“Things are good enough to prevent a major decline in stocks, but negative enough to prevent a major advance.“ – Jim Awad, Zephyr Management.
A money manager this morning sent me that quote, saying it sums it all up.
It’s nonsense. For one, Awad is an OK, but not brilliant money manager, nor a great sage. But who is? Not me.
September was great. October has had its bad moments. Remember 1987?
I remain in bonds, with a small toe in equities, mostly in decent dividend payers.
My stops remain tight — presently about 8%. I’m out at the first sign of angst. Cash remains king.
The dollar is coming back — both the U.S. and the Australian dollar.
What’s with hot penny stocks? There’s a whole industry devoted to manipulating penny stocks. The modus operandi:
1. Find one with a good story. Calypso Wireless had one. They apparently have a patent on carrying voice on the Internet. Every cell company — from T-Mobile to Verizon — needs to pay them oodles of money.
2. Buy oodles of the stock.
3. Then, put out oodles of stories about the company. Suggest it’s going to 20 cents. There are zillions of penny stock newsletters and penny stock chat rooms, and even more zillions of gullible, desperate “investors.”
4. Bingo, the stock rises. You get out as fast as possible.
This chart tells the story.
Latest on Harry’s Virus: Wasting time acquires a whole new meaning.
+ I didn’t have a cloned hard drive, pre-virus. That was real stupid. But I did save all my working files. I didn’t lose anything. I copied them to my older machine, which is working fine.
+ Macs do get viruses. They just get fewer of them. The bad guys target viruses at Windows machines simply because there are more of them.
+ No anti-virus software works 100%. You are always vulnerable, no matter what you do. Getting hit like I did is not “If,” it’s When. Regular backing up is your only protection.
+ Sometimes your virus masks itself as anti-virus software. It asks you to pay money to clean up the infection which it created. Don’t.
+ Richard Grigonis, reader, recommended software called Malwarebyes’ Anti-Malware. I paid $25, downloaded it. It did a far better job cleaning my infected drive than Symantec did. Richard runs Anti-Malware once a week in addition to his anti-virus software which runs all the time. Get it here.
+ When you do get infected, it’s a total waste of your time trying to repair your drive. Copy your working files over to your good cloned disk, format the infected disk (i.e. erase everything), then clone it and keep it as a backup. Keep multiple backups. Hard drives are cheap these days.
Paired off Parrots.
A lady approaches her rabbi and tells him, “Rabbi, I have a problem. I have two female talking parrots, but they only know how to say one thing. ‘Hi, we’re prostitutes. Want to have some fun?'”
“That’s terrible!” the rabbi exclaimed, “but I have a solution to your problem. Bring your two female parrots over to my house and I will put them with my two male talking parrots whom I taught to pray and read Hebrew.”
The next day the woman brings her female parrots to the rabbi’s house. His two male parrots are wearing tiny yamulkes and praying in their cage. The lady puts her two female parrots in. The female parrots say, “Hi, we’re prostitutes, want to have some fun?”
One male parrot looks over at the other male parrot and exclaims, “Put away the siddurs (prayer books)! Our prayers have been answered!”
Visiting the hospital.
The President of the congregation went to visit the Rabbi in the hospital.
“Rabbi, the board just voted 12 to 8 to wish you a speedy recovery!”
Jewish Taxis and reverse Logic.
An American tourist was in a taxi in Israel.
As the taxi approached a red light, the tourist was shocked to see the driver drive straight through without even slowing down. Surprised as he was, he didn’t say anything, feeling himself a ‘guest’ and not wanting to make waves.
The trip continued without event until the next intersection.
This time the light was green and, to the American’s dismay, the cab driver brought the vehicle to a grinding halt.
Unable to contain his astonishment, he turns to the driver. “Listen”, he says, “When you went through the red light, I didn’t say anything. But why on earth are you stopping at a green light?”
The Israeli driver looks at the American as if he was deranged. “Are you crazy?!” he shouts. “The other guy has a red light! Do you want to get us killed?!”
Susan and reverse logic.
Harry: “Susan, will you please close the window. It’s cold outside.”
Susan: “If I close the window, will it get warm outside?”
Harry Newton who wonders why he gets so much pleasure each evening from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The shows begin at 11 PM EST four nights a week on Comedy Central.
Is Harry sick? Or is the “real” news simply too depressing?
Bill Maher is on tonight on HBO at 10 PM EST. He’s often a bit serious. But I’m batting 100% with him. I watch his opening piece, then I fall asleep, only to wake up in time for his New Rules, which end his show. It’s my new talent.
Tennis’s charm is twofold: Great physical exercise without the treadmill. Great mental exercise figuring how to beat the guy at the other end. I have two opponents I can’t beat. But I’m getting closer. I have a new strategy. Ha.
Because Harry you are a closet Democrat! 🙂
Hit to his strength. Your game will improve. Then, once you beat him twice in a row, you got him.
Hit deep down the middle v. to one side when coming in. Now the opponent has two small opening that he has not practices v. one large opening that he has practiced.
And move your feet and keep the eyes on the ball.
Have fun, Paul
Harry, I'm surprised you had no luck removing a virus.
Even the ones that purport to be anti-virus programs are tough, but I've yet to find one the free version of Malwarebytes couldn't remove.
Speaking of those anti-virus viruses (? virii) It always strikes me that if they took your money and went away they would make a fortune from the gullible. A good (if nefarious) business plan! Most would pay and not give it another thought.
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I read somewhere that a lot of people consider those two show the actual news…scary how much influence they have, but probably no more fictional than Fox news.
According to Symantec and Malwarebyes, I got rid of all the virii. But I didn't. The PC would start and open some files but many programs wouldn't start — like PHotoshop and regedit. The hard drive is toast. Yes, malware masquerading as virus-fixing software makes you wary about anything you see. Is anything for real? Or is half the Internet a gigantic scam?
That's a shame Harry. I though the days of hard-drive destroying Virii were gone; It seemed like all they really wanted was to add your machine to the swarm of zombie machines to carry out denial-of-service attacks etc.
You can buy inexpensive 2.5″ & 3.5″ hard drive docks that are hugely useful in cases of virus attack. If the infected drive is added to another machine as a simple external drive after boot-up, the virus doesn't run and cleaning is much simpler. Accessing the registry is tough, but can be done. At the very least, it makes formatting and cloning much simpler. Here's one on Amazon, but there are many to choose from: http://➡.ws/amazonHDD
PHysically the drive is OK. I just bought 3 Seagate Momentus XT 500 gig hyrbid drives. I'll have more backups and protection than ever. I'll never be stupid again.