RIP John Templeton

One of the giants in investing and mutual funds in particular, John Templeton, passed away last week. Click on the headline above for Investopedia's short biography or here for Forbes's take on lessons to be learned from Sir John.

IRS Raises Mileage Allowances

Deductible mileage rates will increase for mileage incurred in the last half of 2008 the IRS announced yesterday. Specifically:

Deductible business mileage: $0.58/mi
Deductible medical/moving expense mileage: $0.27/mi

Charitable mileage deduction, set by statute, remains: $0.14/mi

Fundamental Analysis Basics

I envy writers and researchers that can summarize ideas concisely without over-simplifying.

This article appears courtesy of John Maudlin's 'Outside the Box' email. The article is about short selling but the tool, the F-score developed by University of Chicago professor Joseph Piotroski, described in the article is about as efficient a winnower of companies as I've found. Missing, of course, is valuation and price so you still need to determine if the stock is as good as the company.

Maudlin is one of my favorite sources for insight, investing, economic, and otherwise. His email is JohnMaudlin@InvestorsInsight.com.

New Credit Rules May Be Coming

From Clark Howard - an update on credit card proposals on the horizon:

http://clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/2008/05/07/13527/

Completed Trade

Completed the following trades:

Purchased 75 shares Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE) @ 126.8794
Purchased 50 shares Vanguard Industrials ETF (VIS) @ 73.3594
Purchased 100 shares Vanguard Material ETF (VAW) @ 96.1299