![\"DJIFallingKnife\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/DJIFallingKnife.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBut it felt pretty gruesome in the early days of 2009. A lot of\u00a0depressing talk. No one told you to buy then. But stock prices turned and shot up like a rocket. Warren Buffet says buy when the blood flows in the streets, as it was in early 2009. Buy them when everyone is selling them.<\/p>\n
It’s not easy. Try these. Are they worth buying now? The logic? One day interest rates will rise (they already have a little).<\/p>\n
All three were great investments for a long, long time. But then they fell and we got out. Is it time to dip our toes in? Perhaps.<\/p>\n BlackRock is the world’s biggest investor.<\/strong> It’s the subject of a cover story in this week’s Economist: Here’s a list of BlackRock’s key holdings. Nice list:<\/p>\n BlackRock is not to be confused with Blackstone (BX), which I really like (and which has been on my recommended list for a while — see right hand column).<\/p>\n The simple case for owning SoftBank: <\/strong><\/span>It’s a really well-run company. And it owns about 37% of Alibaba, China’s largest online shopping site, which is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined and accounts for 60% of all the parcels delivered in China.<\/span><\/p>\n Dan Loeb pounded the table for SFTBY because of its ownership in Alibaba, which may come public soon. \u00a0Read more on this. Click here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> \u00a0More on Alibaba here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n My friend’s daughter loves ADSK’s products: <\/strong>Items:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n + She works for an electrical engineering company.<\/p>\n + She and her colleagues have been using Autodesk’s REVIT MEP (Mechanical Electrical Plumbing) since 2007.<\/p>\n + They use it to make power and lighting drawings for commercial and residential buildings (hospitals, hotels, aircraft hangars, stores, i.e., any building or other structure).<\/p>\n + It’s database-based and 3D-oriented.<\/p>\n + They get strong support from Autodesk.<\/p>\n Yesterday<\/strong><\/a> I wrote about my new love for ADSK. This weekend, take some time and watch some presentations from this week’s AU University. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n There will be more crime on Wall Street.<\/strong><\/span> And it’s your own job to protect yourself. The government won’t protect you. That’s the inescapable conclusion from the latest acquittal of some bad guys. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has been covering the court case and concludes:<\/p>\n You can send a guy away for life on a murder charge based on a speck of blood and an old lady who saw a piece of a license number on a car screeching away from the scene. But you need to build a massive rhetorical case from scratch just to indict someone for being part of a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy.<\/p>\n The crimes take place in a world unknown to ordinary people, so it is not unlike trying to explain a crime committed by aliens on another planet. In fact, the crime, in many cases, is not one that has even been seen in American courtroom before.<\/p>\n Judges need to be convinced they’re not wasting their time. Juries need to be walked by the hand down a very deep rabbit-hole of inscrutable paper transactions and then literally trained on the fly to recognize evidence – these trials are often more like seminars than court cases.<\/p>\n So bringing these cases takes forever. This one took forever. And in the end, for these three anyway, it was all for nothing.<\/p>\n The Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm case was important on a number of levels. Many years from now, we will look back on this story that began as far back as the late Nineties and recognize in it an early, smaller-scale preview of the major global manipulation\/collusion scandals that have already rocked the planet and will likely continue to do so in the years to come.<\/p>\n After all, the most dangerous possible consequence of the extreme concentration of financial power that has taken place in the last few decades has always been the possibility that these giants might figure out ways to work together, to game the costs of things for the rest of us. That’s what took place in this case, as these defendants (and many big banks which have already settled with the state for similar actions) were caught colluding to skim from the investment returns owed to all of us local taxpayers.<\/p>\n Something similar also took place in the Libor case, and in the global currency exchange scandal now blowing up, and in numerous other manipulation cases (involving everything from metals to chocolate) already coming down the pipeline.<\/p>\n All of these cases will share the same features. The defendants, if there will be any, will have the best lawyers money can buy. And if they’re charged at all, it will be for the most complex crimes imaginable, offenses so convoluted that it will take years to make cases.<\/p>\n This carries serious risks for anyone trying for justice, and we’ve just seen what those risks are. It’s hard to put these guys away. It’s even harder to keep them there.<\/p>\n Read Taibbi’s entire piece here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Best bicycle light ever:<\/strong><\/span> It’s called the Nite Ize TwistLit LE.D. I’ve researched these things for 20 years. This is the brightest, lightest, most durable, easiest to install and cheapest bicycle light I’ve ever found. The white is very bright. The red one is a bit weak, but acceptable. I have two white ones on the front and one red and one white on the back.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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