A reader asked:
Looking at the list of equities that you “like and own” is mind bending! Without counting them, I estimate that there are about 75 products that you own. How many of those (many in the tech sector) are owned by XLK or VGT? And why do you own so many? There is no way that you can monitor all of those stocks and ETFs to know when it’s time to sell. O’Neill from IBD says your limit should be less than 10; Cramer agrees. The only way that you can feel good about this portfolio is because the market has been on a tear this year. You should lighten up on your holdings and consolidate into the ETFs that already own your favorites. Maybe you have stops on everything??
I answered:
Reasonable question. Of course, it has all to do with allocation. Clearly I don’t have the same amount in all my stocks. Some I have tiny amounts in. I change the allocation often, putting more into stocks I find I’m more comfortable with. And selling those I feel less comfortable with.
But I am also aware that (a) I know enough about technology to quickly glean a good feeling (or not) for the company’s product, service and technology (b) Many (maybe most?) of these tech stocks make no sense from a value point of view, hence very hard to predict which ones will take off strongly, and (c) It’s incredibly hard to predict which ones are going to hit a road bump, as a small percentage always do. So my recommended portfolio is in constant flux. Buzz is the important element I’m always searching for.
Maybe this is a new way of investing? Maybe not. It does seem to be working. Owning an ETF means you own someone else’s picks. Often they’re slow to throw non-performing companies out. By the way I haven’t found an ETF that covers what I own. But, that said, I do like Vanguard’s VGT. It’s done well. Do I make sense?
The best Christmas presents
+ TVs and computer monitors. Big ones. Little ones. Unbelievably cheap.
+ Bump your Internet speed. Everything works better — from Zoom calls to surfing — when your speed is faster.
+ Put money into two index funds — VGT and VTI.
+ Open an online account for each of your kids. Stock it with VGT, Apple, Facebook, Etsy, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Nvidia, PayPal, Qualcomm, Shopify, Tesla, and Zoom.
+ Buy your iPhone-owning relatives a set of AirPods — not the pro. The simple ones are on sale.
+ Buy yourself an iPhone 12 Pro Max with a 5G SIM card and lots of memory.
+ Buy yourself the latest iPad Air (the one with the new Apple chip) and the Magic Keyboard.
+ Buy yourself an Apple Watch Series 6.
+ Anything Roku. The $27 Roku Premiere is great. It now costs less than when I bought it last month.
Prepare your Kleenex. These are really funny.
This was the opening to last night’s Saturday Night Live
This was the news. Or their version of it. It’s hysterical.
Another reason I will miss Donald Trump
No politician has ever provided the nation’s writers (including me) with such great fodder.
Imagine you’re writing about one of the key political figures of the last 200 years. Would your key source be an eminent Shakespearean scholar?
The weekend’s article is called:
Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial
The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House.
Some of my favorite paragraphs:
WASHINGTON – Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times – and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.
Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.
The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court.
On Saturday night, Mr. Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy.
…At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Mr. Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.
“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”
….Students of the American presidency, on the other hand, could think of no recent parallel. “As we move toward Inauguration Day, I have thought almost daily of a remark attributed to Henry Adams: ‘I expected the worst, and it was worse than I expected,’” said Patricia O’Toole, a biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as well as Adams.
…Sliding further from the mainstream, the president has aligned himself more with fringe news outlets like One America News Network and the conspiracy theorists of QAnon, who believe the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles plotting against Mr. Trump.
In a meeting with Republican senators, according to an official confirming a report in The Post, Mr. Trump said QAnon followers “basically believe in good government,” a comment that left the room silent until his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, volunteered that he had never heard them described that way.
With six weeks until he leaves office, Mr. Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Mr. Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath.
“If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Mr. Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”
For the full article, click here.
Watch this engrossing miniseries. It’s on HBO.
I was up till 2:00 AM this morning watching. It’s really great.
Between now and when we get the vaccine may be the most dangerous time in our lives
If you get it, you may die. If you get it, there won’t be a hospital bed for you. If you get, be aware that it can be hard to cure. From a Washington Post piece I read over the weekend:
In reality, “the pharmaceutical toolbox for physicians to treat covid-19 is seriously restricted,” as The Post’s Christopher Rowland put it in September. The FDA so far has authorized only two drugs for the illness: remdesivir, for in-hospital use, and bamlanivimab, for people with mild or moderate symptoms.
Remdesivir appears only somewhat beneficial, with evidence that it shortens hospital stays but not that it improves a patient’s chance of survival. Health experts have expressed optimism about the effectiveness of bamlanivimab, but the drug is scarce and logistically complicated to administer.
Tennis as an antidote
I played tennis this morning (for the 270th time). I ought a breakfast scone, then rushed home. No one comes to visit any longer. And we don’t visit anyone.
Some people are finding all the enforced loneliness (aka a hermit life) stressful. I find reading, researching and writing to be wonderfully exciting, I’m grateful for our high-speed Internet line and my ability to play chess online with my 4-year old grandson, Peter, 2,500 miles away in Portland, Oregon. Susan plays Canasta remotely with friends she can’t visit.
See you tomorrow. — Harry Newton
