Monthly Archive for May, 2008

Which Candidate Does Wall Street Prefer?

Published
by
Doug
on May 29, 2008
in Elections and Money
. 0 Comments

It’s interesting to me to see that most of Wall Street’s execs prefer the Dems to the Republican. Click on the graphic below to see what I mean.

Portfolio.com - Divided Loyalties

Back in March, the LA Times also reported that the Dems are the “darlings of Wall St.” For a more recent update on Wall Street donations, check out Alphaville. Despite the Dems’ push to change rules concerning carried interest and regulate hedge funds, the activists are overwhelmingly for the Dems because of their seemingly stronger support for shareholder interests.

My Online Art Journal

Published
by
Doug
on May 28, 2008
in Art and Culture
. 0 Comments

The internet and web are undoubtedly great things. I have found and digested a vast amount of information and visual stimuli as a result. I also think it’s a little funny at times how I’ve been able to see so many new things and so much of the world without setting foot outside. But I digress…

When I surf the web, I like to keep up with art. I like what’s old and I like what’s new. Past trends interest me as well as current trends. Lately, I’ve been keeping an online scrapbook of art that I’ve found online. I use a combination of Tumblr and Shareaholic and Firefox to scrapbook all these images. It takes less than 10 seconds to post an image to my scrapbook.

If you happen to visit my scrapbook, you’ll see a tile of images. If you hover over an image, you’ll see a plus mark pop up, which you can click on to view the full-size image. If you just click on the image, you will go to the original website where I found it. As you can see, I love all sorts of art. Architecture, furniture design, graphic design, illustration, photography, advertisements, paintings, logos, typography, and sculpture.

The world is full of beautiful and wondrous things.

Insider Transactions and Guru Portfolios

Published
by
Doug
on May 28, 2008
in Investing
. 0 Comments

There has never been a better point in time to be an individual investor. The primary reason is that there are so many tools out there to help you research potential stock picks. You can get five years of a company’s financial data for free from Google, Yahoo, or Reuters. You can go to a company’s website and download their quarterly and annual reports. You can look at all the various SEC filings, via EDGAR, pretty much as soon as they occur.

But there are also some very interesting and useful online tools that focus on insider transactions and the holdings of investment “gurus” like Warrent Buffett, Ian Cumming, Seth Klarman, or Eddie Lampert. There are three online tools I use to research insider transactions and the holdings of gurus: J3 Services Group, Tickerspy, and GuruFocus. I greatly prefer the first two, and only look GuruFocus as it might have some interesting articles.

J3SG logoJ3 Services Group (J3SG) is free for nonprofessionals. It’s an online service that takes SEC data and whips it up into a presentable format. You can look at all the holdings of institutions and gurus and the various changes they’ve made from the previous quarter. You can look at pie charts that show insider and institutional holdings. J3SG also provides some very powerful screening tools. For example, you can search for stocks that have insitutional money flowing in but whose price has gone down. You can also subscribe to various alerts, where an email is sent to you if an insider or institution has sold or bought a particular stock.

J3SG has a very barebones design, but it is still pleasing to the eye and it is not too difficult to navigate the site.

Tickerspy logoThe second online tool I use is Tickerspy, which has a very “Web 2.0″ feel. Tickerspy has the same type of features as J3SG, but it is a bit more limited in the amount of data it provides. However, navigation is easier and the design is much better. In it’s attempt at trying to be more of a web community, Tickerspy has the feature of allowing you to create your own portfolio of stocks your’e tracking. The portfolio you create is tracked and you can compare its performance to the S&P or to Buffett. I created a portfolio almost a month ago - right now it’s beating the S&P.

Another useful feature of Tickerspy is the news regarding your tracked stocks and gurus it automatically provides you. Overall, I like Tickerspy a lot so far and will probably continue to use it along with J3SG.

Lastly, there is GuruFocus. I only go there to see if there are new articles. I don’t use it for its guru-tracking services, which are the most limited of the three. I also think its a badly-designed website.

