{"id":6119,"date":"2011-03-03T09:02:48","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=6119"},"modified":"2011-03-03T10:17:57","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T15:17:57","slug":"gold-apple-brazil-washington-and-the-swiss-some-neat-investment-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=6119","title":{"rendered":"Gold, Apple, Brazil, Washington and the Swiss. Some neat investment ideas."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There are\u00a0 four ways Washington solves its deficit:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">1.\u00a0 Reduce spending<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">2.\u00a0 Increase taxes<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">3.\u00a0 Print money and let rampant inflation take care of the problem.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">4. Change the system radically. For example, introduce Australia 9% retirement fund. 9% of your salary must go into your retirement fund. Bingo, no need for social security. We could do some smaller changes, like raise retirement to 70. Bring in a means test for social security. It&#8217;s insane that I&#8217;m receiving nearly $24,000 a year. Medicare is sad. Ever since I went on Medicare, every doctor I visit does tests, tests\u00a0 and more tests &#8212; or tries to. Until I stop them. But how many older people can resist the pressure from their doctors for these &#8220;critical&#8221; tests. I went recently to have my ears cleaned of wax. He wanted to &#8220;check out&#8221; my sinuses. Apparently they&#8217;re connected to be ears. Upshot: my old pre-Medicare bill of $80 suddenly became, post-Medicare $450. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with my sinuses that a new, attractive nose wouldn&#8217;t fix.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Washington won&#8217;t tell us it&#8217;s opted for option 3.\u00a0 It sure looks that way.\u00a0 So it fudges its &#8220;official&#8221; figures for inflation, which it says doesn&#8217;t exist. Washington is 8-square miles surrounded by reality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Will gold continue to rise?<\/strong><\/span> Probably. Should everyone own some gold? Yes. I like SGOL.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/GoldONeYearAgain.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6132\" title=\"GoldONeYearAgain\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/GoldONeYearAgain.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/GoldONeYearAgain.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/GoldONeYearAgain-300x133.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This piece came across the tape this morning:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\"><strong>MARKETWATCH VIEW: Gold&#8217;s Climb May Be Sending A Message       03\/03 07:53 AM<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Gold reaches a record high. Is it telling us something?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Gold closed $1437.70 on Wednesday, using the CME April contract as the measure, up $28.40 so far this week and breaking through significant technical barriers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Over the weekend, Australia&#8217;s The Privateer had growled: &#8220;Just as it has since early November 2010, the area between $1,400 and $1,425 is proving a firm &#8216;ceiling&#8217; for gold.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe Gartman Letter was more direct on Tuesday: &#8220;Someone &#8230; or something &#8230; has kept a virtual lid on the gold market at or near $1,414-$1,416 for the past many months and has certainly been at work for the past two weeks making certain that gold does not push upward through that level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Consequently the new, adjusted gold chart looks very exciting. Pring Research put out an early Weekly Infomovie Report on Wednesday morning, saying of the ( for practical purposes identical to gold) SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD) chart: &#8220;The break-out is likely to be a valid one. That&#8217;s important because these consolidation formations are typically followed by price moves far in excess of that suggested by their size.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">The Aden Forecast&#8217;s Wednesday evening Weekly Update has swung entirely positive: &#8220;Now that gold is hitting new highs, it&#8217;s still to be seen if this is really the start of an A rise or an extended C rise. In either case, it&#8217;s very bullish.&#8221;<br \/>\n(Last week the Aden Forecast was still entertaining the possibility that gold remained in the undesirable &#8220;D&#8221; decline phase.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Can gold go further? MarketVane&#8217;s Bullish Consensus appears to say yes. On Wednesday, gold rose to a 2011 high of 80% but the previous night a LeMetropoleCafe correspondent pointed out that, prior to the 2008 crash, tops generally involved several days in the 90s. Mark Hulbert&#8217;s HGNSI appeared to support this optimism. (&#8211;but after Wednesday&#8217;s action, HGNSI jumped very dramatically, to 71.9% vs. a record high of 89.58%, which will certainly disturb contrarians.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">What is going on? Obviously, the Middle East and the oil squeeze have to be considered. But two (hopefully) longer-term factors also command attention.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">News of a recent stunning acceleration in Chinese imports is spreading. This week UBS published a report saying China imported 200 metric tonnes of gold in the first two months of this year, which suggests an astonishing and bullish restructuring of the physical market.