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/

An IPO offers a huge (possible) reward at the cost of a huge risk in investment.  In such scenarios it is advisable to go through a systematic set of steps to understand better the odds of the IPO rewarding your investment.  We describe a step by step approach to understanding IPO investment:

1. When are IPOs issued and what are they?
- IPOs are initial public offers which are made by companies which are planning to go public. The company is usually opting to go public (meaning selling their stock to the public), when the company is planning to cash in on a huge growth opportunity, and needs to raise capital to attain that growth.

2. How do people make money on the IPOs.
- Most IPOs allow the public (specially the retail investors) to subscribe their share at a discount in comparison with the general valuation. This offers an incentive for people to subscribe to the issue. When the issue is actually listed on the index, depending on the market sentiment, the stock may be priced higher than the issue price of the IPO, or lower. The investor makes money if it is higher.

3. Gauging  and deciding IPO investment: All kinds of company metric like previous sales figures, PE, PEG, EPS, and other statistics. EPS is calculated on the price at which the IPO is issued and the number of stocks that are being offered as a part of the IPO. A comparison can be made to see if this is in line with that of the industry. Other qualitative indicators are the promoter standings. A good promoter will usually also indicate great business prospects for the company in the future.

I know this might be stretching it a bit but I just found out a quick way to have drinking water in hotels where they usually charge anything between $2 - $10 for a single bottle of water. If your room has a microwave oven, a simple trick is to get free ice from the vending machine, and microwave oven in your room to make nice pure drinking water.