Category: 401k and Personal Finance

401k, oil and gas

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401k
Last week my old 401k at Vanguard was merged to my new 401k. I don’t know if you paid attention to your 401k or IRA lately, not a fun thing to do. I did a quick calculation, my old 401k portfolio lost 7.56% of its value from Dec 31 2007 to July 7 2008 when it was transferred into new account. It appears I did ok considering the market dropped quite a bit in 1st half of the year.

Oil and gas
The relief at gas pump is coming. Not from federal goverment. The crude oil price has been dropping 3 days in a row in the futures market (refer to Bloomberg energy price here). Natural gas also goes lower with the oil pullback. Notice I used the word pullback. I don’t think we are going to see $50 oil or $2 a gallon gas. So, I was buying oil and natural gas stocks 3 days in a row. I bought Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO) on Tuesday, Devon Energy (NYSE:DVN) yesterday, and Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK) today, all in small amounts. Because I know the oil and gas could drop more, so as the stocks. But long term, 6 months or a year from now, I am quite bullish on them.

Tags Chesapeake-Energy, CHK, Devon-Energy, DVN, Marathon-Oil, MRO

401k and Personal Finance CFA

CFA, 401k, Berkshire shareholder meeting

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 1, 2008
No Comments on CFA, 401k, Berkshire shareholder meeting

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I printed out the CFA exam admission ticket yesterday, the test will be hold on June 7. Still got to read up the economics (my least favorite topic). So far I have read “financial management and statement analysis”, “quatitive methods”, “equity analysis and portfolio management”, and I’ve almost completed the “Options and derivatives”. Another thing I need to read is “Ethics”: I intentionally put it off and prepared to read it right before the test. As I get older, my memory is not as good 🙂

401k
I checked out the 401k and Rollover IRA at Vanguard this morning. I was surprised to find, after all these craziness, my portfolio is down 3.77% YTD. One thing I noticed is April was a good month for stocks. All the major indices went up.

Berkshire shareholder meeting

Tags 401K, berkshire-hathaway, CFA-exam, shareholder-meeting

401k and Personal Finance

Andrew Feinberg, Barron launches newsletter

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 6, 2008
No Comments on Andrew Feinberg, Barron launches newsletter

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Kiplinger is a personal finance magazine I have since year 2001. In its May 08 issue, I found “Tune out the seers” (Promised Land column) by Andrew Feinberg, in which he is saying everyone (especially experts) likes to predict the market and economy, but we should just ignore them. Or in the case of famous guys like George Soros, we could pay a little attention. But we still need to understand the logic behinds his conclusion, and do not let others opinion change our plan without our own homework. Quote John Kenneth Galbraith: there are two kinds of forecasters. Those who don’t know and those who don’t know that they don’t know. The article is not online yet, but I found Andrew’s another article Let Your Winners Run entertaining. Hope you have not listened him blindly if you bought AAPL shares last year 🙂

Barrons launches daily stock alert
I started to subscribe Barrons since this year, and enjoyed it so far. I always think Barrons (along with WSJ), probally is the best business (finance) newspaper in this country. But one thing I also notice is the business of newspaper is deteriating in the US very rapidly, WSJ and Barrons is no exception. Thus the buyout of Dow Jones (parent company of WSJ aand Barrons) by Murdoch last year.

As a part of rescuce effort, now Barrons is launching Daily Stock Alert. I have not signed up for it, because I think all stock picks newsletters make money by the newsletter subscriptions, not by their own portfolio performance. If a guy (or a lady) is really that good at picking stocks, why not buying those stocks in their portfolio, and make the money from it (which is Mr. Buffett did so successfully in last 50 years).

Oh, BTW, Mr. Buffett picks stocks by himself, not from Barrons or other newsletters 🙂

Barrons stock alert pic

Tags Buffett, Kiplinger, stock-pick-newsletter

401k and Personal Finance

Proud to be a Berkshire Shareholder

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 3, 2008
No Comments on Proud to be a Berkshire Shareholder

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My wife used to joked with me: you always tout some stocks when you buy, then after it crashed, you will say it’s a crap (XFML, Heelys, LFT, Crocs).

I think I won’t say that for Mindray, and hopefully no hard feelings for BRK, either.

Sold Mindray MR
I sold my remaining Mindray (MR) shares just now, here are the reasons:

Mindray was doing OK up to this point. But I think it may have overpaid for the DataScope patient monitoring business. It paid 202 million, while the business has revenue of 162 m last year. The unit was not profitable according to one analyst, which I believe because I also did a little research myself. The cost structure of DataScope is higher than Mindray; the US medical device market is tough and will be tougher in the credit crisis. Note the hospitals usually need to borrow from banks to finance the new medical devices.

On other hand, at $31.88, the stock is not cheap (PE ttm of about 45). The company expects to grow revenue and earning by 40% this year.

Bought Berkshire BRK.B
I bought one share of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at $4349.89. This is Buffett’s company. If you have read my blog for a while, you know I have great respect for the Oracle of Omaha. Its main business (insurance) will be tough in the near term, but Warren has did some smart acquisitions lately (the Israel company, and a domestic diversified company, I could not remember the names but believe it or not, sometimes those unknown companies made a lot more real money than Crocs)…Although he scaled down the equity investing (relative to the big purchase mentioned above), he has continued to make money in stock market, notably the $3 billion profit from PetroChina last year.

