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It’s up today. Bigtime, in the morning. Smalltime, by early afternoon. But still up. Thankful for small mercies.
Why didn’t we buy like drunken sailors yesterday? Some of us did.
Instead many of us thought the end of the world was near.
The market is like your mother-in-law — predictably awful one day and predictably warm, gracious and loving the next. Confusing, but impossible to escape.
My “strategy” is a core portfolio — of stocks I believe in and have sound earnings and handsome growth — Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, PayPal, Generac, Facebook, United Health, Google, and Microsoft. Then, I’ll dabble in stocks I learn and then expand my holdings as they explode — like NET, CRWD, AVXL, EPAM, ANET, ETSY, HUBS, ZS, CRL and QRVO.
I don’t think this summer’s downdraft has ended — today being a small respite. So I took today, the opportunity — a rising market — to dump some that weren’t performing well — FVRR, SPOT, NTDOY, NVCR and UBER.
This is not a precise recommendation to you — a reader — but more of an explanation of the “logic” of my stock ownership strategy. Everyone needs to develop their own — an environment in which they feel comfortable. And which they can use to measure their moves against.
You have to have this Defined World so you don’t drive yourself nuts and flounder around when your friends tell you about the millions they’ve just made … and make your feel positively envious — and stupid.
The biggest area for me — envious and stupid — has been crypto-currencies. I haven’t owned — or profited — by bitcoin, Ethereum or dogecoin or others — because I’ve simply felt uncomfortable, uncertain, leery… whatever.
You can either love or hate Bill Maher. “comedian” who has an hourly show called “Real Time with Bill Maher,” which runs most Friday nights at 10:00 PM.
You have to admire this piece he did on bitcoin. It sums up my feelings and more. If you can’t see the box below (because your email client doesn’t support embedded links, please click here. Otherwise click on the picture.
Air gap — where your data is safe
The pipeline is back running. They apparently didn’t pay the hackers a handsome ransom. But they did cause temporary havoc on the east coast. Susan insisted that I take her car to tennis and fill it up with gas. The TV news had videos of panicked people filling up plastic cans of gas and carrying them off in the back of their SUVs.
I’m still engrossed in this book. The more I read, the more I’m convinced there’s a lot of truth in the title of the book. “This is how they tell me the world ends.”
The bottom line is that hackers want our lunch, our business, our security and our society. The hackers are supported — encouraged is a better word — by Russia’s Putin, who sees the U.S. in particular, and the West in general, as his mortal enemy. Hacking is the latest, and perhaps, most powerful weapon for causing damage and bringing your enemies to their knees. Better than guns, planes, or warships.
Biden’s people seem aware of how dangerous the game Putin is playing.
But it’s all our problem. Our lives run on the Internet. We bank online. We get paid online. We work online. We buy shares online. It’s what we call technological progress. One day some of us will be shut down, compromised, hurt….Today, we all know people who got very sick and died from Covid-19. More and more of us now know someone whose company has been hacked.
The only serious effective answer to ransomware in our lives is something called air gapping:
What is air gapping? An air gap backup and recovery strategy means ensuring that, at any given time, one copy of your organization’s data is offline (disconnected) and cannot be accessed. If a file or system of files has no connection to the Internet or a LAN, it can’t be remotely hacked or corrupted.
Here’s the cheapest air gap:
It’s called a flash drive. Every day — a couple of times that day — I use a software program called FreeFileSync to copy my updated work files (not software) to one of these drives. I actually have several PNY drives.
It’s nice to be backed up to the cloud. But remember the hacker in Russia can get to your cloud.
I put one flash drive in a little green pouch which I carry with me in my backpack.
I don’t know where I bought my little green pouch. Amazon? But I do know nobody in Russia can get to it. It’s air gapped.
I’m pleased that Elon stopped taking bitcoin. Making bitcoin takes far too much energy and is seriously contributing to our climate crisis. Watch Bill Maher’s video for more.
The market is bouncing late this afternoon. Get rid of your uncomfortables.
See you tomorrow. — Harry Newton
