Harry Newton's In Search of The Perfect Investment
Newton's In Search Of The Perfect Investment. Technology Investor.
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8:30 AM EST Thursday, May 25, 2006: Enduring
realities as we go forward:
+ Energy and commodities will stay high. The era of cheap resources is over.
+ Breakthroughs will continue in biotech. People will pay anything to stay alive
longer and more comfortably.
+ Inflation will be with us and will fixate the Fed, whose boss won't find the
big productivity improvements his predecessor found (and loved). This is likely
to lead to stagflation and a replay of the 1970s where stocks went nowhere for
a long, long time. Portfolio diversification is key.
+ Investible funds sloshing the globe searching desperately for opportunities
-- long and short -- will produce huge volatility, forcing us all to re-think
short-term fads.
Bird
flu. Energy. Alternative energy. Commodities. China stocks. India stocks. Flash
Technology. Search. There's always a hot, short-term area. And if you get in
real early and out quickly, you do OK. What's increasingly amazing (at least
to me) is how fast the fad comes and then how fast it disappears, leaving a
lot of late-in investors with egg on their faces and red ink in their pocket.
You can the see
the riskiness of stocks. The first chart assumes buying one share; the second
a thousand shares. (I should have been consistent). My China list is too long,
but virtually all the stocks are now well off their one-year highs.
Zoltek (ZOLT) is new to my list of alternative energy companies. It makes
high-performance carbon fibers for use in the blades of windmills that make
electricity. Making electricity through wind is growing at nearly 20% a year.
Carbon fiber is lightweight
and meets the stiffness needs of longer and longer blades, which is the key
to productivity improvements in the windmill business.
I continue to look for great undiscovered biotech/health care companies. I figure
people will pay big for a few more months of life, or a better drug with fewer
noxious side affects. My small portfolio includes Hana Biosciences, InSite
Vision, Manhattan Pharma, Novadel, Point Therapeutics, Vioquest and Ziopharm
Oncology.
If
you figure I'm stumped this morning in the search for the perfect stock investment,
you'd be right. Those small-town real shopping center/office buildings with
the 8% to 9% cash yields and projected 12% to 15% IRRs look very attractive
compared to gambling on fads in the stockmarket. This morning, I'm actually
revisiting muni bonds.
Vonage's
tanked yesterday. Its economics are terrible, except in raising money.
It will never make any money. Vonage's VoIP phone calls placed over the Internet
will never be consistently good. Vonage
can't control the Internet the same way conventional phone companies can control
their own phone lines.
Never
ever subscribe to Quote.com: Another reason
to hate takeovers. The stock charts and tables you see on this column were done
with Quote.com. Ever since Lycos bought Quote.com, it's been all downhill. Help!
Can anyone recommend a decent service that is actually reliable?
Life
in the Virtual Assistant lane: Jobs for older people are scarce in
corporate America. An older friend with no job came to see me yesterday. What
should she do? I suggested becoming a "virtual assistant." Zillions
of people -- retired and not retired -- are working out of their homes. They
all need an assistant, who will print stuff at Kinkos, follow up on promises,
return phone calls, take the kids to soccer when there's an important meeting,
pay the monthly bills, get the computer fixed, back up the computer, deal with
UPS and FedEx, etc.
The French Open Tennis begins this Sunday:
Set your TiVo -- but don't buy TiVo's stock. Its results of later
have been miserable.
French
Open Tennis
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Time
(EST)
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Sunday
May 28
|
12:00
pm to 5:00 pm
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ESPN2
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Monday
May 29
|
5:00 am to 3:00 pm
|
ESPN2
|
Tuesday
May 30
|
12:00
am to 1:30 am
|
ESPN2
|
Tuesday
May 30
|
5:00
am to 3:00 pm
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ESPN2
|
The June schedule
is not up, yet.
This one's a cousin of Murphy's Law Cousins -- Part 1:
Law of Mechanical
Repair
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and
you'll have to pee.
Law of the
Workshop
Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.
Law of Probability
The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of
what you're doing. .
Law of the
Telephone
If you dial a wrong number, you'll never get a busy signal.
Law of the
Alibi
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the
very next morning you will have a flat tire.
Variation Law:
If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move
faster than the one you are in now.
Law of the
Bath
When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.
Law of Close
Encounters
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone
you don't want to be seen with.
Law of the
Result:
When you try to prove to someone that a machine doesn't work, it will.
Harry
Newton
This column is about my personal search for the perfect
investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered
with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor.
I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three
reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column
is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect
Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas,
concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address
is . You can't
click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software
scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing
the Google ads. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look mighty interesting.
If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting
you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Claire's law school tuition.
Read more about Google AdSense, click
here and here.
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