Howdy Sportsfans!

With Oil prices going down, there may be a good chance that they could go a lot lower.  Perhaps even below $100 and that  is a good thing…

Which brings me to a bunch of items on the horizon for us as investors.  We have the worst rated congress in History, or in over 230 years which is really saying a lot when you think that we had slavery, scandal, deficits, wars and more to contend with and these boobs still manage to take the cake.

The Democrats got control and promised big changes and they are not doing anything, which is good for us.  By them not doing things, that usually means they won’t be raising taxes or trying to redistribute wealth or scaring businesses into leaving the country, so in actuality that is a good thing.

We have Uncle Al, aka Al Gore, who is still managing quite nicely to ignore that fact that Global Tempartures dropped a full degree last year calling for us to shut down our coal and oil industries here in the US and put several hundred thouasand people out of work and ruin millions of peoples retirement portfolio in order for us to all  go green in ten years.   Yea… sign everyone up for that one Al baby.

But on the good news front, we have Brazil and Czechloslovakia offering up some amazing investment opportunities as well as, and yes I am ringing that bell again, small businesses here right in the good old US of A.

While a lot of the country is hurting, there are many businesses that are flourishing and in desperate need of money to expand profits and grow.   The US still breeds some of the best Entrepreneurs on the planet.  Wall street ignores most, the VC’s won’t play for less than a few Million, the Banks are a joke, which leaves some big holes to fill and some great opportunities for the smart little investors like us.

I know I have promised this before, but I will unwrap the best way to get into this market here shortly.  In the meantime, just start asking around in your community to find out which businesses are doing well and need money.  Approach them, they will be estatic.  Use Virgin Money and some common sense to put together a deal and you are on your way and you will be helping the business, all of the people that work for them, your community, yourself and your portfolio!

Let me know how it goes!

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine this week announced that 31,072 U.S. scientists signed a petition stating that

“… There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…”

This includes the eminent theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson who is among the many distinguished signatories. For you Sci-Fi and Physics fans, he is the guy that came up with the Dyson Sphere! Pretty cool aye?

On a personal note, Dyson happens to be one of my few heroes.

Moving on, add this to the fact that the Global Temperature actually dropped by 1 Degree last year and you have a major fiasco brewing and a lot of chickens coming home to roost.

Considering the whole ill founded and unproven Global Warming farce caused a landslide of ignorant, knee jerk legislation that is now responsible for about 20% or 75cent per gallon of the higher gas prices every time you fill up your tank and about 40% of the now higher food prices you pay every single time you buy food.

But hopefully this will soon come to an end.

But then again we are talking about Politicians actually doing the right and smart thing for us as US citizens and for the world for that matter, so I would not bet on it.

The recent veto of the disastrous Farm Bill by Bush may help a little.

From an investment standpoint you should note that while the Congress and Senate preach support of alternative fuels and support Corn Ethanol which costs $1.25 to produce $1.00 worth of Ethanol, (hey I never said it made sense) the bill also still supports the tariff ( tax you pay) on Ethanol made from Sugar Cane from Brazil (which actually does make sense and per acre is 8 times more efficient than Corn) making it more expensive.

Even so, I would hesitate to put a single dime into Corn Based Ethanol Ventures as the subsidies that make them viable may be withdrawn and this dumb idea could be plowed underground again where it should be.

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

for I Am An Investor.com

**** One of the things that I do not want to do here is turn this into only a blow-by-blow trading blog. On the other hand, I do want to show you the reality and practical sides of investing to meet and beat our 21.5% benchmark as well. The largest factor in any trading strategy and game plan of course is you!

You have to figure out what is going on with you, i.e. how much time you have, what your comfort and knowledge levels are and basically what do you have going on with your life at the moment. How much friction do you have going on? All of these things can and will affect your results, so you need to make adjustments accordingly. (more…)

You have no doubt heard of MySpace, but did you know that it and other sites like it such as Facebook, Orkut, and YouTube can be used as great research tools that can put you way ahead of the market?

