In Search of the Perfect Investment

My best lesson from 2015: My Stop Loss Rule works. It protects when things go against you.

My worst lesson from 2015: I didn’t sell enough short. For example, why didn’t I short Brazil?

Or Brazil’s biggest stock? (I actually did, but I covered too soon. Gotta have faith.)

Or HP?

Or Exxon Mobil?

This year things have gone awry in oil, minerals, commodities and emerging markets.

There will be massive bankruptcies in all these areas.

Imagine you are a Brazilian company which borrowed in U.S. dollars. The Brazilian real is down 40%. That means your interest payments are suddenly 40% higher. Where do you get the money?

The Fed begins its two-day meeting today. Whether it raises rates or doesn’t, no one (including me)  seems to know how that “decision” will affect the stock market.

I suspect they will raise rates slightly, if only to give them a little ammunition for the next recession.

And I suspect markets will react positively.

More useful stuff:

+ Amazon still have 60 WATT incandescent bulbs. You still need them because many fixtures are too small for CFLs or LEDs.

+ Screw your glasses tightly every three weeks — otherwise the temple screws will fall out.

Important Medical Advice: From a letter to the New York Times:

+ Hospital Errors That Put Lives at Risk

Dr. Bud Shaw is to be lauded for his forceful intervention to treat his hospitalized daughter who was in shock (“A Doctor at His Daughter’s Hospital Bed,” Sunday Review, Sept. 6). His story demonstrates the importance of having a knowledgeable ombudsman for seriously ill patients, and the need to take action in the face of staff reluctance (“I’m calling my supervisor”).

Last year I was hospitalized and required surgery for an intestinal obstruction. I am a surgeon and had to be my own ombudsman. I was able to avert only a few of the mishaps of my preoperative care and postoperative complication. My forceful intervention on my own behalf did not endear me to the nursing staff, who have their rules, or to the medical hospitalist.

As Dr. Shaw suggests, there are “more stories like this.” Being hospitalized is a potentially dangerous experience. No matter how conscientious the staff, it is important for the patient, or his or her representative, to understand what is being done and why, to not hesitate to ask questions and have them answered, and to confirm that the doctor’s orders are being followed.

I have served as ombudsman for family and friends in health care situations and recommend that everyone have a medically knowledgeable person to represent him or her whenever possible.

Peter S. Lieber, West Harrison, N.Y. The writer is past president of the Westchester County Medical Society.

From Bottom Line Personal:

+ Stay hydrated when driving.

Drivers who were mildly dehydrated made twice as many errors as drivers who were adequately hydrated. These errors nclude lane drifting, late braking and crossing the rumble strip. In short, drink plenty of fluids.

Philip Watson, visiting professor at Virije University, Belgium.

 29 Productivity Apps To Help You Rule The Office.
There’s an explosion of “apps” to help you work better. Many focus on working better with your team.

I use four “apps” — Microsoft Outlook, Lookeen (to index it), Instapaper (to capture web stuff I want to keep), and a text editor called The Semware Editor, for organizing To-Do lists, for writing and taking notes.

TechCrunch has a piece called 29 Productivity Apps to help you rule the office. Two that caught my eye — Mail Pilot and Staying Informed. For the full list, click here.

How to extend your TV to another TV set, without cables, or another pricey cable box. This stuff saves the expense of a cable box and he agony of laying cables on nice clean walls. This stuff is fast.

You’ll need:

+ Two HDMI cables.

+ This cable splitter. It should be called an HDMI doubler. It makes two HDMI outputs out of one.

+ This wireless HDMI transmitter/receiver to send the HDMI signal from one TV to the one in the next room.

+ A second TV set. I prefer the bigger the better. I like Samsung LEDs.

All this works and works well. I have two successful installations, and one more coming.

You buy all this stuff from — where else? — Amazon.

A funny clean short video. Click here.

Harry Newton who covered his HAL short, at a small loss. SGOL is up today. But markets are basically flat.

Half my readership think climate change is nonsense. This summer I breathed the acrid smoke from the western fires, many of which are still burning. The best reporting on them is in:

What Megablazes Tell Us About the Fiery Future of Climate Change
Pervasive drought and record temperatures have turned forests from Fresno to Fairbanks into tinderboxes. And it’s only getting worse

For the full Rolling Stone article, click here.