The Tasgall Group

I just wanted to point out a couple of links I’ve added to our blogroll. The first is Minyanville, an unique online “town” of market-obsessed characters with a nack for out-of-the-box thinking. Their daily “Five Things You Need To Know (to stay ahead of the pack on Wall Street)” and “Random Thoughts” are priceless and wonderfully irreverant. Once you catch on to their style of dry, often subtle humor, you’ll feel right at home. The second is Economist’s View, a constant flow of articles and commentary on all things that might interest the economist in you, especially if you are Keynesian in your leaning. It’s a great place to read editorials from major papers that are normally subscription-only.

Also, I should mention that I’ve recently become a user of Bloglines. I was looking for a good RSS feed reader when I learned that this web-based service seems to be more favored that most download-and-install types. Given that I have a preference for all things web-based (see Meebo) because they are always “with me”, this fit the bill perfectly. I’ve already added Tasgall to my subscriptions.

There is a good section in one of the Market Wizard books about option expiration and why there tends to be a lot of volatility. I will try to recreate the blurb here… (more…)

An excerpt from John Mauldin’s e-letter:“The market was already up 120 points when the Fed made its announcement and then roared ahead almost another 100 points. So it was not all Bernanke. In fact, I tend to think it was more likely end of the quarter gamesmanship, with funds working to move their favorite stocks up, moving into stocks that will look good in their portfolios and dumping the dogs. If XYZ stock is up 10% for the quarter, you want some of it in your portfolio to show investors you were on top of it. Of course, you don’t have to say you got to the game late.

End of the quarter rallies are common. Any old excuse will do. My bet is that whatever the Fed did would have produced a rally, short of stating that they had decided a recession was in order.”

Interesting stuff and good to keep in mind. I need to create a calendar with items like “End of quarter games might cause a rally–don’t read anything special into a suddent 100+ plus gain!” and other similar friendly reminders.

Andy Kessler has a pdf version of his book How We Got Here available for free from his website. The book is about technology’s contributions to history and increases in the standard of living. Kessler was originally trained as an engineer, and he takes an engineer’s approach to the situation.

I read Kessler’s book Running Money a couple of years ago and his writing style is engaging and accessible. He also wrote the first chapter (titled Signposts in the Fog) of Just One Thing. He also has a pretty good blog here.

(The pdf is 212 pages, ~670kb.)

I was just browsing over at StockCharts.com and noticed on their Point & Figure (P&F) charts, they have quite a few sizes available…

• Tiny
• Small
• Medium
• Large
• Huge
• Wide
• Very Wide
• Super Wide
• Mega
• Super Mega
• Giga

Now that’s impressive. Not that many websites give their customers that many options. I tried out Giga – I can see how you might want that if you need to see EVERY LAST PIXEL.

It’s time.? A project that I’ve been working on extensively for weeks, probably to the great annoyance of the lady of the house, is finally at a point where I’m ready to share my work and begin testing the idea in a semi-public forum.? The working title for this project is the Uberman’s Portfolio, inspired by the infamous Uberman’s Sleep Schedule in that it never sleeps and because of the many late nights spent building the?gears and levers that make it all?possible.? Also, the acronym is UP, which is where I hope my equity will be when all is said and done.

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Ever wondered how or where to open up an IRA for trading things other than stocks, such as futures and forex?? Consider a custodial trust?company that can approve various types of trading accounts for an IRA setup.? I think as long as the broker can prove that there are automatic safeguards in place that prevent the account ever going into debit such that you owe money, then it can be approved.? This is why margin accounts are allowed because most have automatic margin call procedures that prevent you from ever losing more than the amount in your account.

Here are a few:

Entrust Administration

Equity Trust Co.

Millennium Trust Company

I don’t have any knowledge of these firms to recommend?one and there may be more, but these are the few I’ve heard of.

By opening a FXTrade account at Oanda, which costs you nothing, has no obligations to trade and no minimum deposit, they pay 4.7% interest on USD deposits compounded daily.? Four point SEVEN just to have your money sit there.? I don’t think there is a savings account at any bank that can match that while giving you the option to invest in alternative currencies. The only better rate with no minimum on www.bankrate.com?was OneUnited Bank at 4.91%.? So for a trading account 4.7% is?very attractive.

How Index Investing Harms Your Portfolio

I read about this a few months ago in the book Just One Thing?where Rob Arnott contributed a chapter and it really stuck out as a useful piece of info.

Now for the other point of view and more supporting arguments with charts.

If you’re looking to invest in CDs or a similar fixed income investment, consider loaning out part of your money at Prosper.com. You can invest in small amounts, start to get a pretty big boost to your yield, pay low fees (well, the borrower pays the fees), and get it all done with minimal hassle (everything can be done from a web browser).

You can take a larger chunk of money and lend it out in small amounts to many different people — the diversification should help with the risk that a person walks out on their debt. I believe all the loans are in 3 year repayment periods, so you’ll probably want to diversify across people as well as begin to ladder the loan over time.

Some obvious advice: focus on those with high credit ratings and a reasonable way to pay back the loan; don’t treat this like a charity and give money to the person who “deserves” it. Factor in expected defaults when calculating the return you’re willing to lend at.