It looks like one of the things that has always been seen as a “sure thing” could be coming back to bite investors. Life insurance companies have been offering policies to people for years and premiums often go up as the insured begins to age.

An investment scheme that has popped up in the last few years is when someone who is insured can no longer afford the premiums or is looking to “cash out” a life insurance policy that he or she has been paying on, someone will come along and buy it for a fraction of the payout and sell it off to investors who will pay the premiums until the original insured person dies.

There have been over a dozen life-settlement scams to come under investigation since 2008. Life settlements get capital by promising high returns. The business also gains the attention of other senior citizens who have empathy for the policy holders that have looked to cash out. And so, there have been a lot of companies ready to take advantage of those people.

Like when the market for securities became bloated and backed by homes created the subprime mortgage mess, the market for life settlements has created a surge in fake insurance policies called STOLI’s or stranger-originated life insurance. These STOLIs are illegal and begin with a life insurance agent who is also a life-settlement broker. The agent talks a senior citizen into taking out a big life insurance policy and wines and dines them. Then the agent agrees to pay the premiums and the ownership of the policy is transferred to investors.

Again, the problem with these STOLIs is that they are illegal and could endanger the policyholder from being able to collect any insurance in the future. Some scary statistics are that more than 50% of life settlements right now were on policies that were less than 4 years old. The reason for the increase and the large amount of settlements on policies that are less than 4 years old is the STOLIs. These policies equal out to huge losses for the insurance companies also and could potentially hurt the insurance companies to the point where they are unable to pay out real insurance claims.

It appears as though the government is taking note. Last month Senator Herb Kohl led up a special committee on the problems associated with life settlements. The committee meeting ended with the IRS and SEC being contacted to talk about gaps that are left in legislation in life settlement procedures. The SEC has agreed to look into the issues facing the industry. Due to this activity, it seems as though the market has cooled down a bit.

The stock market has been doing better as compared to the same time last year, which was just a month or two after the biggest financial disaster of the decade. However, there have been some bumps along the way. If you look at something that has unfolded over just the past two or three weeks. Dubai was going bankrupt and there looked to be no one to save the country. That is, until today when Abu Dhabi surprised the country with it’s own $10 billion bailout.

With the country accepting a payment like that, it is easy to see why the stock market has kind of shot up today. Investors of the oil rich nation have had their fears calmed regarding the longevity of the emirate.

That is not the only financial news that has helped out the markets today. Citigroup has also announced this morning that it would be paying back $20 billion of bailout money that it has received from the United States government. The move will help put Citi back in control of its own company and will help out the government, which just passed a huge spending bill.

Financial news over the past two weeks has really been overshadowed by the whole “Tiger Woods” debacle. His story has completely caused a media frenzy and no one has mentioned that the Dow Jones has been over 10,000 for a while now. While there is plenty of good financial news to report on, there aren’t many news organizations that are doing so right now (that is, unless you watch cable news which has to report on several different things to fill up the time).

The stock market has seemed to start leveling off and is back to near-normal. Other investors have started to work their way back into the market after receiving heavy losses. So, is now the time for you, or any other timid investor to start putting their money back into the market?

I will say yes. However, I would say that the time to get into the market was months ago while the stocks were down. Many people lost a lot of money and then got scared and pulled their money out before they rode out the worst of the recession. For the most part, if they would have just held their stocks their losses would be minimized.

Right now, it is important to track the stocks and funds that you want to invest in. You have to look at the big picture rather than the previous 12 months. The problem is the recession has changed the game so much that you have to look at everything rather than just the short term.

For example, in commodities, most things have always fallen in price as the weather turns cold. However, if you look at the cost of something like copper, you can see that because the recession has improved in the 3rd quarter 2009, the prices have gone up a bit since the weather has changed. In normal times, the price falls because construction tapers off for the winter. Right now, though, more houses are being built than were at the beginning of the summer.

If you are still timid about trading, try paper trading for awhile and see how you do. Once, I had heard about Citi and the rules regarding mark-to-market trading changing and knew that the stock was going to go up. Chris and I paper traded the stock (actually we did an option trade) and would have made a killing had we actually put money into the stock. Doing something like that makes you a bit less paranoid about putting money in the market.

Things to consider before you put your money in the market are things like how much risk are you willing to accept. Obviously, the more risk you can take on, the bigger the payoff or the greater the loss. You also have to realize how much you can put into the market and how to diversify.

The recession has been a huge part of the state of the economy for nearly two years now (according to when it officially began in December 2007). It has affected everyone in one way or another during that time. So, why not take something that was and continues to be awful and use it as a tool to teach your children about financial responsibility?

There are plenty of children that grow up with only a small idea of what the value of a dollar is. In the years leading up to the recession, many parents would indulge their children and even spoil them with some of the things they wanted without having to work to earn them.

When starting at an early age, children can be taught that when they do something good, they can earn things that they want; but how young should a parent start offering a child allowance? My sister and I did not start getting an allowance until we were 7 or 8. However, I believe that children can likely benefit from the system at a younger age.

Getting back to the issue of the “value of a dollar,” children need things such as clothes, school supplies, etc., but while those things are considered necessary, things such as expensive shoes and designer backpacks aren’t. As children get older, they can learn this lesson and, in some situations, may be able to earn the expensive shoes and backpacks by working for them.

