June 2014 Blog Posts
We use bankers' rounding in much of our software.
For those of you who don't know what banker rounding is, it is commonly known as round to even. For example if you have a number like 105.5550 and wand to round it to 2 decimal places, bankers' rounding would give you 105.56 because 6 is even and 5 is odd. Likewise, if you had the number 105.5450, bankers' rounding would yield 105.54 because 4 is even. The reason to use bankers' rounding is that it is more "fair" than always rounding .5 up or down. Bankers' rounding is intended to round...
The stock that is.
I understand why people are enamored with GE's dividend of around 3.3%. I like dividends too.
But let me show you a picture:
This Yahoo chart compares GE against United Technologies & Dow Chemical since 2000. I bought GE in 2006 for around $35/share. As everyone knows the stock collapsed in 2008/9 during the great recession. While others have clawed there way back, GE wanders in the desert in the mid 20's. That really sucks. Did I mention that I hate GE?
The reason I show Dow is that, I also bought it in mid-2005 for around $40/Share. DOW then...