I sold my Visa yesterday. It hadn’t suddenly gone awry. It hadn’t invoked my inviolate stock loss rule. I was making good money on it. But its P/E was in nosebleed territory — 31.6.
Yesterday at tennis I was losing 1-5 in the first set. I got mad with myself, put my brain and energy on it. And won the set 7-5.
You can do that with tennis. You’re in control. You can grit down and do it.
You can’t do that in today’s stock market.
All the great positive stories are for naught when one seller is dumping his entire holdings, irrespective of what he does to the price.
There is logic to his dumping. He’s fed up with waiting.
The pain he inflicts on others (like me) is simply collateral damage.
Miracles happen. The Mets beat the Cubs last night won and are now in the World Series. The last time that happened was 2000.
More people are eating at McDonalds. Go figure.
We had a pleasant dinner with friends last night. One friend complained the candidates for president for 2016 were all awful. That de Blasio, New York’s mayor, was destroying the city and that Obama was destroying the country.
Getting mad over things you have zero control over is a guaranteed to drive yourself nuts.
Donald Trump has a great idea — a wall along the border.
A guest on The Daily Show thought they should build a wall around Donald Trump. And the Mexicans would probably pay for it, too.
Jokes are an effective antidote to pain and displeasure.
Ditto for self-indulgence. In the old days I marketed our magazines by giving speeches. If I thought I gave a good one, I’d reward myself with a chocolate milkshake, with extra chocolate ice cream.
I can’t afford that any longer. My metabolism has plummeted. Even thinking about milkshakes would add two inches to my teenage waistline.
I the old days I could drink three of them. No more.
So I indulge myself with buying nonsense — adding to my collection of Nike sneakers or buying a new camera which I don’t need.
There’s actually little (if anything) I need. Worse, everything I have suddenly needs maintenance. Like the startup which is reverse splitting its miserable shares so it can ascend Nasdaq. I have to sign a pile of incomprehensible papers that the lawyers sent — with no explanation, no covering letter, no nothing. Typical lawyer stuff.
There’s the glass door in my tenant’s apartment that has slide out of its hinges and is hanging precariously.
There’s the toilet that flushes itself in the middle of the night. It doesn’t bother me, since I can’t hear it, but it bothers Susan. I think I know what’s wrong. But … can I find the ailing parts for my ancient, ailing toilet? Can anyone find them? There’s the question.
Canon has a new G5X. It’s got great benefits — on paper at least — over my favorite G16.
The camera has a 2.8 times larger processor — thus more pixels for wall-size poster pictures, which I never make. It weighs more. I need the exercise. The good news is I can’t buy it today. It’s not in the stores. Perhaps when it is, I’ll have forgotten about it.
There’s a desperation out there, which reflects hard times. This is yesterday’s chart of the S&P500 index:
You can catch serious vertigo with this behavior.
Three quotes from today’s New York Times reflect the vertigo:
+ Volkswagen Investigating if Diesel Emissions Deception Was More Extensive.
The automaker said it was looking into whether a second diesel motor type, used in many of its cars, had software meant to evade pollution testing.
+ Valeant’s Shares Fall on Report’s Fraud Claim
A research firm’s report that all but called Valeant the pharmaceutical equivalent of Enron hit the stock market like a bomb Wednesday morning.
+ As Viacom Struggles, Questions About Current and Future Control
Viacom has no clear succession plan in place for its 92-year-old chairman, Sumner Redstone, at a time when it is confronting a shifting marketplace.
Pity the poor souls who thought VW and Valeant, Viacom were lovely companies with bright futures.
Ditto for AT&T, American Express, Yahoo and IBM. AT&T warned Wall Street’s third-quarter revenue estimate is “inflated.” American Express missed its latest earnings by “a wide margin.” And I Cringely just wrote a piece on “Why Yahoo is worth less than nothing.” It’s selling at $31.35. I think he means its only value is Alibaba.
My bedside bookshelf bristles with wonderful books, such as The Intelligent Asset Allocator, The Little Book that Beats the Market, and Get Rich Carefully.
I can see the next one: The Foolproof Way to a Small Fortune. Simply start with a large one. I’ll write it.
The Donald would be richer today if he had simply stuck all the money his father left him in an S&P index fund and played golf.
I, too, would be richer, if I had taken my pile from selling my company in 1997 and stuck it in an S&P Index fund also, or in muni bonds.
But no one can put a price on the fun we had losing money. The Donald may even become president. Stranger things have happened. An honest VW lied and cheated, and may still be.
This afternoon, I’ll pay tennis and count my good fortune. I’m healthy. I have a great family. And occasionally people laugh at my jokes.
When you get frustrated about things you can’t control — like your stock in VW, Valeant, IBM or Yahoo or the next speaker of Congress — remember that great sage, who defined Washington, D.C. as “eight square miles surrounded by reality.”
If taxes and death are inevitable, there is good news today. From the New York Times’ Money Adviser:
+ Funeral Prices Are Hard to Get and Vary Widely, Survey Finds
An analysis of 10 local markets by two consumer groups suggests that comparison shopping, difficult as it is for the bereaved, might be fruitful.
Meantime, follow our advices:
+ When in doubt,stay out.
+ Cash is King.
+ Buy something you don’t need. Somewhere, someone is having a Sale you can’t avoid.
+ Self-indulgence is satisfying, and, usually, cheap.
+ Go play tennis. Go for a run. Go for a bike ride. Go to the movies. Or take a vacation:
For more wonderful (but funny) scenes of the insanity of the human race. Click here.
Illinois is so broke, it’s stoppd paying its lottery winners their winnings. But it’s still selling lottery tickets. And people are still buying them. The perfect madness for today’s world. Even if you win, you won’t get paid!
Harry Newton whose Dark Sky app just warned that “light rain started.” I see azure blue sky with no clouds. Maybe they’re into praying for rain? They can make it happen with an app. A new way to solve climate warming?
If the Volks software guy would stand up and identify himself, I’ll be he would have thousands of job offers. Maybe it was not nice, but it was brilliant.