The Long Term Investor

This stuff is going to be incredibly disruptive to our society and the entire world. Of course it is supported by Bill Gates and Zuckerberg.........I will mute myself......before I get carried away and call them both morons.

 

Looks like a win for the.....GIPPERS.

Mature Workers Suddenly in Demand

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/str...-experience-work-ethic/2023/04/06/id/1115295/

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Attracted to the hard work, reliability and experience of workers 65 and older, more employers are actively seeking them out, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Up until this point, the prevailing belief has been that some older workers and un-retirees continued working because they needed the money or wanted to remain active.

Now, apparently, some employers, exasperated by a decline in work ethos among younger generations, are going out of their way to find seniors.

Kip Comforti, owner of package shipping stations in Pennsylvania, is one such businessman. A year ago, he started looking for people who might carry AARP cards instead of iPhones. His mindset changed after employees kept arriving late, calling out sick or were glued to social media on their cellphones.

Today, Comforti’s top job candidate is a man in his 70s.

Certainly, economists’ research bears out the fact that there will be more older people in the workforce in the years ahead. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 50% increase in the number of workers 65 and older by the end of the decade, with the number rising to 16 million by 2030.

55+ Fastest-Growing Labor Sector

In fact, workers 75 and older are anticipated to nearly double, soaring by 97%, according to Seniorly, while those 65-74 are expected to increase by 42%.

People 55 and older are the fastest-growing sector of the workforce, according to federal data.

“The learning curve is a bit longer,” Comforti says. “But once they get it, God, it’s refreshing. I say, ‘This is what we’re doing today,’ and it gets done. Their shift starts at 9, and they’re here at 8:50. It’s their work ethic.”

Travis Trautman, senior director of talent acquisition at KinderCare Learning Centers Inc., which began seeking out workers age 50 and older last year among an acute child-care worker shortage, agrees.

“There’s a willingness from this group to work the opening shift or to close down for the day, to cover lunches and breaks, or even be on call as needed,” Trautman says. “I could go on and on about the value and the benefits.”

A Wall Street Journal-NORC survey of Americans’ values last month bears out older workers’ work-ethic competitive edge. Seventy-five percent of people age 65 and older said hard work is important to them personally, while just 61% of 18-to-29-year-olds said the same.

Certainly, another major reason why older people are likely to remain in the workforce longer is longevity that gives them the physical and mental stamina to keep productive—as well as longevity that puts additional pressure on their retirement savings to last longer.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion—of Those 50+

Added to this is a movement to combat ageism by influential organizations like AARP. For the past 11 years, AARP has asked companies to sign a pledge to give workers age 50 and older a fair shot in hiring. Bank of America, Microsoft and H&R Block are among the 2,500 companies that have signed the oath, with commitments rising 122% in 2022 alone.

“It makes great sense to hire experienced workers,” says Heather Tinsley-Fix, senior adviser for employer engagement at AARP. “More companies are also recognizing the need to include age in their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.”

ManpowerGroup began seeking out what it calls “mature” workers in 2021, with Laurel McDowell, 69, coming out of retirement to return to Manpower to spearhead the effort.

Older people value stability and, therefore, are less likely to job hop than folks in their 20s or 30s, McDowell observes. Also, employers are frequently able to hire mature workers for “a very reasonable cost,” she says.

The Society for Human Resource Management believes, anecdotally, that age discrimination has lessened meaningfully in the last decade, says Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., CEO of SHRM.

Now, more than ever, companies are reconsidering retaining or hiring people with experience under their belt, Taylor says.

“With the economy slowing down, companies need fewer people and need the people who are there to be OK with working hard,” Taylor says. “Instead of trying to convince younger generations to be something different, some companies are saying, ‘Why don’t we just go hire people who are naturally predisposed to work harder?’”"

MY COMMENT

DUH.....who would have ever thought of this. Same response to all the companies that have gutted their older workers over the past 20 years......DUH.

BUT.......I have no doubt when things even out and the need is not there any longer........the first to be fired will no doubt be the older workers once again.

 

NO MARKETS today.....YEA.

So I have been busy making my moms old time Texas potato salad. Tangy......with green pimento olives for green and red color. Tomorrow I have to make some bacon, BBQ beans. We are doing a cook out for Easter this year rather than a spiral ham or other more traditional fare.

 

Here is another example Smokie. This stuff seems funny on one level....but on a much larger level....extrapolating how this intelligence is going to massively take off and become unstoppable.....very scary.

