Tomorrow is a New Year.
There’s one Rule for the New Year: Be ultra-careful.
Make that: Be Aggressive About Being Ultra-Careful.
Why aggressive? It’s getting worse out there: The virus is mutating into worse viruses. Some healthy people get long-term covid — with horrible long term effects. One fellow with covid is in the hospital for the seventh time. It’s hurting his body and his brain. It’s not what you or I want. Click here.
None of us have been vaccinated. The administration promised 20 million vaccinations by today. They lied, as usual. Here’s today’s headline:
Infections and deaths are skyrocketing — driven by Thanksgiving and Christmas “festivities.”
Don’t let your guard down. If you’re someplace that looks unsafe, leave. Better yet, don’t go “someplace.”
Order in. Do curbside pickup.
Don’t visit anyone.
Do Zoom. It’s safe and easy. Go for a walk, away from everyone. The trees don’t have covid — last time I checked.
Keys to Life for 2021: Moving, thinking, loving (remotely), resting, reading and writing.
That’s it for today’s lecture.
Send this blog to your friends.
Tell them we made lots of money this year.
We’ll figure out how to make more in 2021.
It won’t include buying overpriced recent IPOs like ABNB, UBER, DASH or SNOW. In fact, they’re probably all good shorts.
Tax and stock things:
+ You probably spent more than enough time out of New York City to no longer be a resident. Five states don’t have income tax, including Florida, Texas, and Nevada.
+ You may have fluked a capital gain or two. You could also sell overvalued stocks today for a capital gain. Right now there is 15% federal capital gains tax. I hear the Biden plan is to move it up to the same as ordinary income which can be as high as 39%, maybe higher. If that seems like a real possibility then you should take all a loft of your long-term profit now for the income year 2020. Especially since I don’t think that prices of companies with no earnings will sell in 2021 for what they’re selling at now.
+ Probably best to put in a 15% stop loss order. There’s a lot of talk that Biden will be bad for the stock market. Historically Democratic Administrations had actually done better for the stockmarket than Republican ones. But that fact will get lost in all the noise, as most facts do.
I sold my Alibaba today at a small profit. I like its business. I don’t like the Chinese government. I’m short SWI and Zoom.
Posting nonsense on the Internet
Since we got the Internet in the last 1990s, anyone can post anything anywhere. Once posted, someone will send it to someone else.
The Nashville bomber apparently believed you get Covid-19 from 5G cell towers. So he blew up AT&T’s central cell phone switching center.
A friend recently sent me a video of standard conspiracy theory — Democrats eating children to prolong their lives. (Not the children, the Democrats.) Along with the video, he sent this wonderful caveat:
I have no idea if this information is valid. I haven’t even watched it yet. I am posting it in case it is, and because it will likely be removed immediately if it has any truth to it that is damaging to the illicit Biden regime.
Please watch and comment. If it is real garbage we will remove it.
It was real garbage.
Things to be happy about
+ I’m happy I never invested in China, Iran, Egypt or Turkey. I had oodles of opportunities in the last 30 years. I saw potential high returns. I’ve visited all these countries. When I look at these countries today, I see them all locking up reporters to long prison times — for writing stuff similar to what I write in this blog.
+ I leave the year happy that I’m a reporter in America and that I’m not being hit with trumped-up charges and locked up for years in horrible prisons in China, Iran, Egypt or Turkey.
+ I’m happy that I can play my grandson Peter chess remotely. And I’m happy for FaceTime, PhotoStream and Zoom. I see my kids and my grandkids in wonderful Kodak moments.
+ This morning I played my 291st game of tennis in 2020. It was an hour and a half of aggressive singles. Tomorrow we’ll play a little longer so I can win the third set and coddle my fragile ego.
Thought for 2020
For the celebration tonight
This is fun. Click on the link or the photo —whatever your system is showing you.
Final thoughts
I switched to a Logitech wireless mouse. It’s really good. Lands End is having a perpetual sale. They have good stuff for playing tennis and for wearing in your home office. Lenovo has sales on Windows laptops. Everyone has a sale on stuff you don’t need. I want to own the company that sells Amazon boxes.
I write this blog using WordPress, which is free and good. I use ICDSoft as my ISP. They’re really good. They’re based in — of all places — Bulgaria. All their people work at home and do amazing customer support — like replying to my emails within ten minutes.
Give a little money to TurnUp. They’re crazy busy getting young Georgians to vote in the January 5 election that will determine who controls the Senate, breaks Mitch McConnell’s stranglehold on it and whether Americans get another stimulus check — perhaps as much as $2,000. Give money here. Do it. I have. Most of my remaining friends have also.
What does Mitch McConnell care about — clearly money and power. For more, read the best piece ever written on him:
How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief
The Senate Majority Leader’s refusal to rein in the President is looking riskier than ever.
Click here.
The market is dropping today as many people take their 2020 profits.
See you tomorrow, but most likely Monday — Harry Newton
