Mint.com – A review of the investments section

I’ve been a big fan of Mint.com ever since I first heard of it. They’ve been in the news lately since they’ve announced that they are being purchased by Intuit for $170 million dollars. While many people have congratulated them on creating a great product and now reap the financial benefits of it. Others have thought it would have been better for them to continue independently and continue to drive innovation in their product. Regardless of how you feel about their corporate situation, very few people are critical of the product that Mint has put together since they started up.

In the short amount of time since they launched, they’ve added a lot of features that customers have asked for on their forums, one of which being investment tracking. For obvious reasons, this was something I really wanted to see them add, but when they did I was somewhat underwhelmed. And now that I have re-visited the tool, I think I know why. One of the things that makes Mint so great is its vast amount of data that they have. And when the investment tracking first launched, they have very little data. Fast forward a year, and they now have much more of both my data, and everyone else’s (anonymous) data.
Continue reading

New Portfolio: Dividends to beat the bank

In talking to my father the other day, he mentioned he had a large CD that was about to mature, and wanted to build a portfolio of stocks to beat the interest rate he was getting. There are two nice things about this portfolio.

  1. We get to start from scratch with a clean slate and pick whatever stocks we want to.
  2. We have a clear goal to work towards. (Beat 4% interest)

Continue reading

How could I have forgotten Ford?

I was reminded this morning, that when I went thru last week’s update on my stock holdings, that I left out one of the purchases that I had the most confidence in working out over the long run. Ford! I bought shares of Ford back on June 11th for a little bit under $6 dollars a share, and after a a nice earnings call this morning, they were up to almost $7. My horizon on this stock is much longer term, as I am hoping that they take this auto industry crisis as a turning stone in their business, and continue upwards to profitability, but the news is so far so good.

While I’m posting I might as well add some more info based on this quarter’s earnings reports so far. Continue reading

My current financial holdings

I’m not obligated by the SEC to declare what my holdings are, but I do enjoy doing it from time to time, just to track publicly how I am doing. I freely admit my losers when I have them, and try and state my winners ahead of time, so that I am on the record in favor of a stock BEFORE it runs up. It’s been a while since I’ve posted about stocks at all so I’ll just jump right in.