Channel Shopping time!

It’s almost time that my cable contract ends with Comcast. I have been paying a reasonably low price for the past 1.5 years and it’ll go up steeply in the next few months.

I have like 300+ channels in my package. They call it a sliver package and package has all kinds of crappy channels. Our family hardly watches 10 of them. But the package is so designed that to watch all our favorite channels, I have to subscribe to all 300 channels. I don't understand why the cable companies can’t let consumers choose the channels they want and pay accordingly?

Now I have to go through the ordeal of shopping through various cable/dish providers. Also I have to go through the hassle of installation and other crap just to save some money. I know most people go through this cycle once every 2 years or so.

I just wish that our legislators pass some kind of a bill providing flexibility to consumers so that we can just stick with one provider and save all the hassles and of course save a good amount of money.

Call Center

The most irritating thing that can happen to you is waiting to get a customer service representative over a phone. Most companies have too many menu options and it almost feels like they are discouraging you to call them. I was waiting for almost 15 minutes on the phone today calling Comcast. They encourage you to email them or chat with them online. But personally for the problem I had, I had to talk to them. I went through so many menus and submenu’s before I could get in touch with a rep. On top of that, the call got dropped in the middle and I had to go through the whole process again. In some companies they note down the number to call you in case the call gets dropped. That’s nice customer service. Many don’t do that.

I am sure many would have gone through with this at least once. I guess it’s justified if people here complain about calls going abroad.

1. They have spend eternity reaching the customer assistance
2. Once they get a customer rep, they have to put up with a different accent trying to figure out what he/she is talking.

Why should people go through this especially if they are paying boatloads of money every month to that company?

What do you think?

Gas Trading!

Buying gas is like trading stocks these days. I am always looking for the price to come down. The other day I went to Costco to fill up gas and it was $3.19. I thought it was very high and decided only to fill up half my tank with a hope that it’ll come down in the next few days. But alas it keeps going up like Apple’s stock. So I have decided that I am just going to fill gas whenever it is needed irrespective of the price per gallon and hope that Dollar cost averaging works in my favor just like how it works for stocks. Just trying to save some money here.

MasterCard Surge

If you guys have been following Master card which IPO’ed last year, you would have noticed how the stock has jumped almost 250% in a matter of months. This leads me to the question as to the credibility of the people pricing these IPO’s. It’s just stunning that this IPO was priced so low ($39) especially knowing what a mammoth MA is. Now the entire sets of analysts are coming out one by one with an upgrade saying how mammoth MA is.

What were they thinking when an IPO price is set? Or is this a Wall Street ploy to reap huge profits that an individual investor like me cannot understand?

Marketing Drugs

The most disturbing thing about the drug industry is the fact that it pays doctors incentives for prescribing their drugs to patients. Granted the industry helps the masses by researching and creating a cure for different kind of diseases. But for it to survive, it has to market like any other company that markets consumer products. I am not sure how much federal help is lent to these companies. But based on the aggressive marketing, I can conclude that it is either very less or none.

The negative side to it is the fact that consumers may end up taking medicines that might be unnecessary for them. Even though it is not harmful, it may still be unnecessary. So ultimately we end up being the losers. But this is the reality and we have to put up with it.

Export quality?

Every time I go to Indian grocery store to buy stuff, I always feel good seeing ‘export quality’ label on the merchandise. Recently I read that most of the goods that are imported into US do not require a quality check to be performed in the originating country. Also only a very tiny percent of what is imported is sampled and checked by FDA for quality and assurance here in US. FDA attributes it to usual complaints like lack of resources, funding etc.

So essentially most goods we buy here that are imported is not assured to have good quality. After knowing that piece of info, ‘export quality’ label doesn’t make me feel good anymore. In fact it makes me very nervous now.

How do Private Equity firms do it?

Chrysler is up for sale. I am sure many private equity funds and individual investors are lining up to bid for it.

