In Search of the Perfect Investment

I have not disappeared. I had to rush back to New York on a red eye from California for a dear friend’s funeral. He was 95. We’d loved him for 40+ years.  We laid him to rest yesterday on a cold, but beautiful day in upstate New York:

It was wonderful to be with his family and all the friends.

I did a lot of reading while traveling and discovered:

+ How depressing politics is at present. Nonsense: no substance, no Vision. Cruz wants to off the IRS, the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, housing. He calls it his “Five for Freedom” plan. Makes no sense. Won’t happen. Trump makes sense on many issues — like why is Medicare stopped from negotiating drug prices? Or that trade deals have hurt employment in manufacturing in the U.S. But there’s one problem: Trump is nuts.

+ Business Insider says rich people are rich because they exercise! Business Insider is short of real news. So they (and much of the media) make stuff up.

+ Augmented/Virtual reality is the next big technology, maybe. But not now. Years from now. Nobody to bet on, yet.

+ Half the world’s economists think stock prices will be higher this year. The other half don’t. Both have equally strong reasons. Economists are great with “On the one hand. On the other hand.” It makes me yearn for a one-armed economist.

Getting back to New York brings cold weather and traffic insanity. We landed at JFK at 7:00 AM. I wonder the sanity of my fellow man to sit in three-mile long traffic jams to get to work every day…. New York has a perfectly fine subway/rail system. Why inject logic into insanity? It’s their lives. They can waste it whichever way they choose.

These nice people sitting in their cars all alone couldn’t all be masochists enjoying the pain? On second thought, maybe that’s why they live here.

There are easier ways of making money than picking the stock of a company you have no control over. Look what’s happened to Bill Ackman, an ertswhile successful billionaire hedge fund manageer.

My preference, remains starting or buying your own company. And owning real estate in sensible areas.

I have a couple of apartments I rent. Both lost their tenants recently. So we’re replacing them. Which is proving harder than I thought. Is the economy tightening? Hard to tell. I’m trying to fix one of the apartments up with new appliances, new countertops and new kitchen closets. The condo building’s management insists I install new pipes. Which is a good idea for a 50-year old building — until you open the walls and discover a can of worms beyond belief. Months later I’m eyeing months of lost rent.

I’m back on our “Permanent Technology Portfolio.” One reader suggests dropping BOX, FIT, GPRO, MBLY and replacing them with DIS, ILMN, NKE, and SBUX.

I repeat. I don’t favor owning the entire portfolio. It’s a starting point, to be culled and fine-honed. More on that later. For now, here’s the list again. Send your suggestions, please.

Adobe ADBE
Amazon AMZN
Apple AAPL
Autodesk ADSK
Baidu BIDU
Box BOX
Cisco CSCO
Expedia EXPE
Express Scripts ESRX
Facebook FB
Fitbit FIT
GE GE
Gilead GILD
GoPro GPRO
Google — Alphabet GOOGL
Microsoft MSFT
Mobileye MBLY
Netflix NFLX
Oracle ORCL
Palo Alto Networks PANW
Priceline PCLN
Salesforce CRM
Tesla TSLA
Verizon VZ

WiFi Calling and cell phones. Reaction to my story:

+ Lots of people love T-Mobile because it’s cheap, has WiFi calling and offers a cheap world-wide data plan which lets you summon an Uber on a Paris street without paying extra. Inside-Europe phone calling is only 20 cents a minute versus $1.50 or so with Verizon and AT&T.

+ With WiFi calling, generous data calling and services like WhatsApp and Facetime, there are a zillion ways of staying in touch everywhere with everyone on your cellphone for very little money. Your cell phone’s quality is now so good, it makes you wonder why anyone has a landline. Which speaks well  for Verizon’s strategy of getting rid of its landlines.

T-Mobile looks increasingly interesting. I shall do a test on it.

The four little animals…

A teacher asked her class, “What do you want out of life?”

A little girl in the back row raised her hand and said,

“All I want out of life is four little animals, just like my Mom always says”.

The teacher asked, “Really and what four little animals would that be?”

The little girl said, “A mink on my back, a jaguar in the garage, a tiger in the bed and a jackass to pay for all of it.

The teacher got a coughing fit and had to leave the room.

Harry Newton who finds successful people reply to their emails fast. Nebisches (yiddish for unsuccessful people) don’t. Successful people also read their emails and respond to all the issues — not just the first one.

Granddaughter Eleanor suited up for her upcoming Liquidity Event. These things actually work. I wish there were a corporate equivalent — keeping the company alive when it can’t swim.