In Search of the Perfect Investment

Every investment has a gotcha — something that will, at some stage, bite it.

For biotech and pharma companies, it’s drug trials and the FDA. For bricks and mortar retailers, it’s the Internet and Amazon. For Expedia, it’s you and I directly booking of hotels and airlines. For many it’s the cockroach nature of their awful management, e.g. Wells Fargo.  And for others it’s politics.

That’s why these days I eye gotchas before I eye good things. I’ve been burned on “cures for cancer” too many times.

I suspect Buffett feels this way also. He talks about “Don’t lose money.”

In recent weeks, I’ve been publishing lists of investments not to own, which now include Intel, GE, retailers, and bonds of miserable places — including and especially Venezuela and Puerto Rico.

I include Saudi Arabia, now seemingly on its way to becoming the new Venezuela or the old Zimbabwe. See below for more on Saudi. That place is fast becoming a tinpot dictatorship.

Cramer highlighted IDTI last week

I did some research. I’m superexcited. This company is in the right places at the right time. Sensors for autos. Sensors for food making. Wireless charging. Wearable medical applications. Millimeter wave beamformer stuff for 5G wireless — the next generation of ultra-fast smartphones. But, wait, there’s more. Go to Integrated Device Technology’s web site — and browse around. Click here. Read their latest impressive quarterly. Click here. 

IDTI is not cheap and it’s had a big run. (But so has Square, and it’s still climbing.)

The stuff IDTI makes is awesome.

I’m semi-big on charts

I do like this one. Look. There’s a floor around $50. Every time it hits $50, it bounces.

I put in a limit buy order at $50. It may never get filled. But if it does, I’ll be happy.

My friend Ed routinely has low buy orders in. Sometimes he lucks out.

Check. Check. Check. All these from personal experience.

+ Your car is still registered? Or not? Ours was only three months late.

+ That the voltage is 480 volts, not 240 volts before you buy a swag of new bulbs.

+ Check you paid your real estate taxes on time. So you won’t get whacked with a huge late fine?

+ That California King and Eastern King beds are different sizes. King is not. They are different. No sheet!

+ You’re holding the banister before you step down? Especially onto the last step.

+ That you wrote it’s not its. Or there, when you meant their or they’re.

+ Check that the plural doesn’t have an apostrophe. This is wrong — car’s.

+ Check, you don’t lift anything heavy. The worst: Do not lift your heavy suitcase onto your airline’s overhead bin. Hernias are not fun. Eli is having his second operation today for the hernia he got lifting a heavy TV console.

Worthwhile reading:

+ What Trump is really afraid that Mueller will find by Paul Waldman. Click here 

+ The Great College Loan Swindle
How universities, banks and the government turned student debt into America’s next financial black hole. Click here. 

I don’t know if college loans are the next financial crisis, like sub-prime mortgages were in 2008. Read this piece and worry.

+ Commerce Secretary’s Offshore Ties to Putin `Cronies’
Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, retained investments in a shipping firm with business ties to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle.

After becoming commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. retained investments in a shipping firm he once controlled that has significant business ties to a Russian oligarch subject to American sanctions and President Vladimir V. Putin’s son-in-law, according to newly disclosed documents.

The shipper, Navigator Holdings, earns millions of dollars a year transporting gas for one of its top clients, a giant Russian energy company called Sibur, whose owners include the oligarch and Mr. Putin’s family member. Despite selling off numerous other holdings to join the Trump administration and spearhead its “America first” trade policy, Mr. Ross kept an investment in Navigator, which increased its business dealings with Sibur even as the West sought to punish Russia’s energy sector over Mr. Putin’s incursions into Ukraine.

For the full New York Times story, click here.

The awesome story of Google’s awesome power

CALLER: Is this Gordon’s Pizza?

GOOGLE: No sir, it’s Google Pizza.

CALLER: I must have dialed a wrong number. Sorry.

GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Gordon’s Pizza last month.

CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza.

GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir?

CALLER: My usual? You know me?

GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.

CALLER: OK! That’s what I want .

GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten free thin crust?

CALLER: What? I detest vegetables.

GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir.

CALLER: How the hell do you know that?

GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.

CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetable pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.

GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you only purchased a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once, at Drug RX Network, 4 months ago.

CALLER: I bought more from another drugstore.

GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.

CALLER: I paid in cash.

GOOGLE: But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.

CALLER: I have other sources of cash.

GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your last tax return unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law.

CALLER: WHAT THE HELL?

GOOGLE: I’m sorry, sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.

CALLER: Enough already! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I’m going to an island without Internet, cable TV, where there is no cell phone service and no one to spy on me.

GOOGLE: I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago.

Dateline Pakistan

A 21-year-old woman has been arrested after killing 17 people with a poisonous substance that was intended for her new husband.

