Sometimes you look at a stock like Netflix when it was trading at $300+ and think “Here is a great company in a market with super growth, but how can I justify the price?”
Well, it turns out you don’t have to justify the price because the market is beating the shit out of the stock. It’s trading after hours right now at around $86, and who knows where the market will take it.
Hip Egg had the next level of support at around $60, so I would look for the price …

With mortgage rates dropping like a brick, it’s becoming a no-brainer for us to refinance our home loan. Even though we just got a 30-year loan 2 years ago at 5.875%, we can get 30-year loans now for around 4.5% or lower. You might be in a similar situation.

Rule of Thumb
The rule of thumb I hear thrown around a lot is that if you can drop 1% off your mortgage rate, you should refinance. To get a more precise idea …

This is happening to me, with one of my stocks right now: RCRC.
A few months ago, I bought about 50 shares of RC2 Corporation (RCRC), a maker of die-cast  and wooden toys, at $20. My wife and I were looking for an investment idea based on the toys and media we’re buying for our 2-year-old son. What I’d really like to do is own Thomas the Tank Engine, but the company owning the license (HIT Entertainment) is privately owned. The best we can do is to buy the companies with contracts on …

A couple months ago I opened a position in Activision Blizzard (ATVI). Blizzard is the Pixar of the gaming industry. All of their games are blockbusters. The most notable title World of Warcraft collects $15/month from their millions and millions of players.
I got interested in the stock after picking up Star Craft 2, another blockbuster game from them. I knew that game was going to sell better than expected. I had been watching pro Star Craft 2 tournaments that were run off the game’s beta for a few months. At …

These folks emailed us and they have some decent finance calculators on their site: Ultimate Calculators
I found the loan application one particularly interesting… haven’t seen that one before.
Cheers!

Great overview and background on Gold as a Commodity over at Crossing Wallstreet.
The summary for current investors is…
My view is that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates earlier than expected. I don’t know exactly when that will be but it will put gold on a dangerous path. For now, my advice is to stay away from gold, either long or short.
… but you should read the whole thing for a lot of interesting tidbits on the history of gold and how to track and trade it. Here’s another quote …

I still own a few shares of GOOG. It’s felt overpriced recently, but I’m holding onto a minimal amount at all times and trying to add more over time. So I’m hoping the price drops a bunch so I can pick up more cheaply.
Do a search here for GOOG for my previous thoughts (years old), but I basically think that the world will continue to be drowned in data. Google’s goal to organize the world’s information and their expertise at scaling Internet apps puts them in a great position to …

With mortgage rates dropping like a brick, it’s becoming a no-brainer for us to refinance our home loan. Even though we just got a 30-year loan 2 years ago at 5.875%, we can get 30-year loans now for around 4.5% or lower. You might be in a similar situation.
Rule of Thumb
The rule of thumb I hear thrown around a lot is that if you can drop 1% off your mortgage rate, you should refinance. To get a more precise idea if refinancing is good for you, you should really take …

Via blog.xplana.com:

Personally, I think this is a little conservative… though kids and professors on campuses would probably know more about how motivated professors are to switch to digital textbooks. What I do know is that no one likes spending $100 for a textbook and my professors were always empathetic to this.
Obvious investment plays are Apple and Google stock. Both are probably fairly priced now. None of these companies mentioned in the article are public, but there may be more like them. Another plan would be to find a publisher who …

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve been reading Paul Krugman’s blog at NYTimes.com daily. Paul won a Nobel Prize for economics, so obviously a smart guy. He’s very thoughtful and always bases his opinions on research and current economic thought.
I basically defer to this guy on all economic issues like finance reform, the Greek Economy, the Euro, and the economics of Health Care Reform.
Make sure you also check out his larger “columns” which are featured elsewhere on the site. There is usually a list of current/popular ones in …