A Blog About Finances

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Less than 10 miles from the downtown district of San Diego, nearly 26,000 people make their home in the delightful city of Lemon Grove, California. Plantings of vast collections of citrus trees throughout the southeast region of San Diego County in the early 1900s led to the evolution of this community named for its freshly planted groves. After World War II, as the area become more urbanized along with the outgrowth of the entire San Diego metropolis, the immensity of the groves was diminished, but the spirit of a small, agricultural community still remains intact. Present-day neighborhoods consist of a wide range of three-bedroom Lemon Grove homes for sale to accommodate a varied assortment of both current and potential residents in the city. With the lasting city motto of the “Best Climate on Earth,” Lemon Grove is notable for its mild weather patterns, which cater to a lifetime of year-round outdoor activity at local attractions like Lemon Grove Park, Civic Center Park and Berry Street Park.

It is easy to see why residents of the charming city of Red Oak, Texas are so proud of the community in which they live. This idyllic location boasts a rich culture and history, a friendly atmosphere and a number of exciting ways to spend your leisure time, making Red Oak eco-friendly homes for sale very attractive. Visit Red Oak’s many parks to make the most of the pleasant climate with family picnics, games of catch and relaxation. Red Oak invited residents to become acquainted with their neighbors through reading clubs, community appreciation dinners and more. In addition, essential amenities like hospitals, libraries, high performing school districts and post offices are just a short drive away.

Just about all the experts have been wrong. I’ve been following some of them even way before I began online trading and online options trading. None of them called this.

A very few did say that they thought that the sub prime lending would have consequences, but they did not forecast in what manner. They mostly said that it would have an effect on a few banks, but never did they say the entire system would melt down.

It’s ironic that almost twenty years ago, in the late 1980’s, that there were a slew of books and financial gurus who predicted the next Black Tuesday and Great Depression, and of course when that didn’t happen, they fell out of favor.

The Panic of 1987, which drove stocks down then over 500 points, was an enormous percentage point drop, but now drops like that are happening daily.

Of course, the banking and finance system has not quite melted down. Nobody really knows how dire it is.

Yesterday, Hank Paulson, forced some of the largest banks to sell stock to the federal government. Some of the banks objected, like Wells Fargo, as they were not in danger, had a strong balance sheet, and did not want the federal government owning such a large voting block of stock. There were clearly some shotgun weddings.

None of this is restoring confidence. Bad news continues to flow in across the world. Yesterday the bad news came from Switzerland. Both big investment banks there, Credit Suisse and USB, have been nationalized.

This is Switzerland — home of the Swiss bank! These banks survived the Great Depression and World War II. Now they’ve been done in by a bunch of lower income Americans and the banks and the politicians that caused this mess.

I’m not sure what can be done. If trading is halted on the exchanges, it would probably only be a pause in the massacre.

If the government got out of the way, the markets would totally crumble, which may happen anyway. If that happens, real wealth will be lost, but others will step in to buy. There is money out there — waiting.

Today and tomorrow will be interesting days, to say the least. If the market goes below 8000, then we may see another rush to sell, people moving out of mutual funds and into cash, and people and institutions stashing the money in the mattress, so to speak.

Each day is something new. I wish it weren’t. Being my own online broker certainly presents me with some challenging times.

Online trading has made my life easier, but has also kept me up at night because I am glued to the screen, searching out events in global markets as they unfold.

Tara, my wife, has told me that I haven’t slept so little since September 11. That’s true. Perhaps leaving the work to an online stock broker is not such a bad idea.

I’m trying to do a few things with online stock trading and options trading. One is to protect our holdings. The other, is to make some money. There will be few times in a lifetime when there is such a buying opportunity.

It’s true, though, what they say about not knowing if the markets have hit bottom. I believe the markets have further to fall. But picking the bottom is not an easy assignment. The blood is seeping out of the cracks, but it’s not yet running in the streets.

Panic has reached the retail level. That happened last Friday.

This Friday is triple witching, and it could be a blood bath.

Still, it’s hard to cover my own positions the way I want to, due to the cost of hedging. Still, to not head will cost me a lot more in the long run. In fact, it will cost me the long run. This could be an extended bear market not seen since the 1930’s.

So, most of my nights have been spent glued to this computer. Even at work I’m constantly checking the markets.