Overindulging a child makes them a maladjusted adult in a lot of situations. A child that gets everything that he or she wants doesn’t help them as they get older. So, perhaps if a parent is a pushover now, the recession is helping him or her say no to their child as far as indulgences go. When one or both parents are out of work, things such as little trinkets which seemed harmless to get for the children before are now simply unaffordable.

Teaching kids about money when they’re young will definitely help them make better financial decisions as they get older.

You can minimize how much you spend when it comes to investing by doing just a few things. Cutting how much someone spends on investing is one of the five painless ways to cut expenses in a report from Time Magazine.

One thing that you can do to minimize your investing costs is, of course, to go from a full service brokerage to one that offers cheaper trades. Then again, a lot of people aren’t comfortable with making decisions when it comes to their investments. There are some brokerages that will charge very little per trade, but they are going to let you make your decisions. The stock information that you are missing out on by picking out one of these brokers could be made up by searching the internet for investment information. You have to be a bit more hands on with your trades but you could save yourself a lot of money in the long run.

Another thing that eats at your money when it comes to investing is that you are being charged fees that are hidden in your 401 (k) or your IRA. When you have your money in these kinds of funds they are often put in mutual funds and there are recurring fees associated with them. Because these fees are deducted from the balance already in the account rather than charging you out of your bank account, they often fly under the radar.

The best way to help out your 401(k) and the fees associated with it is to stick with low-cost index funds. You can reduce your annual expense to as little as 0.2% of the balance. There are actively managed funds that can cost you up to 1.20% of your balance.

From the article:

On an account worth $100,000, your annual cost in index funds is a mere $200 instead of $1,190 with actively managed funds. So you’d save $990 a year by switching. But that’s only the start.

The money you save each year stays in the fund and grows. Let’s say a low-cost index fund and an average-cost actively managed fund both grow 8% a year for 20 years. Over that period, you’d end up with $75,678 more with the index fund by virtue of the additional compound returns from lower expenses; the index fund would grow to $449,133 while the actively managed fund would grow to $373,455. That’s more than $3,700 a year.

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According to Moody’s Investors Service, AIG may actually be able to pay back its loans from the government. The company posted its second straight quarterly profit last week thanks to a recovery in the value of investments.

Moody’s said that as long as the operations of AIG and other markets continue to get better and stabilize, then they will likely be able to repay the government with heavy government support in its restructuring plan.

With the government now likely to recoup its investment, it has incentive to continue supporting AIG and its various creditors, Moody’s said. The agency affirmed AIG’s long-term rating of A3, the seventh-highest investment grade, with a negative outlook.

Credit spreads on AIG’s 8.25 percent notes due in 2018 tightened by 15 basis points on Tuesday to 751 basis points over U.S. Treasuries, according to MarketAxess.

Over the past year, AIG has taken more than $180 billion in financial aid from the government. Eighty percent is currently owned by taxpayers in the United States. While AIG is looking for someone to buy major assets, it is having a very difficult time finding anyone to buy from them.

I am actually surprised to see any company saying that AIG will be able to pay back the better part of $200 billion to anyone…especially from a company that went nearly bankrupt.

I don’t see why anyone would spend their time investing in a company like this. I sometimes wonder if the government knew what they were getting themselves into with AIG if they would have lent the money to them without and major consequences (remember executive retreats and those outrageous bonuses?).

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Advanta Corp is a company that offers small businesses credit cards in the United States. Yesterday the lender filed for bankruptcy protection. The company, in its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Deleware District, listed assets of $363 million and debts totaling $331 million.

The company came into hardships after many of its small business clients simply could no longer afford to pay the balance or the minimum payment on credit cards lent by the company because they had also come under economic hardships. According to the company, it is trying to collect $2.7 billion from the accounts of 360,000 customers. The accounts are closed to new charges, but the outstanding balance is killing the company.

It had decided to shut down its credit card lending business five months ago to try to keep something like this, or worse, a takeover of its bank by the FDIC, from happening. however, it appears as though the bank will likely be taken over by the FDIC shortly because its level of capital is below regulatory requirements.

The company said that it has almost $100 million in cash and cash equivalents available, but would not be capable of meeting all of the debt obligations that will become due. There are around $138 million of senior retail investment notes still outstanding. The company’s largest unsecured debt holder is the Bank of New York Melton; it is investing in $230 million in debt for the lender.

Due to the announcement, of course, the stock for the publicly traded company fell 70%. It fell from 25 cents to 8 cents after hitting its all time low of just seven and a half cents.

Not included in the bankruptcy filing is Advanta Bank Corp. Also, customers who are making payments to their credit cards need to continue making payments on time because this has no effect on those accounts.

Flash orders give some traders an edge in the purchase or sale of their stocks. The advantage is only a split second advantage, but it is enough to get the attention of the SEC.

For the next 60 days, the change will be up for public comment and could be adopted by the SEC after that time.

Flash orders are one of those things that sometimes occurs in the trading world. They really have started to become quite a hot issue on Wall Street though due to people asking questions about fairness on the Street.

From MSNBC:
A flash order refers to certain members of exchanges — often big companies — buying and selling reports about continuing stock deals milliseconds prior to that information being made public. A number of big banks and financial companies, using high-speed PC programs, can get a speedy, sneak peep at how additional investors are trading, giving them a brief peek into the direction of the market.

The other rule on the table includes more transparency from credit rating companies. For its role in the subprime mortgage mess, the industry that performs credit ratings has been shamed. The practices of these companies (which includes Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service, as well as Fitch Ratings) will be able to be seen by the public and will also be subject to restraints.

