Slow Sale Zone Concerns

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Do you Live in a Slow Sale Zone?

When buying a property, there are many factors that will influence your decision. Potential buyers may consider whether the property in question will increase in value over time, but there are many more questions to ask before making a commitment. The area itself can have an effect on the speed at which your property sells, so if you are struggling to sell a home, this could perhaps be the reason. Do you live in a slow sale zone?

School Catchment Area

There are many factors that contribute to your area being a slow sale zone and one of these is not living in a school catchment area. If you do not live near a grammar school, you could find that families or young couples may not be very interested in viewing your property. Being based near a reputable school is one of the main factors that influence a property buyer who has small children, and if the school they have their heart set on is too far away, this will lower your chances of making a sale. This may mean that you don’t get as many viewings as you had hoped for, but you can turn this around by making your home more appealing to students and professionals.

Crime Hotspot

If you live in an area that has a high crime rate, this could mean that you are looking at a slow sale. If your home has a higher than average crime rate, this will be a red flag for many potential buyers and it could prolong the sale process. The best way to put buyers’ minds at rest and increase the chances of a sale is to kit out your home with high quality security solutions. An alarm system, security gates and CCTV can make your home instantly more appealing and set your home apart from the other properties that are for sale in your area.

Nightmare Neighbors

It’s not just the area that can put potential buyers off purchasing your home.  The people that live nearby can also put doubts in buyers’ minds. Problem neighbors can drive down the value of your home and it is your responsibility as a seller to inform potential buyers of any disputes that have occurred. For example, if you have had disputes over land, it is essential that you put potential buyers in the picture as this directly affects the property in question. Nightmare neighbors needn’t ruin your chances of selling your property fast.

 

Pros and Cons of Automation

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Today I’m going to discuss the Pros and Cons of Automation, from my own personal experiences.

First, what do I mean by Automation?

My definition of Automation is:  the use of technology to substantially increase accuracy, decrease the process time for the given task and at the same time having no human involvement needed to perform the task.

The way that automation does this is by enabling a business to take a current product and make it cheaper than what the competition can make it for thru both increased efficiency (enabling reduced production time by a significant factor), and in the elimination) of the need for human capital to be involved in the process.

Automation

 

The Pros of Automation – My Automation Experience

While my day job isn’t really to automate things at where I work at, I usually see ways to automate processes at work that others.  For example, I’ve taken a process that use to take about two days (16 hours) to complete, and reduced the execution time for the person involved in that process down to 5 seconds (I’ve timed it over 5 samples, and even the 5 second number is conservative, usually it takes 3 seconds).  This particular task could be totally automated, but the management team of the business process still wanted to be in control of the process, so it’s not “totally” automated, but it can and probably should be.

Another example is that I had a friend at work that had a task that took between 30 minutes to an hour each and every day.  I examined the task and told her that I could totally automate the task and even have a confirmation of completion, and a summary of what was updated emailed to her afterwards.  While 2 1/2 to 5 hours per week doesn’t seem like much, it was great for her since she hated the mundane task and even inputted improper numbers as she tabulated the end results.  So now she no longer has to do a task that she dreads, and the accuracy has been dramatically improved!

Based on my experience, automation is a huge win for businesses since such automated systems are much cheaper than employing a human to do the process.  Automation is also great for repetitive tasks that are tedious and painful to perform for individuals.

List of the Cons of Automation

The worst thing about Automation is the job loss for individuals!  Over the years, I’m sure I created enough automated solutions that I prevented someone from being hired to do work in my company.

    • Reduced need for human capital.  Automation also makes unemployment a huge battle for society in general.
    • Reduced tax stream for government (all types, federal, local and city).  The government losses tax revenue on robots and automated computer programs because they don’t pay taxes and anything else for that matter;
    • Automation adds to wealth inequality that’s already too prevalent in the world.
    • If the task being replaced is not documented, once the task is automated, it’s the only way that the task can be done.

Most of the typical automation has been with automated computer programs, but expect more machinery and robots do more and more of the tasks that humans use to sole do.  Even law and medicine areas can be replaced (google has a car that can almost drive itself)!  It will be interesting to see the way the evolution of 3D printers and automation interact together in the future.  Who know, once a item in inventory sells, it might be instantly replaced by some automated 3D printer process without human involvement.

I think we are seeing the effects of automation already, possibly automation along with offshore job migrations could be the reasons unemployment is always kind of on the high side in the united states.

For better or worse, pro or con is a matter of opinion and if you own the business or work for the business.

Bests,

Don

 

Was the Removal of the Uptick Rule Stupid?

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The “Uptick Rule” was removed back in 2007 after a pilot study said that no manipulations occurred.This is what the pilot study found

“The general consensus from these analyses and the roundtable was that the Commission should remove price test restrictions because they modestly reduce liquidity and do not appear necessary to prevent manipulation. In addition, the empirical evidence did not provide strong support for extending a price test to either small or thinly-traded securities not currently subject to a price test.”

Not to be offensive, but isn’t this the most stupid thing that you’ve ever read?  Here is my take on why this is stupid, or maybe why the pilot program supporters think the American people are stupid.

