In Search of the Perfect Investment

Amazon has new Kindles. Amazon is doing three great things with its Kindles: More models. Cheaper models. Amazing new technology. The one I’m most interested in is the $119 E-Ink Kindle Paperwhite. From what I’ve read on the tech web sites, i.It’s stunning.It has more pixels (easier to read) and built-in lights (four LEDs) which light up its screen. Hence no necessity for an external light. Should be easier to read in bed without disturbing the missus.Will be available in October. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

Amazon’s stock is in nose-bleed territory. But keeps going higher. Amazon’s P/E is a quaint 310.

The company is dong remarkably. These days it seems I buy only from Amazon — they have the cheapest prices and fastest delivery.Recent purchases included mosquito coils, ex Officio underwear, camera equipment and camera bags — all for our Africa trip. And they’re doing wonders with their new,cheaper e-book readers and tablets. I love my Kindle Touch. I take it to tennis and read it on the subway.

Africa revisited, yet again. Half our Africa trip was talking about the “unbelievably funny” honey badger video on YouTube. It’s worth watching. Click here.

Here’s my favorite hippo picture from last week. We were in a boat, very close to our new friends. Hippos are very aggressive. We didn’t pat them. check out the teeth.

Gold is sort of rising. It’s above several of its moving averages. I own a little. I don’t think it’s the “hot” commodity it once was, even though Russia’s Putin is allegedly stockpiling the stuff for his own strange reasons.

Annaly did a 7.5% $400 million preferred offering yesterday. It sold out within hours. They will use the money to retire its long-term indebtedness, buy some more mortgage investments and repay some short-term indebtedness.

Meanwhile Annaly’s common is holding in nicely — despite gloom and doom predictions about skyrocketing interest rates and home owners paying their mortgages off too quickly.

You can earn 12.88% dividend yield with the common or 7.5% with the safer preferreds. I now own both.

I love Mark Cuban. He was on CNBC today. He talked about what I’ve been hammering on for months: It’s easy and cheap to start a new tech company. You need a laptop and an idea. That’s great for Cuban and the 70 odd companies he’s invested in. But it’s not great for old tech companies like Intel, Dell, Research In Motion, Best Buy, Nokia, HP, Lexmark and Radio Shack. these companies  were last year’s favs, but have now seriously lost their way. They’ve all been great shorts. I’m not big on IBM either.

Mark lost money on Facebook. He recently wrote,  stocks are not investments-they’re bets. And right now, Facebook’s market value is far above its actual value, making it a risky bet. Investors should have known it was a gamble. “So who is to blame if you lost money on Facebook?”

The fault is entirely your own. This isn’t a game for crybabies.

I’m short Facebook.

Organizing your own African Photo Safari. The short course. We like Botswana’s Okavango Delta because of the enormous breadth of large mammals and  because the country is  safe and ultra-well organized. Everything works. Planes go on time. The people are professional, well-trained and can’t become guides unless they speak English fluently. Air Botswana runs new Boeing 737s. There are safes in the rooms. The food is great.

+ You need to get to Johannesburg. There are millions of airlines flying from Europe and the U.S. We flew Delta from Atlanta. The flight was 15 hours +. Flat beds. Perfect time to sleep.

+ Stay overnight at the Intercontiental at the Joberg airport.

+ Catch next monrning’s Air Botswana from Joberg to Maun, Botswana.

+ You’re met in Maun by a representative of the travel company you booked through. They get you onto the next Wilderness Airlines flight directly into your chosen camp. It flies 14 seater single-engine Cessna Caravans. Wonderful planes. You’re at your camp in 30 minutes where you’re whisked away on your first game drive, while your luggage gets taken to your room.

+ We stayed four nights at each of three camps — Duba Plains, Selinda and Mombo. I liked Duba the best. The guides at all three were superb.

+ You’ll need a travel agent in South Africa or Botswana to book the camps you want to stay at — there are about 45 in the Delta. He’ll also organize the connecting flights. The camps talk to the airline and make sure you’re at their local airport.  They even have one of their Land Rovers or Land Cruisers circle the runway to sho away pesky animals that may stray across the runway in front of a landing plane. One recently hit a giraffe. Everyone survived perfectly, except the giraffe.

Email me and I’ll send you the contact information for the fine agent we used.

Finviz.com has lots pricing screeners. A nice reader alerted me to them.I need to check them out more. They look interesting.

Two Gay Guys are walking through a zoo…
They come across the gorilla and notice that the male gorilla has a massive erection.

The gay men are fascinated by this. One of the men just can’t bear it any longer, and he reaches into the cage to touch it.

The gorilla grabs him, drags him into the cage and mates with him for six hours, non-stop, while the zoo attendants stand by helplessly.

When he’s done, the gorilla throws the man out of the cage. An ambulance is called and the man is taken away to the hospital.

A few days later, his friend visits him in the hospital and asks, “Are you hurt?”

“AM I HURT?” he shouts, “Wouldn’t you be? He hasn’t called…………he hasn’t emailed, he hasn’t written.”

Harry Newton who wonders what the two conventions taught him — if anything. Both Obama and Romney are ultra-sketchy on what they’ll actually do should they be elected. I hope the debates will make things more clear.

The U.S. added some jobs in August and brought down the unemployment rate to 8.1% from 8.3%. Some of the drop came because poeple dropped out of the official workforce.