random musings...

Coupon, Is it good remedy for current inflation fight? I think it is not and coupons are highly addictive. Yesterday when i was in train on the way back home, one lady sitting next to me, cut and cut coupons from newspaper. I was watching it all, to make things worse, she put all waste into me. She carried a separate bag for coupons, the bag was filled of coupons. Okay, that was fine, she is just trying to save some 1 or 2 dollars. After finishing all coupon cutting, she opened other bag and took 3-4 lottery, the one that we have to scratch.So now she started now scratching lotteries, again all wastes into me. I just realized that what ever she saved now from coupon were gone. One day I was standing in queue at Costco for checkout, a man who was standing in front of me had tons of ton items to checkout. I thought i might have to spent another hour or so to check out after him. He placed all items on checkout belt. As soon as, sales clerk started checking the items, he pulled a coupon

Sukumar raised an important question from last post, about when technical chart doesn’t work and pitfall. I explained by using Freddie Mac [FRE] example. I think i need to spend some time here about FRE and decision making process when technical and market conditions are not favorable to us. The 5 year, 50 SMA [Simple Moving Average] charts for FRE is scary one for us. The chart just fell south from 60 to 7, over last 7-9 months. The investor who followed basic ‘double armor’ rule, that is, one limit order with 15% below buy price and other one with 50% above buy price, are not losers, in fact lot of people made good amount of money from FRE for long time. Now it is million dollar question whether to buy or watch FRE, we don’t have favorable technical analysis and market condition. can we take risk? If yes, how much… FRE is a government based enterprise and it will always take care by federal government, no matter what happens to it. Latest fall was obvious that US real estate melt dow

There is important element to cover before buying stocks that is, reading the chart, by using simple moving average. This is straight forward and no brainier, but i’m not sure that this is correct, as per professional standard. Any way i used it for last 8 years and most of the time, it worked ;-) For example, Apple stock, it is very hot stock right now and many small and individual investors want to buy it. In my opinion, Apple is paradise for long timers, meaning buy and hold for next 2-3 years, you might get more than 100% profit. So the question is, is it right time to buy? Let’s see the chart. Step 1: Go to following URL http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=AAPL&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=e50&a=&c = To get there by clicking links, go to Yahoo.com -> Finance -> Enter AAPL -> Click on Basic Tech. Analysis link -> click 1 year -> click Moving Ave. 50 link If you want more control, try Yahoo’s interactive chart and click Simple moving average from Tech.

There are very few English movies insisted me to see one more time, Dark Knight is latest one. I can’t explain Heath Ledger’s performance on this movie. You have to watch it!!!...What a terrific and never-tried-before performance by him. It got to me think that no body can act like this other than Heath Ledger. The first time he made a pencil disappeared to plotting to blow up ferry, are excellent and unforgettable. Other than joker character, this is usual Batmen movie. I never watched previous Batmen movies. Movie is very interesting and Heath Ledger, sorry to miss a legend like him. I got excited to see my daily roaming places from Chicago downtown also. Last dialogue from joker is "this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object". I had no idea why he wants a phone when he locked up in jail, but the reason is really terrific. The hospital plot also great and costume also. A must see movie.

Taking off from investment series for now. Will be back on over weekend (assumption is i’m not going for fishing) with how to read a chart with simple moving average. Here is fun one…making money should be intelligence with fun. 1. China one kid policy : Oops…I should blame “Adam” for this, he is one started all when he got bored. “Eve” had no idea what is going on from the start ;-) During 1970s China wants to control its exponential population growth by imposing one-child policy. First it was introduced as short-term goal, but due to huge success, this becomes law with some exceptions. One of the exception is, if one of the parents is single child to their parent, they are allowed to have second kid. Then my question is what will happen after some time, all one child can have 2 children when they ready to become parents. So it is 1 then 2 then back to 1. (Source: http://people.howstuffworks.com/one-child-policy1.htm ) 2. India National Anthem law : India we are not suppose to sing na

Caution:Stock price movement is totally unpredictable by anybody. Please use it at your risk. 15/50 Rule: From various investment suggestions, I used 15/50 rule, which is sell if price goes down 15% or sell if price goes up 50%. As an individual investor, we have to minimize our loss at same time take off some profit. For example, If we buy Apple (AAPL) stock for $100, create two limit orders as soon as we bought the stocks, 1. Sell all if price is $85 2. Sell all if price is $150 This is very straightforward; this works most of the time, but when the market is volatile, we may want to use advance feature called stop-limit order . Stop limit order is same as limit orders but more precious control than limit orders. Stop-limit order executed as per order, first stop on one price and then execute limit on one price. We can use the above same example, because Apple stock price now very volatile nowadays, hence 15/50 rule may not work well. Better solution is stop-limit order for this sc

August contract expired as of yesterday, New York crude future trade started for September contract from today onwards. Officially summer travel season ends on September and we are moving towards low demand months of oil consumption. Oil price slides to $127 (and today $124), that is, almost 20% drop from peak, that means, a prolong bull run have been ended. The main factor of oil drop is President Bush’s executive order of lifting ban on offshore drilling , which was approved by most of the US people. I personally liked Al Gore’s 10 year, 3 trillion dollar investment to transform all energy need from oil to electricity. His views from Sunday’s “ Meet the press ” really good, but caveat is, he want to do it aggressively and on one go, no baby steps. He is not willing to join any future government position and doesn’t want to advice future president also. I think he want to convenience US business people to make his plan become reality. There are several talks and brainstorms about futu

