Reading Time: 2 minutes I have been a Borders customer for a long time, most times buying coffees while studying (reading books) there, from time to time I also bought some computer or finance related books, such as Effective C++, My Life as a Quant, etc. One benefit of buying books at Borders (compared to Amazon) is getting the

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update Feb 29 2009) CNBC is putting up some nice words on Buffett today. After all, he lent $3 b to GE (the parent co. of NBC) last fall. (Original) In these turbulant days, investors, ordinary and professional alike, look for directions from investor guru more than ever. Of course among gurus people pay attention,

Reading Time: < 1 minute (Update May 2020) I found from this website, it seems the US consumer saving rate went up a bit in last 5 years, from 6%, 8% to most recent 13% . I can understand the last part due to pandemic. In fact our restaurant eat out (to go, take out) shrunk a lot. My wife is

Reading Time: < 1 minute This morning, Ingersoll Rand (NYSE: IR), the diversified industrial company makes procucts to air conditioner (Trane) to Schlage locks, reported its Q4 2008 earning this morning. Some highlights: it wrote down $3.7 billion (pre-tax, $3.4 b after tax) from Trane acqusition, or a loss of $10.56 per share. Interestingly, the stock went up about 15%

Reading Time: 2 minutes Who is better positioned to weather the recession (or depression as some people like FT Martin Wolf said), American Express (NYSE: AXP) or Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS)? I got some DFS last week so my opinion maybe biased, but wait: I hold Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) which in turns holds significant number of AXP shares

Reading Time: < 1 minute I remember reading this last year, this morning I read it from Yahoo Finance. Here is the prospectus at SEC, and here is a glimpse at IPOHome. It looks like they are going to IPO on Feb 10 (from the roadshow, again from IPOHome). I think most people heard about their product enfamil (Amazon, Wiki),

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update Feb 5) It appears BoA CEO Ken Lewis bought additional 200,000 BAC shares yesterday (source: bloomberg). (Original Feb 4) Today Bank of America stock (NYSE: BAC) fell below $5 the first time since 1990s. The company was in trouble earlier this month as the loss from Merrill Lynch turned out to be much bigger

Reading Time: 2 minutes What is the best investment one can make in 2009? Invest in yourself: health, family, financial knowledge, job skills, business skills,…among all I think health is the most important because without it everything else will get hit or become less meaningful. Amid growing belly I decided to do something about it this year. I used

Reading Time: < 1 minute Since I have done some travel lately, I have oppertunity to see people in the airport or airplane. It seems to me Blackberry is everywhere. I remember Blackberry was popular a few years ago (also from airport impression), now it’s pervasive / everywhere. There are lots of coverage on Blackberry recently such as: 1) Obama

Reading Time: < 1 minute This morning, 9:05 AM, CFA Institute web page is again hit hard: I mean all the people are trying to log in and see the results of CFA level I exam last Dec. After about I waited 25 minutes, just before I entering the customer meeting room, I am seeing passing rate: 35%. This is