Zecco Stock Brokerage and Free online trading

If you have done your due diligence on Zecco.com and are ready to sign up with them, THEN EMAIL me at naridon@yahoo.com before signing up . I will refer you and also tell you about the cut.

This is not endorsed by Zecco, I am just doing it as a goodwill measure for a short time only. This offer might removed from this site anytime if Zecco pulls out of the underlying referral promotion (through which I hope to fund this reward, hehe)

Zecco, the discount online stock broker that offers "10 free trades/month" if you maintain $25000 or more in equity

Stock trading is risky business, the capital is yours and at RISK. Invest only money that you can lose. Take profits easily, cut losses even more easily.
You yourself are responsbile for your money and investment decisions, no body else is the world is responsible for that, including OPEC, Obama, Putin, Pelosi or Palin. I decided to ignore other key names in politics because they don't start with O or P. Also if you join Zecco you are doing so at your own responsilbility and aware of stock market risks as well as the fact that nothing is risk free in today's world. So this is not a forceful recommendation, merely posting some news that I saw about Zecco. Best of luck.
POST ENDS HERE

Stock Market on Monday gains-in-the-East

The Stock Market on Monday, How Will it Pan Out - like last week or like Friday? Or will it be an inverse of Friday's opening behavior?
i.e will it rise fast and then give the gains away?
Reporting time at New York time: Sunday, Oct 12, 2008 9:20pm
(in the Eastern part of planet Earth: Monday, Oct 13, 2008)
- Nari, Soundarrajan. Blogger.

The Latest News coming in from the Eastern parts of the Globe indicates a positive trend in the markets right now. Futures markets in bloomberg also indicate a positive trend

DJIA futures are up 280, no 260 pts as I write this.

Turning our attention back to the "East"...

The New Zealand Stock Market's primary index is up 1% in the afternoon, after falling initially in the morning.

"After starting the day lower, the New Zealand market reversed early losses and was up over 1 percent in afternoon trading.

The benchmark NZX 50 started the day 20.734 points down at 2784.58, after falling 5 percent last Friday.

By early afternoon, the index reversed early losses, to move into positive territory, up 40.232 points, or 1.4 percent at 2845.541."

Reproduced from source: http://www.nzx.com/news/markets/4725582

AUSTRALIAN MARKETS are up close 5% in early trading. The major bounce has been helped by positive moves in bank shares.

This is mostly in response to the Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's guarantee that the Aussie Federal goverment would guarantee deposits of ANY SIZE in Australia for the next three years.
For more on the news follow this link.

You can imagine what kind of smart money + foreign institutional money that kind of safety net is going to bring in especially when you see negative yields in US and bank failures left and right.

Also I heard (saw on Japanese news feed) that UAE is guaranteering bank deposits. European leaders have pledged support for banks too. S. Korean and Singapore markets are also up. (news from BBC)

Hopefully this might move some positive money sitting on the sidelines to come in and also probably trigger some short covering - both which could lead to a quick upside gain in blue chip stocks and some key emerging market stocks. I am not giving any stock tips here because it is crazy out there and I have no clue just like anyone else. However, I am long on Bristol Myers (BMY) and I would stay long in a company I think is blue chip: ABB (any one agree?).

Update: Just found out that Japanese markets are going to be closed for some holiday -not Columbus day. I am also not too happy that the Driver License office in PA are closed on Sat for
Columbus day -and Monday is their usual closed date.
Update 2: Indian markets gained by about 4-5 % on confident measures by the Indian finance minister, who actually quoted the gains of East Asian markets to seek confidence and calm, duh!
Disclosure: Other joker stocks that I am long on are NAT, NCC, CHKE and CSR (China). I am not short on anything.

Cash under the mattress

I could not resist posting a note about the safety of cash under a mattress in this fear/panic situation in the stock markets. Clearly many, many people have been planning for this situation as you can see from Sealy's earnings

Sealy Corp. (ZZ US): The world's largest bedding manufacturer reported third-quarter sales of $405 million, topping the average analyst estimate by 3.9 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey. The stock fell 18 percent to $4.05 in regular trading. Source

Have you bought your mattress yet? Buy it on credit and keep cash under it. Just kidding. I am not giving you any type of stock advice without charging money, so no stock advice today kids.

