In Search of the Perfect Investment

Continuing the chart from yesterday. Two days of moves. Interesting which ones came back — the less speculative ones:

Check out our wonderful AGIO.

Boone Pickens, on Cramer last night, predicted the return to $100 oil within 12-18 months. If so, some of the very beaten down oil companies might be interesting, e.g.

Or maybe even this one:

Most interesting stories today:

+ Successful programmer, Pavel Durov, flees Russia.

He created Russia’s leading social media site, VKontakte — Russia’s Facebook. Why he fled Russia tells you a lot of about Putin’s increasingly awful and increasingly disastrous regime. Sad for Russia. Read the piece here. Durov has now created Telegram, an encrypted messaging service. Read about it on Wikipedia. Click here. You can subscribe to Telegram, which he bills as “taking back our right to privacy”  here. If you’re working on a secret project for your firm or yourself, Telegram is probably the way to go. It’s available for all platforms. Durov is smart. I wish I could write code as well as these bright Russians. Make sure your kids learn coding. What typing was to my generation, coding is to theirs. Only you can go a lot further with coding than typing.

+ Bloomberg on trading in Apple shares. They go up. They go down. hard to predict why. We’re figuring they’ll have a nice Christmas, but the shares have already had their own Christmas? Click here. I’m holding my Apple stock.

+ Built in Brooklyn, FlyCleaners saves a trip to the laundry. Neat entrepreneurial opportunity. Click here.

+ Radio Shack has major problems. Amongst not having anything appealing to sell, it treats its employees awfully. Click here. I wonder if it’s too late to short RSH again?

My Verizon cell service in Indian Wells is iffy. There are two ways to fix it:

+ A network extender which creates a microcell in my house and sends and receives Verizon cell phone calls over the Internet.

+ A cell signal booster, (e.g. this one) which grabs the outside cell phone signal, amplifies it and brings it inside.

To work well, both systems need an antenna on my roof and a cable run from the roof to a device inside the house which handles the cell  service. I’m tending to the network extender. But it only works for Verizon. The cell signal booster also works for AT&T, which some of the children have. Big issue right now is to find a way for the cable without making a total mess.

Harry Newton in erstwhile sunny times. It’s actually raining in the desert. I’ve never seen rain here. I hear it’s “monsooning” in LA. Great for their water. Lousy for their traffic.

Lots of attractive real estate syndications coming at end of year. I’m spending time figuring which ones make sense. Happily, I think most do. They offer nice dividends , a nice return, but tie up your money for several years — until they refinance or sell — two totally unpredictable “liquidity” events. Research is time consuming. Hence today’s short column.