I added some names in the list of “Stocks We Like” on the right.
2013 is shaping up to a very nice year. Real estate leasings and building prices are way up, especially in key cities like New York, Washington and San Francisco. Corporate earnings are up. See last night earnings from Honeywell. Nice simple way to play this: Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF.
Bonus: VOO has a 2.1% dividend yield. Not much. But better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish.
None of this optimism means going near the tech biggies — like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Stay away from these monsters. When you get this big and this successful, you’ve lost your founder and you’re now bureaucratic, slow and very constrained. And you start doing dumb things, like making dumb takeovers. I notice that Cisco is selling it home networking business, called Linksys to Belkin. Cisco bought Linksys in 2003 for $500 million. The sale price hasn’t been announced, but the scuttlebutt on the street is in the low $100 millions. Dumb!
Want to invest in Early American Decorative Arts? Much of it hasn’t done well in recent years, as the art collecting scene has focused on contemporary art, where prices have skyrocketed. In fact prices in contemporary art have become parabolic, leaving many observers to believe that the bloom will go off that rose and onto a new one — Early American Decorative Arts.
This morning begins the year’s most important auction — Christie’s Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Prints Auction. (I love the use of the word “important.”) Here’s the beautiful catalog. Click here.
Get yourself over to Christie’s in New York’s Rockefeller Center. I’ll be there, bidding on a couple of chairs Susan won’t let me buy.
They could sell today for half what they cost the collector in the mid-2000s — before The Great Recession. The chairs date back to the mid 1770s. They’re in great condition and would look great i our living room, which doesn’t have any room for the chairs, according to what I’ve been told.
Like any investment you make, you need to research, study and love it. I love the chairs, but I’m very new at this. The auction, I’m told, will be enormous fun. Especially the outfits of some of the bidders.
Talented kid. If only we were all so talented. Click here.
Before Berkshire: Investment Ideas Inspired By The Buffett Partnership. From Seeking Alpha. When Buffett was an arbitrageur. Click here.
It’s the cable, stupid. You’d think I’d know. I’m bitching that my TV’s picture is pixelating — but not any of our other TVs. I figure the cable box. I call Verizon. We have FiOS. They come and replace the coaxial cable between their cable box and my TV. Problem solved.
It’s always the cable. Ditto for crackling on phones. It’s the handset cord. etc.
Kudos to Phanfare. I pay them $29 a year. It’s worth every penny. I go to a party, take a lot of photos. I post them all to Phanfare.com. Takes five minutes. Phanfare lets me email all my friends, telling them of the pictures. One recipient of last night’s dinner photos emailed the group this morning,
Nice photos. Harry is our official photographer. I know he does a splendid job. Took better pictures at my daughter’s wedding then our professional photographer.
I didn’t do a better job. But it’s a nice thought. Thank you, Steve.
I want one. This is the huge Samsung Galaxy Note II. and it puts my puny iPhone 5 to shame. A friend showed me his last night. He writes his SMS message by finger in longhand. The phone’s handwriting recognition is top notch. No mistakes. My friend showed my how he used programs that did the equivalent of Photoshop. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. How he sketched drawings, layouts and concepts.
The apps typically cost him $10 to %15. Less than 5% of what Adobe and Microsoft are selling them for on PCs and Macs.I have no idea how Microsoft and Adobe are going to compete in this new mobile environment. My friend refers to his Note II as his “super computer.” He runs his professional life on it — creating presentations and proposals on the fly — in the subway, on the bus and on the Roosevelt Island Tram (which serves my favorite tennis club).
Useless statistics from Laptop magazine:
+ 48% of 18-24 year olds believe a text message is as meaningful as a phone call.
+ More than 38 million Americans shop online while on the toilet.
+ What children want most — 48% want an iPad.
Last night’s photos. New York is so much fun to photograph. On my way to dinner last night, these caught my eye. First, a jacket in a men’s store window on 42nd Street, opposite Grand Central Station:
Second, the end of the Shuttle train in Grand Central. Given the amount of concrete, is the Stop sign really necessary?
This silly sign reminds of my favorite New York subway story:
A couple were heatedly arguing. Everyone in the car strained to hear the argument. The punchline came when he plaintively said,
“Be reasonable Anne. I made the date with Jane three weeks before we were married.”
Harry Newton, who has spent far too much time watching the Australian tennis. It’s on again this weekend. The women’s finals on Saturday and the men’s finals on Sunday. Remember, Australia is 16 hours ahead of EST. I believe they’re playing on ESPN, with instant re-runs on The Tennis Channel. You should be able to watch a rerun of last night’s Federer-Murray match on The Tennis Channel today.