Let me show you exactly how this works: Companies that are using these sites as a regular part of their business and media models have a huge edge over their competition who just don’t get it.

These sites represent many of the top 10 most visited sites in the world.

For instance just MySpace and Facebook alone get around 2.5 Billion with a B hits a day… A DAY!

The kicker is that the vast majority of the business clients that I consult with don’t have a clue about how to capitalize on these numbers. But those that do it right can see phenomenal growth no matter what business they are in.

This is part of the reason why I can base 95% of my consulting fee on guaranteeing to improve revenue and profit by 10% to 20% within just a few months for my clients no matter the size or type of business they are in or I don’t get paid.

How many other consultants will do that?

I am currently working on two books based on using these effectively. The one you see is for Investors and I will be giving you some of the best and most relevant concepts from it over the coming weeks.

The other one is a “How To” for businesses to show them how to capitalize on this.

The largest problem for many companies is that their IT people usually don’t have a clue about marketing, and their PR and Ad people don’t have a clue about IT. It is a double whammy. But for those companies that do get it, they have a huge advantage.

In the book I will teach you how to use these alternative methods and tools to find hidden and not so hidden gems.

First off, find out if the company has a MySpace or Facebook page and see how they are using it.

As far as I know, I have not seen a concise book on using these sites as a research tool. But then again, if someone is using them the way I am going to show you, more than likely they are not going to broadcast how they do it.

But there’s a rub – and it’s really ironic. The more people that find out about these tools and use them the better it is for everyone.

Want to see how it works right now? (more…)

Bear with me, because I’m going to show you how…
****
Guess what? You are the market! The market is “you” and several hundred million other people. You made it go up today.

But with this in mind, in order to beat it you have to do what everyone else is not. You have to be doing the opposite of what “you” normally would do or to do it a bit quicker or a bit later.

As it turns out this is not normally as easy as it sounds but there are some rather simple solutions to testing this theory while getting better at it.

Here is an exercise for you just to get your brain moving in the right direction. Set up a dummy trading portfolio somewhere. There are thousands of places you can do this. Your own brokerage firm should allow you to do this in fact. (more…)

I am always looking to improve the quality and relevance of what I put up here and I could really use your help.

If you are like me, I often have at least one concern or question rolling around in my head at any given moment about investing. Actually, it is more like a a half a dozen truth be told. I then do my best to get it answered as quick as I can.

With that in mind, I am looking to do the same for you. I would like to know what question or concern you have about investing and get them answered for you!

It might be answered by me or the best expert that I can dig up and I am very good at digging and finding the best person in the field. Now the best person does not always mean the most noted. I just look for skill and knowledge, not what package it comes in.

So if you have a question, take 30 seconds or so and jot it down below.  I will do my best to answer as many of them as I can. If you don’t want me to use your name, I won’t.

Thanks, AA

OOPS! You forgot to upload swfobject.js ! You must upload this file for your form to work.

Do wealthy people do things differently than those that are not wealthy? What one thing do nearly all of them have in common?

Is it something that can be learned? If so, would you like to learn how to do it if you could?

Well, I will give you a hint on the first question, heck, I will just plain give it to you.

If you look at Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Gene Simmons, Donald Trump, and Andrew Anderson, they all own their own business and point in fact, they all own several of them.

With owning their own businesses being the common denominator with the vast majority of the wealthiest people in the world, why is it when we talk about investing that we don’t immediately talk about the one vehicle more people use to become wealthy than any other first?

Think about it. Ask most people about investing and the first thing that comes to mind is stocks, mutual funds, or perhaps real estate. The later falls into the owning your own business category but the others definitely do not. (more…)

= $5

Welcome to prices in the not too distant future here in the US. Get used to it because commodity prices have shot up dramatically recently and that is where prices are heading. I am going to show you why this is a good thing. Well, OK, not for everyone, but at least for you and I. Yes, we are going to make money from this!

All of these items have something to do with coming out of the ground and going up. Wheat has seen prices around $15.75 per bushel when only last year it was around $4 per bushel. Corn in 2006 was around $2.25 a bushel and now it is around $5.80.

