New account balances are as follows:
General Account – $ 1,357
Spending Account – $ 77
Spending Account 2 – $ 403
Investment Account – $ 2,523
Bill Account – $ 981
Permanent Savings – $ 5,549
Charity Account – $ 338
Stock Portfolio Value – $ 11,323
Roth IRA – $ 6,574
Emigrant Direct – $ 1,007
Total Liquid Assets – $ 30,132
Credit Card Balance – $ 0
Business Holding – $ 5,309
Total On Hand – $ 35,441
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My first stock sale in a while occurred on Friday. I had a $23 limit order set for Syntel (SYNT), and made a profit of $681. I’m in the process of restructuring my portfolio, so I will start buying around October which is generally not a very hot month for the stock market.
I’ve accumulated $5,549 in my permanent savings account which is earning a very small amount of interest (less than 1%). I need to put some of this money back to work in low-risk areas.
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I found the popular marketing blog Brand Autopsy pretty interesting, and recently asked the fellow Austinite John Moore to coffee. We met up and had a great conversation. After spending years in the marketing departments of Starbucks and Whole Foods, he really knows his stuff.
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My income for April was pretty slim. Several stock shortages forced me to cancel several orders, leaving House of Rave profit at only $1,080 for the month. Ouch! I’m looking to correct that discrepancy this month.
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This past week I had the opportunity to attend a huge event held in Austin. CEO’s and politicians were in abundance, but my favorites were Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer and Colin Powell. Unlike the speeches I usually attend which have mostly students present, the subject matter was much different. The resounding theme of this conference was: Making the world a better place through the use of technology.
I’ve never seen Michael Dell do a solo speech, but he was actually really good and pretty funny too. The day before his speech I got to speak with Mr. Dell one-on-one for about 3 minutes which was rather fun!
One of the distinguished guests at the conference was Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. I’m not sure how to pronounce his name, but I managed to get two photos with him during a press conference! Much to my surprise, he actually looked a bit like the Prime Minister of Malaysia from the movie Zoolander!
He had so much security around him that I didn’t dare approach him for a picture without permission. Instead I asked his head press secretary to take these pictures for me.
I was really excited to see Steve Ballmer speak. He didn’t act like this, but he was still fun to hear. Once again, the speech was about improving the world through the use of technology, so it was mainly a speech about what Microsoft has done to help. I was already in the very front row, but I really wanted to snag a picture with him….no luck though:
My FAVORITE speaker through this entire event was by far Colin Powell. I thought a staunch, former Secretary of State would be speaking….instead the guy was an absolute comedian!! He had the whole place in laughter most of the time, all while peppering his speech with serious points. He’s 69 years old and has been doing this for years, and you could easily tell. I truly enjoyed the time he spent speaking. His speech was incredibly natural, he never used the teleprompter or stood at the podium and it seemed he honestly enjoyed being up on the stage doing his speech.