So basically somehow the push to remove the “Uptick Rule” was put into place, not sure how, but I’m guessing lobbyists for hedge funds!  Sadly, the government removed the uptick rule for some of the largest stocks for this pilot program.  Umm, that’s kind of short-sighted, no?

These are the reasons that such a study is STUPID!

  1. If the lobbyist (who I assume are spending money to do this) are pushing to get such a rule removed, why would they sabotage their own efforts by taking advantage of temporary removal of the rule?  If the lobbyist (probably hedge funds) did take short-term advantage of the rule removal, wouldn’t that make the hedge funds (or lobbyist) look stupid?
  2. The pilot was done in the best of time, not the worst of times.  The major advantage of the uptick rule is protection for the worst of times,right?  Plus, if you run such a pilot program when time are good, who is really shorting large stocks much then anyway?
  3. If the rule had no effect on the market, then why not let it stay?  Instead they removed it and in a few short months boom, we have “The Great Recession”!
  4. The ones who would most benefit from the removal are those that least need any help in the stock market.  Everybody talks about Rich getting richer, well here is a direct effect and cause of that saying.  It’s like having an average person fight Mike Tyson, but tying that average persons left arm behind their back.  Would you fight such a fight, or does it sounds pretty stupid to you?  Well, removal of the Uptick rule is at that same level of stupidity..

Now I could say that I believe some agency should investigate to see how those involved with the removal of the “Uptick Rule” has fared from an increase in “Net Worth” perspective after the removal if the uptick rule.  But I’m not going there and I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt (wink, wink).

Why not put it back into effect?  The worst that could happen is that the Uptick algorithm would slow down market trades a bit (a small reduce in liquidity, but just a little), is that such a bad thing?  For smaller stocks, the Uptick rule would practically have no noticeable trade volume change in transaction speed at all.  I don’t think it’s that important to have more than 1 thousand trades per second for any given stock, do you?  I know I don’t trade that fast, personally.  I like a quick execution time, but I have to wonder what the ratio of human verses automated trading is happening currently?  Are we fighting trading algorithms on way faster than human computers?

Check out this video at huffingtonpost.com site:  Trading in Johnson & Johnson in 1/2 second.

Okay, I put my “main street” take on the removal out there.  But I also understanding computer systems, I can imagine that there might be some legitimate reasons for the removal, and I invite any that know those reasons to speak up in the comments below!

In conclusion, what I really wonder is if government is trying to destroy the stock market for the little guy without even realizing it, or trying to help the Rich get Richer with the disabling of the “Uptick Rule” and the gutting of Glass-Steagall act (thanks Bret @ Hope to Prosper for the comment about Glass-Steagall!

What do you think?  Are you thinking WTF is going on anymore?  Are we small, main street investors really being taken advantage of?  if you want to read more, check out my original write up on this called “Where is the Uptick Rule“.

I’m still upset about this!

Grrrr,

Don

Do I Have Brilliant Ideas on Helping the Econony or No?

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I’m tired of reading about people who are successfully in life or Actors putting forth their believes and ideas on topics that they haven’t lived or even researched.  I’m tired how the successful tell us all what to do, but don’t do it themselves (surely you know of an actor/actress that has a hummer or large SUV that complains about global warming).  Now I could rant and rave about this until I’m blue in the face, but looking like a smurf doesn’t really fix anything, does it…?

So here are my ideas that might be use for helping the economy today in the United States.

Idea 1.)  Instead of giving countries financial aid for free, why not invest in them instead?  That way it’s a win-win!  They benefit and United States benefits if the foreign countries thrive.

Idea 2.)  Why not have an extra taxes paid line on the income taxes form?  That way the liberal rich (or Warren Buffett) and actors/actresses that continually try to increase my taxes can put their money where their mouths are while leaving us alone!  Shoot perhaps the government could even have a wall of gratitude on their website to identify and thank the top above and beyond contributors.

Idea 3.)  This one might sound a bit off, but perhaps we should consider lowering the maximum contribution limit for retirement accounts or at least hold them steady for a few years.  Yeah, sounds like I went nuts huh.  But if tax collection is the goal of the current administration, reducing the contributions amounts would mainly those more able to contribute more to such plans.  Logically, such a change would be an indirect tax on those more wealthy that are able to afford to contribute the higher contribution amounts.  This would suck for me, but it’s still a viable option.  I think if the white house wants to get more “tax revenue” (I hate calling tax collection REVENUE…) then this is a viable way to do it in my opinion.

Idea 4.)  Perhaps social programs should be more of a forgivable debt?  Then those that do beat their social class and become millionaires could pay back some of the taxpayer’s monies?

Idea 5.)  The government should really review the wage inequality between countries.  Paying someone overseas only $1 in US currency while someone in the US get’s paid $20 for the same type of work is a pretty big incentive to move a lot of stuff offshore.  This is probably a lot more complex that I can imagine, but if a company that moves offshore charges $2 for a production vs $21 for the same product, and the products are identical or close to identical, which price are you willing to pay for it at Walmarts?

Okay, the ideas above are just a quick attempt at some ideas that might help the economy.  I fully admit, they are simplistic the way I present them, but still interesting, no?

Bests,

Don