London has been named the world’s leading center of commerce in a survey by Mastercard. The survey found that London
outpaced New York in four of the six dimensions used by the Worldwide Center of Commerce Index: economic stability, ease of
doing business, financial flow and business center.
While the other three are self-explanatory, business center “depends
on the clustering effect of business formation, supported by efficiency in logistics and transportation linkages.”
According
to the report, London “scores the highest in being the most economically stable (93.54), followed by ‘ease of
doing business’ (87.87) and ‘legal and political framework’ (84.11). It scores the lowest in ‘knowledge
creation and information flow’ (52.72), which is lower than what New York and Tokyo score in this dimension (61.55 and
55.94, respectively).”
Of course, more shares are traded in New York, at least in terms of value, but London is
decidedly global. And with the New York Stock Exchange hitched to the U.S. economy and the dollar in the pooper, going global
is like the next sector rotation.
That means stocks traded in London, ADRs here in the U.S., and those ever-versatile
ETFs are going to be pretty hot for a while…
1) HOW YOU
THINK IS EVERYTHING, always be positive, think success, not failure. Beware of negative environments.
2) DECIDE
UPON YOUR TRUE DREAMS AND GOALS. Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.
3) TAKE
ACTION. Goals are nothing without action. Don't be afraid to get started. Just do it.
4) NEVER STOP LEARNING.
Go back to school or read books. Get training and acquire skills.
5) BE PERSISTENT AND WORK HARD. Success
is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.
6) LEARN TO ANALYZE DETAILS. Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.
7) FOCUS YOUR TIME AND MONEY. Don't let other people or things distract you.
8) DON'T BE AFRAID TO INNOVATE; BE DIFFERENT. Following the heard is a sure way to mediocrity.
9)
DEAL AND COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE EFFECTIVELY; No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.
10) BE HONEST AND DEPENDABLE; TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. Otherwise, nos. 1- 9 will not matter
And Now the Internet Is Enabling Peer-to-Peer
Lending
Yes, my friends, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is becoming the norm and is currently in its infant stages.
Companies like Prosper.com seek to pair up potential lenders and borrowers using an eBay-like approach. Instead of listing
and bidding on items, people list and bid on loans using Prosper’s online auction platform.
If lenders
like the terms, they will bid a portion of the money to the loan. If enough lenders step in to fulfill the full monetary asking
amount, then the loan becomes official and the borrower has three years to pay off the balance.
Overall, the process
cuts back on the high personal loan rates for the borrower. At the same time, it provides lenders with a forum to receive
passive income in the form of interest payments on the loans they make.
In addition to criteria commonly used
by institutional lenders, such as credit scores, people who lend can consider borrowers’ group affiliations. Groups
on Prosper are critical to bringing people together for the common goal of borrowing at better rates. Groups earn reputations
according to their members’ repayment records. Groups with successful repayment histories should attract more lenders
offering lower rates.
Borrowers create loan listings for up to $25,000 and set the maximum rate they are willing
to pay a lender. Then the auction begins as people who lend bid down the interest rate. Once the auction ends, Prosper takes
the bids with the lowest rates and combines them into one simple loan. Prosper handles all on-going loan administration tasks
including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matched borrower and lenders.
Prosper generates revenue
by collecting a one-time 1% fee on funded loans from borrowers, and assessing a 0.5% annual loan servicing fee to lenders.
Unfortunately, companies like Prosper are private and have no need to finance growth by offering shares to the public.
Maybe over time this will change.
What Effect Will P2P Lending Have on the Banking Industry?
Although
it is perhaps too early to say, P2P lending could begin to blossom in rapid fashion and steal business away from banks. Currently,
sites like Prosper limit themselves to unsecured loans valued up to $25,000. If they can find a way to break out from their
niche market and effectively manage secure loans, I believe P2P could then begin stealing large commercial loans. That’s
when the executive types start screaming foul.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
If I were a large banking
institution, I’d start buying out all of these P2P lending sites. Then, turn around and say to your customers, “Either
you can establish a loan through us or go through our lending community online.”
Personally, I tested both scenarios
to determine where I could get a better deal. I was looking to borrow $5,000 in the form of an unsecured loan from nationally
renowned bank XYZ and Prosper. To paint the picture further, I’ll disclose that my credit rating is as high as it gets.
Guess who won?
Bank XYZ offered a 13% interest rate while the P2P firm Prosper landed me 8.8% for the same payback
period.
