Sunday, October 24, 2010

Second Market

Sorry, I haven't posted since my I'm back post, need to get back in the habit.  I know I have been pessmistic about stocks, but I did buy a little Apple last week when it tanked after it's earnings news.  If any stock will go up, it would be Apple.  Most of the targets are at the $300 - 350 range.  (I haven't bought any and I don't want to regret not buying some).  I still own some bonds and bond funds.  I'm worried that once interest rates rise (maybe next year), the bond funds will tank.  I'm not worried about my corporate bonds since I've bought them at below par and even though they are above par right now, I had planned to hold them to maturity anyway, so I should get them back at par or if I'm lucky and receive a tender offer above par.  I plan to slowly get out of the bond funds as soon as there is an inkling that rates could rise.

Hey guys, I was listening to a podcast and they mentioned a site called second market.  They were talking about it in terms of buying sand selling stock in private companies such as facebook, etc.  I thought that since this blog is about alternate investments I thought I would mention it.  Now the podcast I listened to mentioned that you need millions of dollars to invest and that they do have a lot restrictions so I would suggest you do your research before looking into it.  I looked at the website and they seem to specialize in illiquid assets, so again, I would suggest doing your research before you put any money into it, since it could be hard to sell if things go bad.  There may be other companies that do this, but this is the one I know of.

http://www.secondmarket.com/

Sunday, October 3, 2010

I'm back!

Hey guys!  I'm back!  Sorry it's been so long.  Lot of interesting things happened to me in the year.  First of all, I got married, so here's a shoutout to my new bride (Priya)!  After that my sister got married, and then my new brother-in-law had a baby.  Also, the company I work for just got purchased by IBM

So as you can see, it's been a busy year for me.  Now that the excitement has calmed down, I'm going to go back to doing regular posts.

Now down to business.  I've changed the format and layout of the blog.  Looks like while I was out blogger added a bunch of new features which I'm going to try to incorporate in my blog.

I was looking over my earlier posts.  Crazy how things have changed since I posted.  Previously, I was blogging in the depths of the financial crisis.  Now the market has stabilized, and we're just waiting for the employment numbers to come back.  I want to review a little bit about what I blogged about before.

Corporate Bonds -  This strategy has been working out great.  Every bond I've purchased last year is over $100 (I recommend buying below $100).  A lot of my bonds have been called, a lot of them were "make whole" bonds that I bought, so I got my full value early.  I then rolled those over into other bonds that will hopefully be called at full value.  A lot of them also have given me tender offers where they will give me most of the money upfront instead of waiting 2-3 years for the rest.  This is thanks to low interest rates right now, since no one wants to pay these high interest rates when they can sell new bonds at lower rates.  Now, this does make it difficult to buy new bonds at higher rates since there are not as many since interest rates are so low, but I still do find bonds >5%.

Gold - As you guys know, gold is at it's all time high.  I blogged before about how I didn't understand gold and it is a speculative investment and so I wouldn't buy it.  I've changed my mind.  I ended up buying some at $1100 an ounce.  I feel that gold is in a bull market right now and it could hit $2000 an ounce.  I could be wrong but the way the government is spending and printing money, I don't see how gold will come down anytime soon.  Peter Schiff, who i follow, is prediciting $5000 an ounce.

I am going to be blogging regularly..if there are any questions you guys have or if there is any topic you want me to cover, let me know.