The Carnival of Smarter Investing #12

As we mentioned last week, the Carnival of Smarter Investing (CoSI) continues to grow rather rapidly. We're getting more and more readers each week, as well as submissions. In the spirit of maintaining a certain size for our weekly Carnival installment, competition is increasing for our submitters. This is obviously great for you, the reader, as you are assured to be offered a steady diet of ever improving material. Great news! So, without further adieu, read on and enjoy the top submissions for this week, as well as boozwatt.com's CoSI Top Pick. And, if you're new here (welcome!!), when you're done, take a second to look around our site and some of the great articles we've assembled on various topics of real estate, business, and investing. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy!

boozwatt.com's Top Pick of the Week

Value Seeker presents Are Mutual Funds For You? posted at Stock Investing, saying, "Complete stock investing resource featuring advice on how to pick stocks, mutual funds tips, and stock broker reviews., Mutual funds and index funds are often good investments. But are they for you?"

The other Top Submissions

Praveen presents Stock Market 2008 - Third Worst Opening Day posted at My Simple Trading System, saying, "The first trading day of 2008 was the third worst opening day since World War II. Yet, history shows that a bad opening does not mean a down year for stocks."

Phillip Lyon presents Is There Any Money in Internet Search Stocks? posted at Intelligent Speculator, saying, "I’ve followed the second tier search companies for a couple of years and frankly I don’t think there is any money to be made investing in these companies (from a fundamental perspective)."

Allen Taylor presents Is Your Annuity Good or Bad? posted at Investing World Today, saying, "Annunities are a misunderstood investment vehicle. I break down the good and bad of Annunities so you can better understand them."

Ryan-Careonecredit presents Taking Advantage Of The Equity In Your Home posted at Care on Credit, saying, "When you obtain a home equity loan, you are borrowing money by using equity in your home as collateral"

Chris Harris presents Data or Algorithms? – New venture outsourcing blog posted at New venture outsourcing blog, saying, "Coming from the data mining and machine learning field, a few friends of mine have been kicking around the idea of whether data or analysis is a more valuable asset. Obviously the two have a symbiotic relationship to be valuable together. If you can have both you’ll take it, but what if you had to choose?"

Edith presents Bring the Love Back posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act., saying, "Are you listening to your customers? Do you really know what they want? It is time to bring the love back? Watch this video."

Raymond presents Cheap and Affordable Ways To Create A Virtual Office For Your Small Home Business posted at Money Blue Book, saying, "Ways to create and run a small home business without spending a lot of money."

Jay M presents 10 Critical Steps to Writing a Business Plan posted at 4 entrepreneur, saying, "10 Critical Steps to Writing a Business Plan"

Ryan-Careonecredit presents Managing Your Credit Wisely Improves Your Chances for a Good Mortgage posted at Care on Credit, saying, "Naturally, if you have kept your credit use reasonable and always paid your bills on time, you will most likely have very few difficulties obtaining a mortgage loan. But what if you are one of the many Americans whose credit report is less than perfect?"

Matthew Paulson presents Donate Shares of Stock and Get Double Tax Savings! posted at American Consumer News, saying, "Don't donate money to non-profits, donate shares of stock instead. There'll be no capital gains to speak of"

Investing Angel presents Common Stock Investing Mistakes posted at Stock Tips, saying, "As we go into 2008, let's recap some of the common mistakes we all make and strive to avoid making them in 2008. 1. Trading too often. This largely depends on the size of your asset base."

Larry Russell presents Fund Authority Scores - Taking the Snake Oil Out of Investment Fund Evaluation - The Skilled Investor provides free personal financial information. This financial website does not sell investment securities, and it do not provide investment advice about posted at THE SKILLED INVESTOR Blog, saying, "Superior mutual fund and ETF performance charts are the sales tools of modern financial snake oil salesmen. They allow investment fund promoters to market selectively their supposedly superior funds and to allege that their excessively high fees are worth it. Lured in by superior past performance, most often individual investors will get mediocre future performance before costs and even worse performance after costs."

Slackerwealth presents Investing in Agriculture, ETN, Jim Rogers posted at A Slacker's Quest for His First Million, saying, "Discusses merits of a new way to invest in agriculture commodities to hedge against inflation."

And here are some submissions that didn't follow the submission guidelines, and thus weren't eligible for the Top Picks, but are still worth your time:

Terry Dean presents January Monthly Mentor Club News posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

The Chef presents Investing With Debt posted at Recipe For Financial Freedom.

Bonnie Krueger presents What Are The Accelerator Loans To Help Pay Off My Mortgage? posted at Student Loan Consolidation.

iPhone 2.0 presents Investors React to Impending 3G iPhone posted at iphoneupdate.

Mr Credit Card presents College Student Credit Cards Primer posted at Ask Mr Credit Card.

Fred Black presents Honesty posted at Fred Black: Internet Business Blog.


That's it for this edition of CoSI. Thanks again for the great above submissions, and thanks also to our rapidly expanding base of loyal readers. And remember, if you’ve got something to say regarding real estate investing, general investing, business, entrepreneurship or small business management, get it written up and submit it today! We’re always looking for more article submissions. So get writing!! Thanks for reading, and see you here next week!!