Aasia Bibi, who lived in the remote village of Alipur, 60 miles south of Multan, a city in Pakistan, was forced by her parents to marry a relative.

“I repeatedly asked my parents not to marry me against my will, as my religion, Islam, also allows me to choose the man of my choice for marriage but my parents rejected all of my pleas and they married me to a relative,” she said.

After getting married, Bibi continued her relationship with her boyfriend, Shahid Lashari.

Lashari provided Bibi with the poisonous substance intended for her husband. Bibi mixed it into some milk that her husband refused to drink. But her mother-in-law “used the tainted milk to make a traditional yogurt-based drink and served it to 27 members of her extended family who fell unconscious and were hospitalized.” According to the district chief of police, Sohail Habib Tajak, 17 people later died from the poison.

Despite the fact that many parents arrange for the marriages of their daughters in Pakistan, Bibi warned her own parents that she would do whatever she had to do to get out of the marriage since they wouldn’t permit her to divorce her husband.

Dateline Saudi Arabia. From the New York Times:

Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal

LONDON – Saudi Arabia announced the arrest on Saturday night of the prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, plus at least 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers.

The announcement of the arrests was made over Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned satellite network whose broadcasts are officially approved. Prince Alwaleed’s arrest is sure to send shock waves both through the kingdom and the world’s major financial centers.

He controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, owning or having owned major stakes in News Corp, Citigroup, Apple, Twitter and many other well-known companies. The prince also controls satellite television networks watched across the Arab world.

The sweeping campaign of arrests appears to be the latest move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son and top adviser of King Salman.

At 32, the crown prince is already the dominant voice in Saudi military, foreign, economic and social policies, stirring murmurs of discontent in the royal family that he has amassed too much personal power, and at a remarkably young age.

The king had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption committee, headed by the crown prince, only hours before the committee ordered the arrests.

Al Arabiya said that the anticorruption committee has the right to investigate, arrest, ban from travel, or freeze the assets of anyone it deems corrupt.

The Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the de facto royal hotel, was evacuated on Saturday, stirring rumors that it would be used to house detained royals. The airport for private planes was closed, arousing speculation that the crown prince was seeking to block rich businessmen from fleeing before more arrests.

Prince Alwaleed was giving interviews to the Western news media as recently as late last month about subjects like so-called crypto currencies and Saudi Arabia’s plans for a public offering of shares in its state oil company, Aramco.

He has also recently sparred publicly with President Donald J. Trump. The prince was part of a group of investors who bought control of the Plaza Hotel in New York from Mr. Trump, and he also bought an expensive yacht from him as well. But in a twitter message in 2015 the prince called Mr. Trump “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.”

Mr. Trump fired back, also on Twitter, that “Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy’s money.”

As president, Mr. Trump has developed a warm, mutually supportive relationship with the ascendant crown prince, who has rocketed from near obscurity in recent years to taking control of the country’s most important functions.

At 32, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is already the dominant voice in Saudi military, foreign, economic and social policies. Credit Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

But his swift rise has also divided Saudis. Many applaud his vision, crediting him with addressing the economic problems facing the kingdom and laying out a plan to move beyond its dependence on oil.

Others see him as brash, power-hungry and inexperienced, and they resent him for bypassing his elder relatives and concentrating so much power in one branch
of the family. …

Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy without a written Constitution or independent government institutions like a Parliament or courts, so accusations of corruption are difficult to evaluate. The boundaries between the public funds and the wealth of the royal family are murky at best, and corruption, as other countries would describe it, is believed to be widespread.

The arrests came a few hours after the king replaced the minister in charge of the Saudi national guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, who controlled the last of the three Saudi armed forces not yet considered to be under control of the crown prince.

The king named Crown Prince Mohammed the minister of defense in 2015. Earlier this year, the king removed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as head of the interior ministry, placing him under house arrest and extending the crown prince’s influence over the interior ministry’s troops, which act as a second armed force.

Rumors have swirled since then that King Salman and his favorite son would soon move against Prince Mutaib, commander of the third armed force and himself a former contender for the crown.

The Crown Prince is clearly a nut case. He also got Saudi into its present disastrous war against Yemen. He’ll probably bankrupt Saudi with billion-dollar new cities he’s building. Read the full article here.

Harry Newton, who got to thinking: What’s most wonderful gift you can buy yourself? Answer: A pair of super-comfortable shoes. My most comfortable shoes are these from the Australian company R.M. Williams:

Do not buy them online. Sizing and color are critical. Buy them in Australia or one of the local shops in the U.S. stocking the boot. You can find them on Google. The boots are close to $500 in the U.S. They’re cheaper in Australia because the Aussie dollar is only 77 cents. Nice place to visit. Nice people. They even speak nearly the same language. The boots are incredible.