The ideology of these private equity funds is to buy a company which is weak currently, somehow improve it and then sell it to somebody else/make it public again and make money out of it. But the question I really have in my mind is, if a private equity firm has the confidence to turn around a company, why can’t the current company management do that? This always baffles me. I am sure there is a very good explanation for it. Please share if you know the reason. I am curious.

Money – Marketing!

Lately I have been stumbling upon dollar bills with Ads in it. Recently I got a dollar bill in which somebody advertised their website in it. It seems like an easy and effective way of advertising. But I am not sure whether it is legal to do it that way.

Some people try to get their message across by hook or crook. I have tried to do some research on Internet marketing. From all my analysis, I can see that the startup websites success depend on the most part on Google results. They somehow have to find a way to make sure that they stay on top of Google ranking. If not there isn’t much chance that someone is going to visit your website by chance. There are lots of websites who claim that they can ensure that your site stays on top of Google rankings and charge hefty fee for the service. I am not sure how effective they are.

It’s a tough world out there. Anybody can create a website. But it takes real talent and patience to market it.

What do you think?

Investing in Emerging Markets

If you have been following the stock market for the past 5 years one thing that really stands out are the emerging markets. The returns on emerging market funds and ETF’s have just been mind boggling with most of them returning more than 25% in the past 5 years.

There are many mutual funds out there. Personally I avoid most of the managed ones because I don’t have time to research and pick the best ones and the expense is very high on managed ones. So I have been going with the ones that follow the index. I use (Exchange Traded Funds) ETF instead of mutual funds to capture the market timing. I find it easier that way.

My personal favorite is the symbol EEM – It’s well diversified (Of course it has recently increased its stake on Russia. I am not sure what to think about that!) and has had some strong performances over the past 5 years. Of course it had a steep fall in early June losing almost 26% (oops!) but is strongly back now. So I guess it’s better to lock in on gains once in a while and reinvest when it goes down.

Also there are lots of good ETF’s if you want to take the risk of investing in one country like India, China etc...

My personal favorites are

For India IFN and IIF (These are closed end funds. So look for premium on NAV. There are no index tracking funds for India as far as I know.)
For China FXI
For Brazil – EWZ

I am nervous to look beyond these 3 countries. In fact even with these 3 countries timing has to be correct if you want to reap the benefits. But if you are daring enough there is an ETF available for almost all developing and developed nations (Ishares web site is a place to start. http://www.ishares.com ). Good Luck with emerging markets.

Any other recommendations/advice are welcome.

The Razor evolution

I ran out of shaving blades today. I remembered that I got a sample of 'Gillette Fusion' in mail. So I wanted to try it out. The first thing I noticed after opening it is the number of blades in it. It's exactly like my wife predicted. My wife predicted last year that we'll have 5 blades this year and her prediction came true. Yay!!

I remember shaving with one blade a few years back. Now the razor companies are adding blades at the rate of 1 blade each year and I am very curious to see where it's all going to end. Another point worth noting is that the cost of these blades increases exponentially with the addition of each blade. I think I should seriously think about getting a stock of P&G soon.

Pop Culture!

I read that coke is going to introduce a new drink called diet coke plus. This is going to be a multivitamin drink. As such it is hard for parents to keep their kids away from carbonated beverages. Now with such a product, it's going to be even harder to make kids stay away from sodas. Every coke fan is going to drink with a content feeling that they are really drinking stuff which is partly good for the body totally ignoring the fact that soda is bad.

I know that are many other drink like that in the market like red bull etc.. But this is special because it promises the same taste as coke.

I just hope that it is priced high to shy away those cash crunched teens at least.

Let me in

Have you wondered how many online accounts you have created in the last few years? I must have created at least 20+. The difficult part in this is remembering the user name and password for each and every account.

Each account seems to have a different format for login and password. So I must have at least 5+ different kinds of login ids and many different passwords. Now it’s reached a point that I have forgotten a few of them.

Recently many financial institution websites have started creating a second layer of protection. They ask you as many as 3 questions and ask you to remember the answers for them if you are not logging from a specific computer.So it makes it even more confusing.

The only viable solution I think is getting a biometric reader. This is getting out of hand.