by John Walters
Starting Five
Fisher was just 19 years old when they began filming Star Wars
R.I.P., Carrie Fisher
To my parents’ generation, she was Debbie Reynolds‘ daughter. To mine, she was Princess Leia in the Star Wars films (as well as the pushy friend in When Harry Met Sally). Carrie Fisher, who suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles over the weekend, dies at the age of 60.
Honestly, if you told me I’d be writing about London, a person with a royal prefix and a death this week, that wasn’t the person I’d have thought we’d be talking about.
2. Fevered Pitch
The Blues are way out in front in the Premier League with just over half the season remaining
On Boxing Day in London, Chelsea defeated Bournemouth for its 12th consecutive Premier League victory. The Blues have a record of 15-2-1 (one draw) and can tie the Arsenal’s league record for most consecutive wins (14) if they at Stoke on New Year’s Even and take down Tottenham at home, White Hart Lane, on January 4. The latter will provide stiff competition.
3. Housing Bubbles: Silicon Valley, Brooklyn
We’re approaching point where you’ll have to be a millionaire to be able to afford to live on the street from Do The Right Thing (“Go back to Boston!”)
Last night Friend of the Blog Amelia Boone, who works as an attorney for a Brobdingnagian Silicon Valley company sent out a tweet about housing prices in her area.
People wonder why I spend my time looking for cabins in the mountains. Ex. A of my options in SJC: https://t.co/iJcmY3AD9C #rentingtilIdie
— Amelia Boone (@ameliaboone) December 27, 2016
And that led us to thinking: What if just one megalithic tech corporation moved out of the Silicon Valley (with its perfect climate, proximity to San Francisco and the Wine Country, etc.) and relocated to say, Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Sure, housing prices in South Dakota would climb, but the early arrivals would get so much more bang for their buck. Look at this home I found in Sioux Falls for the same price that they were asking at the Sunnyvale abode in Amelia’s tweet:
About the only place in America with more exaggerated housing prices than Silicon Valley? You got it: Brooklyn.
4. Stock Tip: NVDA
We weren’t paying much attention to Santa Clara-based tech company Nvidia all year, mostly because we couldn’t spell it correctly and also because it makes parts for gamers’ games, and we’re not gamers. So we missed out (mostly; but Susie B. did not).
Last February 9 the stock hit a low for the past year of $24.80 . This morning in pre-market trading it’s at $119.10. So we’re just a few dollars away from a 400% jump in less than 11 months, which is good cheddar if you can get it. The stock shows no signs of slowing down (it’s up $30 per share, from $90, in just the past fortnight) as takeover rumors begin to swirl.
Buy it? I dunno. But if you know gamers, they’re not about to find a new hobby, such as going outside to play, any time soon.
5. Bowls Gone Wild
The Golden Gophers had two fewer practices and were missing four defensive starters, and still held Wazzu to a pair of field goals for 59 minutes and 41 seconds
Three of Tuesday’s four bowl favorites flat out lost (Temple, Wazzu, Boise State) and the fourth, Army, failed to cover (Cadets, 10-point favorites, beat puking North Texas, 38-31). Kids, don’t bet bowl games, but if you’re gonna, take the ‘dogs. Always. Please. There were no three schools in the pre-NYE games that seemed more of a lock than the three that lost yesterday. There’s no predicting this.
Music 101
I’m Your Man
George Michael was a part of at least 10 Number 1 hits in the U.S. or the U.K., which is remarkable. This was Wham!’s third chart-topper, written and produced by Michael, and it was not featured on any album. It was just a one-off. Six months after this song was released in 1985, Wham! split. It was simply a matter of one man being far too talented to remain as part of a duo with a guitar player with a cute face. Don’t you love the relentless up-tempo beat and Michael’s relentless confidence on this song?
Remote Patrol
No. 2 UCLA at No. 21 Oregon
ESPN2 9 p.m.
Ball, with ball
The Bruins are 13-0 and freshman Lonzo Ball is one of the two or three most exciting players in the country (he’ll look so good in a Suns uniform next year). The Ducks were SI’s sexy Final Four pick in the preseason, but they lost two in November, to Baylor and Georgetown. Matthew Knight Arena is not an easy place to win on the road. We’ve got the Ducks ending the Bruins’ run….I mean, it’s not as if they’re going to win the next 75 in a row, is it?
Yes, for a few brief minutes this morning I had the 5th 9-bagger in my stock investing “career”. Hot damn! (And I need it, thanks to the 3 companies that lost ALL my money in them this year). NVDA has retrenched a bit today along with the market & will do so again whenever the market finally corrects. Could be your time then to get in. BTW, I have not read anywhere else about any company planning to buy Nvidia at this time. Would be pretty dumb to wait till a stock quintuples in a year & THEN make your move, don’t you think?
