Rob Cheng’s Blog

About two weeks ago, one of my brokers called and told me that it was time to get back in the market. I laughed at him. I reminded him that I got out of the market entirely in May 2008, and now that events have unfolded, I had little faith in our financial system. But he kept on pushing and pushing, and of course, we were going nowhere, because in my view the downsides far outweigh the upsides. Here are the top reasons why I will never listen to another stockbroker ever again.

Stockbrokers advise you when and what to buy not when to sell. That was what my broker was doing two weeks ago. He wanted me to buy again. That’s my issue, in all of my years of investing, I have never had a broker call me and tell me to sell. Never. Read More »

June 14th, 2009 | Category: Financial Crisis | Leave a comment

Man Oh Man. I have been working harder than I can ever remember. I am a man on a mission to finish a huge project sprinting to the finish line. When I want to, my focus can be amazing and singular. I really hope that I can look back at this period, and be amazed at how much work I got done.

Despite all of that, I decided to take a lightening vacation to NY with my family. We arrived on a Friday and went to the Statue of Liberty. We woke up the next day, and grabbed a train from Grand Central to Pleasantville NY to visit my cousin, Nancy and her family. My other cousin, Larry, was also kind enough to join us for the train ride from NY to Pleansantville. Read More »

June 4th, 2009 | Category: Jesse, Slide Show, Teddy, Travel | Comments (1)

This entire economic crisis has left me more than a little peeved. The reason is that Obama and Bush have been dancing around assigning blame for this huge mess. The reality is that this entire crisis and heartbreak was entirely avoidable. In order to create such a mess with the world’s largest and most powerful economy takes a perfect storm of retards acting overtly and covertly.

What is an economic bubble? If one looks at any chart related to the housing prices or the stock market during the last 15-20 years, the bubbles are more than apparent. A bubble is by definition something that pops. That means that there is ascent in pricing, followed by a precipitous decline, also known as a crash. Therefore, the people that buy and sell in the beginning of the bubble, win. The people that invest at the tail of the bubble, lose almost everything. When one looks at it through this lens, it is hard to distinguish between a bubble and a Ponzi scheme. The only difference is that the architects of a Ponzi scheme go to jail. The architects of a bubble retire to a private island. Read More »

April 13th, 2009 | Category: Financial Crisis | Comments (1)

I found a couple of very cool pictures in FaceBook when I was cruising around. One of my old high school friends posted photos from our graduating class yearbook of 1977. The first photo is our Math Team. Believe it or not, we were a team of 5 and we would travel to other schools each week and compete in little mini math tournaments. They would hand out math questions, and we would have 5 minutes to answer the question. We were the best team in the county! Read More »

March 28th, 2009 | Category: General | Comments (1)

It has been over 6 months, since George Bush went in front of the entire nation and told us all that we are all screwed. He succeeded in putting the nation into a panic setting the stage for an unprecedented flurry of government spending. After 1/2 a year of spending, none of the stimulus has had any impact whatsoever. Employment continues to rise, housing prices plummet, and GDP is still shrinking.

The underlying theory behind the “shop til you drop” stimulus plan is Keynesian economics which became popular during the last depression. Unfortunately, Keynesian economics will nor work this time. The primary reason is that the United States is broke. In the last 50 years, our great country has been transformed from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation. We are broke, and we are addicted to spending more money than we have. Addicted is the only appropriate word, and like an addict, there is only one solution. We must wean ourselves from the addiction, rather than borrow more money. Obama and Bush have been feeding the addiction. Read More »

March 18th, 2009 | Category: Financial Crisis, Politics | Leave a comment

Here’s one of the funniest emails I have received in a long time. It is an extremely funny photo series of contenders for the world’s greatest husband contest. Each photo is a look at a contender from a different country. The contending countries are Greece, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, the UK, and the USA. I hope you laugh as much as I did. I actually wonder whether all of these photos are real. Enjoy!
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February 15th, 2009 | Category: Slide Show | Leave a comment

Last Sunday, Solange, Teddy, Jesse and I made the drive to Recreio to visit our friends Katia and Jason Elliott. Recreio is night and day different than the hustle and bustle of Rio and Lagoa. We went to a churrascaria close to their house that also had a small playground for children. The food was great and the kids had a great time playing together. I took a ton of photos with my new camera, mainly of the kids. Read More »

February 12th, 2009 | Category: Brazil, Jesse, Photos, Slide Show, Teddy | Comments (1)

The Fed announced two months ago that they would drop America’s key interest rate to .25% giving America the unique distinction of having the lowest interest rates in the world. In addition, although Congress is still wrangling, they will soon pass one of the largest spending bills in the history of the nation, wrapped up in a bow and called economic stimulus. Although, it sure smells like pork. These two events have one key thing in common - printing more money. In fact, the United States will begin printing money at an unprecedented rate, not just in the history of our nation, in the history of the world.

Ultimately, I believe these policies will fail. Furthermore, their policies are designed to promote consumption and penalize savings. I refuse to fall into this trap. I believe that saving money is always prudent, and in these economic times, even more so. There in lies the dilemma. If I want to save money, where should I do that? Read More »

February 8th, 2009 | Category: Brazil, Financial Crisis | Comments (22)

It comes from Central America and is found from Mexico to Panama. It is quite common in its zone, but it not easy to find because of its transparent wings, which is a natural camouflage mechanism.

A butterfly with transparent wings is rare and beautiful. As delicate as finely blown glass, the presence of this rare tropical gem is used by rain forest ecologists as an indication of high habitat quality and its demise alerts them of ecological change. Rivaling the refined beauty of a stained glass window, the translucent wings of the Glasswing butterfly shimmer in the sunlight like polished panes of turquoise, orange, green, and red. All things beautiful do not have to be full of color to be noticed: in life that which is unnoticed has the most power. Read More »

February 1st, 2009 | Category: Slide Show | Leave a comment