How to Get Free Movies, Free Kindle Library Access, and Free Shipping from Amazon for FREE

If you are a regular shopper at Amazon, you are probably familiar with the Free Super Saver Shipping option. The disadvantage of that option is that it can take up to eight business days, and that's after all of your items are available to ship. In addition, you need to order at least $25 worth of items. I've had times when I've had an order totaling $23 or $24, and had to come up with something else, in order to get the free shipping.

Well now you have another option. You have also heard about Amazon Prime, which allows you to have these benefits, but you weren't sure if it was worth it. Well how would you like to have Amazon Prime for Free?

Amazon is offering this special for a limited time so sign up now. It allows you free access to Amazon Prime for 30 days. Here's what you get:

* More than 40,000 movies and TV episodes

* Kindle Owners' Lending Library to borrow Kindle books

* FREE two-day shipping, no minimum order size, as many times as you want in the 30 day period

If you want more details, click on the following link:

Amazon Prime for Free

If you want to sign up now (the offer is only for a limited time), chick here:

Amazon Prime for Free

Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

Who Needs Bitcoins When We Have Amazon Dollars?

Bitcoins are a cyber currency that are transferred from and to any computer without going through a financial institution, and is not backed by any governmental agency. Since the Bitcoin system is decentralized, there is no entity that controls it. The number of bitcoins is essentially limited, as with each update of bitcoin generation, new updates are cut in half every four years until the year 2140. The privacy feature is one favorable feature of bitcoin proponents.

According to Doug Casey, the five essential attributes of good currency, based on Aristotle's writings, are that the money has to be durable, divisible, convenient, consistent, and have value in itself. Casey covers these attributes with respect to bitcoins in detail. However, let's look at a competitor to bitcoins which no one ever thinks of.

Did you know that you can buy just about anything on Amazon (AMZN)? And when I say just about anything, I mean just about anything, without going into specifics. Obviously, you can't buy cars or guns (unless you are buying a tattoo gun, and ear piercing gun, a pellet gun, or a toy gun). But this world's largest retailer, which started out as an online bookseller, can offer you everything from cellphones to makeup to clothing to food to coffeemakers to watches (does anyone still wear those?) to jewelry to guitars to baseballs to gift cards, either electronic or physical. If you receive an Amazon gift card, you log in to your Amazon account, type in the card code, and your card is credited.

Durable

These funds, which Amazon refers to as Gift Card Balance and I'll refer to as Amazon dollars, are good forever. You can spend these on whatever you want (assuming Amazon sells it) whenever you want. Plus, the data for these Amazon dollars are stored on very secure servers. The company recently won a huge contract to provide computing services and data storage to the CIA. Although IBM is challenging the decision, it does show that if the CIA is willing to trust Amazon, it must provide very secure services. So Amazon $s certainly qualify as durable.

Divisible

How small a purchase can you make? One cent, so this currency is certainly divisible.

Convenient

Are Amazon $s convenient? Sure, just go to your account and use them. You don't need to pull out your credit card and type in your credit card number. You don't need to send a check in. As a matter of fact, you don't need a checking account or even a credit card to be able to use Amazon dollars. You can go to almost any supermarket, pay cash for a gift card, then type in the code to your account.

Consistent

Each Amazon dollar is identical to any other, so they are certainly consistent.

Have value in itself

Does the Amazon dollar have value in and of itself? Yes, each one is worth exactly one US dollar, no more no less. Of course, if the value of the dollar drops, the value of the Amazon $ drops, but at least it won't drop below the value of a dollar.

Privacy

Although privacy isn't part of Aristotle's Five Characteristics, I thought I would mention it in relation to the Amazon dollars. One drawback to the Amazon $s is that you can't just transfer your Amazon $s to another person (currently) or even buy a gift card with your Amazon dollars. But what you can do is walk into a supermarket, pay cash for a gift card and mail it to the person you want to transfer the money to. (Or you can email the gift code to the person.) So transferability can be a challenge but is still possible.

Don't get me wrong about bitcoins; I like the concept and I even own some bitcoins. The point I'm trying to get across is that I see a lot of similarities between bitcoins and Amazon dollars, and that Amazon.com gift card balances can even be considered a kind of currency.

Disclosure: Author didn't own AMZN at the time the article was written.

The World's Most Expensive Investment Book at $1979

Do you believe that the most expensive advice is the best advice? Do you believe that you have to pay for quality? Then you might want to consider buying the book Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman, extremely successful portfolio manager of The Baupost Group. Unfortunately the book is out of print but it is available through Amazon (AMZN) at very high prices. Currently three Amazon sellers are offering a new version of the book at prices ranging from $1,979.95 to $2,399.99. If those prices are too rich for your blood, then you can always buy a used copy for only $989.99. According to some of the Amazon comments, it is one of the most-stolen library books.

So why is the book so successful? First, Klarman is an extremely successful money manager. Second, the print run for the book wasn't that big. Third, the book has been out of print for about twenty years, based on my understanding. Fourth, because of all these reasons, the book has become a collector's item as opposed to a book.

And what's the book all about? Value investing, which he covers in extensive detail. He also continuously promotes the philosophy of maintaining a margin of safety. This hardback book is 249 pages long and is published by HarperCollins. Surprisingly, it ranks #23 in the category of Books > Business & Investing > Investing > Bonds.

You probably don't want to buy the book as a gift for someone (you would hate to find out it ended up in a charity book sale). But if you are interested in it for yourself, and price is no object for you, you should get Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor.

