In Search of the Perfect Investment

I’m warming to Con Ed (ED), our local power company. It has a 4.1% dividend and remarkable growth, as  New York City is coming back remarkably quickly – with new construction, filling old offices with new tenants, conversion of apartment buildings (including our own) to natural gas and remarkable technology company growth – with new server farms and carrier hotels. Best r yet, it has no exposure to Europe. Cramer talked to ED’s CEO last night. Impressive fellow.

Here’s ten years of Con Ed:

Here’s a remarkable chart. A bond fund with a tinge of capital growth:

It’s paying 3% federal-tax free. As they say in Australia, that’s better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish.

Fortunately I’ve had it on my list of stocks I like for a long time  — see right hand column.

The online tradeoff. Trading online is cheaper per trade. But when things screw up, there’s no one with nay decision-making power to talk to. The hired call center “help” live by inviolate rules — the first one being “The customer is always wrong.” The second being “My supervisor won’t be able to do anything for you.”  The third rule is “Tough. We have your money and we’ll do what we feel like.”

Great noise-cancelling headphones.They come by the cheery name of Panasonic RP-HC55-S Noise-Cancelling Earbud Headphones (Silver)

You can buy them on Amazon for a miserly $43.99. They actually work (I have a pair) and they’re far, far cheaper than any other noise-cancelling headphones — and much easier to carry than the big over-the-ear ones from Bose, etc. For Amazon, click here.

It’s always the cable or the batteries. Items of frustration:

+ If your landline phone’s handset crackles, change the handset cord.

+ If your TV remote doesn’t work well, change the batteries.

+ If you’re wiring a house, always put in double the cabling you’ll need. Run Ethernet cat 6 wires everywhere. Cables die in walls. I don’t know how or why. But they do die. Trust me on this one.

+ The only decent connection between your TV set-top box and your TV is an HDMI cable. Cheap ones work just as well as expensive ones. Some people are now running HDMI cables in their walls. Good idea. I wish I had.

+ If your walls are open, run fiber also.

Second frustration — the network. Corded networks work faster than WiFi. But corded ones are harder to keep running. Rule Number One: Turn off everything. Then turn items back on in the order they’re attached to your incoming cable.

Russia has talent, big time. And this short video proves it. Please watch it. You’ll die laughing.

Click here.

You’re invited to a wedding.

The real story on how they caught Osama bin Laden.

Osama was living with 3 wives in one compound and never left the house for 5 years.

It is now believed that he called the Navy Seals himself.

Harry Newton who is eying Apple again. The buzz is turning positive.

Europe still sucks and will continue to rain on our parade — until they do something. Greece runs out of money in three weeks. Maybe they can buy some default protection from JPMorgan?