Philosophy, Investing, Video games, and other Tomfoolery

Again?

2009-11-06T15:11:52Z

Dang man, what is up with the SEC investigating the companies I work for? First Countrywide, now CVS Caremark.

There is now an SNES Powerpak

2009-11-05T03:43:59Z

This is too incredible to believe. And now he's added the ability to save programmed Game Genie codes from a text file!

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=84

Just a General day

2009-11-04T15:04:40Z

Added some shares of General Electric.

All your trains are belong to Warren Buffett

2009-11-03T13:30:08Z

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10620978/1/berkshire-buys-burlington-northern.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Dang man, the entire thing.

Pics from our Anniversary Dinner

2009-10-31T16:08:19Z

As promised!
Dinner at The Grill at TPC:

Really cute (And oh my gosh yummy) desert they made specially for us:

They're at it again..

2009-10-30T20:31:17Z

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features_momsatwork/2009/10/mormon-calendar-girls.html

Hmmmm

2009-10-29T15:26:04Z

I added to my position in American Express today. It wasn't really a great price, but I try to keep my largest holdings in high quality companies, and I noticed I had some less quality stuff exceeding it as a percentage. I'm sure that I won't break any records on this purchase, but my risk of loss is also not great.

Sliding prices

2009-10-28T13:14:17Z

Mmmm yesterday's market action was really interesting. The DOW closed up a bit, but many smaller companies saw good percentage drops. I came very close to stepping in and making a short term trade on AK Steel when I saw it was down 9% at one point. I backed off at the last minute just because I didn't feel like the amount I was going to purchase would be worth it. I'm starting to get hit with the law of diminishing returns, which means that as your account/business size grows, the percentage of gains as a dollar value starts to shrink.

It's an argument some finance people make against buying exclusively large-cap stocks. For example, if you have $1000, and you add $100 to it, well your account value gained 10%. The same $100 added to $10,000 is only 1%, etc. For a multibillion dollar company to grow 10% is much harder than a company with just a few million. So I'm having to make bigger and bigger investments to see a payoff. It is not my goal to take on more and more risk, so I decided against AK Steel for today. We'll see what happens with prices. I may revisit it.

Something good to watch on TV

2009-10-27T20:18:23Z

Get your DVRs programmed! Buffett and Gates are gonna have stuff to say:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33493535/

Quick n dirty analysis of Wendy's

2009-10-27T19:01:33Z

My mother in-law is a Certified Financial Accountant, so I keep in touch with her about various investments she's making. Today she told me she's been buying Wendy's, and I had to pause for a moment to ask her why. I was immediately struck by the bad numbers on their data sheet, and declining net income for the last 3 years. I thought if anyone would recognize that they have problems, it would be her.

She forwarded me this article as her reason for buying:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fast-Food-at-a-Slow-tsmp-1668865720.html?x=0&.v=1

I picked the reasoning apart, and sent her this reply:

"There are a couple of different philosophies I sort through when I try to analyze something like this. Under various conditions, one may be more appropriate than others. If I start with the Buffett approach, then I could most certainly say that Wendy’s has no “durable competitive advantage”. They may very well be priced down because they deserve it. The non-synergy created with Arby’s, the frequent changing of menu options, and most troubling, the lack of customers in their restaurants when we visit pretty much points to all of this. I’ve not looked at their cash flow statements but I bet their debt load is nasty. Actually, I just looked, and yeah, it is.

So, that being the case, if a recovery happens, it won’t happen quickly. You could be sitting on a $4-5 range stock for a really long time. If it was fast food Buffett was looking for, he’d want McDonald’s. But McDonald’s doesn’t go on sale too often, so what can you do. That also means it doesn’t take a 20% drop in price overnight either.

The Benjamin Graham in me is the guy looking at those real estate assets as motivation, and the dividend as a margin of safety. BUT, real estate is not producing revenue for them, and I could imagine another Filiberto’s would be more than happy to buy those buildings at a nice low price. Mark to market can really hurt them here. In regards to the dividend, you can see that they reduced it by 80%, but they’re still bleeding red ink and adding debt. If you use the same reasoning to choose an investment, why not diversify with other beaten down/badly run restaurants like Carl’s Jr., or Krispy Kreme Donuts? KKD might actually turn it’s very first every profit this year, and they’ve been targeting their debt levels, so who knows?

Graham would also want to purchase below the value of the assets if possible, and when examining a possible raise in EPS, he’d want a lower P/E ratio, especially in light of a low growth rate.

Lastly, there’s a philosophical approach where we say that everything tends to return to sameness, but that is only in light of constants. Wendy’s is struggling to make themselves a workable business. Sometimes, the markets are efficient, and a $4 stock really is only worth $4. The argument that their competition is doing well right now doesn’t make them more appealing, it makes it look like they’re losing market share.

