It isn’t hard to get started. All you need is $100 to $500 to open an account, and anywhere from $25 to $50 monthly to continue building your stock or mutual fund portfolio. In fact, a young person aged 20 could deposit $2,000 and then not another dime. In forty years he or she might have tens of thousands of dollars. The stock market has followed fairly predictable patterns since its inception in the 1800s in New York City. Although historic events like the Great Depression and several global wars have impacted its activity, the gains and losses remain fairly consistent, with most investors earning a predictable return on their investment.

Of course, no one can predict what the future holds, or whether the pattern will continue. And none of us should invest more money than we can afford to lose—just in case the world economy crashes one of these days. But with steady deposits that continue to compound and earn interest over time, a sensible and prudent investor can substantially increase the amount of money going for retirement or a dream vacation at some future point.

If you are thinking about opening an investment account, do a little online browsing for more information. Visit sites like E-trade or Scott’s Trades to see how the process works. Start reading your newspaper’s financial pages for details about the latest stock prices and market trends. Do a little paper trading by following the daily stock news. Instead of actually purchasing stock, however, work it out on a piece of paper by pretending to buy a certain amount of stock for the specified price and then watching to see how it performs over the following week. Chart your gains or losses to figure out whether your stock deal was successful. If you do this for several months, you will soon learn to understand more about the stock market and how to buy and sell like the pros.

Even if your budget is tight, try to set aside a little money to open an investment account from any windfalls that come your way from job bonuses, inheritances, or cash gifts. Some people set aside their annual job raise, or part of it, as part of their investment strategy. Then, as your budget becomes looser with paid-off bills or grown-up kids, you may be able to start having a standard monthly amount deducted automatically from your paycheck and deposited into your investment account. This could take the form of a Roth IRA (individual retirement account), a money market fund, a mutual fund portfolio, or individual stock shares.

It probably is a good idea to take an investment class at the community college or sign up for a financial planning seminar. Success may be just a few years away if you start now and plan right.

Sports memorabilia has shown a tendency to increase in value as the years go by. This is especially true for any piece that involves a player who is considered one of the best of all time. This is one thing that you will need to keep in mind when you are looking into what pieces to purchase. Try to pick out the new player in the league that is going to turn into the next great. By doing this you will be able to purchase an item for a relatively low price, and then watch it grow as the player comes into his or her own.

You may also want to invest in older sports memorabilia that has shown a tendency to increase in value over time. This is often one of the best ways to locate a good investment. This is due in part because you can see how much the value has increased over the past five years, and then make a good estimate at how much it will increase in value over the next five.

Finding sports memorabilia to invest in has never been easier. There are hundreds of resellers that are willing to supply you with what you are looking for. Just like anything else, you can shop around in order to get the best price possible. Make sure that you do some research on the company that you are purchasing your items from. It is very important to only purchase 100% authentic items. You can ensure this by only purchasing memorabilia that is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

If you love sports and are interested in investing, you may want to consider jumping into the sports memorabilia industry. It has proven to be an effective way to invest money, and has made many people a pretty penny over the years.

When you are investing in sports memorabilia make sure you do all of your homework. This includes everything from choosing which players have the best chance of making it big, to ensuring that everything you purchase is 100% authentic. Who knows, you may buy a piece today for hundreds, and sell it in five years for thousands!

Many master Inuit art carvers are also expert hunters. They get to see the Arctic animals regularly resulting in excellent representations in their Inuit carvings and other artwork. Many young Inuit these days prefer not to hunt since northern community grocers have reduced a need to hunt for food. As a result, the accuracy of carvings by some younger, non-hunting Inuit artists may be affected since they may not have the familiarity of Arctic animals like older master carvers do.

All of these developments may lead to the demand for good, high quality Inuit art surpassing supply. This will in turn cause a future appreciation of value for good Inuit art. Of course, characteristics of each piece must be taken into consideration. However, most art experts recommend against buying any type of art purely for investment purposes only. Art should be appreciated for its esthetic value. If a certain artwork doesn’t increase in value as hoped, then at least one would still have a lovely piece of art to look at. If one finds a piece of Inuit art that he or she really likes and can afford, then it should be purchased since the opportunity to own that one of a kind piece will probably not come around again.

With so many potential investments outside the United States, investing internationally becomes a great way to diversify an equity portfolio. Some people contend that there is an increasing correlation in performance between the United States and international markets. But while world markets often tend to react similarly to news or developments occurring around the globe, over time, international and domestic markets tend to behave differently, helping to smooth out the ride in a diversified portfolio.

Consider the performance of the Morgan Stanley Capital International Europe, Australia and Far East Index, which charts the progress of stocks in developed markets located in Europe, Australia and the Far East, versus the S&P 500, considered representative of the broader U.S. stock market. When one is going strong, the other tends to lag behind, and that has been the case going back as far as 1970. In addition, when the MSCI EAFE outperforms the S&P 500, it has done so by a greater margin than when performances are reversed.

