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How to win an election — November to be precise — and help the market. I keep pinching myself.

28 August 2018, 8:50 am
First you create a crisis. Like Nafta.
Then you “solve” it.
You are a hero. The stockmarket goes up.
Then you win an election. The one coming up in November.
Not very complicated.
Cynical, you say.
Watch Canada come on board.
This is the way Donald played real estate.  Heavy bluster. Buy something. e. g. the ground lease on the Empire State Building. Then threaten the tenants they’re in default on something-or-rather and Donald now deserves ownership of the building. When the courts disagree, he sells the lease and moves on. Keep blustering. Don’t pay all your bills. Threaten lawyers. Often the strategy works.
As President he has more bargaining power — like imposing tariffs.
In short, as November elections approach, we should be in for a continued nice ride in stocks. (I’ve said this before.)
Now you see why I’m obsessed with tech stocks. They just do better:
SectorPerformance
Amazon is approaching $2,000. Square is approaching $80. (Who knew?). Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Netflix and Google continue to fly.
I have no new recommendations today. I’m just back and catching up.
And you thought the cloud was safe

Here’s Australian humor at its very best. From comedian Charlie Pickering, whom I love:

My favorite cockroach stock

HuffPost has this delicious story, headlined:

 Why Does Wells Fargo Still Exist?
The bank isn’t just “too big to fail.” It’s too big to fix.
The story begins:
“Wells Fargo executives know that everyone hates them. In the last two years, the bank has launched three separate marketing campaigns hoping to clean up its public image, only to see each effort thwarted by fresh, catastrophic scandals ? like wrongly repossessing 27,000 cars and foreclosing on 400 families for no reason.
Now, obviously I don’t own shares in Wells Fargo, nor have I shorted them (too hard). But I remain fascinated with the story of the bank that can’t seem to get out of its own way.
For the full story, click here.

Pack a week before you leave.

Then progressively discard stuff you don’t need — before your final packing.

You do not need everything you plan on taking. Trust me on this one.

Stuff to carry for travel

 + A 25-inch wheelie can be carried on. Saves huge time waiting at bag claim.
+ Bar soap. I hate liquid soap.
+ Duxiana travel pillow. Lets you sleep on planes.
+ Extension cords, cellphone cables, chargers, triple adapter, power supplies and country adapters.
+ $100 in one dollar bills. For tipping.
+ An emory board. You can’t carry scissors.
+ One set of polyester clothes — easy to wash.
+ Two laptops. Several flashdrives. Just in case.
+ Global Entry. When we arrived on Saturday afternoon, there were at least 500 people waiting in line. With Global Entry, we breezed through in less than a minute. They waited at least two hours.

Travel photography

 + 99% of people use their iPhone. It has three big pluses. It’s tags your photos with their location. It has an enormous capacity. Battery life is long.

+ SLR cameras are heavy. But you can use them in sunlight.

+ Pocketable cameras like my Canon G5X are the best. You can use it in sunlight. My G5X has great zooming. Carry extra batteries.

Once you return with 1,250 photos what do you do with them? Pick five best. Print them. Frame them. Send the rest to SmugMug.

 Travel WiFi
+ If you carry a laptop, Firefox is best opening network login pages.

+ Many places cut you off after 12 hours, or 12 minutes, or whenever. You have to re-logon. A pain.

+ Amazon will download you a book on the worst WiFi connection with amazing speed — often less than 30 seconds. I read using Kindle software on my laptop and my iPhone. Susan likes her Kindle.

+ Google maps with directions work everywhere, with or without WiFi. It’s amazing.

 Favorite travel cartoon

complaints

I heard a bunch of others — chiefly relating to the abysmal WiFi on our pricey Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise ship.

HarryNewton
Harry Newton, who warns: Never expect decent WiFi on a cruise ship. But all decent European hotels now have decent WiFi. It’s a new world.

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One Comment

  1. Omer Acikel says:
    August 28, 2018 at 1:00 PM

    Hey Harry, have you looked into AMD recently? It jumped some 20+% in the last couple of weeks. There might be some shifts in AI chip makers: Tesla planning its own “CPU” for autonomous drive, NVDA being squeezed by it, and now AMD supposedly pushing Intel in CPU business and getting into AI. May be AMD price spike already factored in some of this already but not sure. Something worth looking into.

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