Can you see why your prices for the items mentioned are going to go up?

There are actually two major factors at play.

Here are very, very simplistic answers for this and there are more factors, but here is basically what is going on.

Only about five years ago if we say the US Dollar was actually worth a Dollar, it is now worth only 50 cents. (more…)

Update: Ok heard back from then and and will post some info in the next few days.

I know that a lot of you have your own Jets or use charter services on a regular basis. Plus, there are many of you that don’t realize just how much sense they make in the right situation. So, hopefully I will be able to pass on more information soon straight from the horses mouth as it were.

If you are an early bird like me, perhaps you caught Sir Richard Branson this morning on Squawk Box talking about Virgin Charter?

There were more than a few interesting subjects discussed. First his official launch of Virgin Charter, which is a system to fill empty legs of Private Jets. It is basically a registration system that allows companies to put passengers on an otherwise empty Jet. Some paying customers is better than paying for fuel on and empty plane as it flies back to home base after dropping off people at their destination.

Virgin Charter is finally open for business as of today. If you have never flown by private jet, it is the way to go. With airport delays these days even on a one or two hour trip you can waste the better part of a whole day just getting somewhere.   You can check them out here at www.VirginCharter.com .

Whereas with a charter, you usually fly to a smaller airport that is much closer to your destination, and in many cases you can arrive only five minutes before you take off. This can literally save you a whole day’s worth of work.

Just think about this, if you have a whole day to work on what makes you money can you use that time to come up with an idea that will make you an extra $5,000 to $20,000 this year? If so, you probably just paid for your trip and then some.

If you take four or five people with you, the economics really makes sense when you add up what a whole days worth of lost production.

Branson also discussed the state of the economies around that world and the fact that he fully expects India to top 10% economic growth this year and China not to be far behind. While here in the US, we are going to be lucky to break 1%.

This should cause a great deal of concern. He rightfully points out that much of this can be contributed to governmental interference and protectionism that is going on here in the US.

He brought up the insane sugar subsidy that is causing America to pay nearly double the price for sugar as the world market, which in turn has caused us to use corn for producing ethanol which is 8 times less efficient per acre than sugar. This in turn has caused food prices to skyrocket. Have you seen what has happened to the price of a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs this year?

Talk about what I like to call the Stupidity Multiplier. 99.9% of all market malfunctions can be attributed to Government interference and the Stupidity Multiplier and he spoke about just a few more examples that are going on in the US.

He also spoke about the knee jerk protectionist restriction on foreign investments in US airlines and in other areas.

He rightfully points out that most of the US airlines are Dinosaurs that should have been extinct decades ago but continue to receive government bailouts no matter how badly they are run.

If you have ever flown on a decent foreign airline, you know how bad most of our airlines really are.

One other note, silver has topped $20 per ounce and to think that just a few short years ago it was at about half of that.

I am trying to get an interview with someone from Virgin Charter. We will see how responsive their PR people are.

With all of this in mind, knowing that the government is artificially keeping up grocery prices and oil prices here in the US is there a way that you can take advantage of this? Are they going to blame everyone and everything else and do even more harm trying to “fix” things? Could be some great plays coming up.

Overall, you can look at energy prices continuing to rise at least 10% short term and I predict we might see oil top $110, to even $120 a barrel before the year is out.

I have mentioned in the past that the Government and specifically politicians should not get involved in Economics but it does give them a huge club in which to garner favors and redistribute wealth which all leads to power. This is always at the expense of the consumer and investors.

As Investors we need to be aware of the back door deals that are done and take advantage of them. The following will give you a reason why not to short Oil at the moment and just how truly crooked many of our Senators are, and points out how big of liars they are as well. They can do more to harm the US economy in two paragraphs than any market changes ever can.

Read on and you will see what I am talking about. Why this is not the largest news story in the media is beyond me. My Dad actually alerted me about this.

This is from Fox News and Steven Malloy who has one of the sharpest scientific and economic minds around. You will have to dig to find this story but it is there. Here is a link to his column and story.