Excellent JavaWorld article from Infosys architects(Nitin, Ananya, Mahalakshmi and Sangeetha). I have not come across, this much detailed comparison of object-relational mapping (ORM) technologies, in my recent memory. But my take on this topic is we can use standard java database connectivity (JDBC) to create, update, read, delete (CURD) operation. The idea of using ORM is to decouple database layer from business logic, so that we can easily migrate to new database. I don’t think most companies are often changing database, other than start-ups, all companies are using standard one-time buy database software such as Oracle, DB2. This article really helps to sharpen ORM knowledge. I compared software database role with football kicker role, yes, if we see kicker’s game time is very less like less than 5 mins but every 4th play depends on kickers, which means, 25% of play was executed by kickers. Kicker is the one setting next play position by punt and helping teams to win with last minu

One month without smoking is not a big success, but this time not even a single cig, not even a single buff. I think i crossed all physical/mental craving of smoking, still have to fight a long way to go. But last times, i slipped within a week with a single cig, and later on one and so on until i completely back to full form within 3-4 months. First we have to understand the real facts of smoking addition, why we are smoking and what are the factors triggering smoking. Once we understand the facts, we can easily avoid the smoking craves and stay as non-smoker. Feeling refresh after a smoke – Coffee is also giving the same refreshment, Tip: buy StarBucks tall coffee and sip it very slowly, 2 sip at a time for 1-2 hours. Decreased concentration – No scientific study concludes that smoking is giving extra boost for new idea/solution or increase concentration but smokers does. The fact is, the time we walk to smoking place and staring at something and smoking and thinking at same time i

Crime Rate It was very hot weather in Chicago, so do crime rate, either people are going crazy or they are getting guns very easily from market. Last 2-3 days, evening TV news and Chicago Tribune overwhelmed with crime news. June was worst month for crimes and increased 12.8% over last year. Mayor and Police Chief are pointing fingers to each other, but no solutions, all politics, obviously waste of time. The worst part of these shooting is, young teen kids are got killed. This is inexcusable and highly unacceptable. What is the point of killing innocent kids, they can't even carry a gun. Taste of chicago got sour experience for visitors, all over internet forums, youtube overloaded with last day taste of chicago shooting videos. So this resonates all across US and world. Eventually this all creates bad image for Chicago and chances for 2016 olympics is in stake. All this crime rate increasing, because of some people's greediness and drug related gangs. This bad guys are g

O.K. I’m glad that Apple “moved on” with old iPhone model and introducing next generation of iPhone , starting tomorrow. I think last 2-3 years, mainly mobile phones, evolution happening so fast, and definitely this new model from Apple, fuel already heated mobile phone competition. This is good for consumerism dominated society. This 3G model got more media focus and everywhere talk and thoughts are about iPhone 3G. I think after “Bill Gate’s retirement”, Steve Jobs getting all media focus, because he is the only one now can replace Gates for media to get attention from public. The main new features of new iPhone 3G are, 1. 3G network support , of course faster than EDGE networks. But we have to check AT&T 3G coverage area . As of now, only major cities have this advance network. 2. Half the price , price for new iPhone slashed by 50% than the previous models, but the catch is new iPhone buyers have to pay $10 per month more for AT&T 3G data plan. 3. GPS support , based on my

3 weeks back, i watched a Tamil movie “ Desavadharam ”, the movie was really great and everybody talked about actor Kamal Hasan ’s 10 different roles. In my opinion, that was really fantastic. For me, my curiosity re-heighten from the movie is, chaos theory because the movie is based on chaos theory. Chaos theory is “ fact that the systems that the theory describes are apparently disordered, but chaos theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data ”. When we try to fix “hard to reproduce or complex” issues from production system, i think chaos theory is the key. I wrote my previous company’s internal blog, there i mentioned that when we try to debug a complex issue, note down all the issues/ and unsuccessful steps, which we followed to fix the issue. I think i mentioned chaos theory over there. The descriptions of issues with steps to fix are random orders but after some time if we analysis all points, we can predict what would be the real issue and sol

Everywhere we can see some kind of phobia or fear affected people. If we see the list of phobias, it is quite big and we can't imagine that people are afraid of these things. But reality is, there are 8 to 18% of people from US affected by some kind of phobias. But as per my personal experience, the medicine for phobia is the same phobia stimuli object or situation itself. For example, i was Aquaphobia — fear of water, when i was kid. My dad one day took me to a pool and just pushed me into water. What a surprise? my phobia was gone and i learnt swimming within 2-3 days by myself. But there are some phobias we can't do anything. There is one peculiar phobia is Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia — fear of the number 666. Another one is Paraskavedekatriaphobia , Friggatriskaidekaphobia — fear of Friday the 13 th . I think i can't p rounce them correctly or write them without typo in my life time. As technology improves, this new phobias list also growing. A new kind of pho

O.K. We can find a smart, sharp intellect, high IQ people any time, any where. No problems. But finding a person with all the above quality with A) Can foresee future of world B) Thinking always how to improve future technology that makes people life easier. C) Constant quest for knowledge is rare and nearly impossible. Bill Gates is one of the kind people of our generation. Everybody hated him, when he was trying to capture world by windows operating system, he was labeled as monopolist (that was true, hey nobody is perfect!!!), and even US antitrust law nearly tumbled him from top. But even the judge presumably used Windows-Word to type the judgment, he made windows available all the places, every corner of world.Nobody could reach at his height for near future. Almost all techno geeks were against him, complaining about buggy windows, less taste products, cunning business mind, arrogant, aggressive, greedy and not too intuitive products etc. All are went silence when he announced th