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

Reading Time: 2 minutes Happy New Year!!! The Chinese New Year of ox, or bull (or cow). If you missed making new years resolution on Jan 1, this is another time to make up. Hotel Frequent Guest Program Like Airline frequent flyer programs, there are hotel frequent guest programs. And I joined two lately: Hilton HHonors and Mirriott Rewards.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A; BRK.B) has not done well lately. Nonetheless, Nightly Business Report (PBS) interviewed Buffett. The topic ranges from new administration, recession and investing. The interview is about 30 minutes long. Interestingly Susie Gharib tried to ask particular investment advice, Buffett declined politely.

Reading Time: < 1 minute It seems the financial crisis has been more like a banking crisis these days, with the RBS virtually nationalized by the British goverment, and Citi and Bank of America increasingly can not stand on its own. The No. 1 and No. 2 US banks according to market cap, J.P.Morgan (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:

Reading Time: 2 minutes Bank of America is back in the news because they asked and got $20 billon from US govement, to back the loss from Merrill Lynch acquisition. (Source: Yahoo Tech-ticker) Personally I like Bank of America, ever since I became their customer serveral years ago. Two benefits of being BoA checking acct cosumer: 1) Their branch

Reading Time: < 1 minute Good reading I found John Bogle’s 6 Lessons for investors (WSJ op-ed, Jan 8 ) to be good. A few years ago I read John’s Little Book of Common Sense Investing, and was not impressed by it because at that time the market was very hot. Now it all makes sense to me. John is

Reading Time: 2 minutes Madoff story continues to occupy the news these days (e.g., this one from NYTimes). Yesterday, Satyam, the No. 4 Indian IT outsourcer, broke the news with giant accounting scandal (BBC news, wiki: Satyam). But the story does not end here. In my mind, there are many other ponzi schemes in our lives, and sometimes people

Reading Time: < 1 minute Sunmmary: the issue of 3G license (news here), the immature domestic standard being assigned to CHL, and no cool handset. All the above combined with the slowdown of Chinese economy is creating a headwind for China Mobile near term growth. China Telecom (NYSE:CHA, the landline operator recently acquired CDMA business from China Unicom) is ramping