Compounding Life

This is my first time hosting the “Festival of Stocks”. For those of you that don’t know, The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival and I encourage you to consider participating either by contributing or signing up to host it. You can do so by reading the info about the carnival at Value Investing News.

There were over 40 submissions and I arbitrarily picked 23 as the limit. I am quite impressed with the variety in the topics. I am mostly value focused so it was interesting to read some articles that I probably would never come across in my RSS reader normally.

So here they are the 23 selections for Feb. 1st 2010 edition of the “Festival of Stocks”:

Brokers

Options Express – Online Brokerage Review at DoughRoller
A review of Options Express an online discount brokerage
Stocks:

Currency

Think your lek can kick my colón? Get riyal. at Control Your Cash
A post on currency trading and what it means to bet on one currency against another.
Stocks:

Debt

Lending Club Risks and Costs at Index Investing: The Oblivious Investor
A comparison of Lending Club notes to a simple high-yield bond ETF. (Doesn’t exactly make Lending Club look great.)
Stocks:

Dividends

Realty Income – Dividen Stock Analysis at Dividend Growth Investor
Analysis of Realty Income, a stock that pays a monthly dividend.
Stocks: O

Raven Industries Inc. (RAVN) Dividend Stock Analysis at Dividends Value
Raven Industries Inc. manufacturer provides electronic precision-agriculture products, reinforced plastic sheeting, electronics manufacturing services, specialty aeronautics, and sewn products. Linked here is a detailed analysis and commentary.
Stocks: RAVN

5 MAGIC FORMULA STOCKS FOR A LONG-TERM DIVIDEND INVESTOR at MagicDiligence.com
5 dividend stocks found using Joel Greenblatt’s Magic Formula
Stocks: RAI,LLY,HI,LO,UNTD

MFI STOCK REVIEW: REYNOLDS AMERICAN INC (RAI) at MagicDiligence.com
Reynolds American is a maker of popular cigarette brands like Camel and snuff brands such as Kodiak. The investment’s main attraction is a big, stable 7% dividend yield, but is this enough over a one year target holding period?
Stocks: RAI

S&P500 Dividend Aristocrats at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

A quick summary of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats

Stocks:

ETF

Emerging Markets Stock ETF (VWO) at Best Mutual Funds Now
The Emerging Markets Stock ETF or VWO has investments in the emerging large-cap markets
Stocks: VWO

Wildcatters Exploration & Production ETF at ETF Base
Review and background on a newly launched Wildcatter Exploration and Production ETF – expect wild volatility and huge gains if gas/oil move upward.
Stocks: WCAT

Darwin’s Inverse Leveraged Short ETF Strategy – Incredible Results Outlined at Darwin’s Finance
This post covers a strategy where you short two opposing leveraged ETFs.
Stocks: ERX,ERY,FAS,FAZ,GLL,UGL

Time For A Real Estate ETF? at ETFdb
An overview of REIT ETFs
Stocks: VNQ,IYR,ICF,RWR,FTY,FRI,IFNA

The Gold ETF Situation at Personal Finance Analyst
Description of the Gold ETF and what the current status of Gold is today.
Stocks: GLD

M&A

Kraft to Take Over Cadbury – A Sweet Deal? at American Consumer News
An investigation into Krafts takeover of Cadbury.
Stocks: KFT,CBY

Mutual Funds

Vanguard Review at Foreigner’s Finances
A review of the mutual fund company. Included in the review is information on fees, site design, the company, and what type ofinvestor will work best with Vanguard.
Stocks:

Options

Options Strategy #2: Protective Put at The Financial Blogger
Using puts to protect your positions.
Stocks:

Small Cap

Graphite India Ltd – Good Small Cap Stock for Long Term Holding at TIPBlog.in
A long term small cap idea, Graphite India Limited
Stocks: GRAPHITE

Strategy

New Trade: Long Google-GOOG/Short Baidu-BID at Intelligent Speculator
A paired trade with Google and Baidu
Stocks: GOOG,BID

Are You a Bear or a Bull? Or a BeaBu? at BeaBu.com

Stocks:

A quick note that I will be hosting the February 1st edition of the “Festival of Stocks”. I have already gotten 3 submissions. Keep’em coming.

I attended the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this year, at the meeting you get to hear Warren and Charlie (mostly Warren) answer questions for about 5 hours. The Monday after was the Wesco Financial annual meeting which is all Charlie’s show. I didn’t attend but the Motley Fool has some good notes in this article.

Charlie Munger is a wealth of knowledge and thought. As a lot of people say, he doesn’t talk very much but when he does listen up.

Disclosure: I own shares of WFC and BRK.B at the time of this writing.

I have been considering starting a blog that is investment oriented, so today when I thought of a good name for it, I decided to run with the motivation and start setting up another word press instance for this site. 

The title “Compounding Life” is a reference to compound interest. I think the idea of compounding can be applied to everything in life; friendships, love etc… So while this blog will be investment focused it is but a small part of interest that ends up getting compounded into my life overall.  I am not really sure of how much interest the topics will be to my immediates friends but I guess we will find out.