Economics

Oct 02

Entrepreneurs Will Save America

My friend Will O’Brien just started a blog, and it already looks like a winner. I recommend his first post: “Entrepreneurs Will Save America“.

May 14

Daily Gas Use for the United States and the World

Statistics, Economics Comments

The other day I wrote a post on How much Gas Americans use per day. The answer is 400 Million Gallons. A reader wanted to know how much gas the whole world consumes in a day. The answer is about 83 millon bbl’s. One bbl = 42 gallons, so the world consumes about 3.5 billion gallons of gas per day. That means the United States consumes 11% of the total gas consumed per day.

400 million gallons is equal to:

1.5 million cubic meters. 2.56 billion 20oz bottled waters. 400 million gallons of milk.

There are 1.3 quadrillion gallons of water in Lake Michigan. One quadrillion equals 1,300 trillion. Or 1,300,000,000,000,000. If America had an oil supply of 1.3 quadrillion gallons, and consumed 400 million gallons per day, it would take 8,904 years for us to run out. If the world had an oil supply as big as lake Michigan it would last for 890 years.

Americans use a lot of gas. The world uses a lot of gas. But the world is a big place and there’s a lot to go around.

May 08

How much gas do Americans consume per day?

Statistics, Economics Comments

Americans consume about 400 Million gallons of gas per day. That works out to about 146 Billion gallons of gas per year.

Exxon Mobile’s 2007 net income was $40.6 Billion. Not that this makes any sense, but if you imagine that their entire profit went to lowering gas prices, prices would drop by 27 cents.

Sep 28

First Place in the Stock Market Game

Economics Comments

So after 1 year, my Fantasy Stock Portfolio returned a little over 150%, which was enough to capture 1st place. We used the MarketWatch game. At first I had no competition among our friends in our private game, although Conor(and his risky day trading in the subprime market) spiked at one point and finished around 80%. I lucked out thanks to a hot tech market and picking some of the best companies in that. Not a single pick lost money(though this is lucky).

My primary investments that I held for the duration of the game were RIMM and AAPL. I also held MSFT and HPQ for the duration, though in smaller quantities. I dabbled with maybe 2 or3 other stocks. I made a bit on GOOG but thought the volatility was too much and while I can clearly see the untapped markets for RIMM and AAPL products, I think AdSense is nearing saturation. HPQ has impressed me the past few years with their well designed products(which I own a few of) and I think they can be the AAPL of the PC world. MSFT makes so much money, has brilliant people, and the new Office 2007 rocks(even if I’m not too impressed with Vista). 360 is also a great product. MSFT is not gonna fall anytime soon.

Besides those, I had some boring non tech investments. My strategy with investing is simple. I know tech well, so if I’m going to invest in something that is riskier than Indexes or CD’s, it’s going to be what I know best: tech. And I buy and hold for the long run. Partly because it makes sense, partly because I like doing things that don’t take much time. And trading is a hassle.

I’m mostly proud of the fact that my returns were high while I maintained a good Sharpe Ratio and I didn’t carry a whole lot of risk.

How did my real portfolio do? Pretty much mirrored my virtual portfolio. Except the commas and trailing zeros were very, very much different.

If someone had given me $1,000,000 a year ago, I would be writing this from a tropical resort right now. Instead, I’ve earned enough to maybe splurge on the fries when I order my next hamburger. But it’s all good because I don’t need much money to do what I love. And because I’m totally going to win the lottery soon.

Breck’s Homepage

Entrepreneurs Will Save America

Daily Gas Use for the United States and the World

How much gas do Americans consume per day?

First Place in the Stock Market Game

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Recommended Books

Links

Archives

Categories