In Search of the Perfect Investment

Markets are down half a percent today.

Business Insider reported today:

Goldman Sachs says conditions point to the stock market seeing a 10-20% correction in the next few months.

The bank is the latest Wall Street firm to express direct concern over equity valuations, and warn against a potential weak patch.

Ultimately, strategists are bullish on US stocks for full-year 2018, and recommend that bulls add to positions on any first-half weakness.

The New York Times today reported

LONDON – A decade after the world descended into a devastating economic crisis, a key marker of revival has finally been achieved. Every major economy on earth is expanding at once, a synchronous wave of growth that is creating jobs, lifting fortunes and tempering fears of popular discontent.

No tidy, all-encompassing narrative explains how the world has finally escaped the global downturn. The United States has been propelled by government spending unleashed during the previous administration, plus a recent $1.5 trillion shot of tax cuts. Europe has finally felt the effects of cheap money pumped out by its central bank.

In general terms, improvement owes less to some newfound wellspring of wealth than the simple fact that many of the destructive forces that felled growth have finally exhausted their potency.

In short, buy stocks when they pull back.

IHI and ROBO are two  interesting ETFs covering high-growth areas:

IHI is U.S. Medical Devices.

ROBO is Global Robotics and Automation Index.

The nice thing about ETFs is that you can look at the stocks they own and then choose which individual ones to buy.

GE — the classic cockroach stock

The logic is “It’s big. Something good must come. Somewhere.” Yep. The old prayer theory of investing. It won’t come back, for a long time. Meantime, it ‘s the classic Cockroach Stock.

I fell for this scam

I should have figured. Anything that is advertised so heavily has to be a disaster. (Think Prevagen.)

Anyway, the pillows contain cheap  nasty shredded polyurethane. If you want to return your pillows for a refund, you pay shipping. And you also cannot call the company on the phone  “due to very high call volumes.”

Stupid of me.

Gotchas in private company investing

There are no rules on reporting. Give that “sure thing” your hard-earned shekels and you may never hear from them again.

Oops, I mispoke. You will receive a bankruptcy filing.

I repeat: There are no laws, no rules, no regulations that insist private companies report to their shareholders — ever. That includes their investment bankers, who are egregiously negligent in reporting.

I don’t make this up.

The first I heard from one of my “brilliant” private company investments — it was a beginning startup — was the notice from the bankruptcy court!

Check. Check. Check. 

+ When you play Pickleball, please wear tennis shoes. Normal running sneakers do not provide the sideways support that tenis sneakers provide. People have twisted their ankles playing Pickleball because of their bad shoes.

+ If you want your laptop (or desktop) to run three external screens, to start, you’ll need three screens. This one is perfectly fine:

To buy the monitor, click here.  Next, you’ll have to download the DisplayLink software. Click here. 

More when you’ve completed these two tasks.

+ We ordered furniture from Design Within Research (DWR), a Herman Miller subsidiary. So far, they’ve billed us twice and are late delivering what we ordered. But, they do make great stuff.

+ AOL email is a disaster. Kill your AOL account and get a Gmail one. Do it today.

+ Get a flu shot. It’s not too late.

Wonderful, stupid images

Harry Newton, who enjoyed the Australian finals and won $3 on a Federer win and is back in New York for a few days.