I couldn't resist

The following just flew out of my head onto the keyboard as I was browsing the internet this evening.  I figured I would share it with you guys:

I begin today with a question.

What is the world’s largest business by revenue?

No, it’s not an oil and gas company like Shell or ExxonMobil (2nd and 3rd, respectively).  It’s not a conglomerate like General Electric (8th).  It doesn’t deal with money like Bank of America (9th) or telecommunications like AT&T (10th).  The world’s largest organization in terms of sheer sales power is Wal-Mart.

It’s the largest private employer in the United States; the largest, in fact, in 25 individual states.  Nearly a third of the entire US population visits a Wal-Mart every week.

Say what you will, but I love Wal-Mart.  I buy almost everything there.  If the Wal-Mart by my place had a gas station, I would never drive anywhere else except to go to work.  I would buy gas at Wal-Mart just so I could keep driving to Wal-Mart to shop there.  I buy all my groceries there.  I go to Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s inside Wal-Mart.  If I had an RV, I could live there (the majority of Wal-Marts allow overnight parking).  If I had an RV, I could live and work there.  I could live my entire existence in a paved lot without moving beyond the path from the trailer door to the store entrance.

The reasons for this are many.  Wal-Marts are so plentiful that they are always close.  I don’t have to plan my schedule to go on a certain day to get a specific discount (Save-On), or waste valuable time browsing flyers, or clipping coupons (Superstore).  I don’t even need a loyalty card to get a deal (Safeway), although they have a new MasterCard rewards card that I might have to look into.  It’s always open.  I went grocery shopping on a Sunday night at 10:30pm and was still able to bask in the presence of my fellow Wal-Mart brothers.  The main reason I shop at Wal-Mart, though, is that I like keeping my money, and by shopping at Wal-Mart, I keep more of it than when I shop anywhere else.

In its fiscal year ending January 31, 2010, Wal-Mart made a net income of $14.335 billion dollars on $405.046 billion in revenue, a net margin of only 3.5%.  They have grown their revenue 17.5% since 2007 while maintaining essentially the same margin.  They have done all of this while continuing to provide me with continually higher quality goods at continually lower prices.

Wal-Mart is one of the greatest businesses of our time.  I need an RV…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart

First Sunday Post!

Starting next week...  :P

The plan going forward...

So on the drive up to Edmonton after work on Friday, in between periods of scribbling down possible topics of discussion on the back of a gas receipt while using the steering wheel as a desk at 130 kilometers per hour, I started to think about the best way to go forward with this site.

I initiated my brainstorming with the simple matter of how frequently I should post, or whether I should even set a target at all.  However, it quickly became apparent that ideas like this have a habit of starting strong and then fizzling out, much like Air Canada's common shares each time they announce some sort of news and investors momentarily forget that the company they are buying into doesn't actually make money (-$1.02/share for the first 2 quarters this year; Air Canada is one of the few companies I despise as much as I despise the fixed fees on my monthly gas bill that total more than the gas I use).  Therefore, I have decided to aim for a once per week post target.  I also like this idea because I will have a full business week of events to filter through prior to choosing the best ones to tear into.

My next thought was what day I should do this on.  Historically, Tuesday has always been my most hated day of the week.  I can deal with Monday, because it's the first day back to work after the weekend, and everyone ramps up to their 15 minutes of meaningless contribution for the day quite gradually.  And, once Wednesday rolls in, well, it's almost Thursday, which means it's almost Friday.  I began to think that by posting Tuesday it might have an opportunity to climb the ladder in my days-of-the-week mental ranking, but it eventually lost out to Sunday.  Sunday works the best, because after watching 60 Minutes, I'm usually at my rage-iest, so that should provide sufficient motivation.  The weekend also works best because the markets are closed, and one can take a stab at what the prior week meant and what the future week could hold in store.

So that's the plan I have for now.  At any rate, I'm headed to bed because I'm old and boring (if I was at home, I'd be even cooler and head to the grocery store because the crowds are the smallest on Saturday night, and I hate other people ;).

The 'Bulin Wall Crumbles

Today Oilers fans received the news that they've been dreading for months: Khabibulin is going to jail.

For anyone not up to date, Edmonton Oilers goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin was pulled over on February 8 near his home in Scottsdale, Arizona.  His blood alcohol level was found to be 0.164. That's over twice the legal limit and probably enough to kill a small animal.  I won't even bother making the stereotypical drunk Russian joke.  Today he was found guilty and could face between 30 days and 6 months in jail.

This is a huge hit to Oilers fans.  Khabibulin was supposed to be the big goaltender that was going to bear the weight of a shaky team.  After his back injury last November, the Oilers struggled to find a way to win, ending up a very distant last in the NHL by the end of the 2009/10 season.  For the sake of the younger and more impressionable hockey fans in Edmonton, I hope he does serve most of his jail term if only to show that no one can getaway with a DUI.  But of course the hockey fan in me just wants to see him back between the pipes in an Oilers jersey.

