In Search of the Perfect Investment

It’s hard to get serious about anything when this is the view from my home office window this morning.
Bright blue skies, 60 degrees, no wind. Perfect tennis weather in Columbia County, New York.

This is the Sugar Maple outside my window this morning.

These are some of its glorious leaves lit by today’s bright sunlight.

The best news today is Biogen’s apparent dementia breakthrough. My father-in-law died of dementia. His last few years were awful. Patients who received aducanumab (the Biogen drug) experienced significant benefits on measures of cognition and function such as memory, orientation and language. BIIB bounced up on the news. I bought a handful of Biogen this morning in his memory. I pray the drug works. It could be the biggest drug in history.

I closed out my Boeing short with a small profit. Too many investors love the stock and are willing to believe two things:

+ Boeing will get approvals to fly the plane by end-year. My take: Pigs will fly before they get the approvals.

+ People will want to fly the plane. Susan says she will never fly the 737 MAX. Given a choice, I’d rather not also. I’m soured off all new Boeing planes now. Too many problems. Too many bad management decisions. They still haven’t fired Muilenburg. Please explain why not?

Impressed with Intuit

I’m very impressed with Intuit. Small businesses up here are using Intuit to send me bills:

And have me pay for them in seconds with my credit card:

It’s beautifully done. It’s real easy for me. Much easier than sending checks. Every small business should be using Intuit to send out their bills. Maybe they all will soon?

Here’s Intuit over the last two years.

Intuit is growing steadily and is profitable. Whopeee. A techie company with profits!

WeWork is brilliant — for the founder

Adam Neumann walks away a billionaire from one of the biggest snake oil hypes and biggest disasters in American corporate history. They’ll be writing business school case studies about WeWork forever. For now, the lessons are:

+ Don’t trust hypes that have no clear path to profitability.

+ Don’t trust snake oil salesmen.

+ When you get pitched by an obviously good salesman, step back, take a deep breath and think about all the things that could go wrong. Then say “NO.”

+ Remember we all need to put our money into ventures like WeWork like we need a hole in the head.

A quick story: I asked my most talented syndicator to visit with WeWork and see if there was anything there? He came back scratching his head. “They know nothing about real estate. Nothing.”

Health stuff

My ageing friends have health problems. My takeaways:

+ Relying 100% on doctors doesn’t help. It’s amazing how few people spend the time to become expert in their own problems.

+ You are your own best doctor. Don’t do stupid with your body — like do no exercise, drink too much, sleep too little, get stressed out too often.

+ Hospitals are dangerous places. People die in them because hospitals do wrong all the time.

+ Dietary supplements are, in the main, totally useless. They could also be dangerous. since they’re made in factories no one knows much about. Think Prevagen, a heavily advertised “brain” supplement that does nothing for your brain, but plenty to your pocket book. It’s a brain supplement made from an animal — the jellyfish — that has no brain. Go figure!

Favorite silly cartoons for a glorious Fall

After morning tennis yesterday .. we dined at the local Dairy Queen, now called DQ and owned by Berkshire Hathaway. I like their hamburgers and their fries. Their vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate is also great.

It was hard to resist being photographed with the Fall DQ decorations.

Photography by Mark Johnson with his trusty LG phone, which takes better photographs than my older iPhone 8 plus.

See you tomorrow, or so. — Harry Newton