Time and time again every investor faces question of allocating hardly earned cash. Obviously, his or her aim is to find an investment vehicle offering highest possible per annum return at an acceptable risk.

However, how many investors than go on and calculates how long does it take, at any given compounded rate of return, for his investment to double, triple or quadruple in value?

I looked around for some answers to this and here is the table I found most useful:

Rule 72
Of course in real life you don’t always have similar table ready at hand when you need most. In such cases you can use another well known tool to your assistance, Rule 72.

All you need to remember is number 72. By dividing a potential yearly return into 72 the resulting product will tell you how many years it takes for such return to double the value of your money (e.g. potential yearly return 8% => 72 / 8 = 9 years to double your money).

As you understand by now, the rule can be also used to find out what kind of yearly return you should be looking for if you aim at doubling your money within a certain time frame (e.g. wanting to double my money in 5 years I would need to invest in vehicle returning 72 / 5 = 14.4% per annum).

While this may seem like a joke or at least an unbelievable scheme, one newish internet company is trying to resurrect this not so new dot com idea. The company is called AGLOCO and it is in a startup stage of creating an advertising program where a part of the profits will go back to the Internet user.

What is AGLOCO?
According to the available information, AGLOCO is trying to build on a late 90ties concept of paid web surfing promoted by now non-existing doc com venture AllAdvanatge. In the 90ties AllAdvantage worked out a system which was rewarding its members according to the hours they stayed online and paid commissions for newly referred members. The system worked reliably and was providing some members with very handsome profits until the dot com crash of early 2000.

How does it work?
The principle seems to be simple enough. Once signed up with AGLOCO a new member will need to download and install custom AGLOCO Viewbar to his browser.
This toolbar will than monitor his or her browsing behaviour and effectively will also earn the money from which the member is to be paid.

More money for referrals
On top of the money made by browsing, members are also encouraged to refer and recruit new people to the system and earn potentially much more. A successfully referring member will be also paid part of the profits made by all his direct (signed by member directly) and indirect (signed up by member’s referral member) referrals.

How much is there to earn?
Surfing on his own, a member will be only paid for a maximum of five hours of browsing per month. Once he achieves that time limit in any given month, the AGLOCO Viewbar can be turned off until the next month.
If a member is successful in singing up only a few active members of his own, the combined earnings could however be quite impressive. As per AGLOCO’s membership calculator if a member signs up only five direct referrals who than go on and sign up another five each the resulting earnings are 4,886.25 per month.

However please be aware that the specified amount does not represent earnings in dollars but rather in a mix of AGLOCO shares and cash, details of which are yet to be specified.

Whats the bad news?
For a person who spends most of the time in front of the computers screen and on the Internet now browsing for nothing, this scheme does not really have any drawbacks. After all if one is willing to do it for free why not to earn few dollars that way?
But admittedly there are two minor hurdles for AGLOCO yet to overcome:
First - the AGLOCO Viewbar is still only in beta testing version so it can not be used to earn anything
Second - to my best knowledge it is yet to be determined what exactly are the earnings worth as the AGLOCO shares are not available and their face value has not been established

Where to from here?
Clearly there is more benefits than drawbacks if the system operates as it is planned. From that reason I already signed up with AGLOCO as, if nothing else, I would like to see how the system fares in the future. If interested you can also register here through my link www.agloco.com/r/BBBB9011 which will put you in as my referral. Once registered all you need to do is replace my user ID with yours and use the same url to start building you own AGLOCO network.

After numerous recommendations finally yesterday I got myself the investing bestseller by Peter Lynch named One Up On Wall Street. I have only read first few pages but I must say that it really is quite educational yet entertaining reading.

For those of you who don’t know Peter Lynch, he was the man behing the success of Fidelity Investmnets fund and his long term investing approach is not entirely unlike the value investing way of Warren Buffett. What struck me the most so far is the way Lynch describes the day trading for living phenomenon:

“…the odds against making a living in the day-trading business are about the same as the odds against making a living at racetracks, blackjack tables, or video poker. In fact, I think of day trading as at-home casino care. The drawback to the home casino is the paperwork. Make twenty trades per day, and you could end up with 5,000 trades a year, all of which must be recorded, tabulated, and reported to the IRS. So day trading is casino that supports a lot of accountants.â€?

Of course Lynch is a well known long term investor (which is why I picked up his book after all) so such views could be expected, however given his investing track record, these opinions are also hard to disregard. For me personally this works as yet another confirmation that a patient, long term investing approach is the best investing direction one can take.