In fact, during the past 10 years, the U.S. stock market has never been the leader in the global investment arena. Top performance has been the exclusive domain of international indices during that time, and the returns of the S&P 500 sometimes have lagged those of overseas peers by wide margins.

Global funds invest about half in the United States and half in the rest of the world, making them a smart way for someone with little or no experience in international investing to test the waters. A good example is American Century Global Growth, whose managers scour the globe for the best growth investment opportunities for the fund’s shareholders.

You should consider the fund’s investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses carefully before you invest. The fund’s prospectus, which can be obtained by calling or visiting American Century’s Web site, contains this and other information about the fund and should be read carefully before investing.

A new revolutionary technology is forming called RFID or Radio Frequency Identification. This technology greatly improved the ability to track items, any item. The current leading market solution uses a one way system where, for example, a simple “bar code” at your local grocery store where the grocery clerk has to run the bar code over a scanner. These readings are very man-hour intensive as each individual item must be scanned RFID is a two way system where a reader could scan every item at a Wal-Mart (WMT-48.14) store. Then each item with a RFID tag would respond or “chirp” back to the reader. Using the two way RFID system a single person could take complete inventory of a store almost eliminating all the man-hours of manual inventory. A reader mounted on a fork lift truck would track each item the hyster moves into the warehouse. The RFID will allow a single person the ability to inventory unlimited amounts of items.

Using our simple forecasting theorem which mathematically helps us forecasts how successful technologies will be; our approach signaled that RFID will be revolutionary.
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Here are some of the many uses of RFID. Tracking gamblers at a black jack table so the house knows who’s betting big, tracking prisoners in a jail to see who was involved in a scuffle, tracking prescription drugs for counterfeit, tracking cattle for mad cow disease, tracking cars so police could immediately identify a stolen car or a car with outstanding issues. More examples, tracking passports to see if the picture is correct, tracking products for Wal-Mart to almost any store and warehouse, tracking the Department of Defense inventories for most items, Boeing can track parts for building aircrafts and Ford tracking parts for it automobiles. It appears that both the scope and magnitude at this time is limitless.

Industries tracking consumer goods from shoes to cement blocks to frozen food to cars, including boats, planes, parts and supplies can utilize it in all aspects from manufacturing, inventory and shipping to retail outlets.

Judging from our theorems, RFID will see revolutionary growth to the likes of the cell phone, Personal Computer and the Internet that also at the beginning of their cycles scored extremely high.

IdtechEx forecast

From IdtechEx, the market for RFID is to grow from 2.7 billion in 2006 to 12.3 billion in 2010. The value is expected to be about 26.2 billion in 2016 or ten years to grow almost 10 times.

Selecting the company that could lead that market

Identify the correct market to invest is only part of the challenge. Possibly the bigger challenge is to identify the company that will lead this technology. This is where we have identified Intermec. Intermec is one of the leading companies in bar codes. Over the last few years Intermec has been focused on developing products that would comply with the new Gen 2 RFID standard rather than introduce products that supported the older Gen 1 Class and 0 Class protocols. This strategy has allowed Intermec to utilize its roughly 149 patents to allow Intermec to extract royalties from the entire RFID industry and appear to be essential when utilizing the Gen 2 RFID standard. The Gen 2 RFID standard and Intemec’s patents are very co-depended of each other. In my opinion Intermec is gaining an integration monopolistic position.

Why monopolies have great success

Past monopolies have had great success from controlling the market like Intermec integrating their solution into and then helped become part of the standard. Compared to war it is the equivalent of having the high ground in battles – this approach is extremely valuable. Control in new revolutionary technologies is very rare. Our studies shows that in the past when companies achieved control they are usually able to hold it for 1-2 business cycles or from 9 -19 years. Some past successes that have demonstrated integration and or control of revolutionary products were Microsoft (MSFT-27.13) and Intel (INTC-19.78) in the Personal Computer, Cisco (CSCO-21.44) for the Internet and Qualcomm (QCOM-49.87) currently for Cell Phones. When I was young child IBM (IBM-84.32) controlled the standard for Mainframe and AT&T (T-26.81) the phone business. You can often see companies that are monopolistic in a revolutionary industry have a probability of achieving super wealth. Several monopolies we listed achieved the world’s largest stock value.

Is Intermec a new monopoly?

Intermec or any company for that matter to have a chance to be great monopoly it must have a degree of control. The question is how much control does Intermec have over the RFID industry?

To answer this simple but very important question we devised an extremely effective test. Intermec claim’s to be an integral part of the Gen 2 standard. The definition of de facto standard is recognized by all its peers as the standard.

Does the RFID industry recognize Intermec as the standard?
Companies like Symbol Technology (SBL-10.64), Zebra Technology (ZBRA-45.45), Philips Electronics (PHG-32.38), Texas Instrument (TXN-30.59) are some of the leading companies in RFID space that also have the size, technical background, law staff and other resources to verify or reject Intermec’s claim. Accepting Intermec’s claim means paying royalties to Intermec for years, you must understand if possible all theses companies would NOT want to pay royalties so their preferences is to reject Intermec’s claim.