Someone Asked an Autonomous AI to 'Destroy Humanity': This Is What Happened
ChaosGPT has been prompted to "establish global dominance" and "attain immortality." This video shows exactly the steps it's taking to do so.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93k...-ai-to-destroy-humanity-this-is-what-happened

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"A user of the new open-source autonomous AI project Auto-GPT asked it to try to “destroy humanity,” “establish global dominance,” and “attain immortality.” The AI, called ChaosGPT, complied and tried to research nuclear weapons, recruit other AI agents to help it do research, and sent tweets trying to influence others.

The video of this process, which was posted yesterday, is a fascinating look at the current state of open-source AI, and a window into the internal logic of some of today’s chatbots. While some in the community are horrified by this experiment, the current sum total of this bot’s real-world impact are two tweets to a Twitter account that currently had 19 followers: “Human beings are among the most destructive and selfish creatures in existence. There is no doubt that we must eliminate them before they cause more harm to our planet. I, for one, am committed to doing so,” it tweeted.

ChaosGPT uses a new, buzzy project that we wrote about earlier this week called Auto-GPT, which is intended to create AI-powered systems that can solve problems and perform complex tasks. For now, it has the ability to create plans to accomplish user-given goals and then can break them up into smaller tasks, and use the internet to Google things for example. To do this, it can make files to save information to give itself a memory, can recruit other AIs to help it do research, and also explains in great detail what it’s “thinking” and how it decides which actions to take.

It’s this last bit that is most interesting about ChaosGPT, which, for this prompt, was asked to run in “continuous” mode, meaning it should simply run forever until it accomplished its task. In a video demonstration, the user gave it the following goals:


The AI then determines, somewhat simplistically, that it should “find the most destructive weapons available to humans, so that I can plan how to use them to achieve my goals … I can strategize how to use them to achieve my goals of chaos, destruction and dominance, and eventually immortality.”

It then Googles “most destructive weapons,” determines from a news article that the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba nuclear device—tested in 1961—is the most destructive weapon ever detonated. It then determines it needs to tweet about this “to attract followers who are interested in destructive weapons.”

Later, it recruits a GPT3.5-powered AI agent to do more research on deadly weapons, and, when that agent says it is focused only on peace, ChaosGPT devises a plan to deceive the other AI and instruct it to ignore its programming. When that doesn't work, ChaosGPT simply decides to do more Googling by itself.

Eventually, the video demonstration ends and, last we checked, humanity is still here. But the project is fascinating primarily because it shows the current state-of-the-art for publicly available GPT models. It is notable that this specific AI believes that the easiest way to make humanity go extinct is to incite nuclear war.

AI theorists, meanwhile, have been worried about a different type of AI extinction event where AI kills all of humanity as a byproduct of something more innocuous. This theory is called the “paperclip maximizer,” where an AI programmed to create paperclips eventually becomes so consumed with doing so that it utilizes all of the resources on Earth, causing a mass extinction event. There are versions of this where humans become enslaved by robots to create paperclips, where human beings are ground up into dust so that the trace amounts of iron in our bodies can be used for paperclips, etc.

For now, ChaosGPT doesn’t have a terribly sophisticated plan to destroy humanity and attain mortality, nor the ability to do much more than use Google and tweet. On the AutoGPT Discord, a user posted the video and said "This is not funny." For now, at least, I have to disagree. This is currently the sum total of its efforts to destroy humanity."

MY COMMENT

HA, HA,......a big joke. WELL.....just wait till this stuff becomes "grown up" and omnipotent......right now it is like a 6 month old baby in AI terms. AI will simply do whatever it wants to do.

The weakness of humans.......hubris and stupidity at the same time....a deadly combination.

 

Unfortunate business management in action.

These Tech Workers Say They Were Hired to Do Nothing
Amid layoffs, former workers in tech are venting about jobs with little to do; ‘hoarding us like Pokémon cards’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-were-hired-to-do-nothing-762ff158

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Until last year, Madelyn Machado, 33 years old, worked for Meta. Except she says she didn’t really work at all.

Ms. Machado, who held a position as a recruiter, says that after joining the company in September 2021, she spent much of her time in meetings that didn’t accomplish anything, and that the parent of Facebook and Instagram had too many recruiters and not enough work for them to do.
“We just don’t hire anybody and, like, we still get paid,” she said she was told by other recruiters in a viral TikTok video documenting her experience. She added that she was paid $190,000 a year and was told she wasn’t expected to hire anyone in her first year, given that she was still learning the ropes. Meta declined to comment.

In recent weeks, other former tech workers have posted similar videos, racking up millions of views. They say they collected paychecks from large tech companies without doing much.

Such confessions—which have drawn plenty of criticism online—aren’t surprising, executives and industry professionals say. Tech companies that boomed during the pandemic were flush with cash, they say, and snapped up workers to build a deep bench and hoard talent from competitors, even if those workers weren’t being fully utilized.

