Getting Ahead for the Little Guy
I recently opened an account with Lending Club, a “peer-to-peer” lending service. It’s an interesting option both as a borrower (since the credit crisis is so tight right now) and as an investor. From the investment angle, Lending Club is currently claiming an average return of over 9%, including losses due to defaults.
So far my [...]
I borrowed “Trading for a Living,” by Alexander Elder, from the library several months ago. I loved it – though a lot of the explanation of various technical indicators in the middle of the book went over my head. And I thought I was pretty well up on things!
Still, there was a lot of worth [...]
Learning to be a serious investor (and trader) over the last couple of years has taken a lot of work – and I can’t say I’m too pleased with the results so far. But we’ve been in what many are calling the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression (I’m not sure I buy into [...]
I understand, I really do. By setting themselves up as the nominal leaders of a mob-mindset, our elected officials can set us off looking for a lynching or witch-hunt so we won’t look too carefully at who is really responsible.
It’s pretty disgusting.
There’s an investment group that meets (almost) weekly that I try to attend every once in a while. Not much of the deals presented are within my range (these guys tend to throw around numbers like $10,000 or $40,000 like I might talk about $500 or $2000), but I attend to get an idea of [...]
I was asked in an email about liquidity, and how short-sellers provide it in a tanking market. Since this is really geared towards beginners, I figured I ought to explain the term.
The simple definition of liquidity I use is “How quick and easy it is to buy / sell / trade / convert an asset [...]
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why it can be scary being a bear in a “mature” bear market. Almost as bad as being a bull in a very late, fluffy-top, ready-to-plunge bull market.
Fortunately, I had no short positions left when today happened. I was 100% pure bull. Wait, that can have a lot [...]
Because of the size of my account, I am required by federal law to hold onto my stock & option positions overnight. I can’t day-trade. They give me three exceptions per trading week, but on the fourth time my account gets frozen – unable to open new positions – and I get stuck in time-out [...]
Last night, I heard a statistic that almost 1 in 8 mortgages is currently in some level of default (late payment, etc) in the U.S. How is any lender supposed to survive that?
Well, one bank tried. I shall leave the name anonymous to protect the guilty, but a friend of mine was recently laid off [...]
Wow.
Microsoft stock is selling at less than $16 / share. I didn’t expect to see that again without a split. Almost everything (and everyone) is taking a beating in the market. Most people aren’t talking about a recession anymore – they are arguing over whether or not the “D” word applies, and whether it’ll be [...]