In Search of the Perfect Investment

On the weekend: Lots of reading. Lots of mulling.I’m comfortable with my large and expanding equity position. I need to formulate an exit strategy for VWALX. Maybe very soon. Mulling.

Verizon and its wonderfully incomprehensible bills. I‘m a customer. I have FiOS and two cellphones (mine and Susan’s). Every few months I summon the energy to call them and question my bills. I know three things: The bills are always wrong . They are always incomprehensible. And I’ll wait too long to speak to someone, anyone. This month Verizon added $35 for movies I didn’t watch and had never heard of.  I can’t go elsewhere because FiOS has the fastest Internet speed. This is me, measured last night. It’s phenomenal:

Verizon also has the best 4G/LTE coverage and speed for cell phones.

I can’t make any sense of most of the charges on my Verizon bill. And they can’t explain them. I figure they’re just an extra cost of getting the best service. I figure most everyone else has come to the same conclusion. So what’s the solution?

Buy Verizon’s stock. It’s holding in and yielding a handsome 4.54%. Not too shabby. Go with the best.

Google is stealing the “Innovation Wow” factor from Apple. Google’s latest “Wow” is called Google Glass.

This device is neither cheap ($1,500), nor available. But, boy it’s getting great reviews from the computer trade press.

You wear the glasses, take pictures ( video and still), see directions on a projected screen, ask it questions (like Siri), do Google searches, find useful information, like when your plane leaves, etc. For Google’s short explanation, click here.

You can’t buy one today. You have to “apply.” From Google (this is neat):

How to apply

We’re looking for bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass. We’d love to make everyone an Explorer, but we’re starting off a bit smaller. We’re still in the early stages, and while we can’t promise everything will be perfect, we can promise it will be exciting.

Using Google+ or Twitter, tell us what you would do if you had Glass, starting with the hashtag #ifihadglass.

Your application must be 50 words or less
You must include #ifihadglass in your application
You can include up to 5 photos with your application
You can include a short video (15 secs max)
Be sure to follow us on Google+ (+ProjectGlass) or Twitter (@projectglass) so that we can contact you directly
You must be at least 18 years old and live in the U.S. to apply
For more details, please see our full Terms and FAQ

Meantime, the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki has weighed in with a piece on Apple’s Stock price. (I like Surowiecki’s work.) the article begins:

Not long ago, Apple was almost universally venerated. It was the most profitable tech company in the world, and commentators predicted that it might be the first trillion-dollar company in U.S. history. What a difference a few months make. Since September, the stock has tumbled thirty-five per cent, losing more than two hundred billion dollars from its market cap. January’s earnings report disappointed investors, and analysts are cutting earnings estimates. Now there’s a deluge of forecasts stating that Apple is “in big trouble,” “losing its cool,” and just plain “doomed.” And it’s not only pundits: the activist hedge-fund manager David Einhorn has capitalized on the crisis by pushing the company to hand over its giant cash reserves to shareholders.

So why the sudden fall from grace? There were a few missteps: a tepid launch for the iPhone 5, followed by the Maps fiasco. And Steve Jobs’s absence is obviously preying on people’s minds. But there’s a more concrete reason: Apple’s competitors are finally doing a better job of making the kinds of phones that customers want. The most notable of these is an oversized phone dubbed “the phablet”-Samsung’s Galaxy Note is the leader in the category. The phablet is bigger than a traditional phone, smaller than a tablet, and as ungainly as its name-too big to fit comfortably in your pocket and cumbersome for making calls. In the U.S., the phablet is still very much a niche product, but overseas, particularly in Asia, sales exploded in the second half of last year. And, unfortunately for Apple, there is no iPhablet. The analyst Peter Misek, a managing director at Jefferies & Company, told me that he had been an Apple optimist until last fall. “We assumed, as Apple did, that a buyer of a smartphone would also be a buyer of a tablet, so you’d have one device for mobility and one for surfing the Net,” he said. “But what we’re finding is that, especially in lower-income areas, people can’t or don’t want to buy both. So they’re buying the one device that combines the two.” This means that phablets are eating away at both iPhone and iPad sales. And Misek’s research suggests that Apple won’t be able to release a phablet until next year.

