AA bought into Bookabach – so what are they getting and how much is it worth? I’m arguing they got a bargain, even though I don’t know how much they paid for what % or even how much bookabach makes. Here’s the reasoning and estimation: The site looks great – very well laid out and …
Category Archives: Investing
Deficit and housing
via calculated risk this chart – showing the huge size of the US Trade Deficit. Sure Petroleum is bad, but that red line is hovering around the the thirty billion a year mark. Meanwhile on the same blog we see that a major US apartment owner is in big trouble, risking default on $900m in …
The vote is in: Housing prices are overvalued
I know internet polls are unscientific, but it seems that Stuff poll voters are pretty clear on housing prices these days: I agree. Just check your rent versus buy numbers. Over here in Perth I’m paying rent of a third of the mortgage payments required to buy this place. I should know – it is …
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Wanted: A CTO for our well-funded start-up
My cousin here in Perth is launching his mobile application start-up in earnest, with solid VC funding all but finalised from a group that has a successful track record of delivering mobile start-ups to market. The mobile application itself complete, and it is currently being tweaked offshore for the hundreds of phones out there. Now …
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US housing crisis – more evidence
The October US new house sales statistics were revised after official release from 735k to 727k, and the September ones from 770k to 716k. Those are big differences, and signs that all is not well in housing land. So via the WSJ blog, a few tasty tidbits about the stats: It isn’t just the bottom …
How to win at Monopoly
Quite simple. Get the railroads and milk them, then the Orange properties – Bow, Marlbourough and Vine street in the UK edition. After that buy the light blue, and so on. alternatively buy something in the first two rows, put 3 houses on there, and then use the profit to buy something in the last …
Overall portfolio return: 72% this year
It’s been a great year for my US portfolio, which sadly is relatively small as most of my investments go into small private companies, with some to GMI. Here’s the return to date (green) versus the S&P500 (Blue). That green bar hits 72%, though I’m fairly sure there is an error in eTrade’s calculations, and …
Making money from the housing crisis
Call it Sub Prime Crisis, but when mortgage financiers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae show signs of distress, the entire US housing market is in trouble. Freddie dropped $2 billion in losses in the last quarter, which is scary – as they hold over $700 billion in mortgage assets, at last some of which are …
Making money from eBay, Apple and Microsoft
Here’s an update on how my US share portfolio is going. Previously I was afraid that the tide was going to turn, and my 43% gain for the calendar year to September would be wiped out. First – Apple, Microsoft and eBay. I sold down 70% of my eBay holding the other week, as I …
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Yahoo Finance New Zealand
Not what you’d expect… au.finance.yahoo.com/investing directs you to Yahoo!7’s Australian focused Finance site, but changing that “au” to an “nz” yields a different result: nz.finance.yahoo.com/investing Not so useful, unless you live or invest in Brasil
10 Questions to Xero’s Rod Drury
Rod kindly offered to answer some questions about Xero during this earnings release phase, so here they are. My questions are in Bold, Rod’s answers in Italics. Rod notes that we are trying to be as open as possible so I’ll try to give you as much info as I can and explain where we …
Xero results – first look
First look at Xero results Revenue 1: Xero made $24k from 204 paying customers and 404 users. That’s $117 per customer and $59 per user, but the report states $54 per customer. Perhaps the $54 is the average monthly per customer revenue. Cashflow 2: Xero received $16k in cashflow from customers (“receipts from customers” – …
BNZ – it gets worse for all of us
My own personal BNZ Sucks saga continues, but there is worse news, via a response to my internal emails: From April 2008, all Internet Banking customers will be required to use NetGuard when logging into Internet Banking. I applied for my damnable Netguard card on the 21st of October (which I blogged about in passing), …
We’ve never had it so good
Things are booming in New Zealand – and we have 3.4% unemployment forecast for the September quarter by Westpac, a strong Kiwi dollar and low inflation. I have not seen signs this good in my lifetime. I do worry about US housing and sub prime happenings, froth in the US equity markets and froth in …
Microsoft Profit up, but Vista sales declining?
Interesting snipet from Slashdot (home of the Mcrosoft vs Apple vs *nix wars) Microsoft is not directly mentioning Vista demand while they brag about how much money they made last quarter, because sales fell. “[Microsoft] shipped approximately 28 million copies of Vista in the latest quarter ended September, or 9.3 million copies per month. I …
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Lance Wiggs 