Learning Stocks Part 1

I have begun my "official" quest to become a better investor, and to create tool that will help me with this endevour.  I have also adopted the philosophy of sharing information, and using information shared by others will benefit everyone in the long run.  With that in mind I have put together a few resources that everyone is free to use and contribute to.  The first one is a wiki for anything stock related.  I started it out listing all of the stock symbols I've been hearing about or am invested in.  If you take a look, there are some facts about the company, and any notes I thought were important.  If we all share notes, we're much more likely to be educated about a stock when an opportunity arises.  So far, what I have learned is that there is simply too much information, data, and opinions out there about stocks to absorb alone.  So this wiki is something I think will help everyone that uses it digest more information and cut through to the important tidbits we can all pick up from everywhere.  So here's the link to the wiki.

Stocks Wiki

The second thing I did was to see if there were sites that I could use to test my theories on picking stocks.  I found a site that allows you to setup a virtual portfolio, and even have contests to see how much money everyone makes in a set time period.  I set up such a contest and invite everyone to join.  The link to see the virtual stock echange I setup is here, and it only asks for email and a password to get started I believe, so try it out.

Virtual Stock Exchange

That's it for now, I am looking into a few other sites and will write about my first stock screening idea which I am currently testing at the virtual stock exchange in my next post.  Please feel free to comment about the resources and/or give me suggestions on other tools that might be helpful in making money and learning about the stock market.

Investment Education Series

To all my loyal readers, I will be documenting my research into the stock market on my blog so that other new investors can learn along with me.  I have been investing in the stock market for about 3 years now, mostly with my IRA, and have a few things figured out, but am interested in documenting all of my ideas and research, which I am currently doing on http://www.1337code.com/stocks.  However, I thought it would be nice to document the way I got to all of the conclusions I put up on that site, so follow along, and we can learn to make some money on stocks together.

P.S.  Sunny Nair is also contributing to http://1337code.com/stocks, and everyone is encouraged to add more to the wiki.  The more information we gather, the more useful the site will be for everyone!

Firefox woes

So I was reading this article today, which told of Firefox's monumental task of trying to gain marketshare from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes pre-installed on Windows computers (Aritcle Here). An interesting problem was brought up by the founder of Firefox, in which she says Firefox must convince users to make a choice to go with Firefox over and over, every time a user gets a new computer. It was an interesting problem, but when I thought, ok, what if Microsoft stopped packaging IE with Windows....and a funny problem arises. While IE is forcing people to use IE when they get a new computer, it's acutally this very piece of software which allows users to "choose" Firefox. If IE didn't come with Windows, how would Firefox get users to install their software? I agree there is an advantage being given to IE due to the packaging with Windows, but you have to give Microsoft some credit. If this weren't the case, I wonder how much longer it would have taken for the internet to have gotten to the mass usage we see today. If a consumer had to buy or FTP a browser, just think of how much that would have slowed down internet usage adoption. Anyways, I just thought it was a funny problem, in that without IE, it would have been difficult for Firefox to be downloaded to being with, yet they are complaining about the monopoly Microsoft has created. Perhaps I'm missing something else too....how is Firefox making money? Are they a non-profit? If so, why do they care about the "Monopoly" on browsers. For that matter, how are ANY companies making money on browsers?

ScribeFire

I'm making this blog post from a new FireFox add-on called ScribeFire.  It took me less than 5 minutes to install and setup.  Let's test a few things like...

Including an image/picture on the page from my computer...



How about from the web (which many blogging servers do not let you do...so this may actual upload this to the server, let's see).



Wow, let's see how it comes out because this was SUPER easy to use.

Online Political News Sources

I'm always looking for more reputable news sources, and understanding the slant of each resource is also very important to me. So, when I came across this link today, I figured I would share it with all of you that are also interested in getting a complete view of the political issues that we face today.

List of political news sites here - They are broken down into liberal, conservative, and non-partisan.


Please post your thoughts or comments about any of these sources here...

Amazing Hip Hop Violinist

I found this video about a year ago, and am still blown away every time I see it. This kid has such an amazing and original sound (even though the whole thing is him sampling different hip hop songs hehe). Check it out, it really inspires me every time I see it:

Watch The Video Here

It's Amazing!

Alternative Energy

Recently I've been reading about a lot of alternative energy sources. I read about the new tidal generators, which use buoys in the ocean, which have pistons in them that are driven by waves. I also just read this article:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/piezoelectrics-installed-in-tokyo-railway-station-floors-generat/

It talks about generators in the floor which generate electricity due to vibrations in the floor I believe. These examples got me to thinking...what other places do we see an up and down motion which we could harness for electricity? My first thought was that of elevators. Obviously you need energy to get the elevator to go up, but what about when it's coming down? It seems to me like you would be able to harness the force of gravity to create some electricity. I could see multiple ways to do this...The most straight forward being to attach a rope to the elevator car, and have the motion of the car either turn a wheel, or move a piston up and down. Along with this type of generator, I was thinking about another alternative energy story I saw about cars that run on compressed air. You could use the motion of the elevator to compress air for use in generating more energy later (in other words, use the elevator as a huge pump). I don't think any of these are breakthrough ideas, but with the issue of alternative energy popping up everywhere, it's got me thinking about ways I could make a difference. Take this as the first installment of a series of Alternative Energy posts I intend to make.

Here's a picture of the generator installed in the UK dance floor, as well as the link to the article:

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/uk-club-gets-dance-floor-that-creates-electricity-20080718/