To reiterate, there are some great online tools out there for researching possible investments. I highly reccomend J3SG and Tickerspy for tracking the movements of insiders and the gurus, the two groups of people who have the most intimate relationship with the company in which they are investing.

My Beginnings As An Investor

Published
by
Doug
on May 19, 2008
in Books and Investing
. 2 Comments

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been reading Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor at the suggestion of a professional money manager. Ever since I got my first job out of college, I’ve tried to learn about investing and the stock market. I saved as much money as I could, putting some into my 403(b) plan with TIAA-CREF, putting some into an online savings account to earn 5% interest, and leaving some for my self to invest in individual stocks of my choosing.

I lived quite frugally for some time in D.C. along with two other great friends I made. As one of my friends watched me scoop up the last of my baked beans with a piece of wheat bread while watching The Daily Show, they said I ate worse than prisoner. Nevertheless, I still was able to go out some of the time and was able to enjoy myself and their company.

But back to this book I’ve been reading. Benjamin Graham was basically the mentor and teacher of Warren Buffet (a very rich, shrewd, and keen investor by all accounts - an understatement, of course) and the book lays the groundwork for the concept of value investing. The basic idea is to buy stocks that are undervalued by the market and to hold onto them for a very long time or until the market fully values them.

As I’ve been reading, I’ve been taking some fairly detailed notes on all the chapters. I’ve also been extremely fortunate to have the same money manager as my own mentor, a person with whom I have discussed Graham’s concepts and to whom I may ask questions. I’ve enjoyed the material and discussions and have already learned a great deal. I just wish I had known about this book 4 years ago.

Taxi Driver: The World’s Most Lucrative Film

Published
by
Doug
on May 15, 2008
in Economics and Film
. 0 Comments

FT.com reports that Columbia University’s Nobel laureate economist Robert Mundell says Taxi Driver is the world’s most lucrative film for a very interesting reason:

John Hinckley, the deranged would-be assassin who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan in 1981, claimed that he was inspired by it. He said that his action was an attempt to impress Foster. (The movie features a scene in which a mohawked De Niro attempts to assassinate a politician.)

According to Mundell, the wave of sympathy for President Reagan that was engendered by the assassination attempt deterred Democrats in Congress from voting against his proposed tax cuts. Due to this accident of history, the US administered a big fiscal stimulus at the same time that Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve was administering tight money. This, for Professor Mundell, was vital in creating the era of prosperity that followed.

“Taxi Driver is the most important movie ever made from the standpoint of creating GDP,” Mundell told delegates. “It’s the movie that made the Reagan revolution possible. That movie was indirectly responsible for adding between $5 trillion and $15 trillion of output to the US economy.”

Exams, Graduation, Then Tornado

Published
by
Doug
on May 13, 2008
in Life
. 0 Comments

I’ve been quiet for quite some time now. I’ve been studying and taking exams for the past two weeks, I cut down on cycling far more than I intended to, I’ve had my sister’s graduation stuff to deal with and now a tornado has struck my down. I’ve spent two days without power and I won’t be getting it back until tomorrow.

Now, I’ve started my summer job and hopefully I’ll be able to cycle a lot more since I don’t have to worry about school. On the other hand, my hours are not flexible and I’ll only be able to ride from 5:30-8:00. I might start doing 45 minutes on the trainer in the mornings, or perhaps I’ll start running again in the mornings?

America and Macon Going to the Pawn Shops

Published
by
Doug
on May 1, 2008
in Economy and News
. 0 Comments

The economy is clearly not what it once was. Americans and Maconites are cutting back on spending and are stopping by the local pawnshops and eBay to pick up some extra cash in exchange for the crap they don’t need.

Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meet. (AP)

Pawn shops receive more traffic as times become financially tougher. (Macon.com)

Low Spending Is Taking Toll on Economy. (New York Times)

Big Retailers Scaling Back Expansion Plans and Shutting Stores. (New York Times)