First email – before the start of the semester

Before the beginning of the fall semester, I want to share some information regarding the course with you. 

For general information about the class, you find the syllabus at http://financialblog.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/20060801-f06-370-syllabus.pdf

Many of you want to find a cheap textbook for the course.  If you want to order the book before the semester from an online book-seller, the textbook we will use is Higgins’ Analysis for Financial Management, 8th ed.
http://financialblog.wordpress.com/2006/07/27/textbook-selection/

You will find the best prices for the book at
http://isbn.nu/007325858X

Apart from the textbook, you will also need a financial calculator and a set of cases as well. You will find the best prices for the calculator at
http://www.mysimon.com/9000-11036_8-0.html?mlpid=20656339

Unfortunately, you can buy the cases only at the bookstore.

The first day of class is Aug 23rd, when I also tell you about the class and other aspects that the syllabus and the information that you can gather do not cover.  Also, at our first meeting, you will receive a comprehensive set of lecture notes for the semester.

Tuesday news roundup

It is unbelievably hot here in Central PA and the temperature is expected to hit 100F.

• WSJ and BBC both report that Fidel Castro undergoes surgery. Castro is 79 years old and transfers power to his 75 year old younger brother, Raul. This is not surprising, he has been in bad health lately. The question now becomes, when can I smoke a Cuban legally. I am willing to take bets.
• Jomentum is cool. Both the Daily Kos and Wonkette sacrifice serious binary resources into the analysis of Joementum, or rather the lack of it. If the Colbert Report is discussing Joementum, clearly there is something to talk about. BTW, Mitt Romney is out. No link’s necessary …
• CNN is taking on www.youtube.com and allows now users to post content. The White House is updating its pressroom, which originally was built atop a filled in swimming pool. These new changes will help the pressroom to communicate more drama.
• Smut stinks. Howard Stern is not working out for Sirius. It posts wider loss, but the subscriber base is increasing. According to Sirius it added 600,460 subscribers; it has 4.7 million at the end of the quarter. The company expects to have 6.3
  million subscribers by the end of 2006. Previously it expected 6.2 million. Last week, XM posted a wider loss for Q2 and cut their subscriber estimate. XM, which has seven million subscribers, expects to end the year with between 7.7 million and 8.2 million.
• Cingular and Verizon start charging their customers with old phones a monthly service fee.

Market news

• The appeal of ETFs is shifting to Main Street. This is a positive and very interesting development, which in the long run changes the structure of both the mutual fund and the private financial advisor industries.
• The question of maturity is always relative. New web-start ups lure executives away from eBay and Yahoo. Only 7 years ago, staid old economy companies – GE, IBM, CA – lured lost people to the upstarts. Does this new development mean that eBay and Yahoo are both old economy companies now?
• And the Beirut stock market reopened for trade today. One of Beirut’s main indexes, the BLOM, closed 4.1% lower at 1,230.22.

Blogosphere

• Political Calculations discusses Greg Mankiw’s perspective on the Federal Funds Rate. Mankiw’s method is attractive in that it incorporates two of the economic factors that the Fed is chartered to influence through monetary policy: the rate of inflation (measured as 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban consumers, less food and energy) and the rate of unemployment.
• Voluntary exchange discussess the economics of World War I.  A book edited by Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison for specialists and folks interested in history discussess the economic factors behind the war.  The reviews are interesting here and here.

Education

• SmartEconomist talks with Stanford GSB professor Paul Oyer about management education and corporate executives. Also, an excellent review on MBAs and Investment Banking Education.

Time management

Academic and professional success is greatly aided by time management. Time management is a disciplined use of the only finite resource each of us have: time. Before the semester hits us fully, I list a few sites that offer some insight to successful time management. Even if you have excellent time management skills, reading through their suggestions adds value.

