In Search of the Perfect Investment

Susan and I have decamped to Kona, Hawaii for a week to celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary and to visit with one set of grandkids during their school vacation.

It’s six hour time difference to NYC, which makes sleeping and blogging “interesting.”

One key to successful stock picking is something called creative destruction. You destroy one industry, only to replace it with a much better one.

Hawaii is a great case example. One time its hills were alive with sugarcane, pineapple and whaling. Since statehood in 1959, tourism is its biggest gig. Come here today. The hills are alive with condos and hotels –zillions of places to rent and to buy — and things to do, from fishing to zip-lining, to day-time helicopter rides to night-time mantra ray viewing. And beaches with sparkling clean water with all color and shape of fish to gawk  at through snorkeling apparatus — available for rent, for purchase. You name it.

Hawaii also exports expensive coffee, pricey macadamia nuts, grass-fed livestock – our helicopter pilot called them the happiest cows on the planet. By weight, says Wikipedia, honey bees may be Hawaii’s most valuable export.

Cockroach stocks.are hard to play

I’m good at identifying cockroach stocks, and not owning them. But I’m not good at playing them. I suspect cockroach stocks are short-term plays. Big arrogant companies — like Wells Fargo, Boeing, Facebook, Deutsche Bank — will ultimately fix their ills — by firing their CEO (as Wells Fargo just did) or fixing their product (as Boeing seems to be doing).

Playing cockroach stocks successfully tends to be a short-term fix — a week or two. Maybe three.

Here are some one-year charts which show what I mean:

Charts I derive optimism (and pleasure?) from:

The cloud is becoming more important to Amazon than selling my tchokches.

The next chart is from a presentation by JPMorgan called “Key Investment Themes.” It was dated January, 2019. I’ll have a couple more slides from the presentation on Monday.

Rented houses tips

+ WiFi good. But what speed? Insist on 20 megs down. Use this site to test. Click here.

+ Which TV channels? If you want HBO, ESPN or the Tennis Channel, specify in advance. Before you get there.

You don’t need a fight about this nonsense when you get there. I fought with Jeff from www.ParadiseinHawaii.com. He told me he wasn’t allowed to change the cable service and add The Tennis Channel — even if I was prepared to pay the entire price and more. Jeff runs a very inflexible place to rent from.

The iPhone camera

It’s not a Leica. But it’s very good. And a lot lighter and easier to carry. I guarantee you I can now take pictures with my iPhone 8 plus that you’d think were taken with a $3,000 chunky Nikon or Canon.

The iPhone can zoom, warm or cool your photos, take splendid videos — including slo-mo — and edit your photos and videos in the camera.

Here’s Peter. Look at the clarity.

Here’s a family shot converted to black and white inside the camera:

We went sight-seeing on a helicopter:

Here are two photos up in the air, with the iPhone’s image stabilization making the photos super sharp. Note the thousand foot waterfalls.

There’s no hot lava flowing at present. But there is this thing spewing hot gases. We circled it a couple of times.

I’m in love with sea turtles.  I found him sunning himself one afternoon. This is by the iPhone 8 plus on 10x zoom. Amazing quality.

Warren Buffett says the economy is slowing. It undoubtedly is. Which means more time to scope out sleeping turtles on the sea shore and to marvel at wonderful jokes, like this truly tasteless, but funny video:

Harry Newton, who’s having a blast with the grandkids at the beach. The last time I visited a beach was around 1958. How about this one of Eleanor? Almost the feeling of Tri-X.