Minimal resolutions blog

By Jeff Lakie

Everyone seems to have their own secret or strategy or trick to making money in the stock market. Here are two strategies that have helped many people.

1. It’s your time, how do you want to spend it?

Some people suggest high risk investments and watch them all day. Others say that simply buying good quality mutual funds and hanging onto them for a long time is the best option.

One of the deciding factors for you in developing your investment strategy should be the amount of time that you are willing to spend on monitoring your investments. There is nothing wrong with investing in high-risk investments if you have the time to spend researching, analyzing, and monitoring the price movement. There’s also nothing wrong with the “buy and hold” method, if you do not have the time to spend on watching your investments.

The people who have been very successful in investing are able to match their investment style with the amount of time they can spend on investing.

2. It’s your money, how much can you risk?

The people who have lost everything on the stock market were not careful at managing their money. The stock market is not a gamble, if you’re careful. But you need to be careful in what you buy and how much you buy.

You can decide what is right to buy based on the amount of time you want to spend in the market. Knowing how much to buy is another issue. Don’t put more into your higher risk stocks than you’re willing to lose!

You may find greater safety in buying mutual funds or bonds and if you have money you don’t want to see disappear, those are probably good options for you. If you are sitting on your children’s education fund, you probably do not want to be sinking that in stocks that could potentially gain or lose as much as 50% in a day!

Knowing how much time you have to spend on your portfolio and how much you are willing to risk are two strategies that can help you make wise financial decisions when it comes to investing.

Originally published article: A guide to investing

President Obama has been roundly criticized for his approach thus far to the Muslim world, so it will be interesting to see how the Muslim world receives the words he delivered in Turkey on Monday.

Some critics see Obama’s promise to open a dialogue with the Muslim world as being soft on terrorism. Others wonder why the president would waste time on words, when, they say, now is the time for policies. Others (including Alaa Al Aswany, an Egyptian whose op-ed, “Why the Muslim World Can’t Hear Obama,” was published in February in the New York Times) point to the disappointment felt by Egyptians and others in the Muslim world that President Obama did not take a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza. The criticisms are variations on a theme: Actions speak louder than words.

Many are asking: Will his words matter? And, how might the world benefit now from his words to the Muslim world?

The operative word is “now.” Actions may speak louder than words, but proverbial wisdom also has it that you can’t get there from here. In this case, we can’t get to effective action without words.

Since 9/11, polls studying public opinion in the United States and Muslim-majority countries have revealed mutual suspicion. Muslims have grown accustomed to being labeled as terrorists, suicide bombers and radical extremists, and because of these labels, young Muslims I teach, work and pray with say they have felt marginalized in America.

Yet a significant shift has occurred since Obama’s campaign and his election. While many American Muslims kept their presidential preference to themselves, fearing that an endorsement from Muslims might work against Obama, many are now much more actively participating in the public discourse. This is good news, but misunderstanding built over eight years will take time to abate, and if left unaddressed, can be easily hijacked in the service of divisive agendas, fueling more fear and hatred.

At the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley where I work, education is centered on interfaith dialogue. In our teaching, research and community conferences, we embrace, rather than avoid, the critical tensions that arise from different perspectives. We do this because one role of religion is to cultivate civic character and virtue so differences in the public arena can be peacefully negotiated.

But finding the common ground we share comes first. In a class I teach on pluralism in Islam, my students ask, “How do we translate respect into action?” I refer them to one hadith or saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: “Actions are but by intention.”

An open and inquiring mind, the ability to listen, and the willingness to engage “the other” are the essential precursors to dialogue and cooperation. Ultimately, the work involves intention, words and actions. As my students find their answers, they will become religious leaders and educators who, in addressing issues of pluralism and difference, will help find resolutions to geopolitical, economic and social problems.

In an interview with Hisham Melhem of Al Arabiya, President Obama emphasized, along with respect, the importance of listening. These are critical starting points in rebuilding a relationship with those who practice the world’s fastest growing religion. They are the way to find what President Obama called “certain common hopes and common dreams” that unite all people regardless of their faith. President Obama’s approach to the Muslim world is a nuanced one: It is neither a closed nor an open fist; neither soft nor hard line: It is an opening.