This one is almost beyond belief. But what is done is done. And you think our politicians really care about our economy. It also points out the real anti-technology and capitalism agenda of most environMentalists.

Junk Science: Candidates Fail Energy Independence Test

Thursday, February 28, 2008

By Steven Milloy

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All the presidential candidates say they’re for energy independence. So why didn’t they do something about it when they had the chance?

Hillary Clinton rails on her Web site about Americans sending “billions of dollars to the Middle East for their oil.” Barack Obama warns that Middle East oil is the “lifeline of Al Qaeda.” Republican hopeful John McCain says that, if elected, his energy policy will “amount to a declaration of independence from our reliance on oil sheiks and our vulnerability to their troubled politics.”

But Clinton and Obama recently voted for a bill that can only promote dependency on oil from the Middle East. And John McCain went AWOL, not voting on the bill at all.

A little-noticed provision of the ironically named “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007″ that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush last December bars the federal government from purchasing fuels whose life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are greater than those from fuels produced from conventional petroleum sources.

Before we get into the energy independence implications of this provision, it’s worth appreciating the obscurity of the provision and the fact that the media doesn’t seem to understand its import.

Related

• Column Archive

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  • Junk Science: Looming Lightbulb Liability
  • Junk Science: Mayor Gloomberg
  • Lights out, America?
  • Hurricane Hysteria Revisited

  Full-page Junk Science Archive

I only learned of the provision while thumbing through the Feb. 15 Financial Times, serendipitously noticing the egregiously mis-titled article, “U.S. risks trade dispute with Canada on fuel.” A bit of research turned up no other media reports relating to this particular section of the bill.

The Financial Times article reported on how section 526 of the energy bill prohibits the federal government from buying oil that was produced from Canadian tar sands, a reserve that holds about two-thirds the amount of recoverable oil as compared to reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Because it takes greenhouse gas-producing energy to extract oil from the tar sands, the article focused on the fact that the law could affect billions of dollars of trade in oil, particularly since the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest single buyer of light refined petroleum.

But while I give the Financial Times credit for reporting this story, it really dropped the ball with respect to understanding it — this is yet another effort by environmentalists and their congressional henchmen to cause chaos in our energy supply.

Sure enough, it turns out that Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., already are pressing the Department of Defense to comply with the provision. In a recent letter to the secretary of defense, Waxman and Davis asked how the DOD will ensure that the fuel it buys doesn’t come from Canadian tar sands or from domestic coal-to-liquid processing.

Waxman and Davis apparently expect the military to expend the Herculean effort of tracing the source of the fuel it purchases and then to refuse North American oil from unconventional sources apparently in favor of oil from OPEC sources such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. How’s that for energy independence and security?

It gets worse if you’re one of those who believe that biofuels are the path to energy independence.

The plain language of section 526 also would seem to ban the federal government from purchasing biofuels like ethanol, since their life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are greater than that of conventional petroleum.

“Turning native ecosystems into ‘farms’ for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate,” researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy reported in Science (Feb. 7). Another study in the same issue of Science projected that the life-cycle greenhouse gas emission from ethanol over 30 years is twice as high as from regular gasoline.

Interestingly, Waxman and Davis specifically excluded biofuels from their letter to the DOD. Not to worry, though, biofuels likely soon will become fuel-non-grata as the environmentalists have already started to demonize them.

Similar to the case of compact fluorescent lightbulbs discussed in this column last week, The New York Times editorial page this week signaled that biofuels soon will become as politically incorrect as the Canadian tar sands and domestic coal-to-liquid fuels.

The Times opined that, “Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.”

“Done right” for the Times is what’s required in the energy bill — a 20 percent reduction in life-cycle greenhouse gases as compared to gasoline. But, of course, this is a next-to-impossible goal since the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for ethanol are projected to be 100 percent greater than for gasoline.

It likely will require nothing short of a technological miracle for ethanol to achieve the energy bill’s standards in the near or even distant future.

