As can be seen from the figure, the case schiller housing index shows a second dip in the last 3 years indicating that there might be another (possible) buying opportunity for home buyers.

1 trillion china reservews - china buys treasuries -- and since liquidity is ample -- us govt pays less interest --- so less taxes for the country  --- more money to spend on cheap chinese goods -- more chinese goods brought -- chinas reserves grow ---- back to step 1

Interesting chart by the business insider which shows that it is not very useful (of course relatively) to write Facebook apps.  However, things have to still be kept in perspective. The 10% is still from a user base of 600Million+ users. Hence at any instant of time, you will have more than 60million+ users on facebook apps, which is still pretty neat.

That is what I think. :)

Time spent by a regular Facebook user.

Graph showing aaapl's performance in the smart phone market.

Apple domination of the smartphone business 2011

Windows licenses sold - IPAD responsible?

+ At 10inches the iPad 2 is too big, and Steve jobs declines to make it any smaller.
+ Multi-tasking on the iPad 2 is not as good.
+ If you want full web support, the iPad 2 is not even in the running.

The playbook is a strong competitor as of now, though it cant run quite a few android apps.


Disclosure: I am long aapl

Nice article on investopedia. Take away:

1. Use a card with little or no foreign transaction fees: E.g. that from a federal credit union (FCU). Applies only to certain FCUs though. (Please ask your bank).
2. Tell the bank in advance that you will be traveling to enable foreign transactions.
3. Sign receipts only in the local currency rates so that you will get the default competitive conversion rate.
4. Carry an ID (passport) for validation.

Based on chart of the day information from linkedin. Nice plot:

Linkedin revenue distribution

Considering the fact that, among the 11 IPOs listed to date, only 6 of them have been profitable, it is important to know a set of criteria before selecting an IPO. 

Excerpt from a nice article in the economic times of India:

Promoters' track record: One way to check this is by finding out the other businesses that the promoters are a part of and checking the track record for the existing listed companies, especially those listed in the recent past. Any legal or accounting problems with these businesses or with the company that is being listed should be a red flag. It's also important to check whether the group has other companies that are engaged in a similar businesses but are unlisted. Several promoters have used this to divert profits. This information is available in the red herring prospectus (RHP) of the issue.

Merchant bankers' track record: A good merchant banker is one who has brought high quality IPOs to the market in the past. Look for subscription response to previous IPOs and the return that they generated for investors.

Financial details of the company: This is a crucial step. Jagannadham T., head of research of SMC Global, says, "As the RHP provides the financial details for the past five years, it allows investors to understand whether the business has been growing profitably with expanding or stable margins, or at the expense of shrinking margins."

Look for any sharp increase in profit just before the IPO. Companies often inflate profits under pressure from private equity investors who have made pre-IPO placements. Also, check for changes in accounting policies in the past three years. Says Ambareesh Baliga, COO, Way2Wealth: "See if there has been a windfall in the past 2-3 years. If this is due to changes in the sectoral performance, don't be worried, but with other things remaining equal, one should look at it with scepticism."

An  important point to keep in mind is that these fundamentals matter only when the investor is looking for more than investment gains (i.e. some sort of long term - medium term investment).
 

Beautiful chart of the day from the silicon alley insider.
* As always click on the plot for enlarging

Comparison of profits - apple and microsoft

Ironic that Microsoft (msft) had supported apple (aapl) with a 150million funding when it was about to go under. Bet they are not too happy now :)

1) Relative earnings of women in corporate America are improving as compared to those of males. Great transition. See the progress from the chart below:
* As always, please click on the images to enlarge them

Discussion by Paul Krugman on this issue:

There was a big positive movement in satisfaction with the country’s direction after 9/11, despite a deteriorating economy; there was another positive spike with the capture of Baghdad. After that, however, despite a genuinely improving economy, public perceptions slid steadily — reflecting, I believe, the sense of betrayal over the Iraq war, and also the Katrina disaster.

Excellent post by Prof. Perry on his blog. Discusses the result from a recent study which shows that contrary to popular belief, when the rich are getting richer, the poor are also benefiting.

All in all a great post. Numbers re summarized by the following table:

Income distribution for the quintiles

The reason can be summarized as:

“By leaving out additional sources of income – like fringe benefits or employer-provided health insurance – past studies have dramatically understated American households’ access to after-tax resources.” said Dr. Burkhauser. “What we found is that the rich did get richer over the last 30 years, but so did the middle class, the working class and the poorest.”

Nice initial comparison by Prof. Krugman
Taxes are compared in 2007 as a function of the GDP thus making the comparison fair. The original data source for this info is located here.

Based on a nice article from seeking alpha. They show the following plot from MorningStar

Thanks to wikipedia for this wonderful diagram:

Dollar valuation over time

"Developed by Gerald Appel in the late seventies, Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD) is one of the simplest and most effective momentum indicators available. MACD turns two trend-following indicators, moving averages, into a momentum oscillator by subtracting the longer moving average from the shorter moving average. As a result, MACD offers the best of both worlds: trend following and momentum. MACD fluctuates above and below the zero line as the moving averages converge, cross and diverge. Traders can look for signal line crossovers, centerline crossovers and divergences to generate signals. Because MACD is unbounded, it is not particularly useful for identifying overbought and oversold levels."

Nice discussion available here.

Set SMART Goals for a Kick Ass Year: "

We’ve done two days of “reviews,” from rebalancing your portfolio to reviewing your home inventory, and now it’s time to look forward. One of the most popular past-times for the New Year is to set a New Year’s Resolution. People resolve to lose weight, spend more time with family and friends, work harder, blah blah blah. Most of the time they abandon that by early February. I know this because every year the gym is packed in January, thins out by February, and has returned to normal by March. It’s like clockwork.

One of the reasons why most people fail has to do with their goal setting. That’s why it’s important for you to set SMART goals.

This post is part of the 2011 Spring Cleaning Week!

SMART Goals

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. The acronym is significant because a good goal is one that incorporates each of those characteristics. (there are some versions of that acronym that swap out words but the basic gist is the same)

It’s important to set goals in the first place, SMART or otherwise, because it’s always valuable to have a target. Without a target, you don’t know what you’re aiming for. The other characteristics that make a goal SMART will help maintain motivation, which is absolutely crucial.

How do we turn a not-SMART goal into a SMART one? Let’s take the old classic, “lose weight.” Lose weight lacks all of the characteristics of a SMART goal. It’s not really a goal but more of a statement on a process, right? You are constantly losing and gaining weight.

A better version would be to lose 10 pounds before March 1st, depending on how “realistic” that is for you (if you weigh 100 pounds, probably not realistic). It’s specific (10 pounds), measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (March 1st).

What’s important in setting a SMART goal is that you can measure your progress, which can boost your motivation to complete the goal. As each week passes and you trim off a pound or two, you feel that goal getting closer and closer. That, in turn, motivates you to push onward.

So this year, set some SMART goals and have a kick ass 2011!

(Photo: kenjonbro)

Set SMART Goals for a Kick Ass Year from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

In the paper Park is partial to the 200-day moving average as the longer-term moving average, and he tests a variety of short-term averages ranging from 1 to 50 days.  It should come as no surprise that they all work!  In fact, they tend to work better than simple price-return based factors.  That didn’t come as a huge surprise to us, but only because we have been tracking a similar factor for several years that uses two moving averages.  What has always surprised me is how well that factor does when compared to other calculation methods over time.

Details on this article are available here: http://systematicrelativestrength.com/2010/08/26/moving-average-ratio-and-momentum/