The winner of WinWeb’s Pitch of the Week competition this week is Simon Malone, co-founder of VirtualStudio.TV, a company who stumbled across technology that allows them to place a presenter in any virtual environment using green screen technology. VirtualStudio.TV saw this as an ideal product for training videos, webinars and instructive videos.
Why so much money?
Well, it was just sitting in a savings account earning less than 2%, and I need to diversify my investments a little, but I’m not ready to go back into the stock market yet. I realize there is risk involved with holding a personal loan portfolio, but I’ve met the Lending Club team, and I feel confident in their tactics and processes to minimize that risk.
I’m looking now for investments that generate cash, and Lending Club fits that bill.
I didn’t want to choose dozens of loans on my own, and since Lending Club was waiving the normal .8% PRIME loading fee, I decided to enroll in their PRIME program.
The PRIME program allows Lending Club to invest on my behalf, which is exactly what I’m looking for. I want a
Stocks limped to a small loss, capping a rough week that has seen the major indexes back into the red for the year on renewed signs of slowing economic growth.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 16.80 points, or 0.16%, to 10303.15, extending a four-day slide that’s seen the blue-chip index fall 3.3% this week.
The slump came as weak economic data and a gloomy Federal Reserve statement lent more credibility to fears that the flagging economic recovery could turn into a double-dip recession.
Investors “got a big jolt from the Fed this week that just shifted positions dramatically from just two weeks ago when they felt that the economy was gaining some traction,” said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Robert W. Baird.
The market’s retreat was a stark reminder of the Fed’s power to affect confidence, said Albert Meyer, portfolio manager for the Mirzam Capital Appreciation Fund.
I’m out on vacation this week, driving through Oregon down the 101 with my father.
We stopped in a small town called Reedsport to look around in a few shops along the way, and as I entered one establishment noticed a peculiar sign on the door.
The sign itself was not pequliar. The typical “Welcome, Kindly Step In” message at the top was as American as apple pie, which isn’t nearly as good as the blueberry sour cream pie I had in the same town for lunch. What made the sign peculiar was the message below giving the hours of operation.
The sign read, “Hours – 8 or 9 til about 5, 6 or 7, Mon. to Sat.; Sun 11 to 5; When we’re here we’re open. WELCOME!!!”
This sign speaks to entrepreneurs on so many levels. It demonstrates the flexibility that entrepreneurs have. It shows the ow
Well, It’s official.
I’m married : ).
And it’s awesome. : ) : ) : )
Yes, that was three smileys in a row on a blog.
It’s a strange feeling…sometimes it feels strange, but I’d say 99% of the time, everything feels the same with my now wife, which is great, because we are both very happy.
The past few months have been pretty crazy, lots of wedding planning, moving, living in my Mom’s basement, etc. But now I’m settling in with my wife in Portland, and we just love it.
I honestly thought, when I started this blog back in January of 2007, that there was no way in heck I would be getting married anytime this side of 30 (I’m 27 now).
What, you didn’t think so either? Ha.
My wife brought very little debt into our marriage, she had a little chunk of credit card debt that we paid off a few months ago. She is now complete
As sales pick up, I’ve been trying to build our production capacity proportionally. This has been hard for me to accomplish in the past. During the last big expansion, between 2003 and 2008, I found myself in the position of hiring willy-nilly, throwing warm bodies at production bottlenecks. In the rush to get work out the door, we never set up a training program and we didn’t do a good job of increasing productivity with technology. This was a disastrous mistake. More than anything else, an inflated payroll drained cash from the company and kept us from making a profit.
As we ramp up again, I’m doing it differently. It’s become apparent to me over the years that the key to a highly productive work force is training and specialization. On the shop floor, that means that the guys are doing a narrower range of things. We don’
By Jonathan Cheng And Min Zeng
Stocks saw a late surge collapse as investors reassessed Federal Reserve moves to try and support an increasingly wobbly economic recovery.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 54.50 points, or 0.51%, at 10644.25 after surging after the Fed announcement to erase the majority of its earlier triple-digit loss. Treasurys jumped, while the U.S. dollar plunged, shaving off a day of strong gains.
At the end of their one-day policy meeting, Fed officials said they would reinvest the proceeds from expiring agency debt and mortgage-backed securities into Treasurys, to keep long-term borrowing costs for businesses and consumers low. The U.S. central bank also acknowledged that the pace of the recovery had slowed in recent months.
“The Fed is still very concerned about this economy, as we all are,” said Randy Bateman, president and chief investment officer for Huntington Asset Advisors.
As industry watchers debate the merits of proposed changes to the rules governing mutual fund fees, some fee-free funds are generating head-turning returns – and they won’t have to make big changes to comply.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a new set of rules to limit the onerous and sometimes vague fees that have raised the ire of many investors. The so-called 12b-1 fee is traditionally described as a marketing and distribution fee, although a large portion goes to financial intermediaries (like brokers, financial planners and advisors), who recommend and sell the funds.
The fee is named for Rule 12b-1, which was adopted by the Security and Exchange Commission in 1980 and allows mutual fund companies to draw from their assets to pay those investing professionals.
Different share classes charge different 12b-1 fees. Class A shares typically charge an upfront sales load and no 12b-1 fee, or a minimal one. Cla