Books: Reading the updated investing classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton G. Malkiel

Posted By on April 7, 2021

Book_RandomWalkDownWallStreet210402In keeping with a New Year’s resolution from “years ago” to read more non-fiction books and some classic literature still sitting unread on our new bookshelves, I’ve picked up a new edition of an “older” book.

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For April and more likely May (statistically good months for stock market investing), I’m reading “A Random Walk burtonmalkielDown Wall Street” by Burton G. Malkiel. The business, or more precisely, investing book was originally published in 1973, but it has been updated 12 times, the last revision in 2020 and should a little more current and up-to-date.

Some of these older value investing oriented books are timeless and have patterns and habits by excellent teachers, successful business leaders and investors that have stood the test of time. One of my favorites is The Little Book series mentioned before when reading The Little Book of Value Investing by Christopher H. Browne. I’m hoping this will be another?

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Political corporate activism in Georgia, boycotts and investing

Posted By on April 6, 2021

Democrats have been gaining ground over the past few years with their “hate Trump” blitzing supported by the leftists, big tech and mainstream media (one in the same from what I’ve seen), and continue to put heavy pressure politicians and corporations. Just as with the tactics used by BLM, Antifa and “woke” groups using racism, gender, income inequality, capitialism, etc .. the latest is an attack on Georgia’s election legislation. Politicians in Georgia are attempting to prevent chaos and fraud in their elections, not suppress voting (IMHO, November 2020 was a mess). There is a media blitz and Democrat lead propaganda painting this new law as if it were Jim Crow 2.0.

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So what does the Georgia law do? First, it gets rid of signature matching, so election workers aren’t trying to verify mail ballots by comparing John Hancocks. This subjective process should concern both sides. It creates avenues for contested outcomes, with fighting over ambiguous signatures.

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Instead of signature matching, voters will submit a state ID number with their mail ballots or applications. This way there’s no arguing over handwriting: The ID number either matches or it doesn’t. Georgians who vote in person are already asked to show identification. Anyone who lacks an ID can get one for free.

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As the Georgia voting legislation was being hash out, opinions from corporate leaders and the community were debated … and for the most part understood and supported, but under pressure from the political activists on the left, these same corporations are “waking” or should we say becoming “woke.”  The activists have gone after corporate heads and corporations, along with sporting events such as the Masters, Major League Baseball … and their media pressured propaganda campaign and rhetoric is gaining traction once again.

atlanta2021-all-star-gameRecently each corporation has placated the left as they did for BLM and has decided to oppose the sensible voting measures that are supported, at last polling I’ve seen, by 80% of Americans ( that of Voter ID – you are who you say you are). Perhaps the most notable example of caving to the pressure of the activists mob is MLB moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta this summer – shocking. Other companies seem to be verbalizing in a way to appease the left, but are offending others … both moderate and conservatives who approve of measures so as not to have a shady election situation as in 2020. Personally the only realistic reasons not to have voters show an ID when voting is that Democrats think they benefit from fraud (non-resident voting, illegals voting, multiple votes, voting for someone else, recount tracking, etc). Preventing and cleaning up election fraud is not some kind of voter suppression.

As much as it pains me to miss out on Major League Baseball this year  or boycotting companies .. I won’t be watching or going to a Reds games and will be choosing other products when possible … I’m not sure what SellingKOonPolitics210405else Americans can do to demonstrate our frustration with companies going political or caving to the leftist mob?

I’ve always been an advocate for Coca-Cola Company ($KO stock) and thought of it as an all-American company and as a solid investment to hold in a retirement portfolio … but not when we don’t see eye to eye anymore. There are plenty of other good companies to invest in.

Music Monday: Paul Simon (and Art Garfunkel) – Kodachrome

Posted By on April 5, 2021

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Happy Easter 2021 – He is risen. He is risen indeed.

Posted By on April 4, 2021

EasterCrossFor Christians, there’s no more celebrated day than Easter … for without a risen Savior, no other day in Christianity would matter. He is risen indeed! 

BUT … why does the day always change? I mean, we’ve assigned December 25th to celebrate Christmas and most other holidays on our calendar at least fall in the same month? So why does Easter have to move around so much? Like a birthday, etc … there must have been “one” day on the calendar that Christ rose … although it was a Sunday. Hmm?

Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon.

