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8:30 AM EST, Monday, March 12, 2007: I've taken a long weekend. I'm in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Nice weather. Nicely managed. They celebrated St. Patricks Day yesterday -- five days early. Seems to fit their business schedule better. Hard to get excited about investing when the weather is so perfect for tennis.

Lex writes a respected column in the London Financial Times (the pink newspaper). His latest column on the stockmarket is interesting. He is concerned about the slowing U.S. economy:

What a difference a mini-correction can make. Not so long ago, financial markets might have shrugged off last week’s readings on the US economy as mildly worrying, if not very noteworthy. Growth in the service sector slowed to the lowest level in almost four years. Factory orders had their biggest decline in more than six years, following hard on the heels of dismal durable goods orders.

Labour productivity growth for non-farm businesses fell to 1.6 per cent in 2006, the lowest level since 1997. That fits the trend of the past four years and suggests the rate at which the US economy can grow without triggering inflation has declined. Even the week’s more cheerful data-points, payrolls and trade data, contained some warnings.

A slight fall in imports is no sign of domestic resilience – and supply constraints might well dampen exports, even if demand in the rest of the world remains strong. Similarly, a tight labour market and rising wages further strengthen the case against an interest rate cut, making a recovery in sectors such as construction a distant prospect.

Worse still, most of the payrolls report’s cyclical gauges, from manufacturing to working hours, remain weak. Aggregate employment, moreover, typically lags growth trends, while most of the jobs created lately continue to reflect the steady hiring by sectors less exposed to a slowdown, such as education, healthcare and government.

Needless to say, indicators are notoriously volatile, revision prone, or both. But that they provided support for a neat little recovery on Wall Street says a lot about how little it takes these days to reassure investors. Conventional wisdom still has it that the sky would need to fall in to make US equities look wholly unappealing. With corporate profitability near record levels, however, slower growth and rising wages might prove all it takes. And the odds of that happening before too long are shortening.

Little tests. Big implications: A fellow is trying to sell me on investing in his company. He gets me down to his office. But forgets to tell me that the promised demo isn't ready. He finally gets the demo ready, calls me and invites me down. I wonder why he doesn't bundle his device up and bring it to me? Or figure a better way to sell me. I worry when CEOs show so little sales ability. I always return to the statistics: the bulk of startups don't make it, and often because the execs fall in love their technology / their idea and forget about acquiring serious sales and marketing skills.

Switching to a Mac.
My readers emailing me how ecstatic they are that they switched to a Mac. All are universally unhappy with the constant housekeeping Windows PCs require -- from reloading software, reformatting disks, to updating virus protection and chasing out spyware -- and, their favorite, blue and black screens of death.

What's amazing to me also are the number of computer editors switching to Macs and writing about their experiences. This is amazing to me because over 90% of their readers use PCs. You'd think they'd care. But it's as though the PC press is on a mission to convert everyone to Macs. The latest: ComputerWorld editor and Windows expert Scot Finnie recently gave the Mac a three-month trial as his primary machine for work and home use. Now he's hooked. Read about his experiences in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of his "Mac trial" series.

The best mouse is the Intellimouse Explorer 4.0:

Reasons I love this mouse.
1. It's correctly shaped for right-handed people.
2. It has two useful buttons (left and right click) and one really useful wheel for scrolling up and down web pages. You can push the scroll side to side, scrolling your page side to side -- great for Excel spreadsheets. If you push the scrollwheel, you have another button. I use this one for deleting unwanted emails etc..
3. It comes with great, non-intrusive software, which lets you speed everything up -- from the rate the mouse moves across the page to the speed of the scrolling. I have everything on "maximum." It works great.
4. Finally, I tested about ten of the things, including two trackballs from Kensington which were awful.

The reason I've suddenly become obsessed with mice is that I have always used the pointing stick in the middle of Toshiba's (and Lenovo's) keyboards. But lately I've been getting cramps in my hand using the pointing stick. I have no problems with the mice. The cheapest way to buy the mouse is to buy five of them for $129. Give some to your friends. They'll appreciate them. Click here.

Tennis on TV this week starts on Wednesday:

Breakfast talk
At the breakfast table a woman grumbled to her husband. "Our new neighbor told me her husband has sex with her every day. Why can't you do that?"

"Without missing a beat, he answered, "Honey, I hardly know the woman."

Lawyer jokes (deserved by my recent experiences with a bunch of bad bankruptcy lawyers)

Have you heard about the lawyers' word processor?
No matter What font you select, everything come out in fine print.

They're replacing rats with lawyers in lab experiments:
1. They breed faster.
2. They are less messy.
3. You don't get personally attached to them.
4. There are also some things rats just won't do.

Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps while California has more lawyers?
New Jersey got first choice.

A newly deceased lawyer goes to heaven and complains that at 52 he's too young
to die.
"That's strange," says St. Peter, "According to your time sheets, you're 105."

What do you need when you have three lawyers up to the necks in concrete?
Answer: More concrete.

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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