It is not fair when some companies have the ability to trade before the general public is allowed to do so. When there are ultra high speed computers and company information and reports available, then of course they will have an small advantage. I do not believe that the flash ordering has been exactly beneficial to a lot of companies on Wall Street because if you look at how many companies have performed over the past few months and especially when you look at the last year, you can tell that they are not exactly doing great. Many of the banks and financial institutions have only remained open only by the grace of our taxpayer dollars.

I am glad that they will no longer be helped out by any of the money that I pay the government. I know that the general public of the United States is ready to go after the boards of many of these companies because of all the bonuses that they seem to be raking in every couple of months; and I have to agree with the general public on this one.

These rules can be seen at the MSNBC article I’ve linked below. I would like to see what the SEC does with the public comments over the next two months. In 60 days, we will see how the market is doing and I am sure that will have some impact on the SEC’s decision as to what it is going to do with the new rules.

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An analyst at Citigroup is calling for the company to buy into Motorola as well as sell stocks in Palm and RIM (the makers of Blackberry devices).

Jim Suva says that the release of Motorola’s Droid on the Verizon network will end up spelling trouble for the other makers, even with Palm coming out with the Pixie in about two weeks. Even Research in Motion has a new device coming out, the Storm 2, but it just isn’t drumming up the kind of noise that the Droid is.

Something else no one should forget is that Motorola is releasing several Android handsets in the next few months. It is all pretty impressive when you think that people were talking about Motorola’s handset division going out of business.

The Citigroup analyst said yesterday that Motorola is a “buy” instead of a “hold” and that the Droid handset is “compelling.”

I am not sure what else he is looking at, but right now there are more HTC handsets on the market running Android than Motorola handsets.

After the analyst made his announcement, RIM and Palm both closed down for the day and Motorola closed up. Obviously this kind of analyst announcement has a large effect on the stocks for both of these companies.

I think Palm may be able to come back from losing, but the problem is (at least in my opinion from a consumer point of view) that the WebOS operating system was not ready for prime time when it was released and it has taken some time to get it ready.

Sprint can’t keep itself from hemorrhaging money as well as customers. The nation’s third largest retailer announced their third quarter earnings and they obviously weren’t too great.

As subscribers dropped the carrier, it found itself losing $478 million, 17 cents per share. This is a greater loss than the company saw in the third quarter last year of $326 million, or 11 cents per share.

The loss the company had was greater than what analysts were expecting. The majority were expecting an average loss of 15 cents per share.

The net operating revenue for the company was also down to $8.04 billion. This represents a 9 percent drop from the $8.82 billion it was making last year during the same quarter.

So, where did the money go? I would guess it followed the 545,000 wireless customers it lost during the last quarter alone. The company actually lost 801,000 post paid Sprint subscribers, but 801,000 signed up for its Boost Mobile prepaid service.

When the dust settled, Sprint was left with 48.3 million subscribers. There is a pretty large gap between Sprint and its next biggest competitor; AT&T Wireless (which currently has over 80 million subscribers. However, it is still ahead of the smaller T-Mobile cellular provider with just over 32.8 million customers.

It’s not all bad news for the company, however. In its earning statement for the third quarter, Sprint also talked about how it has had improvement in customer care satisfaction for the past 7 consecutive quarters as well as opening its 4G network to 17 different markets, and it has launched (and will be launching) 16 new touchscreen, full keyboard smart phones.

In my honest opinion, Sprint has bent over backwards to keep a lot of their subscribers happy. I don’t know what they’re doing to lose so many subscribers, but I would imagine it has something to do with the company’s phone lineup. I can’t imagine it being the actual network because (at least in my opinion) the service is great anywhere I go. I even had reception in a basement on the college campus near me while my friend with an iPhone did not.

Imagine yourself shopping for great Christmas presents at Harrods in London when something catches your eye. It is bright, shiny, and gold. It comes in a range of sizes between two pounds and 27.5 pounds; that’s right, Harrods is carrying gold bars and coins in its department store for the holidays.

After seeing a lack of support for the market geared toward selling gold, Chris Hall, head of Harrods’ bullion department said, “Up until now, London has had no well recognized name serving this market. Harrods saw the opportunity to help individuals buy physical gold in a prudent manner.”

Harrods is selling the gold in relation to market price, so it is definitely not flying off the shelves. Two point two pounds of gold from Harrods will cost you $35,000. The most expensive bar, which weighs 27.5 pounds, costs just under $430,000.

Even with the steep price tag, the gold has been selling well due to its long term investment potential.

With gold hitting all time highs recently, I can see exactly why Harrods would be wanting to cash in on this. If people know where to buy gold, then they would be more likely to actually buy it; especially if they can see it.

I would be more willing to buy something like Gold if I could see it and touch it rather than for it to be an intangible stake in the commodity.

If you have gone to the grocery store recently and wanted to pick up a few Cokes you may have noticed the prices of Coca Cola products are outrageous. This is one of my reasons why I stopped drinking soda, but this is also why Coca Cola has posted a profit growth of 15% for the third quarter.

The Atlanta based company reported a net income of $247 million and earnings equaling out to 50 centers per share. This is up from the third quarter 2008, when the company posted a net income of $214 million and an earnings of 44 cents per share.

Of course the company is going to be posting higher profits this year, the cost of a 12 pack of any Coke product has jumped from $3 to $4.50 at my local Wal-Mart. This week you can find them on sale at Walgreens for 4 12 packs for $10, that is the cheapest I have seen Coke products for in months. Even in the 24 pack cases that are sold at Wal-Mart, they have been around $7 for a while.

