Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video message to the Russian people speaks love and commonsense. Watch it yourself. Then send the link to your Russian friends.
Click the picture, or click here.
The actual URL to send your friends is https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762
Simply paste it into a browser and they’ll get to Arnold’s excellent video.
Inflation or no inflation? No one knows.
We clearly have inflation now. But by the end of the year? Will it drive us into a recession or will we simply sail through it. And how will it affect our stocks?
Lately I’ve read many “learned” (and long) economic reports predicting this year.
I’ve never seen the “experts” so split between “It’s going to be great” and “It’s going to be awful.”
Personally, I think it’s going to be great. I believe our stocks will be up from here.
Look at what they did this week. Looks like a strong bull market:
But if you look at a one year chart, it’s clear the last five days did not put us back to where we were in those halcyon days of mid November last year.
If this week’s stocks stay where they closed today (Friday) or even go higher (next week), they will categorically prove that anyone who sold any stock in recent weeks — i.e. me — was a raving idiot.
So much for my 15% Stop Loss Rule. It didn’t work. So much for selling stuff that had a a big drop. Look at Amazon over the past 12 months.
You would have been totally crazy to sell Amazon at any time in the last year — unless you were trading it. But I sold some (fortunately, not all) much below where it closed on Friday. And now I feel really stupid.
What have I learned now (if anything)?
Stick with your stocks. And stop trying to be panicked into selling them — thus letting some smarter person buy them cheaper.
Fortunately, I’m not totally stupid. I jumped back into the market early Friday morning and by afternoon most of what I bought was up a little.
I think between November and Friday there were bad forces working on my brain — panic being the worst.
I hope you learned something. I did. Maybe.
Stay with the good stuff — especially companies earning profits and growing in an expanding industry.
It’s good the market bounced. My portfolio is still showing a “profit” — although not what it was in November last year.
Cramer told us that a quarter of the S&P 500 companies paying dividends had raised their dividends this year. That’s unbelievably positive — perhaps suggesting that all those horrid things weighing on us — the war, inflation, interest rate hikes, supply chain problems, 50 million locked down in China — were somehow being dealt with. And executives were feeling more positive going forward.
Stuff
+ Cutting the cable and streaming in movies and TV channels, means you need higher Internet speeds. That’s OK because all the Internet providers — from Verizon to Spectrum to Consolidated have all dramatically dropped their prices for one gigabit fiber.
+ You will need faster routers and mesh networks. Anything older than a couple of years won’t handle one gig effectively.
+ The more you can wire your devices into Ethernet and not rely on slow Wi-Fi, the better. Wi-Fi cuts your speed by at least 50%.
Britain’s Prime Minister said of Vladimir Putin
“His only instinct is going to be to double down and to try and ‘Grozny-fy’ Kyiv, if you know what I mean,” Boris Johnson said.
What does Johnson mean? In 1999, Vladimir Putin ordered the complete destruction of the Chechen capital of Grozny.
The Russian military laid waste to Grozny, killing tens of thousands of civilians. In Putin’s own words, his troops “fulfilled their task to the end.”
Here’s what Grozny looked like when Putin and his army had finished with it.
Putin is nuts. Look what he just said publicly:
“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Mr. Putin said.
Please send money for the Ukrainian refugees.
My favorite two charities are;
+ The World Central Kitchen. I just gave my fourth round. Click here.
+ The International Rescue Committee. I’ve given them twice. Click here.
I’m traveling to Colorado for a week
One son, one daughter in law and two grandkids. All floundering around on a steep, cold mountain.
They expect me to ski. I’ve bought a lift ticket.
Skiing is hideously expensive. I hear a one-day lesson with a teenage instruction is over $1,000 and a day’s list rides is over $200.
Those mountainous prices have not been good for the biggest of them all, Vail Resorts:
Please beg whoever you know in Washington to send more weaponry to Ukraine.
Don’t wish me luck skiing. I really don’t need to break a leg. See you soon — Harry Newton
