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For Sale – Lightly Used Toilet Seat

soundwise — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:52:48 +0000

October 20, 2008

Dow Down – 508 points

For Sale – Lightly Used Toilet Seat

Recently when the kids went off to college we decided to upgrade their bathroom which was also being used as our guest bathroom. The toilet seat was getting a bit raggedy and had to go. But also the seat had never fit quite right around the bowl, and that had always bothered me.

So off to the Home Despot we went. And with our big orange shopping cart we navigated to the toilet seat aisle.

Wow, never knew there were so many choices in the world of toilet seats. We picked a reasonably priced white seat that seemed to be the right size and headed home.

I got on my hands and knees in front of the porcelain god and immediately had a flash back to the ugly end of a drinking binge from my Sophomore year in college. Anyway, off came the old seat and on went the new one when — guess what – nature called.

But once that was done and I stepped back to inspect my handiwork, I knew something was wrong.

It turns out that the toilet bowl, which been installed by the previous owners of our house, wasn’t a standard size. And the new seat, well not only didn’t it fit right, but it actually hung over the front edge of the toilet bowl – looking not unlike a big ugly white pelican.

Now the question becomes - what to do?

I mean, think about it, you can’t just take a toilet seat – one that’s been “broken in” so to speak – back for a refund. I could put an ad in the local recycler paper, but what would the ad copy read –“ Toilet Seat For Sale – Lightly Used”?

Do you think I’d get a lot of takers?

Somehow this made me think of the stock market.

Today stocks stink!

I mean they really stink.

Warren Buffet (whom I respect) can take out ads in the papers exhorting us to wade back in, but it rings a bit hollow like George Bush’s exhortation back in 2001 after 9/11 that the best, most patriotic thing we could do at that time was to shop!

Stocks today are like my lightly used, but ill-fitting toilet seat. They have some value, but they just don’t fit right. But the problem is most of us aren’t quite ready to return them.

So we sit on them and just keep on flushing…

Which leads me to today’s survival tip.

At your service,

Marc

Concise Advice to Help You Thrive in Challenging Times

Survival Tip #4

Stop Flushing Your Money Away – Use Stops

I have to tell you that I avoided a potentially much larger loss in our retirement and college accounts this year (and last year as well) by using stops.

What are stops?

Investorwords.com defines a Stop Order as “A market order to buy or sell a certain quantity of a certain security if a specified price (the stop price) is reached or passed.”

There are two kinds of stops – what I call “in the market” stops and “out of the market” stops. An “in the market” stop means I’ve instructed my broker or keyed in a stop loss price in my online trading account that is entered into the market that publicly states I’m willing to sell X shares of Y Company if the prices falls to or below Y dollars.

All well and good you might say. This is cheap protection.

But since my stop loss order is actually in the market, the market meanies can manipulate the price of that stock during intraday trading to take me out – in other words, force me to sell my position at an artificially lowered price. And then guess what, the price goes back up above my stop. Ouch!

That’s why I like “out of the market” stops. But then if these stops are out of the market – in other words not entered as standing sell orders – then how can you protect yourself?

I use a service called Trade Stops I enter in my purchase price, and how much I’m willing to let the stock go down before I want to sell it. It could be 20% off its high since I bought it or 15% off my purchase price. How much risk you want to take is up to you. Then I get an email alert at the end of any trading day that any position of mine has hit its stop loss price.

If it does hit my stop loss price I do not sell it immediately on the opening bell the next day. Instead I have a rule (a hard learned trading rule). I wait 24 hours. I wait until the next trading day to see if the stock continues its fall or if it corrects itself.

If it keeps falling I sell. No questions, no attachments, just goodbye.

Anytime, I fail to do this, I regret it.

This means that when my stock in Wachovia Bank, which I bought at $44, fell 20% from its high of $54, I sold it 24 hours later and got $44 for it. (It’s now at $6, having cratered to just over $1 in recent intraday trading.)

This trade stop stuff has saved my butt big time.

And in today’s volatile Wall STreet environment, the good news is you won’t have to watch your positions all day (it will just make you crazy anyway – trust me). You can let Trade Stops do the work for you and then in the quiet of the night you can make a rational decision, based on the hard facts, about what to do next.

