ShareBuilder/ING Direct $90 or $70 bonus from Costco

January 6th, 2009 Vijaianand No Comments »

Few months back, I received my monthly coupon book from costco, and saw offer from which I cannot resist. It is the $90 cash bonus for signing up with SHarebuilder if you are executive member. I immediately signed and started my first transaction. I just got my $90 last week and invested in the cheap Citigroup stock. So here is more details,

Open a no-minimum account with ShareBuilder from ING Direct and
Executive Members receive a $90 account bonus.
Gold Star and Business Members receive a $70 account bonus.

To take advantage of this special offer, visit Here.

Offer ends 1/25/09 and you must complete your first stock purchase by 2/25/09

Bonus will post to account within approximately 4 to 6 weeks after the first transaction in each new individual, join, or custodial account.

Think Positive – A must-to have Mantra

January 5th, 2009 Vijaianand No Comments »

I am sure many of you, either read books or heard about this topic from lot of self development preachers. As this new year rolls around with lot of expectation and emotionaly challenging (for investors like me!!), Thinking Positive is a must-to have mantra especially for this year. I was reinstated by an incident of this mantra just before the new year. So I decided to share the story and want to reinforce to you all while its fresh from the oven.

Here is how the story starts.

RING, RING…. 

My wife calls me at my work on the new year eve (yep, you heard it. I was working!!) and told me, our Laptop wasn’t booting up. I asked her to give it couple of tries but it didn’t look like getting any life. So I told her to just leave it and I will get to it when I am get back home. It happened before because of loose power adapter. I thought it might be an easy fix to just plug it right.I never knew there was shock news waiting for me.

As soon I got home, I applied my trick fixing the power adapter but that didn’t work. The laptop powers on but it fails to load the windows shutting down with blue screen.  If you are savvy Microsft user, you might be familiar with blue screen death. It is a system crash and it might be very bad.

Since it is the only computer at home, I had everything both personal and business information. I am worried of losing the data as its been a month since my last backed it up. I was especially concerned about the pictures and video’s of my son which we took last few months. I was bit upset and frustrated asking questions, “Why on the new years eve? Why to me?”.  I immediately started working on checking out whether I can access the data and luckily Hard disk didn’t crash and its in tact. I was like “Thank God!”.

That evening, I went to my friends place for the planned new’s year party with my laptop so I can brainstorm the problem with him. I shared my concern with friends and they tried to help me out a bit. As he saw me bit upset, he mentioned about few incidents which made me realize a point. He told me, “You are frustrated about your laptop crash. There are people who have bigger problems than yours”. He started listing few of the incidents from his friends circle. My wife also stressed the same point later that day.

I was totally taken back by hearing those incidents aboutf friends kid with no heart beat, friends kid with less platlets etc., They are real life stories and not just news. It is the struggle for life or death. It really opened up my thoughts and made me to see the broader picture. My problem is afterall a computer crash which can be fixed easily. I still have backup of data and might be just missing 2 months worth of it. So I started to Think on the positive side and just stopped my work right there. I went on to join the enjoyment and fun with friends and family. We had a good New year celebration mid night. 

I am a optimistic person and I do think positive but sometimes problems has the tendency to immerse you in it not allowing you to see the bigger picture. Thats what happened to me but I got out of it. In today’s financial mess, we all need to “Think Positive”. Just imagine investors who lost millions of dollars when you only lost hundreds. You can get it back .

Moral: Everybody got problems small and big. Don’t always thing just inside your own box, get out to see the broader picture. Your problems will become miniscule.

The ending for my story,  I was able to fix the problem in a week and back on track from yesterday. So it wasn’t bad at all.

Mahatma Gandhi who talked about people and their character once said,

  “A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”

Those are wise words as always. You are who your thoughts are.

Always, Think on the positive side like the guy below on the lighter note. You will make the right decision to go on right direction at the right time. 

For a lighter note, you can also have fun thinking positive like the guy below.


Year 2008 – In the Rear view Mirror

December 30th, 2008 Vijaianand No Comments »

I cannot imagine we are already saying good bye to this year. It is Dec 30th and in just 24 hours we are about to welcome yet another year. A new year full of hopes and promises in many folds especially on the economy front all around the globe. With brand new US president in place, there is lot of expectation from him to the put this economy crisis as the first priority in way to stop us going to depression.
 

