Month: October 2008

It's that time of the year again when your choice of health care insurance plans comes to the fore - Open Enrollment (OE). During OE you can change your health care coverage and flexible spending allowances for the year ahead without penalty or a qualifying "life-event". With health insurance premiums…

I wrote a while back on how the US was leading home price declines earlier this year. Looks like the world has caught up to this unfortunate trend and pushed the relative US declines to the middle of the pack. As the most recent IMF economic report shows, the US…

The difficulty in closing funding for some recently concluded corporate takeovers has presented an arbitrage profit opportunity for investors willing to take some risk. In particular I refer to the $52 billion mega takeover of U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch (Ticker : BUD), the company that is famous for Budweiser Beer, by…

Despite global economic woes and falling stock markets, a positive aspect for main street America has been the relatively rapid rise of the US dollar of late. While this lowers the cost of imported goods and services, it does hurt business that compete globally as the cost our exports rises.…

Crude-oil futures tumbled 6% to below $70 a barrel in New York, despite widespread expectations that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will reduce production at an emergency meeting later this week. Normally a planned cut in the crude oil supply would drive up the price of oil and…

In further proof that the government is trying to spend it's way out of the current financial crisis, the federal reserve chief - Ben Bernanke - signaled his support for a second round of fiscal stimulus'. The usual fear mongering lines of "dire consequences", "grave doubts of our future" and…

One of my colleagues brings her kids to work on days that schools or their day-care is unexpectedly closed. Her kids are about 5 and 7, and she brings either one or both depending on the circumstance. I would say on average, she brings the "kids to work" about 7-10…

Google's AdSense program generates about 30% of the company's total revenues and has been growing consistently over the last few years, despite all their search algorithm change and increase competition. So clearly this is a big and growing money earner for them. However one thing I have noticed is that…

Over the last 10 years I have traded all sorts of financial instruments. One that I have found particularly useful in volatile times like we have now, are options. Options provide a way to make money from both rises or falls in stock prices. It is also allows you to…

Crazy headline or spot on prediction? Just trying to grab attention you may be thinking. However based on the recent rapid moves in the market, mainly to the downside, this headline may come to pass sooner than you think. I have a reasonable investment and retirement portfolio, so I hope…

A sign of America's declining influence in controlling world financial markets was signaled by the fact that unprecedented Federal Reserve and Treasury actions over the last few months was not enough to calm financial markets that went into free fall last week. It wasn't until a coordinated global rescue, orchestrated…

Tony Parker - a regular contributor and experienced investor - is calling the bottom of the market. To quote what Tony said late last week: "Either today (Friday) or Monday will signify the bottom for the stock market...time to buy, buy, buy...and make some money in the process". He has…

A few months ago I found out that this site had a Google Page Rank (PR) of 3. Last week, it was 4. Is this good or bad? Not really understanding what a Google Page Rank was, I let my fingers do the walking and here is a simplified definition…