Disclaimer

Before I get too far along here, I thought that I would write a disclaimer.

First of all, this is a personal blog, and I am not a financial advisor. The material provided by PFStock is for general information only. This information is not intended as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Readers should not assume that any recommendations made by PFStock will be profitable.

In other words, if you invest in something that I've mentioned here and lose money, then I'm sorry that this has happened, but I can't accept responsibility for your loss. On the other hand, if you do the opposite of what I've suggested and lose money, then I would say that I told you so.

In addition, I may sometimes mention investments in money market funds or in mutual funds. An investment in these types of funds are not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or any other government agency. Regardless of how safe these investments may seem, it is still possible to lose money by investing in them. So, don't bombard me with irate Emails if you do.

Lastly, readers accept responsibility for their own investment research, due diligence and decision making. All investments involve risks and are not guaranteed. You may wish to seek the advice of a professional before investing.

Copyright © 2009 pfstock

About Me

I think that it is fair to give some background about myself. I want to give readers an idea of where I am coming from. I am a 40-something engineer working in Silicon Valley (California). I started saving for my future shortly after finishing graduate school. My main focus then was getting the best savings rates from my bank. Even the concepts of 401(k) plans and mutual funds were something completely new to me. I did become seriously interested in investing a little less than 10 years ago. Like many people, I got caught up in the technology stock craze of the late 1990s. Working in the high-tech industry also fueled my interest in these stocks. I rode a few of these stocks down in the early 2000s. And, I would say that my portfolio hit bottom in 2002. Coincidentally, I was also subjected to downsizing not once, but twice, in the past five years. Any employee stock options that I had were essentially worthless at the time.

But, I have been resilient. Each time that I got knocked over, I have gotten right back up and redoubled my resolve to succeed. Since 2002, I have rebuilt my investment portfolio. Although I actually own fewer stocks nowadays, I am better diversified across industry groups. The economy has its ups and downs, and I've learned not to get too overconfident. I am always planning for the worst while hoping for the best.

On a personal level, I have been happily married for over eight years. My wife and I have one child. Recently, I have noticed a prevalence of "under 30" personal finance blogs on the Internet. I am no longer qualified to be in the under 30 crowd. Nevertheless, I hope that the under 30 bloggers would look to me for advice from someone who is only older. My blog hopes to share my experiences with others. On the other hand, I also hope to learn from those who have more experience than I do.

pfstock

Welcome!

Welcome to PFStock, a personal finance and stock investing blog. It seems that financial blogs are roughly divided into three groups. These groups are personal finance, real estate, and investing blogs. I am interested in personal finance and investing, but not so much in real estate. I've decided to make my blog a combination of a personal finance and stock investing blog. Thus, I've decided to call my blog PFStock.

In the area of personal finance, I am interested in saving money, banking, credit cards, and basically getting the best deals that you can out of banks and credit card companies. In the area of investing, I am mostly concerned with stocks, but I am also interested in discussing retirement plans, mutual funds, ETFs, IPOs, brokerages, and general investment strategies.

I've spent some time now perusing other personal finance blogs. There certainly is a great variety of them. I do not intend my blog to become a diary of my daily financial transactions. I am skeptical that anyone would want to delve into the detailed minutiae of how I spent every last penny over the weekend. Although some personal finance blogs do, I do not intend to disclose my net worth or list out my entire investment portfolio here.

Also, I can't promise you that I will have something new everyday. In fact, I am skeptical of people who always have something new to say. This is the case with financial writers who are obligated to either report news, or otherwise fill up space when there isn't anything newsworthy to report. The financial markets simply don't work that way. I can go for months without making a single trade or altering my portfolio (buy-and-hold), and then later go through a period where I'll make several stock trades in a week. Besides that, I have a regular job to hold down, and might not be able to write something everyday.

So, as I embark upon creating my new blog, I look forward to sharing my experiences and ideas.

MarketClub Pays for Itself

A couple months ago, I mentioned that I signed up for a stock analysis service called MarketClub. This is part of a website called INO.com (pronounced "I know") where I can research stocks, futures, or forex products. I recently used their Trade Triangle analysis to help me decide on buying a stock.

The stock that I was interested in buying was Bare Escentuals (Nasdaq: BARE). Readers of this blog may remember that I first purchased shares of this stock during the Bare Escentuals IPO. I sold that stock a while ago. But with the stock market recovering, I have been looking for individual stocks that I can get back into. I used MarketClub to get an instant analysis, and the results are shown below.


This analysis shows that Bare Escentuals is now in a strong uptrend, and that this is an ideal time to buy the stock. This type of analysis is great for trend traders who like the "red-light, green-light" simplicity of investing. So, I bought some shares of BARE at $9.25 per share at the beginning of August. It recently closed above $11 a share.

Based on the number of shares that I purchased, I have already made more money that what the MarketClub subscription costs for one year. Note that Trade Triangles are strictly a technical analysis tool. I don't use the MarketClub analysis to tell me what to buy. I rely more on fundamental characteristics like Earnings Per Share (EPS) and PE ratios to decide on which stock to buy. But, I use MarketClub to tell me when to buy. I now have a stop order in place to help protect my gains.

Another comment that I have is that MarketClub does not require you to download and install any software. This is good because you can access your subscription from pretty much any computer. The downside is that your access speed will be limited by your Internet connection. In other words, MarketClub is not the fastest analysis tool that I've ever seen. But, it is pretty good considering that the software runs on their servers and not your computer.

