In Search of the Perfect Investment

I give thanks for Eleanor, my first grandkid.

She’s what it’s all about.

We spent Thanksgiving with Eleanor in Portland, OR.

In Portland I’m an “honored citizen.” I ride for $1 on the light rail to the airport. Everyone else pays $2.50.

Portland has dubbed an area an “Industrial Sanctuary.” It’s where during the second World War they built warships — over 1,000. Portland was the second biggest shipbuilding U.S. town in the 1940s.

Manufacturing is now coming back with a roar. Automation is making it cheaper and better to build in the good old U.S. of A. I couldn’t be happier.

One potential long-term beneficiary:

Meantime, Forbes has put out a piece on the fastest-growing 25 small companies. Actually they’re not so small and they’re all public. Most of their stocks have done very well. Read the doc here:25_american_small_cos_

I visited Lumber Liquidators (LL) in Portland, OR. The building is ramshackle.

But the cash registers are humming. The salesman didn’t work for LL. He worked for an independent installer who will lay your LL wood. He was remarkably helpful. Whitney Tilson had said “Short LL” at the recent Robin Hood Conference. I’m dubious. And so is one of Seeking Alpha’s writers. Read here.

Weekend reading:

+ Much Ado About Bitcoin. The mysterious currency that’s gone through the roof – sadly without me. From the Economist:

BITCOIN is booming. Investors are piling into the digital currency, which is not issued by a central bank but is conjured into being by cryptographic software running on a network of volunteers’ computers. This week the price of a Bitcoin soared to above $1,000, from less than $15 in January.

Having long been favoured by libertarians, gold bugs and drug dealers, Bitcoin is attracting some surprising new fans. Germany has recognised it as a “unit of account”. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told a Senate committee on virtual currencies that the idea “may hold long-term promise”. A small but growing band of shops and firms accept payments in Bitcoin. Some like the way it allows funds to be transferred directly between users, without middlemen. Others are attracted by the potential for anonymous transfers, or by the fact that the number of Bitcoins in circulation has a fixed upper limit-so there is no way a central bank can inflate their value away by issuing more.

But the recent price surge, driven by Chinese investors stashing money offshore, looks like a classic bubble.

For more on bitcoin, click here and here and here.

+ A Trusting Couple, Now Thrown for Two Loops. Salutary lessons in personal investing by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times. Click here.

+ Power Outages Hobble Pakistan’s Biggest Exporters. Lack of Electricity Enfeebles Industrial Production, Hitting Textile Sector. Really sad. Really stupid. What a dumb way to run a country. From the Wall Street Journal. Click here.

 Favorite Christmas present I don’t want:

+ A 8 gig USB drive bottle opener. Only $14.39. Click here.

Harry Newton just got off a Red Eye (through the night) flight. I’m exhausted. I’ll catch up tomorrow.