TMFEldrehad's Blog

Congrats to the new Top Fool!

TMFEldrehad — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:01:07 GMT

Yes, the title of this blog post would appear self-congratulatory, but it isn't, honest! If you will kindly indulge me and read on, you'll hopefully agree that it isn't.

Yes, for the moment I am officially the CAPS Top Fool and will be, since it's Friday after market close, at least through the weekend -- my apologies to all of my fellow CAPSters who have to look at my face...

Ouch!

TMFEldrehad — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:12:28 GMT

Yesterday, in CAPS, I red-thumbed Stevia Corp: STEV.OB

Ouch!

The stock is up somewhere in the neighborhood of 75% today. Ah well, I'm not worried.

Is it up on news? Nope.

Up on good earnings? Nope.

Was I wrong to red-thumb this ticker in the fir...

Wow!

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:27:46 GMT

So... I logon to CAPS and....

I'm Top Fool again?

OK, so I expect it to last all of five minutes, but... even so, it's a nice feeling.

Losing Dinner

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:06:25 GMT

No, I don't mean the title of this blog post in the way you are probably thinking -- I'm not feeling ill, my stomach is not upset.

But, it's looking more and more like I'm losing a dinner bet.

For those of you who may not have followed my CAPS project from a while back, in 2007 I launched a stock-picking blog called Eldrehad's Picks in which I built a long-only porfolio in CAPS with detailed wr...

Inherent Assumptions

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:36:25 GMT

I was reading an article today entitled Learn to Love Our Massive Deficit which made some inherent assumptions I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with. You know, the kind of assumption that is not actually stated, but must be true for the ...

Regarding the Deficit

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:27:45 GMT

Regarding gaining control over the looming federal budget deficits:

Obama said that getting the job done is "going to require the people of both parties" to put politics aside. (link)

Ummm, Mr. President? When was the last time that happen...

Who to Believe?

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:47:32 GMT

Well, let's see, on the one hand we have a survey from the National Association for Business Economics (link).

NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a re...

Will Congress Never Learn?

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:14:55 GMT

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Ok, I have no idea who the above quotation should be attributed to, but this article on the current Senate debate over bailout legislation has me scratching my head with wonder.
Resolution authority: In the Wall Street overhaul bills, lawmakers w...

A Little Trouble with Numbers

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:38:06 GMT

Okay, I was cruising around the financial press for a few minutes today, and stumbled upon an article entitled 6 Things You're Doing to Delay Your Retirement.
The article itself isn't bad, and has some decent advice. Sure, some of it's pretty basic, but we ...

Tax Time

TMFEldrehad — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:44:28 GMT

Have you filed your tax return yet?
I filed ours this week. Actually, this is the first time I've ever had to write a check and send it off to Uncle Sam (I had to write one to our friends in Sacramento, too). While I didn't know the exact figures before I sat down to prepare our return, I knew some kind of tax bill was coming.
And as much as I didn't like writing those checks on the one hand, I didn't mind writing them on th...

My Head Still Hurts.

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:40:18 GMT

Back in November I wrote a few blog posts about my dislike for the Cash for Clunkers program, citing an Edmunds study which some of my fellow Fools (perhaps very rightly so) called into question. Certainly, the news article I read today paints a much more rosy picture and hails "Cash for Clunkers did better tha...

Green Jobs Cost Too Much

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:09:09 GMT

Those of you who have been following my picks in CAPS know that for quite some time I have been rather bearish on the whole 'alternative energy' sector. The problem I've always had is one of simple economics. Fossil fuels prevail as our main form of energy generation for one simple reason, they are the most economically effecient. It is my very firmly held belief that alternative sources of energy will begin to prevail only when the economics allow them to.

Parallels

TMFEldrehad — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:51:31 GMT

One of the things I like to do when thinking about companies and investing is draw parallels between what I am seeing in the world today what may have happened in similar instances in the business world in the past. As I was driving into the office this morning and listening to the radio, I heard a brief news story on some of the now famous (or infamous) troubles that Toyota is having, and my mind went back to the 1980's.
A...

A Sign of the Times

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:35:07 GMT

As the number of job losses and foreclosures has mounted over the past two years, some people have chosen to surrender their animals, unable to afford pet food let alone veterinary care.
The above came from an article entitled: Pets in the Recession: Howls for Help

Kids, Money and Shoes

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:15:50 GMT
While poking around the internet looking for interesting stories to read, I stumbled across this one entitled How to Teach Your Children the Value of Money.
While the article goes through a few steps, things like starting early, teaching children where money comes from, and making investing interesting (all of which are good ideas), I ...

Speaking of Bad Assumptions....

TMFEldrehad — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:29:37 GMT

A recent blog post of mine drew some fire for leaning on data from Edmunds.com - critcism which stated that Edmunds' assumptions were simply unreasonable. You know what? Fair enough. I don't know enough about the industry to say one way or another and am certainly willing to admit that there's a possiblility that Edmunds' figures were off by good margin.
Apparently, however, t...

The Headache Continues

TMFEldrehad — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:24:39 GMT

A few days ago I wrote a blog called Ow! My Head Hurts! about how if the Edumunds.com figures were right, the tens of thousands of dollars per additional car sold under the Cash for Clunkers program seemed like a collosal waste.
A few Fools, perhaps rightfully so, questioned the

Line du jour

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:11:17 GMT

I have my questions regarding the rest of the article, but the first line was just fantastic:
Now that we're officially (if barely) out of the Great Recession, it's time for our nation's elected officials to get down to serious business -- that of taking credit, assigning blame, and calling each other liars.
<...

Ow! My Head Hurts!

TMFEldrehad — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:09:49 GMT

Okay, my head doesn't really hurt, but I've known a few coffee drinkers (okay, these folks drink extreme armounts of the stuff) over the years who, when suffereing from caffeine depravation, will get a forehead-splitting headache.
If the analysis done by Edmunds.com is anywhere close to accurate, our economy...

The Healtcare Debate

TMFEldrehad — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:14:54 GMT

Until now I have been a bit hesitant to post too much on the healtcare reform debate currently going on in our country. What I didn't want to do is get into a debate on the specifics of any particular proposal or idea -- and frankly, the specifics (and arguments on both the pro and con side for each individual element) have gotten so much press I didn't think there was much that I could add that wasn't already being said, perhaps a thousand times over, elsewhere.