This was one of my reasons why I should definitely stop drinking sodas; it was getting to be a very expensive habit and since it is the only thing that I had to have to avoid negative side effects (those awful caffeine withdrawal headaches that would happen after I decided to not have a Diet Coke before noon), I decided it would have to stop.

I read somewhere in the past few months that said that sometimes when people go to college, because of debt and other issues, the college graduate would not have as much money saved at retirement as the person who graduated with just a high school degree, even though the person with the high school degree earns less.

Of course, this is counting on that the person who did not go to college not only has a college fund, but invests that in a mutual fund that tracks the market and also puts money into their retirement fund on a monthly basis.

While this is a scenario that could happen, it often doesn’t. A report by the Office for National Statistics in Great Britain reported that people who earn less do not contribute to their pension funds as often as those who earn more. It said that 21% of men and 32% of women who earn less than 300 pounds a week were contributing to their pensions.

This is in stark contrast to the 76% of men and 82% of women who earn over 600 pounds per week give to their pensions and have an employer sponsored pension program.

This could also have something to do with the fact that contributions to employer sponsored pension programs are down. According to reports, in Great Britain, in 1979, 65% of employees were contributing to their employer’s pension program. However, the number dropped to 57% in 1995 and then to 54% in 2004. In the private sector, 40% were contributing to their fund while 25% were contributing in 2005.

A problem has come up regarding the pension programs because people simply aren’t contributing to their pensions, and they don’t continue to participate in a program. Contributions to 33% of pensions stop after four years. If this trend follows that means that within 10 years, as few as 40% of pensions will still be getting contributions.

A serious issue in the United Kingdom, as well as all across most of the world, is the aging population. In the UK there are four working people to every retired person. In the future, the ratio will turn. In the United States, many are worried about what happens as our population grows older. Obviously this issue is just as large in other countries as well.

This is why everyone should start saving for retirement. You can never be too young to contribute to a pension fund or a 401 k or any other kind of retirement fund.

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While it wouldn’t make a really good episode of the Mythbusters television show, there are myths that are prominent in the financial world that need to be debunked. Here are some of the myths that Kiplinger compiled:

Myth number 1: There is a hot market somewhere in the world. There is an idea out there that other bits of the world will grow at huge rates even when the economies of the United States or Europe have begun to fall. There is an idea out there that you can offset losses in your home country by investing abroad.

The Truth: These days, thanks to globalization, downturns in any economy can lead to downturns everywhere. No country is immune anymore.

Myth number 2: Real estate is independent and behaves differently than other types of investments. In the most recent real estate craze, many people called it a bubble instead of a boom.

The truth: Real estate will not overcome other risks when credit problems are hurting investments all across the board. Real estate cannot and is not immune.

Myth number 3: The businesses that pay reliable dividends are safer than other investments and are preferred over stocks that do not pay dividends. There are some companies out there who are counted on to increase dividend payouts regularly and, therefore, actually performed better than other stocks.

The truth: Some companies are still increasing dividends. The best way to make sure that a company is going to have stable dividends, look at the cash flow and not just how big the company is.

Myth number 4: Foreign creditors can take out the U.S. Treasury because they own $3.1 trillion of our Treasury debt.

The truth: While it is true that many foreign creditors have a lot of the United States’ debt. It is also true that the U.S. Treasury is the place to go if you want bonds that are extremely safe. That’s why in school, they teach that the rate the Treasury sets bonds at is the risk free rate.

Myth number 5: Gold is where you should put your money in a bad economy. It is now trading above $1,000. However, it has been swinging back and forth with its price over the duration of the recession. Gold seems to be in its own bubble where it does things independent of the rest of the market.

The Truth: Gold is one of the commodities that also rallies in good times. When there is credit for buyers, inflation, and buyers who actually want to go out and spend their money, gold tends to increase a bit then too. It’s not just during bad times.

Kiplinger has five more myths to debunk at their site. I’ve linked to it below.

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Companies are releasing earnings left and right and not all of the news is good. Some of the companies that posted a loss in earnings or revenues today include:

Old Dominion: OD reported today that revenues had fallen 22.4% in the third quarter. The company said it was directly related to the drop in freight volume as well as a lot of competition in the industry. It reported a revenue of $322.8 million, in comparison to the $415.9 that the company saw in the third quarter 2008.

Earnings were $10.5 million for the third quarter or 28 cents per diluted share.

It reported a 14% drop in freight volume.

AT&T: Being a telecom giant doesn’t exempt you from some bad earnings news either I suppose. Regardless of a huge amount of iPhone sales, the company couldn’t manage to bring profits up from the same point last year. The stagnant earnings is thanks to the declines in voice, legacy data and print advertising products. The only thing that really kept the earnings from being a loss is the wireless division of the company.

AT&T did manage to post a $3.19 billion profit on a $30.85 billion revenue. However it is still now from $3.23 billion in profits and $31.34 billion in revenues.

UPS: Like other shipping companies, UPS is not doing as well as it once did. Revenues fell 15% and profits fell 43% due to customers shipping fewer packages. Net income for the company fell to $549 million, it was $970 million just one year ago. Revenue fell from $13.1 billion to $11.2 billion.

This can likely be attributed to the decline in packages sent. Shipping volume was down 2.4% from the same period last year.