Sleep well.

www.tradestops.com

Why are the Financial Markets Like the International Drug Cartel?

soundwise — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:32:28 +0000

October 7, 2008

Dow Down – 508 points

Why are the Financial Markets like the International Drug Cartel?

When things are as strange as they are these days in the financial markets with the guillotine of fear chopping the heads off of many peoples’ nest eggs, I tend to look for analogies to help me make sense of events.

I was reading an article about the upsurge of violence in certain Mexican towns, noting that the violence, including a bomb blast at a wedding, was widely blamed on the drug cartel.

And as repugnant as these violent crimes are, I noted a strange similarity to current events in the financial markets.

Here’s how my twisted thinking goes…

Like the drug trade, the financial meltdown occurring worldwide is not the result of a single manipulator (sorry global conspiracy fans!). And in my analogy, drugs just don’t show up on the streets of LA by themselves. In fact, it seems that the drug trade is the result of scores or even hundreds or immoral and illegal actions by a large number individuals, starting from the coca farmer in the hills of the Andes to the corrupt customs agent, to the mule who carries the drugs, to the lab owner, managers, runners, enforcers, paid off cops, money launderers, all the way to the thousands of dealers on the street.

Now, how is this like the financial crisis?

Last week after dropping my son off for first his first year at the University of California in Santa Cruz, my wife and I were having brunch with our CPA who also happened to be in town at the same time. As our CPA is also a mortgage broker, real estate agent and registered securities broker, she has some strong views on the subject. While sharing with us the pressure she saw being put on appraisers by brokers to falsify home values, a guy at a nearby table piped up. Honestly, he looked like another Santa Cruz neo-hippie kid. But when he opened his mouth I knew I was wrong.

Turns out he’d been with a big Bay Area real estate firm and had seen first-hand, appraisers and other front line folks in the real estate business being strong armed by lenders and mortgage brokers to lie about the values of homes that they were appraising. If they didn’t go along, they’d be, in effect, black listed and wouldn’t get any more work. As a result he resigned from his job.

And he agreed wholeheartedly that a corrupt chain of individual decisions from the front door of new construction homes led all the way to wall street and beyond to banks and financial institutions around the world.

The old news about drug dealers is that the little fish always get caught, but the big fish are slippery and hard to fry.

While I seriously doubt that the US government would ever bail out the international drug cartel, I’m not sure why our government should be using our tax dollars to let the big fish off the hook in the financial mess. Unlike the drug cartels, the financial world is supposed to have been regulated.

But crooks will be crooks. And like the drug cartel they find ways to corrupt officials ignore laws and evade investigators.

The drug cartels have an advantage though, their business still gushes cash. And the down economy hastened by the failure of our financial institutions is more likely than not to provide them with a surge of new customers.

At your service,

Marc

Your Ultimate Survival Guide to Help You Thrive in Challenging Times

Survival Tip #3

Hang up on your phone company.

The belt tightening felt around the world hit our household last month. My wife went back to work and I started looking for ways to cut costs around the house.

We reviewed our monthly expenses and discovered an amazing money saving opportunity that I want to share with you.

For several years, we have had our home phone service provided by Verizon and our cable and internet service from Time Warner. An offer from Time Warner to take advantage of new digital phone service had been ignored by us for a few months because we’d heard of some bad experiences of friends in and out of state about its quality.

But then we ran the numbers.

By reducing the number of cable channels we received and adding digital phone service, we could save almost $1000 dollars a year!

I’m not kidding – a grand a year.

Digital phone service, including unlimited in state and US calling plus the basic cable package and high speed internet was $99 a month. And we got to keep our existing phone number. We were paying $60 a month for unlimited phone service with Verizon, plus the bigger cable package and internet was $114 by itself.

In one fell swoop, we put almost $1000 back in our pocket.

Granted, the $99 rate is a 12 month teaser, but it only goes up to $114 for the same service at the end of the first year.

We also gave back a second cable box to save another $9 a month. Afterwards, I hooked the office TV directly to the cable line and guess what — we still get 25 channels on it.

Go figure.

And how do we like digital phone service?

I honestly can’t tell the difference…except in my checkbook!

