{"id":9554,"date":"2011-10-14T09:04:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T13:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=9554"},"modified":"2011-10-14T10:22:37","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T14:22:37","slug":"developing-your-own-theory-on-managing-your-investments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=9554","title":{"rendered":"Developing your own theory on managing your investments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had I taken the money I earned from the sale of my business in 1997 and invested every nickel in muni bonds, I’d be a lot richer (and probably a lot happier) today.<\/p>\n

Instead I mucked around, figuring I ws smarter.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t.<\/p>\n

These words are here today because I spent an hour yesterday on the phone with my partner (from the business).\u00a0 He was eyeing his returns this year and last. He was thoroughly depressed. All his great hedge funds and money managers suddenly were no longer performing. They were losing him money. His handsome life style was being questioned.<\/p>\n

He figured that the next years in the U.S. would look like Japan’s lost decade — in which everything went basically backwards. He figured our delveraging (reducing consumer and corporate debt) will take 10 years.<\/p>\n

He’s 62. He should have 62% of his investments in bonds. I’m 69. I don’t have 69% in bonds, but more than he does.\u00a0 (I need to figure the number this morning.)<\/p>\n

The sad thing is that muni bonds don’t yield very much. Thank you, Mr. Bernanke.<\/p>\n

The good news is that muni bonds are not like traded stocks, whose price you can find from one minute to another. Muni bonds trade by appointment, which mean you can occasionally find bargains — if you have a good finder.<\/p>\n

Let’s take up this “Developing your own theory on managing your investments” on Monday.<\/p>\n

Meantime, if you didn’t read yesterday’s long column, please do. Click here. <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Annaly goes to Congress: <\/strong><\/span>Yesterday’s\u00a0 opening remarks before Congress of\u00a0 Michael Farrell, Annaly CEO.\u00a0 Nothing earth-shattering. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Change to an SSD.<\/strong><\/span> Friend reports “I installed a Crucial 512 gb SSD (solid state drive) — $740 from Amazon — in my older (2008) MacBook Pro. I have e experienced an amazing pickup in speed. Windows now fly open.” Click here. <\/strong><\/a>He writes,<\/p>\n

Since my MacBook Pro is three years old and was a little sluggish given that the SATA 200 gb hard Drive was almost filled to capacity ( 180 gb used), I was considering buying a new MacBook Pro for $3-3,500). However, the current laptop has a 2.66 mhz motherboard and 4 gb of RAM so I tried the SSD. It runs as fast as Marlene’s (his wife’s) new MacAir and now I can wait another year or two before buying a new machine. Saved my at least $2,500.<\/div>\n

Amazon also has smaller, cheaper SSDs. I use a 128 gb drive on my laptop. I keep my photos and videos on an external moving-platter (i.e. cheap) drive). I do that because I don’t need them every waking moment.<\/p>\n

I strongly recommend using external drives to back up your daily work. I\u00a0 do not recommend “cloud” services for now. If you don’t believe me, check out BlackBerry. I’d let Apple’s new\u00a0 iCloud settle in before I used it.<\/p>\n

Obama, the busical. Beautifully done. Click here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Latest favorite New Yorker cartoons:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Three Black Men<\/strong><\/span> (totally tasteless, but wonderful)<\/p>\n

At the National Art Gallery in Dublin , a husband and wife were staring at a portrait that had them completely confused.<\/p>\n

The painting depicted three black men totally naked, sitting on a bench. Two of the figures had black penises, but the one in the middle had a pink penis.<\/p>\n

The curator of the gallery realized that they were having trouble interpreting the painting and offered his personal assessment. He went on for over half an hour explaining how it depicted the sexual emasculation of African Americans in a predominately white, patriarchal society. In fact, ‘some serious critics believe that the pink penis also reflects the cultural and sociological oppression experienced by gay men in contemporary society.<\/p>\n

After the curator left, an Irishman approached the couple and said, ‘Would you like to know what the painting is really<\/strong> about?’<\/p>\n

‘Why would you claim to be more of an expert than the curator of the gallery?’, asked the couple.<\/p>\n

‘Because I am the artist. I\u00a0 painted the picture,’ he replied. ‘In fact, there are no African Americans depicted at all. They’re just three Irish coal miners. The guy in the middle went home for lunch .<\/p>\n

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Harry Newton who lost 6 lbs on his two-week Vietnam\/Cambodia trip. Key: Eat the local diet, which is fat-free — largely noodles and fresh fruit (like mangoes).<\/p>\n

Family is clamoring for pictures. One video does a great job. I hope you can watch it.\u00a0 If not, download the free VLC Media Player. Monsoon in Hue. Click here.<\/strong><\/a> I’ll run a video of\u00a0 the incredible traffic in downtown Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City)\u00a0 when I figure out how to chop it to 20 megs, which is the maximum my dumb server allows. Better, I’ll upload it to youTube.<\/p>\n

The big key in traveling in hot climes: Drink water and eat lots of salt.<\/p>\n

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Had I taken the money I earned from the sale of my business in 1997 and invested every nickel in muni bonds, I’d be a lot richer (and probably a lot happier) today. Instead I mucked around, figuring I ws smarter. I wasn’t. These words are here today because I spent an hour yesterday on […]<\/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-9554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554","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=9554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}