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Published: Saturday, 22 March 2025 01:36
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These are stocks that are at year lows. These are large companies, all dividend paying and financially strong enough to keep paying dividend.

  • Target (TGT):
  • Pfizer
  • Accenture: ACN buy at $250, div=2.5%
  • Pepsi (
  • Hormel Foods Corp => HRL, div of $1 on price of $23.
  • Stanley Black and Decker
  • Fedex
  • Baidu:
  • Kohls (KSS)
  • Medtronic (MDT) => dividend aristocrat
  • HPE = ?
  • HPQ = NOT the stock you want, though it has 6% yield at $20 price
  • Kraft Heinz = KHC
  • Bristol Meyers Squibb (BMY) => wait for $40
  • Nike: 21 yrs of dividend inc. $1.6 dividend on $50 stock (5 yr low in price)
  • Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) => Looks like a perfect stock which went up 100X in last 20 yrs from 2005 - 2025. It makes analog chips, and has been a very small company when it started, but still always profitable.
  • Cisco systems => at $50, $1.6 in dividend.
  • Qualcomm
  • Dell
  • ITW => Illinois Tool works, dividend king, $6 div on $250 stock (earning=$10). P/E=25. worth buying at $150 or so.
  • Colgate Palmolive => CL. Div=2.7%, stock needs to goto 1/2 as it's dis growth is only penny/sh every yr.
  • Eastman chemical EMN => 5% yield, buy at $65 (at $75, it's 4.5% yield), Tangible Book value = $1.3B
  • Humana = currently at $190, buy at $170, div = 1.7%, cap=$24B, Rev=$125B, income=$1B. 10 yr low at $160.
  • Novo Nordisk => At $45, 4% yield, $150B cap.
  • ADP => < $200, 4% yield
  • Wells Fargo (WFC) => buy at $75, yield=2.25%. buy < $70. $250B cap with $150B in tangible book value.
  • INFY => 4% yield at $13.
  • POOL => 5 yr low at $200. 2.5% div, Warren buffer owns it
  • LULU => lululemon, no debt, $20B in cap with $10B in sale and $1B in profit. buy at < $55
  • General Mills (GIS) = more indebted, at 10 yr low, dividend safer at 6%, buy @35
  • Campbell's (CPB) = less indebted, at 25 yr low, dividend risky at 7%.buy @21
  • Unilever (UL) $60 cap=$130B, buy @$50, will be at 10 yr low, with div=4%.
  • Sysco (SYY) @< $60, it's 3.5% div. $30B company, $12B in debt, -$5B tangible book value. Not so great.

 Stocks NOT worth investing:

  • VZW, ATT and other telecom: Too much debt. Not much left after paying Dividend. 
  • Bath and Body Works

 

 

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Published: Saturday, 01 March 2025 00:14
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Home Owner Association (HOA):

Wiki => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

HOAs are Associations that a bunch of homes in a neighborhood form. In homes built before 1980's, there didn't use to be associations. The only associations that existed were for "Apartment" like housing complex, where a bunch of homes shared common wall, or common roof, or common ground. Associations were necessary in such cases, since no one owned the land, instead they owned just the air space. Any maintenance work needed for the building had to be shared. So, associations were needed, where associations collected some yearly fees from Homeowners. This money pooled in was used for pay for any ongoing expenses to maintain the "Flat system community". These "flat or apartment" systems are known as "Condo" and "Townhome" in USA. "Condo" are exactly like "flats" in India, where houses are built on top of each other, generally 2 storied. Bigger cities have Buildings which have 10's of floors. "Townhome" are little better than "Condo" in the sense that each house is built on it's own land. To keep price of houses low, houses are built next to each other, where they may share a common wall on one or both sides. However, the hmeowner still doesn't own the land. All of the land in a condo/townhome is owned by the Association (HOA).