How Change Happens on this Planet

soundwise — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:17:33 +0000

October 3, 2008

Dow down – 157

How Change Happens on This Planet…

With things swinging wildly in our financial markets these days I thought it might be valuable to take a look at how change occurs in our species.

My 19-year-old daughter, Allie called me from school recently during her freshman year in college. Normally a very optimistic and positive person, she was really down, having spent most of a semester studying American foreign policy, race relations and environmental issues. Her bubbly demeanor was replaced with deep sighs as she listed America’s checkered relations with the rest of the world, our internal divisions and the litany of cruelties and atrocities that we humans have committed against one another and the environment over the past hundred years. “Why are we doing this to ourselves, to our planet,” she moaned, “and can it ever change?”

Everyone should have a daughter in college.

Why?

Because you get to enjoy (if only vicariously) a bit of the excitement and freedom of a time of pure inquiry (however short it may last); and second, because phone calls like this force you to re-examine your beliefs about the world and how it works. At least it did for me.

As our dialogue unfolded, it came into my mind that there are three main ways that change occurs on this planet for our species.

The first is through coercion.

Under pressure of financial loss or bodily harm, people will bend to the will of others. And clearly for much of the last century might has been used to reshape the globe. But coercion is a lousy change agent. No one who has been forced to do something against his or her will continues to do so once the threat is gone. So to create lasting change, coercion just doesn’t cut it.

The second way change occurs is through pain.

Pain is perhaps the most powerful change agent for our species. Whether it’s individual pain like burning your hand on the stove, relationship pain such as being dumped by a lover, or societal pain like theater fires, plane crashes or economic depressions, when the pain gets strong enough, we change. We change our habits, change spouses, change elected officials, make new laws and regulations, innovations and enhancements, all with the goal of avoiding future pain.

The $700 billion bailout of the financial industry is a good example of the combination of pain and coercion. Most don’t want it but the pain was so great (and the future potential pain so unpalatable) that we capitulated.

But there is a third and vastly underrated way that we as a species make change on this planet. And that is through hope. Hope is one of the defining aspects of the human character. As Victor Frankl pointed out in his landmark work Man’s Search For Meaning, even in of one of the worst of all human-created hells, the Nazi concentration camps, there was hope.

Hope is an expectation for improvement in one’s individual or collective condition. It can be completely unfounded. It can be both irrational and utterly realistic. Hope can be based on faith in something greater, wiser or more compassionate than us or it can be pulled up from the depths of an individual’s own heart and soul.

As a Buddhist [link to www.sgi-usa.org] , I believe in the limitless power of hope. The sun will rise again tomorrow. With each moment, each day, I can create a different future. The Buddha teaches in the Lotus Sutra that, if you want to know what happened in the past, look at the results you are receiving today. And if you want to know what will happen in the future, look at the causes you are making now. Through the engine of hope can come new actions, and through those hope-filled actions, a new future.

The dialogue with my daughter became lighter – which also is a function of hope. She told me that she and many of her fellow students feel a great sense of mission to bring positive change to people and to the planet. She and her youthful colleagues around the globe are realizing that coercion and pain are not the kinds change agents called for in this decisive moment in human history.

Maybe there’s still hope for hope.

At your service,

Marc

YOUR ULTIMATE SURVIVAL GUIDE

How to thrive in challenging times.

#2 Do More With Less

Among my many business responsibilities, I’ve been a professional negotiator for over 20 years. I’ve made deals with everyone from Hollywood studios to Major League Baseball. I’ve negotiated contracts and deals worth at least $50 million.

So I know how to help you get the best deal.

And nowadays, you need to know that retail is for suckers.

Ok, let’s get started. You want to buy something and you don’t want to pay the price at which that item is being offered to you. So you have some choices. You can:

a) walk away discouraged

b) pay the money and grumble

c) pay the price you want.

Getting what you want in any transaction is the science and art of negotiation. It means knowing what you want – the terms, the features, the extras, the service warrantee. And it means knowing what you’re willing to pay for it – before you open your mouth.

SECRET #1 — ASK, ASK, ASK!!!

If you learn only one thing from me today, this is it. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. And what’s the worst that can happen? They say “no.” But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So why don’t people ask?

