OG_LOU responded so something I said about investing.
I thought that would be a good topic to chill on.


Lou, I am unfamiliar with those tools, but I will look at them.

I am not an individual investment advisor. I consult to companies: family to gigantic, strategic consulting, technical assessments of new ventures, project management involving lots of technology, market analysis and product development, including Wall Street firms.

But I love reading and discussing all kinds of investments, not just what I do or have done for myself. I am actively trying to catch up on some of the latest online tools that I might have missed because they were offered by some broker I was not using.

Maybe the lesson there is to use multiple brokers today, in order to be kept aware of different tools and opinions.

Retread, thanks for the reply and the information about wour pprofessional skills
The link to http://www.betterinvesting.org/public/default.htm is one program that encourages looking for companies that have a track record of good earnings and that develop enough new products or have popular products that would be difficult for start-up companies to make and drain away their business. Morning Star financial publications calls the good products that other companies would have a difficult time replicating and taking away business as �Wide Moats.� The Better Investing program tries to get club members to look at companies from a vantage point of how do all the boring numbers stack up and not what might become a popular product but has little earnings. Cabella�s the sporting goods store is an interesting company but their bottom line earnings are lower than other similar companies.

Some libraries have the "Better Investing" Magazine on their racks. I think it cost $29/yr (mag only) or $79/yr with the data service.

Evaluating companies can be done by hand with a lot of research, reading and hand data entry or with the aid of software (see website for prices) http://www.iclub.com/products/default.asp and a data subscription service ($79/YR).

I use the �Stock Selection Guide (SSG) program in the Tool Kit 6 package. There is a 30 free trial offer on the ICLUB website if you want to play with the software packages they sell. I bought some of my software used from eBay but it is rarely solld so I had to keep looking till someone was selling their programs.

I tried American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) http://www.aaii.com/ for a year at the same time I was using the SSG/ToolKit software but never connected with anyone locally so we could help each other out. There is some value being in a group, both educational and motivational.

Also trying to use both programs and websites to ICLUB Better Investing and AAII was a bit time consuming, so I stuck with Better Investing and the corresponding ICLUB software. �Club Accounting 3� (CA3) is another ICLUB software package I use for club purposes.

Lou

I will go look at those resources you are using and get back to you.

Do you invest in one sector, or use software with a set of parameters to comb 10,000 stocks and come up with a hot list for you to watch?

Do you track Cabela's, Sportsman's Warehouse, [censored]'s Sports, Gander Mountain, etc? How about other retail that are larger and more direct competition, like Belk, Dillards, Kohl, Ross, Federated, etc?

blech, I thought this was a thread about bad weather, but it's booooring

The weather is boring... more predictable.

No, sector only investing is a no-no rule from Better Investing (BI) everything I have read or from everyone I talk to in the investment field. A couple of local people had most of their retirement $$ in a few stocks and those companies were cooking the books. The companies stock went to zero and now these people have almost nothing in their retirement account.


There a set of suggestions in the BI program but no set numbers because sectors and company size influences what range a set of numbers will actually be. Wall Mart will have a different set of numbers because of its size if compared to Target.


We look at a few numbers from some of those companies if someone in the club brings it up at a meeting. If someone does a SSG with all of the numbers, a couple of the members will comment on some of the percentages and why the company is a good consideration or why some other company might be a better stock.


Lists are generated from readings, the BI magazine has lists that pass as potential selections to buy or sell and they do more research and number crunching than the average BI member.

The BI magazine tracks other clubs interests and puts SSGs in the magazine and on line for the people that pay the membership fee. Some BI.com information is free all the time or free for 30 days.


We look at those companies but try to have a balanced portfolio, no more than 15% to 20% in one sector. I said try. Sometimes we over buy/sell in one sector. I am guilty of that in my own investments. Sometimes one stock goes way up and then my sector balance is heavy in that area. Other times a company gets in trouble/cooks the books and by the time I do something, the stock is down so much it feels like I am screwed anyway if I sell now and maybe the company can stage a comeback.