You can subscribe to MarketClub for $150 per quarter or $449 for a year. You will have complete access to many of the investment tools available on INO.com. There is a 30-day risk-free trial period in which you can try them out. They will ask for a credit card when you sign up, but you have the right to cancel within the first 30 days and get all of your money back. So, what do you have to lose?



Another free tool that I utilize to help me keep on top of my portfolio is called Trend Analysis. Trend Analysis is a daily email analysis tool that gives me insight into exactly what my portfolio is doing. For investors who are following many stock symbols, MarketClub sends a daily Email for every symbol in your portfolio.

The links above takes you to a screen where you can get your first stock (future or option) symbol analyzed at no cost to you. After you sign up, you can easily add more symbols to get a daily update, which I find very helpful.

PF Stock

Disclaimer: This material is for general information only. It is not intended as an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any security or fund.

Update On My Free HDTV

Last month, I wrote a post about a bank offering a free HDTV or a mini Camcorder for opening a new CD account. Specifically, the offer was made by Irwin Union Bank to customers who open an 11-month CD with a minimum deposit of $20,000. After funding their account, a depositor would receive a Sharp or LG 22 inch HD LCD TV or a Flip MinoHD Mini Camcorder within 30 days. I took Irwin Union Bank up on their offer, and opened a new CD account. It has been about a month since I opened my account, and I just received my HDTV.

About a week ago, the bank sent me an Email that saying that the manufacturer had run out of 22" TV sets, and that I would receive a Toshiba model 22AV600U instead. The TV itself is the first HDTV that I've owned, and the picture is quite sharp compared to our old tube TVs. The new TV includes a built-in NTSC/ATSC/clear QAM tuner that can tune into both broadcast TV and cable. (It is an unadvertised fact that cable subscribers who have a clear QAM tuner can often receive unencrypted HD cable TV, without adding "digital" cable to their service.)

A new 22 inch TV set retails for about $250-300, so it is a generous gift considering how stingy banks are with interest rates these days. This offer was scheduled to end on August 31, but it seems that Irwin decided to end the promotion early, as I can no longer find the offer on their website. Readers who are still interested in the TV or Flip Mino might try calling the bank directly. It can't hurt to ask.

The bank informed me that they will report the value of the free gift ($280) to the IRS (on a 1099 form), so the "free" TV will probably end up costing around $100 in taxes. I thought that the days of banks offering a TV set to new customers was a thing of the past. Has anybody else taken Irwin Union Bank up on this offer? If so, could you share your experiences here?

DC

Free Stock Market Analysis

A while back I signed up for a useful stock analysis service called MarketClub. It is part of a website called INO.com, where you can research stocks, futures, or forex products.

I recently asked for an instant analysis of INTC (Intel Corporation), and got this graph from MarketClub:


Their analysis is called a Trade Triangle. It shows that Intel is now in a strong uptrend, and it is an ideal time to buy. This analysis is great for traders who like the "red-light, green-light" simplicity of investing.

For investors who are following a large number of stock symbols, MarketClub sends a daily Email for every symbol in your portfolio. But staying on top of the changes and momentum shifts often becomes overwhelming, especially if you’re watching a large number of symbols and open positions, like me.

Another free tool that I utilize to help me keep on top of my portfolio is called Trend Analysis. Trend Analysis is a daily email analysis tool that gives me insight into exactly what my portfolio is doing.

The link above takes you to a screen where you can get your first stock (future or option) symbol analyzed at no cost to you. They also cover Forex symbols (e.g., you can enter EURUSD as a symbol). And, here is a great website that allows you to compare Forex brokers. After signing up, you can easily add more symbols to get a daily update, which I find very helpful.

PF Stock

Disclaimer: This material is for general information only. It is not intended as an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any security or fund.

Rescan Your DTV tuner

Did any of your local TV stations disappear last night? Officially, all regular television stations in the United States stopped broadcasting analog TV signals and switched exclusively to digital broadcasting as of yesterday, June 12th. Because some digital stations have moved to different channel numbers, everybody should re-scan their DTV tuners to ensure that you will receive all of the digital stations broadcasting in your area. This is usually a straightforward procedure.

My DTV converter box is an Insignia NS-DXA1-APT, but it is very similar to the Insignia NS-DXA1 as well as the Zenith DTT901 and DTT900 models. On these models, I push the Menu button on the remote control to get into the setup menu. From there I would select either Auto Tuning, or EZ Add, and follow the on-screen directions to scan for new channels. If you have any difficulty doing this on your DTV converter, then you should consult the manual that came with your DTV box.

For some background information, the switch to digital TV is not as simple as just turning off analog TV broadcasts. Until June 12, 2009, TV broadcasts were received on channels 2-69. After the digital transition is complete channels 52-69 will be reallocated for other uses. In Silicon Valley, where I live, the digital TV station KTEH is on channel 54-1. KTEH is really broadcast on digital channel 50, but shows up as 54-1 through a process known as virtual channel numbering. The analog channel 54 will disappear after the DTV transition.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, KGO broadcasts analog TV on channel 7, and digital TV on channel 24. After switching off the analog channel, they will return the digital broadcast to channel 7. More complex is the case of KTVU which broadcasts analog on Channel 2, and digital on channel 56. After the switch off, they will broadcast on channel 44. However until June 12th, Channel 44 was used by KBCW (the old KBHK). For obvious reasons KBCW needs to shutdown their analog transmitter before KTVU can take over this channel. Is this confusing enough for you?

In addition to my DTV converter box, I also bought a DVD/VCR recorder with a built-in digital tuner. If I use an antenna with this device, I will also have to rescan the channels to receive over-the-air (OTA) TV broadcasts.

DC