Recently I came across a new site that was innovative and worthy of discussing. With the hot real estate market in the Toronto area, the sales have be fierce and lately, sellers have been hiring the first agent they can find to unload their property for the best price. But what is the best price when you only have talked with one agent?
This question has been asked by many who wonder about the lack of competition in the real estate business. Well cue, iBidBroker. iBidBroker is basically a meeting place for sellers and agents to converge and enable these agents to submit proposals to prospective sellers on how best their property can be sold and for what price. [Read the rest of this entry...]
To some is might seem like I only post when I profit, but with the busy schedule of myself for the past few days, I missed the boat on opportunities to get out of a few key stocks which were up and now are sitting at much lower prices. There is no true logic or reasoning I can come up with except for the sheer greed of being up significantly and trying to squeeze a few more drops before walking away. I have emphasized this in the past as a way people lose their shirts and sadly caught myself in the same trap. One stock I am caught holding the bag with now is (OCNF) which I was at one point up 20+% and now am down a pathetic 35%.
For a while now, a lot of stocks have been trending upwards and it all came to a stand still when the Greek market crisis took more central stage in the media. With the thought of another market doom scenario in the minds of many, people have stated to pull money off the table to take profits and preserve capital which I should have done.
Instead, I held onto denial and tried to ride this wave. Wrong move.
This week, the markets have ended on drops we did not see in a while. All three boards have erased all the gains they recorded this year. At close, the S&P 500 was 6.4 per cent down on the week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 5.7 per cent on the week while the Nasdaq Composite had dropped 7.9 per cent over the week.
The Vix index, a measure of market volatility, was up 26 per cent yesterday to 41.32, and 87.4 per cent higher on the week.
What does next week hold? Its seems like volatility is going to linger for a while. More people are jumping back into gold and USD which could not be a bad idea. With the good rise in the number of new jobs truly failing to push the markets into a positive trend, the better housing numbers also failing to do the same, we are going to need some time to let the wound of the Greek crisis to heal and hope that the next country in line to make a similar announcement to either find a resolution without public turmoil or wait long enough that the aftershock does not topple the markets. Spain is facing problems that will need to be dealt with soon.
24 hours ago, I was looking long and perhaps greedy in trying to squeeze every drop from (ABK). When the markets opened today, I was on cloud nine was the stock was strongly over $3/share ($3.39 to be exact) before the fun stopped.
Profit taking, and a note from JP Morgan began to take center stage and although I was willing to walk away with a 100% profit, why would I not get out now when I see the knife falling? As soon as I was able to get to a computer, I started to dump my shares and managed to get out before the stock took a serious swing towards the red.
(ABK) it seems, according to the JP Morgan note, still has a lot of negative qualities (read this article)
With this profit, I have begun to watch another stock that looks tempting. Although it does have a strong risk, the swings are interesting on AMCORE Financial (AMFI). I actually had plan to get in at $0.65/share and the stock did begin to drop towards this price before touching $0.70 and moving back upwards. I can see this stock pull down again before another run up. If it does not happen, I’m not going to lose any sleep.
To some, an advert on TV is just a pointless waste sandwiched between bits of their favorite show. Most of the time, I will agree with this sentiment. But once in a while, a marketing company will come up with something that will not only get your attention, but give you powerful message in less time than some shows could do in 30mins.
SoupFilms came up with a commercial called “Paths” and I was just taken away by it. There have been times when we wanted to stop, take the easy way, or felt like being alone on a journey was enough to look back. This commercial spoke volumes and minimized those doubts and hesitations and amplified the will to aim higher and keep building my own path. [Read the rest of this entry...]
