The most comfortable shoes I have ever owned I just bought from Amazon:
They cost the grand sum of $32.99 and come in many colors, some ridiculous, others ghastly. Click here.
In my job as your favorite blogger, I spend time reading, studying and thinking — with only one goal — to excite my tiny brain.
A pair of shoes can excite me. So can reading Time’s Magazine writeup of Elon as Person of the Year — click here.
So, can figuring why the investment I’m about to make makes perfect sense. For example, Apple, Amazon, Google or Nvidia. Or special situations in residential or commercial real estate.
Or why the investment I’m not about to make makes no sense at all (for me). For example, Boeing, PayPal, Alibaba, cannabis or crypto.
I love reading good books. When I was young I learned “speed reading.” The key is not to read faster, but to figure what each book is worth — half an hour or ten hours. Some books make one point, which you can figure out in minutes. Read the introduction. Scan the table of contents. That’s it. Novels are to be enjoyed. Business books are to learn from.
Kindle is the best. You get delivery in seconds. Highlight a passage. Then find it on your special reading page in the Amazon cloud, auto-saved there. The best cloud invention ever.
This time of year every publication has its Best Books of the Year list.
My favorite list this year is the Economist’s. It’s long. The Economist describes its list as “Our favourite works considered God, opioids, China and cannibalism.“
Here’s the full list. Click here.
Useful things I have discovered
+ PayPal is not useful in auto-pay accounts. BusinessWeek has a deal — $1.99 a month for three months and then your life savings each month after that. PayPal used to have a way to kill auto-pay “deals.” No more. Now I can’t find a single reason to use PayPal. Maybe if they had done what Elon laid out of them, the stock would be worth owning.
+ Omicron is exploding. The best way of protect yourself is a booster shot. Get it today. Don’t delay. Please.
+ Overhead lighting doesn’t work well in Zoom. Turn off your overhead lights and face your window. Light yourself from the front.
+ If you’ve lost your cell phone, ask Alexa to call it. She’s very obedient. She has a record of every word you’ve ever said. (NO.)
+ A bunch of brainy people are making a fortune off the market’s volatility. Don’t believe me? Check out charts of Amazon.
+ Saying NO is more important than saying YES. The Fed is tightening. Hence we hear “Don’t fight the fed,” which means the bloom is off ultra-high flying stocks, like tech stocks with no earnings. That’s what the gurus say. Yet, today, many highflyers with no earnings are going up — like DDOG, TEAM, ASND, DOCU, NET and PANW. The best news today is NVAX which is up 10%. It’s my “big” biotech gamble. The only one.
+ Dietary supplements are useless for most of us. We get everything we need in the food we eat. Dietary supplements are not regulated, which means they could (and do often) contain bad stuff that can cause us to get sick. Very sick. Here’s a story on supplements from Men’s Health magazine:
The Toxic Supplement Hunter
Some pills and powders can cause more pain than gain. But there’s one doctor turned investigator who’s taking on
sketchy manufacturers one false claim at a time.
For the full eye-opening story, click here.
An all plant diet can actually cure diabetes and save your toes and limbs. Read how New York’s new mayor did it. Click here. He wrote a book called “Healthy at Last: A Plant-Based Approach to Preventing and Reversing Diabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses.
To buy the book, Click here.
New stuff
+ Qantas is switching its fleet to Airbus, a blow to Boeing. Boeing is one of those stocks whose management has been a total disappointment to me. Read the entire story in The Australian. Click here.
+ We’re just out with the 32nd and much expanded and vastly improved edition of Newton’s Telecom Dictionary. Here’s the front cover, the spine and the back cover.
It’s an enormous accomplishment. It defines 33,889 terms — basically everything you need to know about technology — from the Internet to 5G and everything in between. We wrote the dictionary is non-technical business language anyone should be able to understand. Our goal is to explain what the technology means, what it does, how you use it, what its benefits are and the pitfalls to watch out for. Think of this as useful if you’re trying to figure today’s exploding technology. The book is 1,550 pages which is probably the biggest book you’ll ever own. It’s called “Dictionary” , but it’s really an encyclopedia. The best you’ll ever own. Please buy a copy from Amazon. Only $32.16. Click here.
+ This gadget is among the best hearing aids I’ve ever found. Use it to clean your ears of hair. That way the wax won’t cling and you’ll hear better. I don’t make this up. It really works.
Only $24. Click here.
+ The greatest travel bargain is a $1,600 round trip business class fare from New York to Paris. It’s on a good airline. My friend has used the airline dozens of times and loves it. Click here.
Urgent Covid vaccine warning
On his way home after his vaccine booster shot, he had seriously blurred vision.
When he got home, he called the vaccination center for help seeing a doctor, or being hospitalized.
He was told NOT to go to a doctor or to a hospital, but return to the vaccination center and pick up his glasses.
Oih vey.
Let’s talk dirty in Hawaiian.
Listen to John Prine’s classic. Click here.
Isn’t advertising great?
Wondering how your great Grayscale bitcoin investment, GBTC, would have worked — the one they advertise mercilessly on BubbleVision. Here’s year to date, compared to my tech heavy favorite ETF called VGT.
Don’t forget to buy grandpa a useful present this Christmas
We’re going with half the family this weekend to the sun. I believe they found a place with Internet. “Fast” Internet — 20 mbps.
If you’re still listening to all the experts’ stock picks, know they’re all wrong.
The world is changing. The Fed is changing. Our economy is transitioning — whatever that means.
Give thanks this Christmas that you don’t live in China, Russia, Turkey, Belarus, South Africa, Venezuela, Hungary, or any of the countries run by this collection:
Read the full Atlantic Magazine story on these wonderful people. Autocracy is Winning.
The article is brilliant. Click here.
See you soon. — Harry Newton