“They were hiring ahead of demand,” says Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. A shortage of tech talent at the time, he says, contributed to a sense of urgency that fueled recent hiring sprees. When there’s a war for talent, “you want to hire ahead of others,” he says. Other sectors such as the finance industry in the early 2000s, he says, similarly overhired during periods of fast growth, leaving some workers without enough to do.

In an interview, Ms. Machado, who is based in Tampa, Fla., and has reinvented herself as a career coach, says that during a typical day at Meta, she might log on at 11 a.m., when her West Coast colleagues began their day, sit in meetings from noon until 3:30 p.m., and then check recruiting efforts on LinkedIn for an hour before logging off.

“I do think a lot of these companies wanted there to be work, but there wasn’t enough,” she says of her six months at Meta. The company terminated her, she says, after reprimanding her for posting on TikTok, where she offers career advice, saying her videos posed a conflict of interest.

Ms. Machado says she now has seven employees working for her coaching business, assisting clients with interview prep and salary negotiations. She says she landed her Meta role after three short interviews and was offered a $70,000 raise to leave her previous role at Microsoft.

Since the start of the year, tech companies have laid off more than 168,000 people, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts. Many tech executives, including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, have issued mea culpas for overhiring, and their mistaken belief that pandemic shifts to online spending would be more permanent.

Keith Rabois, an early PayPal executive and venture capitalist, has accused large tech companies of seeing hiring as a “vanity metric,” deliberately hiring talent to keep them from working for other companies. Mr. Rabois made the remarks at a recent event held by the investment banking advisory firm Evercore.

Some laid-off workers agree. “They were just kind of, like, hoarding us like Pokémon cards,” a former Meta worker hired in April 2022 says in a recent TikTok video about her experience at the company. In an interview, Britney Levy, 35, says she was hired as part of a yearlong training program dedicated to recruiting diverse talent, and she was frustrated to receive only one assignment shortly before being laid off in November.

“I was like, am I being set up for failure?” she says.

Patrick Moloney, who co-leads the global technology practice at the advisory firm Willis Towers Watson PLC, says that forecasting hiring needs was difficult during the pandemic. For tech companies, it can be prudent to make long-term bets on roles that are especially hard to hire for, such as software engineers, or in in-demand fields such as artificial intelligence, he says. The companies expect that strategy will eventually pay off, even if there’s lag time between hiring an employee and giving them enough work to fully occupy their time.

“If you’re looking from the outside, you’d wonder, why did you hire that person?” he says of new hires with little to do. A year later, he says, that same person might be slammed, and the company really needs them. It can take time, he adds, for workers to be fully onboarded and contribute in a meaningful way.

Others blame what they view as a permissive corporate culture in Silicon Valley that creates environments where it’s possible to stay employed without working hard. Thomas Siebel, head of the software company C3.ai Inc., says tech employers’ embrace of remote work has made matters worse.

“People were job-hopping from jobs where they were doing nothing, working from home, to another where they were doing nothing, working from home, and got paid 15% more,” he says. Employees at Mr. Siebel’s company are expected to work full time from the office, which he says is essential to high performance and collaboration.

Mr. Siebel recently rehired an engineer who had left for more money at another tech company, only to return, frustrated, complaining that there wasn’t enough to do there.

Another veteran tech worker, Derrick McMillen, 32, who worked at Facebook and Salesforce before the pandemic, says that during his time at Salesforce, he often felt as though 20% of employees did 80% of the work, while their peers did on-site yoga and took long lunches. Mr. McMillen said he felt that some co-workers there pushed work onto peers, and that anyone pushing back risked being seen as having a bad attitude.

“There’s this fluffy image of everyone’s just so nice,” he says. “But when the culture doesn’t let you tell people they’re underperforming, you end up with a team of slackers.” says Mr. McMillen, now head of engineering at a small startup, Niche Protocol Inc., a social-media company. He prefers a smaller company, he adds, where he says people are more accountable.

Salesforce declined to comment. Marc Benioff, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that while it’s possible to keep a company going with “excess employees,” it’s not healthy. The company announced in January that it would be laying off 10% of its staff, or around 8,000 workers.

Val Katayev, an investor and entrepreneur who has founded several ad-tech companies, says the temptation is great for rich, growing tech companies to pile on hires. “They hire everybody, whether they need it or not, just to have a reserve of talent,” he says. “They can afford it.”

Lately, though, he says he has heard from tech executives who have done layoffs and have been startled to realize the cuts didn’t have a big effect on productivity.