Fast forward to 2000's and now even stand alone home with their own land have associations. Infact, no builder builds houses w/o HOA anymore. If you buy any of these houses, you have to become member of HOA and  bound by the HOA rules. HOA also have yearly fees to pay for common area maintainence, etc. These HOA dues are usually $1K/year, but in some neighborhoods go as high as $5K/year. Condos/Townhomes have even higher HOA dues.

HOA Pitfalls:

HOA is a legal "GundaRaaj" in USA. There is a Board for any HOA which comprises of couple of elected homeowners. They go hire a "Management Company" which provides services for a yearly fees. These "Management Companies" take over all the power, and Board members become mere "puppets" of the Management Company. Dues start going up, services start going own. Anh how does it become a "GundaRaaj". Because there is

http://www.poliakoffoncondohoaliving.com/2011/04/enforcing-covenants-rules-and-regulations-in-condos-and-hoas-the-concepts-of-waiver-and-selective-enforcement/

If r4ule hasn't been enforced in years, it cannot be enforced.

Ask for mediation or arbitration prior to lawsuit.

http://www.dallasbar.org/sites/default/files/October%202014%20-%20HOA%20Foreclosure.pdf

Texas property code :

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.209.htm#209.007

Does the unit owner’s debt consist solely of fines? If Yes, that association can't forclose. Tex. Prop. Code §82.113(e).
=>
The association has the right to foreclose its lien judicially or by nonjudicial foreclosure pursuant to the power of sale created by this chapter or the declaration, except that the association may not foreclose a lien for assessments consisting solely of fines.
 
Sec. 209.0062.  ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT SCHEDULE FOR CERTAIN ASSESSMENTS.  (a)  A property owners' association composed of more than 14 lots shall adopt reasonable guidelines to establish an alternative payment schedule by which an owner may make partial payments to the property owners' association for delinquent regular or special assessments or any other amount owed to the association without accruing additional monetary penalties.  For purposes of this section, monetary penalties do not include reasonable costs associated with administering the payment plan or interest.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.82.htm
 
(12)  impose interest and late charges for late payments of assessments, returned check charges, and, if notice and an opportunity to be heard are given in accordance with Subsection (d), reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws, and rules of the association;
Illegal fines for delinquent dues:
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Published: Saturday, 18 January 2025 15:02
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Currency Trades:

You'll hear a lot about Currency trades too, where people bet on a pair of currencies and depending on what direction the currencies move, you make/lose money.

Currency Basics:

Currency Pair: A currency pair is the quotation of two different currencies, with the value of one currency being quoted against the other. The first listed currency of a currency pair is called the base currency, and the second currency is called the quote currency. It indicates how much of the quote currency is needed to purchase one unit of the base currency.

Ex: 80 USD/INR = 80 => This implies that 80 INR (quote currency) is needed to buy 1 USD (base currency).

The US dollar (USD) is often used as the base currency because it is considered the world's primary reserve currency. So, most FX quotes are written as USD/<Quote_currency>. The value quoted is > 1 for most currencies as you need more of the other country's currency to buy 1 USD. That makes it easy to quote, as 0.012 doesn't sound good in quoting (if quoting was done in INR/USD). Notable exceptions are USD/GBP,  USD/EURO which are slightly < 1 as of 2024.

The EUR/USD currency pair is considered the most liquid currency pair in the world. NOTE: it's not in the conventional USD/EUR form, with USD being the base currency. This is how it was done historically. The USD/JPY is the second most popular currency pair in the world.

Forex Market:

Forex market is where these currency pairs are traded.

 

Historical Currency exchange rates:

Each country prints their currency, and the exchange rates are decided by the people who exchange one currency for the other. Usually, the cost of same consumable as rice, etc determines how much is one currency valued against the other.  Exchange rate is also dependent on how much printing takes place for one currency vs the other.

