Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Save $10 off a purchase of $25 or more at JCP.com

For a single purchase of $25 or more at JCP.com (JC Penney), you can save $10 by using your MasterCard for the purchase. This is not as nice as the TRIM10 Coupon Code that I posted earlier.

I haven't tried it myself, but received a mailer.  The purchase must be made between December 7, 2009 and December 24, 2009.  The Coupon Code to use at checkout is FROST25.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Free frequent flier miles (or other stuff) ?

Now I guess I missed this opportunity.  The US Mint was lots of 250 $1 coins with free shipping.  The story goes that some people racked up to $800,000 in coins which were all promptly taken to the bank and deposited and then used to pay off the credit card.  This amounts to 800,000 miles.

I would have used it to get $8,000 in rewards of some other sort (like money).

Click here for the story on WSJ.com

Baby Hammocks are recalled by CPSC

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of Baby Hammocks made by Amby Baby based out of Minnesota.

Click here for more details.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Save $10 on a $10 or greater purchase at JCP.com

For a single purchase of $10 or more at JCP.com (JC Penney), you can save $10 by using your MasterCard for the purchase.

I haven't tried it myself, but received a mailer today.  The purchase must be made between December 7, 2009 and December 24, 2009.  The Coupon Code to use at checkout is TRIM10.

Exited my Gold Position

In this previous post, I reported that Gold was overbought and that I had a position where I would benefit from a fall in gold prices.

Here is an update on my risk and reward estimate.  I have exited the position since the price has dropped about $6.50 based on GLD and about $65.00 on the spot price.  My initial target was a support of $108 for GLD or about $1,080 for the spot price.  At this time I am not ready to risk about $6.50 in profit to wait for another $3 or $4 to develop.

I expect prices to fluctuate for the next two weeks in the range of $108 and $113.  I would not be a buyer at this time unless it fell below $108.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

New iMac quad-core machines better than current Mac Pro?

Apple posted a link to this article by MacWorld.  In their tests, the new iMac quad-core machines with the i5 or the i7 processors are better than either the current Mac Pro with the entry-level quad-core or the 8-core machines.  The obvious question will be "When will Apple upgrade the Mac Pro entry-level processors?"  That would seem to be the next logical step from a product line perspective.

From a cost vs. benefit and performance vs. space issue, spending this kind of money is an individual decision, but in round numbers, you could get two 27" iMacs for the price of one Mac Pro with a 30" display.  This is based on not paying for any RAID configurations and extra drives on the Mac Pro.    Add those features and you could easily increase the ratio of three iMacs to one Mac Pro (or more than three). The iMac is a lot less cluttering to any work space whether this is your home office or a business.

The 27" iMac display is the same width as the Apple 30" display at 2560 pixels, but a little shorter at 1440 vs. 1600 pixels.

To view the graphic that shows the processor comparison, click here.

For the complete review click here.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Gold appears to be the most overbought in 2 years





For at last the short term, Gold as represented by the SPDR Gold Shares ETF trading symbol GLD appears to be overbought.  Even when you look at the 5 year chart it is just about as overbought as possible. 

There is this report that Billionaire investor John Paulson (known as the "other" Paulson) is taking long positions in mining companies and the metal.  This in addition to recent positions in several large banking stocks.  Click here for the video.  This is the investor who actually started placing investments against the housing market in 2006 and made about $20 billion for his hedge fund.  He personally profited about $6 billion to his benefit.

If there is a short-term correction, I would expect support to be around $108 at the time of this post.

Disclaimer:  I hold a small position where I would benefit from a lower price of Gold.