“I’m encouraged by the signs of economic recovery that are becoming apparent, although we still have a long way to go,” UPS chairman and CEO Scott Davis said in the release. “Ongoing strategic investment has positioned UPS to capitalize on growth opportunities around the world.”

US Airways: US Airways posted a pretty big loss of $80 million for the third quarter. However, in the same period last year the airline managed to post a loss of $866 million, so it is doing a bit better this year than last even though it is still posting losses through the quarters.

“Our third-quarter financial results reflect the soft but improving economic environment,” says Chief Executive Doug Parker. “As we look out at the improving demand environment for both business and leisure travel, US Airways is in an excellent position to capitalize on the recovering economy.”

SunTrust Banks: SunTrust posted a $377.1 million loss for the third quarter. Most of the losses came from write offs on loans and other bad debts. To contrast, last year in the third quarter the company posted a $304.4 million income.

“Our third quarter bottom line results reflected the difficult operating environment for more traditional banks,” James M. Wells III, SunTrust Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement. “Continued recession-related earnings pressures included higher credit costs, softer fee income and generally weak loan demand, as consumers de-leverage and businesses pay down existing credit lines and defer investments.”

Wells Fargo reported a 98% increase in its third quarter earnings. This is even with a increase in credit losses.

The numbers came out to a $2.6 billion third quarter profit, which is up from $1.6 billion in the same quarter last year. It totaled out to 56 cents per diluted share. If you exclude retired debt from the TARP funds as well as additional preferred dividends, Wells Fargo actually earned just over $3 billion in the latest quarter.

While the earnings were up that much, revenue for the company more than doubled and actually topped analysts’ predictions. The third quarter revenue for the company was $22.5 billion and analysts were only expecting $21.64 billion. In the third quarter 2008, revenue for the company was $10.38 billion and fueled by the merger with Wachovia Securities. Even CEO John Stumpf seemed surprised by the cost of Wachovia, in a statement he said that the costs related to absorbing Wachovia is “significantly less” than he or anyone else at the company had anticipated.

There wasn’t all good news for Wells Fargo. It said that its credit loss provisions increased to $6.11 billion which is more than double last years numbers and charge offs also jumped to $5.1 billion. That is 2.5% of the loans from the company, it was only 1.96% last year.

The company’s chief financial officer, Howard Atkins said in the earnings release, “While the level of nonperforming assets and losses is expected to remain elevated for a period of time, we currently expect total credit losses to peak in 2010.”

Last year, Wells Fargo did buy out Wachovia Securities. It was a merger that happened at a time when a lot of huge banks (the same ones that were too big to fail) were buying out medium sized banks that were going to fail. It seems like when this happened all it did was create a bigger issue where the banks that were too big to fail are now even bigger. At least Wells Fargo is seeing a positive in the way of revenues…

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Apple was able to beat any expectations for the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. It was able to pull out a 46% profit jump.

The increase in profits was $1.82 per share or $1.67 billion total.

Analysts were expecting the company to have a gain of $1.42 per share earnings if there revenue would have been $9.2 billion, but the actual revenues came out and it was $9.87 billion.

Part of the reason for the high numbers was the increase in iPhone sales, which increased by 7% in the fourth quarter. It was able to sell 7.4 million units. It was also able to move 10.2 million iPods, which represented an 8% increase. In the way of computers, it sold 3.05 million Macs.

Steve Jobs had a statement,”We are thrilled to have sold mroe Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter. We’ve got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.”

Hopefully one of those things in the pipeline for 2010 is the much rumored tablet. Many are expecting it to be a fully functional computer, but like an iPhone or iPod Touch. A tablet with the abilities of one of those would really change the game as far as computing is concerned. So far, touch screen computers haven’t taken off the way touch screen phones have; even though there are several companies out there who are putting a lot of development dollars into the touch screen technology for computers.

I am excited to see what Apple has coming out in the future because, even though other brands will be behind, it means that there is a new generation of computers and electronic gadgets coming out that can really (like I said in the previous paragraph) change things up. Watching advancements in technology is pretty exciting to me!

While HP has stayed on the top of computer sales once again, Acer is moving up the ladder. The company has become the second place PC seller in the world in the third quarter; beating out Dell.

Acer now has 12.4% market share according to the research firm Gartner. Sales have increased 23.6% when compared to the same time last year; it shipped 12.4 million computers in the third quarter 2009. Dell only managed to shop 10.3 million in the third quarter. Dell actually showed a 6.7% decrease when compared to the same time last year.

Selling 16.1 million PCs, HP has remained on top and has increased 9% over the last year and still has a 18.4% market share.

Lenovo came in fourth with a 7.4% market share and sold 6.8 million computers.

Overall, I am actually impressed with computer sales over the past year. One would think that computer sales would have fallen flat in the recession as people would have just stuck with what they had versus upgrading to something else. Perhaps Acer has been helped by their line of netbooks. The AspireOne is one of the most popular netbooks out there right now. I personally liked everything about the Aspire One except for the fact that the touchpad mouse buttons were on either side of the mouse versus directly under the touchpad like my full sized Dell notebook.

Netbooks really have started a craze. I see more and more of them everyday it seems. I actually don’t travel with my big laptop anymore. This probably has something to do with the computer’s inability to function without a power cord. For some reason my computer starts to go crazy or just turns off whenever it feels like it. This is the second power issue that I’ve had with a Dell computer. The first one I had wouldn’t even charge the battery after the computer was about 2 years old. My most recent laptop is actually 3 years old now and works pretty good except for the power issue.

