The April Fools of the US equity market in the Year of our Lord, 2025

 I don't give investment advice to friends. I don't care about the outcome enough to stay engaged, the personal payoff structure is asymmetrical. Family is different. Them, I try to keep out of the ditch, if they ask. 

The market fell off sharply as our President has become enamored with a tax called a tariff. Markets will tolerate a modest hike in taxes, but not on the scale he is proposing. 

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, badly. Never sell out of US stocks. Never. Never. Never. 

Buy when the market is rising, buy when it is falling, buy when it is flat. Never, never sell. Buy when a President is healthy, buy when one is assassinated. Buy when oil is plentiful, buy when there is a shortage. Buy when there is no cure for a terrible virus. Buy when a vaccine is developed. Buy when you love the President, buy when you don't. Buy when you're sober, buy when you're not. Buy when there is war, when there is rumor of war, when there is peace. Buy when your dog dies, when your cat dies (especially), when your Uncle Wayne dies.

Granted there are times when one should sell everything, go to cash, wait for clarity. Ask CNBC or Fox Business they see it all the time. Having been born in 1956 I have yet to see such a day. 

What so many people fail to realize is our emotions act in an opposite fashion of real things. 

When the market falls we percieve (feel) that risks are going up, we feel this is bad. In reality the risks are going down. The opposite is true when stocks are rising. 

This was true in 1929 and will still be true in 2029. True in 1974, will be true in 2074. 

In case I am all wrong. Keep a few cartons of Marlboros and some bottles of Jack Daniels in your basement. I think I have about four of each. When the social order completely breaks down, when the gas pumps are dry and the shelves are bare at Food Lion, these two things will always have value and can be exchanged for passage across the border into Canada or Mexico. 

Aroma

I was walking through the Minneapolis skyway the other day on my way to work and passed a Subway restaurant that had just pulled out a tray of fresh baked bread. Immediately the smell reminded me of the lunchroom at Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Florida, where the lunch ladies made fresh rolls for the kids every day. Funny how certain smells, good or bad ones, can take you back to another place. Got me to thinking about other great smells,
2. Babies
3. Newly cut grass
4. Sun tan lotion on skin at the beach
5. Cigarettes and coffee, early in the morning
6. Gasoline
7. Old Spice after shave
8. Tomato plants in the South in July
9. A baseball glove

I am throwing away all my 8 track tapes

I have been hauling around some 8 track tapes since the 70's and 80's. It's what's left of a larger collection that has just vanished over the years. As I looked at them, stacked here by the pc, it's an odd group of leftovers. Some of them old favorites, others simply something I pulled from the discount bins at a music store. I have no means of playing them. Although I hate to see them go, I know that they will only sit in the basement, accumulating dust until the day when I am hauled off to the nursing home and my kids come to clean out the house. Whether it is today or years from now, the next destination for these is the landfill. So Goodbye....

Abraham Martin and John - Dion

Isle of Wight - Atlanta Pop Festival - Vol II

Road Food - The Guess Who

A Song or Two - Cashman and West

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Tapestry - Don Mc Lean

Rite of Spring - Stravinsky

Stars and Stripes Forever - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

The Best of the Newport Folk Festival

Liberty - Gene Cotton

Machine Head - Deep Purple

Untitled - Don McLean

Funny how my tastes in music today are still so similar to back then. I still listen to Pink Floyd and occasionally Deep Purple. I like story songs from people like Don McLean and American roots music from groups like the Dirt Band. I like symphonies but find them hard to listen to more than once or twice. A couple of these were played only once or twice. But they all had the honor, I think, of being played in my 1969 Ford Fairlane in high school and college. Some of them went on long road trips home from college, on dates, to and from various jobs of the young unskilled laborer. I guess I need to stop reminiscing or I won't throw them out.

Pondering Waco

Twenty years ago if you asked most people what they knew about Waco, you'd get a blank stare. The knowledgable few would know it as the birthplace of Dr. Pepper and the home of Baylor University. It's much more than that, but for a city its size being known for two big things is not so bad. Then came the situation in 1993 and Waco took on a new meaning.

I was there last week and visited Mount Carmel. The David Koresh, Branch Davidian, Janet Reno stand-off, Mount Carmel.

What was really fascinating is that for a few minutes last Thursday afternoon I was the only person in the whole world who had an interest in this place. No one else was there. No media, no tanks, no self-proclaimed Messiahs, no troops, no lost souls looking for an answer. There is no sign that anything important ever happened here, except for these markers.

Once the whole world was watching the tragedy unfold. For weeks and weeks. Now it's only me. I'm the only person who is watching what is going on at this place.

For a while this was home to a band of people who lost their way. There is a church on the property, I assume it is where the old compound stood. I think the final chapter in this story has yet to be written.

