Monday, May 28, 2012

Choosing Apps for My First Smartphone

My New Droid RAZR

Well, I finally decided to replace my nearly 10-year old flip phone. Even though you could make a strong case that my Virgin Mobile pre-paid flip phone was already overkill for me, I finally tossed the flip phone and upgraded to a Motorola Droid RAZR.

Android smartphone apps & widgets for Motorola Droid RAZR
Motorola Droid RAZR

My home phone is still my primary phone; my mobile phone doesn't get very much use. So, if the increase in the cost of my mobile phone service from $5 to close to $80 a month is going to be worth it, the increase will have to be justified by apps, not phone calls. Here are the apps that I have so far.

Droid RAZR Home Pages 

The Droid RAZR has five home pages that you can use to organize your apps.  Each of my home pages has a theme: communications, social networking, productivity, entertainment or phone utilities.  I describe each of these home pages in more detail below.

Friday, May 18, 2012

The 2011 10-Year Stock Market Projection

Note: The purpose of this post is just to archive the original 2011 projection for posterity. For the current yearly projection, see The 10-Year Stock Market Projection. The original post for 2011 follows....


This post presents projected stock market returns for the "next" 10 years -- beginning in January 2011. It also shows the actual results for the most recently completed 10-year period.

Projected 10-Year Stock Market Returns


Stock market (Dow Jones Index) forecast for next 10 Years performance /returns

The above graph (click to expand) shows my projected returns for the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) for 10-year periods beginning end-of-year 2000 through 2010. The dotted red line estimates the return that a hypothetical investor in the stock market would receive over the next ten years if he

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

April 2012 Stock Market Update

Stock market (DJIA) monthly performance / closing prices for last 12 months
Dow Index Monthly Closes Through April, 2012

A Flat Month

After establishing a new 52-week high on the first trading day of the month, stocks skidded.  Poor employment numbers and renewed worries about Europe (Spain this time) resulted in five straight down days.  These were more or less offset by four straight up days at the end of the month.  Bottom line? We ended one and a half points from where we started.