My Sick Mind

There is a big week ahead in your portfolio-thingy.  Over in France, they are having an election on Sunday.  Yes, Sunday.  The French are goofy.  I suppose they expect everyone to vote, or something? One wonders what would have happened if we had a full turnout last November, instead of electing someone with 49% of the vote with barely 60% turnout.  But, I digress. Our stock market will react - however it will - to the results on Sunday night.  Sadly, there is nothing you or I can do about it, so we are forced to grimace and bear it.  But, these are the facts: Like the Brexit vote several months ago, the markets may tank, and you will have an opportunity to jump in and buy quality stocks at a discount. Or ... Like last November, the market will react positively, and you will have an opportunity to hold onto whatever you own and watch it increase in value over ... nothing, really.  That's the beauty of the stock market. Meanwhile, many...

OK, so I'm no Warren Buffett.  I'm not even Jimmy Buffett, but I do like Chinese buffets - so, I have that going for me - which is nice.  However, I do keep up with things, and I have opinions, which is why I do this.  But I digress. It's earnings season - again. Seems like it comes around every three months - because it does.  It's junk food for market geeks like me, and I enjoy hearing the reports, especially when they don't involve stocks that I own or markets that I follow.  So, what's going on? Today, Goldman Sachs (a.k.a. Golden Slacks or ticker symbol GS) reported a less than stellar quarter, and predictably the stock got hammered, to the tune of a 4.7% loss. Since the Dow Jones is a weighted average, their loss was the market's loss, and the DJ Index took a 113-point hit.  The pessimist could look at it as a clobbering.  The optimist can look at it as a buying opportunity.  I say, wait three days and allow the big institutions ...

I don't have enough time or space to opine on why we are who we are or why we are born where we are.  Let's just accept that as a quirk of fate and move on.  After all, who among us knows why we were born of our parents and why we were not born somewhere or someplace else?  How did I wind up here and not in Botswana or Japan?  Why am I a caucasian American and not a slave in 1820s America? If you have a clue, let me know.  There is a comments section at the bottom. For now though, let's say that none of us knows why we are here or what we are supposed to be doing. That's fair enough, eh?  If this is too deep for you, then just move on to the next Dilbert cartoon in your feed and allow me to work on this by myself. Many of us work long and hard trying to figure out where we are going in "the next life," without trying to figure out why we are in this life.  I guess we accept it as a matter of fact and move on.  Well, I for one cannot do t...

He is strong.  Stronger than you or I.  Certainly stronger than I. He has battled gingivitis, which prompted all of his teeth (save one lower) to be removed, and restrict him to a life of canned food. He battled high cholesterol, which caused him to have pancreatitis, which put him in the hospital for three days.  After which, he struggled to eat for two weeks, forcing me to find something that he could stomach until he returned to his version of normal. The ultrasounds that were done during his illness told us that he had smaller than normal kidneys,  and the prognosis was negative.  Cats like him didn't survive much past the age of seven.  So, we knew - for whatever good that did us.  Good for him, I guess. The deterioration was slow.  The numbers decreased as he started eating special kidney diet food and I gave him IV fluids.  Inevitably, the disease would catch up with him, and by his mortality he would succumb.  It w...

Thursday marks the unofficial (official?) beginning of "Earnings Season."  My second favorite other than the start of baseball season.  Only in this case, you have to be wary of where your money is.  With baseball season, all you have to worry about is where your car is parked. The banks will lead off.  Among others, JP Morgan and Citibank.  The biggies.  During the last big rally - after Trump was elected (you remember) - the banks led the way because investors thought that they would be the force once his administration got healthcare reform and lowered corporate income taxes - and the Fed raised interest rates.  Well ... We see how that has gone.  Trump is nearly into his first 100 days and ... nothing. has. happened.  Oh,  unless you count launching missiles at North Korea.  Now, you have something. Once the banks start reporting, it's either "run for the hills" or "hold the line," since bank stocks control a large ...

Ryan Howard is still out of work.  If President Trump (just threw up in my mouth) wants to create jobs, why can't he make a new baseball team for Ryan to join?  He has quietly settled into obscurity. In other news, President Trump (drying out now) has signed another one of his quaint Executive Orders that loosens the restrictions on coal that President Obama instituted.  He (that will not be named) claims that it will "save jobs." That's always his excuse for junk like this -  saving jobs.  Meanwhile, we are not in rampant unemployment, and the jobs he is "saving" are low-income, black lung sorts of things that somehow he supports. I fail to see how being a Republican makes one opposed to clean energy and preserving our home for the millions of children they are producing.  "Dying industries will come roaring back to life," he says.  How does he explain why they are "dying industries?"  Sometimes, it's best to let dying things ...

