In Search of the Perfect Investment

I yearn for irrational exuberance. I can’t keep up with today’s volatility:

+ One moment biotech is hot. The next moment it’s freezing. Then it’s hot. It bounces wildly. Look at the last six months. To buy or to short? I tried shorting. I was making money one minute. I waited too long to bail. It went against me. Then I lost money. Yuch.

+ Gold is my savior of late. But I’m sure why:

+ Nike has its big Investor Day today. You can watch it on the web. Click here.  Nike’s been doing fine. Its P/E is 31.9. It’s not cheap. I do like my Nike Flyknit Lunar 2.

+ Technology is inexorable, transforming industries instantly, but making investment decisions based on the changing technology is not easy.

Bloomberg has a neat piece “These Three Trends have radically refined the Energy Market.” Slides:

Writes Bloomberg, all those LED light bulbs are starting to have an impact. Energy-efficient technologies of all kinds are squeezing electricity demand. The chart below shows Australia’s experience. Actual power consumption is shown by the green line. The gray lines show demand forecasts made each year since 2010 by regulators, and the blue line represents their most recent forecast.

Together, the trends may hit coal hardest, as curbs on pollution drive up the cost of burning the dirtiest fossil fuel.

“There’s plentiful supply and weak demand,” Liebreich said. “The price of coal is on a gentle glide path toward the shutting of large amounts of capacity.”

I don’t know how to play energy. But I just bought a nice LED desk light from Amazon.60 WATTS equivalent light for 9 WATTS of electricity.

You can read the whole energy presentation and Bloomberg story here.

What to do now?

Keep putting in your low limit buy GTC (good till cancelled) orders  — figure 15% to 20% below present levels. With this volatility you never know when you’ll get lucky and snag a bargain or two.

Meantime, follow Todd’s golden rule: When in doubt, stay out.

Nice new keyboard on your iPhone. Turn your iPhone sideways and you’ll see this:

The two arrow keys move your cursor. It’s got a period and comma, albeit in the wrong place.

This key  deletes in a weird way I haven’t figured yet. You won’t see this keyboard if you’ve adjusted your iPhone display to “zoomed.”

German investor confidence is fading. Business Insider reports: ZEW Economic Sentiment tumbled to 1.9 in October, down from its previous reading of 12.1. ZEW said, “The exhaust gas scandal of Volkswagen and the weak growth of emerging markets has dampened economic outlook for Germany.” The current assessment also fell, sliding to 55.2 from 67.5. The euro is up 0.2% at 1.1378.

Now for the real story — movies about the VW scandal. Make sure you read all the reviews, not just Herbie:

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Visit to the doctor 

During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old-age home?”

“Well,” he said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.”

“No,” he said. “A normal person would pull the plug.

Do you want a bed near a window?”

Harry Newton who is proud of his wonderful granddaughter, Eleanor. She’s a cutie. Photos, courtesy iPhone 6 Plus.