I’ve said it before and I am going to say it again, I am a sucker for these types of reports and this one sure got my attention real fast. The article at Forbes.com lists the 10 most valuable teams in sports. I know that you are busy and can’t wait for the weekend so I have a list of the top five for your reading enjoyment, if you want to read the full list just head on over to Forbes.com. Manchester United from the English Premier League sits atop the list, apparently the owner paid just $1.45 billion back in 2005, not a bad return on investment if you ask me. I was going to buy the team myself at the time but was short a couple of dollars, just a couple.

Well since 2008 is over and done with I decided to finally do something about all those coins in my Coin Counting Jar. At the end of December that jar said that I had $265.31 which isn’t that bad for two years of saving coins. Well I decide to send my brother to the Coinstar machine last Saturday and just get it over with. To make things interesting I decided to have a contest, try to guess how much money is there in the jar before Coinstar gets their cut and whoever comes closest gets $20 big ones. My brother took the jar and the final amount was $276 dollars, I don’t remember how many cents, and the winner was my nephew with his $280 dollar guess. I thought that the final amount would be close to $300 dollars because the jar didn’t count some coins but obviously it wasn’t. When my brother returned I handed over the prize to the lucky winner, who didn’t want to participate in the contest at first, we got some Taco Bell and the $200 left are going straight to my bank. I took pictures of the jar and the receipt and when my blog editor starts to work I will update this post.

I was hoping to start the year on a good note and so far I can’t complain that much. Things have not been great investing wise but they haven’t been horrible either and that is always good. Anyway, my account was down $30.35 last week and I am hoping to make that up and some more this one. There is no graph this week because my Wordpress editor makes it that hard to add a picture and I was in no mood to deal with it, sorry about that.

I had one trade last week.

My investments, 15 Bidu Inc (BIDU) shares, 50 Dow Chemical Co (DOW) shares and 100 Allied Irish Banks PLC (AIB) shares.

The first 403-B/DCP report of the year is here and I am exited about it. Hopefully this year won’t be as bad as last. You may notice that the rate of return for my investments is on the positive side, that is because it is the new year so we start from scratch. I have decided not to make any changes to this report and leave it the way it is. Anyway, my account was up and in positive territory (when was the last time that happened?) and that makes me happy, hopefully that is a sign of things to come, enjoy. 

Yesterday I got up extra early just to check the market. I noticed that most everything was down, my investments on the other hand were up and ended the day slightly up. I then saw that Baidu (BIDU) and Google (GOOG) were down and since i had some money laying around I decided to make a buy. The question then quickly became which one to buy, Google was too expensive so I decided to go with Baidu. I ended up placing a limit order for 15 shares at $127.53 and once that price was reached my order was triggered and presto. The total including the $7 dollars for the trade was $1,919.95 and just like that i made my first trade of 2009.