In Search of the Perfect Investment

I bought some shares in another mortgage REIT, called Armour Residential REIT (ARR). It does what AGNC does and yields 16.4%,

This week it did a secondary that was wildly in demand by institutions. Here’s the prospectus. Read it before you do anything. Click here.

Deutsche Bank is big in mortgage REITs because they have a great analyst, Stephen Laws. Here’s his July 12 report on the company. The headline is “cutting estimates to reflect recent capital raise; Maintain Buy”. Click here.

Craig Henderson is one of the smartest guys in muni bonds I know. He manages billions of dollars of tax-exempt muni bonds for clients. He puts out a quarterly newsletter. Conclusions from his July 2012 newsletter:

Modestly higher rates would not be surprising, but a sharp move to higher levels is not likely while growth remains sluggish.

Our  posture remains  unchanged. We  continue  to  target  portfolio  durations  at  3.6  years,  about  15%  below neutral.  Despite the sluggish economic setting and Federal Reserve ease, low nominal rates argue for a degree of caution.  High quality standards are being maintained.  Continued emphasis on credit research is paramount to us.

You can read his entire newsletter here.

The biggest pieces of my portfolio are real estate, tax-exempt muni bonds and tax-free muni bond funds, like VWALX.

TBT continues to be a lousy investment, which I don’t own, but a lot of my friends do. It’s a way to gamble on higher interest rates. The TBT goes up when interest rates go up.

Today’s “logic” is that no one will give the US treasury money if they don’t get a decent return on their money. Under 2% for ten years is not a “decent” return. (Hence rates will rise.) But that’s not the point. People (especially those from overseas) give the U.S. treasury money (by way of treasuries) because it’s a safe place to store money. Whether you get interest is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that you’ll get your money back when you need it. There are some people who believe the interest rate on treasuries may actually fall below 0%. In other words, you’ll be paying the U.S. government to hold your money. Heck, the Swiss has been doing it for centuries. Today, we’re much stronger than they are. All we got to do is to develop the cohones (aka balls, or chutzpah).

The Euro slumped below $1.22, its lowest in two years. It will go lower since their politicians  seem incapable of solving their problems. Europe is a little cheaper for a summer vacation this year. But it’s still not cheap. Good news: There isn’t a pricey European hotel that can’t be bargained down to terra firma.

Supervalu (SVU) was one of the stocks on my “Short These Stocks” list. RIMM and RSH continue to self-immolate.

Bidding jobs out. Readers weighed in with story after story about jobs they bid to several contractors and the enormously varying bid prices they got back — surprising them. Many readers went out of their way to define the job in the most rigorous terms — down to the materials they’ll use, etc. And still the bids came in wide. Some readers commented that even after analysing the bids, they still coulldn’t figure the reason for the wide pricing differences.

Samples:

From Alan123 at AOL:

A while back I had gotten bids on a new septic system. I remember some crazy bids. One guy came in at 3,500. Another at 12,500. I asked several of the competitors what is the difference between their job and the 12.5k job. All were local guys and knew of the 12.5k contractor, and they all said the same thing – he has been around a long time and doesn’t work so hard anymore. He throws out these exorbitant bids, and sometimes people just accept the bid. He doesn’t get a lot of jobs, so isn’t that busy, but when he gets a job, he can take a break before his next job.

From Steve Sparrow:

I put our heavy-lift device fabrication out to bid. Had 3 quotes back: $450,000, $650,000 and $850,000

All had the same capabilities, similar facilities and were all based in Texas. Strange. I never did figure out the difference between low and high bidder.

From Herb Soroca:

I had similar experiences. I put out bids on a painting job. Bids came back $7,000 to $18,000.

One worked through selling organization- Certa pro, sales and marketing add on. Individuals with crew clustered around same price area- + or- 10%. All said they would use same paints and stains. Most of the cost is labor. The most expensive thought they were Picasso…… on a house painting job?

The moral of this story seems to be — keep bidding your jobs out and take the lowest, or at least second lowest

Service your air conditioners: Indoor ones have two parts — a compressor outside and an air handler inside. The outside compressor needs its fins cleaned. We blow out the dust with compressed air.  The handlers need their filters replaced. Without this elementary maintenance they’ll produce less cool air at greater cost. Ditto for cleaning the fins on the back of your refrigerator.

The Wall Street Journal this week had a neat piece on the history of air condtioning by my favorite business historian, John Steele Gordon:

As with all major inventions, air conditioning has had profound consequences. Washington, D.C., used to be nearly deserted in the summer because of the city’s notorious heat and humidity. Today, the government runs year-round. That’s not necessarily progress.

Watch your email. Get yourself a gmail account. Then send yourself an email from your existing account at Yahoo, AO, MSN or whichever other junky system you’re using. One day all your friends will receive a one-liner email giving them a link to a strange web site. If they go there, their computer will be immediately infected with some nasty. If you receive one of these nasty emails on your gmail account, you’ll know you’ve been hacked. It is now your job to tell all your friends to ignore your email before they lose their computers and you lose your friends.

I’ve had several of these emails in recent days. Sadly, most people don’t alert their friends to the virus.

I get tasteless emails. This one is among the most tasteless:

I’ve just fitted strobe lights in the bedroom. . . .. . .. It makes the wife look like she’s moving during sex.

Harry Newton who feels better the less he eats. As I get older my metabolism is clearly plummeting. But way down to a couple of tiny meals a day? Maybe I should go on Michael’s vegetarian diet? It’s so tasteless, you don’t want to eat any of it. Perfect diet food. He’s as thin as a rake (in Australia) or as a rail (in America).