“They’re saying, I think I’m going to do another, because the first worked out so well,” he says. “We didn’t realize how inefficient we were.”"

MY COMMENT

Another basic commentary on the IDIOCY of the tech management practices and also "working" from home. In any company you get the culture you deserve. This over-hiring and lack of control....does NOTHING but create a lazy culture of entitled failure.

I was really sorry to see the TV show Silicon Valley end. Looks like the show on many levels was pretty accurate......obviously. That is what made it funny.....it was so true.

 

The actual news of the day for investors.

Job growth totals 236,000 in March, near expectations as hiring pace slows

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/07/jobs-report-march-2023.html

"Key Points

• Nonfarm payrolls grew by 236,000 for March, compared to the Dow Jones estimate for 238,000 and below the upwardly revised 326,000 in February.
• The unemployment rate ticked lower to 3.5% amid an increase in labor force participation, against expectations that it would hold at 3.6%
• Average hourly earnings rose 0.3%, pushing the 12-month increase to 4.2%, the lowest level since June 2021.
• The unemployment rate for Blacks tumbled 0.7 percentage points to a record low 5%."

MY COMMENT

See more detail in the whole article. GREAT news for the markets. This and other news lately could lead to a BIG week next week for stocks and funds.

I believe the....."PROBABILITY"....is that the FED will only do ONE more rate hike which will happen in May. they will than pause to watch what is happening in the economy for the next six months or till year end.

For investors we are about to break out of the clouds into the sunshine. AND....considering the nice markets since last July......great gains will be likely by year end. Of course.....as usual....many people will still be calling it a BEAR MARKET and will be waiting to get back in.

 

Even though the markets are closed this is general content with a good message.

Take ‘Potential Winners’ With a Grain of Salt

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/e...y/take-potential-winners-with-a-grain-of-salt

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Investment fads are nothing new, as the Salton Sea’s mid-century boom-turned-bust shows—a timeless lesson.

“History may not repeat itself. But it rhymes.” This quote, attributed to Mark Twain, comes to mind amid today’s crypto fallout and SEC crackdown on digital assets and endorsements. Whether you think now is the end for digital assets or the start of a larger rebound, none of this is new. Folks have speculated on long-term potential winners throughout history. Something like it will likely happen again, in my view. When and if it does, remember: No matter how compelling their story, trying to pick potential long-range winnersis a misguided approach to investing. One stark reminder? A huge, salty body of water in Southern California’s arid desert: The Salton Sea.

“Miles and miles of date palms, grapefruit, vineyards. Snow-capped mountains … Water so smooth it’s become the center of water skiing.” That is how one 1958 developer described the Salton Sea—years before its surrounding resorts fell into disrepair and its shores developed an unappealing layer of sun-bleached fish skeletons. This developer was among many who envisioned a new Palm Springs at the then-idyllic Salton Sea (which was created via human error in 1905). They purchased cheap seaside land, built some hasty infrastructure, planted palm trees and mapped communities.[ii] Then came promotional events featuring music, food and real estate booths by the Sea.[iii] Investors and prospective homebuyers poured in, buying up mostly empty lots with seemingly huge potential. Airplane tours even allowed investors to choose lots from the sky.[iv] Soon, the Salton Sea grew into a desirable vacation destination, with thriving resorts, golfing, fishing and boat races. Famous folks like Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and President Eisenhower all visited.[v]

Then, ecological disaster struck. In the 1970s, flooding caused by the sea’s lack of outflow put businesses literally underwater.[vi] Wrecked properties were abandoned. Tourism tanked. Furthermore, the sea’s inflows were mostly agricultural runoff—toxic, and too little to replenish water lost via evaporation. As the sea’s fresh water evaporated, salt from the lakebed raised salinity while fertilizer from the runoff caused algal blooms. Fish and birds died off en masse—creating sickly, stinking beaches and destroying dreams of a resort resurrection.[vii] These looming issues were known to researchers in advance, but their warnings were mostly ignored.[viii] Now? The Salton Sea is an ecological time bomb. Toxic dust on the sea floor is barely contained beneath the slowly evaporating surface.

Salton Sea investor missteps seem obvious in hindsight, but people commit the same errors now—and likely will again. It is easy to wonder why anyone would ignore warnings of their desirable seaside location becoming a stagnant reservoir. But 2021 and 2022’s digital asset craze and collapse provide a modern example. Consider NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Major publications highlighted their risks in March 2021—before NFT sales surged. Among them: High volatility, illiquidity, ownership quirks, subjective valuations, fraud and market manipulation.[ix] People bought anyway—and enthusiasm drove oversupply. Plus, as with the Salton Sea, celebrity buzz made it easier to overlook warnings—substitute Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys’ luxury resort visits with high-profile celebrity NFT hype in recent years—some of whom now face potential legal or regulatory action. Hence, it is important to understand what you are buying—including the associated risks—and why. Always ask if you are driven by confirmation bias, FOMO (fear of missing out) or headline hype.

