ZAY Blog

OMG, this is probably the most expensive PC that I’ve ever seen:

• GIGABYTE 3D Mercury GZ-FW1CA-AJS Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case – Retail – $399
• Custom Case Painting by Gary Berg – $1500
• Asus P5N-T Deluxe Motherboard – NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI, Socket 775, ATX, Audio, PCI Express 2.0, Gigabit LAN, S/PDIF, USB 2.0, Firewire, eSATA, RAID – $299.99
• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Processor BX80569QX9650A – 45nm, 3.0GHz, 12MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Yorkfield XE, Quad-Core, Retail, Socket 775, Processor with Fan – $1,199.99
• 2 CORSAIR 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory – $228
• Ultra X3 ULT40070 1600-Watt Power Supply – ATX, SATA-Ready, PCI-E Ready, Energy Efficient, Modular – $499.99
• 2 SUPER TALENT FSD28GC25M 2.5″ 128GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) – $6,259.00
• Adaptec RAID 3405 – $390
• 4 Cheetah® 15K.5 SAS 3Gb/s 300-GB Hard Drive – ST3300655SS – $3,931.20
• SimpleTech Duo Pro Drive – $259.99
• 2 SUPER MULTI BLUE BLU-RAY^TM / HD DVD^TM READER – 1,999.98
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Fatality Platinum – $179.99
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra Video Card – 768MB DDR3, PCI Express, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card – 629.99
• 2 NEC LCD2490WUXi-BK 24.1″ Widescreen LCD Monitor – 16ms, 800:1, WUXGA 1920×1200, DVI-D, DVI-I, VGA, Black, Height Adjustable, Swivel, 16:10 Aspect Ratio – $2,577.98
• Ultra Internal 3.5″ Floppy Drive w/Multi Card Reader Black – $29.99
• Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 – $629.99
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate – $379
• Adobe Master Collection CS3 – $2,750.99
• EA Crysis – $49.99
• Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe – $59.99
• Call of Duty 4 – $59.99
• Half Life 2: Orange Box – $61.99
• Battlefield 2142 Deluxe Edition – $30.99
• Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 – 73.99
• Canon Pixma MP970 Printer – $299.99
• Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard – $199.99
• MX Air^TM Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse – $149.99
• Logitech Z-5500 THX Certified 5.1 500-watt Dolby Digital & DTS Hardware Decoding Speaker System – 209.99
• Tripplite Isobar / 12 Outlets / 5700 Joules / Power Center – 290.99
• Cables Unlimited UV Reactive Mode Kit with Dual Tube UV CCFL Lights, Fans, Floppy Cable and ATA133 Cable – $26.99
• Vantec UV Reactive Motherboard Slot Protector – Green – $4.99
• Labor for building and troubleshooting — 100 hrs at $50/hr – $5,000

TOTAL ESTIMATED RETAIL VALUE: $30,666.91

If you want to make it yours, details are available here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141628/article.html

The sweetiest thing in this world today (to me at least), is to look at the stock for Ambac Financial Group Inc:

Did you see how much it went up today? I am not kidding, it is close to 72% in one day!!!!

And I just said it would go up today.

MBI did a pretty good job today as well, went up by more than 30%.

And that was also the worst thing I had today, because I overslept and rushed to class and forgot all about buying the stock until after 4:30EST!!!!! (Yes, I did not eat in any yesterday because I was busy with some other stuff).

Sigh, I guess that is really fate, if I were not meant to be rich, I would not be……..

For anyone who had an observant eye on the NYSE today, it was an incredible morning.

When the market was first opened, many stock literally plunged down to the bottom before starts to pick up again, particularly the stocks that were heavily related to Asian stock markets, which performed worse than poor yesterday.

One of the examples is PetroChina:

Overall, NYSE performed worse than expected today, and here is the quotes from Bloomberg:

The S&P 500 capped the longest losing streak in almost a year, retreating 14.69 points, or 1.1 percent, to 1,310.5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased 128.11, or 1.1 percent, to 11,971.19, its first close below 12,000 since November 2006. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 47.75, or 2 percent, to 2,292.27. About five stocks declined for every four that rose on the New York Stock Exchange.

All these were signalling that US, and the rest of the world, is going towards another major economical recession today.

It may be a great time to enter the market, when the prices of all stocks are so low, but when NYSE has performed so poorly today, the impact is definitely going to be larger than previously expected.

However, note that the financial companies have performed well today, with MBIA Inc. being the largest gainer in the market today as a result of the possible victory over the credit downgrading case. In fact, MBIA has a target profit of close to 90%.

Attached is an article from CNN about MBIA.

MBIA shares rally; Barron’s says company ‘isn’t nearly as troubled as Ambac’

January 22, 2008: 10:22 AM EST

BOSTON, Jan. 22, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — Shares of mortgage-backed securities insurer MBIA Inc. (NYSE:MBE) (NYSE:MBI) rallied Tuesday after Barron’s, a financial investment news provider, wrote that it finds the current price levels of MBIA’s debt, credit-default swaps, and even it stock to be ‘absurdly’ low.
The stock jumped 26% to $10.72 on volume of 5.1 million. As of Friday’s $8.55 closing price, shares of the bond-insurer were down roughly 54% year-to-date.
‘For one thing, MBIA isn’t nearly as troubled as Ambac because it has far less exposure to really-troubled subprime paper,’ Barron’s said. ‘Also, MBIA has already completed raising, or locked in commitments for the additional capital demanded last month by Fitch and the other rating agencies.’
Barron’s noted that MBIA’s AAA rating seems to have ‘passed muster’ with both Fitch and Standard & Poor’s (NYSE:MHP) even after the latter ran a new stress-test on MBIA’s 2006-vintage subprime exposure using the 19% cumulative default rate.
‘Without Ambac competing for new business, MBIA and other bond-insurer survivors should be able to grow faster and strike more attractive insurance deals,’ Barron’s concluded.
Greg Saulnier
Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

Major stock markets have seen the largest drop since September 11th.

US is not open since it is a public holiday, let’s hope NYSE and NASDAQ will do better later today…