Meantime, I notice a piece in The New York Times on them. It contains these delicious words;<\/p>\n The company has long struggled to overcome two big challenges: the industrywide drop in display advertising that has traditionally been its primary revenue source and the distraction inherent in trying to excel at many different things, from news and fantasy sports to web searches and email. …<\/p>\n “Marissa is the type of boss that makes you feel like you’re disappointing her at all times, so I always feel like I’m on the verge of being fired,” said Mr. Bonforte, who is widely respected for both his talent and his irreverence. “It’s never, `Way to go, Jeff!’ “? …<\/p>\n Just before the party, Ms. Mayer and the company’s other directors decided to stop pursuing the original Alibaba spinoff plan and instead slim down and spin off Yahoo’s core business.<\/p>\n That is unlikely to soothe the unrest at Yahoo, however, since activist investors like the Starboard Value hedge fund are pushing for new management, a new board and a new strategy, including a possible sale of Yahoo’s operating businesses.<\/p>\n Mr. Bonforte said those outside forces were beyond his control.<\/p>\n “That’s the problem with a turnaround,” he said. “The world gets to decide, `Time’s up.'”<\/p>\n Those quotes came from here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n I used to be a big time publisher. I’ve kept thinking…What would I do to save Yahoo?”<\/p>\n Break it up and sell all the pieces is my only thought. I’m not just not bright enough to save Yahoo.<\/p>\n I doubt anyone is.<\/p>\n But the board and Marissa keep playing the “Let’s try this. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try that.”<\/p>\n It’ s hard for people to sell the thing they love. But hope is not an investment strategy. No matter how much money you got.<\/p>\n The joys of being a landlord. <\/strong>Why luck is the best. I bought a New York apartment for my son. Then he moved to Portland. And I got “stuck” renting the apartment. That hasn’t been easy. I just lost my long-time tenant, who stiffed me for the last month’s rent. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n My broker, who I’m love, recommended we “freshen” the place with up with a paint job, and a new kitchen. Simple stuff. Not so simple. The building insisted we install new pipes. This made sense since the place was 50+ years old. We opened the wall and discovered rotted, corroding pipes… A month later we’ve replaced about 20 feet of old iron pipes with gleaming new copper pipes and the hole got a little larger and larger and larger.<\/p>\n I was hoping to have a new tenant in two months ago…<\/p>\n The good news is that the value of apartment has risen 50+% in the last ten years — despite the hole.<\/p>\n Luck trumps good planning. It always does.<\/p>\n Good news for investors using financial advisers. <\/strong><\/span>Wall Street is disgusting. These guys can sell you anything they feel like — so long as it benefits them (not you). Keep reading with your eyes open and your jaw on the ground. From the New York Times:<\/p>\n The rules governing how financial professionals handle the trillions of dollars they invest on behalf of Americans saving for retirement<\/a> are about to get a lot tougher<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Labor Department, after years of battling Wall Street and the insurance industry, issued new regulations on Wednesday that will require financial advisers<\/a> and brokers handling individual retirement and 401(k) accounts to act in the best interests of their clients.<\/p>\n The government move is expected to encourage a shift of retirement funds into lower-cost investments \u2014 potentially saving billions of dollars for many ordinary investors \u2014 while setting off one of the biggest upheavals in the financial services industry in decades.<\/p>\n “The marketing material that I see from many firms is, `We put our customers first,'” Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, said in an interview. “This is no longer a marketing slogan. It’s the law.”<\/p>\n The new regulations, which may be challenged in court, were proposed a year ago by the department – which oversees pensions and retirement accounts – and were modified after hearings and industry criticism. They are not expected to take effect until next spring at the earliest.<\/p>\n Many consumers assume the individuals and firms investing their money are operating under the same sort of ethical and legal standards as a family doctor – someone who is obliged to provide the very best advice.<\/p>\n But brokers are generally required only to recommend “suitable” investments, which means, for example, that they can push a more expensive mutual fund that pays a higher commission when an otherwise identical, cheaper fund would have been an equal or better alternative. <\/strong>(My emphasis.)<\/p>\n The Obama administration, relying on extensive academic research, estimated that conflicts of interest embedded in the way many investment professionals do business cost Americans about $17 billion a year, leading to annual returns that are about 1 percentage point lower.<\/p>\n “It has the potential to really change the way advice is delivered to retail investors,” said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “It is a really big deal. Revolutionary, even.”<\/p>\n The so-called conflict-of-interest rule covers only tax-advantaged retirement accounts and does not apply to most other investments. But it could lead to more sweeping changes across the financial services industry, making it harder for some smaller firms to do business and perhaps encouraging a further consolidation into larger companies better able to handle the detailed rules of compliance.