How To Start Building a Stock Portfolio with $5,000

The Intelligent Speculator has a good post on building a stock portfolio with $5000.

He makes several good points:

1. The key is to avoid procrastination and get started.

2. Use a discount broker that charges $10 or less per trade.

3. Interestingly, he offers the same advice I offered in Stock Trading Riches - to keep commission costs down, own 1 stock per $2000.

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Tesla Motors, Inc (TSLA) IPO : Good Buy?

I've been asked by several people about what I think about the Tesla Motors IPO (TSLA) yesterday. It was offered at $17 and closed on $24 yesterday. It was at $28 this morning.

What I find interesting about the company is that the CEO founded PayPal, and it is the first U.S. auto manufacturer to go public since Ford in the 1950's.

I read about the IPO the day before it happened. I thought about whether it is worth buying and decided against it.

1. The company has lost money for years.

2. They currently make only 1 car which costs over $100k.

3. They have only sold about 1,000 of them.

4. The IPO and price are assuming that they sell a lot of the new car they are developing, which might cost between $35-45k.

5. The new car will have competition from the Nisson Leaf and Chevy Volt.

So I concluded it's too much risk relative to the possible reward.

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Tax Credits For House Sales Made The Markets More Volatile

Today, there was a report that home sales dropped 33% after the tax credits ran out.

This article on the tax credit's effects on home sales argues that the credits did not create more sales - it just simply affected their timing, thus causing more volatility in the market place.

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How Trying to Save $15 Cost A Fishing Crew $1 Million

It looked like a fishing boat called The Citation had won the "Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament", off the coast of North Carolina, with their record 883 pound catch.  However, it turned out that one of the crew members didn't have a $15 fishing license, which is a violation of contest rules. The boat was disqualified, and the second place boat The Carnivore, with its 528.3 pound catch, ended up getting first prize and netting a cool $999,453.

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Canada's Economy is the Envy of the World

According to this article on Yahoo, Canada's economy is strong and leaders of other countries want to learn from it. Here are some highlights from the article: * Canada's economy grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year. The housing market is hot and three-quarters of the 400,000 jobs lost during the recession have been recovered. * Finance Minister Jim Flaherty recalled visiting China in 2007 and hearing suggestions "that the Canadian banks were perhaps boring and too risk-adverse. And when I was there two weeks ago some of my same counterparts were saying to me, 'You have a very solid, stable banking system in Canada,' and emphasizing that. There wasn't anything about being sufficiently risk-oriented." * As the U.S. and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries over the last 15 years, Canada refused to do so. The banks also aren't as leveraged as their U.S. or European peers.  * In Canada's concentrated banking system, five major banks dominate the market and regulators know each of the top bank executives personally. * There was no mortgage meltdown or subprime crisis in Canada. Banks don't package mortgages and sell them to the private market, so they need to be sure their borrowers can pay back the loans. * Canada  had 12 straight years of budget surpluses.  When recession struck, they pumped stimulus money into the economy, with the result that Canada again has a large deficit. But it is recovering from the recession faster than others, and although its deficit is currently at a record high, the International Monetary Fund expects Canada to be the only one of the seven major industrialized democracies to return to surplus by 2015.

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Watson Trivia Game

I just played the "Dear Watson" trivia game, and I crushed it 41-12.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/16/magazine/watson-trivia-game.html

I don't know if it will ever be able to completely rival human intelligence - but it will be better than us when it comes to retrieving knowledge.

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Fw: 'Jaws' Launched Summer Blockbuster 35 Years Ago - ABC News

The 35th anniversary of the first summer blockbuster.  My mom took my brother and I (we were 8 and 5), but my dad hadn't wanted her to take us - he thought it might be too scary. It scared us, but was good!  My brother even jumped out of his seat during one of the scenes. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/jaws-launched-summer-blockbuster-35-years-ago/story?id=10855868

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