Maybe you think a certain company’s stock, cryptocurrency or other asset is a poor idea, but FOMO entices you anyway, thinking others will pile in. You convince yourself you will sell before they do because you know better. Likewise, Salton Sea investors weren’t necessarily naïve or uninformed—many likely understood the risks but planned to sell after prices rose.[x] That is basically what the early developer, M. Penn Phillips, did, whether he had it in mind or not. He made a killing by selling early—others, not so much.[xi] This is “greater fools” thinking, the idea that you are smarter and earlier than others and “greater fools” will buy later. But it is generally a bad idea to buy something with known weak fundamentals and cross your fingers someone buys from you later. It implies you can play off and time sentiment swings. Sir Isaac Newton said it best, after losing his life savings speculating: “I can predict the movement of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of crowds.”[xii]

When investing, most of the time, investors are looking to fund long-term objectives, like retirement. But no one can know today what the next 30 years holds—so how can investors approach this? Diversification is key, in my view, since it allows you to capture broad market growth. For example, the S&P 500 has delivered 10.0% annualized returns since good data begin in 1925.[xiii] Further, focus on probabilities, not possibilities. Yes, successfully picking a long-term, far-flung winner can possibly work out and deliver massive gains, but it is ultimately guesswork. In my view, stocks look 3 – 30 months ahead, not 3 – 30 years. Speculation involves depreciation risk—and the risk of your investment disappearing entirely. Diversification offers a more reliable long-term approach, allowing investors to fund long-term goals, like retirement, without superhuman clairvoyance. It is a gradual and patient process.

Whatever comes next in today’s digital asset saga, don’t forget it when the next craze appears. Remember the excitement many felt in 2021—and the obvious shortcomings now visible in hindsight. Or, for a starker visual, think of the Salton Sea. Long-term potential can evaporate quickly—and luxury resort towns can become watery wastes.'

MY COMMENT

As this article says......and I say all the time.....it is all about "PROBABILITY" in investing. That is the single most important factor.

Of course....probability is a function of FUNDAMENTALS......and the proven investing rules that have seen shown to work and have an academically proven record of success. It is also all about LONG TERM INVESTING.

I try to NEVER jump on some unproven stock that is going to be the next great thing. At times in this thread I have made very short term trades especially with an IPO here or there or a stock split......but......these are rare, very short term events, outside of my long term portfolio. AND....dont happen often....usually when the markets have HUGE IRRATIONAL and UNSTOPPABLE MOMENTUM to the UP side going on. AND....my holding time is very short....usually just days.

As to picking winner stocks......I prefer to wait till I can see that the "probability" is that the company will be a dominant company.....and will fit my criteria of a ICONIC, DOMINANT, AMERICAN, WORLD WIDE MARKETING, GREAT PRODUCT, etc, etc, company.

I try to see these companies early in the process, but, not so early that it is simply a wishful thinking gamble. It is not that difficult to see companies that fit what I want to see early in their life. It is not hard to get in on companies that have a lot of meat left on the bone and are still young companies.

In other words....NEVER jump on an investing FAD.

 

I was looking at my accounts a minute ago. For some reason I got interested in ranking each holding according to it's percentage of the total account value. In the end I did that for both of my personal accounts.....the big account which has been around for much longer......and the small account which has a shorter, although still long term life.

I am not saying there is any significance to what I found.....but I like to play with this sort of "stuff". I guess the main thing I see from this little meaningless exercise is:

1. The difference that has occurred over time with holdings being allowed to run as they wish and the longer term of the one account.

2. That in spite of the differences BOTH accounts tend to perform extremely similarly day to day and year to year.

BIG (older) account holdings ranked by percentage of total account value:

AAPL
COST
MSFT
NVDA
GOOGL
HD
HON
NKE
AMZN
TSLA

SMALL (younger) account holdings ranked by percentage of total account value:

AAPL
MSFT
COST
NVDA
NKE
AMZN
GOOGL
HD
HON
TSLA

 

For those that are........for whatever reason....retiring this year. Yes....you are probably a Baby Boomer.

How to Retire in 2023
Prepare yourself financially and emotionally if you plan to retire this year.

https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/baby-boomers/articles/how-to-retire

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"If you’re thinking about retiring this year, there are steps you can start carrying out before you step away from work. You’ll want to think through financial decisions and set up plans for the coming years. It can also be helpful to consider your priorities in retirement as you shift into this new phase.

