MIT Lecture by Former LTCM Partner
Former Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) partner Eric Rosenfeld gave a guest lecture about LTCM to MBA students at MIT Sloan School of Management in February. The title of the presentation was Long-Term Capital Management: 10 Years Later, What Happened and Lessons Learned. It's part of an MBA class Options and Futures Markets. MIT TechTV put the video online.
Mortgage Refi Journey Started
I wondered out loud last Monday why I couldn't find a no-cost refi deal for a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 4.5%. Reader Raghu commented that he got an offer for 30-year fixed at 4.875% with a 0.125% escrow waiver fee.
I called the mortgage broker he referred to me but the broker is not licensed in my state. I also remember that Raghu wrote about his refinance experience last December. I actually commented on a few of his posts back then because he had listed my blog as one of his favorites.
Raghu mentioned in his posts last year that he went with National Mortgage Alliance (NMA), which is an Upfront Mortgage Lender certified by the Mortgage Professor. NMA lends in all 50 states and Washington DC. When I checked NMA's no-cost refi rates, I was offered 30-year fixed at 4.875% and 15-year fixed at 4.5%, both with a one-time 0.125% escrow waiver fee and $120 in document preparation and government recording fees.
New York Times Crowdsourcing Geithner's Schedule
Have you heard of the word crowdsourcing? I hadn't until yesterday. Crowdsourcing means giving a job to the public and letting the crowd do it for you. That's what New York Times is doing with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's schedule.
New York Times published a long investigative article on Sunday about Secretary Geithner's close relationship with Wall Street.
Book Review: The New Coffeehouse Investor
I wrote a review for one of my favorite books The Coffeehouse Investor in February. A new edition came out this month. The title changed to The New Coffeehouse Investor. I read it with eagerness to see what's new.
Everything in the original book is still there. This new book uses the same conversational style, like the author is telling you something over a cup of coffee. There are very few charts and tables. It's still a small book, under 200 pages, although with four new chapters, the page size had to be made larger than the previous edition. The four new chapters are:
Travels of a Coffeehouse Investor – How to deal with the sales pressure and the temptation for wanting to do better than the market, now that the market didn't do well in the last ten years.
Quit Obsessing with the Credit Score
I've said it before, and I will say it again: dear media, please quit obsessing with the credit score. Last week's episode of the NPR program Marketplace Money was about credit and credit scores (listen online or download mp3). One of the stories was The power of FICO. It featured Pete Deibel of Winter Park, FL (emphasis added by me):
"Here's how Pete got punished. Without warning, the credit card companies slashed his credit limits. This even though he kept up his payments as he always had. With lower limits, his card balances instantly shifted from making up 20 percent of his available credit to 80 percent. Suddenly, Diebel looks like a guy who's living off his plastic. His FICO score dropped 10-points [sic]. That may sound miniscule on a scale of 300 to 850, but it could translate into thousands more in interest payments."
Waiting For a No Cost Mortgage Refinance
Ever since late last year, there have been numerous news reports about the mortgage rate going to 4.5% or the mortgage rate reaching historical lows. The headlines read Treasury mulls plan to lower mortgage rates to 4.5% (CNN, 12/4/2008), Mortgage Rates Fall to Another Record Low (Fox, 4/2/2009), and so on. Then how come I still can't refinance my mortgage?
I kept asking my trusted mortgage broker about refinancing but he kept telling me "rates are not yet lower than what you have now." In case he's no longer able to get competitive rates because the banks are cutting off mortgage brokers, I also tried getting rate quotes myself directly from the banks.
Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) used to have good rates and no lender closing cost. Now they added a 1% origination fee on all their fixed rate mortgages. That totally killed the deal. Right now I can see 4.5% rate from a few places but they all require about $3,000 in a combination of points, fees, and closing cost.
Read the Contract and Protect the Consumer
Reporter and book author [1] Bob Sullivan wrote a few weeks ago about his trouble with canceling his cell phone service with Sprint and how the FCC handled his complaint.
Upselling at the Post Office
I went to the post office to mail my tax returns yesterday. While the postal clerk was placing the certified mail stickers and printing the receipt, I noticed a printout under the glass on the counter. The title the page said FY 2009 Mystery Shop Script. It's the instructions to the clerks for what they are supposed to say to a customer. It starts with offering Express Mail.
We can get it there the next day for $17.50. It includes $100 of insurance.
Explore Bonds: New Site for Bonds and Bond Funds
I wrote a lot about bonds on this blog and I'd like to write more, but I'm afraid not all readers are interested in minute details about bonds. So I created a new site Explore Bonds exclusively for articles about investing in bonds, bond funds, and other fixed income securities. I'm also using a different system on the new site. This system makes it easier for me to organize my articles.
There isn't much there yet. Over the next few weeks I will first copy over the existing posts on bonds from this blog to the new site and put them in logical orders. Any updates and new articles on bonds and bond funds will be done on Explore Bonds. I will continue to write about other money related topics on this blog.
If you are interested in articles on investing in bonds and bond funds, please bookmark the new site or subscribe to the RSS feed or e-mail updates. Eventually the site will be populated with everything you ever want to know about bonds and bond funds.
Personal Finance Education from the Federal Government
I often hear people complain about the lack of personal finance education in high schools. Guess what I found in my e-mail inbox: an outreach message from the Federal Trade Commission.
In case it's relevant to any of your upcoming posts, I wanted to let you know about a new FTC website, FTC.gov/MoneyMatters. We created the site to help people dealing with debt, struggling to find a job, or looking to learn more about creating a budget, saving, and spending wisely in tough economic times.
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