Free lunches:
+ Exercise. Especially tennis. From the font of all knowledge, Instagram:
+ Napping
Benefits include more alertness, better mood, less stress, stronger memory, improved brain health.
Don’t believe me? Ask any of the AI bots, like Perplexity or ChatGPT.
+ Diversification.
Also called ETFs. Here are two. My favorite is VGT, which is Vanguard’s technology ETF. It’s the blue line. Put all your money in VGT. You’ll never have to read my boring blog or watch CNBC ever again. The brown line is the S&P 500. This is a ten year chart.
VGT has returned 22.55% a year over the past ten years. You can see its performance here.
+ Don’t do stupid
The last step going down is the most dangerous. Hold onto the railing.
Look both ways twice. Otherwise you’ll be clobbered by an out-of control, motorized messenger bicycle.
Gyms are dangerous. They cause you to strain muscles you never use and fracture bones that get in the way.
Good surgeons are scarce.
Break something today. You’re done.
+ New doesn’t mean better
You don’t need the latest iPhone, or the latest Windows or Apple laptop.
When in doubt, when it’s causing too much agita, chuck it out.
+ Turn everything off
Read a book. Watch the Vienna New Year’s Concert on PBS. (Hint, it’s wonderful). Watch Instagram. Get your feeds right. You’ll be addicted. Mine include tennis, mammals in Africa, and mess-ups. Nothing more fun that watching motorbikes crash into trees or snowboarders fall on their rushy after trying a triple flip.
+ Be endlessly curious
The world is alive with funnies. I shot this bus in Manhattan:
I asked the bus driver what services he provided that we could enshrine in the museum. He laughed for ten minutes.
Is this is what our new mayor means by free buses?
+ Curious about AI:
Is it for real or is it a bubble? I think it’s for real, though I flagellate myself by reading articles that question its life — like this one in the Atlantic Magazine.
Next week is CES — the year’s huge Consumer Electronics Show.
In its run-up to the show, PC Magazine wrote:
Last year’s top AI announcement from CES wasn’t a chatbot or an AI-infused gadget. Instead, it was a unique foundation model, Nvidia Cosmos, which was developed as the first “world foundation model” built not for generating images or carrying on conversations, but to simulate and replicate the physical world to train future robots, self-driving cars, drones, and other autonomous tech. Instead of real-world training in closed courses and lab conditions, this model would accurately replicate those conditions virtually, allowing robots to be trained virtually. As we said last year, this virtual sandbox “could be the platform that enables future CES innovators…for years to come.”
Once again Jensen is CES’s keynoter. He begins 1 PM PST (4 PM EST) on Monday, January 5. His presentation is streamed by everyone and his uncle. I’ll be watching — not napping. I own oodles of Nvidia (NVDA).
My portfolio’s biggest percentage gainers are (in order) B, KLAC, NEM, GLD, RTX, GE, C, HII and GOOGL.
Dumb money things
+ Drive a Mercedes or BMW or whatever posh car for 100,000 miles. It will cost you exactly $100,000 more in gas than my new, much loved, Subaru Outback Wilderness. I use regular gas. You use premium. The only difference is you pay more — and you have no discernible benefit.
+ Every time you give your credit card to some company — think cell phone carrier, Internet service provider, parking company, video streamer, satellite radio — you give them a license to steal your money. They hike your bills when you’re not looking — which is most of the time.
+ Paper towels. At my New York supermarket, they’re $4.99 a roll. At Amazon, they’re $2.72. At my local Price Chopper supermarket they’re $2.25.
New Year philosophy
My favorite quote. From the latest New Yorker magazine:
(Peter) Navarro’s role is that of mad-professor hype man: the President’s economics mascot. As Navarro, referring to Trump, has put it, “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right.“
See you soon. — Harry Newton
Inference
Click here.
More Tips
+ I extol Google Chrome browser