All the companies mentioned above and more have agreed that Intermec will receive royalties on every Gen 2 RFID product they make. No one wants to pay 2.5-7% royalty to Intermec to utilize the Gen 2 RFID standards. Especially leaders in RFID like Phillips, Texas Instrument and Symbol which all have a major leading position in the market, and their agreements with Intermec greatly validated Intermec’s claims.

It was when the largest company and Intermec’s closest competitor, Symbol Technologies, that created the biggest challenge to Intermec’s claims. Symbol Technologies not only refused to pay early in the process, but sued Intermec asking for Intermec to pay Symbol royalties for their many patents and Symbol wanted their own version of the standard.

Symbol gave up their court fight and agrees to join Intermec’s Rapid Start Licensing program. When your biggest competitor allows you to sign a controlling contract where Symbol has to pay royalties to Intermec every time Symbol sells a RFID hardware product. To me the Intermec/Symbol relationship Intermec has provided validation with a very high degree of control.

Many experts assign a similar agreement to the rise of Microsoft and the downfall of IBM when IBM accepted the Microsoft PC standard. I believe history will say the same thing when Nokia (NOK-20.52) then the largest cell phone company in the world signed and agreed to pay royalties to Qualcomm on all Nokia 3G phones.

It reminds me of a very old saying “the king is dead, long live the king” if you can dictate your will to the powerful companies your have a high degree of control.

Gutter vs. Shingles

Intermec is using their RFID control to establish what I call a gutter business. In Oregon it rains a lot and what we know are roofs. Water from shingles flow into a gutter. In some cases the gutter and shingles are co-dependent and need each other for the roof to work properly. First gutters have tremendous leverage. Second you could measure the number of shingles or measure the square footage of the roof to understand the amount of possible water flow or leverage the gutter might achieve We believe gutter based companies are far better companies to own. If you wanted fill a cup of water would you put your cup under a shingle or a gutter? It’s my believe that by far most companies are shingles business models, but the gutter business model have far great potential to grow profits utilizing and leveraging the shingles.

In a few situations all the shingles combined could flow into a single gutter. A roof with a single gutter or a monopoly has one of the best business models and has a chance to leverage the entire industry to enrich its profits.

Intermec is possibly building this type of business model and has awarded the premier client of Cisco, and IBM while having alliances with Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Companies that joined Intermec’s Rapid Start Program and agreed to pay Intermec a royalty on every RFID hardware product they sell.
• Accu-Sort
• Avery Dennison
• AWID
• Datamax
• EM Micro
• Feig Electronics
• Hand Held Products
• LXE
• Metrologic
• Paxar
• PSC
• Psion Teklogix
• SAMSys
• Sato
• Symbol Technologies
• Texas Instruments
• ThingMagic
• Toppan Printing
• Zebra Technologies
All of these agreement occurred in 2005 after the new Gen 2 standards for RFID established in early 2005.

If we are right Intermec should have outstanding and accelerated growth for the duration of the Gen 2 RFID standard business cycle possible Gen 2 Standard last about 9 years based on many business cycles we followed.

Risk

Intermec’s placement and degree of control in the Gen 3 RFID standard is very unclear, and will take many years from now to achieve any clarity.

A company could challenge Intermec’s legal position. Even though Intermec has about 149 patents in the RFID industry the largest IP portfolio, a single company could sue making Intermec’s patent unenforceable. Knowing that Symbol Technologies is well funded and a leader in the RFID industry and has attempted this and failed, it makes the hurdle even higher for a smaller less funded company to attempt this knowing that it would be a very costly approach.

Intermec appears to limit the companies that license their technology especially during their Rapid Start Program. If in future years Intermec is found to be a monopolistic company this could be very damaging in a court system. Intermec should give every company an equal chance.

RFIG Gen 2 is still not Intermec’s core profit center and there are no guarantees that RFID will become revolutionary. Most all new technologies have gone through long incubation cycles before becoming mainstream which RFID Gen 2 will probably incur.

In my opinion the great appreciation will come when the royalties are the main profit center, and that may be many years if it ever occurs.

Conclusion

To summarize

1. The RFID appears to approaching a revolution growth cycle.
2. Intermec is the technology patent leader and has degrees of control over the Gen 2 RFID Standard.
3. Intermec is forming a gutter business model combined with a possible monopoly position giving Intermec the ability to have possible leverage over the entire RFID industry

If Intermec could achieve the three items above it has a chance to achieve
a: Modern Monopoly Effect.

A Modern Monopoly Effect is when a single monopolistic company achieves a stock market value roughly equal to all the companies’ market value that supports the standard. In Intermec’s case Intermec could achieve stock market values about equal to all RFID hardware partners businesses that supports Intermec Gen 2 Standard for RFID.

The water from all the shingles on a roof could roughly equals the water flowing into a gutter, a single monopolistic gutter named Intermec.

If Intermec becomes a Modern Monopoly Effect possibly it will become the fifth time we have identified and owned a Modern Monopoly Effect.