The women in the group like retailers. When they go up everything is fine. Some retailers depend on trends of what people buy. Shoes seem to be the fastest thing to go up and a short while later another shoe is trendy and our holdings drop like a discarded shoe, but the women still like the physical shoe/purse, and want to hang on to the stock. Sometimes we buy near the top of the up trend and wait a little too long to sell. We did that with Crocs shoes (CROX) and Coach purse (COH) stocks. We lost money on Crocs and made some money on Coach.

What has worked well long term is (SYK) Stryker, the medical device company. Consistent growth in sales, new products and old reliable products where the demand increases each year, the company controls their costs well and has a decent research and development budget and department. They buy other companies that have related products, so that helps in their growth dept.

Star Bucks (SBUX) used to be a good holding but their business model is easy to duplicate on a local level. We sold it when the price dropped significantly but still made money. We had Harley Davidson (HOG)for a while and made some money but saw their sales eroding, their expenses going up, saw dealers were over stocked and the company was trying to compete in some bare-bones profit markets, so we sold HOG

My biggest fault so far is to hang on to a stock, hoping the down swing in share price is the typical market�s over reaction and that a stock issue will gradually go up in price.

I have found a lot of people can pick a decent stock but they hang on way too long when the share price drops. Guilty as charged.

I don�t day-trade and sometimes only look at the exchange ticker prices every couple of weeks. If a stock issue crashes I sometimes find out about the crash a week after it happened, and most of the time it feels too late to do anything constructive.

Lou

I see a trend here...

If I can't set a realistic top and bottom band, I figure that I don't know enough to buy, yet. It may be past time to buy, but I don't know enough if I cannot have some reasons in advance why it would go below the bottom threshold, or above my upper expectation. Then I set a stop-loss sell order on what I buy, to get me out. Likewise, I will set a selling price, and this I may adjust, but only a small bit. Better to get called out early with less than maximum profits than to miss the top and then try to guess when to jump off the roller coaster on the way down.

The stop loss order makes sense. I want the club to implement a "Stop Loss" on the tech stocks we have but no one else agrees with me.

The BI premise is that if a company is good and well managed, even a big dip in share price should recover. Having a stop loss, especially if set to low a percentage (5% to 8%), whip saw takes place and the investor is in and out (too many trades) too often, with commissions eating up most gains.

Investor�s Business Daily (IBD) advises share holders to have "stop loss" orders on all shares owned. IBD basically said a 50% loss of a $10 stock requires a now $5 stock to have a 100% gain just to break even. I sort of agree with IBD. I don�t remember the percentages IBD advises, but it was somewhere around 8% to 12% for most stocks and lower for stocks with large capitalizations.

Re a realistic top and bottom band BI also suggest that but doesn�t push the concept, at least not in the people I interact with. They mostly go along if the company/stock was good in the past, it is most likely some in-favor, out of favor thing more with the investors than something wrong with the company business and stock shares, so ride it out.

I personally look at websites like MSN money, Yahoo finance, and Scottrade and played with different charts with bands, but I didn�t really learn how to use many of the options.

Part of the SSG could be used to set high and low limits but no one I know is talking about that concept a great deal and selling is more a �flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants� method than anything statistically based. BI is primarily fundamentals based. I bring �S&P vs. a stock� charts to our meetings but that is a simple comparison and if I get too involved/technical I lose almost everyone else and sometimes I doubt my own expertise in this area so mostly stick to what I now to be real.

Because you advise companies, do you have any firsthand information on some good products that are likely to be money-makers? I don�t want you to violate any of your business contracts.

One of the problems most little investors have is jumping on seemingly good products that catch on but not with enough people or products almost any small company can manufacture and the clone products come on to the market within 6 months at a much reduced retail price. Can I say Crocs.

The original type Crocks sold for $30 to $40. Clones were $7 or less in a few years. Of course what counts is the profit mgf. earns when it sells to its distribution chain. $30 / $40 leaves a larger profit margin potential than selling at $7.