I’m thinking not much will move to the upside until after the presidential election. Even then, there is that phase of uncertainty that occurs between election and taking office.

This could be a battered market for some time to come, with nobody really piloting the ship for a long time.

For the longest time, a market meltdown has been predicted. Often, the predictors have been off by decades or so. I remember in the late 1980’s, there were all kinds of fear about stock market crashes, and none ever happened. The only thing the warnings did for me is convince me to buy some gold coins. I loaded up on gold coins, St. Gauden’s and others, when it was hard to give them away.

I kept them, because I liked the beauty of the coins, not so much that I ever thought that they would come back in value or actually have to serve as the last resort of value. I pretty much thought that markets were somehow under control and a massive meltdown would never happen again.

I was wrong, obviously, but at least I was not completely unprepared.

We had a history seminar today at our online trading club.

Since the markets have been on a roller coaster ride we have been trying to reassure each other that we know what we’re doing.

This has met with limited success. When people are down twenty, thirty or forty percent in their holdings, it can make for a nervous time. Even the online options brokers are having a tough time assuaging their clients.

Online stock trading and options trading for me has been very good, but I admit that I’m as confused at the rest in what to do going forward.

I will work to hedge my long term holdings some, by purchasing some puts. And then as addi-tional security I will look at buying some calls for the same. Yet, I’m not alone in doing this, so rates are not going to be rock bottom for any of these.

So this morning, Mr. Callahan came back to talk to the club. He was brought in by a member who thought that talking to someone who had seen a great deal of trading history might help us find our own individual directions.

Mr. Callahan, was a trader for many years down at the old Chicago Board of Trade. He was actually actively trading when Black Tuesday hit, in 1929. He was very young, maybe 21. He is 101 now.

Mr. Callahan apologized when he met us. He was still wearing his gym clothes from his morning routine at Cardinal Fitness. And he was planning on running a few miles after he talked. He declined any offers of food, as he preferred to run on an empty stomach.

Mr. Callahan’s advice was to observe the fundamentals. If the credit markets loosen, there still has to be demand for credit, like any other product. Watch the earnings reports. Most will not be great.

Business of all types will be pulling back. Pulling back means less demand for credit to finance expansion.
Examine the consumer, too, he added. Most consumers are leveraged to the maximum. They have very little disposable income remaining. Plus, many have taken a hit in their retirement ac-counts and their biggest financial asset — their homes– have sunk in value. This does not foretell a rosy future.

Still, he said, there is money to be made. Some investors will be excited by the recent gov-ernment action and will drive up certain sectors, and then will oversell other sectors reacting to poor but not horrible news.

Be ready then.

He reminded us before he jogged off that he made a tiny fortune during the Panic of 1929. He had been holding short positions in a lot of stocks, and wasn’t tempted back into the market on a “dead cat bounce”.

The Federal Reserve Board and the Office of Thrift Supervision has prepared a booklet on refinancing your mortgage in response to a request from the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs and in consultation with many other agencies and trade and consumer groups. It is designed to help consumers understand an important aspect of home financing.

If you are considering refinancing your home loan, this booklet will provide useful basic information about refinancing. It cannot provide all the answers you will need, but we believe it is a good starting point.

A Consumer’s Guide to Mortgage Refinancing

If you are a homeowner who was lucky enough to buy when mortgage rates were low, you may have no interest in refinancing your present loan. But perhaps you bought your home when rates were higher. Or perhaps you have an adjustable-rate loan and would like to obtain different terms.

Should you refinance? This manual will answer some questions that may help you decide. If you do refinance, the process will remind you of what you went through in obtaining the original mortgage. That’s because, in reality, refinancing a mortgage is simply taking out a new mortgage. You will encounter many of the same procedures-and the same types of costs-the second time around.

Would Refinancing Be Worth It?

A general rule of thumb is that refinancing becomes worth your while if the current interest rate on your mortgage is at least 2 percentage points higher than the prevailing market rate. This figure is generally accepted as the safe margin when balancing the costs of refinancing a mortgage against the savings.

There are other considerations, too, such as how long you plan to stay in the house. Most sources say that it takes at least three years to realize fully the savings from a lower interest rate, given the costs of the refinancing. (Depending on your loan amount and the particular circumstances, however, you might choose to refinance a loan that is only 1.5 percentage points higher than the current rate. You may even find you could recoup the refinancing costs in a shorter time.)

