India Rising!

Recently a friend of mine forwarded me this video recorded by PBS and termed "India Rising". You can view the video at PBS's website.

The video's main focus is a town Pune, a growing educational town situated 100 miles east of the main metropolitan of Mumbai in Western India.

India's GDP is on its boom in the last few years, recording 9.1% growth in the 2007-08 timeframe according to wikipedia.

The middle class can now afford a lot of commodity items that were taken as granted by rest of the world.

Indians now are shopping in malls for microwaves or refrigerators and also buying condos and driving comfortable automobiles.

To me the above change has already been in place for a few years, but its only recently that its started making news in mainstream America.

Express India's rising food prices article gives the views of President Bush on the same.

What do these economic needs of China and India mean to the rest of the world? There is only so much in the world and one argument is "Should we not share what we have?" Is this the price the rest of the world will have to pay when The World Is Flat?

One positive outcome as depicted in the video is that it encourages innovation by the rise in competition.

Thoughts?

Dollar cost averaging - Another view

Image courtesy:about.com

In my earlier post about dollar cost averaging or long term investing during down markets I had written how it was beneficial to dollar cost average during a bear market.
This morning I was looking at another article on Investor Business Daily's newspaper. They had a small article on dollar cost averaging specifically for down markets or during markets with bearish trend. This article featured under their Myth Buster title titling "Averaging down can be a poison". The author takes an example of Lehman brother's stock and how one would have suffered major losses in such a condition and instead ask to dollar cost average in bullish markets.

My takes on this and comments are slightly different. My focus would be to dollar cost average on an index vs. a stock. Thus if any particular stock is burned then my risk of loosing all my money is certainly lessened.

The article took an example of AIG and explained how an investor would take ages to get back the fortune spent. I would have rather put money in the finance sector, probably in an ETF or a mutual fund.

Of-course buying during market correction is a better strategy but then who can identify a bottom and then a correction.

One strategy recommended which I might partially agree is too sell off if losses get steeper than 7-10%.

What do you think?

Energy saving tips for today's economy.courtesy Food Network

With the recent downturn in the economy and increase in gas and fuel price everyone is looking for money saving tips. These money saving tips could be energy saving tips or gas saving tips or even grocery saving tips. In my previous post I talked about a healthy and moderately priced dining out options in the rough economy and recommended Sweet Tomatoes.

Lets see some myths transform into energy saving tips.

Ever thought of cooking salmon in a dishwasher or cooking an egg over your car engine?
Recently while watching the Food Detective Show on Food Network TV I came across these crazy ideas or myths as you call it.
Ted Allen runs the show covering myths around food and drinks along with some not so usual energy or money saving ideas.

How to cook a salmon in a dishwasher:
1. Take an aluminum foil and then apply some olive oil at the bottom.
2. Lay your raw salmon on the oil and then apply some lime juice over the salmon.
3. Carefully cover it up with one more layer of aluminum and then wrap it up nicely so that soapy water does not get in.
4. Load it in your dishwasher with all those dirty dishes.
5. Start your dishwasher with the normal or full cycle.
6. Sit relax and enjoy! At the end of the cycle take out the covered foil and unwrap to see what happened to the salmon !
Food Network claims nicely cooked Salmon thanks to the heat that the dishwasher creates to properly sanitize the dishes.

Late for breakfast , got to get to work quickly? Take that egg break it up and carefully wrap in layers of aluminum foil layered with olive oil and open your car hood. Place it on an engine so that the aluminum bundle with the egg in it does not spill over parts of the engine. The car hood should hold your egg with all the aluminum is in place.

Drive to work , your egg's ready.

I have not tried any of these saving tips but thought these as being quite unusual and worth sharing.

What are your thoughts?

Dining in today's economy

Image courtesy: http://www.souplantation.com


As most of us know Sweet Tomatoes is one of the famous salad chains in northern US.
"Sweet tomatoes", "Sweet Tomatoes coupon", searches are on an increase in today's economy. I made a quick google adword tool keyword search on Sweet Tomatoes. I saw the second most searched word for the keyword "Sweet Tomatoes Coupon".
Is this the result of people looking for cheap dining options?

If you are looking for a cheap option to dine out with the opportunity of eating healthy Sweet tomatoes is a great option. For around $7.5 for lunch along with a chance to get 10-15% off if you join their veggie club one gets a choice of plenty of fresh salads.

Feeling bored with eating the same salads? Sweet Tomatoes has been creative in creating an Asian week or a Mexican food week where customers get to taste some delicacy.

We recently got a chance to visit the Sweet Tomatoes Asian Week and we thoroughly enjoyed the Asian Ginger broth Soup.

Looking for some Sweet Tomatoes coupons? Type "Sweet Tomatoes coupons" or check out links like this.

If you have more of such ideas please feel to free by leaving a comment. Thank you.

Promote high traffic blog using StumbleUpon

Slightly shifting from my normal finance entries this note is about promoting a blog in general. Recently I came across Problogger's how to promote young blog and have started taking steps towards the same. The big catchaway to promote young blog to become a high traffic blog is to network on StumbleUpon. I have been a passive user of stumble upon.

Leaving the "Stumble Upon" issues aside I am starting the network on StumbleUpon to attract people with similar interests.

Sane Investing in an Insane World - review

Recently I have been reading this book . Definitely some takes and some "non" takes from the book. Cramer goes over different stocks to be purchased at different times in the economy. Once an industry is picked , next is the choice between various companies within it.
Here are some guidelines that are outlined in the book for comparing stocks in an industry
1. P/E ratio, this seems to be the #1 principle.
2. Growth rate of a company: Online sites like thestreet.com or reuters or yahoo finance will list the rate the company is growing. This should be in sync with the growth rate.
3. Dividend comparison: Yield is the trick, Compare yield vs. the actual dollar amount of the yield.
4. Think outside the box: Real business world. Are there some take over or other orders lurking for the company?

5. How does the company perform vs. S&P 500. A bargain is a company with P/E lesser than the industry but has better sales and earnings faster. For example in the current market non cyclical stocks would normally outperform the other ones in the market.

As an example Coke vs. Pepsi comparison is listed at http://seekingalpha.com/article/91789-coke-vs-pepsi-cramer-s-mad-money-8-19-08 Seeking Alpha

More useful tips coming up in the upcoming blog(s).

Disclaimer : Author does not hold KO or PEP at the time of writing the blog and is provided as an example.

Your money or your life

Recently glanced through this book, especially the section covering the crossover point which signifies "financial independence" after mymoneyblog wrote up an article on this. This point dictates the start of financial independence when your passive income (income generated not by working at a job or business) exceeds your expenses.

The author describes the crossover point by means of this simple figure.




Figure courtesy of the book : "Your Money or Your Life" and mymoneyblog.com.

The author uses the treasury note rate of return to calculate annual return of investment.


Consider the savings invested 60% in one year CDs and 40% in stocks will earn an interest/rate of return of around 4% and 6%(typically stocks should return more) to give an average of 5 % rate of return.

$100k will earn $5k per year or $416 per month before taxes. In reality it will take a long time before which the monthly investment come will touch the line of tip over of financial independence which is the expense line.


However I see that a few milestones could be derived from this discussion. Complete financial independence is the ultimate goal but there could be minor goals on the way. One common example is grocery or eat out bills. This I call as food independence as seen in this example.



There could be other milestones built on the same fundamental idea.

Essentially an individual would like to track the performance of passive investment making some intermediate goals along the path to the final goal.

The crossover in my mind is not a single point but a range. I will discuss that in a separate post.