Friday, December 09, 2005

13 Most Unconventional Investments

Investing requires a lot of spunk and the ability to see things when none can see it. Ridicule is an occupational hazard when investing with vision, and failure a necessary event.

Back in the late 1950s, Warren Buffett and his friend Tom Knapp cornered the market on 1954 Blue Eagle 4-cent airmail stamps. They found out that the 400,000 stamps were nearly worthless—plus the sheets kept sticking together. Buffett sold much of the lot at 10% of face value.

Read about the world's 13 Most Unconventional Investments.

Posted by Eclectic Investor at 1:52 AM 0 comments  

Sunday, December 04, 2005

The Importance of the Number Three

The number three shows up very often in technical analysis of stocks. Major bull and bear markets have three important phases. There are three kinds of gaps, the commonly known reversal patterns, such as the triple top and 'head and shoulders' have three peaks. There are three major classification of trends: major, secondary, and minor); and three trend directions (up, down and sideways). Among the generally accepted continuation patterns, there are three triangles–symmetrical, ascending and descending. THere are three principal sources of information–price, volume and open interest.

For whatever reason, the number three plays a very prominent role throughout the field of technical analysis.

Excerpted from Technical Analysis of Financial Markets, by Joesph Murphy

[Author's Note] Interestingly, there are three persons in the Christian Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and three persons in the Hindu Holy Trinity (Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh)

Posted by Eclectic Investor at 4:35 PM 1 comments  

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

KM

ADBRITE REF

IN PASSING

Consider how the crisis has unfolded over the past eighteen months. The proximate cause is to be found in the housing bubble or more exactly in the excesses of the subprime mortgage market. The longer a double-digit rise in house prices lasted, the more lax the lending practices became. In the end, people could borrow 100 percent of inflated house prices with no money down. Insiders referred to subprime loans as ninja loans—no income, no job, no questions asked. - George Soros in latest book


“When everything’s going up, there’s a feelgood factor and people tell each other how much their houses are going up at dinner parties,” says Professor Mark Stephens of York University’s Centre for Housing Policy. “Then the music stops, as it always does.”

“Last year, Japan was a more attractive market to put money in. If you look at the US, we can now get an internal rate of return of 25% there, so why would anyone want to come to India?” - a senior executive at an international financial services group, who did not wish to be named.

"Most people told us house prices never go down on a national level, and that there had never been a default of an investment-grade-rated mortgage bond, "Mortgage experts were too caught up." - John Paulson, trader, who bet against subprime market and made $15 billion.

The most puzzling are the real-estate projects of Parsvnath. Just have a look at the Pride Asia project near Chandigarh. They are asking almost US $300K-$350 K dollars for 2 bed room apartments. They have Villas in this project that costs more than US $1.5 million dollars. It is true that some people in India have that kind of money in India. However most of their wealth is black money and that can not be used to buy these properties. Obviously, these projects have been launched keeping NRIs in mind. - Sanjeev, comment from another site

Prachi Desai, aka Bani, the star of Balalji Telefilms's soap, Kasam Se, has been house hunting for over a year. She had almost closed a 2-BHK deal last year for Rs 1.5 crore in a Oberoi Constructions' building located at Andheri, Mumbai, but when she went back to confirm it, she was asked to cough up Rs 2.61 crore. Since then, she is still house hunting. - Mumbai Mirror

AD BRITE

Your Ad Here