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Market Correction, Web Hosting and Weekend Reading - Sept 12, 2008

Written by FrugalTrader on Sep 12, 2008 filed under Interesting Links

Cheap Web Hosting

I’ve been getting a bunch of emails lately from personal finance enthusiasts looking to get started in the blog world and looking for suggestions on a good but cheap web host. I’ve personally tried a bunch of cheaper “shared” web hosting, some good but also quite a few bad ones. From my experience, the best bang for your buck web host that I’ve found is lunarpages. Their regular price / month is $6.95, but for the fall season, they are offering all 12/24 month terms the reduced price of $4.95/mo. This pricing includes a free domain name along with unlimited bandwidth/storage. For the features, reliability, available support and money back guarantee, the current pricing is a steal.

Market Correction

The current market correction has got people squirming in their seats. What’s causing the TSX to slide? A couple factors; global recession fears and crashing commodities prices. What do you do? As I’ve mentioned before, if you are invested for the long term, ignore the markets and stay invested. If you were to chart this “crash” 20 years from now, you would barely notice the dip on the ascending slope. Personally, whenever the market corrects, I follow my stock watch list closely to see if my favorite stocks meet my target buy prices. Come to think about it, maybe the RBS prediction of a global market crash was partially correct?

Weekend Reading

There seemed to be a few blog rebuttals to my “why index funds may not be for you” column, mostly from hardcore indexers. You can find them from:

Consumerism Commentary shows us How to Deal With Unpredictable Income.

Canadian Dream responds to my expenses summary with a comparison to his own expenses in the article “frugal vs frugal.”

The Digerati Life lists 14 Effective Strategies To Leverage A Weak Stock Market.

Cash Money Life writes about The Bottled Water Myth.

Frugal Dad indicates that Half of Us Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck.

Four Pillars reveals the secrets of buying in bulk.

Generation X Finance has an interesting view on Why Everyone Should Keep at Least $30 in Cash on Them at All Times

My Dollar Plan has some advice for Sarah Palin.

The Financial Blogger has a great tax tip for those of you who have small corporations with home offices. Get the business to “rent” the office space from your home. That way, it’s a tax deduction for the business, and you get the personal tax deductions from being a landlord.

Lazy Man and Money shows us that Your Home Pays You Back with Reverse Mortgages.

Money Smart Life has some great tips on the art of quitting your day job gracefully.

The Sun’s Financial Diary asks “Is Small-Cap Making a Comeback?”

Brip Blap lists how Batman would deal with an uncertain economic future in the article “holy dismal science, batman!“

11 Comments, Comment or Ping

1. Four Pillars

I’ve heard good things about lunar pages as well. We have the DH vps and I’m kind of on the fence about it. We’re not really big enough to warrant to a more expensive hosting solution so maybe something like Lunar is an option.

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 10:20 am
2. FrugalTrader

Hey FP! How was the reliability been like for DH vps?

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 10:29 am
3. Dividend Growth Investor

I have been buying stocks for several months now as most of my picks tend at depressed prices.
I missed adding to several of them already however, as they keep increasing in price. Who would have thought that discount stores like Wal-MArt and Family Dollar would do well in this recession?

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 11:49 am
4. Cannon_fodder

DGI,

I thought that during a recession, the lower end retailers typically do better because people don’t have the money to spend at the more expensive stores. When the economy is humming along really well, the Walmarts tend to lag behind the luxury retailers (Coach, Tiffany’s, Rolls Royce, etc.)

I’m quite excited at the market potential right now. Some of my Canadian stocks have reached my target prices for purchase and many of the international stocks are below. But China looks like it has plenty of room to drop. One stock I’m following is on its way to its 8th lower close in 11 days during which it has lost over 20%.

I’m hopeful that the Canadian financials will go through one last plunge before I can invest in them but I may have missed my best opportunity just 2 months ago. Even so, I wouldn’t be surprised that an investment in the Financial subindex in Canada would be up around 40% within 3 years.

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
5. FrugalTrader

I’m with you CF, during slow economic times, people still need to buy toilet tissue, dish detergent and other home essentials. Walmart is the store that comes to mind as the most cost effective place to buy those household essentials.

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
6. Canadian Capitalist

Thanks for the link! Cheers.

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
7. Four Pillars

The vps isn’t bad but we’ve had a few problems where it can’t handle traffic very well. The problem is that I can’t tell if it was the server or something in the blog.

One big complaint I have is that you set the amount of memory etc that you want to pay for - it is then burstable to I think 50% more than what you set. If you get a big rush then you might need more than that even but you need to increase the settings manually - unless you are spending all day looking at your traffic then it’s pretty useless. I’d like for them to just increase the memory automatically to suit the traffic.

Like everything else with blogging - it’s very difficult to properly measure if something is working/worth it or not. :)

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
8. Michael James

Thanks for the mention, FrugalTrader. Have a great weekend!

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
9. Scott

I saw a new item last week that mentioned the Wal-Marts of the world were bustling more than ever. Great. That’s one way to ensure the mass proliferation of sub-par consumer goods across the land. And the standard (and quality) of living continues it’s slide…

I’ve always said if you are going to go into business, choose either end of the scale: 1) a “McBusiness” that sells a billion widgets a year for $0.50 each, or 2) a “Trumpness” that sells a crazy high-quality, insanely priced widget. Forget the middle.

1) Like McD’s, the masses will buy your product and you will be wealthy. The bigger the lower-class becomes, the more people there will be to buy your widget. There’s a reason Buffett bought Coke and Gillette.

2) The ultra-rich are pretty much recession/downturn proof. They will spend the money on what they want regardless of economic conditions. So make something they want and only they can afford, then sell 1 a year.

Unfortunately, I have no ideas for #1 or #2. Harmonica holster maybe?

Sep 12th, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
10. MultifolDream$

For a person who is in his/her early years and starts investing - now is the time. For him/her these market corrections doesn’t matter much.

Sep 13th, 2008 @ 1:58 am
11. Patrick

I’m on LunarPages and can attest for their reliability and ease of use. I’v ebeen a happy customer for well over a year and a half now. Thanks for the mention! :)

Sep 13th, 2008 @ 2:32 am