Let’s give this final moment to look back and reflect on things which just crossed us last year. I am going quickly few things which I remember about last year.


BAILOUT Year Webster dictionary company every year comes out with top 10 words mostly used in that year. This year “BAILOUT” scored the number one spot and winning the title as “2008 Word of the year”.

This year will surely go in the history books for the financial downturns and economy crisis but especially for quite number of bail outs by the government. Bailout was the sole mantra used by the last oval officials to tackle the financial crisis which devastated the wall street and main street. They developed quite number of strategies to stop the bleed but its too late for many things. According to many analyst, Bail outs just helped to stop the issues temporarily and didn’t help for any long term perspectives. Actually it made things worse for many financial organizations. It is going to take year for those companies to recover and get back to normal after weather this storm fully.

GOLD’s, Golden year


Gold reached his all time highest ever for an ounce this year. It reached $1,023.50 on 17th March 2008 A.M. It bottomed out in 1999, and has been on an uptrend ever since. The previous all-time record high gold price in US dollars, reached on 21st January 1980, fixing at $850.00 on that day’s p.m. On 13th March 2008, it broke through the $1,000 per ounce barrier for the first time ever. Although it retreated to about $995, we think it may fix at over $1,000 tomorrow or soon but it went on to make the history reach $1023. It is still an attractive investment for many with global recession concerns. It is currently lingering around $775-$850.

Beijing Olympics – China’s Class Act It was an Olympics we will never forgot for many years to come. Every Olympiad Games is special and unique on its own. But this time, China made it a point to make it more memorable. It displayed great professionalism and authenticity both in opening and closing ceremonies with high end tradition routines. With billions of dollars spent in the making, China world number one populous country made sure, we take away the splendid memories about this 29th Olympics put up by the 22nd nation.

One more important reason to make this Olympics unforgettable time is because of the Swimming Animal Michael Phelps who made history claiming the most golds in single Olympics. He holds the record for the most gold medals won at a single Olympics with the eight golds he won at the 2008 Olympic Games. He also holds seven world records in swimming. With this record, he surpassed American Mark Spitz, who was also a swimmer and had held the previous gold medal total with the seven that he won at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.


All over the world, people glued into their TV set to at least take a glimpse of this human dolphin creating the history in his every attempt at the pool. It was great watching him accomplish his tall feat.

Historic US Presidential Campaign

It was indeed an historic campaign between a Black Democrat and White Republican. Finally, the popular vote goes to “Barack Obama” . It wasn’t hard fought campaign for John Mccain because he is from the ruling party been in the power for 8 years. Obviously, people wanted a change and whether its obama or Clinton (who failed to secure her presidential Democrat seat with Obama), they would have own. It is historic in many ways mainly the first Black American is elected president after US fought its Civil war few decades ago.  It is a welcome news for lot of americans which signs the real change in people’s heart and mind. It is sign of revolution yet to happen.

Mumbai Terror Attack

An unforgetable event unfolded in the Wall Street City of India, Mumbai on Nov 29, 2008. There were a series of ten coordinated terrorist attacks across Mumbai devastating many people life killing almost 164 people (civilians and security personnel). Among the dead were 30 foreign nationals from 10 countries as it happened in famous hotels where foreigns usually stay. The attack went on for 2 days and Mumbai police where finally able to end it after a big chaos. After initial investigations, it was determined that its an act of Pakistani terrorists organization to create yet another panic putting this horror show in way to convey the message Terrorisum will never end in this high tech world.

Finally – A Wise Thought

Last week, I got a video from the Toastmaster Speech Champion and speech mentor Darren Lacroix wishing Happy Holidays with a nice message to Thank ourselves first for this year. I like to ditto his message and stress the point. We sometime forgot to take a moment to accolade ourselves for all the effort we put in to get thru his year. We might have faced some real tough times and good happy moments, it is you who made your days meaningful to get through one at a time.

Before you step into the new year, take some time to Thank yourself for all the things you have done and able to accomplish. Give yourself a nice treat and welcome this new year. That will surely help to make the coming year another fruitful one.


I like to end this post wishing Happy New year to you and your family.

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