Steadfast Finances
A Personal Finance & Investing 101 blog that delves into current events, consumer education, and techniques to improve your bottom line.
Losing Interest in Buying Gold?
If you have been paying attention to the market lately, months ago there was a flood of interest in buying gold. Investors were seeking to diversify their portfolios in something that was showing a promising growth while the rest of the market struggled. With interest rates at an all time low and the price of [...]
30 Year Mortgage Rates Over 5% Got You Down? Try 18%!
So you think 30 year fixed mortgage rates over 5% is a bad thing? You think an interest rate above 4.99% has some sort of mystical, psychological barrier to entry? How does 10% sound? What about 18.5%? So quit your cryin’… we all knew 30 year mortgage rates in the 4% ballpark couldn’t last forever. [...]
Why I Don’t Use Web or Mobile Personal Finance Software
With the rise of web based and mobile financial tools, I’ve been something of a late adopter. Actually, I’m more of a “no” adopter. Sure, I trade a few stocks online or I’ll purchase a few gifts using a one time use only credit card number, but other than that, my trust in placing all [...]
The Irish Bubble: Can’t Spell ‘Confidence’ without ‘Con’
I speak quite a bit about the dark side of investor “confidence”, and no where is there a better example on the fallout from manipulating investor psychology than the latest Vanity Fair piece by Michael Lewis on the Irish financial crisis. The endless flow of cheap foreign money had teased a new trait out of [...]
Michael Lewis and “Learned” Iconoclast Behavior
Every now and then, I get asked how can the individual investor learn to invest like Warren Buffet (an iconoclastic personality) or invest so they’re not always following the herd. The simple answer, aside from turning off financial television… The wise advice for the individual investor: be conservative, don’t listen to brokerage advice, and index. [...]
CNBC’s Goal: Breed Confidence In The Markets?
As a long time viewer of CNBC, it’s becoming very difficult to listen to the “sell the hope” meme… [Guest #2 (Mike Rubino) suggests markets are in a Fed induced stock market bubble and Dow Jones could sell off.] Quote from Guest #1 (Scott Redler): I think that’s an irresponsible thing to say because that [...]
10 Favorite Neologisms & Buzzwords of 2010
Advertising,Business Trends,Investing 101,Investor Psychology,Politics,Strategic Planning 
No commentsI’m a self-confessed word play nut. I love the wordsmith process because it’s a constantly evolving process that illustrates new or existing concepts, that describes the etiology of new areas of study, and highlights the evolutionary process of how crowdsourcing and groupthink enriches the English lexicon. Not surprisingly, I bookmark like crazy and, sometimes annoyingly, [...]
Banks Fear Foreclosures because of Mark to Market Accounting?
The Naked Capitalism blog posted something interesting yesterday that got me thinking… Are Banks Afraid to Foreclose on the Rich? I got this report from an attorney who is doing work in one of the top five foreclosure states. One of his colleagues has a monthly mortgage payment considerably above $20,000 a month. He has [...]
Chartology: So You Think the Markets are Cheap
So you’re ready to buy after being pumped and primed from the latest sell the hope, confidence building segment of finTV where the supporting thesis was something like “stocks are cheap based on their P/E ratio”… … not even close. Image via Chart of the Day Apologies if I burst your confidence bubble, but unless [...]
David Einhorn: What’s Still Wrong with the Entire Financial & FinReg System
When one of the best money managers on Wall Street who correctly called the stock market and financial crash (e.g. shorting Lehman Brothers when no one else was) makes a rare on camera interview, investors should take note. So over lunch, coffee, or whatever, take some time to listen to Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn. [video] [...]
Never Make an Investment After a Money Manager Hypes a Stock on CNBC
Here’s a prime example, courtesy of ZeroHedge, of why the everyday investor should never make “Buy and Hold Forever” stock investments after a major money manager (especially a hedge fund manager) makes an outlandish sales pitch on CNBC. Guess who, after on September 24 David Tepper almost screamed that he was “balls to the wall [...]
Chartology: The Halloween Indicator vs. Sell in May and Go Away
Remember that thing known as the “Sell in May and Go Gway” effect? It has a flip side, known as the the Halloween Effect, where the majority of all S&P 500 gains have been made between November and April. Image Source: Chart of the Day I also refer to the Halloween Effect as the “cold [...]