As an investor, you’re probably wondering how all this information put cash in my pockets. Simple. You
short the banking industry. Sell it, liquidate it, get rid of it, toss some gasoline on it and burn it! Just stay away…
How Elmer Wheeler Can Help You Make Sales
By John Wood
"Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle."
That just might be the most famous piece of sales advice ever. And,
as a marketer, knowing the real meaning behind those words can transform your company's sales copy - and your bottom line.
I often wondered who came up with such a great line. Until about a week
ago, I still didn't know...
I was reading Joe
Vitale's latest book, Buying Trances. In it, he mentions Elmer Wheeler as the originator of the idea.
Who's Elmer Wheeler? Born in 1904, Mr. Wheeler was well known as one of the pioneers of persuasion.
In Buying Trances, Joe tells the story of how Texaco was looking
to sell more oil to their customers. Too many people, without giving it a second thought, said "no" when a service
station attendant asked "Check your oil today?" Wheeler suggested replacing the question with "Is your oil
at the proper level today, sir?"
Now asking
something like "Is your oil at the proper level today, sir?" would seem to be just common sense. A line so simple
you'd think most gas station owners would naturally come up with it - but few did.
Which is why Texaco paid Wheeler $5,000 for those nine words... a small fortune in
the depression-riddled 1930s.
They got their money's
worth and more. In one week, Texaco attendants got under 250,000 more hoods.
Another Wheeler sales triumph came when he was asked by the president of Barbasol to help them sell more
shaving cream.
The first slogan they tried was "How
would you like to save six minutes shaving?" Wheeler instructed their salespeople to then say "Use Barbasol. Just
spread it on. Shave it off. Nothing else required!"
When
they tested it, they found it increased sales by 102 percent.
A light bulb went off in Wheeler's head, and he changed the slogan to "How would you like to slash your
shaving time in half?"
That adjustment
increased sales by another 300 percent.
Over the
years, Wheeler tested 105,000 selling statements for 5,000 products. He eliminated 100,000 of them.
He summed up the philosophy behind what he called "Tested Selling" by saying...
"Don't think so much about what you want to say as about
what the prospect wants to hear - then the response you will get will more often be the one you are aiming for."
Great advice.
In his book Testing Sentences That Sell, Wheeler laid out his five "Wheelerpoints":
Wheelerpoint #1. "Don't sell the steak - sell
the sizzle." It's one of the first things a new marketer or copywriter learns. Sell benefits and
deeper benefits. Your prospect could care less about the product.
Wheelerpoint #2. "Don't write - telegraph!" Back in Wheeler's day,
telegraphs were a popular way for people to send messages. But you were charged by the word. So, to keep the price down, you
had to choose your words wisely. By saying "Don't write - telegraph," Wheeler meant "Make every word count."
He often said "Your first 10 words are more important than the next 10,000"... and "You have only
10 short seconds to catch your prospect's attention."
Wheelerpoint #3. "Say it with flowers." This simply means that it's not
enough to make a statement to your prospect. You have to prove it. In other words, say "I love you," and then prove
it by sending flowers. (Of course, you have to be sincere and do it convincingly.)
Wheelerpoint #4. "Don't ask if - ask which." Meaning,
always give your prospect a choice between something and something... never between something and nothing. For Abraham and
Straus, Wheeler worked out a way for their soda fountains to sell more eggs. Instead of asking "Would you like an egg
with that?" the clerk would ask "One egg or two eggs?" while holding an egg in each hand. The result? Seven
out of 10 customers added at least one egg to their order.
I'd like to add my two cents to this one...
I'm continually surprised by how many waiters and waitresses don't use this gentle sales technique. Most
ask if you'll be having wine with dinner. Few say "Will you be having white wine or red wine with dinner tonight?"
And one more example from Wheeler for this point:
He noticed that when a customer at the soda fountain requested a cola
and was asked whether they wanted "small" or "large," most chose "small." He wondered what would
happen if the clerk, instead, just said "Large one?" When they put it to the test, they found that seven out of
10 people said "Yes." This simple idea could have a dramatic impact on a fast-food restaurant's bottom line.
If they sell 500 drinks a day and the difference between a small and a large is 50 cents, converting 70 percent of their drink
orders to large translates into an additional $175 per day. Over a year, that's an increase of $63,875!
Wheelerpoint #5. "Watch your bark!" This
one came out of Wheeler's love of dogs - and how much you can tell about how a dog feels by the way they wag their tails
and the sound of their barks. So by saying "Watch your bark!" Wheeler's reminding us that it's not just
what you say, but how you say it. For copywriters, that means keeping the tone of your copy conversational and engaging.
