Earn up to 75,000 AA miles for new Citi AAdvantage card holder

(Update 02-10-2011) The previous link expired. Try this new link if interested. One difference is they requires one spend $4000 in first 6 months to get the full 75,000 miles. Good luck!

(Update 09-17-2010) I got the 75,000 AA miles.

(Update 8-19-2010) Received the Citi Platinum Select /AAdvantage Visa Signature card today, called and verified the “spending $1500 in first 6 months, receive 75,000 AA miles” is good.

(Original 8-16-2010) Got the offer from my AA membership letter. Choose one of the three cards:

Citi Platinum Select /AAdvantage Visa Signature card, Citi Select /AAdvantage American Express card, or CitiBusiness /AAdvantage Visa card.

Here is the link www.away5.citicards.com.

I applied the card before getting the mail, via another link. Today I received the letter says my card got approved. I hope the 75k miles offer applies to my application (and I got a free round trip ticket back to China 😀

Cash Back Credit Card II: rebate category madness

(Update 07-28-2010) I found Citi® Platinum Select® AAdvantage® World MasterCard® to be interesting. AA actually offers 3 cards: Master Card, American Express or Visa. They has a 30,000 miles promotion as of now. Another card, which is more useful in our daily lives, is the Upromise® World MasterCard® credit card with Dining & Grocery Rewards, offered by BoA. But I think I will go for the Subaru card, for the 3% cash back (Subaru dollars, good at Subaru dealers for purchase or service).

(Original)Costco American Express Card
3% gasoline
3% Restaurant
2% Travel
1% everything else (including Costco purchase)

Discover card
5% gasoline, hotels, movie and theme parks (July 1st to Sept 30). Discover rotates the 5% cash back category every quarter.
1% for everything else (after meeting those $2,000, $3,000 spending requirements, as I said in earlier post)

Citi Dividend Card
Citi Dividend changed its policy from July 1. It no longer offers 2% (3%?) cash back on groceries etc. Instead it’s taking a page from Discover Cash Bonus Card, doing the rotating category thing. For instance, for this quarter (July 1 to Sept 30) it offers 5% for restaurant (needs enrollment).

It offers 1% for everything else.

Citi Professional
3% cash back on gas station, restaurant, office supplies and car rental;
1% on everything else

Summary

Recent Bank Ads on WSJ

We know CEOs of some of the nation’s largest banks are buying their companies’ stocks, to show their confidence on their respective company.

It’s also interesting to see some of the leading banks are putting up a lot Ads on Wall Street Journal. I took some pictures here from WSJ in these days and share them here.

(Citi bank shows a happy couple/home owners who got mortgage from Citi)

(This JetBlue ads encourage CEOs to ditch their business jet and use the discount carrier)

Dow 5,000?

I remember years ago (in dot com era) there is a book named Dow 36,000. Obviously that predication was a laughing stock becaue Dow crashed in year 2000. No I am not trying to make a fool of myself, my title Dow 5,000 is merely to reflect today the Dow and S&P dropped to 12 year low again (source: bloomberg).

Banking crisis?

It seems the financial crisis has been more like a banking crisis these days, with the RBS virtually nationalized by the British goverment, and Citi and Bank of America increasingly can not stand on its own. The No. 1 and No. 2 US banks according to market cap, J.P.Morgan (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), are also under pressure today, both hovering around $20 and $15, respectively.

(Source: telegraph.co.uk)

Of course this all happens today as the new US president sworn into office. It appears to me the market does not like the stimulus package proposed by Obama team, or the uncertainty around it? Plus the controversy around his treasury secratery pick. All this bring uncertainty to the market, and we know the market does not like uncertainty.

What will we go from here? Will all the big US banks taken over by the federal goverment? It seems unlikely because this country lives or dies on the private business or entreprenuership. With goverment controlling large banks, it will be like (dare I say) China.

Expedia Citi Premier Card

When I was booking the Hyatt hotel at Expedia a while ago, it offered me the Expedia Citi Premier Card.

I went ahead and did it, to get the $50 off for the first purchase (the hotel booking). They do offer another card, which gives back up to $100, with an annual fee of $75. I decided I don’t want that 🙂

Interestingly, Citi only gave me $2,000 credit limit. I remember earlier this year, Citi gave me $4,000 on the Professional card. Just another sign the bank is tightening the credit (lending).

To be fair Citi is not the worst, JP Morgan appears to be more strict. Earlier this year when I asked them about Home Equity Line of Credit, they gave me a same credit limit as I have now with a rate higher than my current rate. What’s more recently I received a mail from them, they are closing a dormant credit card of mine. I am just curious:

What are the money Treasury give to those banks? Did they put it under mattress?

Saving Citi Bank

CNBC Maria Bartiromo interviewing Saudi prince Awaleed, the largest shareholder of Citi Group (NYSE: C), after the US gov (aka we the tax payers) bailed out the Citi and the prince. Here are the terms (PDF). Maybe president Bush gave him assurance that his holding won’t get much diluted before the rescue? The video lasts 18 minutes.

Where is the money for Detroit auto makers, by the way? Sorry no Saudi prince owns the big 3 stocks, and nobody can call the President directly.

Flip flopper

It appears Politicians are not the only flip floppers. The reason we should not follow analyst blindly.

Citigroup Global Markets analyst Jim Suva, talked about RIMM on early Feb (source: seekingalpha):

“Overall, we believe the points brought up during today’s call are highly supportive of our bull case on RIM. Concerns regarding financial services exposure have been largely debunked, in our view, and we think investors should be encouraged by what seems to be a very low replacement rate at Citi, and financial services in general…”

Mr. Suva reiterates his “buy” rating on RIM, and maintains a $140 price target.

Today, according to Barron’s, CitiGroup analyst thinks RIMM will go down significantly. Let me quote: