leeway

I have some cash in Barclay's online savings account, 1% rate, just a bit better than bank accounts.

QIWI?

Costco accepts any AMEX card, not just the 2 cobranded ones. Some years ago only Discover cards were accepted. Whatever Costco will switch to, I for one will carry one of those cards, and may use it sometimes for other payments. So the effect does go beyond the sales within Costco stores.

almost fully invested. we are currently in the best few months in terms of seasonals, so would like to be in the market even if it is not looking cheap, but not at extremes yet.

Bill Ackman adds to Fannie, Freddie stakes http://nypost.com/2014/10/09/bill-ackman-adds-to-fannie-freddie-stakes/

I am curious would you consider industry specific factors in such assessment? For example, it seems there are quite some companies in the insurance sector, trading well below book with decent ROE and expected growth. However, the very low bond yields (or bond bubble) would likely be a big drag for years, aside from the competition.

I think there are both insurance effect and lottery effect that explains why vol sellers have an edge over the long run. People go long options / vol to hedge, even they know net net they would lose on the hedges. On the other hand, long out of money calls/puts would give a lottery effect, not losing much if losing, but may win a lot when winning. There is some value in the positive "skew" and people pay for it.

AMEX has an exclusive deal with COSTCO. Not sure if there are other such arrangements, but this alone could be a huge amount. I used to use mainly some 2% reward mastercards, but now those rewards gradually decreased to 1.5% to 1%, so AMEX cards become the main charge cards for me now.

Compared to other new stocks -- mostly IPOs, and many existing stocks, spin-offs (non-IPO types) lack the often present "promotional" premium. New management probably has incentives not to promote in the first few months, so this may contribute to later outperformance.

those were from trader's price run. I have not found good free website for Argie bonds prices. Here is one that may be useful: http://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/en/search/result?name_isin_wkn=argentina&type=ANL

Argentina sovereign bonds are still trading at very high prices (eg the benchmark US$ 2033 Discounts at around 87, ~10% yields). Market seems really optimistic thinking this is just a "technical" default which will be cured soon, instead of a real default. No panic selling so far. There are talks about potential private solutions involving some big banks, but the amount is too high and there are other complexities (eg legal claims outside the current judgment) that I am skeptical it would work.