Who wants to think about anything except to enjoy the glorious spring weather and the flowering trees.
Here’s Columbia County, New York mid-state.
This one is bright green. My iPhone didn’t capture the full brightness.
The “anything” is confounding us. The economy grows. Everyone has a job. And Buffett sold more peanut brittle than ever. All despite the Fed wanting to clobber inflation by clobbering us.
Warren Buffett is a shameless salesman. That’s his charm. Here are Buffett and Munger dwarfed by boxes of the stuff. Good acoustics muted the chomping of Charlie stuffing his face with See’s candy.
I watched Berkshire’s Saturday annual meeting and marveled at Buffett’s ability to talk and talk and talk. He extolled the U.S. He extolled Apple (his best investment ever). He extolled compound interest. I’d heard it all before. This wasn’t a meeting to extol Berkshire Hathaway, however. All 30,000 plus meeting attendees are fans, shareholders and sold. They’re all happy shareholders.
The point of the meeting? To sell See’s candies. It’s totally brilliant. Everyone went home with a shopping bag of the stuff.
A side benefit? Berkshire’s stock rose nearly 1% yesterday.
As Charlie munched on the brittle, I thought about George Burns. When he was 100 (Charlie is 99), a reporter asked Burns what his doctors thought of his life — whiskey, cigars and women.
Burns answered, “My doctors? They’re all dead.”
Now that I’m banging my brains (and legs) out on the tennis court, I’ve been aggressively weaning myself off all the investment “experts” with their lousy attitudes. Samples:
+ “We are weeks away from a potential financial disaster.”
+ “Empire of debt.”
+ “Hard landing ahead.”
My favorite expert advice:
+ “Debt Ceiling Alert: Sell the companies which have high revenues from the US Government”
Yuch.
When surveyed, investors say they’re worried about Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan. I am too. But I’m buying more American equities — more Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, Google, Amazon. I am not following “Sell in May and Go Away.”
But then I have nearly 13 times as much invested in treasuries as I do in equities.
My present Zen is to enjoy Spring’s warmth, the blue skies and the local tennis courts.
Reporters and cartoonists are having a ball
Reporters are organizing their life with ChatGPT — only to find that the only useful result is a semi-amusing story of their efforts.
Cartoonists are having a ball:
Pun writers are having fun:
Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.
Tips
+ Want to fix something? Ask YouTube. It’s got videos on fixing everything.
+ Reboot everything. Can you believe this: Before you call in Rotor-Rootor, reboot your garbage disposal (the thing under the sink). There’s a little red button.
+ Find your iPhone. Use your spouse’s phone to call it. Or use the button on your Apple Watch.
+ Delete bad movies from your iPhone. If you don’t, you will run out of storage and Apple will charge you more for backing up.
Talk about absolutely lousy customer service
This morning’s email from eBay.
They got nothing else to sell me? Dah!!!
Creativity in speling
And my favorite:
Why I’m more cautious driving these days
The U.S. will set a record this year for mass killings.
Knowing that everybody now has a gun in their glovebox, I have become much more cautious driving.
What are you worried about? Send me your thoughts. — Harry Newton
