HSBC has raised the interest rate on their Online Savings account to 4%. This beats the 3.55% I am currently getting at Virtualbank. I think I’ll wait a few days and see if Virtualbank bumps their rate too before I move our 0% balance transfer funds over. It does represent at extra $6 a month [...]
Went to check my HSBC balance today and noticed they’ve bumped their interest rate to 4.25%. That’s the best I’ve seen anywhere and certainly kicks the crap out of Virtualbanks 3.55% rate. I imagine some of the other banks will follow suit shortly but so far I’ve been very happy with HSBC and plan to [...]
Mittal (symbol MT), one of the stocks I hold in for my Investment Experiment just launched a surprise bid to buy the Arcelor, another huge steel company.
I have to admit this one took me completely by surprise. MT has been climbing recently well exceeding my $30 strike. This underscores the main risk of selling covered [...]
Saw this in the NY Times… prosper.com is a relatively new site which matches lenders and borrowers in an online format.
I don’t currently carry any debt outside of our mortgage so I won’t be likely to use it for borrowing myself but I do plan on spreading some of my risk portfolio into these loans. [...]
This is the first post of a series I’ll be doing on government and other public sources of solid financial information. I’ve added a category called Financial Information Resources which will contain all of the posts in the series. I’ll be characterizing and rating the sites based on the type of information they have as [...]
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent in March, before seasonal adjustment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The March level of 199.8 (1982-84=100) was 3.4 percent higher than in March 2005.
What this means for I Bond investors
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For those who purchased I Bonds [...]
Rates for the next six months for I Bonds were released today. The fixed rate was raised to 1.4%, while the variable rate is 1% as expected from the CPI-U numbers announced in mid-April.
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I was hoping for a higher fixed rate but given that the low inflation component is temporary this is really no surprise. [...]
I’m not normally the doom and gloom type but what I’ve been reading about subprime mortgage debt has me a bit concerned… I don’t know what will happen but one possibility is laid out below.
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There are approximately six million subprime mortgages in the USA. The average home price is $190,000. This comes out to $1.14 [...]