Someone planted virus on my site, and after a huge effort, working with my ISP, I finally was able to clean out everything after almost 1 week. My ISP even said that they may be able to trace the hacker. My sincere apology for anybody who got affected by this. I also tightened up the site security and changed all of my passwords. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.

And if you were using Firefox, you won’t get hit. Internet Explorer however was vulnerable. In any case, virus would be caught by any active virus scanner or shield.

I won’t be posting much until I’m back from my vacation. Annually I use up all of my vacation days just to visit my parents aboard.

In the meantime, hold onto your stock positions. It should turn up soon, I believe. It’s going to be a very difficult market, and it will get even more difficult next year.

I think we will be going into a depression, and then stay in a long recession. Job market will be terrible. Make sure you hold on to your job if you have one already, and good luck in finding your new/next job.

Regards,

Frugal

Sorry. I just couldn’t find time to blog, after working some 24+ hours through the weekend.

I’ve got a rare last minute problem found in my delivered work. And I need to fix it ASAP.

I should be back blogging tomorrow or Wednesday, I think.

Regards.

Boy, I forgot to hit the publish button for this Wed’s post. You can scroll back now to see it.

Yeah, I have been getting ever busy by days. My work is getting busier too. And I’ve got a car for sale for the last seven months, and I haven’t even had any time to do an ad for it, or even cleaning it up. I have 3 cars now after I bought a Honda Odyssey last year. I should really get rid of my old car before the gasoline prices go up even higher. Next car I will be buying a hybrid for sure. I don’t intend to keep my Odyssey if the gas prices go up too high.

Alright. It’s time to get into my stock trading pits again. I’m literally doing 3 jobs everyday. I apologize if I have been late on my replies of emails.

I am on vacation earlier today for the long weekend.

I shall see you next Monday or next Tuesday.

Have a happy Memorial holiday.

And yes, gasoline is really expensive now, $4.15 last time I saw for the least expensive refining grade.

Frugal

Anyone interested in having their money managed by me personally?

My current plan is to use the platform at interactivebrokers.com. Your assets will be owned under your name, and under the custody of interactivebrokers.com. I will just have the trading permission.

The fee structure will be

1. Basic fee: 1% of your account size, charged quarterly.
2. Performance fee: If your account returns less or equal to 10% after interactivebroker’s commissions, there is no performance fee. Otherwise, for every 5% additional return beyond 10% return, the fee increases by 1%, and it will be prorated. This fee is charged annually for every annual period.
For example, if your account returns 23%, then the performance fee is (23-10)/5=2.6%.

I don’t plan to get a stock broker license yet (reasons at the end of post), but according to the state laws of California, I can manage up to 5 individual clients without a license. Because I only have 5 limited spots in total, I will rank the preference of the accounts in the order of potential account size, and then on a first-come first-serve basis.

If you’re interested, send me an email to 1stMillionAt33 # gmail.com (changed # to @), with the subject of “Money Management”. Let me know your estimated net worth (including your home equity value), and the account size that you would like to open. The net worth number helps me to decide how aggressively I will act in your account. Make sure that LESS than 15% to 20% of your net worth will be in this account for the sake of diversification. I don’t have a minimum account amount yet, but it’s likely that I will decline if the account size is less than $50K, unless you plan to add more cash after a short period.

I believe this year could be a banner year for commodity in general. Don’t miss the train. I’ve also back-tested my own proprietary buy/sell indicators for a long period, and it out-performed the ETF by about 600%.

P.S. Assume that I have 5 clients of $50K each, returning 10% annually, the total fee that I will get is just $2500. That will be just enough money to pay for stock broker license fee, and I haven’t counted incorporation, tax and accounting services. Are you going to work for a whole year and just get $2500 for it? So if it’s a terribly bad deal for me, it’s probably a good deal for you. Obviously and unfortunately, I cannot guarantee a good performance, but you can look around on this website for my past recommendations and performance.
By the way, to match my current wage, I will need to manage 10+ million. That’s one of the reasons that I haven’t been more pro-active, since going from 0 to 10 million asset will really take some time.

Today we have a new guest contributor on 1stM@33. If you are interested in participating too, simply email me with a subject titled “Guest Writer”. Heather will be writing a few articles from time to time. Please welcome her contribution. Here is a short introduction on her.

Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and credit writer, as well as a regular contributor for BusinessCreditCards.com site for comparing small business credit cardsShe welcomes questions, comments, and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com

I won’t be posting this week. I don’t get much break if at all. I decided I will just take a break. I will be back posting next Tuesday, January 1st 2008. I will see you next year. Some of my previous posts from last week are pre-written. In case you find them out-of-step with the market, just move the timing by one to two weeks earlier.

In any case,

Happy New Year. May you all have a prosperous year.

Frugal

No regular post today. I hope everyone has a happy Xmas.

This is a family time to get together with your loved ones, excluding your computer.

Best regards,

Frugal

Are there any good mechanical engineers out there to join me for a new invention?

Video-taping my children has become a pain in the arm. I have thought about this a couple of times. If a person can mount the camcorder on the shoulder (probably not on the head due to a weird feeling), one can easily record videos with very few physical efforts. Of course, the biggest problem is that when you move and walk, the video quality will be terrible. But I think I may know how to solve that.

The answer is similar to those anti-noise earphones, where it cancels high noise. I’ve learned that trick in my senior year in college. That’s very old technology. Definitely decades ago.

Anyone out there, care to brain storm a little?