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<\/p>\nSaying NO is more important than saying YES.<\/p>\n
NO brings you peace. You sleep well. You still have your cash in your bank or your favorite mattress.<\/p>\n
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The easiest places to say NO to are messed up overseas countries — like most of them.<\/p>\n
When I was in Russia last year, I asked people how easy was it to start a new business. They told me about permissions and bribery and the difficulty of opening bank accounts … My eyes glazed over. I began to understand why I’d never bought anything Russian. Why Russia never started\u00a0 anything of merit, like Waze. But Israel had, probably with Russian engineers who moved there.<\/p>\n
I’m trolling the Internet and find this piece:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Russian-Stocks.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I like the word “confidence.” Invest with confidence. Makes you feel good.<\/p>\n
The article recommends:<\/p>\n
Some popular Russian funds and ADRs easily available in the U.S.:<\/p>\n
Voya Russia Fund (Mutual Fund: LETRX)
\nMarket Vector Russia ETF Trust (NYSE: RSX)
\nGazprom OAO (ADR) (Pink Sheets: OGZPY)<\/p>\n
I have a mean streak. I plot their performance against the S&P 500 for the past ten years. With two of them you actually lost<\/strong> money over the past ten years. With one — LETRX — you made a pittance.<\/p>\n For the article on investing in Russia, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Russia and much of the world are awash in leaders becoming dictators and lining their pockets. Putin is alleged to be the richest guy in the world with way over $200 billion of net worth — more than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos combined. I wonder which offshore mattress he puts it all in?<\/p>\n Then there’s Turkey, Saudi Arabia…<\/p>\n I like this map. It’s the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI),\u00a0 an index published each year by Transparency International which ranks countries “by their perceived levels of public sector corruption.” The CPI generally defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit”. The blue ones are the best to invest in. Note: there aren’t many blue ones.<\/p>\n Turkey has blocked Wikipedia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Follow my logic:<\/p>\n Trump likes palling around with autocrats and dictators.<\/p>\n I understand why.<\/p>\n They all have gigantic egos. They all believe they know what’s best for their country and themselves. They all are stable geniuses. Like Trump.<\/p>\n They all find it irksome to have to listen to people who don’t agree with them.<\/p>\n Turkey is doing what, I suspect, Trump would like to do here — close down the non-fawning press and lock up all his opponents.<\/p>\n Turkey’s\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan is the nuttiest of them all.<\/p>\n The story from the weekend is\u00a0Finding Truth Online Is Hard Enough. <\/em>It begins:<\/p>\n On Saturday, April 29, 2017, Turkey banned Wikipedia. This came as a shock, even in a country with a history of banning everything from novels (Albert Camus’s “The Plague,” from public schools in 1987) to films (“Nymphomaniac,” in 2014) to entire genres of music (arabesk, from state channels in the ’70s and ’80s).<\/p>\n Previously, Turkey’s checks on the Turkish-language version of Wikipedia were limited to blocking only specific entries – like “vagina,” “human penis” and “2015 Turkey general election polls.” Someone in Turkey who followed a link to such a page would simply find it didn’t work. But why did the whole thing have to go?<\/p>\n Syria, it turned out, was the proximate inspiration. Wikipedia pages with headers like “State-sponsored terrorism” and “Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War” seemed to accuse the Turkish government of supporting ISIS – “a smear campaign,” according to officials. Some months later, after the full block went into effect, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz identified other entries that the government considered offensive: One was about 57,000 emails tied to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak, which implicated him in having had indirect business relationships with ISIS; another entry, about “Benevolent Dictators,” like Napoleon and Fidel Castro, included Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founding father. The government said it was banning Wikipedia, according to the law that allowed it to do so, for the protection of public order or national security.<\/p>\n For the full fascinating story, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Erdogan has built himself a palace 30 times the size of the White House. It has 1,100 rooms. Don’t even ask what it cost. Or what the cost of keeping the lights on is.<\/p>\n The big overhang on the world’s economies<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The Times ran a piece: “Trump’s Theatrics Keep China on Edge, Deal at Bay.” <\/em>The article included these three paragraphs:<\/p>\n Even Mr. Trump’s supporters have trouble at times disguising their frustration with his focus on showmanship over substance and a nagging feeling that the president doesn’t want the show to end.<\/p>\n In a letter to the president in May, Zippy Duvall, the president of the American Farm Bureau, said farmers faced “near-unprecedented economic uncertainty and hardship” stemming from the escalation of tariffs in China and other key markets. He urged Mr. Trump to make a deal as soon as possible, saying “time is running out for many in agriculture.”<\/p>\n But Mr. Trump’s approach has complicated his ability to get a final deal, including securing the big farm commitments that he showcased last month. American negotiators are now left with the difficult task of translating the massive purchases Mr. Trump requested – larger purchases “than any time in our history, by far” – into the actual text of a trade agreement.<\/p>\n While China needs and wants to buy agricultural goods like soybeans and pork, it has balked on terms that would leave it exposed to accusations that it favors American products over other countries’, as well as agreements that could result in more American tariffs if its purchases do not come through.<\/p>\n Read the full piece here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n I found Lloyd Blankfein’s brilliant interview on CNBC yesterday<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n To watch the interview, click here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/RussianStocks.jpg\")
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