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Best travel technology, How to balance your investment portfolio. Finally, how to benefit by all the AI hype.

How to balance your investment portfolio

— 60% bonds. 40% equities?

— 40% bonds. 60% equities?

— 40% real estate. 40% equities. 20% bonds.

— 10% startups. 30% rea estate. 10% renewable energy. 40% equities. 10% bond?

— All equities?

There are theories. The younger you are, the more equities you should have Over the long-haul (like five years), they’ll always outperform bonds.

If you freak out — like I do — you’ll screw up. You’ll sell your shares when they go down and be late about getting back in. Like me.

Don’t freak. Pick an allocation that you can ignore for more than an hour! (Just kidding — for a quarter, at least).

My theory of allocation is simple: You can’t be fixed to a hard rule. Great investment opportunities should be seized as they come along. Which isn’t often.

Stay with what you know.

Stay with what you can sleep with (or on).

Diversification will get you sleep. Falling share prices means they’re on sale. Like Amazon today. Think positive.

Harry’s best Travel technology

We lucked out. None of our ten airline flights in our 24 days down under lost our luggage or were late.

Here’s are what works for me:

+ Whatsapp. Free voice and video calls anywhere. Everybody uses it. Facebook owns them. I have no idea how Meta makes money on this fantastic service. I don’t care. My advice: use them. Everyone in Australia does.

+ Reboot when moving. Your cell phone is meant to automatically log you in and out of towers as you travel. But it forgets. Hence, get off a plane and reboot.

+ Drink water. Avoid Sugar. Sugar gives you cramps. Water cures them. You need to drink sufficient water to pee five times a day.

+ Apple AirDrop moves photos from one iPhone to another. It is the easiest way to give your family your favorite vacation photos.

+ Apple AirTags are the absolute best way of keeping track of your bags, your keys, your wallet and your husband (if you don’t trust him, any longer). y family has an AirTag in every piece of luggage and backpack they own.

+ Most places have WiFi. Sometimes WiFi doesn’t work, So, use Apple’s Personal Hotspot, which transforms your cell phone service into WiFi you can use on your laptop.

+ You need noise cancelling ear buds, like the Bose …. they drown out engine noise and make flying pleasant. (Well, relatively pleasant.)

+ The Captio app lets you talk or type notes to yourself. Click “send” and you get your notes in an email to you. It’s the best app ever invented. I use it many times a day.

+ The Apple watch wakes you, but not your mate. It pulses your wrist but doesn’t make noise.

+ The Apple watch finds your iPhone under a towel or a pile of papers or in the bathroom.

+ Verizon lets you make and receive calls practically everywhere. But you need to turn on international travel — via a $10 a day charge or $100 if you’re away for more than ten days. Make sure you turn on “Do Not Disturb” and only incoming calls from people on your Contact List. Watch Verizon’s monthly bills. They always get it wrong and always in their favor.

+ My favorite middle-of-the-night app is Instagram. I watch animals I will never see in the wild. I visit places I will never visit — no matter how big my bucket list.

+ Switch your iPhone’s browser to Chrome. Much easier than Apple’s horrible Safari.

+ I carry a laptop — a ThinkPad X1 carbon. I can’t write efficiently on a iPhone.

+ The best iPhone “trick” is to hold your finger on the space bar. Watch how the keyboard changes to a mousepad. Then you can move your cursor anywhere.

+ The best way not to disturb your spouse in bed is to read Kindle books on an iPhone in reverse type — white on a black background.

+ Tennis balls cost a fortune outside the U.S. Bring U.S. cans.

+ Tennis racquets fit in 32 inch roller bags, i.e. ones with two (not four wheels). Sadly, you have to check 32 inch bags.

+ Australian hotels are pricey. Airbnbs are much better value — especially if you’re traveling with kids. Michael, my brilliant son, snagged one in Hobart, Tasmania, with a tennis court and a pool.

+ You can’t get boarding passes online for international flights. Get them at the airport. Takes seconds.

+ You need chargers for your iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches. The little chargers are 1 AMP. The bigger ones deliver 2.5 AMP.

This is the one you want:

Costs only $30. Click here.

Australia is a fun place to visit

The locals are super-friendly. Some speak English. It’s big, easy to get around. Oodles of tourist attractions. To enjoy Australia you should take a month and carry a hefty wad. It ain’t cheap. And jet lag coming back is brutal. Took me two weeks to recover.

Some things to see:

The Great Barrier Reef. Uluru (aka Ayers Rock). Sydney Harbor (go on the water, climb the bridge). Taronga Park Zoo (go for the overnight “Roar and Snore”), Tasmania, Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, the Blue Mountains, the Great Ocean Road and any one of the many Wildlife places you can pet and feed the local fauna — kangaroos and koalas.

Want a good guide book?

1104 pages Australia Lonely Planet. Buy the Kindle version. You can’t lift the paper version. Click here.

Stop driving me nuts with AI

Three points:

+ Every one of us is looking for The Next Hot Thing.” We like to be convinced of our brillliance. Think tulips and bitcoin.

+ AI is the next hot thing. But it’s been the next hot thing for thrity years — since May 11, 1997, when an IBM computer called IBM Deep Blue beat the world chess champion in a six-game match:

+ If you want to punt (gamble) on AI, buy Nvidia, which makes the only chips powerful enough to realize the new AI’s potential. Nvidia is not cheap. Anything but. It sports a P/E of over 90. It’s my biggest position. But I’m making money with my second biggest position, Apple.

Why I write this blog

Two reasons: First, I learn. Second, I help my family and friends. Some listen. Not many.

i get enormous pleasure from expanding my “horizons.”

I’m obsessed with my own health.

+ I play tennis every day. Exercise is critical.
+ I nap every day.
+ I eat salads and blueberries — my magic fruit.
+ I have given up salt. I’m trying to give up sugar.

Sugar is poison. This book says “Some medical experts believe that sugar not only ages you but may also be as bad for your health as smoking and drinking alcohol.” (Neither of which I do.)… “eating lots of added sugar can create changes in the brain similar to those found in people who are addicted to cocaine and alcohol and it’s one reason many of crave sweets.”

For the book, click here.

I hide things every day. I try to find them the next day. When I find them, it means I don’t have dementia, yet.

Latest stuff

+ Yesterday afternoon, I bought  HON and DIS and a little more NVDA and AAPL.

+ This morning we got news that the economy continues to boom. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, an almost 54-year low, buoyed by nonfarm payrolls increasing by an enormous 517,000 in January, far more than the 187,000 estimate by learned economists (!!) nd December’s 260,000 gain.

Inflation is ebbing, except in jobs.

Somebody said everything is baked in.  The Fed. The inflation. The War.

Stock markets typically go up. They rarely fall two years in a row.

Heavy duty philosophy? I like short sentences. So there.

I’ll be back. The’s a promise (and a threat?). Harry Newton