Lou

You can't use an arbitrary 8% to 12% pullback as the trigger for the stop-loss on some stocks, like explosive ones with super long-term fundamentals, but a lot of volatility because they are new, thinly traded, etc. For example, if you know a large fund holds a large block of a small stock, and that fund has trigger to sell of at 8% down, they are going to drive the market down 15 or 20%, and wash you out. Then the stock is held tighter by new owners and it climbs back up. The only way you will come out ahead is if you time the bottom and buy it low enough to cover your loss and your first two of your three commissions... better to stay in and ride it back up, or to have not gotten it when it was that volatile.

I used to do a lot of R&D of telecom and medical products, and would have to sign all these agreements to not trade in a gazillion stocks, many unnamed but covered with CYA clauses like, "anyone doing business with ____". For the last 4 years, I have had one huge client, European and privately held, and a few small companies here, with just one or two new products under development, and not public stock.

I like medical devices, because I have worked on launching a variety of them, and understand them. I like to invest in businesses I understand, and companies I know are first preference. The big question mark is the $20 billion annual tax on medical devices in the so-called "Affordable Health Care Act". In the short term, the costs will be passed on to the consumers (us patients), so the companies will just mark it up. In the not-so-long term, the government is going to ration care and deny diagnostic tests. We already see these studies saying that women don't need mammograms, and men don't need PSA tests, before age 50. A PSA test kit costs $8.00. The whole test is less than $40.00 at a specialist's office. Go look at how many men end up with prostate cancer in their 40s, and their late 30s. Same for women with breast cancer.

I have just had my head down so much working on my two projects that I have not looked at anything else. Friends of mine who live off their investments are extracting everything out right now. But they aren't putting it in the banks, who pay nothing for CDs. And the banks aren't lending to businesses.

I'm going to reread this tomorrow after a good night's sleep.

Well, they are putting it somewhere, and where might that be?

I would like to hear your strategy for determining hi sell signals and stop loss signals. I know different stock issues require different numbers or percentages. Web links would be great, it saves typing.


OK, stocks equal risk and from what I read some stocks are a hedge against inflation because as inflation goes up, so do most stock prices.

Diversification is what I frequently read is what the prudent investor needs to do. I have cash equivalent to live on for XX months, a few municipal bonds and utilities or high dividend shares of stock for income and a few capital appreciation stocks with good products that have universal demand.

Gold? I don�t follow it so don�t invest in it. It seems over priced if one looks at the long term prices over the last 50 to 100 years. I have some platinum-palladium shares (diversification ).

I have been reading about several other rare metals used in electronics and batteries. Supposedly, some of these rare metals are in short supply or will be in short supply but I haven�t invested any $$$ because the related companies are mostly new. New companies are full of risks but a few do make it big. I play on the tried and true side so miss out on the big wins but I also avoid the risky losers.

Lou

Where investors putting their cash as they sell out of stocks?
Most of them are keeping cash.

$14.5 Trillion left the stock markets before the 2008 election.
Some of it went back in and made profits on the rebound.
Most is still in cash, gold, or something else.

Pension plans and 401-plans are not pumping money into the markets every week, like they were from 2001-2007. Half of the Fortune 500 companies dropped their employer contributions in 2009. More are doing it this year.

As for how to determine the stop loss price, it varies according to the stock. If you were holding CROX way at the top, I would say sell on a 5% pullback. If you bought it at the very bottom, and were riding it up in 2009, you would not have as much in it. A 5% trigger would have bailed you out when it plateaued for a while, before gaining another 150% on your small price. So the 8% to 13% rule would have kept you in.

You have to look at a lot of things: the fundamental business model, management, sales growth, gross profit margins.

Crocs are were a fad, cute but way overpriced. I don't think they are a $30 shoe. Maybe a $10.00 shoe. Can they make money at $10.00? Can their patent and other lawsuits beat down the shameless clones of lesser quality? Can they expand their product line, and become a brand that can compete with direct competitors that have broad product lines and products that are not copies, like Sketchers?

Would you rather own a company with a 25% gross margin on something people think is cute, or a 70% margin on something people need, like a patented medical device?

Give me the 70% margin on something people need, like a patented medical device.

Lou

Me, too, give me 70% margin and 17% sales growth for the longer run. Tell me what you think of AMMD.