Money supply is one of the key metrics that measures the amount of money in the system. M1 money supply measures highly liquid money in circulation - i.e currency, checking a/c and other liquid assets. M2 money supply is the most widely used metric for tracking money supply in any economy. It includes less liquid assets too - i.e M1 + savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts) + small-denomination time deposits (<$100,000) + balances in retail money market funds (less IRA/Keogh balances)

USA had M2 money supply inc from $300B in 1960 to $1T in 1975 and then to $22T in 2025 (M1 money supply was slightly lower at $19T in 2025). So, in 50 years from 1975-2025, M2 supply increased 22X, implying 6%-7% growth in M2 money supply. GDP is another measure of money supply, as inc in nominal GDP usually tracks the money supply closely. Nominal GDP has gone from $0.3T in 1950 to $3T in 1980, and then to $30T in 2025. So, nominal GDP has averaged around 5%-6% in the last 50 years.

So, gold or other fixed assets which can't grow in supply are expected to have their prices go up by the same amount (5%-7%) every year when measured in USD, i.eUSD is depreciating by that amount every year compared to hard currency as gold, silver, etc.

Usually countries where there's lot of money printing happening (i.e higher money supply) are the ones which depreciate against the USD, as USD M2 growth lags those of other currencies causing prices of commodities in other currencies to go up (i.e results in inflation).

USD/INR: INR is Indian rupee (Indian currency). This has historically depreciated by about 5%/yr, even though M2 money supply has avg 15% in India compared to 7% in USA (causing a 8% differential). 

USD/YEN: Yen is Japanese currency. This is about 150 as of 2025, i.e 1 USD buys 150 Japanese yen.

USD/CNY: CNY is chinese Yuan (currency of China). It has historically been around 6, as Chinese govt intervenes to support it around 6-6.5. However, as of 2025, it 's around 7.

 

 

 

 

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Published: Tuesday, 14 January 2025 01:55
Hits: 1318

Deals: Here I'll put some of the deals that are FREE or I believe are worth my money. Most of the deals will have links from slickdeals,.net and doctorofcredit.com since that is where I find the deals from wink

Most of the deals we are interested in are ones where we make free money. There are also other deals where items are on sale for a price below what it would cost to make them. Deals are listed for each year separately. Let's make some moolah !!

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Published: Saturday, 14 December 2024 17:28
Hits: 1487

Cruise:

Cruise are one of the best kept secrets. You would think, cruises cost a lot of money. The reality is totally opposite. Infact on a per day cost basis, you can find cruises for < $100/day, which is cheaper than lodging, food and transportation cost of visiting any other place.

There are 3 big Cruise Companies in US => Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise. Link below shows their revenues and how these cruise companies exploit poor countries:

Economy of Cruise ships => https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-economics-of-cruise-ships

Cruise are a great way to go to ports in Mexiso, Bahamas, etc. If you fly to these places, it will cost a ton of money. Cruises are lot cheaper with all your lodging, food and transportation taken care of.

For a cruise, you need to find out a port of departure and the port which you want to visit. Most cruises going to neighboring countries are round trip cruise. There are also 1 way cruise which take you to Europe. Those are lot more expensive, and you have to fly back on your own expense. I would adive to stick with round trip cruise. Below are top US Cruise ports of Departure

These are the top 15 cities which have cruise ports from where you can get cruises to places outside of USA => https://www.bts.gov/content/top-15-cruise-ship-ports-port-departure

The more busy a cruise port is, the more discounts you are going to find. Ports in Florida usually offer you the cheapest cruises. Top 3 spots are all taken by Florida ports (Fort Lauderdale/Miami and Port Canaveral) and account for > 50% of all cruise traffic in the US. Texas has Galveston as the only cruise port, while California has 4 ports (LA/Long Beach, San Diego and San Francisco). Lone port in NY, Seattle and New Orleans round up the top 10. I would suggest that you take a cruise from a port that you can drive too. That way you save money on plane tickets. Also, cruise trip itself is exhausting, so you don't want to get on a plane ride right after the cruise trip is done.

Ports of

 

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