I wrote about failed power utilities, failed pipelines in a few other posts and I always end the post with the question, “Who is John Galt?” The question is from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and I’ll comment again at the amazing parallels between the book and what is happening in America and around the world…
Month: August 2006
Cascading Expense Lifestyles – HDTV
This past holiday season, we purchased a High Definiton LCD TV. After seeing prices drop from $10,000 a few years ago to $1000 we decided the time had come for us to try HDTV. We paid about $1100 for a 37″ LCD HDTV. We’ve been quite happy with the quality and resolution of the TV….
The Perfect Storm – Financial World Markets Imbalance
Newsweek has an interesting story this week regarding the vast amount of wealth China is acquiring day by day. Sometime next month, China will accrue over 1 trillion US dollars in their reserves from mostly their trade with the US. Every month, the cash horde increases by 17 billion for China. This article refreshes the…
Why I despise mutual funds and the industry
I despise the mutual fund industry but before I tell you why I’d like for you to think about Bill Gates. Mr. Gates is one of the wealthiest people in the world. A great deal of his wealth, however, is tied up in Microsoft stock. Keep Bill (and his wealth) in mind while I tell…
Estimating your own FICO Score
I recently purchased Quicken 2007 and I’m wondering why Intuit didn’t include any kind of FICO simulator.  There are plenty of areas to enter credit card info, interest rates, credit limits, and more so you’d think Quicken could take these numbers and simulate a score for you! I’m working on creating my own FICO simulator…
Washington Mutual – Aggressive Marketing
Washington Mutual is aggressively pushing me to sign up for one of their credit cards and they’ve run through the whole gambit of gimmicks to get me to do it. I’ve received these offers over the last 10 days. Offer 1 – “Colorful†credit cards with free access to credit scores, coupons and credit line…
Covered Calls on ETFs – Part IV
I described the long hard way of finding the right ETF to invest –go through the list and look for the right opportunity. I also have an easier way that unfortunately, for the time being, I won’t be able to share with you. I’ve developed my own application to scan all ETFs trading within a…
Covered Calls on ETFs – Part III (The nitty-gritty)
Finding the right ETF to execute a covered call on can be a daunting task. A list of all optionable ETFs can be found here: First, we must limit our scope to find the right ETF. In order to sell a covered call, you must own at least 100 shares of the ETF. You will…
Covered Calls on ETFs – Part II
My Covered Call ETF strategy operates on a few assumptions: You have an interest in wanting to immediately capture a certain rate of return You have little or no desire to be in the market for long periods of time with these funds You want to increase cash flow to repeat this process and strategy…
Covered Calls on ETFs – Part I
Note: 1/5th of my Investment Strategy is doing Covered Calls on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) This week, I’ll be focusing on the mechanics of how I plan to grow my portfolio by 20% year over year but before I do I want to share that these tactics only comprise a small part of my overall…