{"id":13426,"date":"2012-06-08T08:13:55","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T12:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=13426"},"modified":"2012-06-08T08:15:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T12:15:23","slug":"on-turning-70-this-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=13426","title":{"rendered":"On turning 70 this Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t feel old. I’m healthy. I look old. But I don’t look at myself in the mirror. Too frightening.<\/p>\n

I’ll never be a great tennis player nor a billionaire. I’ll never able to write software.<\/p>\n

But there are real joys. My family is number one. Their awesome accomplishments and their continued happiness. And Susan’s ongoing, incredible ability to pull it all together.<\/p>\n

I fear for the mess in Washington and Europe. But I have faith we’ll muddle through, without the wars we saw from previous economic messes. Think what happened after the Great Depression. Hitler and World War II .<\/p>\n

I’ll never be a great investor. But I’ll muddle through and protect what I have left.\u00a0 I’m still learning how to say No — what\u00a0 brighter people call “risk management.”<\/p>\n

I’m learning to do what makes me happy. And I improve those skills.<\/p>\n

Would I rather be in a different place?<\/p>\n

I fantasize about the fun I had running a business. Bouncing ideas off bright people is thrilling. But I’m too opinionated. And no one listens to an opinionated asshole with less than 51% of the voting stock.<\/p>\n

My big hope (and excitement) remains technology. I’m writing these words at 5:00 AM so I can rush out for an early morning meeting with an entrepreneur who has a really neat\u00a0 invention. Will I invest? Will he listen to me? Ego is a big bar to successful investing.\u00a0 It gets a nice boost when someone actually does listen.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I’m still curious. I want to know about anything and everything. I ask the rudest questions. What amazes my family is that I get answers. I think of life as one gigantic blog. Sort of like this one. Dabbling in technology, psychology, health, investing…<\/p>\n

I am lucky. I can afford the luxury of dabbling.<\/p>\n

As I age, I try to be less of an asshole. I’m learning to find fun in all manner of folks, even ones who are wrong.<\/p>\n

In coming weeks I’m taking Susan,\u00a0 the two kids and their spouses on safari to Botswana.<\/p>\n

Highlight of each day chasing animals is to have dinner and watch great African sunsets. The sunsets are ultra-romantic.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ll see some grandchildren in 2013 — before I finally croak.<\/p>\n

The boom in multi-family housing.<\/strong><\/span> Everyone and their uncle is pitching me on their syndicated residential complex. There are a thousand reasons. People can’t buy, because the banks won’t lend. There are lots of young people who needs roofs\u00a0 over their head. It’s cheaper\u00a0 to rent. Lose one tenant. No big deal. Lose one in a commercial office building. It is a big deal.<\/p>\n

Every few months, there’s another hot investment idea designed specifically to part with my money.\u00a0 The history of my investing the proceeds of the 1997 sale of my business is a litany of failed new Wall Street investment ideas. Which brings me to:<\/p>\n

The business dangerous cycle. <\/strong>A reader yesterday commented that I was a “momentum” investor.\u00a0 That means I like things that go up. And I get out of things which go down. Wall Street is a product machine. Its favorite is funds. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Funds have two benefits for Wall Street — fees and longevity (which means fees forever).\u00a0 Funds were good in Romney’s day. But these days we have regular, fast, dangerous business cycles. A fund will boom in one part of the cycle and crater in the next part. Since we cannot reign in our banks with regulation or legislation, we face a future of regular economic booms and busts. This\u00a0 means if you’re stuck in a fund, you’re screwed. You can’t get out as the economy turns down. . As I age, I favor things which are liquid — which I can sell instantly, if not sooner.\u00a0 Stop loses are still the best way preserve my meager, remaining\u00a0 capital.<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

French tennis climaxing. <\/strong>The French Tennis mens semi-finals begin at 7:00 AM EST on The Tennis Channel. <\/span><\/span>The Tennis Channel will re-air the semifinals from 5pm to Midnight Eastern Time, and then again from midnight to 6am. Womens finals on Saturday at 9:00 AM EST on NBC. Men’s finals at 9:00 AM on Sunday on NBC. I’m guessing the semi-final matches today featuring Federer, Nadal, Ferrer and Djokovic will be more interesting than the finals. The semis are usually more fun than the finals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/div>\n

Harry Newton who thanks his readers for their comments yesterday on photo sharing web sites. I finally ended up paying Phanfare $29 for a year’s subscription. The family is happy with Phanfare’s display of last weekend’s wedding. If you’re interested in how to share all those zillion photos on your hard disk (or worse still in your camera), read the comments on yesterday’s site. Click here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

File this away under “Boring is good.” It pays a dividend and keeps on ticking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t feel old. I’m healthy. I look old. But I don’t look at myself in the mirror. Too frightening. I’ll never be a great tennis player nor a billionaire. I’ll never able to write software. But there are real joys. My family is number one. Their awesome accomplishments and their continued happiness. And Susan’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}