New granddaughter Sophie expresses her feelings about yesterday’s market.
Give her some food. Rock her a bit. And she’s hunky dory (slang for OK).
Not so with the stockmarkets, which need major insanity.
Today, futures look up after Caterpillar reported fine earnings. and we may be off to the races again.
Up and down like a whore’s drawers. You can’t predict. But you can do well:
Harry’s Rule: Pick your favorite stocks and put in ultra-low limit bids. You could snag some real bargains. After all, there are still some major players peddling enthusiasm. From this morning’s CNBC (aka BubbleVision):
I snagged Netflix when it fell. And I’m up about 4.3% since. My pick on Delta is doing well. I’m dubious about American Airlines, but everyone seems to love the thing. I have a little position. Boeing (BA) is way too crazy. This is one of those stocks that seems to carry too much baggage (bad pun), though with oil prices down, airlines full, airline ticket prices going up, you’d think it would be higher. Too much baggage.
I may pick up some Google (GOOGL) today. It should bounce back to its $600 level.
I don’t think now is the time to buy general index ETFs or funds. This market is for careful stockpicking. Like stocks I’ve picked recently — UNH, Netflix, DAL, CYBR and SUNE.
Stocks I’d like to pick up if they get cheaper — HON, EOG, WhiteWave Foods, Regeneron, CELG, and GILD. Some I already own, but love to pick up more.
Here’s the perfect chart. Had I been intelligent I would have had a long-standing order for Honeywell at $86. I would have snagged some and now I’d be up 6%.
So, that’s your strategy. Pick a dozen of your favorite stocks. Put in ridiculous low bids — “good ’til canceled” — and go play tennis.
The price you pay is the ONLY aspect of your investment (in anything — stocks, real estate, etc.) — that you can positively affect.
Tips:
+ You must reboot your laptop/PC/computer at least twice a day. If you don’t, it will slow and slow.
+ Norton Internet Security is still superb. Great protection against nasties. Their service over the phone is really superb. I’m a happy camper with them.
+ Best video watching machines — the Slingbox M1. It lets you watch, over the Internet, what you could be watching were you at home in front of your pricey cable, satellite or FiOS TV. That includes live stuff, or stuff you’ve recorded.You can watch your favorite programs from distant hotels that are too cheap to provide decent channels.
Want to watch stuff you can’t get on “normal” TV, get a Roku 3. Lets you watch HBO Go , Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix and about 1,000 others, such as The Man Network and Car TV. You could actually live without a cable connection, just with Roku. In fact that’s the BIG trend: more and more of us are becoming “cord cutters” and the major streamers — like Netflix and Amazon are creating their own program — just for me and my Roku.
Watch your creative bank. They’re creative because they create new fees. Item: I have a bank account with Santander Bank The account has $81,769.07 in it. This week, Santander charged me $75 for a “monthly maintenance fee.” This is a brand new fee, a first, for them and for me.
I called, “What is it?” They didn’t know, but would find out and get back to me. I said I don’t want to know. Just remove it.
They said they would, maybe.
We’ll see what happens. I do not recommend this bank.
Oh, yes. I’ve just discovered they’ve upped their wire transfer fee for incoming wires from $13 to $15. Another creative charge.
Die Music (More sick humor)
A daring vacationer is walking through a Vienna graveyard on Halloween when all of a sudden she hears music. No one is around. Where’s the music coming from?
She finally locates the source. It is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads, “Ludwig van Beethoven.”
Then she realizes it’s the Ninth Symphony and being played backward. Puzzled, she leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with her.
By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but it is also being played backward.
Curious, the ladies agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing and the expert concludes that the symphonies are in fact being played in reverse order.
By the next day the word has spread and a huge group gathered around the grave to hear the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard’s caretaker approaches the group. Someone in the crowd asks him if knows what’s going with the music.
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about” says the caretaker. “He’s just decomposing!”
Thoughts on life today from the latest issue of the New Yorker:
Harry Newton who’s finally recovered from the superb two-day Robin Hood Investor Conference earlier this week. This business of working for a living — from 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM and missing my mid-day nappee-pooh — is exhausting. Only for the younguns. Nice to see all the young eager faces at the conference — all dressed in ill-fitting suits and all seeking to be billionaires before they’re 35. Which some undoubtedly will. Money won’t buy them all happiness, but it will get them into Forbes. Think about their misery in ten years when they find that Richard Branson has bought all the private islands, Larry Ellison still owns the fastest yacht. And Jeff Bezos beat them to the moon.
