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8:30 AM EST, Wednesday, July 25, 2007: I'm not worried. Yesterday Wall Street laid an egg -- down nearly 2%. Daily movements in stockmarkets are increasingly violent -- up heavily one day, down heavily the next. Much of the movement is the result of programmed trading. In this, computers sense the market is moving down and sell and buy or sell, without human intervention. Their "trades" are often for tiny moves, sometime for arbitrage between different stock exchanges. Mostly they cover their position by the end of the day. So the next day can start afresh -- up or down, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

None of this has anything to do with earnings fundamentals, which remain strong. The subprime borrowing mess will not spread its contagion to the rest of the market long-term. Short-term, my friends in the LBO (leveraged buyout/private equity business) are having difficulty borrowing money. That affects their ability to buy public companies, and thus ultimately the price of publicly-traded companies. But this doesn't affect everyone. I have just received two capital calls for private equity funds I'm in -- they're still buying public companies.

Favorite quote:

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. – Mark Twain.

I genuinely like finance.google.com: Fewer ads and more customizable than finance.yahoo.com.

Free money: As a promotion, many banks will offer to lend you as much as $50,000 for very little interest -- say 1%. Take the money, "invest" it with another bank at 5.2%. A friend did it. He's earning $1,500 a year for doing nothing. Make sure you repay the cheap loan on time, otherwise you'll be hit with high charges.

Favorite Australian miner Kagara Zinc booms: My favorite Australian miner continues to do well. It now mines and/or is exploring for zinc, nickel, copper, lead and gold -- a nice diversification mix. This chart is from their latest June 30 quarterly report.

You can read that report in full here.

The desperation in magazines: Magazines are so desperate, they are sending "urgent" renewal notices out a year in advance. Magazines are obliged to tell you when your subscription expires. Some do. You can ignore most renewal notices.

"A wicked slim laptop:" That's what PC Magazine called Toshiba's new Portegé R500 laptop. It can weigh as little as 1.72 lbs, which is basically nothing. It's the lightest laptop, bar none. Benefits include: tiny, light, DVD player/burner and full-size keyboard. In short, ultra-portable. Drawbacks: slow processor at 1.2 GHz and no pointing stick (though a perfectly-fine trackpad). The best configuration is 2 gigs of memory and a 64 gig solid state "hard" drive. Cost is $2,999. I'm very tempted. Neat, tiny machine.

The new Toshiba Portegé R500-S5004. Available soon from Toshiba Direct.

How to send a short message (an SMS) to a cell phone from your PC: 1+the number@Teleflip.com. For example, send me a message 12014219618@teleflip.com. Another way is vtext.com.

Brilliant cover: I love the dark sunglasses on the latest cover of The New Yorker.

Two things you don't know about women: From August's Esquire, by Julie Delpy:

1. We need you to be reachable at all times, but we don't always pick up our phones when you call. We realize this seems like a double standard; if you'd like to discuss it further, just leave a message.

2. We only want to date men who can troubleshoot computers. The broken laptop is the leaky faucet of the twenty-first century.

How the fight started
I rear-ended a car this morning...the start of a REALLY bad day!

The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!!

He looked up at me and said "I am NOT Happy!"

So I said, "Well, which one ARE you then?"

That's how the fight started.

Harry's note: Harry's note: Again, I hesitated before publishing this "joke." But ... my latest theory is if I offend everyone, I won't offend anyone -- so long as the joke is funny, which this one clearly is.

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. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Claire's law school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.
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