Top Selling Investment Books on Amazon

This is a list of the top selling investment and stock market books on Amazon (AMZN):

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks

Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry by Helaine Olen

Trading Bases: A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball (Not Necessarily in That Order) by Joe Peta

The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing: 2013 Edition by Jason Kelly

Stocks Reporting Earnings Tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan 29

Stocks reporting earnings tomorrow, Tuesday, January 29.

AK Steel Holding (AKS)

Amazon.com (AMZN)

Broadcom Corp. (BRCM)

Corning Inc. (GLW)

Crane Co. (CR)

DR Horton (DHI)

Dolby Laboratories (DLB)

Ford Motor Company (F)

Harley-Davidson (HOG)

International Paper (IP)

Illinois Tool Works (ITW)

Peabody Energy (BTU)

Pentair (PNR)

Pfizer Inc. (PFE)

If you like lists like this, check out the many free stock lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Top Business and Investing Books at Amazon

Looking for some great books during the holidays? Here are the Top Business and Investing Books at Amazon (AMZN).

One Letter Companies Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about the One Letter Companies, the companies that either have a one letter stock ticker symbol or own a one letter domain name.

Here is an update to the one letter domain companies, which I came up with due to further research.

a.co is owned by Amazon (AMZN)

g.co is owned by Google (GOOG)

s.co is owned by Startup America Partnership

t.co is owned by Twitter

x.co is owned by Go Daddy and is used as a URL shortener

0.co (that's a zero dot co) is owned by Overstock.com (OSTK)

0.info (that's a zero dot info) is also owned by Overstock.com (OSTK)

c.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

d.tv is owned by Worldwide Media, Inc. and publishes TheDomains.com

h.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

i.tv is owned by i.TV, LLC

k.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

l.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

o.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

q.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

s.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

t.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

v.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

w.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

y.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

z.tv is owned by Future Media Architects

By Stockerblog.com

Get the New Amazon Kindle Fire Tomorrow

Tomorrow is your change to get the new Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire. This will have a full color seven inch multi-touch display.

According to the Amazon web site, the Kindle will have:

Over 20 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books

Thousands of popular apps and games, including Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu Plus, Pandora, and more

Amazon Silk - ultra-fast web browsing over built-in Wi-Fi

Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content

Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle

Fast, powerful dual-core processor

Favorite children's books, graphic novels, and magazines in rich color

The price of the Kindle Fire is just $199.

Cloudy Stocks with a Silver Lining

I remember in the 'old' days, when I was using AOL (AOL), I had the option of saving my mail on my own computer or AOL could save it for me. Back then, I thought it was 'safer' to save it locally. But then I ran into a problem. When I was using my laptop, I couldn't access the mail on my desktop computer, and vice-versa. Plus, I had mail stored in two different places, and wasn't sure what was saved where. I finally gave in and had AOL save my mail for me. This concept is a very simple example of cloud computing. So to understand clouds a bit more, let me give you a couple more examples, without using a lot of technospeak, and keeping it in layman's terms.

Cloud computing is having your programs and data stored remotely on a server in another location, instead of on your own individual computer. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can have a cheap old computer and still take advantage of cloud computing. The servers of companies that provide this service represent the 'clouds', and those servers can be located anywhere. Yahoo (YHOO) mail, Google (GOOG) gmail, and Microsoft's (MSFT) hotmail are examples of cloud computing in a limited way. The email servers are not in your office or home as you use the Yahoo or Google or Microsoft servers. Many corporations, organizations, and universities are utilizing the email services of Google, which saves them money on servers and saves on staffing.

For corporations, cloud benefits are substantial. Cloud computing can reduce waste and carbon footprints along with providing significant cost savings. Companies that utilize cloud computing don't need to keep buying more servers. Costs relating to the disposal of old computers and servers is cut back significantly. Data security is the job of the cloud computing firm. Businesses can eliminate the techs that have to come out and install new software to each employees' station, and network administrators monitoring the company's servers are reduced.

Investors like the green and financial benefits of cloud computing companies. According to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are over 25 stocks in the cloud field, based oh the free Cloud Computer Stock List, which includes companies involved in server farms and outsourced storage systems.

The one of the largest corporations that falls into the cloud computer arena is Salesforce.com (CRM), which is a provider of customer-relationship management services. The company's stock symbol stands for Customer Relationship Management. Salesforce has customers of all sizes, including Staples (SPLS), Expedia (EXPE), News Corp. (NWS-A), and SunTrust Banks (STI). Salesforce trades at 66 times forward earnings. Quarterly revenues ending January 31 were up 38% year-over-year. The company reports latest earnings on May 17.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) provides on demand applications and online services, including GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, and GoToMyPC. This company has a forward price to earnings ratio of 25. The latest quarterly earnings were down 7%, however, revenues were up 20%. I like the fact that the company is debt free.

VMware (VMW) is another major cloud and virtualization company. Its product VMware vSphere is a cloud computing data center platform. It sports a forward price to earnings ratio of 44. The company reported that latest earnings increased an incredible 52% in earnings on an amazing 25% increase in revenues. Although VMware has $450 million in total debt, it holds $5.2 billion in cash.

To access the free database of numerous companies involved in cloud computing in some way, that can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. A couple of them even pay dividends.

You can also get info on the green aspects of cloud computing from my book The Green Light on Green Stocks: A Quick Guide to Green Investing and Making Money in Alternative Energy Stocks, available through the publisher or through Amazon.com (AMZN), which also happens to be involved in the cloud computer business. As far as I know, my book is the first to publish information on cloud computing as a green industry.

Disclosure: Author owns AOL, AMZN, and YHOO.

By Stockerblog.com