But there is nothing wrong with making a play on Crocs bouncing back. I wish I had been paying attention and bought it at the bottom for a 500% return. That's like an naked option play but actually owning the stock. It's a gamble. There were so many of those in 2009; just think of some of the bank stocks, down from 60 to 2 or 3.

This would be so much easier if the politicians weren't making so many destructive choices. Oh, well, chaos creates opportunities, as long as they don't kill us first.

EU breaking up
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/financ...m-brings-british-withdrawal-ever-closer/

Investigating AMMD, I found a link to http://blog.ycharts.com/ and some more interesting information.

I have customer work to do today so I will have to look at AMMD at a later time but the profit margins impressed me. I haven't look at AMMD's expenses. I did notice the current price in near the 52 week high. I was surprised the EPS was so low compared to the gross profit margin, which means the company has a lot of expenses.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ammd

Euro Latest (17 May 2010): EUR 1 = USD 1.2349 -0.0143 (-1.1%)
http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html

Lou

OG, the low earnings are a question I have, too. Their cash is about 1/10 of their annual sales. But I am not familiar with their financials. I know what they do from other medical projects, and they just popped up on a screening I ran because of their pretty good PEG ratio. Like you, I think they are back near their high, and I don't feel like paying more than the low end of the long-term trend, which is 18 by technical analysis. It is now over 22.

The PEG ration for ANND according to Yahoo is 1.47. I thought that was a bit high. . Yahoo has the industry PEG at 1.28. OTH PFE has a 2.88 PEG.

Online definitions say 1.0 is considered �fair priced� and anything below a 1.0 was heading toward being a bargain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEG_ratio


I did an SSG evaluation chart on AMMD and liked the sales chart.
The earnings increases were good but better in the past. The share prices (52 W hi/lows) have been going sideways since 2004 and at almost their high for the past 52 weeks.
I did a max Hi price forecasted share price based on a hi PE 27.6 and hi earnings of 1.41 and came up with a hi stock price of 38.90.
Next I did a minimum low forecasted share price based on some low PE of 12.1 and low earnings of .90 and came up with a low stock price of 10.90

For my PE estimates, I eliminated the hi and low year PE�s 2005-2006-2007. My software can go back 10 years but defaults to five years worth of PEs. The instructions in the manual suggest eliminating any outliers and any years not likely to happen again, that is why I eliminated the 2005 to 2007 PE. A hi PE of 71.2 and a low PE of 45.2 is nose bleed territory for me. Some stocks become chased after because the marked is overly optimistic and has lots of cash. The cash might be there but I think the optimism is gone, so I don�t the PEs will ever get that high for this stock again.


Some SSG information in PDF
http://stockherd.com/mic/files/ssg/scrx_2007-08-21.pdf
http://www.crmic.org/syk.pdf

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Understanding_the_NAIC_Stock_Selection_Guide
http://biwiki.editme.com/SSR
http://biwiki.editme.com/files/SSR/ssg-report%20pages%203%20&%204.1.1.pdf

XLS spreadsheet
http://www.edocfind.com/download/xl...xzL2FyY2hpdmUvdHNzdzguMy9UU1NXOC4zLnhscw
http://www.edocfind.com/en/xls/Stock%20Selection%20Guide%20SSG%20Excel%20template-1.html

On-Line free SSG tool/demo/limited symbols
http://tools.betterinvesting.org/stockanalysis/stockselector.aspx use TEVA as the stock symbol

NASDAQ Welcomes the BetterInvesting 100 Index, symbol BIXX
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=%5EBIXX+Components


I have about 100 completed SSGs in PDF format I could send you if I had a way to do it.

Lou

Thanks, OG. I am going to read all your links.
I set up an anonymous email for sharing a few things with some MB posters, but have never received anything. I need to check it more often, and get you to test sending a few PDF at a time to see if it works okay.

Some forums have private messaging, something like private e-mail. I don't know what MB offers. I have a hot mail account set up just like my screen name, including the underline between OG and Lou. I check it, but not often, so say something if you send me anything.

Lou

For this forum, I set up
mbretread@yahoo.com

i sent several medical related SSG in PDF format.

These SSGs are done by individuals or small groups of individuals and reflect their opinion and what they learned (limited to extensive) concerning the SSG software.

