My extended summer vacation from blogging is over. I needed a break at the beginning of summer, so I took a couple of weeks off.  However, I then found it extremely difficult to get motivated to start up again.

I caught a form of writers block that has been very hard to shake. The economic funk we are in has put me in a very unmotivated mood. My guess is that the same thing is happening to others. This Great Recession must be causing a massive physiological impact across society.

Have these economic times also had an impact on your motivation and mood? How have you handled it?

I just published my first mobile app! It’s called Inflation Adjuster and it works on Android devices. Inflation Adjuster is a quick and easy to use tool that calculates the dollar price equivalent between two years.

Inflation Adjuster calculates what the buying power of a dollar amount in a certain year is worth in another year. This inflation calculator uses the average annual Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The CPI represents changes in prices of all goods and services purchased for consumption by urban households. This index value has been calculated every year since 1913. For the current year, the latest monthly index value is used. This past Wednesday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in May on a seasonally adjusted basis and over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.6 percent before seasonal adjustment.

In addition to estimating the buying power of a certain dollar amount, the Inflation Adjuster also reports on the total percent nominal price change and the annualized rate of inflation for the selected time period.

Start discovering the REAL value of prices with this simple handy Inflation Adjuster tool today! Please download this free app to your Android phones and provide some feedback. Be sure to provide the name of the device you used to try my App out on when providing feedback. I’m also planning to make additional apps for Android in the future, so I’m open to any suggestions for my next project.

Welcome to the May 16, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics. Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Benjamin Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries: Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the May 9, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics.Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Benjamin Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries: Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the May 2, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics.Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Benjamin Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries: Read the rest of this entry »

With the start of the 2011 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting, it is time for a new addition of the Ultimate Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Guide. Throughout the meeting and for several weeks after this event, I will be sharing links to live feeds, meeting notes, and articles about this years event. The Ultimate 2011 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Guide will be the next best thing to being at the event. Please send me your links to all things about the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting. Be sure to bookmark this page and return often for the latest updates. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the April 25, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics.Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Benjamin Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries: Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this list of top value investors on Twitter based on PeerIndex. PeerIndex is a proprietary measure of social capital based on measures of your authority, resonance, activity, and audience on Twitter and other social media platforms.

While this web authority metric is not perfect, it is fun to see how fellow value investors rank. It appears that I rank twelfth with @FatPitch and Value Investing News comes in at number 27. The average for the Value Investor PeerIndex Group is 29. I think you will find this list to be a good resource for finding new value investors to follow and you might even learn a bit about your own social media habits. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the April 18, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. Today is Tax Day in the United States, so I hope you’ve all finished filing your taxes.  If not, don’t forget to file for an extension.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author and value investor, Joel Greenblatt answered questions live today on his new book, The Big Secret for the Small Investor. Greenblatt also answered questions regarding the Magic Formula discussed in The Little Book That Still Beats the Market. Sadly, not many of the questions touched on his best book, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits.