Have we not learned our lessons in the past?

November 8, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Today I sent the following “Letter to the editor” to a few local papers, and a few national ones.  I don’t expect it to be published, but we have to do what we can.
Last night, Saturday November 7th, the house of Representatives passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.
This has been billed [...]

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Ebay, it was nice knowing you.

November 2, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Well, it looks like my stop on Ebay was tagged during the trading day today.  Ebay ended the day up, however during the day it dropped just far enough to tag the top and cause me to quickly exit the position.
My short calls are November 25’s, EBay is trading at $22.38 and I’m fairly bearish [...]

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Peggy Noonan: We’re Governed by Callous Children

October 30, 2009 by Ryan Barr

This
article from Peggy Noonan at the WSJ is awesome.  A must read:
The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a [...]

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Reality strikes after an inflated GDP report

October 30, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Yesterday we had the pleasure of enjoying a 200 point rally in the Dow driven by a headline GDP report of +3.5% in the third quarter.  The headline number looks great; however, when you pull back the covers it isn’t that pretty.  Today’s report of a .5% reduction in consumer spending for Sept further enforces [...]

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Run for the stops – and getting short

October 28, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Well, the new papermoney portfolio just took a swing through stop central and unloaded quite a few positions, and with some triggered orders I added a few more while I was at it.  Time will tell if the additions do anything good for the portfolio, however I’m getting the sinking feeling in my gut that [...]

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Papermoney – Stopped out of EJ

October 26, 2009 by Ryan Barr

A few weeks ago I decided to tweak the papermoney portfolio again.  Rather than going for a bunch of option plays on index products, I wanted to simulate some “money management” via positional plays on individual equities and managing risk via index option plays as needed.  The goal with the portfolio is to earn roughly [...]

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Kenneth R. Feinberg – Massive FAIL

October 23, 2009 by Ryan Barr

It’s not April 1st, so this can’t be a huge joke… Wow, incompetence at its best.
After determining pay packages…. Via the
NYTimes:
“I wouldn’t begin to say how much money you should make on Wall Street,” Mr. Feinberg said in an interview last week, as he prepared to slash pay for the top 25 earners at [...]

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Now that you have an emergency fund in the works…

October 21, 2009 by Ryan Barr

After my last post about what an emergency fund is and how to build one up, I’m hoping that everyone who read it is on their way to get that started!
Having something as basic as an emergency fund is a must, especially in times of economic stress.  I’m not going to get into a dissertation [...]

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Building an Emergency Fund

October 7, 2009 by Ryan Barr

It’s been a while since I’ve written any posts regarding personal finance, and I happen to think this is a very important topic.
Yesterday, my wife and I were discussing how and when to pay off my car. That is one of the few debts we still have and one that we decided made sense financially [...]

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It’s Official – You ARE going to pay your neighbors mortgage

September 11, 2009 by Ryan Barr

I cannot begin to explain how angry this makes me, I’m not kidding when I say that I can feel the anger building up after reading this.  The FDIC, on a Friday afternoon with no vote, no say, no representation, from the people is socializing mortgages and making you and me pay for it.  I [...]

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