So, What Now?

I’m pretty happy with my investment choices - and if you’ve been following along, you would be, too. [Ooops]

The options at this point are:  What to do with Pfizer and Key.  Pfizer pays a dividend in a week, so I’m content to stick with it until then.  For some odd reason, I’ve stuck with it longer than I had anticipated.  Only my investment in Ford was more agonizing.  Key is a great bank, but they are a ... bank, and as such tend to waffle with this goofball that is in the White House and his so-called tax cut - but I digress.

I continue to be long DelTaco (TACO) and would advise you to be, too. They will struggle with costs and the eternal problems of bringing people into their restaurants, but ... people have to eat somewhere, and the stock is priced right, and if you aren’t in already, at the $12 area, you should be.  The management team knows what they’re doing. Ride along. 

It says here, I’m 60 and I’m supposed to be risk averse, but I enjoy the risk.  Hence, my investments in Square, Limelight Networks, and Extreme Networks.  Otherwise, I’d be in stable investments like bonds (yuck) and income stocks, which are only appealing to me if they are growth stocks - which Pfizer doesn’t seem to be at this point. I’m struggling to hang onto this thing.  The part of me that wants to sell it combats the part of me that thinks that their management team will find some way to make this thing a growth vehicle.  But that growth vehicle seems to be a pipe dream, and there is growth to be found elsewhere - which is where Square, Limelight, and Extreme Networks come in.

ACCO Brands is a value stock.  I lose patience with value stocks because the market doesn’t appreciate them, and I can’t wait for “the market” to appreciate something that I already appreciated.  They trade at a lower valuation because they ... well, aren’t valued highly.  That’s the way it goes.  At some point, it will come around for them, but you have to have patience, and patience is something that is growing short for me now.

Square continues to grow at an alarming rate, partially because of their embracing of Bitcoin.  I don’t have time to explain it, and I also don’t have the knowledge of the so-called cryptocurrency to know what the fuck is going on, but suffice it to say that I’m along for the ride.  And, it’s quite a ride.  Get on board. The ticker symbol is SQ.

I’m in a good place, investment-wise - which balances the horrible place I’m in career-wise.  My job is stagnant, and my pension sucks compared with other co-workers who have been with the company a similar amount of time.  It’s the reason I have to make the best of my investments.  My salary stinks compared with people who have been with the company as long as I, and I have to make the best of the time I have left to resuscitate my retirement savings.  It’s pathetic, but true.  I earned so little for so long that I have to make the best of it now.

I try to balance the risk with the reward, and I advise you to, too.  I’ve resisted big-money investments in Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix - although I have found an ETF that contains them and others, so it’s less of a risk.  Ticker symbol FDN.  Find it.  It’s a struggle, finding stuff and keeping up with it all.  It’s a huge stress on my life, and I’d rather not deal with it, but I have to - if I’m going to be able to retire in some sort of comfort.  In my darkest hours, I don’t think I’ll be able to retire at all.  In the long run, I have failed at it, and only now do I realize that my time has been spent in worthless anxiety.  I will struggle to make the best of it.

If it seems that I’ve got the world on a string, it’s not a string so much as it is a yo-yo.  I’m playing catch-up in a world where most of you have already caught up.