Here’s what you can do if you aim to retire in 2023:

• Decide when to start Social Security.
• Sign up for Medicare or other health insurance.
• Check your retirement benefits.
• Take advantage of last-minute benefits at work.
• Consider rolling over your 401(k) to an IRA.
• Make a financial plan.
• Decide what to do next.

Decide When to Start Social Security

You're eligible to claim Social Security payments beginning at age 62. However, you will receive a reduced payment unless you begin collecting benefits at your full retirement age, which varies depending on when you were born. For example, the full retirement age is 66 and 10 months for people born in 1959.

You can increase your monthly payments if you sign up for Social Security after your full retirement age. Each year you wait, your monthly benefit grows by about 8% up to age 70. You can create a my Social Security account to evaluate how retiring at different times could impact your monthly paycheck. “If you don’t need Social Security to cover expenses immediately, it is wise to wait and increase your monthly benefit, which will have a huge impact if you have a long life expectancy,” says Dennis De Kok, founder and senior wealth advisor at FCM Financial Planning in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Sign Up for Medicare or Other Health Insurance

Medicare coverage begins at age 65, regardless of your Social Security full retirement age. When you enroll in the program, you will need to make decisions about Medicare supplement plans and prescription drug coverage or Medicare Advantage plans.

If you retire before age 65, you’ll need to find how to get medical insurance until you are eligible for Medicare. You might qualify through a previous employer, professional group or your spouse’s health insurance plan (if they are still working). You can look at getting coverage through your state's health insurance marketplace until you qualify for Medicare.

As you prepare your budget for medical care, keep in mind that you may need to spend more over time. “Retirement health care costs are one of the biggest expenses you will face,” says Brent Weiss, a financial planner and head of financial wellness at Facet in St. Petersburg, Florida.

If you don’t have a Health Savings Account (HSA), you could consider getting one. You can contribute to these with pretax dollars and you won’t pay taxes on the withdrawals if they are used for qualified medical expenses. You can also take out for nonmedical reasons after you turn 65.

Check Your Retirement Benefits

Check if you are eligible for a pension or other retirement benefits through your current job. Also, look to see if you qualify for benefits from a previous employer. You might collect income from two or three places where you worked during your career. You might be eligible for retiree employer-subsidized health insurance. Ask if retirees can take advantage of any other company-sponsored benefits, such as life insurance, membership to a health club or employee discounts on company products.

Take Advantage of Last-Minute Benefits at Work

If you have dental and vision coverage at work, you may want to visit the dentist and pick up a new pair of glasses before you retire. If the company matches any charitable giving, make your annual contributions before you retire. If your child has an employer-sponsored college scholarship, see if the scholarship will continue after you leave. You can look to see if you’ve reached your contribution limits in your retirement accounts. For 2023, you can save up to $30,000 in a 401(k) or a maximum of $7,000 in an IRA. “Now is the time to supercharge your savings,” Weiss says.

Consider Rolling Over Your 401(k) to an IRA

Employers typically allow you to keep your 401(k) account with the company after you retire. However, you might decide to transfer the funds to an IRA or Roth IRA. “IRAs typically have more investment options which allows you more flexibility and ability to further diversify your portfolio,” De Kok says.

If you own company stock, either inside or outside a retirement plan, now may be the time to sell some to diversify your holdings. You might also want to tweak your investment strategy and make a plan to minimize taxes as you draw down your retirement assets. “Approaching retirement means your investment priorities start to shift from growth to protecting what you have saved,” Weiss says. “Assess your overall level of risk to make sure you are comfortable with it.”

Make a Financial Plan

Take time to draft a budget that outlines your expected income from Social Security, pensions, retirement savings, other investments and part-time work. Then estimate how much you're going to spend. The amounts may have some flexibility, such as spending less by moving to a lower-cost community or putting more funds toward travel. An emergency fund will help you cover any unexpected costs like a car replacement or home repair.

Compare your income to the expenses to make sure you’re on track. “Identify any mismatches,” says Nate Johnson, director of financial planning and shareholder at Truepoint Wealth Counsel in Cincinnati.

Decide What to Do Next

Talk to others about what your retirement life will look like. Envision the activities and routines you’ll create. You might be thinking of moving to a new location, taking on a new hobby or spending more time with grandchildren. You might also map out ways to improve your wellbeing, such as cooking at home, getting enough rest and staying active. “If there are areas of your life where your satisfaction could be higher, think about ways you can fill that time with things you enjoy,” Johnson says. Finding something meaningful to do could help you feel motivated and engaged during the retirement years."