Phablets are actually great. I’m very tempted by Samsung’s Galaxy Note II. Click here. It’s gorgeous technology. Far more exciting than my old, boring iPhone 5. Meanwhile Apple releases a minor update to your iPhone software. It fixes two bugs that shouldn’t have been there in the first place — something in email and a miserable battery life.

For Surowiecki’s full article, click here.

I want one of these electric bikes. It’s called the Stromer ST1 Platinum. it will do 30 MPH for up to 20 miles (without pedaling) on one four-hour charge — enough to get you to work and home when you’ve charged it. It comes in three colors:

And it’s beautifully made — in Switzerland, no less, by a very serious bicycle manufacturer. One button and the battery comes out.

The bike costs $4,000 MSRP — about the price of a high-end bicycle without a motor. I haven’t ridden the bike, yet. But Bicycling Magazine wrote “the effortlessness of maintaining 30 mph while riding with the biggest boost was intoxicating.”

For the Wall Street Journal‘s piece on electric bikes, click here.

Stop press; This morning I received answers to my questions:

1. What is the weight of the bike with the battery removed? Or, alternatively, how much does the battery weigh? The weight with the battery is about 62lbs.The battery weighs about 5lbs. If the bike has a carbon fork (Elite or Platinum model) the weight is reduced by another 5lbs

2. Will the bike run without a battery, i.e. with just pedaling? Yes, you can easily turn off the power system if you wish to ride without electric power. Or when you run out of battery power.

3. Is there a Stromer in New York City I could ride? The new ST1’s will be arriving in about 10 days. NYCE Wheels in NYC will have some

4. What will be the MSRP in the U.S. Bicycling Magazine says it will be $3,400. But I’ve also read $3,900. We have (2) different models. The Stromer Elite is $3499 and comes with a carbon rigid fork, Shimano Sora 9 speed, Magura MT2 hydraulic brakes, a 11.5 amp HR battery and has a top speed of 20mph. This bike is ideal for quick acceleration and/or hill climbing. The Stromer Platinum is $3999 and comes with the option of a carbon rigid fork or front suspension, Shimano XT 27 speed, Magura MT2 Hydraulic brakes, a 14.5 amp HR battery and has a top speed of 30 mph. Both bikes come in standard and stepthrough frames. Standard frame available in medium and large and STP available in medium.

5. When will Americans be able to buy a Stromer? All dealers are now taking pre-orders on the new ST1 bikes and they will start to deliver in 10-14 days.

6. How do you charge the Stromer? Just plug it into a normal 120 volt outlet? You can charge the battery on board, or remove the battery from the bike and charge it wherever you see fit.

The 25 Most Miserable Places In The World. The worst is not Yemen. It’s 19th. The worst is not Sudan. It’s 11. The worst is not Afghanistan. It’s 16th. For the list and the worst — which has an unemployment rate (wait for this) 95% —  click here.

This week’s mandatory reading:

+ The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.  Excerpt:

In fact, everyone in the country, on average, was eating more salty snacks than they used to. The rate of consumption was edging up about one-third of a pound every year, with the average intake of snacks like chips and cheese crackers pushing past 12 pounds a year.

Dwight Riskey had a theory about what caused this surge: Eating real meals had become a thing of the past. Baby boomers, especially, seemed to have greatly cut down on regular meals. They were skipping breakfast when they had early-morning meetings. They skipped lunch when they then needed to catch up on work because of those meetings. They skipped dinner when their kids stayed out late or grew up and moved out of the house. And when they skipped these meals, they replaced them with snacks. “We looked at this behavior, and said, `Oh, my gosh, people were skipping meals right and left,’ ” Riskey told me. “It was amazing.” This led to the next realization, that baby boomers did not represent “a category that is mature, with no growth. This is a category that has huge growth potential.”

To get a better feel for their work, I called on Steven Witherly, a food scientist who wrote a fascinating guide for industry insiders titled, “Why Humans Like Junk Food.” I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.”

For the full piece, click here.

 + The Hunt for a Rental Car Deal. Ways to save money on car rentals. Click here.

+ Reasons to Avoid Buying Stocks, and Why You Should Ignore Them, by Paul Sullivan, New York Times. Click here.

Harry Newton, who counsels his skiing friends to stay safe. Most accidents occur:

+ On the last run of the day when you’re most tired.
+ On the bunny slope when you’re not paying attention.
+ On the last step down on a flight of steps.
+ On ice in the car park.