A look at some Jewish and Christian history helps to shine a “little” more light on the subject, but reading a BBC magazine article makes one realize just how politically charged and difficult it was for churches, let alone governments and countries, to come to an agreement on when to celebrate Easter … even if they were all using our relatively modern (1582) Gregorian calendar. It’s no wonder they couldn’t come up with one fixed date.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who still struggles with the March through April wide span of daysthe earliest being March 22nd and the latest being April 25th. That is quite the spread … but why?

It has to do with the moon

The moon’s cycles played an important role in ancient times, which is how the date of the Jewish holiday of Passover was determined. Eventually, Christians decided to observe Easter during the same time as Passover, with early celebrations occurring on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring.

The Paschal Full Moon and Easter

The date of Eastera moveable holiday—coincides with the Paschal Full Moon. However, the Paschal Full Moon may not be the exact same date as the actual astronomical full moon. The date can vary as much as two days from that of the actual full moon, although the two intersect more often than not.

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Archive: Granddaughter catch-up photos from this past week

Posted By on April 3, 2021

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Tech Friday: A now rare Internet connectivity issue & speedtest

Posted By on April 2, 2021

We have not had many Internet connectivity issues since switching to Cincinnati Bell Fioptic fiber and then added a mesh network instead of traditional router (although the Netgear Nighthawk was pretty good – we move it to the condo). KnockOnWoodSmiley_aniPerhaps a lot has to do with companies building out the infrastructure with fewer buggy devices – but knock-on-wood – our current set-up has been pretty reliable.

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This past week was an exception in that something happened on 3/29 that made the morning connection sluggish. I suspected something on my end (it wasn’t) but by the time I started the diagnosing, all was back to normal … and since it has been a while between speed tests, I was curious. It’s amazing what a couple decades can do in technology … although 50/20Mbps today connected through my home network is not 162/124Mbps as it was in 2019 or 267/116Mbps in 2018 (I blame smarthome and IOT devices)?

An Akron/Canton CAK photo from my Palm Treo in 2006 #TBT

Posted By on April 1, 2021

While cleaning up one of my old Flickr accounts where my Palm Treo 700p photos were backed up, 210325420_52f26cbc1c_oI stumbled across one of the first photos with it I took and posted to this blogJune 2006.

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Even though the camera was lacking by today’s cellphone standards, I still think the Palm PDA turned Treo cellphone did a pretty decent job with this Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) evening photo and a few others as I traveled around Ohio and so decided to include it now, 15 years later for Throwback Thursday #TBT.

By the way … have a prank-free April Fools Day… curiosity of the EV company, Voltswagen! (the clip below is from last week … and I’m still unsure if it was intended as a joke???)

An etymology share: “What Time Is ‘Noon?”

Posted By on March 31, 2021

When was ‘noon’ a time that was later in the day … clocklike 3PM? Let’s check with merriam-webster.com:

There’s something aesthetically pleasing about the word noon. Its palindromic spelling feels appropriate for the middle of the day, when the sun is directly overhead and the hands on the clock are pointed upward in a straight line. It’s even spelled with letters found more or less in the middle of the alphabet.

But there was once a time when noon referred to a different time of day—and that fact is reflected in the word’s etymology.

Noon takes a path through Middle and Old English, where nōn denoted the ninth hour from sunrise. That word derives from the Latin nonus, meaning “ninth,” related to novem, the word for the number nine. If you mark sunrise at approximately 6:00 in the morning, that puts noon at around what we would now call 3:00 P.M. Romans called what we now call noon meridiem, literally the “middle of the day”; hence our designations A.M. (for ante meridiem) and P.M. (post meridiem) for the hours before and after the noon hour.

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After 6 days, the Ever Given is moving and the Suez Canal is open

Posted By on March 30, 2021

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The news that has captured much of the of the world’s interest this week was the very large Ever Given container ship lodged sideways in the Suez Canal by EvergivenStuckSuezChart40+ mph winds (and perhaps some mechanical issues?). The “Empire State Building” size ship snarled traffic for 6 days surprising most people as to just how difficult it was to refloat and move back into the channel. Thankfully on Monday it was finally freed.

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It wasn’t until I saw the navigable channel illustration (right), did I understand how the ship was wedged in so tight. It was still shocking that even the largest tugs struggled to pull it loose and only after days of dredging and waiting on tides. It was also eye-opening to see just how much of the world economy in our JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing, inventories and supply culture we all depend on, especially now that businesses are starting to open after nearly o year of COVID19 shutdowns.

Music Monday: The Band and Kodachrome photography

Posted By on March 29, 2021

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Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
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