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Antiperspirants And Breast Cancer

Most underarm antiperspirants contain as the active ingredient, Aluminium Chlorohydrate, as you will probably think back on there has been controversy about Aluminium, since the 1950’s when it was a popular metal used for making cooking pots, Saucepans and Fry Pans and that it could be one of the contributing factors to Alzheimer’s, now we have another dilemma that could also be related to Aluminium, Breast Cancer.

Research shows that one of the leading causes of Breast Cancer could be the use of antiperspirants. The weak body has a number of areas, that it uses to purge Toxins from the body, these are, behind the knees, behind the ears, the groin acreage, and the armpits. The toxins are purged from the body in the form of perspiration and antiperspirant as the name clearly suggests prevents you from perspiring, thereby inhibiting the committee from purging Toxins from the armpit area.

These Toxin do not just disappear, Instead, the body deposits them in the Lymph Nodes below the arms, since it is unfit to sweat them out. A concentration of Toxins then builds up in the areas such as the armpits, which can then lead to cell mutations, which is cancer.

It cannot be ignored, that approaching all Breast Cancer Tumors occur in the upper outer quadrant of the breast area, this is where the Lymph Nodes are located. Men are less qualified (but not totally exempt) to develop breast cancer prompted by the use of antiperspirants, because the antiperspirant is more likely to be caught in the armpit braids, rather than directly applied to the skin, but ladies, who shave their armpits, increase the risk by causing imperceptable nicks in the strip, which allow the chemicals to enter easily into the body through the armpits.

Read full article: Antiperspirants And Breast Cancer

When mortgage rates dropped to the lowest levels in almost a year, Warren Zeger seized the opportunity to slash $720 off his monthly mortgage payment by refinancing his home in Potomac, Md.

Just don’t expect him to spend the savings.

“I’d love to tell you I’m going to spend it to help prop up the economy, but we’ve tightened our belts,” said Zeger, 61, a retired attorney. “I plan on holding on to it.”

Zeger echoed homeowners The Associated Press interviewed nationwide who have taken advantage of lower rates since Nov. 25th. They planned to stuff the money they saved under the mattress or pay off bills. Refiinance activity has surged as interest rates tumbled about 1 percentage point to around 5.5 percent in response to the Federal Reserve’s plan to scoop up $600 billion of mortgage-related securities.

“We’ve had a lot homeowners waiting for some time” for this drop in rates, said Ritch Workman, co-owner of Workman Mortgage in Melbourne, Fla.

The Fed’s move was the latest in an unprecedented series of actions to help stabilize the housing and credit markets as well as the broader economy. However, pushing down mortgage rates may only have a muted effect on the economy. That’s because more than a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage can’t qualify for a new loan, and many who can are so financially stretched that little of the money they save will end up in store cash registers.

“If you’re worried about making it month to month and your mortgage is your biggest payment you’re not going out to buy a car and a lot of Christmas gifts,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication in Bethesda, Md.

Stuart Cassell in Sarasota, Fla., is putting his $80 monthly refinanse savings into his nest egg, while product development manager Subash Ramnani in Chicago is using the extra $300 a month from his refinancing to pay for graduate school. Jennifer Burke and her husband in Bel Air, Md., are saving the additional $240 a month as they wait out the recession and raise a one-year-old daughter.

Marcus Leef’s $150 monthly savings is going to daycare costs and personal savings. Leef, a consultant in Hartford County, Conn., has seen his stock portfolio plummet 40 percent, his retirement savings plunge by half and his corporate stock tumble by 60 percent this year. He’s not optimistic.

“My view is the economy is in the toilet. It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he said. “If rates drop another point tomorrow, I’ll (refinance) again the day after.”

Those are the luckiest homeowners. Les Berman, a mortgage broker in Encino, Calif., said most borrowers contacting him have interest-only mortgages and they want to lock into a fixed-rate loan. They’re not saving any money each month if they do that; instead, they’re taking higher payments to get out of riskier loans.

“They want that security. They want to protect themselves against the future,” he said, even if it means shelling out more each month.

Other borrowers, like Eric Dudek in Grand Rapids, Mich., are waiting to see if rates drop further after hearing reports that the government is considering a proposal to lower the rate on 30-year home loans to 4.5 percent by buying more mortgage-backed securities.

