Year: 2010

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Some thoughts on investing strategy

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Last Updated on January 7, 2010 by stlplace

Index or value investing for retirement: so that we can sleep well at night;

Crap shoot for speculation: so that we may get rich some day before retirement age;

But those are just tactic I learned from Your Mind & Your Money series of NBR (PBS) and from my own experience. The most important lesson of all investing (be it value investing or other kind of investing/speculating), is stay on the course: focus. Find a strategy fit one’s need and don’t think grass is green is neighbor’s yard.

Retirement acct review
It seems 2009 was a boom for my retirement accounts. It pretty much recovered and then gained some from the crash of 2008. I am not looking for one year performance for this sort of things here. But I will take it regardless. As of now I still leave my old 401k with my old employer. I also have a Rollover IRA and current 401k with Vanuguard. Still have not decided whether moving the old 401k into Rollover IRA. One thing I am looking for is a low volatility period so that my portfolio does not take a hit during a move (not looking for timing the market).

Categories
gadgets

Some notes on Google Nexus One phone

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Last Updated on January 27, 2010 by stlplace

Official link here: www.google.com/phone

Walter Mossberg (AllthingsD, WSJ) Review “Google’s Nexus One Is Bold New Face in Super-Smartphones“, quote:

I’ve been testing the Nexus One for a couple of weeks and I like it a lot. It’s the best Android phone so far, in my view, and the first I could consider carrying as my everyday hand-held computer….

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Categories
Web

Spammer stole my Yahoo email and sent out spam mails

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Last Updated on January 21, 2010 by stlplace

Friends, in case you received an email selling you Viagra online, which appears sent from my Yahoo email. I apologize. Obviously I don’t sell those. Some hackers used my Yahoo email and did this. Please ignore that mail. More information (prevention tips) about this tactic can be seen at:

I had my email account hacked into and emails sent out.?

I realized this problem as my Gmail acct is also in my Yahoo address book. Also, one friend asked me “huh”? I think this is not really brand new tactic, and I believe most people already know it. This note is just in case.

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Categories
Life Saint Louis

Some thoughts after seeing movie “Up in the Air”

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Last Updated on February 4, 2010 by stlplace

(Update 04Feb10) Watched the “Outsourced” movie from Netflix on Feb 02 night, quite interesting. It has a similar theme with “Up in the Air”.

(Original) Went to see movie “Up in the Air”. That’s the first time my wife and I went to see a movie. We figured time is running out for us to go cinema in the near future as we expect our new baby this March.

Couple thoughts after seeing the movie:

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Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Best mutual fund and shareholder return

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Last Updated on January 1, 2010 by stlplace

It’s that time again, the end of 2009 (and the decade of 2000s) means we can also look at the performance of mutual funds in past year/decade. The winner of US based mutual fund is CGM Focus fund, managed by Mr. Heebner, the fund’s manager since its 1997 launch. CGM Focus is a large cap growth fund with annualized total return of 18.2% in last 10 years (source: WSJ, Best Stock Fund of the the Decade: CGM Focus). Sounds pretty good, right?

Not really. According to MorningStar in the same article:
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Too bad investors weren’t around to enjoy much of those gains. The typical CGM Focus shareholder lost 11% annually in the 10 years ending Nov. 30, according to investment research firm Morningstar Inc.

These investor returns, also known as dollar-weighted returns, incorporate the effect of cash flowing in and out of the fund as shareholders buy and sell. Investor returns can be lower than mutual-fund total returns because shareholders often buy a fund after it has had a strong run and sell as it hits bottom.

……

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