Using capital one card is much more better tax wise than any other credit card. According to the latest quantitative finance research, another card that does care for the consumer is mastercard. Even the citicard is trying to be there.
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Mutual funds are usually recommended to those who don’t have time to do not have the knowledge to choose their own investments. Below is a compilation of how fidelity, the world’s largest fund has done over the course of the year.

Unfortunately for Fidelity, they are the 4th largest shareholder of Fannie Mae and 12th largest holder of Freddie Mac. Fidelity also made the error of reloading on these two companies in the 1st quarter because they appeared to be at historically discounted prices. The fund owned 47 million shares by the end of the first quarter. The prices of Fannie Mae have fallen from 40 to rougly 13 and 34 to 10 for Freddie.

I understand how this explains the perforamnce of the domestic equities and financial services but why is the energy sector down. Energy commodities have seen their values rise steadily throughout the year with higher gas prices, solar plays, and other alternative energy.

Overall, fixed-income, not surprisingly is doing the best, which isn’t any better than holding cash at this time.

Steel is the second most traded commodity in the world after oil and was a on a monster roll throughout the first half of the year. Prices reached $1100 per metric ton and are now at a lower range. I can see why some people are still bullish on steel but I think these are the 3 core reasons

Why Steel will continue to be bullish
1. Global steel demand is increasing as the U.S. accounts for just 40% of the world’s demand. Developed nations need steel for mills, refineries and other commodity mining and extraction structures

2. The high price of gas will drive up import steel prices which in turn will push up domestic steel prices for more revenue. Also, the high price of oil will shift the countries into creating more non-oil consuming infrastructure such as subways and railroads that require more steel.

3. Steel companies are better positioning themselves by way of acquisition to ensure that raw materials are better supplied.

Yet iron ore prices have increased 71%, meaning costs for steel companies are getting high. So while the companies may pull in more revenue, the bottom line may not be improving as fast. This high price may cause consumers to find substitute goods and reduce demand.

What do you guys think about steel? Some steel companies worth a look are AK Steel (AKS), US Steel (X), Nucor Corp. (NUE), Arcelor Mittal (MT), Posco (PKX), Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (SID), Mechel (MTL)

The best finance business can have is a timely cheap insurance. This does not necessarily have to be a car insurance or a travel insurance, just something for the business. In the same fashion as a home insurance safeguards a home.

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Apparently the world’s largest private wealth manager is up to some dirty tricks helping wealthy U.S. individuals avoid tax. Heinrich Kieber, a bank computer technician in Liechtenstein, blew the whistle and provided 3 compact discs full of names and tax information regarding these tax cheats. UBS has allegedly been helping wealthy American business men hide their assets and income in Liechtenstein shell companies. What is worse is that instead of praising Mr. Kieber, he is in hiding afraid for his life.

UBS has announced that it will stop offering offshore-banking services to U.S. clients through non-U.S. branches. UBS has been one of the most adversely affected companies in the last 6 months because of their large write-down and drop in stock price but this just adds another black eye to the company. Too bad we can’t short this anymore but you can still get into UltraShort Financials (SKF).

My gripe is if you made 5 million dollars, why would it be so suffocating to pay tax on it? I could understand if you made 50 thousand and the government was taking away 40% why you might try to avoid tax. But even with 40% tax, you still have 3 million, much more than enough to live a very opulent lifestyle. Also, I’m quite sure 5 million is the lowest range for these offenders, they probably have an average net worth of 100 million.

The market is definitely going lower tomorrow because of the missed earnings of MFST, GOOG

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5378080

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a8Jh8z6NacRs

I wont go into details about the recent troubles of IndyMac, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since there are much better sources out there than this blog. I do want to give a heads up of how to profit from the recent bank woes. The answer is Ultrashort Financial (SKF). This one is a momentum play. SKF is exactly as it sounds, a short on financial related companies with a mixture of banks, brokers, investment houses, mutual funds , insurance companies and REITS. This play is good because one isn’t directly shorting the stocks so the risk is limited. Second, it’s a bear market, with financial sector companies leading the sell off. What is even more interesting is the largest holder of SKF is ironically UBS. If finance companies are buying shares that hedge against there own fundamental business line, its saying something. I would hold this throughout summer, even into the 4th quarter.

Look at its chart. Beautiful uptrend, volume etc.
BTW if you think that this has gone up too much too fast, remember that the average recession will see the Dow and the major indexes retrace 30 percent, that means 10 percent more to go.

I got an email the other day asking what I thought about wind power as an alternative energy. Within the past year, solar has been getting most of our attention and Chinese solar companies have had a mad rush of investors. Wind has got the short end of the stick even though it is beginning to be seen as a viable an option.

I clicked on a google ad about T. Boone Picken’s plan to invest 10 billion in building wind power plants in the Great Plains region. His short term project is suppose to supply energy to power 300,000 homes with 1000 megawatts, and his long term project is to supply 4000 megawatts with wind. The sheer size of this project requires large companies such as Siemens and GE to act as suppliers. But we know these companies aren’t going to have the price movement and percentage gain that small wind companies who may ride on the coat tails of Pickens will have.

The problem is many of these companies aren’t the size of our solar counterparts, they are pink sheets and otc’s, extremely risky. Therefore, wind ETF’s seem to be the only real choice as of now. Some ETFs that are worth a glimpse are the PowerShares Nasdaq OMX Clean Edge Global Wind Energy Index (PWND), the FIRST Trust ISE Global Wind Energy Index Fund (FAN). PWND is 90% majority wind based companies and FAN is 66%.

For those with higher risk tolerance some companies worth focusing on include: VWS, ZOLT, GCTAF.PK, HXL, AVAV, WFLWF.PK, WNEA.OB.

Below is a graph showing where would be good places for wind power generation. 1 = not suitable 7 = best