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Possibly more important are signs of a dramatic slump in confidence in U.S. economic management. Symptomatic of this is the normally somewhat-deferential Gartman Letter.<br \/>\nDiscussing Fed Chairman Bernanke&#8217;s Tuesday Congressional testimony, Dennis Gartman complained of &#8220;what we consider to have been one of the worst performances by an American central banker before a congressional delegation that we can remember &#8230; but then again we&#8217;ve only a memory going back to the days of William McChesney Martin, so our pool from which to draw is limited.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">&#8220;The Fed Chairman seemed all too willing to write off the current global price increases of food and energy as simply the result of exogenous market circumstances. &#8230; We have heretofore been overt and very consistent defenders of the Fed and of Dr. Bernanke &#8230; but the Fed chairman&#8217;s denigration of the problems attendant to rising food and energy yesterday caught us off guard, as it apparently caught everyone else off guard also. It was within a few minutes of his discussion that gold prices soared. They should have. They responded properly and they responded well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">It&#8217;s not just Middle Eastern turmoil that is alarmingly reminiscent of the late 1970s!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">(Peter Brimelow is author of &#8220;The Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit From Investment Newsletters.&#8221; He writes for MarketWatch. He can be reached at 415- 439-6400 or by email at AskNewswires@dowjones.com.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Nice chart.<\/strong><\/span> This ETF includes all major Swiss companies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Swiz.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6129\" title=\"Swiz\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Swiz.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Swiz.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Swiz-300x118.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Steve appeared. It was wonderful.<\/strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is him announcing the iPad2 at yesterday&#8217;s press conference. <\/span><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SteveJobsIpad2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6138\" title=\"SteveJobsIpad2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SteveJobsIpad2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SteveJobsIpad2.jpg 262w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SteveJobsIpad2-227x300.jpg 227w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">He&#8217;s thin, but alive. His creative genius has produced the world&#8217;s most valuable tech company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/AppleOneYear.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6137\" title=\"AppleOneYear\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/AppleOneYear.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"649\" height=\"288\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/AppleOneYear.jpg 649w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/AppleOneYear-300x133.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 649px) 100vw, 649px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The iPad2 is faster, thinner, lighter and has two cameras &#8212; one forward facing, one backward facing. You can do video conferences with anyone who owns an iPad2 or an iPhone4. Apple calls those video conferences Facetime. They&#8217;re magical for grandparents, and even those of us who would like to become grandparents.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Will the iPad2 sell, despite 15 million iPad ones already sold? Items:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ My sister owns a travel agency. She is the world&#8217;s least technical person. Yesterday she said she was buying an iPad2 to make presentations to her clients. The iPad was more convenient than her laptop &#8212; the one her brother sold her. (Yuch. You never win with the family.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Computerworld magazine reports this morning, &#8220;<em>iPad owners rush to dump old tablets for new models.<\/em>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Yes, Apple&#8217;s stock will continue to rise. Long live Steve. Thank you for appearing yesterday. I cried when I saw you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>God bless the Internet.<\/strong><\/span> Here&#8217;s a kitchen faucet. It&#8217;s called MOEN KLeo.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/moen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6126\" title=\"moen\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/moen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"243\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/moen.jpg 243w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/moen-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It costs $551.55 on MOEN&#8217;s web site, but only $208 on Home Depot&#8217;s web site. Go figure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">You can also buy faucets on Amazon &#8212; what can&#8217;t you buy on Amazon? What&#8217;s great about Amazon is that it runs instructions on how to install things. Check out this one on faucets. Click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/feature.html\/ref=amb_link_354822922_1?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=2410525011&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=special-offers-4&amp;pf_rd_r=0YGBHARVGGW6S53Y8A6R&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_p=1283870902&amp;pf_rd_i=B000TF8TAO\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Racist plumbing.