DISQUS

Ian:

There are certainly many such as yourself that feel as though investing in real estate requires taking advantage of others. There's no doubt that it requires a motivated seller to buy property at a significant discount, and the majority of the motivation does indeed come from those that are facing foreclosure. There are a lot of crooks out there that prey on individuals when they are most vulnerable and take advantage of them. Whether they do it in a legal or illegal manner, they are still crooks if you ask me. In fact those crooks may even be in the majority, but believe it or not there are a few real estate investors out there that know how to profit from a bad situation, as well as help others (other than themselves).

misanthropope:

Well, the Microsoft example was using figures from a few days ago, if you want to call that “quantitative.” It isn’t too far off from $28 right now, and the April calls are still selling for around $0.60 (granted, it’s still a little more than a month away from expiring, since the expiration is on April 18). There are plenty of other stocks out there that can provide similar returns with covered calls. I you are in the curious situation of owning an overvalued stock, your risk is on the downside potential of the stock price, not from receiving a small premium on a call.

Investing & Passive Income:

Well, it's not really 75% if you take into account the margin requirement. What was the real return if you account for the margin requirement? I don't like selling naked options because of the very high margin requirements. I prefer to use use vertical spreads to limit losses as well as reduce the margin requirements. Even if you use stop loss orders, if the stock makes a big after-market/pre-market move against you, the stop loss isn't going to help when the options market opens and your short is way more expensive to buy back.

It never quite made it to $31 and topped out around $30. I do agree that it would make sense to just sell at the top or as close to the top as you can, and be done with it. However, if a shareholder class action suit ever did make sense, maybe this one did?

CHESSNOID

You're right, I was talking gross figures and didn't consider taxes. To be honest, the distance and mileage example I wrote was fabricated to try to provide some reasonable guess as to what a typical commute may be like. I did try to find some hard numbers, but didn't have much luck. Someone with a long commute such as yourself certainly has good reason to complain. I hope with your long commute you're getting better than 20 MPG though. Thanks very much for your well-thought comment. I wish I'd receive responses like yours more often.

Fuel prices may have tripled in six years, but median household income in the U.S. has also increased by $5,792 from 2002 to 2006 (I don't think the figures for 2007 are available yet). Let's say that in 2006 you drove 2,000 miles a month (household of 2 cars driving 1,000 miles a month each) and you get 20 miles to the gallon. That means in 2002 at $1.10 a gallon you would have spent $110 a month on 100 gallons, or $1,320 a year on 1,200 gallons. With a $2 increase, in 2008 (assuming the same milage and MPG) you will spend $2,640 more than in 2002. With a household income increase of $5,792 (and that's 2006, it is very likely 2007 was even higher), it is more than enough to cover the increasing cost of fuel. I still think we have very little to complain about.

Per litre, I believe. I think it's $4.84 per gallon.

I listed only "the expensive countries" because the overall economies are more comparable. Gas may only cost 13 cents in Venezuela, but do you know how much a car is? In 2005, a Mazda Allegro (same as the Mazda 323 here) cost around $16,000 USD. $16,000 may not sound like a lot, but the per capita GDP in the US is 5.77 times that of Venezuela. Would you pay $92,450 for a Mazda 323? Venezuela is a very poor comparison because of the huge disparity in incomes. Gas may be a lot cheaper there, but you'd have to make a ton of money to be able to afford the car.

I do agree that Canada probably provides the best comparison, as they do tend to have similar driving habits. However, gas in Canada is almost 30% more than here. You don't think that at $4 a gallon gas in Canada isn't that much more expensive? You can argue that the pretax prices are about the same, but consumers are concerned about the bottom line regardless of the taxes and duties.

Anyone that lives near the border of two jurisdictions that have different sales tax rates is more likely to make purchases in the cheaper of the two. For instance, in Georgia gas is about 15 cents cheaper than Florida because Georgia receives revenue from state income tax. Florida has no state income tax, and therefore has a higher gas tax than Georgia. I have a friend that lives in southern Georgia and commutes to Jacksonville, Florida. Where do you think he buys his gas?

If you ask me, mass transit in other nations isn't all that cheap. Take a look at fares for the Tube in London, U.K.. The cheapest monthly pass is £93.00 which comes to $180.86 per month in USD. That only covers two zones, which won't get you to the suburbs of London (it covers a distance with a radius of about 7 miles). Nonetheless, at $3.06 a gallon, $180.86 per month will buy you 59.10 gallons of fuel. The combined car and truck Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) for 2008 is 22.5 MPG. With 59.10 gallons of fuel and 22.5 MPG, that would allow you travel 1,329.75 miles per month. So on average, the price of gas in the US is enough to commute 33.2 miles a day. I still say that relatively speaking, gas here is cheap.

I agree that other countries do place higher taxes on fuel. However, even excluding taxes it is still slightly cheaper here than in Cananda and the UK. Did you view the entire IEA report? Here are the price per liter figures excluding taxes:
<table>
<tr><td>France</td><td>$0.777</td></tr>
<tr><td>Germany</td><td>$0.768</td></tr>
<tr><td>Italy</td><td>$0.805</td></tr>
<tr><td>Spain</td><td>$0.769</td></tr>
<tr><td>UK</td><td>$0.741</td></tr>
<tr><td>Japan</td><td>$0.861</td></tr>
<tr><td>Canada</td><td>$0.741</td></tr>
<tr><td>USA</td><td>$0.704</td></tr>
</table>
That comes to $2.66 per gallon in the USA vs. $2.80 in Canada and the UK (the next-cheapest countries).

Cool, thanks for the tips. Yeah, I've been watching both notes, but I'll definitely keep a closer eye on the 10-year T bill.

Jason, I agree. It doesn't matter where the borrowed funds are coming from, in the end an individual is going to either pay or default. Aggregately, the default rates will be higher for loans with higher-risk borrowers.