Money Talk!

CEF: Central fund of Canada, a close end ETF for Gold & Silver. Later part of 2010, will potentially start having some inflationary pressure. With dollar depreciating against all the major currencies, gold & silver are bound to soar.

ACI: Arch Coal: Copper, Oil & Gold were part of 2009 stock market recovery, whereas Coal though it provides 50% of electricity in US and is a pivotal part of any commodity demand still lagged broader commodity prices. I expect coal prices to rise with local & chinese demands. Mining is already lean due to recession. I don't foresee US going into the direction of gas or any other clean fuel for electricity generation for atleast couple of more years. With one of the highest margin in coal industry, ACI is my pick for 2010.

INTC: Intel. This will be a great play on economic recovery and a new upgrade cycle of enterprise spending. Plus, It provides a good dividends for long term investors who are willing to wait.

GLW: Corning. They are jumping all over LED and currently 1 in every 3 LCD panels are manufactured by Corning. I expect a bigger upgrade cycle with economic recovery and with such a wide moat, it can potentially be a ten bagger.

HD: Home Depot: Generous yield & highly undervalued stock. Better inventory management & scale against LOWES, can potentially provide a high return.

VAR: Varian Medical System. With the coming Obamacare, I expect medical devices companies to do much better than big pharma & HMO.

BAC: Bank of America This can be a volatile stock for 2010, but a great bet on the long term financial health of US. It's retail franchise, consumer banking, mortgage & investment advisory services provides all gamut of financial services.

So when you move from an apartment living to a new house, you start thinking about home security systems with efficient dispatch monitoring. On 30th October, we moved to our new place, new neighbour hood with a need for monitoring system.

Started with online research for ADT, BroadView & GE Protect America. All of them were comparable, just that GE requires DIY installation.

• 3 year service contract.
• Monthly rate around $33 per month.

With my employer, I get some discount promotions with BroadView security, called them for a quote, however customer service was not interested in providing a detailed quote over phone and wanted a security consultant to visit our place for free security analysis and estimates.

Time comes, when the so called consultant arrives with a colored binder. All the conversation are just around making sure you sign the deal and to do some up sell. However will say he was a nice sales man and not much pushy. We ended up signing for Broadview monitoring with little coercion from wife, we need it..Here was the plan I signed up for

• Wired security system, with wires coming from crawl space.
• Complete perimeter protection with free installation and $360 worth of devices like flex switch, glass break sensor etc.
• 3 year service contract.

All good so far, however I ended up cancelling / voiding the contract next day. Why ? Salesman goes and I ended up reading the fine prints..

• I cannot come out of this contract without paying 3 years of complete service. Lot of stories around this on Internet.
• I lease the equipments.
• They will drill holes, however will not fix it back after 3 years if I don't want to continue.
• I need to inform within a month after 3 years else my contract will be extended for 1 more year.
• I've only 3 days from the date of signing to cancel the contract, woohoo...I should use it :)

Search begins again, now I think I need wireless with no service contract dispatch monitoring. Did some research on nextalarm, safemart etc and talked to my coworkers having those systems.

Finally, got SimpliSafe. Wireless, no commitment, UL listed dispatch monitoring for $14.99. Above and all, installation was a snap. 30 minutes for my entire house. Stay tuned for more information on Simplisafe and my detailed review after a month of service usage..I love it so far.