<\/strong><\/span> Blame it on the Jews. I bought son Michael an apartment in New York. Then he moved away. I became a landlord. My first tenant was a pleasure, except his wife committed suicide by jumping in front of a New York\u00a0 subway train and he moved out. Then I acquired a Jewish lady attorney tenant\u00a0 from the West Coast and I\u00a0 became her chief maintenance engineer. My first job was to fix her computer. I did. She was amazed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Jewish men can&#8217;t fix anything,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I asked, &#8220;Why not?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">She said her ex-husband once installed a motorized disposal in their kitchen. The first time she turned it on, it sprayed her with garbage. He had installed it backwards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I wish I had been a fly one the wall. She was lucky he hadn&#8217;t installed her toilet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Program your cell phone, please.<\/strong><\/span> Last night the Missus and I were in a taxi to an expensive dinner &#8212; $23. Our cheapness is not the point. We found a cell phone in the back of the cab. We wanted to return it. It had no information on whom\u00a0 it belonged to.\u00a0 I had to call a bunch of the numbers before someone recognized the owner.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The industry standard is ICE &#8212; In Case of Emergency. Please program your phone with an ICE number &#8212; your wife, your children, whatever. If you&#8217;ve lost your phone or you&#8217;re dieing by the side of the roadway, it helps us good Samaritans find you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Grave dancer\u00a0 Sam Zell was on CNBC this morning.<\/strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yesterday they had Warren Buffett. Today Zell. Occasionally they get stunners. Zell is a stunner. Zellisms:<\/span><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ How much more commercial real estate do we need? Maybe none.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ People got into trouble with commercial real estate because they borrowed too much.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Brazil is the best opportunity out there. (Harry&#8217;s hint: Buy EWA.) Brazil reminds Zell of America in the fifties.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ America gives PhDs, but not green cards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Inflation is already here, despite Washington&#8217;s numbers. Inflation will escalate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ The banks have not recognized their real estate losses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Low interest rates are messing things up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>The presumption of Invincibility. <\/strong><\/span>My  friend Joe Daley loves tennis and golf. For several weeks he did both  aggressively, morning, noon and night.\u00a0 On Friday he&#8217;s checking into  hospital for back surgery.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Joe, we&#8217;re no longer spring chickens. Moderation is a word that belongs in some of our vocabularies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Good old Yankee (Red Neck?) ingenuity.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SwingSet.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6136\" title=\"SwingSet\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SwingSet.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SwingSet.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/SwingSet-300x155.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>The story of the Indian who married the Jew.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">An American Indian comes back to the Reservation to visit with his parents after spending some time in New York. He tells his father that he&#8217;s fallen in love with a nice Jewish girl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">His father is mortified and says, &#8220;You&#8217;re betraying your heritage and you&#8217;ll break your mother&#8217;s heart that you&#8217;re not marrying a precious Indian girl&#8230;.and you know how Jews are, they&#8217;ll feel the same way and you&#8217;ll be ostracized in both camps!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The Indian son reassures his father, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry. The Jewish family has already accepted the situation because they&#8217;ve gone ahead and given their daughter an Indian name.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Really?&#8221; asks the father. &#8220;What name?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The son answers proudly, &#8220;Sitting Shiva.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><a href=\"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/HarryNewtonNewShot2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"HarryNewtonNewShot\" src=\"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/HarryNewtonNewShot2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"125\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Harry Newton who prays for the day he can throw everything out the mailman brought that day.\u00a0 It hasn&#8217;t happened, yet. But yesterday I threw\u00a0 out all the catalogs and magazines I hadn&#8217;t ordered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are\u00a0 four ways Washington solves its deficit: 1.\u00a0 Reduce spending 2.\u00a0 Increase taxes 3.\u00a0 Print money and let rampant inflation take care of the problem. 4. Change the system radically. For example, introduce Australia 9% retirement fund. 9% of your salary must go into your retirement fund. Bingo, no need for social security. We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}