In Search of the Perfect Investment

Gold (and to a lesser extent silver) are the only pleasures in this miserable stockmarket. Gold is now peaking. GLD and SGOL are exploding.

There is pleasure in in taking your few shekels and starting your own business. On my Oregon trip I’ve met happy owners of a high intensity car park lighting business, of a scrap metal business, of many wonderful, local restaurantants, of booming micro-breweries, of amazing hotels, and of one wonderful laundry.

Travels in Oregon with Harry has one overwhelming conclusion: America is alive and kicking  with truly creative business ideas.  As case one, I take you to a laundry in Portland’s SW district called Missing Sock Laundry:

The place is spotless. The machines are modern — though pricey. $3.75 for the small washers and $6.00 for the big machines.

There’s a machine that dispenses candy and soap powder. And there’s one that dispenses quarters:

The owner has a great sense of humor. The sign on the quarter-dispensing machine reads:

And tucked away in the corner is a wonderful noticeboard:

The place is empty — no employees. If you want something, text a message to the manager.

The laundry has excellent Wi-Fi. While we spent zillions of quarters washing and drying our clothes, we were on laptops surfing the Internet. Drying our clothes was cheap — only $2.

CNBC is also extolling the charm of starting and owning your own business.

Here’s their latest project: 10 Ideas That Made $100 Million. Click here.

I  sold Cisco at $36. It’s now $15. I’m not a genius. I tried to sell it higher but my shares were tied up in a a real estate security deposit.

It wasn’t a difficult “sell.” Once Cisco fell 15% from its peak, my inviolate rule kicked in and said, “Sell.”

And as you can see, Cisco has gone nowhere in the past ten years.

Cisco once was a high-flying tech company. But under its present CEO John Chambers, it’s made a zillion desperate acquisitions in continuing, but failed attempts to find growth somewhere —  anywhere. Remember Linksys, Scientifc Atlanta and the Flip video camera? They were just three of Cisco’s disastrous acquisitions that have essentially died, causing millions and millions of dollars of writeoffs and thousands of job losses. Chambers has admitted to “losing his way. ” Recent net income has been flat, viz last five year’s numbers:

Now comes word of Chambers’ latest desperation:

Cisco  said it will cut 11,500 people, or 16% of its workforce, through job cuts, buyouts and a manufacturing outsourcing deal with Foxconn.

The move is part of a $1 billion cost reduction effort to help Cisco adjust to missteps, deal with a drop in tech spending, and face market share losses and a sagging network equipment demand that have knocked Cisco’s stock down 32% in the past year.

The latest round of cuts come on top of the 350 employees who were released when Cisco shut down its Flip video camera business in April.

Cisco chief John Chambers said at the time that the company had drifted off course and he vowed to roll up his sleeves to make some major changes. As expected, the brunt of the cuts have come in Cisco’s consumer business including the cable unit, which has seen plunging sales.

The company said it expects to take a restructuring charge of $1.3 billion over several quarters with $750 million expected in the current period.

The only time you should EVER consider buying Cisco’s shares is a resignation by Chambers and the appointment of someone talented.

Another wonderful Borowitz Report.

SILICON VALLEY (The Borowitz Report) – A shockwave hit Silicon Valley today when, for the first time in five years, the day came and went without the launch of a single new social networking site.

Across this tech-heavy hub, Internet-savvy insiders were checking their BlackBerries, Droids and iPhones for an announcement of the next Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare or Google+ — an announcement that, to everyone’s astonishment, never came.

“We’ve been averaging between 500 and 1,000 new social networks a day,” said Carol Foyler, head of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. “So this is definitely a little weird.”

While there was no shortage of finger-pointing as tech-watchers across the Valley bemoaned the absence of a new launch, many blamed Tracy Klugian, 24, a website incubator who has created over 1,800 social networks and was expected to launch his latest, MeetCircle, today.

“MeetCircle will totally change the way people meet, interact, shop, stream movies, buy cars and have sex,” Mr. Klugian said in a TEDTalk earlier this year. “It will be the biggest game-changer since the fall of Communism or the birth of Jesus.”

Reached at his office today, a red-faced Mr. Klugian explained that the delay in launching MeetCircle became necessary after he learned that another developer in the same industrial park had launched a nearly identical networking site called MeatCircle.

Bloodied but unbowed, Mr. Klugian said he believes that he has hit upon a way to prevent another MeetCircle/MeatCircle snafu from happening in the future: “I’m creating a new social network just for people who are creating social networks.”

Mr. Klugian’s new social network, SocNetDevShack, which launched at 12:01 AM, already has over two million members.

Harry Newton who made it to page five of yesterday’s Oregonian. How? By holding up his arm and smiling as he flew (inched?) by the photographer.

I rented my bike and bought my riding shirt from a wonderful company called  Veloce Bicycle in Portland.  On seeing his logo in the newspaper, Veloce’s owner was so ecstatic  he digitized the photo, emailed it to me and offered me a free rental for next year’s Cycle Oregon bike ride.

Not bad for a smile, a clenched fist and pure dumb luck.

It was a great ride. For lunch we stopped by

and gorged on the most incredible, most tasty and largest berries I’ve ever eaten:

Oregon has some of the world’s most fertile and certainly most gorgeous farmland in the entire world. This is me in front of field of California poppies.

They grow the poppies for fire departments. After there’s a bush fire, the fire departments  send up planes and helicopters to drop seeds for ground cover. Stop soil erosion with these gorgeous orange flowers.  Neat.