Harry Newton's In Search of The Perfect Investment
Technology Investor. Harry Newton
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Columns
9:00
AM EST, Wednesday, April 22, 2009. Two
great days for day traders and lousy for "investors"
-- if such an animal exists any longer.

My
real estate syndications -- commercial and retail -- sink under
the weight of falling rents, more vacancies, and looming mortgage repayments.
So much for that brilliant "diversification." Everything is correlated
in today's mess.

I remember when the estimates of bank losses were
$350 billion. Courtesy RGE Monitor:
April 21:
IMF-- Toxic debts racked up by banks and insurers around the world could
spiral to $4.1 trillion by the end of
2010, up from its $2.2 trillion January estimate. The IMF has raised losses
on U.S. originated assets to $2.7 trillion. In addition, it boosted its
total by $900 billion for toxic assets originated in Europe and Asia. Banks
and insurers have so far owned up to $1.29 trillion in writedowns (about
$800bn in U.S., $400bn in Europe, remainder in Asia). RGE calculates that
U.S. banks/brokers will take a $1.8T writedown, EU banks $1.4-1.8T, and
the remainder in Asia.
Real
estate sucks, maybe yes, maybe no. Now is
the time to buy Florida real estate. There are two reasons: It's cheap. They
don't have any income tax (so long as you stay there 6 months and one day).
Items:
+
A gorgeous condo is reduced from
$700,000 to $160,000.
+ A 3500 square
foot house with boat slip on the water is reduced from .$1.8 million to $500,000.
+ A four-bedroom
house listed for $379,000, now foreclosed is selling for $64,400.
And elsewhere
in Greenwich, Connecticut, the Wall Street Journal reports that the manor
house of the late Leonia Hemsley, has been reduced by $50 million to a mere
$75 million.

Called Dunnellen
Hall, the 20,000-square-foot Jacobean-style brick mansion is set on a park-like
property in the Greenwich back country with views of the Long Island Sound.
Brochure photos show a large marble reflecting pool and fountain in front
and a back terrace leading to a rock- and plant-lined koi pond, flower beds,
a large rectangular pool, many trees and a vast green lawn. The home has more
than seven main bedrooms plus a staff wing with six bedrooms. The home's baronial
features include ornate lamp posts along the driveway, travertine marble floors,
15th-century fireplaces, extensive wood paneling, patterned plaster ceilings,
two dining rooms, a wine cellar and a 52-by-26-foot indoor pool,
Remember the
building at 15 Central Park West that raised its prices 19 times during construction
in the mid-2000s?

Well a friend
bought a 5.000 square foot apartment for $30 million, was promptly offered
$48 million, rejected the offer, put it up for sale at $90 million, got offered
$72 million, which he rejected. He is now stuck with it. He's renting it at
$75,000 a month, which doesn't cover the mortgage, let alone the maintenance.
How much is the mortgage? I don't know. But let's say he borrowed 75% of the
purchase price. That would be $22,500,000. Let's say he's paying 5.5% over
30 years. That means his monthly payment would be $130,591 -- or about 74%
above his rental.
Time
to look at your 401(k).
"There clearly has been a raid on 401(k) plans by Wall Street."
Fees can eat up half the income of a 30-year plan. Fees include:
+ Legal fees
+ Trustee
fees
+ Transactional
fees
+ Stewardship
fees
+ Bookkeeping
fees
+ Finders'
fees
You need to
check your plan for fees and, if necessary, switch managers. For more, watch
last
Sunday's 60 Minutes.
Fastest-growing
industries in New York City, according to
the April 27, New York magazine:
|
Growth-
Q1-09 v's Q1-08
|
Private
colleges and universities |
7.1%
|
Home
health-care services |
6.1%
|
Security
guard and protective services |
4.9%
|
Utilities |
4.3%
|
Mental
health and substance abuse facilities |
4.2%
|
Shame
on you - again. You still haven't watched the
Margaritaville episode of South Park. Drop everything and laugh (or
cry) yourself silly. If you're having trouble watching it, turn off your browser's
blocking of popups. Try this YouTube
link.
It's better than the one I gave you yesterday.
Become an instant trillionaire. This is the front and back of a
recent official $100 trillion dollar note issued by Zimbabwe. You can buy
this note for $14.99 US currency at CollectorsCurrency.com.

Frame
this bill. It will remind you what happens when a government prints, prints
and prints money. On April 12, Zimbabwes new coalition government withdrew
the countrys basically worthless currency from circulation for at least
a year and will rely exclusively on other hard currencies. Economic Planning
Minister Elton Mangoma said We
resolved there will be no immediate plans to introduce the money because there
is nothing to support its value, he said.
Recently, it
took 20 trillion Zimbabwe dollars to equal one U.S. dollar. Inflation was
at that time running into percentage points with 15 zeroes (like trillions).
Time
for jokes about economists. Economics is called the dismal science
because it is the only "science" in which it is impossible to conduct a controlled
experiment. You can't cut taxes for half the population and see if they really
spend more, for example, The standing joke is that an economist is someone
who didn't have the personality to become an accountant.
There is also
a theory that God invented economists to make weather forecasters and astrologers
look good. People claim "If you laid every economist end to end, it would
not be a bad thing." Another variation, "If all the economists in the world
were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

And the final
one is the good news that economists were able to predict 12 out of the last
5 recessions.
Thanks
to all the readers
who chimed in yesterday to my prayer that maybe, just maybe, I was finally
learning something. They said they were. And please keep writing. I will,
I promise. I wish I had more answers. Frankly, I feel strange. Each day brings
me more stories of friends in serious economic hardship -- of job losses,
of housing losses, of vacations cancelled. I see empty and closing retail
stores in Manhattan. Yet the stockmarket has been on some sort of strange
tear since mid-March, up another 127 points yesterday. It feels eerie and
out of whack.

This column is about my personal search for the perfect
investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered
with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor.
I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three
reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column
is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect
Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas,
concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address
is . You can't
click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from
software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role
in choosing the Google ads on this site. Thus I cannot endorse, though some
look interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please
note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay
Michael's business school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense,
click
here and here.
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