My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on January 11, 2020

Forgive me for being a bit redundant in worrying (again) about the hot tech stocks like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Tesla (TSLA) and Netflix (NFLX) among others as the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirts with 29,000 in mid-January 2020 (even a broken clock is right twice a day! ― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach). I’ve been wondering just how long these must have stocks can continue to rise faster than their earning?

Apple in particular has changed in recent years – from a somewhat reasonably priced money making machine, to what some consider a bit overpriced. Time to diversify? Of course, I worried when it was half the price it is today … then AAPL went on to rise another 86% in one year (2019).

If I still held the individual AAPL stock, I don’t think I could ride it much longer … in fact, I’m concerned that if investors decide it is time to cash in a bit as the $1.4 Trillion dollar company is being held in thousands of ETFs and Mutual Funds. A little selling to lead to more and even drag the market itself down. It could be the next melt down trigger, even if the underlying economy and stock market is sound. There might not be any fundamental reason, just a “run for the exits” where investors want to hold onto the 2019 gains in tech before the next guy sells his shares?

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Category: Financial, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: aapl, apple, barrons, djia, election, etf, finance, investing, mutual fund, retirement, savings, stocks, trade, wall street

Posted By RichC on January 10, 2020

This pet video of a dog in Turkey getting his back rubbed by a car wash is pretty impressive. I guess the human touch isn’t all that important to him?

Category: Humor, Video | No Comments »
Tags: car wash, carwash, dog, dogs, Humor, mp4, pets, turkey, video

Posted By RichC on January 9, 2020

It’s fun to remember all the cool looking Volkswagen conversion back in my youth. I loved the dune buggies and sports car models (that looked fast, but were VW Bug slow). Here’s one that I never saw in person, but back in the 1970s … when “vans were cool” … this would have been great. I still like it today!

Back in the 1970s, converting Volkswagen bugs into other things was a pretty popular pastime. I suppose it was the relative simplicity of their chassis design, and easily removable bodies that made them easy targets. One of the most amazing VW bug conversions I’ve ever seen has got to be the Brubaker Box.

Curtis Brubaker would convert VW Beetles into a sort of a low minivan. Like a Bug, it’s still got a rear-mounted engine, and all of the mechanicals are basically the same, though they raised the pedals, and moved the dash controls and radio over to left side of the driver. Of course, that was only feasible because the only way in or out of the Brubaker Box was the sliding door on the passenger side. In addition to the two seats up front, the Brubaker Box featured a sort of section lounge area in the back, much like larger vans of the era.

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Category: Automotive, TBT, Volkswagen | No Comments »
Tags: 95octaine.com, beetle, brubaker box, conversion, volkswagen, volkswagen bug, vw, youtube

Posted By RichC on January 8, 2020

Just when you have the perfect wireless plan (and pricing structure) figured out … someone throws a wrench (spanner) in the works. Thanks Richard Branson. #sarcasm

Our Virgin Mobile iPhones (we have iPhone7s and iPhone7plus) … are being transferred to Boost Mobile. Ugh, that doesn’t sound promising?

Category: Business, Cellphone, Idioms, Productivity, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: boost, boostmobile, Cellphone, idiom, idioms, sarcasm, virgin, virginmobile, wireless, wrench

Posted By RichC on January 7, 2020

Category: Automotive, Humor, Video | No Comments »
Tags: accident, crash, Humor, jumping, kia, mp4, run away, SUV

Posted By RichC on January 6, 2020

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Category: Human Interest, Music | No Comments »
Tags: excitable boy, mp3, Music, music monday, musicmonday, opinion, optimism, peggy noonan, song, warren zevon, werewolves, wsj

Posted By RichC on January 5, 2020

An interesting take on “inflation” and how different generations perceive the possibility of it accelerating in the next decade or so … and perhaps the effect it can or will have on our lives. For example, in the graph below, pick your birth year and note the color bars to determine how many years of 0 to 6% inflation per year. Interesting.

For millennials in Generation “Z” and “X,” hardly remembers inflation or is concerned just how painful high inflation can be. They can’t relate to double-digit home loans or borrowing for cars at credit card rates. The boomers often recall the pain and difficulty in planning one year to another with inflation running nearly 10% each year in the 1970s and 80s.