Tags berkshire-hathaway, BRK.B, Mindray, MR, Scottrade

401k and Personal Finance

My Q1 2008 grades

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(Update Apr 2) Another news to make myself feel better, Chinese A share mutual funds declined 22% on average (read this Chinese news from Money-Courier). For comparison, Shanghai Composite index dropped about 34%, from 5261.56 to 3472.71 in the period. Note that index is not a good benchmark index because it’s skewed by some big cap stocks such as PetroChina (601857.SS).

(Original Apr 1) I was a decent student in elementary school, but from time to time I did get bad grade in an exam. The tough part for me was getting the report to my mom 🙁

The most miserable quarter
I’m sure lots of money managers will share my “most miserable” comments. My little portfolio shrinked about 25.23% from Dec 31, 2007 to March 31, 2008. Thanks to my bone headed bets on LFT and CROX stocks. For comparison: “In the first quarter of 2008, the Dow fell 7.55% and the S&P 500 index lost 9.92%. The Nasdaq was by far the worst performer among major U.S. equity benchmarks in the first three months of the year, dropping 14.07%.” (source: Business Week). To make myself feel slightly better, note GOOG and AAPL dropped about 33% and 25% in the same time period, respectively.

Lesson learned
1) In early Jan. I told my wife I need to unload LFT and CROX, so that I can sleep well in the night. I finanally was able to pull the trigger on them (LFT in Jan and CROX in Feb). A bit too late (CROX went from 75 to 19 in 3 months). But I’m glad I fufilled my words to my wife on this one (see below what if).

2) Trading cost: 7*45 = 315, not significant, but still sizable. Looked at other discount brokers such as TradeKing, IB but have not decided to switch. I will reduce trading times and increase the size of trading (make more sure bets), to reduce the trading cost.

Good things
Finally I was able to get back to In value I trust. I also got back to more solid stocks such as CHL, RIMM, SYT. And I was able to take some profits when I saw opportunity (don’t want be a pig).

Tags AAPL, CROX, first-quarter-2008, GOOG, LFT, stock-performance

401k and Personal Finance Life Tips

Gas saving tips

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Finally St. Louis gas price is exceeding $3 a gallon. Today marks the first day my gas bill exceeded $40 ($3.179 * 13.105 gallons = $41.66).

I am not complaining, as I know people around the world are paying a much higher price for gas, or paying a higher percentage of their disposal income for gas. But I still want to do something to contain the gas cost, before sending my pay check directly to the Exxon-Mobile and the likes.

1) In the past, I tried to fill up gas at the proper time: there are two gas stations near my home, whenever I saw one gas station raised the price (the other has not), I will rush to the other one (usually it’s the Shell).

2) Also, I used the gas rebate credit cards, they are Citi Dividend (5% rebate in the past, this has been changed lately); Chase Freedom (3% rebate); and AAA MBNA card (5% rebate subject to the up limit of 2% of the monthly balance).

3) Last week, I tried another approach. I paid pretty dollars for car maitenance: engine tune up (replace spark plug and wires); fuel injection cleaning; replace engine gasket. Hopefully my investment will pay off over time (from saving in gas).

Tags gas-price, gas-saving-tips

401k and Personal Finance Investing

Close AMZN puts, Portfolio update

Post author By stlplace
Post date February 9, 2008
No Comments on Close AMZN puts, Portfolio update

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I closed the Amazon Feb $65 puts last Wed, when I saw the stock dropped to around $68, which is the low point the day after it released Q4 earning.

Lesson learned:
1) short/put a stock is much harder than I thought. I started this trade because I saw EDU, AAPL, and VMW all dropped big after missing earning. But I have hind-sight bias on them: things are always clearer on rear view mirror. I did not know EDU will issue a so-so guidance for this Q; I did not know iPod suddenly stopped growth, iPhone did not sell as fast as Steve wanted, and Mac computers are expensive considering consumer slow down.

Tags AMZN, China-mobile, CHL, Crocs, RIMM

401k and Personal Finance

Free money from CitiBank: 0% balance transfer

Post author By stlplace
Post date January 20, 2008
No Comments on Free money from CitiBank: 0% balance transfer

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Last week I received the new credit card from CitiBank, which I immediately put it in use by transfering some of the high interest (7.75%) debt in my HELOC to this account. Note this 0% offer is valid for one year.

I found out this offer from MyMoneyBlog.

I have done credit card balance transfer since year 2000. I think most people care about the rate, and the transaction fee when doing balance transfter. But I think the time length is also very important:

Tags CitiBank, low-interest-BT, mortgage-rate, mymoneyblog

401k and Personal Finance

New 401k, $25 from MasterCard, Staples Rebate

Post author By stlplace
Post date January 18, 2008
No Comments on New 401k, $25 from MasterCard, Staples Rebate

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401k
My new 401k plan did first purchase yesterday. I got 0.47 shares of company stock plus other mutual funds. If this rate holds, I am going to get 12 shares this year 🙂

MasterCard CCF settlement
I registered for $25 settlement fees. Now waiting its arrival to my mail box…I understand it will take a while.

Staples easy rebate

Tags 401K, CCF-settlements, Staples-Rebate