For the record (if there is one) I don't have a lot of money.  What I do have is working as hard as possible so that I can have money later. That's called "putting your money to work for you."  Besides paying bills and doing what I refer to as "living," I invest as much as I can, to the extent of what I call "Saving Myself Broke." I don't take vacations or buy a lot of extravagant things.  The most expensive thing I do is buy prescription food for Thor.  He seems to appreciate it. Anyway ... Our stock market made a major thrust forward yesterday, and it seemed that the time was ripe to sell a stock that I had held for a while but seemed stalled in its own growth - Activision/Blizzard ATVI.  I profited from the sale, and like all my sales, I immediately began to think, "What's next?"  Even at my advanced age, I'm still in growth-stock mode. I figure on living at least another 30 years, and if you think about how much the ...

As I get closer to retirement, I'm re-focusing on investing and paying closer attention to where my money is going.  I suppose it's the equivalent of last-minute Christmas shopping.  Looking at the calendar and realizing I have two weeks to make something out of myself.  In this case, it's more like 3 to 5 years - but still. We are at the tail-end of earnings season. Granted, it's not as exciting as the start of baseball season, but for geeks like me, it's pretty close.  Brick-and-mortal retail is getting slaughtered.  JC Penny is closing stores, reporting horrible same-store sales, and their stock has been falling like a lead balloon. Even when I was a youngster, the stores were kind of crappy.  I remember, in the 1990s they changed their focus to attire, and put lots of clothing on sale.  I had a store credit card, and I ran it up bigly buying pants, shirts, and all the stuff that young men makes them think they are well-dressed.  You see wher...

Between watching a marathon of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and talking to a friend about old vinyl albums - the thoughts occurred to me about what it was like buying records in the 1970s versus what it's like now.  Suffice it to say, it's one Hell of a lot different now. Let's travel back to the early-to-mid 1970s.  Places like EJ Korvette's, Record Museum, and Franklin Music sold vinyl albums (we called them records) and 45's. We used to subscribe to magazines like Creem and Circus to get updates on new albums and concert tours.  In other news, we used to stand in line for concert tickets at 9:00am on Saturday mornings - for "Dance Concerts" - shows where you didn't get an assigned seat. $5.50 for a show.  It was first-come, first-served, and it was the kind of nonsense that led to The Who stampede in Cincinnati that eventually brought an end to "Dance Concerts," but I digress. It was exciting to find a new record, sit in the ...

Today is Groundhog Day. I don't know where it came from - and I don't care. Embracing this stupid tradition only makes us look like a bunch of superstitious boobs.  I'm sorry if I'm not "down with it," or whatever the kids say nowadays.  I have no time or energy to devote to superstition or stupid traditions.  The idea that a rodent (or anything, for that matter) seeing his shadow or not determines the weather for the next month and a half is as ridiculous an idea as has been devised. The problem is that, sometimes we get so engrained in something stupid that it's impossible to let it go.  Beyoncé has more black people in her than President Trump has in his Cabinet. His Supreme Court nominee is yet another middle-aged white man.  Our government is full of them.  It's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything for the lower class and minorities - we have none of them in government or anyone who understands what it's like to live from paycheck...

For investors and people who love numbers, today was a big day.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed over the 20,000 mark.  Is it a big deal? Well, yes and no.  What it should do is make people pay attention to the power of compounding and how investing in stocks is the best way to build wealth over their lifetime. For some perspective, the Dow reached 10,000 in October of 2009. So, in roughly 17 years your money has doubled. That is just the average.  If you are a good stock-picker, your investment in The Home Depot would have gained about 400%, and your investment in Goldman-Sachs would have gained roughly 300%.  And, let's not mention Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix.  They are not members of the Dow 30, but have gained roughly that amount in the same time period.  What I'm telling you is:  Get your money out of your cell phone bill, cable company, or your ridiculous car payment and build your future.  That's free advice. ...

In cities across America, millions (?) of people gathered to protest the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. I suppose the center of the movement was women's rights and the idea that a mysoginist is now our President.  The movement is honorable, but leaves me with feelings that are probably going to make you hate me. So be it. The protest marches were organized in cities.  In those cities, support for Hillary Clinton was big.  Basically, they brought together a bunch of like-minded voters to say, "We don't like this" to something that has already happened.  It's easy to organize people in areas where they have a common goal.   I get the feeling that they didn't think it was possible for Trump to be elected, so their anger is retroactive, when it should have been proactive.  The pre-election rallies were coronations of a sort, and few believed that America would vote for Donald Trump. Well - it happened, and now we are supposed to say...

"You can observe a lot just by watching."  - Yogi Berra I've always said that the Business section is the most interesting section of the newspaper.  Following the stock market gives one an insight into what Americans are thinking, doing, and spending their money on.  Lately, the trends have been interesting. About a year ago, the casual dining industry began to struggle.  Stalwarts like McDonald's, Wendy's, Starbucks, Brinker, and YUM Brands struggled to draw customers to their restaurants.  Something was influencing people to stay at home and prepare food rather than spend money for the dining-out experience.  Generally, dining out is coupled with some other entertainment, be it a movie, show, or something to draw people out of their home and stop for food on the way out or the way home.  That ain't happening. Tonight, Netflix reported a stellar quarter, beating estimates on subscriber growth and their own high-quality content.  Some of it is in...

