In some ways, our society is quite privileged to have such a wealth of consumer products to choose from; in others, we are being done in by them. Today I received an email in which a warning was given regarding carcinogenic lead found in lipstick. Certain brands have been found to be at fault, especially... read more

We have seen why Cisco, CSCO, and Google, GOOG, look like good investments. We have also looked at the businesses of EBay, EBAY, and Amazon, AMZN.   Well, EBay and Amazon are also publicly owned companies with guidance and financials that can be examined. EBay has trailing twelve month earnings of $0.79... read more

Every so often, we read about people in the news who refer to specific things they either wear or have on them for “good luck”. This always surprises me for some reason; I guess I figure that people who are successful enough to be in the news in the first place are there for reasons other than dumb... read more

The internet has made it easy to do research about most listed stocks. Google, Yahoo, MSN, The New York Times, amongst other sites offer market quotes and other information so it is now comparatively easy, especially compared to pre-internet days, to look up information on a company and decide if it... read more

Google, GOOG, keeps expanding the areas it can place advertising to include radio, gaming, and word processing, translating into more revenue and, presumably, more profit. It is not hard to understand why the competition is trying to play catchup.   Microsoft, MSFT, through MSN competes directly with... read more

If you have read some of my most recent articles, you will easily figure out that I am focusing on stocks and to a lesser extent the national economy.  In an effort to try to stay up to the minute, although I do not usually write nearly that fast, I have set Google, Yahoo and New York Times alerts for... read more

Once upon a time there was the internet. Then there was the internet mania and, finally, the internet bubble where a lot of less sophisticated investors and allegedly smarter market dabblers learned expensive lessons in investing in stocks.   Many of the companies that were making the most noise such... read more

It was always one of my goals to attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I was able to do so at age 24. Even now, so many years later, I have vivid memories of those four days, especially when TV news snippets show the celebration every February. In my opinion, Mardi Gras is best experienced when young.... read more

One of the first books I ever read about investing around the time it originally came out was called “The Money Game,” by “Adam Smith,” a pseudonym for a man named George Goodman, who has had a quite nice career as a financial commentator, a book, by the way, that is still being... read more

My father has been dead for pretty much six years now, since February, 2001.   When I was young, he invested in the stock market. He did his homework by reading annual reports, looking up some things in the annual Standard & Poor’s Stock Guide, which actually was updated bimonthly,  reading... read more