I’m optimistic. This thing climbs, then drops, then climbs some more. Look at the chart. We had a bad drop in early October, but came back.
The red line is the 50 day moving average. The blue line is the 200 day moving average. Nothing awry. Economy doing well. Oil not doing well. But that’s good for the economy.
Our Inviolate Stop Loss Rule. Pick 8%. Pick 10%. Pick 15%. Look at the fundamentals. Oil plummeted. Not good for oil explorers and oil service stocks. Example, SLB’s peak was $118.13. Eighty-five per cent of that was $100.41 — when you definitely should have been out (and clearly a lot of people were).
Now at $80, should one get back in? Oil has rallied a little. But OPEC says it doesn’t care if it falls further.
Our stop loss rule says if you buy 8%, 10% or 15% down, then buy 8%, 10% or 15% up.
In short, wait for a bounce.
Oil is a commodity you drag out of the ground.
A wise old miner once told me that when prices are high they open mines and drill wells. When prices are low they close mines and driller few wells. It takes time to adjust. It’s called a “cycle.”
Mark Twain described a mine as “a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” Think OPEC.
Not all gloom and doom. Here’s semi-positive discussion of “probabilistic projections” and a vague lesson “in managing risk.” It’s from a company called Ciovacco Capital Management. They seem to be against cashing out.
A lot of view is mumbo jumbo. But it’s fun mumbo jumbo. To view the video, click here.
Please back up.
Friends are moving their companies’ IT to the cloud. This is the latest fashion. The cloud is not the panacea every computer salesman and his uncle is selling. It has big advantages (ability to scale your IT up and down fast — great if you’re a hot Internet start-up). It has huge disadvantages — it relies on three things. First, the Internet, which is definitely not reliable. Our upstate New York house had no Internet all weekend. Second, it relies on dubious backup practices of companies who are vague about how they backup your precious data. Third, it’s out of your control, so it can be messed with and hacked. (You don’t know what their security measures are.)
Make sure you back up your stuff locally. A bird in the hand is worth several in the cloud.
Even more Christmas gifts I like.
+ For all your friends who own Apple laptops:
Most Apple laptops don’t have Ethernet ports. They use Wi-Fi. But wired connections can be a lot faster. This $12 device gives an Apple laptop a wired Internet connection. Most useful. Click here.
+ For your friends who want Internet TV when they travel, this device gives them Netflix, YouTube, HBO Go, Hulu Plus, Pandora, ESPN, inter alia.
$30.64. Comes with a $20 movie promotion. Click here
Schmaltzy, wonderful, happy-making love story movie. Worth seeing – The Theory of Everything.
Only in New York
On my way back from lunch today, I passed the Lubavitch Mitzvah Mobile Tank that is set up on Wall Street most Friday afternoons. As you know, the Lubavitchers set these up and ask men walking by if they are Jewish. (All New Yorkers have seen this.).
If the person responds “yes,” they then are invited to step inside the tank (a converted bus) and pray.
As I passed by, I overheard a black man say to one of the black hats “You are engaging in racial profiling. Why didn’t you ask me if I was Jewish?”
The Lubavitcher then said “OK, are you Jewish?”
To which the man replied “Do I look Jewish?”
From the latest Time Magazine:
Overnight it seemed, Russia was transformed from a superpower into a corrupt petro-state, a fallen empire that Sergey Brin, the Russian emigre turned Google co-founder, once derided as “Nigeria with snow.”
Harry Newton, who spent two hours on the phone on the weekend with Fairpoint communications, our local (and only) Internet provider in mid-state New York only to be told that the regulation was to repair phone lines quickly, but not Internet lines. They could repair them whenever they (the phone company) felt like it. Which meant 9-5 Monday through Friday. I kid you not.