“I’m thinking maybe I should hold off, you know?” said Dudek, who would use the savings from a refinancing to pay off student loans.

But he could be waiting in vain because the plan is only expected to apply to purchase loans, not refinance loans. Either way, most borrowers will need more than just lower interest rates to solve their problems.

Brokers are turning away thousands of borrowers because they just won’t qualify for a refinancing. Pava Leyrer, president of Heritage National Mortgage in Michigan, said about 40 percent of the homeowners calling her likely won’t get a refinance because of falling home values, credit issues and job loss.

Likewise, Brad Cohen, vice president of Mason Dixon Funding in Rockville, Md., said as many as two-thirds of borrowers he’s talked to don’t qualify because they owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth.

An estimated 12 million U.S. homeowners are in that situation and declining home prices only exacerbate their situations. Low interest rates won’t be enough and if they fall into default or foreclosure, that will only make the current financial crisis worse.

“There’s no plan in place to help them right now,” Cohen said.

AP Real Estate Writer Alan Zibel in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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There are some fiscal needs that require your immediate attention. And in order to fulfill that needs you are require to take some help from external sources. If you are also looking for any instant fiscal help then you can consider quick cash loans. These are short term financial help that offers you small amount to fulfill your urgent needs. Like: urgent medical expenses, electricity bills, car bills and education expenditures.

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Here’s a cell phone app that could actually save lives: AT&T Inc. is introducing technology that lets patients monitor their heartbeat and automatically transfer the data to their cardiologists using Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones.

The service, offered by MedNet Healthcare Technologies, allows customers who are in AT&T’s network range or roaming areas to send the information to a central monitoring center, which then relays the information to their doctor. The service is available for a monthly fee, and doctors must be signed up to use it.

Patients using an older service offered by MedNet have to call a toll-free number and then put their monitoring device near a landline receiver in order to transmit their data to the center.

MedNet also will use AT&T voice services so cardiac technicians and physicians can quickly contact patients if necessary. The service will be available April 21.

This article appeared on page C - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Snoring can often cause the person or those immediately around him to have disturbed sleep that, if unchecked, can cause other serious consequences. Snoring is the result of blocked flow of air through the passage towards the rear of the mouth and nose. Snoring results when the structures within the mouth collide with one another and vibrate when a person breathes. Adult Snoring It is not only children with tonsils and adenoids that snore, but adults are equally prone to this ailment as well. Since this problem can disturb others there needs to be some sure fire method to stop snoring. In this direction, there are a number of simple means to achieve snoring cessation such as by losing weight. Overweight people are most prone to snoring and if they lose weight it would certainly contribute to easing their snoring problem. To stop snoring, you may also need to abstain from using sleeping pills before going to sleep at night unless they have been prescribed by your doctor. Alcohol is another known cause and the best way to stop snoring is to also abstain from alcohol as well as refrain from smoking. You should also  ensure that your sleeping pattern is regular as this is a simple as well as effective means to stop snoring. Devices Galore The market today is flooded with hundreds of stop snoring devices which could be of great use to the estimated 45 per cent of adults that snore. To help you in your search for a method to stop snoring, you could ask friends and family for advice or consult a doctor. One tip to stop snoring involves a change in sleeping position which should provide relief. If you want to try out the nasal strips to stop snoring there are many available and so too are devices such as Hivox Snore Stopper. This is a small and convenient watch sized contraption that will aid you in stopping to snore. Alternatively, you could try snoring chin straps too. Snoring, which was once something that many people laughed at, is now a serious matter that could not just strain relationships, but can also be a precursor to other life threatening conditions such as sleep apnea. If all else fails, you may need to undergo surgery, which is certainly a last option but with the advances in this type of treatment taking place, they provide yet another excellent solution to stop snoring.

Giving up the innovative, we-can-change-the-world culture of Google (GOOG) is hardly an easy decision for any executive who works there. But for Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who announced this morning that she’s leaving Google to rejoin the world of start-ups, the decision was a natural.

“My father drummed into me that I should work for myself,” says Singh Cassidy, 39, who is Google’s president for Asia-Pacific & Latin American operations until she moves to Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as CEO-in-Residence next week. “My father always told me, ‘You want to control your destiny.’”