<\/p>\n It is also expected to promote a shift away from commissions for individual transactions toward a greater reliance on flat annual fees for managing accounts, a move that would not benefit all investors equally.<\/p>\n Critics of the rule in its earlier proposed form said they were still reviewing the specific details of the new regulations to determine its effect on investors.<\/p>\n Jules Gaudreau, president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, whose members include insurance agents and brokers, said the organization was pleased that the Labor Department had incorporated some of the changes it suggested.<\/p>\n But he said his members still had reservations. “We remain concerned,” Mr. Gaudreau said, “that the costs to implement such a complex rule will result in higher costs and reduced access to advice, service and products for retirement savers.”<\/p>\n For the last year, the industry has lobbied Congress to delay or kill the rules, so far without success. Before going ahead with the final rules, the Labor Department held four days of public hearings at which nearly 80 parties testified; it also received more than 3,000 comments on the proposal from consumer advocates, industry stakeholders and others.<\/p>\n “We heard the concerns. We listened. We acted,” Secretary Perez said. “And I think we improved the rule as a result.”<\/p>\n Generally speaking, the new rules – six years in the making – require a broader group of professionals to act as “fiduciaries,” the legal term for putting customers’ interests first. They cannot accept compensation or payments that would create a conflict unless they qualify for an exemption that ensures the customer is protected.<\/p>\n If brokers want to receive certain types of compensation that can pose a conflict, they will be required to offer an enforceable contract that promises to put the customer’s interests first.<\/p>\n The firms must also disclose any conflicts and direct consumers to a website that describes how they make money. Firms can charge only “reasonable compensation,” and they cannot offer advisers financial incentives to act in a way that would hurt investors.<\/p>\n In using the contract, brokers will still be permitted to charge commissions and engage in a practice known as revenue sharing, which allows a mutual fund company, for example, to share a slice of its revenue with the brokerage firm selling the fund. Companies that pay more, for example, may secure a spot on the firm’s list of recommended funds.<\/p>\n The rules also aim to protect investors when they roll over money from a 401(k) retirement plan to an I.R.A. Right now, because the recommendation provided is considered “one-time” advice, brokers do not necessarily have to act in the investor’s best interest.<\/p>\n There are piles of money at stake: Individual retirement accounts held $7.3 trillion at the end of 2015, according to the Investment Company Institute, while 401(k)-type plans had $6.7 trillion – money that may eventually be rolled over into I.R.A.s.<\/p>\n Mr. Perez said that government rule makers had made several changes to their last proposal in an effort to respond to criticism and avoid creating a bias toward certain investment products. He said advisers would not be obliged to sell lowest-cost products if a more expensive product like a variable annuity made sense for a particular individual’s situation.<\/p>\n The industry was also concerned that simply providing educational information could set off the rule; regulators said that education would not be considered advice until a broker made a specific recommendation.<\/p>\n Wall Street was worried that brokers would need to provide a contract even before they began talking with a potential client. Regulators said the contract can be signed at the same time as other account-opening documents, though any advice given before the signing must still be in the customer’s best interest.<\/p>\n The new rules also simplify disclosures. For example, firms will no longer be required to disclose performance projections for one, five- and 10-year periods.<\/p>\n There are also allowances for small 401(k) plans. Under the final rules, advisers who provide advice to small businesses that sponsor 401(k) plans, or plans with less than $50 million, as well as advice to participants, can qualify for an exemption from the strictest rules.<\/p>\n Consumer advocates and lawyers say that a robust fiduciary rule will help thwart more unscrupulous brokers, like the one encountered by Russell Kazda, a retired mechanic, and his wife, Christine, a fourth-grade teacher in Illinois.<\/p>\n Their advisers took $172,000 of the Kazdas’ I.R.A. savings and put it in illiquid real estate investment trusts and later invested money in an options strategy. They ended up losing about $125,000, which prompted the Kazdas to sue the advisers.<\/p>\n “I could have had my fourth graders do it and they would’ve done a better job,” Mrs. Kazda said.<\/p>\n Andrew Stoltmann, a securities lawyer in Chicago who represented the Kazdas, applauded the changes.<\/p>\n “By imposing a fiduciary duty standard, this will cause the brokerage firms to self-police,” he said, protecting most people from often unsuitable investments like “nontraded REITs, variable annuities in I.R.A.s and active trading of stocks and options.”<\/p>\n My friend in the other cubicle<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Traveling down the coast road I needed to use the toilet. I stopped at a rest area headed for the toilet, went into the cubicle.<\/p>\n![\"YahooOvertenyears\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/YahooOvertenyears.jpg\")
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