Here’s the rub – we get embarrassed. We think – “Neiman Marcus is a big store. Their prices are fixed” – Baloney! “I don’t want to look like a cheapskate” – fine, pay full price and feel ripped off. “I’ll feel stupid if they don’t give me a break”—you’d be more stupid not to at least ask.

Ask, Ask, Ask!

What should you ask for?

SECRET #2 — Ask for A Discount. Tell them you’re a good customer and you want to know if you qualify for any discount or upgrade. This one works great with car rental companies and hotels.

SECRET #3 — Ask for A Freebie. If they won’t give you a discount, ask for a freebie. Will they throw is two pairs of sox with those expensive pants or a tie with that expensive jacket? You’d be surprised what you can get buy asking for a freebie. How about meal coupons with your hotel room? Or a free desert for your table at a pricey restaurant? How about free gutters with the big roof job?

What’s the worst thing that could happen – they could say “no.” Big farking deal. Don’t take it personally.

And remember when you get a bone, always, always, thank the salesperson, waiter, reservation clerk. And if you can leave a tip, tip like you mean it. Because when you come back, they’ll remember.

For dozens more great money saving and negotiating tips that could save you hundreds, even thousands of $$$, click here for my FREE report – Pay Less For Everything!

Welcome to our world

soundwise — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:02:08 +0000

Monday 9/29/08

Dow down -777 points.

I just couldn’t sit on my butt anymore and watch things keep going this way. I wanted to create a resource that could help you find just what you need, when you need it, from many of the world’s top business, lifestyle and personal growth experts.

That’s why I created SoundWise. And I think it’s going to be even more valuable to you than I ever anticipated.

You see, when I created SoundWise over a year ago times were quite different. The Dow had cracked 14,000, gas was at under $3 bucks a gallon and everyone was using their house as an ATM machine to buy another boat or motorcycle, or even another house.

What a difference a year makes…

With today’s uncertainty. Wait a sec, let’s be real, things are not uncertain, they’re bad and getting worse. Even a new president will have little ability to turn this ugly, rotten battleship around in only 4 years.

If this is really the case, then you and I need help.

That’s why I put together over 100 of the top experts in one easy to use service. I’m talking about the best business, marketing, sales, communication, investing, money saving, job saving, stress reduction, and relationship expert advisors. And you can check them out any time at www.soundwiseonline.com

Don’t get me wrong. I love our country and I think it has huge potential. But today’s meltdown on Wall Street is not an isolated event. its’ the result of years of screwed up mismanagement of the economy – the monetary economy and the human economy. I know we can do better than this.

I’m going to use this blog to provide some basic survival tips for the times ahead. As an investor, seeker, father, businessman, entrepreneur, writer and Buddhist, I’ll have some unique tips for you. And I’ll be you’ll have some great ones to share as well.

we can get through this. In fact, we can turn (as Buddhists say) poison into medicine.

We’re gonna need to — and soon.

At your service,

Marc

YOUR ULTIMATE SURVIVAL GUIDE

How to thrive in challenging times.

#1 Buy some gold.

Yes, the physical, glinting, clinking stuff.

This is our safe harbor in challenging times.

Not collector coins. You want gold coins that are bought and sold for their melt value – Krugerands, Austrian Philharmonic, Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins. We want them for weight and purity, not beauty.

Buy from legitimate coin dealers. Demand is growing so many dealers are experiencing shortages.

The US Mint was issuing new gold coins like the American Gold Eagle and Buffalo, but they’re now really backed up and are delaying shipments. But there are plenty of good coins around.

Why do we want to actually own physical gold?

Well, it depends on your situation, your level of trust in the government, and your level of trust in the US dollar. If you think the government will solve all the financial mess…if you think the government will prop up the value of the dollar…if you think the position of the US on the world stage will improve…if you think things will get better rather than worse…then gold coins are probably not for you.

But if you are less confident, gold makes a time honored hedge.

Find a reputable dealer and Just buy one gold coin.

Look at it. Hold it in your hand. And then put it in a safe place.

What is “safe” these days is up to each person to determine.

Personally, I keep my stuff in a bank safety deposit box. But I know some folks who are back to burying a coffee can in their garden – seriously.

Go buy yourself some gold.