I think the whole affair is best summed up by Oilers GM Steve Tambellini's post on Twitter today: "Nikolai Khabibulin - the aging goalie I signed longterm for $3.75M per year - is going to jail. No punchline needed here folks."

Fertility Tourism?!

How can this be a thing people do?
Jaunted, one of my favourite travel blogs has a post today about how Spain has surpassed India as the hotspot for couples trying to get pregnant.  Apparently Spain has a large surplus of donor eggs (because they pay their donors around €900) while the UK has an 18-24 month wait time.

If I was ever having that trouble trying to have children, I think I'd consider adoption first...

Original article was from The Guardian.

Introduction

Before I start putting my foot in my mouth on a daily basis for all the world to see (and by all the world, I mean the 3 close relatives who will sympathy-visit this place on a monthly basis), some sort of introductory verbiage is probably in order.

Starting with the most basic of basics, I'm male (it's still there, the last time I checked, anyway), 25 years old, married almost a year, with a little one set to arrive in late November, and am embarking upon a road to complete financial independence.  That last bit is key, because to me, that primarily means independence from having to work.  Since the day I left behind the vast seas of naive, liberal-minded, future pensioned government employees that congregate at our nation's Universities, and became, as my dad calls it, an unsubsidized-net-taxpayer, small portions of something deep inside my brain began to die with each subsequent work day.

As my wife will attest, I have declared on several occasions that people like me are too smart to enjoy life in our current society.  I'm a glass-half-empty type -- except when there's beer in the glass; in that case, I'm a glass all-the-way-empty type -- and when you combine that naturally-skewed outlook with a reasonable degree of intelligence, a Ludwig von Mises Institute membership, an online investment account, and a penchant for reading the news, it is becomes clear that joining the rank and file of the blissfully ignorant is just not in the cards.

Anyway, after web design evolved from something everyone my age (14 at the time) did for fun in the late 90s to something you had to pay someone else to do and maintain, I maintained a small website for a number of years.  At the height of the market crash, however, when I was trying to free up as much cash flow as possible to invest in the plethora of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that came about, I elected to cancel my hosting service and said goodbye to that part of my existence.

Since then, I have had to subject coworkers, family, and friends to verbal ravings on a regular basis to keep my rage levels within their safe operating range.  Given that my employment as an engineer continually reduces my once brilliant mastery of the English language to something resembling binary, I figured it would be a good idea to jump back on the blogging wagon and see if I could still churn out comprehensible speech.

My plan going forward is to post links and provide commentary on the vast amount of material my eyes consume on a daily basis.  From the second I get home to around 11pm each weekday, I am engrossed in market research and the news in general.  Writing down my thoughts seems like an interesting exercise, and I'm hoping it will maintain my otherwise wasted writing talent.

So with that, I introduce to you Terry's Casino.  The name comes from a former colleague who used that term to describe my daily investment practices during the 2008 crash and subsequent bull run.  It's really quite suitable.

Only in Canada - I

Let me start this post by saying outright that I am a proud Canadian and I love this country.

Now that I've said that, there are events and things reported in the news that could only possibly come from the Great White North.  This is a country with major newspapers that often devote more space to hockey than world events.  I'm not complaining or saying that's a problem, but it's a fact.

I've labelled this post with a roman numeral because I'm quite sure there will be a large quantity of items filed under "Only in Canada"...

Anyway, on to the irrelevant news.
A herd of bison escaped from their pen near Camrose on Aug 24.  Not a huge deal right?
As you can see here, here, here, and here, this has been fairly major/headline/front page news in Edmonton for two full days.  I expect it to last at least another three.  Now, I do admit that a herd of fairly large, wild, and potentially dangerous animals roaming around places like local golf courses is definitely something to let the public know about.

Still, I can't help but muse that Only in Canada would this still be the top story on the news after 3 days...

Obama vs Harper

In general, world leaders are not seen as fun people; But some are definitely more serious than others.

Let us take, for example, recent events with American President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  An hilarious picture has been circulating around the internet (from the White House's official Flickr page) of President Obama pranking Trip Director Marvin Nicholson on a trip to the University of Texas in Austin.  Meanwhile in Inuvik NWT, Prime Minister Harper was filmed dancing (if you can call it that) with traditional Inuvialuit dancers.

Both of these are very likely pre-scripted photo ops.  But I really do have to give credit to Obama.  Personally, I think a good leader needs to be personable and actually have a personality.  Obama seems like a guy you could just sit down and have a beer with.  Harper seems more of a wine-and-cheese night type of person.

However, I will concede a point to Harper.  I would likely look as awkward and out of place in the same situation.  I don't think "traditional native dance" falls into the skill set of the average western Canadian white male.  But, I do think he just need to stick to playing the piano...