Great sports franchise, bad investment…

It costs $250 a share, pays no dividends, benefits from no earnings, isn’t tradeable and has no securities-law protection.

Although the offering document calls the shares “common stock,” they confer almost none of the advantages of a traditional stock. The document warns that buyers “should not purchase common stock with the purpose of making a profit.”

via Are the Green Bay Packers the Worst Stock in America? – Total Return – WSJ

Wow, talk about good timing. I just closed my accounts at NetBank two weeks ago and moved them to EverBank. Now I see that NetBank has officially shutdown.

NetBank has steadily declined over the years, but I had been with them so long (7 years) it just wasn’t worth the trouble to move my accounts. I read a couple months ago that EverBank was going to purchase NetBank and after some research I decided to open new joint accounts there and move everything over. I wanted to make sure my money didn’t get caught (or somehow frozen) in the shuffle. Newly married, I also wanted to consolidate accounts with my wife.

I didn’t expect the deal to fall though though, so the news was a shock. I’ll chalk it up as good timing on my part I guess. It appears the FDIC is holding the bag for some 1500 accounts over the $100k limit and ING Direct is taking over the other accounts.

Let’s hope EverBank doesn’t run into the same problems. I’ve been watching them for the past couple of years and have been impressed with their reviews, high interest rates, and unusual financial products.

Two of my favorite financial TV shows now have dedicated and updated web sites on CNBC. Jim Cramer‘s Mad Money and Dylan Ratigan‘s Fast Money also sport RSS feeds which allows me to miss these shows and still get updates on what topics were discussed. I’m usually watching these at the gym, so the ability to get the recaps in my feed reader is a huge time saver.

If you have any interest in the stock market, investing, and/or trading, these two shows should be part of your attention stream. Both shows provide excellent insight into the market while keeping it as entertaining as possible.

The other financial site I recommend is TheStreet.com. Again, Jim Cramer is an owner and major contributor to the site. With RSS feeds for every section and columnist, readers get a tremendous amount of free content before having to upgrade.

Google launched its finance service today to compete with Yahoo and MSN‘s offerings. From the WSJ:

Google Finance follows the traditional recipe for such offerings, providing a mix of stock quotes and charts, company news and corporate data. It is too early to know whether Google Finance will steal users from existing offerings, but the Mountain View, Calif., Internet company’s broad consumer reach and recent success with new services such as Google Maps suggest its arrival could cause established providers of online financial news and data to react.

Google said the quality of interactive charts, the breadth of its news sources and its skill at pulling in other information from the Web will set it apart from rivals.

Charlene Li has a detailed review of the site and Steve Rubel points out that each stock detail includes related blog posts.

My first impression is the breadth of information displayed after typing in a stock symbol. Google will be able to make significant gains in this aspect with the resources at its disposal. For someone who doesn’t use another service, Google Finance is a good choice. The problem lies with those of us who have extensive portfolios and watch lists on other services. I’ve been using My Yahoo and Yahoo Finance for years. Do I really want to transfer all of this data by hand? Also, Google only currently allows for a single portfolio. Most investors will need at least two – the actual positions held and a watch list. Personally, I break mine down into IRA, Roth IRA, taxable portfolio, 401k, and then numerous watch lists. The ability to add multiple portfolios will be a limiting factor for many. Once Google takes care of this issue (which I’m sure it will), the service will be better.

CNN reports that Congress tries again for a dollar coin. The new $1 coin would accompany the current Sacagawea dollar. The dollar coin has had an illustrious history in this country. There’s hope this time, though, as the 50 state quarters was a huge hit among collectors. The dollar coins will depict U.S. presidents so there’s likely to be the same amount of interest.

BusinessWeek has a great article entitled A Layman’s Guide to Fedspeak that takes all the possible statements from the Fed and gives them an interpreted meaning.

For example,

Possible Statement: “Now that the labor markets appear fully recovered, if not accelerating, the Committee has decided that a potentially more aggressive pace is required to remove past policy accommodation.”

Real Meaning: Wow, we did not see those 300,000 job gains in March and April coming. You could have knocked us over with a feather. Half-point hikes are the way to go from now on. Trust us.