Once some SSG are gone through and finalized there is another portfolio evaluation sheet where a summation of the SSGs are placed to compare different stocks.
http://biwiki.editme.com/PERT
http://bob-adams.net/Documents/Putting%20it%20all%20Together%202ppColor.pdf


Other clubs
http://www.naicspace.org/index.htm

Thanks! I will look at them later. I have been working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the last month. Good thing it it 95% in my office at home, so I can take a break, help out with chores, and not waste time driving to a client site.

Take your time. I just wanted to show you what some members do with the "Tool Kit 5-TK-5 (discontinued) and TK-6 software.

I didn't want to claim this process is great, beats everything else, but that TK-5 or TK-6 is a tool to be considered unless one finds something better.

Lou

Lou,
I did some looking at what you sent and posted.
Next is playing with their online software tools.
I don't want one of these complex trading tools, because I am not a day trader. I don't have time to keep up with that. But I do invest for the short term, take a profit, and get out.

I am trying to find simple tools that will screen stocks based on my (or other smarter analysts) methods and criteria, then let me start tracking them against expectations, set alerts for buy-in points (not just price), and alerts for sell-out points (not just stop loss price).

Years ago, I was working for a very large firm and went to a Christmas party attended by a bunch of heavy investors in this firm. I got into a conversation with a broker who had made fortunes for their clients in this firm and other biotech and technology in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He told me to come by his office and get a book, which I did. It was self-published, "typeset" on an IBM typewriter, with examples out of date, but the evaluations were great. I was so out of the look for the next 15 years that I never tracked this author. His book was picked up by Dow Jones, he was hired as a columnist for Forbes, and he grew his personal nest egg of a few thousand dollars into more than $2 billion. His name is Kenneth Fisher, and the book is "Super Stocks".

http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=Fisher

I looked online for some of Fisher's books.

Lou

Fisher's methods of valuation are used by a lot of people today, but they have just become another ratio or two in the mix of ratios. It is like reducing the ideas of Sigmund Freud on a subject to one sentence, or HNHN and the LB books to a 3x5 notecard. It's fine for the person who has read and understood the entire program, but the person who just has the 3x5 card is kidding themselves to think they have all they need to know.

Another thing about really great investors seems to be that they had mentors. They come from a line of thought, of knowledge passed down by working for someone great. Then they go off and develop their own ideas, like Warren Buffet, or Ken Fisher or Charles Schwab, or Peter Lynch have done.

I read one big book about buffet's mentor.

On another note I got an email from the moderators to not post links to other marriage type websites.

Lou

I looked at all those analytical sheets you sent me, but only briefly. My first impression is that they use enough factors to be generally useful, but I think you have to use different analytical methods for different industries, and even different methods within a sector, based on what the condition of the company is - size, age, growth strategy, etc.

Right now, I am looking for a tool that will let me set up different screens across an entire market (NYSE, NASDAQ, etc).
Then, once I find a portfolio to watch based on several major criteria, I would customize the analysis further for each individual company, or a set of few similar ones, to see if they behave as expected, and dip into a BUY range. In 2009, there were a lot of opportunities to make 300% and 400% returns. I was just too consumed winding down large projects put on ice because of the FUD created by Washington, and I missed most of them, even ones I knew about, but just didn't bother to make the buy in. That was not smart. There will be a lot of opportunities in 2010 and 2011, but right now the investors seem to be selling off and the traders moving in.

Right now, my business is such transition due to the destruction of so many sectors in which I work. I am trying to redirect my efforts into multiple small markets by developing new products to fill an unmet demand.

My second strategy is to revisit industries where I once had a large consulting practice when my expertise was uncommon and highly paid. As I educated my clients, they no longer needed me. That was expected and I planned for it. Now, the crazies in Washington have created chaos. My clients don't know how to handle the abnormal. Their knowledge base is fine for incremental improvement, but unsuited to creative solutions to a rapidly changing set of challenges, essentially where they were when they retained me 20 or 25 years ago.

All this has me working 12 hours a day, 6 and 7 days a week, but I am twice as efficient as I was 20 years ago. I am trying to allocate 30 minutes a day to researching screening tools.