I've printed out these five Wheelerpoints and taped them up next
to my computer. They're as meaningful for all of us in the "persuasion business" today as they were when Elmer
came up with them 60+ years ago.
Wheeler wrote many
books during his life. They are hard to find, however you can access his Testing Sentences That Sell, free of charge,
online at stoneruniversity.com/TestedSentences/index.html.
Setting Priorities on Energy Savings
Wall Street Journal Oct. 31, 2007
Switch
to compact fluorescent lights - save $87/yr, cost $35, years to payback- 0.4
Insulate
water - heater pipes - save $7/yr, cost $6, years to payback- 0.9
Install low-flow shower heads, save $17/yr,
cost $6, years to payback- 0.9
Increase attic insulation, save $315/yr, cost $772, years to payback- 2.5
Reduce
air infiltration and drafts, save $29/yr, cost $74, years to payback- 2.6
Install programmable thermostat, save
$26/yr, cost $162, years to payback 6.2
(from a 3 bedroom home in San Diego, built in 1957, 1485 square feet, month
of Sept, 2007)
Top 10 Money Drains
Thursday, August 16, 2007provided by
It’s easy to fritter away money on daily expenses. If you fall into these money traps, learn
to avoid them and pocket the savings.
1. Coffee -- According to the National Coffee Association, the average price for brewed coffee is $1.38. There are roughly
260 weekdays per year, so buying one coffee every weekday morning costs almost $360 per year.
2. Cigarettes -- The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids reports that the average price for a pack of cigarettes in the United
States is $4.54. Pack-a-day smokers fork out $1,660 a year. Weekend smoker? Buying a pack once a week adds up, too: $236.
3. Alcohol -- Drink prices vary based on the location. But assuming an average of $5 per beer including tip, buying two beers
per day adds up to $3,650 per year. Figure twice that for two mixed drinks a day at the local bar. That’s not chump
change.
4. Bottled water from convenience stores -- A 20-ounce bottle of Aquafina
bottled water costs about $1. One bottle of water per day costs $365 per year. It costs the environment plenty, too.
5. Manicures -- The Day Spa Magazine Price Survey of 2004 found that the average cost of a manicure is $20.53. A weekly manicure
sets you back about $1,068 per year.
6. Car washes -- The average cost for a basic auto detailing package is $58, according to Costhelper.com. The tab for getting your car detailed every two months: $348 per year.
7. Weekday lunches out -- $9 will generally cover a decent lunch most work days. If you buy rather than pack a lunch five
days a week for one year, you shell out about $2,350 a year.
8. Vending machines snacks -- The average vending machine snack costs $1. Buy a pack of cookies every afternoon at work and
pay $260 per year.
9. Interest charges on credit card bills -- According to a survey released at the end of May 2007, the median amount of credit
card debt carried by Americans is $6,600. Rate tables on Bankrate.com indicate that fixed interest rates on a standard card
average 13.44 percent. Making the minimum payment each month, it will take 250 months (almost 21 years) to pay off the debt and cost $4,868 in interest. Ouch!
10. Unused memberships -- Costhelper.com reports that the monthly service fee at gyms averages between $35 and $40. At $40
per month, an unused gym membership runs $480 per year.
Bankrate.com.
AMERICA OWNERSHIP
- paradox
Equity Steak Originally published in the September 18 edition of DailyWealth
I like you.
You and I are birds of a feather... I feel privileged to be able to write to you. I'm grateful for the attention
you give to my ideas and advice. And given the smallish size of the flock, I hope we'll continue to stick together.
So, please don't take the following personally. I'm only making
a point...
But let's face it... As an investor,
you just aren't that important.
For starters,
you're an outsider. Sure, the stock you buy means you own a piece of the company. But let's be realistic. You have
no idea what's going on in its hallways, meeting rooms, and corner offices minute by minute, day by day. Management could
be swinging from the chandeliers. (How do you know there aren't any chandeliers?)
Not only are you an outsider, you're passive, too. You get to vote your shares, but otherwise,
management doesn't want to know and certainly doesn't really care what you think. In management's view, you, the
shareholder, are best neither seen nor heard.
And
while you may have the potential to vote with the majority, wielding whatever power you possess, you are the tiniest minority
of all: the individual shareholder. You are a gnat on the windshield of the companies in your portfolio.