Some of use who grew up with this as a “normal concern,” anxiously look at the economy through the skewed lenses of inflation … even when there hasn’t been any for years (or very much). Instead of watching the Federal Reserve flit back and forth with rates in the very low digits as it has for a couple decades, the late Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker jacked rates up to nearly 20% and kept them high for a long period of time in order to stop inflation. I remember thinking, “Hm, if I could save enough to buy a few 30 year Treasuries yielding 10%, I could live off that interest.”

But it did not continue and as a result we now have a generation that has never truly felt the impact of inflation. As a Washington Post article commented last month, Volcker “not only broke inflation’s back but seemed to cripple it forever.”

Today’s workforce barely remembers Volcker’s titanic showdown with rising prices. Fewer than a quarter of today’s working-age Americans were over age 18 at the time — and they’re all baby boomers.

“There’s a generation of both people and economic analysts who never experienced the monster that Volcker slayed,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden.

Overall, 6 in 10 working-age Americans haven’t even seen inflation above 4 percent. A quarter of them haven’t even seen a sustained stretch above 3 percent.

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Category: Business, Financial, History, News | No Comments »
Tags: economy, gen x, gen z, generation, inflation, interest rates, washington post

Posted By RichC on January 4, 2020

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Category: Archive, Holiday, Personal, Photos, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: 2019, annalyn, brenda, christmas, crib, drew, family, gift, Holiday, katelyn, megan, new year, project, richc, taylor, woodworking

Posted By RichC on January 3, 2020

As far as one of my biggest investing mistakes goes — buying General Electric ($GE) “after their initial collapse in 2017” – I am hoping this next year “might” be a year of true recovery (pre-posting over lunch on Thursday January 2, 2020)?

Of course that is yet to be, but 2019 was at least promising since the stock may have at least found a bottom. The culture has supposedly changed and management under CEO Larry Culp has made progress on controlling cost and shedding poorly performing units. Debt is still a problem and their once great GE aircraft engine segment is likely feeling the pinch from Boeing’s ($BA) 737 MAX problems.

All in all, the analysts who initially calculated the value of GE’s pieces at $9-$11 per share seem to have been correct (at least until the next recession hits – yikes!). As someone who started to pick up shares under $17 and buying the final few shares at $9.25 … I’m happy 2020is  finally seeing shares trading over $11.50.

General Electric (ticker: GE) isn’t in the Dow Jones Industrial Average any longer. It was removed in 2018. Walgreens (WBA) was given its place. Still, given the year that GE had, Barron’s thinks the iconic American manufacturer deserves its own review. It was a good year for GE shareholders. But to keep it going in 2020, CEO Larry Culp must continue to make progress on costs and culture.

GE shares started off the year at $7.57, down more than 80% from all-time highs. In August, forensic accountant Harry Markopolos — the man credited with uncovering the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme — said the company was willfully cooking its long-term-care insurance accounting books. GE denied the allegations and the stock recovered all losses in about a month.

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Category: Financial | No Comments »
Tags: finance, ge, general electric, investing, markets, planning, retirement, stock, trading

Posted By RichC on January 2, 2020

Every once in a while, a story about cars and history (my memories) catches eyeballs. One such story in Hemmings Motor News last year did that for me in part because my dad had a 1972 Ford Pinto and because the Mt. St. Helens eruption in May of 1980 was a big deal news story. Both were captured and captivating in this photo taken by Dick Lasher.

A towering plume of ash rises in the distance of the photo, swirling with menace and threat, lightning arcing within it. As if to accent the peril, the canyon of trees that frame the gray clouds themselves have gone dark toward their tops, occluded by unseen looming clouds of ash. One shaft of morning light still reaches the lower branches of the trees, splashing over a cut of greenery and the least probable thing in the photo: a red Ford Pinto with a blue dirt bike hitched to its bumper, angled across a forest road.

Even if you haven’t been up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory near Mt. St. Helens, where one of the most puzzling photos of the volcano’s May 1980 eruption is prominently displayed, you’ve no doubt seen the photo circulating on the Internet, stripped of all context save for the date and location. You’ve also no doubt wondered who took the photo, what were they doing up there in the first place, and whether they made it out alive. We did too, so we set out to dig for what answers we could. Some came easy; others not so much.

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Category: Automotive, History, Memories, Photography, Photos, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: automotive, eruption, ford, hemmings, History, Memory, mt st helens, pinto, story, volcano