It has happened slowly, as complex things do.  Erosion occurs so slowly that we hardly notice.  One day, the stream is knee-deep, and before we know it, the stream is up to our neck.  The Grand Canyon was formed similarly.  What we are going through now is the geologic equivalent of stream erosion, and we now find ourselves at the bottom of the canyon. In the 1970s, when I was in high school, I heard my fellow students proclaim, "Why should I pay attention to algebra? We'll never use it in real life!"  Seemingly, they would never use high-powered math in their lifetimes.  Suffice it to say that most of them cannot calculate a 20% tip at a restaurant without a phone app.  Little did I know that they were not paying attention in English class either.  This is supported by reading their Facebook posts where their, they're, and there are the same word; and you're is replaced by your because those are the same, also. If I decide to correct their atro...

Much has been said about the Trump Administration, and what he will do when he takes office on January 20, 2017.  In fact, even more has been made about his "first 100 days" in office, and the effect of that on our stock market and the habits of companies that operate in the United States. He Tweets a lot of stuff - and I guess that's his right as a citizen - but I also guess that it's our right as a citizen to have a President-Elect who speaks rather than Tweets, but that probably labels me a Luddite, or something.  I like to be spoken-to. Lately, our Tweeter In Chief has been griping against Ford, Carrier, and Toyota about building manufacturing plants in Mexico vs. building them in the United States.  Conventional logic would argue that he prefers American jobs over runaway inflatiion . (See my previous post) Once you have accepted that idea, any investment you can make is minuscule in comparison.  If you accept the idea that American jobs is greater than consumer...

I don't know if you have to be an economist, a market theorist, or a expert in finances (all of which I am not) to know that a big change is in the wind, economically, with our new [cough] President Donald J. Trump. He talks a good game, or at least what he perceives to be a good game.  He has already taken credit for keeping 8,000 jobs in America by bullying large corporations from taking their manufacturing to Mexico.  The purpose of that, one surmises, is to save money in production, since the ratio of American to Mexican salaries is something along the order of 35:1.  Ford builds their small cars in Mexico, and brings them back to the United States to sell at a price that Americans of modest means (like me) can afford. When I was a kid (the time when Trump would probably tell us "America was great") if something said 'Made in Japan,' my parents would put it back on the shelf because it was cheaply made and wouldn't last as long as something that was made h...

A week and a two days ago Americans elected a new President.  Well, some of them did.  I cannot say that most of them did, because the majority of the popular vote was not a majority in favor of the eventual winner. True to my word, I watched a movie ("The Silence of Mark Rothko" - highly recommended) and flipped-off the TV at 9:30pm, which I suspected would be well in advance of declaring the eventual winner.  I wished to get one more good night's sleep. Much has been said about the inaccuracy of the pre-election polls and how some of the pundits should be made to apologize for leading us down the garden path where millions of Americans woke-up on Wednesday morning to President-Elect Donald Trump. And, so it goes.   Regardless of your (and my) objections, we are now living in a world where we are forced to say "President Donald Trump." It's akin to saying Mayor McCheese.  He is a cartoon version of a real President.  Sadly, that is what we ...

As Mr. T said in one of those "Rocky" films:  "I live alone, I train alone, I fight alone." I don't do a lot of fighting, but if you substitute "everything else" for fighting, you could say the same thing about me.  I don't have visitors.  The last time someone was in my home was November of 2013 when someone called the cops because they thought I had committed suicide. They were not invited guests. When I go out, it's almost always alone.  That gives me a lot of time to notice the things around me.  When your nose isn't buried in your cell phone, you can notice a lot of the world around you, and there is a lot of world around you.   Last Friday I was in New York, and Saturday I was in Philadelphia.  Both times, there were events tied into my travels.  Friday's event was a show at Carnegie Hall with Marc Maron and Nate Bargatze. Saturday's show was Gilbert Gottfried at Helium. Because I buy one ticket, I usually ...

I don't go to New York City very often.  There has to be a special event to get me to go, and even then, I reluctantly do it.  On Friday, it was a Marc Maron show at Carnegie Hall.  I've seen Marc before, but I'd never been to Carnegie Hall.   I plan it like a NASA mission. Every spare minute is accounted for, so that I can get in and get out without wasting valuable resources like money - which you need a lot of if you are going to New York City.   I like cities.   I love Philadelphia and Baltimore.  New York City makes them look like Mayberry.  The activity is relentless.   I don't drive, because it costs $15 to go through one of the tunnels, fifteen bucks on the New Jersey Turnpike, and $50 to park you car.  So, you're out $80 before you leave your vehicle.  I hate to sound like a frugal jerk, but that's ridiculous.   I take the train because I like trains, and I walk because I like to walk. It's ...