In Search of the Perfect Investment

Apple reports earnings after the close of business today. Apple is my biggest holding. It’s doing spectacularly. I bought some more this morning. Even at today’s price, its P/E ratio is only 21. Its new AirPods Pro is getting rave reviews.

It has active noise cancellation, which is great for planes. Buy yourself a pair today– $249. Even on Amazon — click here.

My second biggest holding is Amazon, which is on its way back to $2,000.

My third biggest holding is LADR, which yields a nice 7.95%.

My fourth biggest holding is UNH, which is still in business despite Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Warren has some ultra-strange ideas. She’s the cover story on the latest Economist:

Here are some choice excerpts from the Economist:

… if the entire Warren plan were enacted, America’s freewheeling system would suffer a severe shock. Roughly half the stockmarket and private-equity owned firms would be broken up, undergo heavy re-regulation or see activities abolished. And over time Ms Warren’s agenda would entrench two dubious philosophies about the economy that would sap its vitality.

The first is her faith in government as benign and effective. Government is capable of doing great good but, like any big organisation, it is prone to incompetence, capture by powerful insiders and Kafkaesque indifference to the plight of the ordinary men and women Ms Warren most cares about. When telecoms firms and airline companies were heavily regulated in the 1970s, they were notorious for their stodginess and inefficiency. Ms Warren’s signature achievement is the creation in 2011 of a body to protect consumers of financial services. It has done good work, but has unusual powers, has at times been heavy handed and has become a political football.

The other dubious philosophy is a vilification of business. She underrates the dynamic power of markets to help middle-class Americans, invisibly guiding the diverse and spontaneous actions of people and firms, moving capital and labour from dying industries to growing ones and innovating at the expense of lazy incumbents. Without that creative destruction, no amount of government action can raise long-term living standards.

Primary colours

Many presidents have taken positions in the primaries that they pivoted away from as their party’s nominee. If Ms Warren were to make it to the Oval Office in 15 months’ time, she would be constrained by the courts, the states and probably the Senate. The immense size and depth of America’s economy means that no individual, not even the one sitting in the White House, can easily change its nature. Nonetheless Ms Warren’s government-heavy master-plan contains much to worry about. She needs to find more room for the innovative and dynamic private sector that has always been at the heart of American prosperity.■

In other words, she’s nuts.

Facebook rocks

Business Insider reports it was able to easily run ads on Facebook that made blatantly misleading claims about the hot-button political topics of immigration and guns, despite the social network claiming that it fact-checks ads. One ad repeated the false rumor that undocumented immigrants who participate in the 2020 census will be deported.

They need serious fact checkers to kill dubious ads — but that would reduce their revenues, at the expense of increased government regulation — which is clearly coming.

 Zuck needs to temper which ads he’ll accept. I don’t see him doing that of his own free will.

Meanwhile I tried to get this blog into Facebook’s new News Feeds. I gave up. They’re Facebook and arrogant.

I don’t own shares in Facebook.

More wonderful, bad jokes

Permanent insult
“The easiest time to add insult to injury is when you’re signing somebody’s cast.”-Demetri Martin

Stereotypes in real life
A ventriloquist is performing with his dummy on his lap. He’s telling a dumb-blonde joke when a young platinum-haired beauty jumps to her feet. “What gives you the right to stereotype blondes that way?” she demands.

“What does hair color have to do with my worth as a human being?”

Flustered, the ventriloquist begins to stammer out an apology.

“Keep out of this!” she yells. “I’m talking to that little jerk on your knee!”

Soup or sex?
For his birthday, an old man’s nephews secretly hire a call girl for him. When he answers the door, she’s standing there in a slinky black dress.

She says, “Do you want super sex?”

After a minute the old man replies, “I’ll have the soup.”

A great fitting suit
This is a great joke to act out at your next dinner party.

The fellow was being sold a very cheap suit. “But the left arm is a lot longer than the right arm,” he complained.
“That’s why the suit is such a bargain,” the sales clerk explained. “Just cock your left shoulder up a little, like this, and tuck this left lapel under your chin a bit, like this.”

“But the right leg is way too short,” argued the customer.

“No problem,” the sales clerk answered. “Just keep your right knee bent a little at all times, walk like this, and no one will notice. That’s why this suit is only thirty dollars.”

Finally, the fellow bought the suit, cocked his left shoulder into the air, tucked the suit’s left lapel under his chin, bent his right knee, and limped out of the store toward his car.

Two doctors happened along and noticed him. “Good heavens,” the first doctor said, “look at that poor crippled fellow.”

“Yeah,” answered the second doctor. “But doesn’t that suit fit great?”

Across the road in Central Park is…guess what

There are two things I love about this photo which neighbor Elizabeth Chandler nicely sent me: First, the tree. It’s gorgeous. Second, look closely at all the multi-million dollar high-rise apartments across the road which the billionaires are living in. They can’t enjoy our tree because they’re in the clouds. For all that money, no view!