Now, if the federal government is barred from bio-, tar sand, coal-to-liquid fuels, how long will it be before such a ban spreads to contractors that do business with the federal government, to states and their contractors, and then, by default, to the nation as a whole?

It’s hard to take the presidential candidates, President Bush and Congress too seriously on the energy independence issue when none of them opposed a bill that actually makes us more dependent on OPEC.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

**************************

For this, the US Senate and President Bush get this week’s Big Fat Fibber Award.

I thought you might enjoy this as much as I did.

Who’s Afraid of Prosperity?

Opinion Editorial by John Stossel - Jan 31, 2008

According to The New York Times, Americans should be fretting about the fact that China and India are getting richer. Are these scaremongers right — or are they just succumbing to zero-sum economics?

Should we worry that the people of China, India and other undeveloped countries are getting richer? Apparently so, according to the newspapers and the “experts” they quote.
They don’t come right out and say that global prosperity is bad for us. Instead they say, as The New York Times recently said, “As development rolls across once-destitute countries at a breakneck pace, lifting billions out of poverty, demand for food, metals and fuel is red-hot, and suppliers are struggling to meet it.

“Prices are spiraling, and Americans find themselves in what amounts to a bidding war with overseas buyers for products as diverse as milk and gasoline.” (more…)

OK, this is just one of the reasons why I still like Google….. A LOT. There little side research projects are better than many of the best startups. Here is one that I am talking about that you may not have heard of yet.

How cool and useful is that? I was involved in speech recognition technology way back in the 80’s and 90’s and it has finally come around. YEA. Talk about a great practical application. Never pay for 411 service ever again.I have been trying to get into as many Beta and Alpha projects that I can with Google and they have quite a few amazing things going on.

For instance we are in on the Beta Email program that allows you to have say Bob@IAmAninvestor.com and access it from anywhere in the world with a ton of razor edge features. If you want your own I Am An Investor email Click Here. We only have less than 500 available.

I also have been a big fan of Picassa as well. It will organize all of your pictures on your hard drive and it is a life saver. At last count I was pushing 50,000 photographs on just my one computer.

Anyway with projects like 800-GOOG-411 available for free, this is just another reason why I think Google is going to be a juggernaut for quite some time. Here is a link to their page for more info. http://www.google.com/goog411/

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
- EB White

And I would add to that, make a lot of money. Even in jest, planning is the key. Do you have an investment plan? How about your goal for the year? Hopefully it is at least our 21.5% and more.

With the monetary supply increase of about 14% or so by the Feds in the past year or so, and inflation running at a good 4%, if you did not go up 18% in the past 12 months no matter what your portfolio said, you lost money.

That darn old Fiat currency. The only problem with it, is when they want more they just print it. And that is exactly what has happened… a lot lately. Ok, more than just lately.

Want to see what happened since we (the US) went off the Gold Standard and became a a Fiat Currency? This is from the Grandfather Economic Report. Some great reading there by the way and recommended by Milton Friedman and Andrew Anderson.

Now I am not going to get into a discussion on Fiat Currency here in detail other than to quote Wikipedia and to make you aware of what it can do to your portfolio.

OK, don’t laugh because I am quoting old Wiwk, but they have it about right in that up until the time the US did it. Whenever a currency was taken off a standard, i.e. Gold, Silver, etc. tt was usually down so by totalitarian regimes.

A better way to look at this graph is to turn it upside down and and use it to show the buying power of a dollar since the Feds got involved. Ouch…. We are from the Government and we are here to help you.

What this shows it that a dollar back then was worth about 550% more than what it is now. And no that is not a typo.

From Wikipedia -

“Another aspect of fiat money is its relation to property rights. Many economists argue that since a government that has control over its territory can requisition, confiscate or otherwise ban the use of specie within its boundaries, or suspend promise payments — as has often happened in the past — the presence of fiat manipulation of money is seen as being a signal that a government is intent on abrogating property rights for other purposes. ”

That bottom line is that the Feds have opened the sluice gates on the money supply stream and for all of those folks that think they are treading water and staying in place, they are actually getting swept down stream at a pretty good clip.

