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<\/a><\/p>\nIf you owned Ladder Financial (as I suggested), you’d be up nicely:<\/p>\n
Ditto for United Healthcare, another one of our recommendations:<\/p>\n It hasn’t been an easy year. There are several overarching lessons:<\/p>\n + When in doubt, stay out.<\/p>\n + Pick your own pain threshold rule — your inviolate stop loss percentage level and get out.<\/p>\n + When things change, get out instantly, if not sooner. Apple is an example. I’m sure they’ll solve their ebbing sales and their China problems one day. But I don’t want to be there through the painful fixup.<\/p>\n Ditto for GE. It seems like the last two much-vaunted CEOs fluffed up GE’s earnings, and understated the problems.<\/p>\n You didn’t want to be near this disaster. Catching falling knives is not healthy. Don’t do stupid.<\/p>\n I have some other charts. I can’t think of a single interesting product or service IBM sells — except their reputation.<\/p>\n Google and Amazon are the two FANG stocks I still own.<\/p>\n I got out this FANG disaster when it became clear it was a disaster:<\/p>\n And I’ve been out of Netflix when Amazon and others took it on.<\/p>\n There are too many car companies. All are selling the same stuff. GM’s stuff is more “same” than everyone else’s. You know anyone who owns a Malibu?<\/p>\n GM is the only stock I’m short:<\/p>\n I own Nike, because they’re having a great Christmas. Nike sneakers will sit under a lot of Christmas trees this year.<\/p>\n I just got a big bill for Rosie’s shots.<\/p>\n This is Rosie doing what she does best — sleeping.<\/p>\n This is Rosie’s sugar daddy (also in our portfolio):<\/p>\n The summary of all these charts:<\/p>\n + The economy is still doing well — for specific (but not all) sectors of the economy and for specific companies.<\/p>\n + Picking stocks you have to be a lot more selective. Today, earnings and growth count far more than puff. The classic puff stock is:<\/p>\n At one stage it just went up and up and up. The CEO appeared on Cramer’s show every ten minutes.<\/p>\n P\/E on CRM is now a skyscraping 131 on Fidelity or 150 on Yahoo Finance. Far too high for my taste.<\/p>\n I’m watching The Tennis Channel.<\/em> More fun than watching CNBC, a.k.a. BubbleVision.<\/p>\n The Tennis Channel is playing old matches. Easy for me to predict the outcome!<\/p>\n Auto-renewal is a recipe for being ripped off<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n SiriusXM will charge you $5 a month for six months, then up you to $15 a month. If you let them.<\/p>\n Talk to them on the phone, they’ll charge you $5 a month for a year and they’ll turn off auto-renew.<\/p>\n It’s a racket. $1 a month for one month, then $500 a month thereafter.<\/p>\n If you don’t catch it, your credit card will. I don’t like these fake deals.<\/p>\n Fun with Apple watch faces<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I can’t imagine why anyone would buy a pricey Swiss watch when you can have so much fun making faces with your Apple Watch.<\/p>\n Favorite samples of what your Apple watch can look like:<\/p>\n My grandkids love Mickey and Minnie because they talk the time. My favorite today is the infograph modular. The time, the date, the temperature, autodial SN (Susan Newton), my heartbeat and the Dow, the S&P and Nasdaq. My whole life.<\/p>\n How laundering is done with real estate<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I have some apartments to sell.<\/p>\n You have $100 million you need to get out of some horrible place, like Russia or Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n I sell you an apartment for $100 million. The apartment’s real price is $80 million. I deposit $20 million in a bank account for you in the Cayman Islands.<\/p>\n Bingo: We’re both happy.<\/p>\n By the way the “real” price on the apartment was $70 million. I keep the $10 million as my laundering fee, which I also deposit in the Cayman Islands.<\/p>\n A very useful book for people like me<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I write and code this blog. It’s a lot more complicated than it looks. Each day I use a minimum of six software packages. Sometimes they don’t work well. So I have to code by hand in HTML. This is the best book for non-techies like me.<\/p>\n Buy the book\u00a0here.\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n P.S. If you’re considering doing your own web site, make sure you have an Internet speed of at least 75 megabits per second up and 75 down. Anything slower will mess you up. Remember web sites are typically written in the cloud.<\/p>\n Christmas advice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Be careful what you wish for.<\/p>\n Young newly married Catholic couple<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Him: “We won’t be having sex for several weeks.”<\/p>\n Her: “Why Not?”<\/p>\n Him: “It’s Lent.”<\/p>\n Her: “To WHO? And FOR HOW LONG?”<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nHarry Newton. Whew! a big blog. It’s now 1:54 AM. Time to sleep.<\/p>\n