Refinancing can be a good idea for homeowner who:

1) Want to get out of a high interest rate loan to take advantage of lower rates. This is a good idea only if they intend to stay in the house long enough to make the additional fees worthwhile.

2) Have an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) and want a fixed-rate loan to have the certainty of knowing exactly what the mortgage payment will be for the life of the loan.

3) Want to convert to an ARM with a lower interest rate or more protective features (such as a better rate and payment caps) than the ARM they currently have.

4) Want to build up equity more quickly by converting to a loan with a shorter term.

5) Want to draw on the equity built up in their house to get cash for a major purchase or for their children’s education

If you decide that refinancing is not worth the costs, ask your lender whether you may be able to obtain all or some of the new terms you want by agreeing to a modification of your existing loan instead of a refinancing.

Read more about how to negotiate mortgage.

Today’s attitude is a bit more fickle.

Stock trading and online trading have never been more challenging and more re-warding. Without today’s modern advancements I’d be in the dark until I came home from work. Or maybe even later.

Instead of reading what happened in the paper the next day, just like the professional stock brokers, I can at least get nearly real time accounting of what’s going on.

Online stock trading is probably helping a lot of people sleep at night. Nothing is worse than not knowing.

As I expected, financial stocks are showing solid to the upside, but consumer driven stocks, like Microsoft are weak. This probably portends that everybody is looking ahead at a soft economy — a recession.

It would be surprising. Trillions of dollars have gone somewhere, and trillions are being spent by the public sector to make banks whole. The trillions lost and the trillions spent have to come from… us.

So, obviously, there will be a slow down in the economy.

Coke is down, too. And I just heard that Pepsi will be laying off workers.

I took another look at the tech stocks. Amazon is down in a big way, 5.8%, and it joins Intel and Google and Oracle. Google is looking like a steal at $376 a share. I might purchase some.

The tech stocks that were up some at last check were Apple, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Ebay and Advanced Micro Devices.

It’s understandable on some of these tech stocks as to why they might be up. Ebay, especially. The question is, will their small rally last?

Next, I will take a look at Johnson & Johnson and see how they are fairing. Also 3M.

I’m just wondering if we are beginning to see doubt sneak back into the markets. Not so much doubt now about the banks and financial companies, but doubts about what the consumer might do.

Most consumers are strapped. They have no options, being leveraged up to the hilt with credit card debt, home equity loans, car and student loans. There is no end to the consumer issues, and this most likely won’t be a consumer led recovery in the recent sense of it.

The past couple of recessions have had the consumer step up, but now, with debt being so high and with so many feeling poorer with losses from their 401(k)’s and diminished housing, it is a real question of what the struggling consumer can do. If anything.

Now the markets might pause to look at that, if they think the banking crisis has been tamed.

Forex was originally launched in 1970, and since then the number of Forex traders is growing every year, as more and more people realize how big is the potential of making money trading Forex.

You must have few essential things and online trading how to before you can trade Forex:

a) Computer with Internet connection in order to log in to your account and monetize Forex graphics, buy/sell currencies, and others.

b) Knowledge. It means that you have to know the Forex market and have necessary tools to analyze the Forex graphics in order to increase your chances of profiting and to have everything required to trade Forex in a smart way.

c) And finally - you need money. It’s impossible to trade Forex without investing your money. But id definitely doesn’t mean that you need thousands to start. It’s really hard to believe, but you can start by having only $1 in your pocket.

There are very many different tools for Forex trading, and many so called “gurus” who want to teach you, how to trade Forex, but, actually, most of them are scams and fake guides.

So that is the reason to be extremely careful when choosing a Forex software to use. Forex Automoney is one of the most popular. All your need to start trading Forex using it are things below:

1. $1 dollar (or more if you want and can)

2. Forex Automoney software

3. Computer with Internet connection

You might think that this sound too good to be true, but people sometimes make things too complicated, when, actually, they are not. Forex is not that complicated, if you have the right tools.

Forex Automoney is developed by professional programmers and financial specialist, which automatically analyzes currencies markets and determines when to buy or sell. It can generate signals in 3 time frames:

- Every week. It means that signals will be generated once a week

- Few times a day. It means that you will get buy/sell message 5 or more times during the day

- Once a day. It means that signals will be generated once a day

It is possible to use all 3 time frames together, and these could probably maximize your profits, but you will have to be more careful, because you will be investing more money.

