Finally on The List.

In July (I think it was) I filled out the form on Korean Blog List to add mine...They just added it now! I even sent a couple of emails a few months ago reminding them...but still it took a while. Ironically, I'm in Vancouver now...haha.

I've been calling my buds in Seoul these last few days. Got one of those el cheapo long distance cards so it won't break the bank. Things in Korea are the same as always, but a couple of them are getting married and one is changing jobs...pretty standard fare. It's good to catch up with them...you know Koreans like to have long term friendships, which is cool.

On to my latest book. I knocked it off on the train-ride home yesterday. It was about 150 pages, but a little light on the content: the title: Careers for Financial Mavens. I picked it up because a bud of my old friend Mike is now going into investments at a bank and I wanted to review it for him. Shawn, if you're reading this: get this book. I wish I had one of these when I was finishing college or high school; it really mapped out the different careers quite well. From accounting to brokerage to money management, venture capital, investment banking and even government jobs...it's all there. The descriptions were true to life, too; which is something I didn't expect from these writers (they had never had a financial job) but they must have interviewed the right people in the right way to get this information down. One glaring mistake was they said that fee-only planners or money managers would charge an annual fee of 5% to 10% of the assets of a plan. That was WAY off. The rate is 0.5% to 1.5%...rookie mistake. Man, if I could make $100,000 for managing $1,000,000 I'd only need one client! Of course, that client wouldn't make any money as the markets usually allow you to make 5% - 10% per year...but, boy, what a racket! Other than that, everything was quite well done. Me being me, I did skim over the accounting and government jobs area...c'mon...if you're out to make money that is not the place to do it normally.

Now I'm on to a more complex book (yay!) Brokers, Bagmen & Moles. It's about a scandal on the Chicago futures markets (apparently at the CBOT and the Merc) where the FBI exposed some sort of underhanded doings in 1989. I like this kind of in-depth reading as it gives me a better insight into the markets, their participants and how things work. Should be good. This and my continued licensing reading (on top of the family stuff) should keep me pretty busy.