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With the Dow reaching above the 10,000 mark yesterday, there is a lot of stock market optimism going on. However, in July Enzio von Pfeil, the chief executive at EconomicClock.com said that there would be a crash this month in the stock market. He reiterated that yesterday saying that the crash doesn’t have to be a huge one that shakes the foundations of the financial system, but it will still happen.

He told CNBC, “There is going to be quite a bit of strong downward earnings revisions going forward, especially the outlook for 2010. And that is simply because the economic clock, of which we tell the economic time, suggests that the excess supply of goods is here to stay and you can’t keep on making profits if unemployment keeps rising.”

He said that the worst earnings would come from industries that are labor intense and others that are driven by consumer spending.

It always seems like everything that goes up has to go down, but there is no indication of how high that the market has to climb before it finds its top and it has to fall again. Most of the worst crashes that have happened usually happen around this time of the year. I don’t think that we’ll see a huge drop in the market like we did in the beginning part of this year, but I do think that the market won’t stay above 10,000 for long, but it will increase to this point again after the holidays.

No one wants to see a recession continue. No one wants to see people unemployed. These labor intensive jobs are so tight for money right now, that they have fired all the people that they can manage to get away with and still have a functioning factory.

Consumers still aren’t spending money like they did a couple of years ago.

These earnings reports will come out, but will they really be enough to send the market into another downward spiral?

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Over the past few weeks, the United States dollar has really taken a dive and the newest news that has been coming out definitely doesn’t help the prospects of the greenback.

The newest news is that the Canadian dollar will be equal to the value of the U.S. dollar and will actually begin to overtake it in the next few months.

The dollar fell to the lowest it has been in the past year while other currencies were increasing. The US dollar fell to 1.4962 per 1 Euro this morning in London. It was $1.4925 in New York during trading yesterday. The dollar even fell to the lowest it has traded in Swiss francs since July 2008.

“Negative dollar sentiment as a result of ongoing risk appetite is still very much in place,” said Ray Attrill, global research director at Forecast Ltd. in Sydney. “Anticipation of good results in the financial sector has been one of the factors driving U.S. stocks.”

The dollar fell against 14 of its 16 major counterparts as the Federal Reserve is expected to report U.S. industrial output rose 0.2 percent in September after gaining 0.8 percent in August, according to the median estimate of 75 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The data is due tomorrow.

According to Daisuke Uno from Sumitomo Mitsui, from Japan’s third largest bank, “The U.S. economy will deteriorate into 2011 as the effects of excess consumption and the financial bubble linger. The dollar’s fall won’t stop until there is a change to the global currency system.”

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For the first time in just over a year, the Dow Jones has traded above 10,000. The last time the Dow traded above 10,000 was October 7, 2008. It hasn’t closed above 10,000 since October 3, 2008. The lowest it has traded at since then was on March 9th when it traded at 6,547.05. The Dow is now up 53% from that point.

The increase came from earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase and Intel, both of which were upbeat. JP Morgan Chase beat expectations by reporting a $3.59 billion profit for it’s most recent quarter. It also reported a record year to date revenue. Intel also beat expectations. It reported a decline in profits, however the decline was much smaller than what was expected from the company. The report raised hopes that the final quarter of the year would be better for the computer market.

Gold also hit another all time high of $1,072 an ounce and oil rose above $75 a barrel. This all comes after the dollar continued its decline and investors put their money into commodities.

Whenever the market increases like this, it can be seen as a very good thing for the economy. However, what if its all going back to normal too quickly? I would like to see everything go back into the black as quickly as possible, but recessions typically last years and have lasting effects for even longer. The huge increase in the stock market just seems too rapid to count on.

People and analysts have been saying that we may have just found ourselves on a false recovery, but if it holds, this is a great thing for our economy and hopefully the job market will begin to pick up as people are getting accustomed to spending money again. It’s easy to see how the economy really works when you have to talk about it every day. It actually needs everyone to pitch in a bit in order to work fluidly.

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Memphis isn’t exactly known for its economic prosperity. It is, if anything, a distribution city. After spending most of my life living near the Bluff City, I can tell you that there is so much blight in that city that it can be difficult for some businesses to take off there even with the amount of wealth generated in the outlying areas.

After a short hunt on BizBuySell.com, I saw that the median asking price for a new business is just about $180,000. That’s a thirty percent drop from the previous quarter.

Why have the businesses decided to lower their asking prices? Well, it likely has something to do with the businesses having almost half of the cash flow that they did in the same period last year. The median cash flow dropped from $117,343 to $60,000. Revenues were also down from $384,000 a year ago to $368,400 for this year.

There are other cities that are having similar issues. Typically, the cost of businesses falls in line with the economic conditions of its neighboring city or town and the real estate market. Real estate values in Memphis have fallen (but to be honest, they haven’t fallen that much in some parts of the city because they weren’t very high to begin with).

Detroit is one of the cities that I have personally noticed taking a major hit in this recession. I read online a few weeks ago that the median home price in the Detroit area was somewhere near $12,000. The only reason that the home prices are so low is because the city is in disrepair and the auto companies that have held the city up for so long started to crumble to pieces this year (and they have been falling apart for some time now).

As far as the businesses in Memphis are concerned, on the BizBuySell website, the types of businesses that are listed include everything from restaurants to cleaning services.