In a company of innovators and iconoclasts, Singh Cassidy has long been one of Google’s most adventurous and global-minded executives. Born in Tanzania and raised by doctor parents–her late father was from Uganda and her mother, still a practicing gynecologist, is from India–Singh Cassidy grew up in Canada and has spent her adult life refusing to be pigeon-holed or tied down. After college at the University of Western Ontario, she took the foreign service exam and the LSATs, thinking of going to law school or maybe medical school. She took an altogether different route, joining Merrill Lynch (BAC) and working in investment banking in New York and London for two years.

“I’ve always been entrepreneurial at heart,” she says. So she moved into tech via stints at Amazon.com (AMZN), OpenTV and BSkyB, the News Corp.-owned (NWS) British pay-TV provider. In 1999, she co-founded Yodlee, a financial-services Internet company, and headed business development there until moving to Google in 2003.

Singh Cassidy stayed at Google longer than anywhere else. Starting as the first general manager for Google Local and Maps, she took over the company’s sales organizations in Asia and Latin American when they had just 17 employees. Now it has several thousand employees in 18 offices covering 103 countries.

Why leave now? Six years is a lifetime for Singh Cassidy and she misses that entrepreneurial world. Plenty of opportunities to run a start-up have come her way over the years, but she decided to join Accel because the VC firm–the same one that backed Yodlee a decade ago–will provide “a vantage point to make wise choices,” she says. “In the next six to nine months, I’ll see a lot of companies.”

And while Accel, like its Silicon Valley rivals, has seen investment values plunge during the recession, the firm has been on a roll in terms of raising money–$1 billion for two new funds that closed to investors this past December. Singh Cassidy is drawn to “Accel’s momentum,” she says, and also to its focus on consumer Internet companies. Accel’s current investments include Facebook, Glam Media and AdMob.

Although Singh Cassidy, like many of Silicon Valley’s star women, is a stretched mom of two (a daughter, two years old , and a stepson, nine), she was not, she says, driven to change jobs by a need for flexibility–which was the subject of my post on Postcards yesterday. “For me, it’s more about what my father said: Control your destiny.”

Besides that wisdom from her late father, what’s the best advice she’s received? “When you feel it in your gut, make the move,” she says. “But don’t commit too soon. Keep yourself open.” She’s doing that now. “This move,” she adds, “is actually the most careful one I’ve ever made.”

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The newspaper industry is reeling and trying to adapt to an online future.

But The Daily Racing Form, the horse-racing tabloid with the familiar red, white and black logo, appears to have found a survival strategy: it feeds its readers a product with news, analysis and data, and sells them more and deeper analytic information from its Web site, drf.com.

“Initially, the Internet was a small part of the company, but now I’d say that it’s 10 to 20 percent,” said Steven Crist, The Form’s chairman and publisher. “We’re not going to be selling more hard-copy newspapers in five years. I think we’ll still be selling them, because there are still thousands of people who are tactile and sensual about their newsprint and Flair pens and marking up their Form. I don’t think we’re going digital any time soon.”

In a few years, he expects the digital side to account for at least one-third of revenue.

The Form’s business model is bucking two economic trends: it is a daily in the midst of a recession that has decimated advertising and some general-interest papers. And it is a niche paper that serves a sport with considerable problems, but one that comes alive to a general audience for Triple Crown events like Saturday’s Belmont Stakes.

Still, it is the industry’s only daily, with its competition largely from The BloodHorse and The Thoroughbred Times’s Web sites, and the industry’s central data source, Equibase. A formidable challenge seemed to come in 1991, when Robert Maxwell started The Racing Times, which Crist edited. But it lasted less than a year, and The Form acquired some of its assets to kill it.

“Oh, The Racing Form is the bible,” said William Nack, the former Sports Illustrated horse-racing writer and a biographer of Ruffian and Secretariat who grew up admiring The Form’s top columnist, Charlie Hatton. “You can’t be without it at the track.”

Crist said that The Form’s unusual economics helped it endure the recession. He said that fewer than 10 people had been laid off this year, on a staff of about 200.

“Newspapers for the most part get 95 percent of our revenue from advertising, and circulation is break even, at best,” Crist said Friday at Belmont Park. “We’re 90-percent-plus from circulation. So the advertising fall hasn’t hurt much. I’m not saying we don’t like or need advertising, but we’re the most expensive newspaper in the world, at $5 or $6, and that’s where our money comes from.”

