In Search of the Perfect Investment

Keeping things in perspective:

The S&P will be pulled down by oil companies and banks. Not good. But not probably not as bad as that horrible bottom reached on October 16, 2014.

Bank earnings are not doing well. Interest rates are too low and legal and lobbying fees too high. I don’t own banks.

Oil companies are cutting back on capex and firing their people, assuming oil will stay low. But there is talk of $80 oil by Christmas.

Industrial production in the U.S. dipped slightly in December.

2015 is not shaping up to be a great year — except for biotechs and restaurants (maybe). And maybe a recovery in HAL an SLB? It’s worth a flyer on these two.

My 30-year Treasuries which I bought at $105.40 recently are now worth $112.422. I should have bet the farm.

Why didn’t I short Radio Shack again? I had ridden it down and down. But got out too early. I looked at it at a $1 and thought “it can’t go lower.” It can, and has. It’s now 24 cents, and likely going even lower, since there is now talk of bankruptcy. My BIG mistake with shorting is that I always cover too early. I’m not pessimistic enough.

I just threw out a bunch of Radio Shack AA and AAA batteries. They’re really awful. I mean REALLY awful. How can anyone sell this drek?

Should you buy on dips? From Quora:

Assuming the market always recovers (which has been the case for the past century), does it make sense to “buy-in” when the S&P 500 or NASDAQ is down?

Dan Egan, Director of Investing at Betterment here.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, but don’t wait for a dip!

Waiting just means you spend time out of the market. Since markets go up on average, waiting for a dip to invest just means you have lower returns on average.

Let’s run these strategies back through the past 60 years of S&P500 data.

Auto-Deposit: Contributes $500 every month, on the first of the month, to an S&P500 index fund. They do this from 1950 till today.

Buy-On-Dips: Keep saving in cash until there is a ‘dip’, defined as a fall from a previous peak of at least 6%. Cash accumulates during bull markets, and invests all accumulated cash when there is a dip.

They therefore both invest a total of $390,000, but at different times.

Results:

Auto-deposit:
Final Balance: $7,708,827
Growth: 19.8x

Buy-on-dips:
Final Balance:   $7,268,565

Growth: 18.6x

By attempting to time the entry into the market, you would have ended up $440,000 worse off than if you had just auto-deposited steadily. Your deposits would have grown 120% less due to buying on dips.

Want to try it yourself? Here is an R file you can modify.

Click here.

Scan your life into my laptop. Three years ago I bought a Fujitsu S510. Yesterday I finally installed it. It’s superb. They have a newer one out that’s even better — the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner.

It does color, two-sided scanning, Wi-Fi and USB. It’s very fast. I mean very fast. Just feed stuff into it and it keeps on ticking.

It makes no sense to leave papers lying around your desk, when you can scan them (to PDF) and find them in a nano-second on your laptop. Click here.

52 Places to go in 2015, according to the New York Times. They include: Singapore, Tanzania, Bend, Oregon, Rabat, Morocco, Baku, Shanghai, China, Miami Beach,  Canton Valais, Switzerland and Squamish, Canada.

For the full list of the 52 places (most of which are better than the ones I’ve chosen above) along with some stunning videos, click here.

Your Verizon iPhone makes a fine, secure Wi-Fi hotspot. Use the hoptspot to get your iPad or laptop  onto the Internet. Two tips:

+ You have to ask Verizon to turn you on. (I don’t know why.)

+ The iPhone hotspot works better on your laptop if you wire them directly using your iPhone charging cable.

Chalk me up as crazy: As I left my apartment yesterday I spied a huge package ….

Apparently obesity in dogs is an epidemic, like humans. You can buy 15-lb of Fat Dog food here. Don’t feed it all at once to your dog. Portion control, apparently, is key. Most dogs and humans haven’t figured that out, yet.

Disgraced is very relevant for today. A week after the 17 Charlie Hedbo/kosher deli killings in Paris, we see this play. It couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s a magnificent play starring magnificent actors. You should see it.

Wikipedia describes it “The play is centered on sociopolitical themes such as Islamophobia and the self-identity of Muslim-American citizens^. It focuses on a dinner party between four people with very different backgrounds. As discussion turns to politics and religion, and the mood quickly becomes heated. Described as a “combustible powder keg of identity politics,”the play depicts racial and ethnic prejudices that “secretly persist in even the most progressive cultural circles.”It is also said to depict the challenge for upwardly mobile Muslim Americans in the post-9/11 America.^“

Here’s Charlie Hedbo’s latest co ver. A remarkable number of U.S. newspapers and magazines have not published it. Everyone is pardoned. I am Charlie. They sold have sold seven million copies already. Normally they sell 30,000. Compared to other Charlie Hedbo’s covers, this one is benign.

There’s an obituary of Stephane Charbonnier, cartoonist and editor of Charlie Hedbo in this weekend’s edition of The Economist. Click here.

The story of the missing wife.

A husband went to the sheriff’s department to report that his wife was missing.

Husband: My wife is missing. She went shopping yesterday and has not come home.

Sergeant: What is her height?

Husband: Gee, I’m not sure. A little over five-feet tall.

Sergeant: Weight?

Husband: Don’t know. Not slim, not really fat.

Sergeant: Color of eyes?

Husband: Never noticed.

Sergeant: Color of hair?

Husband: Changes a couple times a year. Maybe dark brown.

Sergeant: What was she wearing?

Husband: Could have been a skirt or shorts. I don’t remember exactly.

Sergeant: What kind of car did she go in?

Husband: She went in my truck.

Sergeant: What kind of truck was it?

Husband: Brand new 2015 Ford F150 King Ranch 4X4 with eco-boost 5.0L V8 engine special ordered with manual transmission. It has a custom matching white cover for the bed. Custom leather seats and “Bubba” floor mats. Trailering package with gold hitch. DVD with navigation, 21-channel CB radio, six cup holders, and four power outlets. Added special alloy wheels and off-road Michelins. Wife put a small scratch on the drivers door. At this point the husband started choking up.

Sergeant: Don’t worry buddy. We’ll find your truck.

Harry Newton who has great news. Norton Internet Security actually stopped my laptop from being infected. What happened: Every time I opened my Firefox browser, it tried to open a bad site (one that Norton said was bad). Once I closed the tab for that site, I had no more problems. I’m guessing I accidentally clicked on the bad site when I was browsing. Gotta be careful what you click on, what sites you visit.  Check. Check. Check. Have a great weekend.