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Wells Fargo wants to be different. It wants to stand out. It wants to raise your credit card rates and it’s doing so right now.

Getting the news that credit card rates won’t be able to just go up and down like an expensive roller coaster anymore starting in either December or February, Wells Fargo has made the decision to raise the interest rates on most of the company’s credit cards 3% before the law goes into effect.

You know, it’s not really fair for me to say that Wells Fargo wants to be different because, in reality it’s being the same. JPMorgan Chase has also decided that it is going to likely raise the rates for consumers. The only bank that has made it public that it is NOT going to raise rates is Bank of America actually. So, I suppose actually it is BofA that wants to be different and stand apart from the crowd.

Wells Fargo is saying that the new rates will take effect November 30th, just one day before new legislation will likely go into effect saying that credit card companies can no longer just raise rates because they feel like it.

“We are raising interest rates up to 3 percentage points for a majority of our Wells Fargo customers due to the current business environment, including rising business costs and current consumer credit challenges,” a company spokeswoman says. “We decided many months ago that it would be necessary to increase interest rates. We delayed our decision in hopes that the business environment would materially improve

Wells Fargo is, at least, giving customers 45 days to decline the new terms, close their accounts, and pay the balance off at the old interest rate if they so choose. However, for someone who has thousands on their credit card, this may not only be a bad choice, but also one that is just not feasible. If someone is that much in credit card debt, then they will probably just have to “grin and bear it” when it comes to the new rates.

This is the kind of practice that led to the new legislation. This is exactly why this kind of legislation had to be put in place. Wells Fargo (as well as most of the other large lending banks) have no one to blame but themselves and their greedy ways for Congress cracking down on them. I’m glad that something is finally being done.

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Bank fees are really starting to add up for some people. There are a few things you can do to make sure that the money in your bank account stays yours instead of you forfeiting the money to the bank.

1) Don’t bounce checks and make sure that you’re using checks from your CURRENT account. Of course, many people don’t write checks too much anymore. However, I know that we still pay a few of our bills with checks and (for some reason) we still have old checks from a closed account around the house.

2) Use ATMs sparingly. You are obviously not going to find your bank branch everywhere you go, so just watch out how much those ATMs are charging you per transaction. The most I’ve ever seen is $5 per transaction, the smallest amount I’ve seen is $2.50.

3) Watch your transactions and maintain a positive balance. This one is kind of a “duh” but I have to talk about it if I’m talking about saving money on your bank fees. This tip will make sure that you don’t get those awful fees like insufficient funds or overdraft fees. Overdraft fees can really hurt, particularly because they are somewhere in the $30-$35 range every single time you make a transaction from your overdrawn account.

4) Try to find a checking account that is not only free, but also offers some kind of interest. My bank offers a totally free checking program, but also offers a checking account where, if you meet the monthly requirements, they give you a bit of interest on the account. If you can’t find a bank that does this, a free checking account is a good option, but you just need to make sure that you’re not getting tinged by over drafting or not maintaining a minimum balance.

These are of course only a few of the things that you can do to save yourself a bit of money and keep it out of the hands of greedy bankers.

If you guys have any extra tips leave a comment!

Over the internet, it can be difficult to decide who to trust when it comes to learning about trading and investing. Your investments are the goal to your financial success and so you should definitely spend some time to find out exactly what you’re getting yourself into when you decide to invest. You should never invest blindly, with little knowledge of the market, or by going on the opinion of one person.

Forex Training Courses are important if you are looking into getting into trading foreign currency. With the right training and coursework, you can take something that seems as complicated as trading currency and even futures contracts and turn it into something you can excel in.

The Training Academy has been the most trusted name in professional trader education since 1997 and along with online courses offered by the company, it also offers on location training and courses. This is different than most training courses because many places that offer online classes are simply that, just online classes. With several locations throughout the country and worldwide, the Training Academy can offer in-person help to any students who may ask for it.

When looking around the internet, you may find plenty of places to get Forex trading information or find companies that have courses and training for all kinds of investing, but who would you rather pay; the company that has a proven track record or one that offers classes only online?

After selling a lot of its brokerage business, Citibank has decided to regroup and change how it runs its brokerage business in the United States and across North America. The biggest change that it is going to implement is the decision to have the financial advisers that work for the company to charge a service fee for any advice that they may give. Right now, the company has a commission based service for the sale of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.

Citibank issued a statement and said that it wanted to get rid of commission based compensation by 2011.

This would be out of line with the competition. Other brokerages that are the main competitors of Citibank are Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as well as Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. They still, and will continue to have commission based sales.

Citibank wants to start the shift immediately. The company has decided to assign 600 branch based brokers into teams. The branch based brokers were only the ones not included in the sale of Morgan Stanley.

The current CEO of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit, wants to be a larger competitor in the financial investments business. It is having to find new ways to do that since it had to sell off its share of Smith Barney to generate capital for the company.

While some feel that the move is good for the customers, I am not sure because there is no fee structure that was announced. Customers could find themselves paying more for services than they did in the commission based structure that the company used to have. I suppose that, when compared to the main competitors of Citibank, the fee structure could be seen as an advantage, but only if it means that the customer will be happier with the service and paying less.

It’s all about how much the customer is getting for his or her money. No one wants to pay more for a service that was once less expensive.

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The largest (and arguably the most hated) cable network in the United States wants to buy a 50% stake in NBC Universal from General Electric. Talks have been going on for at least two months between the to companies.