Circulation averages nearly 33,000 daily, said Jim Kostas, The Form’s president and general manager. Less than 20 years ago, it was closer to 100,000.

“Although it suffers from some of the same issues newspapers do, the combination of its editorial content and data puts it on firmer ground,” said Charles Hayward, the president of the New York Racing Association and a former president of The Form. “It’s like combining The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”

Although its circulation is modest, the $5 to $6 price tag, depending on the market, means revenue of at least $60 million from selling 39 regional editions of the paper at tracks (where The Form also publishes programs) and newsstands. Some days, just a few thousand copies are sold; on Triple Crown days, 350,000.

“Absolutely, we’re profitable,” Crist said. “It’s not even close. We turn over a lot of cash.” The Form is privately owned by a venture-capital firm, Arlington Capital Partners of Chevy Chase, Md., so there is no independent verification of Crist’s profitability claims.

But at least through its most recent sales, it has proved to be an increasingly valuable news-media property: in 1998, a group that included Crist acquired it for $44 million; six years later, the Wicks Group bought it for about $75 million. In 2007, before the recession struck, Arlington paid nearly $200 million as part of a strategy to sell premium sports data online.

“We know that that can’t go on forever,” Crist said of the rise in acquisition prices.

The Internet strategy has been building for a decade and focuses on selling charts, past-performance data, handicapping reports and products like Andrew Beyer’s speed figures for a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. “We’re constantly playing with pricing plans,” Crist said.

Marc Attenberg, The Form’s vice president for Internet, said, “We benefit because people are willing to pay for our information.” Perhaps The Form’s model is one that newspapers should have heeded instead of offering free content. But The Form may be different because what it offers is highly specialized and geared to gamblers, not general-interest readers.

Attenberg hopes that the next evolution in The Form’s digital growth is the creation of mobile devices that can accommodate the intricacy and depth of performance charts.

“Eighty-five percent of people come to our site, print out what they want and take it to the track or to their living room,” he said. “Right now, our stuff just doesn’t work on a BlackBerry.”
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By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 3, 2009; 8:09 AM

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 3–American flags are hanging next to the green banner of the Saudi kingdom on the street-light poles of this desert capital, a celebratory nod to the arrival of President Obama, who on Wednesday landed here to begin a five-day tour through the Middle East and Europe.

Obama will hold a day of meetings with King Abdullah on Iran’s nuclear program and the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace process, among other issues. It is his first presidential visit to the Arab Middle East.

At a tarmac welcoming ceremony, Obama was greeted by the 84-year-old Saudi leader. The two strode down a red carpet lined by ranks of Saudi soldiers, U.S. and Saudi flags flying taut in a brisk, dry wind. A military band then played the Star-Spangled Banner.

The leaders were then scheduled to travel to King Abdullah’s farm at Jenadriyah, not far from Riyadh. The king hosted a dinner there last year for then-President Bush featuring an Arabian horse show and a falconry exhibition.

This stop was a late addition to Obama’s itinerary, the centerpiece of which is his Thursday address in Cairo to the Islamic world.

It comes as Obama is pushing for early progress on Middle East peace efforts and reaching out to Iran’s leaders over their nuclear program - two major and intertwined foreign policy gambits that so far have yielded few results.

With its vast oil wealth and supreme religious importance in the Islamic world as the site of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has long been a leading Sunni Arab player in the region, an influence Abdullah has sought to deepen in recent years.

Abdullah has asserted Saudi diplomacy aggressively in Lebanon and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the first to propose broad Arab recognition of Israel in return for its withdrawal from all territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, and he has sought in the past to broker unity government agreements between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

Obama has suggested that Abdullah’s peace proposal, adopted by the Arab League in 2002 and now known as the Arab Peace Initiative, may serve as a way to revive talks between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab countries, only two of which now recognize the Jewish state.

After a meeting with Obama last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated that he would welcome more regional participation in future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He said he “would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world, if we could.”

Those talks are being held up now by Palestinian concerns over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s refusal to endorse the creation of an independent Palestinian state as the best way to achieve peace.

The Obama administration may be taking more of an outside in view of the conflict, hoping a gesture from Arab nations such as this one might push Israel toward peace with the Palestinians.
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