Thursday, September 30, 2010

Milestone - $1k

Today, September 30, 2010, I achieved a personal milestone: I earned $1,000 in a single investment. Last month, I piecemail bought 600 shares of BYD (Ticker: BYDDF) which is an acronym for "Build Your Dream", at an average price of $6.26. Well, dreams actually do come true! The stock has bolted up over the past month to $8.10 (as of this afternoon) which equates to a net gain of over $1,100!

For some more personal history, the first transaction that I earned $100 on took place in 2008 when I bought 300 shares of SemGroup Limited Partners, an oil and gas services company located in Oklahoma, and sold half my stake after it ran up 50%. I later sold my entire stake after it ran up to over 200% my initial investment.

In all likelihood, it will be a considerable amount of time (hopefully not) before I realize the next milestone -$10,000.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Haiku - Workplace Relationships

Workplace Relationships
Sex with coworkers,
most cases, inappropriate,
and HR nightmare.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Haiku - Credit Risky Investments

Credit-Risky Investments
You like credit risk?
Leveraged loans/high-yield debt,
hold on for the ride.
-JDW

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Investing Vigilance

Spot on from Designing Better Futures. If you asked me, we are at the crest or just below the crest and on the way down.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Disturbing data observation from Bentonville

This transcript details an extremely chilling trend observed by Wal-Mart's data analysis team: an apparent spike in consumer spending at the 12:00 AM hour on the first of the month, specifically paid for by government benefits.
"And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when ... government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher."
Hat tip to NPR Blog.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Haiku - Trust Me

Trust Me
Companies don't lie:
they know better than you do.
It's for your own good.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Interesting Sentence of the Day

Comes to us from Jay Kirk:
Ernest had never heard of such a thing. Once, he’d had a client who’d come all
the way from Australia just to punch a mountain gorilla in the face, but nothing
quite like this.

Hat tip to Ben Casnocha.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Modern Portfolio Theory rethought


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Yup, it's pretty much like that