Forex Automoney is really convenient Forex software as it is available to trade 18 currency pairs. Of course it’s only your decision how many currencies you want to trade, but it is recommended to trade no more than 3-4 pairs. And in the case when you are complete Forex beginner, then than it is highly recommended to trade only one currency pair.

Forex Automoney will give the signals, and tell you when to buy or sell and what price to put so you won’t have to do any technical analysis, or read any graphs. You literally don’t have anything to lose, because you won’t find anything cheaper than this (as this soft ware costs less than $5).

Learn more about online trading how to and Yahoo currency converter.

Forex (FX) trading software should be to optimize your profits over the long term as opposed to maximize your profits in the short term. It also must function well in all trading environments and be able to produce consistent profits. There exist a lot of Forex trading systems on the market today that is why the decision which one to buy could seem confusing at first. Each and every FX trading system offers a distinctive approach to trading and is programmed a little differently.

Is this cheapest online trading available?

The first step to make if you are an experienced trader and are now looking to upgrade from the manual trading process to computer based system is to examine your on individual method of trading and clearly decide what you are really looking for.

If you have not been successful trading and you are attempting to blame the software then you really should take a long hard look at yourself and determine if it’s the software or is it you. If you decide that it wasn’t the software’s fault, then instead of purchasing a new system immediately you are highly recommended to take additional online training course.

Lots of the most popular FX trading software on the market today has been examined many times by the developers of the software and many independent testing agencies. As long as the software you purchase is a state of the art system is has been proven that it is capable of producing long-term profits if utilized properly.

Your first investment before attempting to jump right in the Forex Market with an automated trading system must be in one of the many online courses in order to be educated about all the details of this market. The cost of these courses is so minimal that they are easily made up with one successful trade that it is just unconscionable that anybody whom has little or no knowledge of the markets would want to start trading without first taking a course. This is, by the way, this is one of the cheapest online trading.

When selecting the software there are only a few vital things to consider. The first one that you should make is to reassure that you are buying a top-level program that is updated as required by the market movements. Then you should choose a software that is based on your personal profile of trading and make sure you are selecting a proven system and check once more that it is a general system as opposed to one that focuses on a specific style of trading. The selected software can really make you a hero in the eyes of your family but this will happen only in that case if you are well educated on the markets sufficiently to understand it.

Learn more about free Forex signal issues.

No matter what plan is put into place, it will still be sluggish for the consumer, going forward. In the online trading and online options trading world, nobody is sure of what results to expect near terrn.

The plan the various governments and central banks have constructed may work. It’s so uncharted that nobody, not even the seasoned online broker, can possibly know for sure if full confidence will be restored.

No matter what happens, I think we can expect to see new regulations and restrictions on market activity, including, maybe, online stock trading.

With so much of the banking sector being, in effect, nationalized, the question will become how much, if any, in they way of spectacular profits can we expect?

New regulations and rules will lead to slower growth in the sector. And will those smaller banks that don’t have the Federal Government’s stamp of approval be good investments?

Insurance is also another area to take a good look at. Will all the rules be changed de facto by the government owning AIG? Will there be a “good for the goose” thing happening?

Once Congress gets its fingers into these big areas anything can happen.

For the ordinary investor sitting at home, the only advice that can be given is to not panic, take profits when sensible, and to invest smartly — meaning buying low and selling high and not following the masses too far or too high.

Insurance and banking, to me, are questionable sectors now. I’m sure that those who know more about both will be able to see the forest through the trees and make some decisions that make sense, or find great buying opportunities.
For me, when the playing field is not level by government involvement, then it’s not best to put too much money into it. In fact, maybe only “mad money” should go into it. If I have any left, that is.

On the other hand, money may flow into those sectors with the knowledge that the government is the ultimate banker. Returns might be lower, but there will be returns.

I’ll watch the market over the next couple of days. I’ve set the stocks to track, so we shall see.

The world seems to be adapting a new standard in investing and finance. It’s so uncharted in scope.

Maybe in the next week or so, the dust will settle and we ordinary Joes out here will be able to settle on a direction. We are all hoping that nail biting time is over.