A Brief History of General Motor
General Motor (GM), the world’s largest car maker for 77 years until 2008, filed for Chapter 11 protection this morning, the same day its fellow car maker Chrysler could exit bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing is expected after GM failed to reconstruct its debts with bondholders before the June 1 deadline imposed by the government. In [...]
Berkshire Hathaway Stock Holdings and Investment Ideas
Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway filed its first quarter 13-F with the SEC last week. From the filing, you may find a few investment ideas from where Buffet is putting his money, as noted by Morningstar. At the end of the first quarter, Berkshire holds a total of 41 stocks in its equity portfolio, with American [...]
SmartMoney 2009 Best & Worst Online Brokers
Despite all the troubles at the financial service company, E*Trade Financial scored a big win in the latest SmartMoney Broker Survey, leading four out of five categories. Though I don’t use E*Trade as my stock broker, nor do I have a savings account with them, I do have a E*Trade Global Trading Account to [...]
Netflix Benefits from Recession
Many industrial groups got hurt pretty badly in this one and a half year long recession. Banks, homebuilders, retailers, just to name a few. However, the recession has also proven to be an opportunity for others to bloom in this environment because when the wallet got tight, we cut our spending: we postpone purchase of [...]
“I Am An Investor”
Well, that’s not exactly what I said, but I found that a piece by Knight Kiplinger, the Editor in Chief of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, in the June issue of the magazine says a lot about what an investor should do in this stormy economic environment. Mr. Kiplinger isn’t as well known as legendary investors such [...]
Scottrade Reference Code for Commission Free Trades
Online discount broker Scottrade is having a ReferALL promotion that will give a new customer referred through the program 3 commission free trades that can be used to trade equity or option with market or limit, GTC or day orders. The free trades will be applied to the next 3 trades made online. Currently Scottrade [...]
Adding Exxon Mobil to My DSPP List
I am still expanding my stock investments, this time through the DSPP program at ComputerShare.
Yesterday, I added Exxon Mobil (XOM) to my regular purchase list with a monthly purchase of $100 of the stock. The reason that I want to buy it through a DSPP program rather making a one-time purchase like I did with [...]
Take a Big Picture View of the Stock Market
The S&P 500 Index lost about 46% between August 2008 and September 2002 when the internet bubble burst.
Then it took the benchmark 5 years to reach a new all-time high in October 2007.
Then there came the subprime mortgage crisis, the collapse of the housing market and the financial market, eventually, the recession. In about one [...]
Stock Trades Since October 2008
I am by no means a trader. I am not always looking for stocks to buy. However, since last October when the stock market started to sink, I have been active, relatively, on trading stocks. In fact, stocks I bought and sold since October 2008 are more than the total number of trades I did [...]
Discount Broker Comparison
The best online discount brokers don’t necessarily offer the best value for investors. Before selecting an online brokerage, it’s better to know how much it will cost you to invest with it, even though cost isn’t the only concern.
When I look for a discount broker, one of the most important pieces of information I always [...]
