Probably boring, but weirdly exciting…

1. Forever Stamp - Here’s a great post from The Simple Dollar about the economics of purchasing the forever stamp. As you can see, it doesn’t really make sense to purchase it because price increases move lockstep with inflation. Better to invest the money. However, if you purchase it right before a rate increase, it could net you some BIG bucks. Of course, The Simple Dollar didn’t know that it was going to cost $0.41; a fascinating bargain of $0.00.

Here’s The Simple Dollar’s graph to illustrate.

Here’s a quote:

To summarize: I plan on buying a few hundred “forever” stamps just before the next rate hike, but not more than I could use in a year. This lets me maximize the benefit of beating a rate hike, but doesn’t lock me into an “investment” that merely stays the same as inflation.

2. Wal-Mart & Consumer Electronics - Wal-Mart announces that its aggressively moving into consumer electronics and that it will carry Skype products in 1,800 of its outlets. Good day for consumers, bad day for product manufacturers and competitors. As I’ve said before, Wal-Mart continues to be a screaming buy.

3. Ben Stein’s Castration - It looks like Ben, the comedic genius from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, son of an economist, and host of a very good but deceased game show, continues to write his politically correct column. If he mentions this again, I’ll likely puke:

As I’ve written before, I like these investments:

• The iShares Emerging Markets index (EEM), which might be 15 percent of your investments.

• The iShares EAFE index (EFA) for developed countries, which might be 25 percent.

• The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX) for domestic (Fidelity has an almost identical fund, the FSTMX), which might be 45 percent of your total.

• And maybe 10 percent in the iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors fund (ICF) for REITs and 5 percent in the shares of some super individual stocks, like JNJ.

Enough for now, I can’t take it anymore!