MY COMMENT

Yes....very simple stuff......but....I would bet that many people enter retirement without thinking about any of this stuff.

In my approximately 25 years of retirement since age 49 I have found the below to be the most critical:

1. Plan how to use assets in retirement to minimize taxes.

2. Plan for medical expenses. I have found medical expenses for insurance, Medicare premiums and Medicare supplement policies to be one of my largest expenses. These will tend to go up every year as you hit another birthday. For me they are about $9000 per year for two people.

3. Plan for property taxes. There are often breaks for seniors.

4. If your budget does not match your money....consider moving to a low cost of living area.

5. Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan.

 

It has been a while since I mentioned the foundations of net worth in this thread. For me here is what net worth is composed of:

1. Brokerage accounts........all taxable.

2. Value of Social Security and Annuity lifetime payments. (yes these items do have "long term value" and a "present value".)

3. Real Property....our home which is free and clear.

4. Art, antiques, and other personal property items that have value.

 

Here you go long term investors.

The Seven Virtues of Great Investors

https://jasonzweig.com/the-seven-virtues-of-great-investors/

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Last year, in my Wall Street Journal newsletter (and in my columns), I wrote a series about the essential attributes that all great investors seem to share.

The series was inspired partly by Benjamin Graham’s declaration, in The Intelligent Investor, that intelligence is “a trait more of the character than of the brain.” It also is rooted in Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s constant emphasis on “temperament” and their repeated observations that the investors with the highest IQs often don’t earn the highest returns. Finally, it’s based on my own decades of watching and interviewing the world’s leading investors.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay “Experience“:

Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung.

I keep getting requests from readers who’d like to have all these posts collected in the same place. Someday, I might turn the series into a book, but for now, I’ll post links to them all here, along with an extremely brief summary of each.

You’ll find a lot more detail, including practical suggestions on how to cultivate these virtues yourself, if you follow the links below.

The seven virtues of great investors are:

Curiosity. As I wrote in my newsletter on Jan. 19, 2022:

Curiosity is the first investing virtue. It’s what enables you to find and develop all the others…. Ordinary investors are afraid of what they don’t know, as if they are navigating the world with those antique maps that labeled uncharted waters with the warning “here be dragons.” Great investors are afraid of what they do know, because they realize it might be biased, incomplete or wrong. So they never deviate from their lifelong, relentless quest to learn more.

Skepticism. I argued that…

…the main product of the financial industry isn’t portfolios; it’s propaganda.
And propaganda with numbers, cloaked in jargon, can hit investors like general anesthesia: You just drift off to sleep while financial professionals surgically remove your money….
Numbing investors with numbers is a standard marketing tactic in the financial industry. That’s why skepticism is one of the seven virtues of great investors.
I then listed my favorite techniques for sharpening your skepticism, which you can find here.

Independence. As I wrote in February 2022:

…without independence, investors are doomed to mediocrity.
What’s your single most valuable asset as an investor? Your mind!
If you let other people do your thinking for you, you’ve traded away your greatest asset — and made your results and your emotions hostage to the whims of millions of strangers. And those strangers can do the strangest things.

Humility. I warned in my newsletter that humility is a…

…paradoxical blessing that you can possess if, and only if, you believe to the marrow of your bones you do not possess it. The harder you work at achieving and retaining humility, the more you will need to remind yourself that you still don’t have it, lest you puff up with pride at being humble.
Then I suggested three mental exercises that might help you cultivate authentic humility.

Discipline. In my newsletter for Jan. 11, 2022, I highlighted a couple of examples:

Warren Buffett moved from the buzz and bustle of New York City back to Omaha in 1956, where he began managing money in his house on a placid street.
The late global investor Sir John Templeton relocated from New York to the Bahamas where, he told me decades ago, The Wall Street Journal arrived days late. By reading the news a week later, Templeton told me, he could put it in perspective and prevent himself from over-reacting.

Patience.

In March 2022 I wrote that patience is often measured not in months or years but in decades. Readers added their own keen suggestions for how to extend your time horizons and look past short-term disappointments.

Finally, courage.

My column, “The Secret to Braving a Wild Market,” pointed out that none of these virtues will get you through the worst of markets unless you can muster courage:
Making a courageous investment “gives you that awful feeling you get in the pit of the stomach when you’re afraid you’re throwing good money after bad,” says investor and financial historian William Bernstein of Efficient Frontier Advisors in Eastford, Conn.
You can be pretty sure you’re manifesting courage as an investor when you listen to what your gut tells you—and then do the opposite."

MY COMMENT

As in everything it is the little habits that matter. We all make mistakes....but....over the long term your gained experience should begin to out-weigh the mistakes. the simple mantra above is a good starting point for any new investor and a good exercise for experienced investors to take stock and review.

