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Newton's In Search Of The Perfect Investment. Technology Investor. Previous Columns
8:30 AM Wednesday, January 12, 2005: I spent all day yesterday in depositions. My head is bursting with investment lessons. About the necessity for due diligence, how greed clouds judgment, how blind optimism dispels logic, reality and commonsense. The specifics are for another time. This morning we're starting early, again.

We're moving into earnings season. We will not see stunning earnings from technology stocks. They're way overpriced. And earnings are simply not growing strongly enough. There's still an overhang of inventory and factory capacity is plentiful. It is not a time to be owning large tech stocks, like Microsoft, Intel and Cisco. It's a time to be thinking of puts on overpriced stocks like Amazon, eBay, Google, Sirius Satellite Radio, XM Satellite Radio, Symantec, Research in Motion, and my continued favorite, AT&T.

Meantime, the "hot" stocks frenzy has evaporated. It's wise to be out of them for now.

Cash remains king. Don't let anyone (e.g. a fast-talking broker) talk you into "putting your money to work." Your money is working just fine in a 2.25% insured bank savings account, or a 1.90% triple tax-free, perfectly-safe, short-term municipal bond floater.

That's it for this morning. The rest of today's column is fun. I'll keep the bad lawyer jokes for another day. Enjoy.


Stolen from United Media's web site. Click here.

A lesson in dirty spelling:
A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They sit down and engage in an animated conversation.
The lady sitting behind them ignores them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

"Emma come first.
Den I come.
Den two asses come together.
I come once-a-more.
Two asses, they come together again.
I come again and pee twice.
Then I come one lasta time."

"You foul-mouthed swine, " retorted the lady indignantly. "In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public!"

"Hey, coola down lady," said the man.
"Who talkin' abouta sexa? I'm a justa tellin' my frienda how to spella Mississippi."

Such positive reinforcement!
A husband and wife are getting ready for bed. The wife is standing in front of a full-length mirror taking a hard look at herself.

"You know, dear," she says, "I look in the mirror, and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled, my boobs are barely above my waist, and my butt is hanging out a mile. I've got fat legs, and my arms are all flabby."

She turns to her husband and says, "Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself."

He studies hard for a moment thinking about it and then says in a soft, thoughtful voice, "Well, there's nothing wrong with your eyesight."

Services for the husband will be held Saturday morning at 10:30 at St. Anselm's Memorial Chapel.

And now for my favorite tasteless cartoon:

I took friends for dinner to Whole Foods on New York's Columbus Circle last night. They were impressed. More customers. Good for WFMI, which is holding in. Funny having dinner there. They weigh your food. Last time I took my son, my dish cost $6.01. His mountain cost $17.73. That's a stark measure of the cost of feeding children.


Harry Newton


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. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look mighty interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. That money will help pay Claire's law school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.
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