• A good, but somewhat dated, introductory treatment of time management gives the bare basics.
• Steve Pavlina has a personal development blog. Steve has an interesting writing style. He focuses on personal development and brings up examples from his own life to underline the point. This open perspective helps in explaining his view on personal development: you can change. Yet his writings are lengthy and sometimes he takes time to arrive to the point we know he tries to make. Nevertheless, his personal development web-log is an entertaining read and he often deals with the three interrelated areas of time management, productivity and goal setting.
• Merlin Mann – 43 folders – offers low tech solutions to time management problems. He and D*I*Y planner have thrown out their PDAs, Treos, and other electronic time manager gimmicks. Now, they either use 43 folders or paper based time management systems, such as the hipsterPDA and Moleskines.
• Other time management tools and ideas come from two similar sounding websites lifehack.org and lifehacker. Both sites focus on life quality improvement using small improvements in the daily grind (argh). Insert your favorite pirate joke here, because there argh. Both sites have a high geek quota, so non-geeks beware.

Enjoy!

A finance blog for class use

Finance class blog by Jim Mahar or FinanceProfessor.com focuses on class information for finance courses at St. Bonaventure. Interesting site with a lot of great ideas.

Weekend …

This morning’s email with a welcoming message from FinancialRounds has a couple of ideas for other finance blogs out there. Read the comment under my earlier post on Edublogging. Thanks, unknown colleague, for the friendly welcome!

Reading the blogoshpere, I came across one heckuva funny article today. Over at EconLog, there is a blog on the international marriage market and the price and equilibrium of legal “human” trafficking. This is another nail in the coffin for RussianBrides.com and its likes, but still does not explain the lack of YYYStuds.com. Oh, well. There is an untapped business opportunity for the entrepreneur in you.

The economics of drug-dealing and narcotrafficing is explored in GoingPrivate. But the funny story is about the “customer service experience” travellers receive at the airlines. Ok, EWR is notorious … Reminds me of an experience in Cleveland a good while back where the customer service representative belittled a passenger, who had a legit complaint and then called security on the person. I was witness to the whole episode and as many others there argue that the airlines have really lost touch with their customers and reality.

I spoke about RateMyStudents.com yesterday. As we all know from experiences our colleagues have had, course and teaching evaluations have evolved into an insidious weapon tenure committees abuse with pleasure. I know of at least several colleagues who have contemplated (not faced) the problem discussed in an article from the Onion. Remember the difference between contemplated and faced.

An a ranking of finance department’s teaching quality reveals surprising results. Way to go Jaime!

Edublogging

Blogging is a practical tool for direct communication, be it gossip, analysis, ideology, or just news. Blogs are also networking and communication tools, where feedback and discussions are valuable.  That is why their use in teaching and classroom management could be invaluable.

So this afternoon, I was thinking about the possible use of blogs in education and decided to look around for blogs and sites in the blogoshpere only to find zilch, nada, nothing. No blogs about the use of blogs in college business education, except for Financial Rounds. This is somewhat surprising; if businesses are successful in blogging and blogs have a financial value, why don’t academics do that?

My primary objective is the disseminate information about the class in a way that allows the students to have a comprehensive view of what the course is all about. Of course that helps me as well. The secondary is to share my ideas about teaching, which may or may not be different from other profs. Also, I could rate my students.

Textbook selection

The textbook I use this year, as in previous years, is Rocky Higgins‘ Analysis for Financial Management. The book is in iths 8th edition, which serves as evidence to the quality of the material. In less than 400 pages, the book provides an excellent background to financial management, the interpretation of financial statements and valuation of financial assets.

A reviewer on Amazon writes. “Analysis for Financial Management” is an excellent text that covers the major topics of financial management: how to evaluate and interpret financial statements, the tools a manager should use to forecast future earnings and manage growth, how to properly valuate businesses and investment opportunities, and so forth. This book is ideal if you are familiar with basic accounting and finance concepts but want a deeper understanding of finance in a corporate setting. Each chapter contains a recommended reading list for those who want a more thorough explanation and analysis of the topics covered. There is a website the author has put together that provides more examples and tools. Unlike other textbooks, this book actually has all the answers for exercises at the end of the chapters! Lastly, Higgins provides a number of examples and explains all the major concepts with a touch of humor. This is definitely one of the best books I’ve seen out there.”

For the best price, consult www.isbn.nu.

Being a finance prof

Over at Financial Rounds, the unknown financial academic at an East Coast institution, has written extensively about being a finance professor, teaching, research, using financial information, and the rough road to get a PhD in finance. He makes several excellent points about teaching; it is worth reading.