Not just talking to LOU, but asking everyone else: how about real estate in this market? I got started 35 years ago investing in old houses in a once-nice Victorian neighborhood, because they were affordable. I could pay cash for one with about 1/4 of my annual income.

I am thinking this market, while terrible for some investors heavily leveraged in existing properties, could be a gold mine for investors making new purchases of older properties to fix up and sell or to rent. I enjoy doing that work, and am still young and fit enough to do all of it, so I am thinking of getting back into it.

Real estate depends so much on the local market and location. I would have a difficult time speculating on real estate even in my area.

What I know it is down a little but only after a 100% or more run-ups. Several fulltime business men and women are working just the "fixer up" market and buy most of the distressed properties.

I have real estate companies as customers and they get calls several times a week from people looking for deals and fixer-uppers. Before I would do something similar, I would want to know more about my potential competition and actually how many distressed properties were usually available in a year.

I can do the repair, modernization work on older houses but the how much to pay and spend, the people skills, making connections, and deals is where I fall short.

Lou

I am like you, LOU. I have had my hand out of buying houses and rental properties for so long that I would have to study it. There are surely some deals, but with more than 6,000,000 homes in foreclosure, the prices could be coming down further.

Also, I am afraid to own anything that the government can see, because they will try to grab it. Property taxes are going up, and all taxes are going up to keep government running at pre-recession levels.

I didn't know there were 6 million homes in foreclosures.

Property taxes? I pay 4X more property taxes than when I bought my house. If my house was in the better part of town instead of out in the country, my property taxes would double. People in my area have turned down increases in the school levies for about 8 years. Finally one of the 4 school building maintenance levies passed.

I feel sorry for the retired people that have a home in a U.S. resort town or high demand area that have to pay $1,000 a month in taxes.

Lou

The news media doesn't report that there are more bank failures in 2010 than in 2009, double the foreclosures, 1 in 6 homes in payment arrears, which is not surprising with 20.7% unemployment.

The liberals in Congress are still pushing for amnesty for 30,000,000 illegal aliens. They want to bring in another 30,000 low-salary contract IT workers from overseas, because big industry tells them there is a shortage. How do they explain the 290,000 degreed U.S. IT workers who are laid off?

Home sales fell another 2.7% last month. Starting salaries for college grads are down 34% from 2007. How are they going to buy a car, much less a home?

I have an IT friend that has been laid off for over 6 months. He has only had a few interviews that were close in pay and benefits to his old job.

I am glad to see Arizona is not backing down on their ID checks.

You are right In your above post. If I had to start over and go back to being 24 again, I couldn't afford a house half of the size I have now and it is 1,300 sq ft on the main floor with a simple basement.

Lou

Lou,
I am a member of the AEA, American Engineering Association, which has for years had experts, like professors at business schools (Stanford, UCLA) studying and tracking the impact of public policy on engineering jobs. They testify before Congress, but those politicians only listen to the "donations" paid to them by the big technical firms.

There are 300,000 legal foreign H1B IT workers in the US right now, and another 500,000 workings illegally ( like on a student visa but working cheap instead of going to college). There are 290,000 degreed US citizens who have much better skills, laid off and out of work. That's no coincidence. It is intentional. And this is just one sector. Is it any wonder there is no recovery.

On May 1, this level of unemployment set a record for the worst 27 weeks in history. That record has been broken every week since then. Last week, Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits, but began funding supper at public schools. If the parents had jobs, the children wouldn't need to be fed at school

It's been three months for me, now. Not one interview. Several rejections, however.

I'm staying sane by working like the dickens to help get a startup off the ground. No paycheck, no health benefits, but some cool technology and the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people.

When the savings start running out, THEN I'll panic.

Fred,
If you feel like it, email at my MB address.
I have designed and run projects in everything from embedded real-time to Wall Street trading, all over the USA. You can keep it confidential and anonymous. Just what you want to do, what you are good at doing, and the location is all I need. I might not be able to help, but I'll try.

mbretread@yahoo.com

Fred, if you are a writer or programmer I can direct you to a website that you can use those skills on.