So I’m going to pass on them for now."

A Nice time out

2009-10-24T05:33:50Z

Today is my 5th anniversary. I bought my wife some emerald earrings and Hugo Boss perfume, then we went out for dinner at The Players Club in Scottsdale (TPC is where the Phoenix Open is played, it has a great view). Food was pretty darn good. They brought us out a really nice bread pudding with bannana ice cream thing with a, um.. you know, I'm not really sure what it was called. It was like a wide ribbon type of thing but you could eat it and it was sweet. Anyway, they had written happy anniversary in chocolate. They must have started making it right when we arrived, it was really a great touch. I'll get some pictures we took up soon.

When I went shopping for her, I couldn't help but notice the price of jewelry with any gold content is really crazy right now. The worst example I've seen so far is this necklace with a 1/10th oz gold eagle coin pendant. The necklace part was 14k gold, so the thing might have had $200 worth of total market value if you smelted it. It was selling for $1600 at Macy's. I asked if sales had been bad from high prices, but the lady working there told me sales are actually up. People are buying this stuff thinking it will hold it's value. Walking around the Metro Center mall I could see that there were a whole bunch of new small jewelry stores that have opened up, trying to cash in on the trend. This is going to end badly.

I mean the jewelry businesses will end badly. It looks like my marriage is going pretty good! Love you Jo, looking forward to the next 500 years together!

Today's purchases

2009-10-22T15:21:16Z

Increased my bonds holdings in BND, and added a new bond fund, MIN. It's a mortgage-backed securities fund holding mainly Japanese bonds. It's got a very stable price and a healthy yield just over 8%.

Also finally added a position in Coca-Cola, and increased holdings in Pfizer and Realty Income Corp.

Sweet T-Shirt

2009-10-22T12:23:23Z

I got the guys at Edushirts to custom make this for me, and now you can buy it too!

http://tshirtcurriculum.com/intrinsic-value1.html

The shirt is also available in XXL if you contact them first. It was kind of awkward when I told them it was too small after having custom ordered it.

Freakonomics has a sequel

2009-10-22T12:19:09Z

I was at Borders a couple nights ago to pick up a copy of "The God Delusion" and I noticed that there is a new book by the author of Freakonomics. It's called "Super Freakonomics" (I know, it's clever, right!)

The first one was really great, you start to think about what anyone's motive is in suggesting that we do anything. Most people don't stop to notice all of the things that supply and demand apply to in our every day lives.

Link to the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/SuperFreakonomics-Cooling-Patriotic-Prostitutes-Insurance/dp/0060889578/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

One of these days I'll sort out how to get paid for posting these links.

Investment stuffs

2009-10-20T19:43:22Z

I quietly sold what I had in Wells Fargo a few weeks ago. I didn't talk about it because I just wanted to have some cash on hand for my 5th anniversary, which is this Friday. I did also want to take some profit on that company, so I'm not certain if or how quickly I might buy it back.

I got my school check this week so I should be making some purchases before the weekend. Bonds for sure, and I'm taking a good look at my portfolio for other smart additions.

Health care industry humor

2009-10-18T19:55:18Z

This is getting really exciting

2009-10-17T22:23:24Z

It was Wednesday night when I added in the supplements fish oil, Alpha Lipoic Acid, and Evening primrose. I lost 6 pounds since then. Moreover, the amount I weigh fluctuates, but this weight is two pounds below the lowest I've weighed in a few months. I'm not calling this coincidence anymore.

The eyebrow!

2009-10-17T16:34:37Z

It's hard for people to take you seriously when you have avatars like this.

Oh wow..

2009-10-17T16:00:49Z

I bought my meter home and took a reading this morning when I had only been up a few minutes. I'm getting 150 which is you know, still high, but much better than the 200+ I usually get. I didn't really eat any carbs last night, but that's still really good for me. Yay!

Price war with Amazon.com

2009-10-16T21:52:19Z

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2009/10/sarah_palin_stephen_king_books.html

Looks like you might get a good deal on some books. Very bad news for Amazon.

Ongoing vinegar trials

2009-10-16T18:49:23Z

So I've gone back to eating baby dill pickles in the morning to see what's going on with that. I keep my glucose meter at work so I'm not really sure what my resting glucose is. (That's a bad habit that I should address actually)

Anyways, the difference in numbers I get by the time I'm at work aren't as large as the differences I used to see before. When I had just started Metformin, I could easily get a 25-50 point drop in glucose. Now I think it's closer to 10, but that's still a difference.

