Category: Uncategorized

I just added a new widget to my right sidebar which shows links to other investing blogs’ posts.  The idea is for each time my page has a visitor, I get a syndication credit that will give me “advertising” on another financial blog.  For each person who clicks on my widget (or here) I also get credits from their visitors and so on and so on…

It’s off to the side, so I don’t think it’ll be annoying when you are just here to read my stuff.  Hopefully we’ll see some good links come through that we might have missed otherwise.  Of course this is self serving since I’m trying to generate more traffic for my own blog as each person who clicks on the widget and adds it to their site will be doing the same for their own.  Basically, it’s just good, free, viral advertising.

Get it here if you think it’s worth a try.

This is not only for Investing/Financial blogs.  It is for me, but doesn’t have to be for others.  They allow you to select the types of links you want. 

EDIT: I started this yesterday and earned 400+ advertising credits, but have had no click throughs yet.  I found this snippet on their site which explains a lot, apparently this is brand new and only started this …

The Mega Millions lottery is up to an estimated $325 million dollars for Friday night’s drawing.  I’ve bought my tickets and if I win, I’ll pay $1,000 for each person who leaves a comment to this post or another of my stock picking posts today or tomorrow.

You’ll know if I win because I’ll change my blog from MyTradersJournal.com to I-Am-A-Lottery-Winner.com or something like that and will blog about how I spend my money.  If I win $325 million dollars, I estimate I’d get around $100,000,000 after taxes, present value.  If I’m off by $5-10 mil I think I could spare it.

Now, after dolling out $1,000 to each of you who comment I have to figure how to spend my new found wealth.  Have you ever seen the Richard Prior movie “Brewster’s Millions”.  He had to spend $30 million in 30 days to get the rest of his inheritance of a lot more, but couldn’t tell anyone he was trying to spend it all.  He had a hard time doing it and that was just $30 million.  Can you imagine the damage (and good) you could do with more than three times that?

Of course I’d do all the basic stuff of giving money to my parents, my brother, my in-laws and brothers and sister-in-law.  Even after setting them up nicely, I’d still have $80 mil to …

I heard good news this afternoon about my family in Greece.  The village where my grandfather was born and where I still have second cousins living, Vounargo (Βούναργο), is not burned.  The area all around it appears to be destroyed and the fires are still burning, but for now it’s OK.

My family from my grandmother’s side in Zacharo (Ζαχάρω) and Kalidona (Kαλίδονα) is all OK and have now made it out to Athens.  Their houses are destroyed and had no where else to go since it also sounds like crops are destroyed too.

The only relief effort for sending contributions I’ve found on line is in NY at the Greek Orthodox church.  Here’s the address for anyone who wants to send a donation to help.  Thank you to those who have emailed your kind thoughts.

Greek Orthodox Relief Fund For Greek Fires
8 E. 79th Street
New York, N.Y. 10021

Technorati Tags: Greece Fires

This has nothing to do with my normal blog topic, but thought it was worth sharing.  I found this picture in Yahoo! News.  It is a satelite view of the fires in the Peloponnese and was taken on August 26th, yesterday. 

The area I circled in red is where I have family.  One of my grandmother’s cousin’s houses burned and we aren’t sure about the others yet.  We have not been able to reach anyone in the village of Vournargo where my grandfather was born and have not found any mention on the Internet as it is a very small town.  It’s not too far from Zaharo and Olympia, both of which have been mentioned in many of the articles I’ve read today.  One of my younger cousins sent an email that said everything is black and completely devistated.

Technorati Tags: Greece Fires

I have the need for one more non-financial post about Le Tour de France.  I posted my chart of the Dow earlier for those who need their $ fix.

The media is well known for trying to create a buzz out of nothing to sell papers or gain viewership.  This year they actually had something to work with as doping in Le Tour overshadowed the event.  Two riders tested positive during the three week event for a week, one was kicked out for testing positive prior to the start and another was kicked out for lying.  The mass media missed reporting on a Tour that ended up being one of the most exciting of all time.  That’s a rather short-term menality for the media producers I think.  While people love taking a look at the train wreck of Le Tour’s drug scandal, a deeper dive into the competition could have created a greater understanding of the sport and thus increased viewership in years to come. 

I think this same mentality that keeps many Americans from understanding the beauty of a no-hitter in baseball or a 0-0 tie in soccer also keeps them from understanding the inner workings that make professional cycling so exciting.  Johan Bruyneel, the directeur sportif of Team Discovery Channel, is a strategic genius.  He coached Lance Armstrong to seven consecutive Tour titles and after a year of …

I temporarily interupt this investing blog to give my thoughts on Le Tour de France and the doping scandal du jour.  I’ll get a stock pick posted later this morning as usual.

No yellow jersey is being worn today because Michael Rasmussen’s team finally wised up to the rules and fired him.  He didn’t test positive so they were giving him the benefit of the doubt until they found he had lied about where he had been.  When he missed two doping tests (riders have to notify the governing body where they will be 365 days a year ) he said he had been with his wife in Mexico and just made an innocent mistake.  Later they found he had been in Italy and used that as the reason to fire him.

Contrary to some headlines, this is great for the sport.  Riders who are cheating, like Vinokourav, are being caught. Those who avoid being caught red handed, like Rasmussen, are being punished for hiding from the testers.  He could very well be innocent and could have never doped, but in a time when many suspect more than 99% of Le Tour riders in the past decade have used drugs Rasmussen deserves to be kicked out for lying.  Actually he never should have started based on the rules.  Interesting though, Le Tour officials didn’t kick him out, his own …