Cashflow Blog

It was good to see Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal reserve Bank of Kansas City, in our state of Colorado. He went on a folksy tour of small businesses and ended up at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Durango on Tuesday.
Rocky Mountain Chocolates makes great candy and Bryan Merryman, the CFO of the company told Hoenig:

“Commodities across the board have pressured us”. “There are a lot of pressures in our system that we haven’t seen before”.

It’s reassuring to see that the feds have recently discovered that they need to start raising interest rates. I hope Hoenig went to the grocery store and gas station with Merryman just to confirm his suspicions

See the original post:
Is Inflation a Problem?

Good News-for all of you who have been wondering about the Yellowstone Club, the Playground Spat Is Resolved according to the Wall Street Journal. Edra Blixseth, who started the club with her husband, Tim, was granted ownership of the club in the couples divorce decree !!
Membership at Yellowstone costs an initial $250,000 was $18,000 in annual dues and millions of dollars to buy or build a home there.

Members such as Bill Gates and Dan (potatoe) Quayle can now rest easier this evening
Edra, email me if you need me to see if the club is now up to your standards!

See the original post:
The Yellowstone Club-It’s Safe to Return

J.K. Rowling extolled the crucial importance of imagination during a speech Thursday at Harvard University’s spring commencement, saying, “We do not need magic to transform our world.”

The Harry Potter author also stressed the benefit of failure, recalling the humiliations of her time in poverty before her career took off with her string of novels about a bespectacled boy wizard.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation,” Rowling said. “In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

Great advice for all small business owners and would be entrepreneurs!

Read the entire USA Today article.

Read the original here:
J.K. Rowling at Harvard University

I would be a liar claiming that any of my portfolios are hedged-I have been long forever! However, on Friday I did buy 500 shares of SDS-Ultrashort S&P 500 Proshares. My cost was $58.91 and they closed the day at $59.80 for a gain of $1855.00.
Buying these shares did not hedge my portfolio but it’s interesting to note that instead of a loss for the day of $8065.00 my net loss turned out to be $6210.00

Obviously, every portfolio is different but having not lost an additional 20% was some small comfort in an otherwise ugly day. Take a look at what you might do to lessen the losses in your portfolio because…I don’t think it’s over.

Read the original here:
Hedging a Portfolio

Why do gas stations have a $75 limit on Visa or MasterCard transactions at the pump?
According to stations owners they say they are simply following the policies of Visa and MasterCard, who won’t reimburse them more than $75 per transaction at the pump if there’s a disputed charges or fraudulent card use!

What does MasterCard say:
“It’s the merchants’ decision to limit purchases,” says Visa spokesman Paul Wilke. He adds: “Customers always have the option of paying with the card at the cash register” where its policy differs from the pump.

The $75 limit “ensures merchants and customers are protected from fraud,” says MasterCard spokesman Tristan Jordan.

Visa and MasterCard have no immediate plans to go higher. “It’s something we always look at,” Wilke says.
Thanks to the USA Today for for this lesson-Happy Friday!!

Read the rest here:
$75 Limit on Credit Card Charges for Gas