Did Online Broker Just2Trade.com Get Hacked?
posted on: 2010-01-25 07:00:26 by Soo-Young
tags: broker news

---

For the past few days I've been receiving notifications from Bullishness.com's commission checking tool that Just2Trade's website hasn't been working. I assumed that they were upgrading their system over the weekend (the market is closed over the weekend after all) and that everything would come back online today, but yet again, in my inbox, I received a notification about how Just2Trade's website was down. This is happening both on my personal computer at home and my web server, which is based remotely. Very strange!

I did some more digging, and found that their website was indeed down. If you go to Just2Trade.com, you'll see a white screen, and the source code reveals nothing going on behind the scenes (the source file is completely blank). For an online stock broker to be down on an open trading day is definitely alarming.


I did more sleuthing and found something on Twitter that would also suggest that Just2Trade got hacked. A Twitter post from 5 days ago reads: "seems kind of odd to me that Just2Trade twitter page is all in Russian, trying to get a account with them but they seem to be slow so far." Twitter posts are usually not the most credible source of information, but because this is coming at around the same time as Just2Trade's down time seems to indicate something fishy is going on.

This is all speculation, but Just2Trade's website is down on a trading day, which is never supposed to happen. If you have an account with Just2Trade and have any other information about this, please email me at .

Is Apple Going To Bed With Bing?
posted on: 2010-01-24 22:42:58 by Soo-Young
tags: internet news

---

The internet is a big part of my life, and I can't help but keep up with the industry. Recently, I read an article on Mashable about how Apple might change their default search engine from Google to Bing. This is driven mainly by the inroads Google is making in the mobile phone market with Android and the Nexus One. I'm not sure about the technology that drives Bing, but I have a very strong feeling that Google's search results are of a better quality than Bing's.

I really think if Apple wants to play the game with Google, they should build their own search engine and brand it like any of their other products (cool, chic, and classy). I'm sure they could drive droves of mac-heads to their search engine just based on the power of their brand. It seems like a much better idea, at least in my mind, to create their own search engine instead of partnering with a second rate search engine like Bing.

I couldn't help but notice the homepage for Bing has an image of, what looks to be, an arctic cat. Apple's latest version of their operating system, Mac OS X, is named Snow Leopard. Coincidence? Heh heh.

Charles Schwab New Lower Fees
posted on: 2010-01-20 11:41:22 by Soo-Young
tags: broker update

---

As you may already know, Bullishness.com keeps track of stock commission prices on a day to day basis. Previously, Charles Schwab offered a $12.95 stock commission for normal investors and a $8.95 stock commission for investors with $1,000,000 in assets or 120 trades per year. Now the $8.95 stock commission is available to all account holders regardless of account size or trade frequency.

Happy Trading!

The Spam Free Investing And Personal Finance Carnival #3
posted on: 2010-01-13 09:47:29 by Soo-Young
tags: carnival

---

(image source)

Welcome to the 3rd Spam Free Investing And Personal Finance Blog Carnival! If you're new to this carnival, my main goal with this carnival is to post the most helpful and spam free articles from around the blogosphere. This means you won't find any articles pressuring you to buy anything or sign up for anything, these links will be safe! Without any further ado, here are the links:

The Weakonomist presents Poker Face: The Card Game Visa Is Playing With Your Money posted at Weakonomics, The Weakonomist summarizes an excellent article about the credit card industry that was published in the NY Times a week ago.

Charles presents Goals For 2010 posted at The Kirk Report, If you're interested in learning the goals of a professional stock trader, check out Charles' goals for 2010. No matter where you are in your investing journey, these goals are all worth having yourself.

Lazy Man and Money presents Is Investing Without Goals Like Golfing without a Putter? posted at Lazy Man and Money, Lazy Man furthers the golf investment analogy by comparing investments to golf clubs. Drivers are less accurate, but can take you further, similar to how risky investments can have high returns, but greater uncertainty. On the other hand, putters are more accurate, but won't take you very far, similar to how conservative investments have lower returns, but less volatility.

Jeff Williamson presents Beginners Guide To Investing Online posted at Investing Online for Beginners, Jeff posted an excellent primer to investing in stocks online. If you're just starting out, this post is filled with a lot of great information.

Lovelymary presents 100 Inspiring Personal Finance Posts for the New Year posted at Accounting Degree.com, Mary continues the new year's trend with an excellent and comprehensive list to help you with your finances in 2010. I would highly recommend checking out this blog post as it covers a great breadth of topics.

Arthur Pledger presents Welcome to Wall Street Part 4 posted at World Domination with Arthur Pledger, Arthur writes a great introduction to investing in his Welcome to Wall Street Series. In Part 4, he talks about how to use government treasuries and international investments to reach greater investing success.

CreditCardAssist presents Credit Unions Provide Credit Card Alternative for Consumers posted at Credit Card Assist, Recently, I've noticed an anti big bank movement amongst the general online community. With the enormous cost of the financial bailout, it makes a lot of sense that people are looking for banking alternatives, and credit unions keep coming up as a very viable alternatives.

Dorian Wales presents The Dangers of Excess Frugality – Budgeting and Balanced Living posted at The Personal Financier, Dorian writes an excellent blog post about the balance between spending and saving and why it's so important not to slip into a life of excess frugality. I can really relate to this post because for the majority of my life, my financial habits were all taken from my extremely frugal father. I was probably the stingiest person in the world, and saved all of my money, but I didn't have any financial goals, and I definitely sacrificed my present for my future. If you're someone who holds on to every penny, I'd recommend reading this article.

Big Cajun Man presents Personal Finance Resolutions for the New Year? posted at Canadian Personal Finance Blog, BCM gives some good starting points for setting new year's resolutions in 2010. If you have the desire to reshape your finances in 2010, head over to Canadian Personal Finance Blog for some ideas.

I Just Finished Coding A CEO Salary Stock Screener
posted on: 2010-01-08 12:47:12 by Soo-Young
tags: site news, screeners

---

The other day, I read an article from the Huffington Post titled: "High CEO Pay May Correlate With Lower Long-Term Stock Value, According To Two Studies". The article highlights a study from the Harvard Law School that explores the relation between the CEO Pay Slice (CPS) of a company and it's relative value and performance. The CPS of a company can be calculated by dividing the CEO salary by the total executive team salary. If the very smart people at Harvard Law consider CPS a topic worth exploring, there has to be something there. I decided to dig a little further and create my own CEO salary and CPS screener and share it with all of you. Some interesting CEO facts:

1. The highest paid CEO is Aubrey K. McClendon of Chesapeake Energy with a salary of $77,930,000.00
2. There are 78 CEOs that earn a $0.00 salary
3. Only 16 CEOs have a salary over $10,000,000.00
4. The majority of CEOs make less than $1,000,000.00
5. 137 CEOs have Ph.D.s

You can use the screener to screen by Stock Symbol, CEO Salary, and CEO Pay Slice. Below is a screenshot of what the form looks like.


On the main screen, there are two pie charts dividing the CEOs by salary level, post-secondary education, and certification. Below the two pie charts are two tables ranking the highest and lowest paid CEOs. Each CEO listing has corresponding links to Google Finance, Yahoo! Finance, and YCharts.