I'm not planning to make investment issues a regular feature of the blog but the following came up in today's HuffPo and I thought it would make a good follow up to yesterday's post on HSBC:
It is not surprising that investing is the subject of so much misinformation. The securities industry fosters false beliefs because it suits its economic interests to do so.
The consequences for investors are grave. The historical returns of most investors barely keep pace with inflation and taxes. Many investors take too much risk because their brokers and advisors don't know how to measure risk. Trillions of dollars of hard earned money has been lost because of the analyst scandals, the tech bust and sub prime loan mess.
The sad fact is that well-informed investors could have achieved market returns and minimized the impact of these tragic losses.
The cycle of talking heads who claim to know the future and brokers who recommend portfolios of stocks, actively managed mutual funds and hyped up "alternative investments", continues to this day.
Most investors still don't understand that they are gamblers and the brokers and advisors are the casinos. [Dan Solin via HuffPo]
I also received the following from a reader by e-mail:
Dear Blogger,
I had a similar experience to your HSBC friends as a Private Banking customer of ABN Amro. In 20 months they lost me 25% of my pension fund which had been handed to them for safekeeping. All calls to my 'Personal Account Manager' were passed to someone else while the fund lost even more value. In the end, I called and told them to sell everything which they did and they deducted a further GBP 10,000 for doing so! Since then I've kept everything in offshore deposit accounts; unexciting but safe.
Result is I don't trust any kind of Financial Advisor. Don't get me started about UK law firms!
A. Reader
Sierra Tangos
- Valentine's Day parties so far announced for tomorrow are:
- Blues Factory
- Buffalo Bar
- Catz Go Go
- Cherry Bar
- Shooter's Bar
- Thailand's tallest building, a residential condominium planned at Pattaya, a beach
resort, has received the go-ahead to start construction next month after months of delay, media reports said Wednesday. Construction of the Ocean 1 Tower planned at Jomtien, a part of Pattaya, is to start March 30 after the project received approval of its environmental impact assessment, the Bangkok Post newspaper reported.
The beach-front residential condominium, is to be 91 storey's and 327 metres high, making it taller than Thailand's current tallest building, Bangkok's Baiyoke Tower II, which stands at 304 metres.
Because of delays caused by that approval process, Siam Best Enterprise Co, the owner of Ocean 1 Tower, has raised its prices seven times on condominium units, which start at 125,000 Baht (3,834 dollars) per square metre. [via Earthtimes]
- Honey Girls Go Go in Soi Honey is now open
- Brutal Attack on Englishman in Soi Buakhao [via Pattaya City News]
- District Officials Raid Bars in Soi Sunee Plaza [via Pattaya City News]
- 4 Apps to help you get additional info about any website
WhoIsHostingThis - Finding a good hosting company can be a major headache. Even when you go to what seems to be a reliable forum, you may be presented with lots of manipulated stats promoting one or the other hosting provider. The best way to find a reliable website host is to check who hosts popular websites. And WhoIsHostingThis is a no-registration service that can help you with this. Enter the website address and it will get you a link to its hosting company.
WhoIsTheOwner - This service lets you quickly lookup who is the owner of the website. Such services also known as WhoIS lookup tools.
MyIpNeighbors - Ever wondered which other websites are hosted on the same server as yours? MyIpNeighbors can help you out. Not only can it give you a good idea idea about how crowded (reliable) your server is, but also explore the overall quality of ‘neighboring’ websites.
BuiltWith - Unlike the above tools, BuiltWith focuses on the website itself. With the help of BuiltWith you can instantly lookup all implemented technologies behind any website (Google, Digg, Reddit, Youtube, yourdomain.com, etc.). If you ever plan to replicate some website, this is the tool you need. Among other things, it will aso give you a basic SEO profile.
[via MakeUseOf]
- Convert Media Files to Embeddable Flash with Moonk [Flash]
Moonk, a free Flash conversion application, serves as a one-stop shop to turn your photos, videos, or music into slick-looking embeddable boxes. Sure, YouTube and a wealth of other hosting sites can do much the same, but for those who don't want to add their videos or other media to a search-able site or mess with privacy settings, Moonk lets simply make your media files web-playable. New users get 500 MB of storage—pretty generous, considering the small size of the Flash output. I also like the uncluttered interface and straight-forward conversion tools, compared to similar tools of its kind. Moonk is a free service, but requires a sign-up to use. [via Red Ferret Journal]
- Marisa Miller - Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2008
- Yet more Iga
- A woman came up behind her husband while he was enjoying his morning coffee & smacks him on the back of his head.
"I found a piece of paper in your jacket pocket with Marylou written on it" she said furiously. "You better have a damn good explaination"
"Calm down honey" he replies, "Remember last week when I was at the dog track? That was the name of the dog I bet on."
The next morning his wife sneaks up behind him & smacks him again.
"What the hell was that for?" he asks.
"Your dog rang last night!"
- Scientists have developed a drug containing 50% Viagra and 50% Prozac. They say if you don't get a fuck, you don't give a fuck.
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