In Search of the Perfect Investment

I got one right. Oil bounced up yesterday and this 3X oil price ETF moved up strongly. Everyone and their uncle are cutting back on oil drilling, exploration, employment and rigs. This is sending a signal that the oil supply will drop and oil prices will rise, which they are doing.

Here’s its movement over the last year.

I’ve never trusted herbal supplements. Their claims always seemed too good to be true. There’s another reason: they aren’t what they seem. And they could be dangerous — i.e. kill you. Here’s a major story from today’s New York Times:’

The New York State attorney general’s office accused four major retailers on Monday of selling fraudulent and potentially dangerous herbal supplements and demanded that they remove the products from their shelves.

The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies.

The investigation came as a welcome surprise to health experts who have long complained about the quality and safety of dietary supplements, which are exempt from the strict regulatory oversight applied to prescription drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration has targeted individual supplements found to contain dangerous ingredients. But the announcement Monday was the first time that a law enforcement agency had threatened the biggest retail and drugstore chains with legal action for selling what it said were deliberately misleading herbal products.

Among the attorney general’s findings was a popular store brand of ginseng pills at Walgreens, promoted for “physical endurance and vitality,” that contained only powdered garlic and rice. At Walmart, the authorities found that its ginkgo biloba, a Chinese plant promoted as a memory enhancer, contained little more than powdered radish, houseplants and wheat — despite a claim on the label that the product was wheat- and gluten-free.

Three out of six herbal products at Target — ginkgo biloba, St. John’s wort and valerian root, a sleep aid — tested negative for the herbs on their labels. But they did contain powdered rice, beans, peas and wild carrots. And at GNC, the agency said, it found pills with unlisted ingredients used as fillers, like powdered legumes, the class of plants that includes peanuts and soybeans, a hazard for people with allergies.

You can read the full story here.

Favorite cartoon:

Chutzpah.

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, sheer guts plus arrogance. There are many stories explaining it. The most famous is of a kid who killed his mother and father and then fell on the mercy of the court, claiming he was now an orphan.

Here’s another.

A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for a dollar each. Every day a young man would leave his office building at lunch time and as he passed the pretzel stand he would leave her a dollar, but never take a pretzel.

This went on for more then three years. The two of them never spoke. One day as the young man passed the old lady’s stand and left his dollar as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him.

Without blinking an eye, she said: “They’re $1.50 now.”

Harry Newton who on Saturday escaped the east’s weather for the glorious weather of California’s Coachella Valley.

The good news is that the family is keeping me up to date with photo selfies on what I’m missing, and they’re endearing.

Here’s daughter Claire walking home last night from her Boston office. They’ve had 40 inches in the last week or so. Commented Claire: “We’re no longer shoveling. We’re tunneling.”