AIG - POST BAILOUT Spending Excesses

Now comes news that executives at the government funded, taxpayer supported American Insurance Group (AIG) have managed to treat themselves to close to half million ($440, 000) dollars of spa treatments in a California resort.

This has happened a WEEK after the $85 billion bailout. AIG stock has taken a beating (and crashed) and then bounced back, but actions like these are not good for any left-over shareholders or the taxpayer or anyone holding insurance with AIG.

Fox Business also has put up the copy of the bill (a scanned copy as a pdf file) here.
The news article says that the executives who were at the resort were from the profitable divisions of AIG, but still...

Hello, who is the CEO now, Henry Paulson/president Bush, Neel Kashkari.. who is it?
Or is it you, john/jane doe taxpayer?

The link to the fox article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434223,00.html
I am neither long nor short on AIG common stock or any derivatives.

----POST ENDS HERE-----

Bank of America Halving Dividend

One of the big doubts that I had a few weeks back was the ability of Bank of America to maintain its dividend. Turns out BAC is cutting its dividend by 50% on its common stock and also planning to issue new stock. This is going to be a long, rough financial year. I don't have any positions in BAC nor in any other financials, but right now the entire market is looking gloomy (for people already invested into stocks). If anybody is just entering the market, then you can search around and find some good bargains in companies with low debt. Definitely avoid the financial companies for any long term trading. If you want to do , intra-day high-low trading, you can try high volume stocks - look it up on yahoo here to decide which ones.
One company I would avoid is Citibank group (Ticker: C).

Some of my long term long sentiments include Bristol Myers (BMY), Asae Brown Boveri (ABB) and Nordic American Tanker Shipping (NAT). Do your own analysis, just use these as a starting point.
----- Post ends ---

Bailout vote, language of the bill and stock market response

An update to the whole "bailout/rescue of credit markets" issue. If I had mentioned somewhere on the internet that the bailout was socialism, I would like to take back that statement. The issue is more complex than I could initially simplify, and Ben Bernanke's and Paulson's panic seems somewhat justified. There is no point going into a depression, right?

By now, all of you know that the bailout vote to assuage the financial crisis failed in the US House of Representatives. What I am about to discuss is not so much about who voted in which way, or even the discussions leading up to the bill provisions or how the markets responded. You can read about voting records here and you must have heard that the "Dow" fell 777 points. Isn't that cute? The venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average decides to fall by a memorable number like 777 (more). If you love decimals, of course the index fell by .68 more, but let us not harp on a few billions (the worth in dollars when you convert the points).

Even so, thankfully the markets did not crash today. They were already down 300 odd points when they suddenly plunged down to 688 points and then fluctuated back and forth between -400 to -700 eventually ending the day at a good bottom. Now, coming back to the bill, the Paulson bailout plan for which McCain suspended his campaign, that one.....

what really concerned me is that the bill, is actually titled as is an amendment to an existing bill

H R 3997 RECORDED VOTE 29-Sep-2008 2:07 PM
QUESTION: On Concurring in Senate Amendment With An Amendment
BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes, and for other purposes

Oh, pleasssssssseee give me a break! Call the bill what it really is, A (purported) shot in the arm to the credit markets and a bailout of bad business decisions by exceedingly large number of financial institutions getting caught up in credit swaps. So unless the clerk of the US congress made some mistake in the bill title, this is probably the funniest title I have ever seen for a bull, oops I mean, bill. Sleep well, the market may crash tomorrow by 2600 points. Or not. I cannot predict things accurately nor can other economists.
if you want to read some funny English, check this out:

9/29/2008 9:27am:

Pursuant to the provisions of H. Res. 1517, the House moved to agree to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment with an amendment.

9/29/2008 9:27am:

DEBATE - The House proceeded with three hours of debate on the motion to agree to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment with an amendment to H.R. 3997.