So, in order to stay afloat and get ahead, 21.5% returns definitely should be your goal. Otherwise, you might be hearing the sound of those famous roaring falls in Going Broke Gulch .

Here is the First 21.5% Investment and information about  “The Guerrilla Balance Sheet”.

I am going to make this brief and to the point. In order for you to have 20% plus returns, you have to think out of the box. But as I have mentioned before, you don’t have to be an expert yourself, you just have to know where to find the reals ones and then figure out how to borrow their brain power and expertise.

In order to drive a car and make use of it to go faster and further than you could ever go by yourself for instance you do not have to be an engineer, a metallurgist, or a welder in order to build it. You just need to know how to use it. The same goes with investing.

While we are putting together your investing blueprint for your vehicle as it were and in order to bring out your inner investing Genius, we are going to do things differently.

As far as investing goes, the best investment you can make is yourself as I mentioned before and I want you to invest $7 dollars just like I just did. Don’t worry, if you don’t like this investment, you can get your $7 Bucks back. Wouldn’t it be great if all of your investments were like that? Talk about preservation of capital! Not only that, I will show you how to hit our magic 21.5% return off it right away!

Just so you know, this is going to be my first investment using my $100,000 virtual portfolio. I have a feeling that this is going to pay off far beyond our 21.5% benchmark.

If you have never heard of Jay Conrad Levinson, I want to introduce you to him. He has been my mentor for well over a decade even though we have never met. I have spoken with his daughter on numerous occasions though while working on a different project and she works with her father as it is a family business. Sharp group of people there indeed.

In case you don’t know, he is the father of Guerrilla Marketing and has approximately 17 million customers if you can believe it. With his first book “Guerilla Marketing”, he turned over the old way of marketing, and if you use this information, he is going to do this for your investing career as well.

While this report is primarily for Business Owners and not intended for investors per say, I want you to think of your portfolio as your business and to see if you can take some of these ideas and adapt them for yourself.

I will be discussing this report and information in detail and show you how you can take this information and re-source so it is applicable to what we are doing.

The report is called “The Guerrilla Balance Sheet” and it is how to turn your business expenses into profit centers. You read correctly. It shows how companies can take what normally would be an expense and make money off of them.

Guess what? Without them knowing it, they have put 90% of my investment philosophy into their report.

This is some pretty mind blowing information that you will be able to start to use right away. It will also give you an oblique way to start looking at future investments and the companies that you invest in.

Click Here to order the report. Remember, if you don’t like it, you can get your $7 dollars back! Not only that, but if you do order from here and leave me a comment, I will show you how to make an immediate 21.5% profit from it right away. In other words, that is $1.50 in your pocket. How is that for a way to start?

The Investor’s Dilemma
If you are like me, perhaps you have had some of these same dilemmas.

• Not sure where to start
• Not sure what “Experts” I should listen too
• Not sure if it is a good time to invest
• Not sure “what” to invest in. Do I invest in Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Real Estate etc?
• It seems like “everyone” has an angle to pry my money from me
• I know that I need to do something but not sure where to start
• Or I have been doing OK, but I want to do better, there has to be a better way

Any of this sound familiar? Well, how about if I walk you through some of the steps and missteps that I have gone through and save you some of the cuts, bruises, and downright thumpings that I have gotten?

How about if we do it live, right here? Does that sound at all interesting to you? (more…)

The Experts

While if you have watched any of the Media coverage on the Housing Market by the so called “Experts” or even the Stock Market, or Analysts of certain stocks, have you ever wondered why if they were such experts, how come the changes in markets always seem to take them by surprise?

Why do you think that possibly, when a company misses the numbers as it were and the numbers themselves being a product of the Experts it is the company at fault and not the idiot that got the numbers wrong in the first place? Doesn’t that make the expert not such an expert?

What surprises me is that these Experts are given the airtime repeatedly. Be it in the housing market, the stock market, etc.

I have found that the average man or woman on the street if they have just a bit of horse sense are far better at predicting market trends than a whole room of experts.

