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<\/a><\/p>\nToday Amazon is up 5%. Last night’s earnings were delicious.<\/p>\n
Every wondered what the Amazon swoosh meant?<\/p>\n
It means we sell everything from a through z. Neat?<\/p>\n And they do. Here’s their sales. Up 43% year over year:<\/p>\n Now, back to my friends who took this\u00a0 headline from yesterday seriously:<\/p>\n John G., A reader, commented:<\/p>\n I have been reading stockman, Rickards and other hard money advisors and they have always had the same prediction.<\/p>\n Like a broken clock they will eventually be right and say they “called the crash” so they can sell more newsletters.<\/p>\n The problem with these and other advisors is they make more money selling advice than investing.<\/strong><\/p>\n They eventually become whores to their marketing and cash flow needs.<\/p>\n Someday when we are together I will explain how this also is why political and nonprofit fund raising scare tactics to raise money poisons their policies and has gotten us into the political drama we now live in.<\/p>\n For instance, the DNC suit is about raising money and keeping the narrative alive to raise money as DNC newbie bosses incompetence has left them far behind GOP except in local campaigns where they are doing better.<\/p>\n “It’s about the fund raising, stupid!”<\/p>\n Not the issues except those created to support what will raise the most money.<\/p>\n You can’t time the market.\u00a0 My feeling: You should always be in it.<\/p>\n You can time stocks. Buy good ones. Sell bad ones.<\/p>\n Look at AMZN, SQ and MSFT this morning. You really want to sell them?<\/p>\n But there are stocks you really do want to sell (or not own) like Whirlpool (see below), 3M\u00a0 and others I’ve mentioned unfavorably in recent month.<\/p>\n You need to choose carefully. My friend, Peter, likes Visa and MasterCard. But not Square. Look at the last two years:<\/p>\n The market this year — 2018 — is different to 2017. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Last year was straight up. This year is up and down. A little more up. (Though we’ll see.)<\/p>\n This year’s volatility brings two opportunities:<\/p>\n + To buy cheaply and hold. I’m doing that with Amazon, Square and others.<\/p>\n + To buy on a dip and sell on a bounce-back. This is called day-trading. I have one friend who has an uncanny ability to buy low and sell 25 cents higher. Sometimes he buys into earnings and often hits the jackpot. He does this trading in his IRA account — to escape the tax on ordinary income. I am in awe of his uncanny feel for the market. I don’t have it.<\/p>\n Amazon is raising the price of prime from $99 to $119. Amazon has got 100 million plus Prime customers. That means it just gave itself $20 x 100,000,000. That’s $200 million for the stroke of a pen.\u00a0 I bet they won’t lose a single Prime customer. They won’t lose me. Check out my safe. It came for free, yet weighed 35 lbs and would have cost $28.55 if sent through the mail. Probably more through UPS. I saved my annual Prime membership with one package.<\/p>\n The problems with Harry’s new, cheap $80 safe.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n + It’s not strong. You could drill through it. With effort.<\/p>\n + You can open it with a powerful magnet. Maybe. A reader sent me a link to a YouTube video.<\/p>\n + It’s not fire-proof at high temperatures. I haven’t tried that either.<\/p>\n But it’s fine to house valueless papers (like house deeds and college graduation certificates). And it’s a lot easier to get to than searching all over town for my errant bank safety deposit box. Moreover I’ve scanned all the important stuff and have that backed up on multiple cheap drives — which are even cheaper than safes. How the world has changed.<\/p>\n In favor of obsession<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n My life is a series of rolling obsessions. The present one is clean-up. Get rid of all the paper in my office. My groaning bookshelves have penned me a Thank You note. My BIG throw out today is this:<\/p>\n It’s called a fax machine. It still works. But I haven’t sent a fax in years. It’s also a copy machine. But I haven’t copied anything in years. I scan and save. I can put zillions of sheets of paper on my laptop with its 500GB hard disk. With my laptop, I can find things. I can’t find anything on my bookshelves or in my handing folders.<\/p>\n Messing with tariffs can backfire<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n + The U.S. imposes tariffs on imported washing machines. Prices rise. Good for domestic maker Whirlpool.<\/p>\n + The U.S. imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum. Prices rise. Bad for domestic maker Whirlpool which uses metal to make washing machines.<\/p>\n +Now overseas washing machine makers are talking about building plants in the U.S.\u00a0 Bad for Whirlpool.<\/p>\n Whirlpool’s stock performs not well. Here’s the latest year:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n