Putting a more technical face on it, the publicly traded common equity
we typically discuss (and discuss and discuss...) represents a residual claim on earnings and assets.
Note the word residual, as in residue. You know what residue is. It's the stuff
you have a bear of a time cleaning off the bottom of the pan. After you take the meat out and use the drippings and scrapings
to make the sauce, there's a little bit of stuff stuck to the bottom.
That's the residue.
In other words, that's the equity. Not the meat, or the
drippings, or the scrapings. The residue. The stuff nobody wants.
Well, if the equity is the residue, then what are the steak and the sauce? What comes before equity? The answer,
it turns out, is "just about everything and everyone." The following list shows you the order of claims on a corporation's
assets in the event of liquidation. Note the position of the common-equity holder. Now that's what I call residue.
1) Secured creditors paid when pledged property is sold or refinanced,
then 2) Unpaid wages, then 3) Taxes, then 4) Trade creditors, then 5) Unsecured debt holders, then 6) Subordinated unsecured debt holders, then 7) Preferred stockholders, and finally, after all these other claims are
met, 8) Common stockholders get whatever is left.
You
are eighth in a line of eight. Every common-equity holder should see this list, study it, and remember it forever. This list
of priorities is why I've often been attracted to stocks with little or no debt and way too much cash or other high-quality
liquid assets.
And claims on earnings are an even
wispier notion than claims on assets. Before a corporation can pay common dividends – if it even wants to – it
has to pay all of its interest payments and other expenses.
Makes you appreciate a world-class dividend payer like ExxonMobil that much more.
Once you start thinking about yourself as a subordinated unsecured creditor, you're
really just making sure you'll get paid.
That's
why we recommended Alexander & Baldwin a few years ago in my advisory Extreme Value. Alexander & Baldwin owns 90,000
acres of raw land in Hawaii. At the time we bought, you got the land at a discount, and its business operations for free.
We recommended American Real Estate Partners for similar reasons. It
was selling for 75% of book value a few years ago. It was easily worth much more than book value. It was around $20 a share
then. It's more than $110 a share now, and selling for about three times book value. Today, it owns even more undervalued
assets. And it still has more cash than debt. It's a very safe stock to hang on to.
We analyzed the position of Borders from the same perspective and realized that its
debt is secured in part by its inventory. Borders book inventory can be returned to the publisher at cost, so there's
a firm bottom to its value. Not what you'd expect, given that today's $39.95 hardbacks will be in the bargain bin
for $5 in a few months. Even if the worst happens at Borders, there'll still be some value for the shareholder. We made
sure we'd get paid.
That's how a creditor
thinks. We're not predicting earnings. We're not figuring out the next hot technology. We're not even worried
about the business having some great competitive advantage. We're just looking at the business through the eyes of a subordinated
unsecured creditor. That's how we get safety, and staying safe is how you keep yourself in a position to take advantage
of the big gains that come from stocks like Alexander & Baldwin and American Real Estate Partners
If this were what you got every time you scraped the bottom of the pan, you'd be
happy to let others eat the steak.
Good investing,
Dan Ferris
I personally have worked in companies I was an
owner of, large public companies, small private start ups. I have heard, 'we all own it you are no different than every
one else' , 'just because you own stock does not mean you get a pay check or employment' 'just because you
own stock does not mean you can go into the company offices or tell them any thing, they do what ever they want', and
when trying to start my own company- real estate and securities, 'you have to be sponsored to take license tests and get
experience at existing companies' the jokes said my degrees, high test scores, stock ownership does not matter, make up
fictitious crimes they say I have committed, jail me, drug me like nazis.
I look at the history of companies,
and the history of the current people if I can. There is a lot of fiction and lies with history, so I base my thoughts
based on my personal expereience, what people tell me, what I read. America, free enterprise, 'the pursuit of happiness'
'FREEDOM" my experience says that those IDEAS are all crap bull S###.
Why You May Never
Take a Regular Drug Again By Rob Fannon,
editor, The Medical Investor
For about the past 100 years, doctors treated their patients with
what we can now call a crude methodology; they simply waited until you developed a disease, then treated you like they did
every other sufferer.
But now, the era of treating every patient the same – the "one size fits all"
model – is coming to an end. We are at the beginning of a new era of "personalized medicine." You see, researchers
have discovered that your genes (more than diet, exercise, or habits) determine whether or not you get sick and how you respond
to medication.