I also was taking a shot of raw cider vinegar, but you gotta dillute it by about 2/3rds for it to not burn going down. The glucose change was insignificant.

What this leads me to believe is that vinegar is absorbed in the mouth more efficiently with pickles, that seems reasonable given the chewing action needed. I also get good numbers eating Pace picante sauce and eggs. More testing is coming.

Omega-6 may be the root of all evil

2009-10-15T20:25:39Z

On doing further research, I'm starting to put together a theory that an imbalance of Omega-3 & 6 are at the root of many types of health problems. Omega-6 is in vegetable oil, which is added to so many things now it's not funny. Omega-6 requires Omega-3's to balance it out, and our american diets are severely short in it.

What I think happens is your body stops being able to process Omega-6 properly, and then a systematic breakdown occurs, be that an autoimmune response like arthritis, or an inability to process glucose properly, as in diabetics. There are lots of links to depression and brain related problems. I'm drawing my personal connection based on the effectiveness of Omega-6 in improving my neuropathy.

The disease varies based on it's inputs, but I think there is a very good argument to be made here about using Fish oil to supplement your diet. If you are not eating fish every day, then consider using daily therapy with fish oil, I think it's going to be huge when they finally bring all of this together. Even if it doesn't work out that way, there appear to be enough health benefits of fish oil to recommend it to anyone.

Here's one of the articles that first set that thinking in motion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_6

Something good

2009-10-15T10:01:01Z

It looks like I may have some improvement in the neuropathy in my feet. I can't remember if I talked about this before. A common symptom in diabetics is nerve damage in the extremities. I have a loss of feeling in my feet, that was what really got me motivated to see the doctor.

The drugs used for controlling blood sugar don't help with healing the damage already caused. However, I may have found some things that do.

I've been slowly building up a collection of supplements that I take each day, and about a month ago I started taking grape seed extract with resveratrol. I took it for the things I was reading about resveratrol, that it was shown to double the life of some bugs, and that it controlled glucose in rats. These effects weren't seen in humans but it was still enough to get me to try it.

Well it turns out that I'm getting feeling back in my toes, but from what I'm reading, it appears to be from the grape seed part. It seems diabetics lose the production of certain enzymes, so they can't extract some important things in food any more. Grape seed puts back one of those nutrients. There's some others too that are supposed to have these kinds of function. Evening Primrose contains a helpful nutrient that's involved in this, so I started taking it too.

So in addition to my normal meds, I'm now taking all of these supplements on a daily basis:
-Centrum multivitamin (Silver formula for men)
-Flaxseed oil
-Fish Oil (This is new and I might phase out flax. Fish appears to have a better Omega-3 profile)
-Grapeseed with Resveratrol
-Evening Primrose
-Alpha Lipoic Acid (Also believed helpful with neuropathy and retinopathy (eye damage)
-Cinnamon
-Chromium

The last two supplements I'm uncertain about. I don't think I'm getting measured improvements in glucose, and most of the articles I've read are contradictory, so who knows. I'll keep taking them for now. Wikipedia has pretty good entries on everything here. I also recently started experimenting with vinegar again. The effect is much less than when I first started taking diabetic medicine, but I am in much better sugar numbers since then anyway.

Again

2009-10-14T16:47:39Z

The strong will fall, and the fallen will become strong.

Philosophy is not an attack on science

2009-10-12T14:14:34Z

I think this bears repeating. Philosophy is a love of knowledge, the word literally means that. It's primary goal is the use of reason to encourage thinking. To question things. Part of the questioning process is in trying to show proof of an idea. Science is a fantastic way to use reason in questioning the world around us.

There are magnificent things that exist today because of what science has made possible. As a type II diabetic I can say that there are therapies now, and more being worked on that will extend my life substantially. In fact, because of those therapies I might not even advance into the more severe problems that diabetes creates for a person. Some may say here that science actually created some of the problems that made it possible to create the products that helped make me diabetic. I think that's unfair, because I still had the choice to use them.

Where I start to have problems with science is when it steps outside of the physical. Science is not transcendental, it has restrictions to what it can do. It must deal with the observable, the measurable. It tries to get meaning from those things. Philosophy can play outside of those boundaries. It allows thinking about things that science can't experiment with. For a scientist to discard the non-physical as impossible to think about, this is a step towards nihilism, and I cannot allow that. When someone says that as humans we are limited in scope because we are nothing more than advanced monkeys, I think that's an awful, awful thing to say.

We must not encourage the end of thought. Philosophy is not an attack on science, it is a call for science to work harder. If we become complacent with science, thought will cease, and we will have spiritual death, which is only a small step away from physical death. We need our lives to have meaning. Philosophy is not something that can be lost for humans to survive.