I’ve always liked Southwest Airlines. They operate on time, have good service, their employees are happy, they actually make money, and as a customer you know what to expect, including a cattle call followed by a stampede.

They seem to have the airline business figured out. So it surprised me a bit to hear that they are experimenting with assigned seating, much like their competitors use. They say they want to shorten the amount of time it takes to board and deplane.

Interestingly enough, Northwest Airlines is eliminating the row-by-row seating after finding that a “board …

I just tallied up all my cash withdrawals from our trip to Europe, and compared the transaction and ATM fees to the fees that my local bank was trying to charge me just to convert currency.

The overall fee was 3% of the total currency withdrawn from the ATM, as compared to the 7% that my bank wanted to hit me up for to convert $100 USD to Euros…

So it turns out that using plastic does save you in the long run.  In addition, I found that both Visa and MasterCard have …

Over the last year or so I have noticed that the customer service at my local Home Depot (HD: chart) stores has gone down hill.  From my own personal observations, it seems that employees in a specific department, while knowledgeable of the products in their department, have little knowledge of the products in other departments.

It was with a bit of a surprise that an article appeared in a recent BusinessWeek article that drove home the harsh reality that Home Depot was losing market share to its competitor Lowes (LOW: chart) and the reason was primarily related to customer service.

On top of that article, a post by The Dividend Guy revealed that he’d had such a bad experience at Home Depot that he considered selling his stock in the company on his drive home (without the products he’d intended to buy!).

Looking through the list of comments from his post shows that he and I are not the only ones with poor experiences at The Home Depot.  Some thought that the idea of selling his stock based on an experience at a single store was a little extreme, while others thought that his experience was an indication of a much larger culture in the company as a whole.

So how do your personal experiences influence your investment strategies?

I saw a quick blurb on CNBC yesterday about a new home loan that takes on the appearance of a savings account tied to equity.

Essentially, each month your paycheck is automatically deposited into your loan account, thereby lowering the principal and interest and raising the equity by that amount.  Then, you make withdrawals from that account to pay your bills, lowering the equity and increasing the principal.  You can draw on your principal but not your interest payments.

I’ve been searching the internet for more information on this new loan program, and haven’t come up with any details…

I can see how this loan …

Last week I bought back into Chesapeake (CHK: chart) after Jim Cramer suggested that the new IPO’s in ethanol may take the wind out of their sails.  Thursday and Friday proved to be good days for oil and gas stocks, and while natural gas inventories were up, they failed to meet expectations.

The oil and gas sector is down in early trading today, but I’m bullish on natural gas producers now that we are in hurricane season and warm weather temperatures will require increased electrical capacity provided by natural gas fueled power plants.

I’ll continue to watch the sector, but over the next few …

Overall, our trip to Europe was a pleasant one, despite sleeping in the train station in Italy.  However, our dealings with airlines were not so great.

Expectations were high for Alitalia.  Past experiences on British Airways were positive, and I’ve heard rave reviews from friends concerning foreign air carriers in general.  So maybe it was the hype that let me down, or maybe it was the terrible customer service, along with the fact that not a single flight on Alitalia left or arrived on time.

The beauty of the internet is that you can gather opinions and experiences in …

Yesterday Bill Gates announced that he will slowly step away from his day to day duties at Microsoft to concentrate his focus on his charitable work (article).  The investor in me immediately questioned what effect this would have on the share price (although I own no shares).

Aftermarket activity showed the shares up a few cents, but I don’t see this as a huge reaction to the news.

Then I started thinking long-term and tried to hone in on the effects of Bill Gates’ scaled-back role in the company he founded.  I started realizing that Bill Gates is a large part of what Microsoft has become.  The words …

I came across an interesting post from a BusinessWeek blogger on how the internet will effectively level the playing field between larger, big name universities and smaller schools.

It’s an interesting subject, and I think it falls in line with a major topic on David Houle’s site concerning “disintermediation“.

While I don’t think the internet will eliminate the professor all together, I do think it will revolutionize the link between professor and student.  Thinking back to my last years (~’00 - ‘02) in college, my department brought in a young, tech savvy associate …

Jim Cramer turned surprisingly bearish on ethanol stocks today, and for good reason.  He indicated that the fad is starting to come full circle on the new fuel replacement stocks.

Ethanol is becoming more and more speculative which doesn’t bode well for the ethanol IPO’s that are already in the pipeline.

The natural gas producers should be heating up (pardon the pun), after all, it’s open season on hurricanes, and the forcast for heat in the midwest will cause natural gas burning power plants to run around the clock this summer.

Cheasapeake (CHK) is starting to look attractive …

There is an interesting epidemic spreading throughout our culture.  It seems that society is becoming more and more dependent on government policies for protection.

Case in point: A local push to ban smoking in all public places throughout my city.

I’m not a smoker; never have been, never will be.  However I understand that there are people that have been drawn into the habit and locked into the lifestyle choice.  Who am I to tell them how to live their lives? On the other hand, I also get annoyed when I go to a local establishment for dinner and have to strip off my smoke infested clothes before I enter my own house.  I can’t imagine what my lungs are thinking…

While I really get irritated about the atmosphere (pun intended), I understand fully that it’s my choice to frequent these establishments, and if I don’t want to get fumigated, I could very easily go elsewhere.

Do I really need the local government to ban smoking as a city wide effort to drive smokers elsewhere?

I expect my local government to provide a clean and healthy place to live.  However, I’d hate to have the government come in and tell me that I can’t allow my customers to smoke in my establishment (especially if I owned a place like, say, a bowling ally).

It seems we’re living in a culture dependent on others to take care of us.