Currently, it’s all resting on the shoulders of Vivendi SA and its decision to sell its 20% stake in the company.

NBC Universal is currently held by 80% General Electric and 20% Vivendi SA. NBC Universal doesn’t only run the NBC network, but it also runs a films studio, cable channels USA, CNBC, MSNBC, as well as Bravo.

So, where is Comcast getting the money for the acquisition if it is, indeed, going through? Well, thanks to the credit markets finally thawing out a bit, companies (Comcast included) have been able to raise some money through the sale of company debt. It currently has $4 billion in cash.

But, how much is NBC worth? Stephen Tusa, an analyst for JPMorgan Chase, estimated the value of NBC Universal to be between $30 and $35 billion. That was on September 8th.

The merger between the two companies could mean better things for Comcast subscribers, but that is completely and totally unlikely. For the reason that cable companies have no reason to have to be competitive with pricing, Comcast will continue to charge whatever they want for the content that they are giving to their customers even if they are getting that content at a reduced price (because they own most of the company). If the purchase does happen (and GE DOES have the right of first refusal so perhaps GE will actually take the 20% from Vivendi?) then Comcast will surely use any operating profits to pad its own bottom line and not actually cut the rates they charge any of their customers.

Comcast is known for really messing over their customers. You can find angry comments about the company all across the internet. I have not been fortunate enough to have another cable provider in my city, however, I will say that the company I have to have cable through isn’t exactly wonderful either.

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The internet is a viral place. One tidbit of information can spread like wildfire and end up in the hands of people who act upon the information that they have received.

If you take October 1st for example, a fake press release was issued saying that Disney was making the move to buy IMAX. The press release was an obvious fake complete with bad grammar. Another thing is that if people had been paying attention to press releases about Disney, then they would have noticed that the fake press release was nothing but the real press release that came out when Disney decided to acquire Marvel (of course, the bits about Marvel was replaced by IMAX).

After the fake release was issued IMAX did issue a short announcement stating that the report was false and that it had no plans on selling out to Disney or any other company for that matter. However, even though IMAX said that the company’s shares moved up 6% in pre market trading due to the fake release.

Fake releases about publicly traded companies can either help or hurt the acutal company and really hurt the investor.

On the same day, there was a fake memo floating around the internet about McDonald’s leaving food out of customers’ orders in the drive thru. You can read the fake memo here.

I am not sure what would compel someone to issue a fake release other than drawing attention to themselves or if the company is trying to find some unethical writers out there that have no actual ties to the company to release the information. There are rules against that though. Then again, we’re asking people who really don’t have a lot of Public Relations integrity to follow all the rules. You can’t expect that much from some of these people.

A disruption in the refinery of crude oil into gasoline due to a fire in a Los Angeles area refinery couldn’t even raise the price of oil and gasoline. For the first time in two months the price of a gallon of gas has fallen below $2.50 on average. Where I live, I just paid $2.38 for a gallon of regular 87 octane.

The fire at the Tesoro refinery in LA will probably effect the price of gas in California, but not too much anywhere else. The refinery processed around 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day and produced gasoline, jet fuel, and other products.

Demand for gasoline is so low that according to analyst and trader Stephen Schork, “a material disruption to supply to one of the largest markets in the world barely registered with speculators on the NYMEX.”

Wholesale gasoline for October actually increased 1.2 cents to $1.6323 per gallon today while benchmark crude for November delivery increased nearly 50 cents to $66.51 per barrel, this is after increasing 13 cents on Friday.

Prices have actually been increasing ever since Iran announced that it had a secret nuclear program at the G20 summit last week. This is due to the fact that 20 percent of the crude oil in the world is trafficked through the Straits of Hormuz which is on the southern coast of Iran. If something were to actually happen between the United States (or any country) and Iran, that route would be compromised  and oil would likely spike.

Of course, oil is one of the indicators of the economy. There are so many indicators and this is definitely one of them. After all, it’s oil that took a dive when people started realizing how bad the economy was last year. Oil also has started creeping back up and analysts are saying that other things are creeping up as well; such as the sale of homes and autos.

While it would be a good thing to not have to see oil reach the outrageous prices it hit last summer, I really want the economy to start picking up soon. Perhaps when it comes time for Chris and I to leave our college town, I’ll be able to land a real marketing job somewhere.

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A report from Bloomberg said that defaults of credit cards in the United States rose by 11.49% in August. The number is up from the 10.52% it increased from the month of July. The percentage reflects complete write offs and not delinquencies that are still being sought by the banks and lenders.

Because of the rising unemployment, there is a problem with many people being able to pay down their debts or be able to pay their debts at all. With unemployment currently hovering just under 10%, 1 in 6 Americans are out of work.

The biggest lenders in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, as well as Citigroup all reported an increase in defaults for the month of August.

It is now predicted that unemployment may reach 10.5% sometime in mid-2010 and at the same time there will be an increase in write offs between 12 and 13%.

As an American, I am well aware of many people of the country having a dependency on credit. For the longest time, everything that was purchased was paid for with plastic (an no, I don’t mean debit cards). Delinquencies were bound to rise at some point in time and they were going to rise by a lot. After all, with all the people defaulting on their mortgages and going into foreclosure, why would they hold on to their credit cards and try to pay them off?

Credit card companies know that this is what is happening, which is the reason for why they all want to hike their interest rates. If they didn’t hike interest rates then how would they make up their money from all of the people who are defaulting on their loans? The government won’t be bailing out these companies anymore.