The tanking of the Real Estate market in Florida could be seen two years before it happened by anyone that bothered to look. The same goes with Oil prices and most commodities as well.

In the US when you have over 85% of the Oil, Gas, and Coal reserves placed off limits by state and federal government edicts do you, think that is going to effect prices? When you have a growing world population that all wants to improve their way of life and rightly so, do you think that demand might continue to grow?

When you have radical environmentalists fomenting hysteria in anyway they can with their goal of sending us all back into the stone age and we have governments and other special interest groups giving the ludicrous accusations credence as facts and passing legislation to drive up energy costs, do you really see a huge drop in energy costs in the near future?

This with all of these artificial pricing forces and that of the Monopoly called OPEC seeing no need to drop their profits, is there really a scenario in which prices are going to ever really significantly drop anytime soon?

If there is, I do not see it. So, my suggestion is not to listen to the pundits and the “Experts” and to start doing just a little bit of research on your own and use some common sense and you will beat the experts every time no matter what market you are in.

It takes a lot to impress me these days, which I guess is a good thing. But, this has to be one of the best uses of the Internet from a practical standpoint to demonstrate a product that I have yet seen.

On this site, you can actually start and control a diesel engine from you computer. It just goes to show you what can be done using remote technology.

First, it is a great demo for their product, secondly, it shows how one person can monitor and control situations remotely rather than have someone monitoring on site.

Why this is not done more often I have yet to figure out. The technology has been around for years. I can think of dozens of applications where this could be used to help bond customers to your product or actually reduce employee costs and or add to safety and efficiency of an operation.

The Product is the Dems-1000 engine management system. You can even control it via your cell phone!

Click Here to take a look and play with the engine. It will probably scare Chuck their computer programmer too. He said he is often alone in the warehouse there. He says you never know when the darn thing is going to start up. LOL

Here are some specs:

• 
  

  Oil Level	Vibration
  Oil Pressure	Engine Overspeed
  Oil Temperature	Battery Voltage
  Water Temperature	Alternator
  Fuel Pressure	Air Filter Monitor
  Fuel Flow	Water in fuel
  Fuel Tank Level	Auxillary Inputs
  Manifold Pressure

• Remote and Local Keypad Control
• Access from Internet, cellphone, RS485, or twisted phone pair.

This is the type of thing, that could end up being a fairly large product in my estimation. Who knows, they might just be looking for investors or new distribution channels. In any case, it could be worth keeping an eye on.

Anyway, go ahead and start the engine and give Chuck a start too.

Getting Good At “It”

So maybe you have dabbled with different kinds of investments, say stocks, bonds, options, even Real Estate. But the big questions is, have you gotten good at any of them?

I know we are often taught to work at making our weaknesses better but, what if instead you concentrated on making what you are really good at even better? You know, if you are really good at stock picking, just concentrate of getting even better at it, become great at it. The same goes with any of the investment mediums.

If you are wondering at the wisdom of this, take a look at Tiger Woods. Does he put most of his effort into learning how to play tennis or does he put the vast majority of his time into Golf?  What do you think of his results?

I think of this every time I hear about balanced portfolio funds. Why would you have a good chunk of funds in Bonds and Stocks at the same time when 90% of the time when one is doing well, the other is going to be doing the opposite?

This is a recipe for mediocre returns before you even put the investments in the oven. Moreover, to even further mix metaphors, that is just what I want in a meal. I want to start with a recipe for a meal that I know is never going to be better then OK. No, thank you, no!

That is not to say that you cannot have more than one type of investment or spread risk. However, how about if you get really good at one type of investment on a consistent basis and then move on to another type?

This does not mean that you have your broker do this for you. You need to get involved as well.

In addition, the next time you speak with your broker, ask him or her if she is worth over a million dollar and did she make it trading whatever she might be recommending you do? If not, why are you listening to her?

Anyway, just some food for thought. I think that I am going to go back to my recipes for comfort food this week.

The Play Of The Day

With Coal as high as it is, might be a good time to play it short. It has shot up around 40% recently and the winter will not last forever.