{"id":16298,"date":"2012-11-28T09:12:01","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T14:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=16298"},"modified":"2012-11-28T09:12:01","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T14:12:01","slug":"life-in-the-fast-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=16298","title":{"rendered":"Life in the fast lane"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Well, the boiler got fixed by replacing two circuits whose chances of going bust simultaneously are smaller than winning the $500 million Powerball Lottery. So we took the clue God gave us and bought a bunch of Powerball tickets. Hence I’m now giving notice that when my fantastic boiler technician, Rob Remler,and I win the lottery, you can take this column and shove it. I’ll spend my Powerball money (aka capital) and never ever agonize about investing even a nickel of it. it. I’ll pile the $500 million in cash in my living room and help myself to handfuls every day. If I live another 30 years, I can spend $456,621 every day until I die. No more fiscal cliffs. No more muni bonds being called. No more pathetic excuses from entrepreneurs who can’t meet deadlines or who wont’ raise enough money for fear of diluting themselves.<\/p>\n

I’ll spend my days sitting\u00a0 in my La-Z-Boy and happily vegetate.<\/p>\n

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However, since this is unlikely to happen, I’m back to the daily grind of finding the perfect investment. Yesterday we had our bi-monthly investment meeting. An impressive group of ultra-successful investors munched through deli sandwiches in a fancy boardroom looking for ways to assure that they also didn’t fall off the fiscal cliff. This bunch is ultra-optimistic — the world may be improving — and there was some good investment stuff out there. Yet for each investment idea someone suggested, there was someone there who could shoot it down. One handsome fellow is semi-in love with retail real estate — doing sale and leasebacks to solid big-name, successful retail tenants. He could earn 5% or even 6% forever. To which one smart participant piped up, “I don’t know anyone who’s smart enough to know what’s going to happen to retailing in the next five years.”<\/p>\n

This fellow said the day Amazon agreed to pay local sales tax to the states was the end of local retailing as we know it. Here’s his logic: Once Amazon pays tax, it makes no difference where it locates any longer. Hence, locate near the customers. Add to your low prices schtick the benefit of next day, or maybe even same dayW delivery. That will effectively kill everyone. who wants to schlepp to shop when you can punch a few buttons on your iPhone and bingo your orders on its way. No typing your address. No typing your credit card. Thirty seconds and your order’s placed. I love Amazon. And I love them even more since I discovered they sell everything I want to buy. And I mean everything, including (I don’t make this up) Lazy Boy type recliners. I want the Chocolate microfiber one — only $193.97. Click here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sadly, we sat in real chairs and stayed awake for our investment meeting to reach — after two hours –the conclusions everyone could agree on:<\/p>\n

1. It’s bloody difficult out there.<\/p>\n

2. Cash is not king, but it certainly has major charms.<\/p>\n

3. The only “free lunch” is diversification. In other words, if you don’t know what’s going to happen down the road do a little of most everything and pray.<\/p>\n

To which I’d add, don’t sweat your unsolvable situation. Everyone is in the same semi-miserable situation as regards finding their perfect investments. Get some exercise. Play tennis. Go for a walk.Or go to the movies. Last night we saw Skyfall<\/em>. It was fun. Make sure you don’t miss the beginning. There’s a great chase. If you see it in IMAX, make sure you sit near the back and in the center. The new Bond doesn’t wisecrack as well or as often as Sean Connery, but then Mr. Connery is 12 years older than I am. Which makes him positively ancient.<\/p>\n

Speaking of “problems” with every investment, yesterday I mentioned the idea of Canadian banks. the Bank of Montreal (BMO) is yielding 4.88%,<\/p>\n

Oih veh. Message body: A nice reader writes:<\/p>\n

I’m not a fan of Canadian Banks. Why?<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Because they are in-favor.
\n2.\u00a0 Because (I believe) there is a huge housing bubble in Canada due to the oil commodity boom.\u00a0 When the bubble bursts .. the Canadian banks will have problems. And then you have the currency risk on top of that.<\/p>\n

OK, so don’t bet the farm on Canadian banks. What’s our reader suggest?<\/p>\n

For dividends there are still options if you pick thru the minefield
\n1. DBLTX – This double line bond fund yields 5.5%.\u00a0 This is the institutional version and requires 100K min initial investment.\u00a0 The non institutional version DLTNX yields about 5.2%. This fund has not been volatile and is mostly invested in mortgage backed securities … which will be hurt less in rising interest rates as fewer MBS will be prepaid\/retired early.\u00a0 The fund manager is very well regarded.<\/p>\n

2. If you like Canada .. how about preferreds ..AZP-A … yields better than 8% …but you got to buy on the Canadian exchange (fidelity will do it). I like it because Atlantic Power has almost no coal powered plants .. and the common dividend would have to be extinguished before the preferred dividend could be cut …. This preferred trades on low volume so you need to buy on dips.\u00a0 The best time to buy preferreds is on sudden market drops … when they can be picked up at deep discounts.<\/p>\n

Talking about dividends, all the mortgage REITs have bounced back a little and seemingly settled in at lower prices. One school of thought says that traditional ones like NLY and AGNC are doomed. But there are two “different” ones that people seems to like more: TWO and STWD. Check out the charts on these two. TWO is yelding at.85% and STWD is 7.8% — both of which are better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish.<\/p>\n

I wish I could be more definitive. Stay diversified, my friends.<\/p>\n

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Harry Newton who still hasn’t solved the layout problem in the auto emailed columns. Today, I promise.<\/p>\n

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Well, the boiler got fixed by replacing two circuits whose chances of going bust simultaneously are smaller than winning the $500 million Powerball Lottery. So we took the clue God gave us and bought a bunch of Powerball tickets. Hence I’m now giving notice that when my fantastic boiler technician, Rob Remler,and I win the […]<\/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-16298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298","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=16298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}