California Real Estate Markets Are Red Hot

I would think that you’re crazy if you tell me this statement six months ago. Frankly, RED HOT is not even enough to describe the current market. Here are some of my personal anectodes, based on my bidding in the market: 1. Most listings go into pending on the first two days, or after the […]

My First Million At 33 Book Is Published At Kindel!

Instead of writing on my blog, I have been working on my personal finance book. I have a lofty goal of making real changes in people’s personal finance affairs, hoping that more people can live under their means, and accumulate a great wealth for their retirement. The book is currently ON SALE for just $0.99Since […]

A Big Raise For This Year

This year’s raise is less than previous year, but my raise is still about the double of the average engineers in my group. It’s fairly good by any measure. One of the best ways to make more money is to invest yourself in your job and career. Whether it’s spending more time, volunteering, attending seminar […]

Out Of Closed End Muni Funds For Now

I have discussed before that for my asset allocation, I had chosen to have muni bonds in taxable accounts instead of taxable bonds in tax-deferred accounts. In fact, I purchased some NXZ at the beginning of the year. I got out of them last Tuesday, after the big panic. Although I managed a small profit, […]

I saw this article the other day from thestreet.com. It spoke about CGMFX returning 50% in two months. That is simply INCREDIBLE for a mutual fund. Don’t know if any of you picked up some shares in CGMFX or CGMRX when I first blogged about Ken Heebner and his funds back in April 2007. Heebner […]

The Best Real Estate Mutual Fund Ever

For me to come out and recommend a real estate fund, you know this mutual fund needs to be more than truly outstanding. I’m very bearish on real estate as the regular readers know very well. But this real estate fund, plus its other fund offerings in other categories are simply outstanding. In fact, I […]

Hedging Strategies Through Options By Hussman

I have been contemplating how I can hedge my portfolio with less risk. I decided to take a look at how Hussman mutual fund managers do it. Using from their semi-annual report, I found out that they had the following outstanding option positions: Effectivley Long: Call on 10000 S&P 500 index option, expiring 2/17/07 at […]

Roth IRA Conversion

One of the most exciting developments in terms of retirement savings for high incomer earners in last year’s Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA, signed by President Bush on May 17, 2006) was elimination of the Roth conversion eligibility limit after 2009. In addition, in 2010 only, the extra tax incurred for […]

Robert Kiyosaki: A Smart Investor

Making predictions is a tough business, but learn from this master of words, Robert Kiyosaki (RK), on making “accurate” predictions. What does this guy think of the recent stock market right now? When my book “Rich Dad’s Prophecy” was released in 2002, most financial newspapers and magazines trashed it because I discussed a looming stock […]

Zecco Part 2

I’ve got some good feed back on my review (Part 1, Part 2) of Zecco.com the online broker with free trades. I was pretty even handed: Zecco does offer free trades as promised and their order execution was reasonable; however, I experienced some problems with withholdings and wasn’t happy with how the reporting was handled. […]