In Search of the Perfect Investment

Wall Street almost lynched him when he launched his first index fund.

It annoyed them:

+ His fees were absurdly low.

+ He said you could better with a simple index fund.

That pis*ed off all the active managers who thought they were geniuses (genii?) and deserved their outrageously high fees.

Every so often one of them pitches me on their fund. I then plot the fund against the S&P500 and usually get a chart that looks like this.

This is five years of the S&P500 compared with American Funds Growth Fund of America (AGTHX), one of the largest mutual funds with assets of $115 billion.

Forbes wrote that it is the most popular of the American Fund offerings. Forbes wrote it is an actively managed fund, which according to American Funds’ website, invests at least 65% of assets in common stocks, of which up to 25% can be international. The net annual expense ratios for A shares and C shares is 0.68% (plus a 5.75% front end load) and 1.46%, respectively.

In contrast, Vanguard’s VTI has an expense ratio of 0.04% and no front-end load. (Guess which one I own?)

BubbleVision did a fine job of explaining Jack Bogle’s legacy:

And his message is getting through.

Netflix did a great job of disappointing Wall Street,

 and allowing me to buy more

What a wonderful business that lets you can gain all these nice customers without building a factory, and raise your prices without any increase in direct costs — except maybe salaries.

Verizon FiOS’s wonderful secrets

FiOS is now better in five ways:

1. Bluetooth on the remotes – as against infrared. A huge improvement. No longer need line of sight. You can put your cable box in a closed closet.
2. Speed as high as one gig. I’m getting 100 megs at present. That’s a tenfold increase.
3. More online storage to store tennis matches I’ll probably never watch.
4. Better, stronger WiFi.
5. All equipment is much smaller

Get a Verizon technician in to design your new system. Our is called Matthew Donohue. He’s good.

The best investment Bill Gates ever made

Giving money to fight diseases. Click here.

Not a good time to sell your house/apartment

The bottom has fallen out of the house market. Not a good time to sell.

But a great time to buy. Especially if it’s a”Divorce Sale.” Offer real low. They want to get rid of their spouses and their houses — fast and cheap.

The Last Step. Don’t do stupid

Look what New York City subways do for the last step: They extend the hand railing. It’s brilliant. It alerts you. The last step going down is the most dangerous.

Korean face mask

It’s so cold in New York, you have to wear a face mask. This the coolest.

I want one. He bought it in Korea. So much for that idea.

Australian Tennis 2019 Open is on

You can watch it on ESPN and The Tennis Channel. They’re playing it in Melbourne, a truly beautiful city. I wish I were there. It’s a lot warmer than here.

A small boy and his dental hygiene

A small boy came running out of the bathroom in tears.

“What’s the matter?” asked his father.

“I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet.”

“Okay, don’t worry, but we’d better throw it out.”

So the father fished the toothbrush out of the toilet and put it in the garbage.

When he returned, the boy was holding another toothbrush.

“Isn’t that my toothbrush?” the father said.

“Yes,” said the boy, “and we’d better throw this one out too, because it fell in the toilet four days ago.”

Harry Newton, who’s happily writing this blog while listening to Mary Poppins on my new AirPods:

These are amazing. Simply amazing.