Reading B.I.F.

I was watching PBS the other day on their documentary about credit card companies and the tools and methodologies they use to lure consumers into their promotions and thus, using their credit cards and I walked away at the end of the show thinking, these credit card companies are evil and ingenious in a way. They hire all these PhDs' and MBAs' on their team devising models and conjuring up ways to maximize profit by sucking the very life hold of consumers who after months of enjoying 0% interest, are now having to pay the piper or devil in the form of higher interest rates. Here are some other tricks credit card companies have up their sleeve to be wary of.

Lucky for me, I got my taxes taken care of early for a change. For those who of you haven't filed your taxes, beware of tax scam operators.

STEM share price has recently hit a roadblock due to the fact there is a lot of political clout hovering around the ethical issues involved in stem cell research and cloning. Here's a good article covering the legislation bill pertaining to stem cell research.

Another document I had on file. Good info...


Subject: HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK ALONE

Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You're Really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly, you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home; unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself. Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed to be in order.

Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough. The cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. And a cough must be repeated about every 2 seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.
Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital

From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON ... (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)

Please pass this information along

So, I was checking out a couple of Janus funds lately because I remember during the internet craze, Janus funds were at the top of the fund industry. They also were hit hard during the internet bubble crash due to the fact they had a lot of those high beta internet stocks in similar types of funds. They seem to be turning around for the better, maybe.

Janus Balanced
Janus Contarian Fund
Janus Growth and Income Fund
Janus Worldwide

* Ever been a victim of some business scam? Check this site out before signing off on a promotion or service.

* Ever want to voice your complaint on some business? Check this site out to express your dissent and view complaints.

This video made me rethink about Japan's culuture.

For $23 you too can own a sushi pillow.

This stock just hit my watch list. I believe they trade on the OTC market.



Splits:none

Last Trade: 2.66 Trade Time: 4:19PM ET Change: 0.11 (4.31%) Prev Close: 2.55 Open: 2.65 Bid: 2.66 Ask: 2.67 1y Target Est: N/A

Day's Range: 2.48 - 2.80 52wk Range: 0.60 - 1.72 Volume: 17,800,762 Avg Vol (3m): 2,493,267 Market Cap: N/A P/E (ttm): N/A EPS (ttm): -0.01 Div & Yield: N/A (N/A)

Business is often immersed in b.s. and sometimes you have to sift through many layers of it in order to find a clear answer or solution to a problem. This article tries to explain what it is.

"We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production," observes Laura Penny, author of the forthcoming (and wittily titled) Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit. But what is bullshit, exactly? By which I mean: What are its defining characteristics? What is its Platonic essence? How does bullshit differ from such precursors as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash, claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or "bunk"), hokum, drivel, flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other adjectives favored by H.L. Mencken and his many imitators? The scholar who answers the question, "What is bullshit?" bids boldly to define the spirit of the present age.

Although both Citigroup and SmithBarney decided to let go their technical trading department, I'm sure there are some individuals out there that still subscribe to this school of thought that historical performance of stocks and markets are indicators of future performance, which is the basis behind technical analysis. Quite the opposite when you think about investing in lets say, mutual funds where it is a common cliche, that past performance is no guarantee of future results when you're investing in these financial instruments. Although, past performance is an indication of future performance, by no means should you invest in something based on past performance.

Here are a couple of links to get you started in learning technical analysis if you're interested.

Chart School
Candlestick Indicators

What a difference 10 years will do for a company. This is Yahoo 10 years ago. Here's what Yahoo has in store for its future...

I usually don't like to post stuff from other people's blog due to overkill but I must admit, this is kind of neat. From engadget blog.

Currently, the prime rate is at5.5% This analyst predicts the prime rate to be at 6.75% at year end with the fed funds rate to be near 3.75% around the same time period.

Continue reading...

I didn't know Business Week online had a stock Filter. I usually read the headlines and commentary and then off to the next website. I decided today to poke around their website a little more today and low and behold, what a nice find.

Have you ever wanted to find stock symbols based on a particular word or phrase in their description? Normally you have to know what the stock symbol is in order to get a stock quote.
This website, is the opposite, you type what you are looking for and it spits out the stock symbol.
For example, my previous post gave some examples on some helpful search engines. I typed in internet search engines and this is what was produced.

Every day, I seem to find one or two interesting search engines and/or web content products. I think the buzz in silicon valley seems to revolve around creating innovative products dealing with, search engines, blogs, and now podcasting. Seeing a movie or tv show on the internet is closer than you think. In the mean time, here are a couple of links worth checking out.

If you're buying shoes, you don't go looking for them at a grocery store you buy them at a shoe store. Conversely, if you're searching for business content, you might want to look at Business.com for the information you're looking for.

This search engine looks interesting. Become.com focuses on searching for products directly. You have to first sign up since they are still in Beta testing but I found a couple of stuff that I typed, relevant to what I was searching for.