The speed of invention

Life is changing fast. So fast that we often don't notice and just adapt. I am on a plane to Boston and posting this entry via two products that did not exist a year ago, the iPad and airborne wireless service. In the past five minutes I have sent a note to my son and another to a friend who is job hunting. I'll post this in a few minutes and it will be broadcast to anyone in the world who cares to read it. I wonder if there was ever a time when things changed so rapidly.

Of course there has. We always view our time on this planet as somehow unique when in reality it is not. Harnessing fire, domesticating animals, the written word, and most recently the wiring of the world electrically all changed the lives of our ancestors immediately and permanently. They adapted quickly or they were left behind.

I wonder what's next? What is the big thing that is just around the corner? The one that will cause my grandkids to laugh at things like ipads and cloud computing. What is it that will make us look so primitive to our descendants? It won't be our faith, that we know. Everything else though seems on the table.

I hate dimes

I hate dimes. It started some time after I became economically self sufficient, which was around midpoint between the birth of my first two children. I can feel those little devils in my pocket. They feel fake, like toy money. You can't do anything with them, except occasionally use them as screwdrivers. Pennies seem more valuable and more like real money. They make me a bit skittish. When I get a dime as change I always look at the receipt, as they are almost always part of some crooked transaction.

When I was a kid most things that adults told me made sense. Things like, "honey the world isn't flat, it's round. It just looks flat because it's so big". "No son, people don't get small when they walk down the street, it just looks that way". Got it, understood. When it came to money, a nickel was worth more than a penny, it's bigger. A quarter is worth more than a nickel, it's bigger. A half dollar, etc. The bigger the coin, the more it's worth, got it. What about dimes. Why are these little things worth more than pennies and nickels. I don't get it. I also don't like the fact that all my adult life I thought it was Thomas Edison on the dime instead of FDR. I don't know how I got that idea. I've never heard anyone else who thought that. Some time in my mid-40's I realized I'd been wrong about the person on the dime, and I consider myself the type who is fairly up to date on such trivia. If you were on "Who wants to be a Millionaire", I'm the person you would call on Phone a Friend. I'm the guy who would know this sort of stuff. Well forget that. Don't ever call me on any coin questions. I'm also the kid who rushed to spend all his Franklin half-dollars when the Kennedy version came out. I assumed the old ones would be worthless. I was either stupid or about 50 years ahead of my time.

So don't give me dimes as change or to repay any debts. When I become a homeless beggar my sign will say "will work for food or money, except dimes. God Bless Thomas Edison" I don't want them. I'd rather tote a wad of pennies than that little money. I don't know which gives me the creeps more, dimes or Linda Hunt, from the cast of NCIS-Los Angeles. I bet she's got a purse full of dimes, and a jar of them on her dresser.

Quarter End

Yesterday was the end of the third quarter of the current year. My life revolves around quarter end.

When I was younger I thought about the passing of the year in terms of semesters and the Christmas, Easter, and Summer breaks. School, and the escape from its shackles, drove the cycle of the year. May 17 was a day in the second semester. July 2nd was during summer vacation. October 20th was about halfway through the first semester. Somewhere in my mid-twenties I stopped thinking about the year in terms of semesters. September became September and May became May.

Now, in my occupation, four days on the calendar jump at me. Every day of activity looks back to one or forward to another. March 31, June 30, September 30, December 31. Every communication with a client references one of these. These are the demarcation points that measure the success or failure of people in my business. We rise and fall in the esteem of our clients based on the results we delivered vs a benchmark during the most recent quarter and trailing year.

Every job is that way. We all have scorecards of some sort. Usually there is one key thing that our clients count on us to do, and do very well. If we get that right, every thing else seems to fall in to place. In my first job it was whether I got your newspaper on your doorstep by 6am. In my second job it was whether I got your groceries to your car without breaking your eggs. In my third job it was whether I could pump gas into your car without a spill and get you quickly on your way.  Now, my career is with a financial gymnasium where companies come for help in staying healthy and keeping future commitments. It's a good work and a challenging way of service.

My take on the iPad

I have an iPad. I'm writing this entry from it. I've had it about three weeks and have not yet decided if it is just a big iPod, or something better. I keep it with me a lot in the evenings, as a substitute laptop. Good for checking email, the news, playing a game,etc. Very good for basic retrieving of info. Email client is weak though, and basically limited to your inbox. The most basic email program will beat this thing easily.

I use it on the bus as I commute. It's not bad as a reader and I have a dozen or so books loaded on it. There is also a kindle app that allows you to download anything in the Kindle library.

All in, I'd say I like it,don't love it. Could easily live without it, but would rather not. If I lost it would I spend my own money for another one? Hmmm

Finally - getting rid of old LP's

I have about 50 old LP albums in my basement. Down from a hundred or so. Some of the last ones that I can't bring myself to throw away.

Over the weekend elton john made it real easy to get rid of my last two of his. Somewhere in a Minnesota landfill lie "dont shoot me i'm only the piano player" and "captain fantastic".