In Search of the Perfect Investment

Amazon and Square continue to rise.

Google is coming under pressure from some bad PR, including a really stupid article in the Wall Street Journal. Click here. Put in a low bid buy, perhaps around $1200.

The Economist has a Technology Quarterly on cryptocurrencies.

It headlines:

It begins:

This Technology Quarterly will take a more sceptical view. It will point out that, despite a decade of development, bitcoin has failed in its stated objective: to become a usable currency. Security is poor (according to one estimate, around 14% of the supply of big cryptocurrencies has been compromised); its decentralised nature inevitably makes it slow; there is no consumer protection; and the price is so volatile that not many people would want to use it as a means of exchange for goods and services. Other cryptocurrencies suffer from similar problems. Few merchants accept them.

If you lose access to your stash of bitcoin-say, by mislaying a USB stick or accidentally overwriting a hard drive-it can be impossible to recover.

Many users therefore store their bitcoin on exchanges (companies that let users trade ordinary currency for the cryptographic sort). But many exchanges are amateurish operations and have an unenviable record of being hacked.

Here’s a chart from the Economist:

That’s it. Read the whole 12-page report here.

The Year of Overseas Contagion

The Turkish Lira. The Russian Ruble. The Argentine Peso. The South African Rand.  The Indonesian Rupiah. They’re all collapsing.

And now the Australian dollar is slipping. Oih Vey.

Want to see more? Type “Russian Ruble to USD Chart” into Google. You’ll get this:

Even in Europe. Here’s the Euro over the past five years:

In short, before you place your hard-earned savings overseas, be aware of the currency risk.

This may save your life

It’s  called a Medical ID Bracelet. Engrave your blood type, your allergies, your medicines, etc. When they find you unconscious in a ditch somewhere, the bracelet may save your life. Click here. 

Our kitchen looks like a vet hospital.

There’s nothing we — or any of us  — won’t spend on their precious pet. Here’s five years of three pet supplier stocks — CENT (pink), ZTS (green) and FRPT in blue.

We’re in ZTS and CENT. Maybe we should be in FRPT? It does fresh food to pets. But it’s losing money. I’ve been reading its conference calls. There’s a little too much hype for my taste. But the stock is reaching its all-time highs…

Who else in pet supplies?

This is LuluLemon over the past two years.

Pretty spectacular! Why didn’t I buy it? Because I’ve always thought their clothes were hideously overpriced. Yet the women in my family tell me: their material is great and their fit even better. They all own LuluLemon gear.

Next time Harry, ask.

If you have DirecTV, this could go wrong

This is the box we have in our basement. You probably have it also. 
In the center is a Zinwell switch that connects the four satellite inputs (on the left) to the various DirecTV boxes (and hence TV sets) we have. Explanation: DirecTV dish homes in on four satellites. You need a separate feed for each one.

The story: We had a thunderstorm. Many of our DirecTV channels died. I called in the DirecTV technician. He said the problem was on the roof, which he wasn’t going to climb and left. Nice fellow.

I found a local TV contractor and $400 later, after finding nothing wrong on the roof, he figured it was the Zinwell box. He switched it out ($72) and bingo, everything worked.

Good idea: if you have DirecTV, buy a Zinwell switch from Amazon and keep it as a spare. Just in case. Better yet, Amazon charges only $28. Click here. 

It can be bad out there.

Women tell their worst first date stories. From Best Life. Two stories I loved:

+ “I showed up to meet a guy I’d only talked to online and the first thing out of his mouth was `You looked prettier in your pictures.’

+ “A guy spent all of dinner telling me about his ex-girlfriends and how after each break-up he had to move out of their place and move back home. Then he asked how big my apartment was,”

Click here. 

The US Open Tennis continues

The Australian John Millman knocked Federer out last night. I couldn’t figure whom to support. Painful. In the end I was happy for Millman. It was his first big win. He played out of his gord. Everything he tried seemed to work. I wish I could play like that — just once. Please God, just once. It’s one ESPN and The Tennis Channel this week.

Harry Newton. Nearly a month without playing tennis destroyed my game — timing was the biggest disaster– and my physical condition. I’ve been climbing back playing as much as I can. It’s coming back, but, oh so slowly. Never stop exercising. Never stop moving.