It’s broken through its 50-day moving average, but is still above its 200-day.
It’s trying, volatile times out there. You have to be “opportunistic.” I bought some cheap muni bonds yesterday. It was an odd lot. They could pay as much as 4.41% triple tax-free depending on when they’re called, etc.
I pull the trigger on anything that starts to fall. I’ve tightened my stop loss to 6%. Cash is king.
The tennis is on. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are back. What more could a simple man wish for?
Amazon has a new Kindle Paper White. I love the old one. The new one is even better. Best way to read a book. Big pluses: 1. Screen is great. 2. Type can be made bigger (great for alta kakas). 3. Processor is now faster. A bargain at $119. Click here.
Slingbox is the greatest TV add-on. My friends are watching tennis matches over my Slingbox over the Internet because they’re too cheap to buy themselves a subscription to the Tennis Channel. I need such friends. Yesterday I used my Slingbox to record the Djoko match which I wanted to watch when I returned to city later.
The 15 Fastest Growing Companies In 2013. They’re not public companies, but they are indicative of the new Internet-based startups that continue to explode. Show the list to your kids. Click here.
The faster, the better. Yesterday I was on a rural phone company’s miserable DSL line — about 2-3 megs a second. But, come 9:00 AM when all the local businesses turned on their computers, it slowed to a crawl, to worse than dialup. This morning (thank the lord), I’m on Verizon’s FiOS, which is:
To test your own service, go here: www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Cloud computing is useless without a decent, fast Internet connection, like FiOS.
Today and tonight. The US Tennis Open continues on ESPN. Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown tonight. Wish your Jewish friends Happy New Year.
The rule is Buy Rosh Hashanah, sell Yom Kippur (ten days from tonight). Sometimes it works. I don’t think there are any Jewish tennis players left in the Open. Federer lost. And he wasn’t Jewish.
Gray hair. All the people testifying before Congress on bombing Syria have gray hair.
They won’t be put in harm’s way. But your children and grandchildren will be.
Meantime…
The U.S. Still Hasn’t Armed Syrian Rebels. From Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
In June, the White House authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to help arm moderate fighters battling the Assad regime, a signal to Syrian rebels that the cavalry was coming. Three months later, they are still waiting.
The delay, in part, reflects a broader U.S. approach rarely discussed publicly but that underpins its decision-making, according to former and current U.S. officials: The Obama administration doesn’t want to tip the balance in favor of the opposition for fear the outcome may be even worse for U.S. interests than the current stalemate.
For the Journal’s piece, click here.
In Australia, we have an expression for an incompetent person, namely he couldn’t even organize a queue for a shithouse.
I googled “Australian outhouse” and got this:
As a teenager I spent one summer answering calls from irate, unhappy customers of a beautiful stainless steel device that sat just underneath the toilet seat. The thing had flaps. They remained closed so your eyes didn’t see the muck six feet below. The flaps only opened when something came in contact with them, i.e. dropped on them. Sadly, one batch was manufactured with springs that were too strong. They tended to bounce what was dropped on them up. They gave new meaning to “Return to sender.”
The customers were not amused.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Favorite New Yorker cartoons.
Harry Newton who emailed his senator this morning:
Kirsten, Please don’t bomb Syria. It’s a civil war. Neither side is worth backing. Both sides are evil. We have no idea what the outcome will be. But we know the consequences will be unpredictable and expensive. Send more humanitarian aid to the refugee camps. At least two million Syrians have left their homes and are now refugees. My parents ran away from the Nazis in 1939. My mother was Austrian. My father was Romanian. They would have been gassed had they not run away. We need to help these refugees big-time. They’ll remember us. My parents did.
You know, we in America are war-weary. We’ve been lied to, we’ve probably helped the wrong people, we’ve certainly done far more harm than good as things have turned out in the last 12 years. But sometimes there really is Evil that must be confronted. Is now the time? Is Assad the Evil? Not sure. But this time IS a little bit different. I would think that video footage of people writhing in agony because of weaponized use of poison gas would at least garner a small amount of concern especially from those with Jewish roots.
Harry, I love your column and have followed it for years, but your answer to the senator that the people should just “run away” from the gas is outrageous. You are only here because your parents were “lucky” enough and able to “run away”. What happened to the 6 million who couldn’t run away? If nothing is done, and God-forbid hundreds, thousands, 10-thousand (pick a number) more ordinary people are indiscriminately murdered using Sarin, their blood will not only be on Assad’s hands, it will be on OURS.
Cash is king.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Stocks > cash, real estate > cash, short term bonds > bonds, Assad > cash.