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Archive for June, 2007

Consolidating My Credit Limits.

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

I’ve gotten most of my cards. Now it is time to consolidate my credit limits to do large balance transfers from each issuer.

I need to consolidate my credit limits with Bank of America, Citibank, Amex and Chase. So far, I have combined my Bank of America, Citibank, and Amex cards. I still need to reallocate with chase.

Here is the transfers I am going to do:

Bank of America PetsReward: 22,000 (0% APR for 6 months, no fee) status: done

Citibank Upromise: 19,000 (0% APR for 1 year, no fee) Waiting for Citi to combine the limits in 3 business days

GM Chase Business: 35,000 (0% APR for 1 year, 75$ fee) Need to call on weekday to reallocate credit limit

Amex Blue Sky 14,000 (this one is 4.99% APR for life of balance. I rather do this than 0% APR for 6 months because I wanted a longer term loan to use for investing.) Need to wait for convenience checks.

HSBC Cash or Fly 4,000 waiting for credit limit increase

Wamu: 3,900 done

Juniper: 2,600 done

The smaller balance transfers from HSBC, Wamu, and Juniper is not very profitable and really worth my time. I did the balance transfer anyways so I can use the money to invest if a good opportunity comes up. Still waiting on my Citi Business Card. Overall, I got approved for most of my cards. Got denied on the Discover Motiva and Advanta business card, and ESPN card. I got approved for 15 new credit cards.

Posted in Credit Cards | 1 Comment »

Credit Cards Update

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

So far, here is the status to my credit card applications:

3 Citibank cards got approved, but I do not know the credit limit yet.

Chase Sony card is approved for 4,000.
Chase Platinum card got approved for 5,000.
Bank of America Pets Reward got approved for 10,400.
HSBC Cash or Fly got approved for 4,500.
Amex Blue Sky got approved for 5,400.
Wamu got approved for 5,000.
Juniper Bank got approved for 3,000.
Discover Motiva got rejected.
Advanta got denied.

10 cards approved so far, 2 denied, and 6 applications are still deferred.  83% approval rate so far.  Not too bad.
I’m glad that I got approved for the chase and citibank cards.  Too bad most of the credit limit on the new cards are quite low.  I’ll be able to make large balance transfers through chase, citibank, and amex by combining my credit limit together with my old cards to do one large balance transfer on one card.  This will save me the trouble of doing a lot of small transfers.

Posted in Misc | 2 Comments »

Focused Investing

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

I have been looking at different investment strategies for awhile now. The first strategy I tried out was following Steve Selengut’s strategy of buying stocks that were 20% below their 52 week high. That strategy works quite well, but the high amount of turnover was not to my liking. It exposed investors a lot of taxes which will lower returns in the long run.

The strategy would be good in a tax sheltered account. When I was using that strategy, I was not doing any type of in depth research. This bothers me because if I am to become an equity analyst in the future, I will need to do a lot reading and have a good investment thesis to back up my picks. I was not spending the required amount of time to do my due diligence on my picks. I did not invest enough money in each stock, so the losses were minimum and so were the gains. I did not know much about the companies that I was investing in. I would do relative valuations such as looking at ratios, but I never really did my homework. I didn’t learn about the industry, the competitors, the company’s competitive advantage, and the management. I was being lazy. I feel the only way I am going to learn how to improve my skills is to really learn about a specific industry and company. I am going to use my free time to do some serious studying.

I am reading the Warren Buffet Portfolio Mastering the Power of The Focus Investment Strategy by Robert G. Hagstrom. So far so good. The book has really changed my view on my investment strategy. I am going to practice a similar investment strategy.

Posted in Investing | No Comments »

Applied for 18 Credit Cards

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

I just applied for 18 credit cards. I plan to borrow money from the cards to invest. It took me several hours of research to look for the best deals on new credit cards. I signed up for a few business credit cards too. I used www.cardselection.com to get their sign up bonus for most of the cards. Most of the applications were deferred. Roboform was used to fill in the applications using the autofill function.
So far, there I got 4 instant approvals, 1 denied, and still have 13 pending.

Here are the cards I applied for:

I’ve only got approved for Juniper 3k, Amex blue Sky 5.4k, Bofa pet rewards 10.4k, and Wamu 5k. After I get all my cards in, I am going to reallocate the credit limits from Amex, Citi and Chase to do one large balance transfer for each of those issuers. I still need to request credit limit increases on my existing cards. I just increased my existing Bank of America Platinum Plus Master Card’s credit limit to 19,900 from 13,700.  I am still using Credit Secure to bump hard inquiries off my credit reports.

