I was talking to my friend who bought shares of Freddie Mac (FRE) at around 4 dollars. He told me he made 30% in around 4 trading days. I told him to take profits but he didn’t and how Freddie is 1 dollar after the government released plans to put it in a conservatorship essentially making its shares worthless.

Now look back a good couple of months with Bear Stearns and Indy Mac. Bear was bought out by JP Morgan making its shares bounce from 2 to 10 dollars immediately. The government didn’t step in this time most likely because JP Morgan said they would buy it out.

Onto IndyMac. IndyMac had a good old fashion bank run that saw its customers withdrawing money to put the company in a liquidation crisis. The shares plunged all the way to 1 cent before anyone could do anything about it and then the government took it over and the shares spiked to about 15 cents at one point.

3 different situations where one could have made or lost serious money because of the govt. So why is IndyMac placed under the govt and the company’s shares soar while Freddie and Fannie are placed in a conservatorship and the shares are worthless? This is the first time I’ve experienced bank failure in my short life and this is what I would have done. I would have shorted BSC after its 1 day free fall to about 10-15 (est), watched that short go to 2 and then back up to 10. I wouldn’t have touched IndyMac because it was way too fast. I would have shorted Freddie and Fannie but not until it ran up another couple of bucks.

But I’ve never seen something like this happen so I didn’t do anything. Maybe I should have

I’m going to give penny stock trading a try as I have been following Tim Sykes’ site for a while and decided to buy a 1 month subscription to his Tim Alerts site. I will keep you guys posted on whether my 1 month of trading generates profits. Note, I’m not going to buy his 300 dollar penny stocking DVD because I’m not totally convinced yet but am willing to try the ‘follow the leader’ approach and just trade what he trades. If all goes well the profits I make will pay for the DVD anyway. I’m mainly trying this because I have 3 more weeks or so till I get started with work and wanted to try something new.

1. In-N-Out Burger : If you are not from the West Coast you probably haven’t heard of this one. This burger chain is the Chipotle of hamburgers. The company is able to strive by keeping prices low (even lower than McDonalds) while serving healthy, tasty burgers. Aside from this winning formula, they pay their employees well (minimum: $10.5/hour) and are most importantly, there is so much room for expansion as they are only in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah.

2. PricewaterhouseCoopers : PWC is the world’s largest auditing firm. They provide auditing services to the most Fortune 100 companies out of the respective ‘Big 4’ accounting firms. Accounting is one of the only professions aggressively recruiting in this bear market meaning the company must be raking in dollars. Lastly, with new International Accounting Standards being developed, PWC will hold expert status in helping companies comply. Oh yea, not to be biased, but I’m going to work them toward the end of the year.

3. The North Face : This is one of my more intuitive picks. The North Face, like you didn’t already know, produces outdoor products specializing in clothing and equipment. The jackets are so popular that they have become the target of scammers selling fakes. This alone doesn’t qualify a buy but the fact that the company has raised prices from 100 to 500 dollars for their winter jackets based on demand does. Look around, which jacket brand easily dominates the cold weather? I’m from sunny California and can even attest.

Ok, got to get back to studying for a test, yeah I have 3 weeks left till I really graduate. But let me know what companies you guys think would do well if they went IPO.

I use Cake Financial to track my investments since I use two different online brokerages. What is neat about Cake Financial is that you can link your two brokerages and the site will track the performance of both accounts and combine them into one. A previous post about MoneyCenter also does this but Cake Financial allows you to see what other members are holding. You can track members or filter them based on performance of their stocks. Basically, you have the upper hand since you can mimic the portfolios of the best investors and see what stocks they hold, and what they have on their watch lists. The site also shows how many total people on the site are buying, selling and holding those stocks. Lastly if you guys decide to sign up, since its free, make sure to add me supaxinc@gmail.com as a friend so we can help each other with investment ideas. And no, unfortunately I don’t get anything from CakFin for writing this.

The more I became aware of all the opportunities to growth my wealth, the more I realized I needed a way to keep track of where exactly all my assets were allocated. I came across MoneyCenter by Yodlee through a friend who told me it could keep track of all my assets including bank accounts, credit cards, cds, stocks, bonds and everything else. I linked all my accounts and it has seemed to work so far except for Countrywide where for an unknown reason I’m unable to link my account. Yodlee keeps track of what you spend and how you are allocating your portfolio. Its quite useful and very useful for those who have multiple bank accounts and brokerages. I wish I got paid by Yodlee for hyping them up but try it out for yourself.