Doctors and scientists have also identified genetic variations that predict whether or not you
will get cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, melanoma, hemophilia, liver disease, muscular dystrophy,
Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease – just to name a few. They've known about these genetic variations
for more than a decade.
Until recently, however, there was no way to test for these mutations before they caused
problems. And there was no way to know how your individual genes would affect your treatment or therapy. That's all changed
in the past decade however... and the change is one of the biggest investment opportunities in the world...
Doctors
can now diagnose diseases extremely early in their progression, simply by looking at your genes and the biomarkers
in your blood. And they can even tell, simply by running a few tests, which diseases you are likely to get in the future.
Depending on your genetic makeup, doctors will prescribe a treatment specifically for you.
If there's a poster child for personalized medicine, it's
the diagnostics industry. The diagnostic testing market is $45 billion annually, a fairly large number. Yet, this
represents only a measly 2%-3% of the U.S. health care market (about 10% of health care spending goes to administrative costs).
Right now, laboratory tests are used for the detection, diagnosis, evaluation, monitoring, and treatment of disease.
The convergence of information from the human genome project and rapid advances in information technology has made individualized
genetic testing the fastest-growing segment of the diagnostics market...
That's been a boon for industry-leader
and mainstay in the Medical Investor portfolio, Gen-Probe (GPRO). This $3.6 billion company has developed technology
that uses a germ's own genetic makeup to identify it. Its products test for pathogens including chlamydia, gonorrhea,
tuberculosis, strep throat, pneumonia, HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, and West Nile virus. Gen-Probe is responsible for screening
up to 80% of the nation's donated blood supply.
Gen-Probe's tests are faster and more accurate than traditional
methods, and the company has begun to expand into industrial testing and cancer screening. Since our February recommendation,
we're up 50% with this play on the emerging personal medicine trend.
Gen-Probe is no longer the bargain it
once was... and I tell its story to illustrate how money can be made very quickly in the right diagnostics business.
For now, I recommend you keep an eye on the short list of companies that specialize in personalized medial testing.
As this new industry develops, investors will find it's one of the most profitable investments in medicine.
Good investing,
Rob Fannon
Sex and Chocolate Can Boost Brain Power: Authors
Content provided by Reuters
Friday, December 21, 2007
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Enjoy dark chocolate, have
plenty of sex, eat cold meats and fish for breakfast and you could boost your brain power, say the authors of a new book.
Cognitive psychologist Terry Horne and biochemist Simon Wootton -- who co-authored "Teach Yourself: Training Your Brain"
-- argue that lifestyle choices are crucial for keeping you in tip-top mental condition.
"Lifestyle can boost
your brain power," Horne said. "What your lifestyle does is help to create the chemical conditions in your brain."
Horne told Reuters in an interview to mark the book's publication that the brain is more like a chemical
factory than a computer.
"You can create the optimum conditions in your brain," he said. "You are not just a passive
victim of your genes."
The authors take issue with those who argue that a decline in cognitive ability is
inevitable from the age of 17 onwards. With careful lifestyle choices "you can create spare cognitive capacity,"
Horne said.
They offer an intriguing list of do's and don'ts and insist that people can be pro-active
in keeping their brains agile.
Much of it is pure common sense.
"Stress is bad for your thinking.
Avoid excessive alcohol and smoking cannabis," he said.
Intriguingly, the authors also urge readers to avoid
watching soap operas and Horne said "Don't mix with whingeing, whining, moaning and cynical sorts of people."
And the book is full of practical tips on how to keep the brain firing on all cylinders.
"Cold
meats and fish are good for you at breakfast," Horne said after writing the book which the authors say is based on leading
scientific research from around the world.
"Dark chocolate is also good for you because it contains many
of the chemicals present when your brain is thinking well. It relaxes the muscles around your blood vessels and actually improves
the flow of blood to your brain."
They then looked at research into the seven stages of sex from the time
you first fancy it through to the after-glow.
"In four of the seven stages we see the same chemicals that
help with the thinking process," Horne said.
In what will be the biggest news all year for my 2-year old daughter,
Walt Disney (DIS: sentiment, chart, options) has decided to move its full-length movies online for the first time. The decision was part of the
coming "Wonderful World of Disney" series on ABC. Currently, "Finding Nemo" is available through Friday.
Coming down the pike are "Monsters, Inc.," "Haunted Mansion," "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,"
"Princess Diaries 2," "Freaky Friday," and "Peter Pan." I can just hear the chants of "Watch
Nemo, Daddy! Watch Nemo, pleeease!"
sentiment
