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Horrid day in tech land. It happens. Dehyrdration really is a serious problem. Here’s how to monitor it. China flailing

It’s a horrid day in tech-land.

It shall pass.

None of my ultra-low buys in techs have kicked in. So, it’s not that horrid.

My heavy concentrated positions in favorites Amazon, Apple, PayPal, Nvidia and Generac are taking it on the nose.

My few non-tech names — like Raytheon, Waste Management, Abbott Labs, Honeywell, Thermo-Fisher Scientific, Procter & Gamble, Dominoes, Dannaher, Zoetis, GE and American Express — are actually up.

So the world is not completely at a hell and a handbasket.

Falling Chinese knives

Do not try and catch a falling Chinese knife.

Chinese stocks are getting cheaper by the day. One day they’ll hit bottom.

I have no idea when that day will be — and you don’t either.  But it’s not soon.

CNBC “explains”:

The tutoring clampdown–which sent shares of Chinese tutoring firms down 50% or more on Monday–is purportedly in response to China’s massive demographic problems. Even after the Communist leadership dramatically relaxed the rules, Chinese parents aren’t having more children. The high cost of education–including tutoring, which reportedly 70% of Chinese big-city high schoolers pay to receive after school hours–is said to be a huge headwind. So the government responded by forbidding tutoring on weekends and holidays and forcing the firms to become not-for-profits. One such firm, New Oriental, has now lost 90% of its market value this year.

China is flailing around, implementing weirder and weirder “policies.” This is among the weirder ones.

I’m having a contest for the next weird China move.

Send me your suggestions. See if you can outdo their nuttiness!

You have to send what they will do (the crazier the better) and the reason (it should make no sense).

Prizes of fame and fortune for the best.

Vanguard is the king of low-cost ETFs.

My favorite Vanguard ETF remains VGT, Vanguard’s tech ETF.

Here’s how it compares to other popular Vanguard funds — some of which you may own.

Putin is reputed to be one of the world’s richest

I hear he’s worth over $200 billion.

The July 26 New Yorker has a long piece:

Lyubov Sobol’s Hope for Russia
With Alexey Navalny in prison, one of his closest aides is carrying on the lonely work of the opposition.

One paragraph in the article sums Russia up:

Under Putin, who rose to power in 1999, when Sobol was eleven years old, cynicism has become the ruling ideology of Russia. The core of Putinism is the belief that the world is rotten, everything is for sale, and anyone who says otherwise is lying, probably because they are being paid to do so. In the past decade, Navalny and his team have built a movement on the premise that honesty and fairness are both desirable and possible in what they call, without irony, the “wonderful Russia of the future.” Putin’s regime rests on corruption, domination of the information sphere, and a narrative of legitimacy created by phony elections; Navalny attacks on all of these fronts. A network of local offices, called the Navalny Headquarters, has organized protests and get-out-the-vote campaigns throughout Russia. Their political party, Russia of the Future, has fielded many candidates for office, although they are almost never allowed on the ballot. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has exposed how the powerful make themselves rich, and the four-year-old YouTube channel Navalny Live has supplemented these investigations with witty commentary, sight gags, and drone footage and digital renderings of ill-gotten palaces and mansions.

Read the full New Yorker piece here.

Dehyrdration is very common

My friend suffered vertigo, vomiting and two days in a  boring hospital because he was dehyrdrated. That was yesterday’s blog.

Now several readers have said they’ve also had bouts of irksome (sometimes dangerous) stuff because they were dehydrated.

Here’s an easy way to tell if you’re dehyradated. Look at your pee. The lighter, the better.

Today’s disaster

I played tennis at 6:15 AM today. It was glorious.

Apple’s newest AirPods are selling at an amazing $119. Click here.

See you tomorrow.  — Harry Newton