OK, so there are a few of you out there that are going to read the title of this post and say something like “…yes, but ‘cheap’ is a relative term…” and you’d be absolutely right.

A long time ago I was doing some research on what I consider some fairly sleepy stocks. You know, the Proctor and Gambles, the Johnson and Johnsons, General Electric, etc.

I set up some reminders to send me an email if a stock ever dropped to a certain level. Well, at the time, I figured yeah, if GE ever drops below $27.50 I’ll buy some.

Well, it just so happens that I got an email …

A long time ago, someone once told me that you can monitor the health of your car through the gas mileage.  Not knowing if that was true or not, I started recording all the pertinent data during each fill up: gallons, dollars per gallon, miles driven, etc.  I started this practice when I first bought my Ford F150, and continue the routine today.

I can’t say whether or not monitoring this information can tip a driver off about degrading health of the vehicle, but it does give me some good data to look at for other reasons.

There has been a lot of gum-flapping on the television about the rising cost of …

A few days ago I read an article on MSNBC that had me scratching my head.  Basically, American Airlines came out and tried to justify their $15 per checked bag fee, and claimed that the new fee would affect fewer than one in four customers this Summer.   They also claim that the fees won’t result in longer lines at the ticket counter.

Right.  I don’t believe them, but that’s really not the point that really got me steaming.

The airline then went on to try and passify its customers by trying to spin the fee as a “bargain”.

The airline defended the fee, saying it was a bargain compared with the cost of …

Read more…

Last week I started increasing my position in the Reserve Yield Plus Fund (RYPQX: web, prospectus, fact sheet, Y!).  Two weeks ago I finally started buying in to the fund, which is a no-load fund and does not impose the typical $9.99 transaction fee from Ameritrade.  At the beginning of this month, I received the distribution for those shares, pro-rated for the previous month.

The distribution totaled $0.09 for 250 shares held over 3 trading days in the month of May.  Doing the math, this translates into about a 4.4% return on my money annually.

…

Last week I posted a review of The Shift Age, by David Houle.  Since then, I had the good fortune of interviewing David about the book.

TCOB: David, your blog Evolution Shift has become an increasingly popular site in the blogosphere regarding a futurist’s look at where we’re headed.  Explain to the readers of The Corner Office blog what a futurist is.
David: Sure, my definition of a futurist is what I do, which is to act as a catalyst to get people to think about the future and then to facilitate the conversation about the future that …

MJ over at Dyslexic Research asked me to research Petrobras Energia Participaciones S.A. (PZE: chart, web, Y!) in return for looking over Ingersoll-Rand.

Simply stated, Petrobras Energia focuses on oil and gas exploration and production, refining and distribution, and transmission of electricity in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

Financial Look

Looking at Petrobras financials, they seem to have a decent set of books.  Profit margin is healthy for a smaller oil and gas producer of 4.22%.  While it’s very lucrative right now to be in the oil business, smaller companies like Petrobras (as compared to Exxon, Chevron, etc) are going to have …

I’m a technology geek, I have to admit.  I take a look back at where we were 5 years ago.  High powered laptops were luxury items (heck, desktops were luxury items just 15 years ago), cell phones were a digital voice communication device that worked everywhere, so long as everywhere was near a major highway.

Compare that to where we are today.  Looking forward 5 years is exciting!  There is no one more in tune with the future than David Houle, a futurist nonetheless.

I stumbled upon David’s blog Evolution …

Several days ago I asked my buddy MJ over at Dyslexic Research what he thought of Ingersoll-Rand (IR: chart, web, Y!).  I’m not really an industrials guy, as my area of knowledge rests more in energy (specifically oil and gas) and tech.  That said, I’ve been making efforts to broaden my knowledge and diversify my portfolio.

MJ, however, is very much in tune with industrial sector, and I figured he’d have a good opinion on the company.

So it was with great interest that I read his opinion post on the company.

As MJ mentions, Ingersoll-Rand is in early stages of acquiring Trane …