It may amuse (or nauseate) you to know that I have never played a videogame in my life. 😉 I also own no Apple product & it’s my (now) 3rd biggest stock holding. I buy what I THINK will have the best future & make ME the most moola in the long term. I’ve ‘won’ some & ‘lost’ some thinking this way. I mentioned last week that I realized if I had put all the money I put into new stock purchases in 2012 into NVDA, I’d have several less losers AND 1000 shares of NVDA. Sigh.
Last night I was looking at the closing prices of all my stock holdings & noticed something interesting. Even though my portfolio is at its all-time high in overall worth, almost half of my stocks have prices UNDER where they were on 4/24/15, the previous peak of my portfolio. Sure, much of this is because I’m energy-sector heavy, but some of my non-energy stocks are behind too. The DOW may be at an all-time high, but I’M not. (If I subtract the money I put in the past 2 years, I’m actually below where I was on 4/24/15). How about you? Are all your stocks higher than ever? BTW, you’ve never answered my (annual) question if you buy anything to hold long term (at LEAST 5 years) or if you just move in & out for short gains. Also, do you emphasize one sector or diversify? What do YOU look for in a good stock investment? What’s been your biggest (stock) successes & failures?
Do you invest much of your take-home from the Cookoutateria? I was thinking about you the other day when I was reading one of my Xmas gifts to myself – a book on Dickens’ London. Did you know that waiters at that time were not only NOT paid a wage by the restaurant but they had to PAY the restaurant owner for their spot AND had to pay for the table glasses & to keep the linen ‘clean’ (relative term in the 19th century)? Their only income was from the tips (minus the upkeep costs). Seems ole Scrooge was down-right generous with clerk Cratchit.
Very sad about Carrie Fisher. That’s 3 celebrity heart attacks in the last week. And none were all that old.
Hey, Sweet Pea says he did NOT deserve a tech for hanging on the rim because a time-out was called immediately after his dunk. I didn’t catch that, did you? I did wonder why he hung on there so long; now it makes more sense.
Still detest the beard though. And YOU thought I couldn’t be critical of LeBron. 😉
Susie B,
Loathe as I am to discuss my plethora of investment losses (and the occasional gain) online, I’ll tell you that I bought a chunk of Lehman Brothers about three months before they went out of business and watched it all go down the drain, while my very first stock purchase in 2000 (an internet company) was a “four-bagger” and I had no appreciation of how fortuitous and rare such a happening was at the time.
The only thing I’ve had for more than five years is my underwear and my cat.
JW
And that, my friends, is your 2016 Medium Happy Shareholder Letter
Ah, one more difference between us. I buy ONLY for long term (between 10 years & forever). Sorry about LB (was this on the advice of a broker or all on your own?) although it makes me feel a bit better about throwing money after money after money after money (I could go on) into an energy stock (one I considered fairly ‘safe’) & lose it ALL (well, except for the cost of a few 6-packs of Diet Pepsi) this year.
I have to disagree with you about the rareness of a 4-bagger. If I can have five 9-baggers in 7 years (& 3 more are very close, as in 2-4 more dividends & they’re there), then it’s not that rare. Of course, I hold on longer than the ‘life’ of my pantyhose. However, even I’m not counting on too many more AMZNs (bought at $36 & stillllll holding).
I guess you subscribe to Cramer’s “pigs get fatter but hogs get slaughtered” philosophy? As a farm girl I can verify this is mostly true. However, in desperate times even pigs go to the great trough in the sky & a few chosen hogs die of old age. Plus, utilizing such a short holding period means you’ll (probably) never experience the exquisite giddiness of a 5,6,7,10,20-bagger, etc (“to infinity & beyond!”). To each their own.
2nd on my personal giddiness scale (after AMZN) is a stock I haven’t made a lot of money on, only because I didn’t invest a lot, but its % return is off-the-chart, literally. It’s a refiner of all things. I bought when it was Holly Oil & then they merged with Frontier. Soon after the merger, they started throwing back quarterly “special” dividends in addition to the regular quarterly dividends. Within 3 years, I’d gotten back as “dividends” ALL the money I’d invested. Which meant my cost basis became less than zero. (Try putting that on your return-analysis spreadsheet). The special dividends were suspended a couple years ago during the energy-sector Armageddon, but it’s still perking along. The other refiner I bought a year later (VLO) is a laggard by comparison, but it is one of my 9-baggers. 🙂
Just so you know that not ALL is giddy-green in susie-stockland, one of my stocks (companies) emerged from bankruptcy yesterday & while I was not totally wiped out, I was given 6 shares in the “new company” in exchange for the 1000 I owned in the old. Brings laughter/tears to my eyes. And it’s not even an energy stock! Investing in individual stocks (as opposed to mutual/index funds) is NOT for the faint of heart. Or stomach. 🙂