Stock Volatility Following Trade Resumption
Trade halts occur in order to disseminate news releases in a timely fashion. Question is, how volatile are the stocks following the news release? Can we predict which direction the stock will move?
RSS feed to watch:
http://rss.newswire.ca/en/newswire/rls_str_en.xml?642B050C780E11DC887DDB50B1B1FDF9
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Step one: Trimming The Fat
Think of your bank account as a bucket. The money you earn is water poured into the bucket. Think of the money you spend as a hole in the bottom. Your goal is to keep more water in that bucket. Obviously there's two solutions. Until recently I've always been obsessed with increasing my income: online ventures, stock investment plans, etc. Meanwhile I was blindly ignoring the obvious: I had some huge leaks to block first.
I'm not willing to change my lifestyle
For my age I live a very relaxed lifestyle. I enjoy dining out, travelling, having nice stuff (synths), eating really well at home. While I think there's definitely room for me to save money in my social life, I'm not going to restrict myself at this point in time for a simple reason: I don't want to :).
Money truly wasted
Fees, interest, charges. This is my primary focus. This is money I'm spending for which I see absolutely no benefit. Reducing this is literally free money in my hand every month.
Goal 1: No Credit Card interest
When I bought a car a few months ago I got an $10k unsecured loan from my bank at 10% interest. I put the purchase of the car onto that credit line and began paying it off. That meant that my debt payments monthly were now split between my credit card at 18% and my car at 10%. At first I was rolling my CC every month so I wasn't paying any interest, but as I started focussing on paying off my car I started to accumulate a CC balance from month-to-month. Which charged interest. At 18%.
Solution: Consolidate debt to lowest interest rate available
I moved my CC balance onto my 10% unsecured loan, saving myself 8% annually. Considering my CC balance was ~2000$, this saving is equivalent to a $2000 investment at 8% return (which would be pretty sweet to come by). Now every month I will pay off my CC balance in full and pay down my loan with the remainder. The side-benefit is that I can track monthly how much I'm really spending for fun and groceries since I put mostly all of it on my CC to save on bank withdrawl charges.
Goal 2: Optimized Bank Fees
My current bank account charges me $8.95/month if I dip my balance below $2000. While I think this is dismal and I need to change banks, for now this isn't changing. But lets see if we can improve the fees.
$8.95/month x 12 months/year = $107.40. $107.40/$2000 = ~5%.
So I would need to borrow the $2000 for less than 5% interest to save the $8.95 fee. Until I pay off my 10% debt this is not worthwhile unless I find a new, lower rate credit line.
Solution: Look for cheaper account
I'll have to start searching for a cheaper loan or cheaper account from another bank, until my finances improve the point of being able to keep a positive $2k balance. But even then, I'll want that $2k in a 4% interest account from somewhere like ING.
I'm not willing to change my lifestyle
For my age I live a very relaxed lifestyle. I enjoy dining out, travelling, having nice stuff (synths), eating really well at home. While I think there's definitely room for me to save money in my social life, I'm not going to restrict myself at this point in time for a simple reason: I don't want to :).
Money truly wasted
Fees, interest, charges. This is my primary focus. This is money I'm spending for which I see absolutely no benefit. Reducing this is literally free money in my hand every month.
Goal 1: No Credit Card interest
When I bought a car a few months ago I got an $10k unsecured loan from my bank at 10% interest. I put the purchase of the car onto that credit line and began paying it off. That meant that my debt payments monthly were now split between my credit card at 18% and my car at 10%. At first I was rolling my CC every month so I wasn't paying any interest, but as I started focussing on paying off my car I started to accumulate a CC balance from month-to-month. Which charged interest. At 18%.
Solution: Consolidate debt to lowest interest rate available
I moved my CC balance onto my 10% unsecured loan, saving myself 8% annually. Considering my CC balance was ~2000$, this saving is equivalent to a $2000 investment at 8% return (which would be pretty sweet to come by). Now every month I will pay off my CC balance in full and pay down my loan with the remainder. The side-benefit is that I can track monthly how much I'm really spending for fun and groceries since I put mostly all of it on my CC to save on bank withdrawl charges.
Goal 2: Optimized Bank Fees
My current bank account charges me $8.95/month if I dip my balance below $2000. While I think this is dismal and I need to change banks, for now this isn't changing. But lets see if we can improve the fees.
$8.95/month x 12 months/year = $107.40. $107.40/$2000 = ~5%.
So I would need to borrow the $2000 for less than 5% interest to save the $8.95 fee. Until I pay off my 10% debt this is not worthwhile unless I find a new, lower rate credit line.
Solution: Look for cheaper account
I'll have to start searching for a cheaper loan or cheaper account from another bank, until my finances improve the point of being able to keep a positive $2k balance. But even then, I'll want that $2k in a 4% interest account from somewhere like ING.
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