Posted in Credit Cards | 3 Comments »

Good Buying Opportunity, American Eagle Outfitters (AEO)

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) (26.02) has been beaten down in the past 13 weeks, losing about 18%. This presents a good buying opportunity to buy a very solid stock at an attractive price that will not last long. AEO has very good PEG ratio at .97x. The stock doubled in 2006, but is down 16.4% YTD. I do not normally buy growthy stocks, but at a current P/E ratio 15x, it has a good discount to the industry’s average P/E ratio of 21x. Sales grew 20%, net income grew 31%, and EPS grew 35%. American Eagle (AOE) has an ROA, ROE and ROIC of 22, 30 and 31% respectively. According to S&P American Eagle brand offers limited expansion in the domestic markets with over 900 stores. Look for expansion through it’s new brand targeting 25-40 year olds called Martin + OSA (”M” + “O”). 45-50 AE, 15 Aerie, and 15 M + O stores are expected to open in fiscal year 2008.

I think the market will be very volatile in the months ahead creating more buying opportunities. I’ve already seen some good buying opportunities starting to appear. I am going to buy some shares of AEO soon.

Posted in Stocks | No Comments »

Earn Thousands of Dollars With A Few Hours of Work.

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

It is time to do some more balance transfers. I am waiting for my credit report to reflect my lower credit balance after paying off one of my recent cards. In the meantime, I need to do some research on current credit card deals.

At first, I planned to open 15 or more credit cards, but now that I think about it, I may just decide to open about around 8 or so. My plan is to open only credit cards that pull credit reports credit reports from TransUnion and Equifax. That way, I can bump off the hard inquiries with Credit Secure by doing daily soft credit pulls.

I am going to open a few business cards from Amex and Advanta and 2 from Chase and 2 from Citibank. I might also open a few with Discover, but they do not allow people to move credit lines, so the balance transfers with Discover will be a lot smaller. I signed up with Cardoffers to try to get cash for signing up with certain credit cards, but for some reason it is no longer available.

Here are the steps I am going to take.

1. Research cards and put the information for all the cards on an excel spreadsheet.

2. Call all my current credit card companies to try to increase my credit limits on my 15 existing cards.

3. Then I will sign up for all my credit cards.

4. Consolidate the credit lines and do 1 large balance transfer per issuer.

5. Some companies do not transfer money from balance transfer to bank accounts. I will use Citibank cards to have the money transferred to a Citibank card with no balance. With the positive balance, I will request a check from Citibank.

6. Deposit the money in a bank account and pay off the balance in full after 12 months. I would buy equities, but I feel the market is pricey at the moment.

This balance transfer will just be used to try to increase my most of my existing balance. I will do a larger transfer in the future.

Posted in Personal Finance | No Comments »

China CEF funds

Monday, June 4th, 2007

I was looking into some China CEFs with nice discounts.  There’s CAF, CHN, and GCH.  Their discounts are greater than 15%.  I think they may be a discount play because of their widening discount over the past few months.  CHN’s was at a 5% premium back in December compared to its current 18% discount.  The fund’s one year market return is only 13.7% compared to its NAV return of 47%.  The discount will give the fund a small margin of safety for the investor.  I’m going to buy some shares of CHN at 36.08 soon.

Posted in CEF | No Comments »

CFA Level 2 Exam Over

Monday, June 4th, 2007

It’s finally over.  After many months of studying and preparation, it’s finally over.  I thought the exam was okay.  There were some difficult questions.  Overall, most of the main topics were covered. I felt pretty confident after the exam, but after visiting analyst forums, I saw that I made some careless mistakes on some of the questions.
I just hope I passed.  Too bad I have to wait until mid August for the results. Now I have so much free time.

Posted in CFA | No Comments »

Received $550 from Citibank’s Payment Partner Program.

Monday, June 4th, 2007

I just received my $550 from Citibank’s payment partner program. I signed up for the payment partner program back in November. It’s takes 2 weeks for the sign up process, and 4 months until the completion of the program. Too bad the program is targeted by invitation. I have another payment partner program in progress that will net me another $550 in a few months.  So if you get a letter in the mail about the payment partner program, sign up for it.  The only downside is that they’ll lower your credit limit after the program is over.  My card’s credit limit went down to 960 from 6k or so.

Posted in Personal Finance | No Comments »