The site takes 10% of what you are paid, but I consider that fair.

Thanks, KR. I last made a programming living writing COBOL. Today's computer languages make me "C sick."

Back then, writing efficient, well-documented code was highly regarded. It offends my sensibilities that Java has a feature called "garbage collection." Ugh.

I have done a bit of writing. I used to be a music reviewer, and one of the requirements of a job I had was to write technical documentation. The company liked my tech notes so much they modified my job to set aside a full day per week to write them. It's not as satisfying as writing about something one really likes, but I know how awful poorly written documentation is.

If you're thinking of freelancerunion.org, I'll admit to having looked at it. If you have a different suggestion, I'm open to further choices...

How about some upbeat news?
Is anyone investing in some new opportunity created by this recession, such as a dramatically cheaper rental property?

Do you even understand garbage collection in Java? Do you understand the benefits of an Object Oriented Language?

In a language such as C or COBOL, anyone can operate on the data. That makes about as much sense as setting the speed of your car by allowing anyone to set the needle on the speedometer.

In Java, you send messages to the object and it manipulates the speed. This more closely matches real life where you send a message to your car to speed up when you press the accelerator pedal.

The garbage collector works by freeing memory occupied by orphaned objects. Something that is event driven may not be able to free memory as it doesn't know if that memory is or isn't still in use.

The garbage collector is able to see if an object is still being referenced, and therefore still in play. If it's not, then the object can be collected and the memory for that object returned to the heap of free memory.

The downside of course is if the garbage collector thread never gets to run, the program grows.

BTW, I was in Sun's very first class of Java instructors, sent out to evangelize Java. It has it's faults, but GC isn't really one of them. OOP more closely matches the real world, and better protects data. But it's more difficult up front, especially for guys like me that did C and Assembly for decades before Java.

Ex,
I understand Fred's point of view. Back in the days of very limited memory, programmers had to write elegant code, and they had no room for memory leaks and unreleased memory.

I real-time systems like spacecraft on long missions, running on 8-bit processors with a few Kilobytes of RAM, there is no one to reboot the system. Stack overflows and math errors which create exceptions today, to be trapped by default handlers, were not there to cover a programmer's sloppiness or lack of failure mode analysis.

I helped developed a Pascal-like OOP language for DARPA in the late 1970s to demonstrate the feasibility and power in modeling real world mechanical systems, but I don't like or use Java, either.

I wrote 6809 Assembly code in the 80's for a machine tool firm. I eventually wrote a 6809 uP emulator to run on an 80x86 so we could test our code there before we burnt it to EPROM, not EEPROM, EPROMs that were erased with a UV light.

So I appreciate the detail required during those days. Perhaps not to the extent the programmers for the Apollo program, but still I was close enough to that era to have a feel for it.

We thought we were in heaven when I was able to redesign the circuit boards for the machines so we could access 32K of memory with the 6809 instead of the 16K we were originally using.

That was when PC boards were layed out not with a computer, but with "stickers" and clear plastic sheets.

Ah, the old Exormax. One line of code at a time on a LCD display.
When the Apple Mac came out, they gave away a Lisa with each one, until they ran out. One of the EEs brought in the Lisa and made that our 6809 programming system. The 6809 was, and is, a great chip. The single board computers which came out for the 6809 and Z80 in the mid 1980s were wonders to my work.

With this new 2,300 page "Financial Reform Act", and the 5,000 pages of regulations to be created from the sloppy legislation, I find my financial clients and investor friends all at a standstill. Even the professional investors and traders are afraid to make a move now.

It's amazing. The incumbents are making all the same mistakes that resulted in the miserable Carter years. "Stimulus???" Hah!

I have some facts and charts on attempts at Keynesian stimulus spending from 1930 to 2010. Yes, it was Herbert Hoover who tried it first. FDR ran against Hoover's spending, then when in office, doubled it. Sound familiar?

As government taxation and spending becomes a larger component of the economy, the less impact more deficit spending has on the private sector. And this stimulus spending has mostly been government sector jobs. Of the $860 billion authorized, only $400 billion has been spent in 16 months, not enough to move the needle.