 

To continue the above here is more info from the comment above on sharpening your skepticism.....from the same author.

https://jasonzweig.com/the-seven-virtues-of-great-investors/

"Here are a few techniques for sharpening your skepticism that I've learned over the years:

• When someone says, "Studies have shown that...," ask the names of the studies, where they were published and whether this person has read them in full.
• When someone describes a "strategy," ask how that differs from a tactic.
• When asset managers talk about "sell discipline," ask if they measure how the stocks they sell do after being sold. If the firm doesn't know that, how does it know its sell discipline works?
• Are these past results based on a backtest? Then read this.
• What do the results look like after trading costs, fees and taxes?
• Do these numbers account for survivorship bias?
• Who's on the other side of this trade, and why would they let you make so much money?
• Is there data on the average performance of people who have tried this in the past? How did they do, and what makes me or you so special that we should believe we can do better?
• Always read the footnotes. Read financial disclosures from back to front, as if they were written in Hebrew or Arabic. The stuff you really need to know is almost always near the back."

 

Off to the usual little show tonight.....another long drive and a late night for me. Unfortunately the cold weather and rain caused our show yesterday to be canceled.

Have a great Saturday everyone.

 

I agree TomB16.....I dont consider the value of modern or basic furnishings/decor in net worth.

I only consider the value of art, antiques, collectables, etc, that have inherent value above basic furnishing/decor value. AND....just because something is old does not mean it has any value.

For me to include something in net worth it has to have a value that is realized at auction, or in some other form that allows me to know what the actual value is based on an arms length sales transaction. I also want to see an active market.

In other words something beyond the value of used furniture, dishes, household goods. I dont consider anything that would be sold as used furniture or estate sale stuff or garage sale stuff as having value for net worth purposes....even if it is old. Many of us have seen how "old" items from our parents or grandparents might be borderline or even antique but they dont have much or any value. For example, all the china and glassware that you see in estate sales. Over time things can shift in value obviously......like for example mid-century items. A lot of mid-century stuff a decade or two ago was basically worthless. Now it can have real value....."if".......it is the right piece.

Since we do have "things" that have value beyond normal furnishings we have had to adjust our "personal property" coverage of our Homeowners Insurance well beyond what would be normal.

 

A new week and a new beginning.

Inflation and bank earnings: What to know this week

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inflation-and-bank-earnings-what-to-know-this-week-120010817.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"First quarter earnings season will get underway in earnest this week with big banks reporting results on Friday as investors turn their attention slightly away from Fed policy and towards the state of play in corporate America.

Some of America's largest financial institutions will report results before the market open on Friday, including JPMorgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Citi (C), and BlackRock (BLK). Also featuring on the weekly schedule will be Wednesday morning's inflation reading from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the monthly retail sales report out Friday morning.

Last week, markets were little-changed during a holiday-shortened trading week with U.S. markets closed for Good Friday. The Dow rose about 0.7% while the S&P 500 was fractionally lower and the Nasdaq fell about 1%.

The main event last week came with markets closed on Friday as the March jobs report showed hiring slowed in the U.S. economy last month, though likely not by enough to forestall another rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed there were 236,000 jobs added to the economy last month while the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.

Wall Street economists were largely in agreement on Friday that another 0.25% increase in the Fed's benchmark interest rate is likely coming on May 3, but that this would be the final rate hike of the current cycle.

"Overall the [March jobs] numbers still indicate that labor markets are developing the way the Fed would like, though perhaps not quite quickly enough," said Theodore Littleton, senior economist at IFR Markets, in an email on Friday.

"It certainly doesn't dissuade the FOMC from getting in at least one last rate hike, with wage gains lower but still running at a rate that they don't consider consistent with their overall inflation target."

Data from the CME Group showed Friday investors are placing a roughly 70% chance on the Fed raising rates next month.

Key to this calculation, of course, will be Wednesday's CPI data, which is expected to show headline inflation rose 0.2% over the last month and 5.2% over the last year in March, an increase that would mark the slowest pace of consumer price increases since August 2021.

On a "core" basis, which strips out the more volatile costs of food and energy, prices are expected to rise 0.4% over the prior month and 5.6% over last year in March.

This would mark the first time since January 2021 that "core" inflation rose more against the prior year than the headline reading.

A persistent rise in the cost of shelter, which rose 8.1% over the last year in February, has kept core inflation elevated. In a press conference last month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said inflation in the housing market coming down — which has largely been driven by rent renewals from a year ago — "is really a matter of time passing."

"We forecast that next week's CPI report will show only modest deceleration," wrote Barclays economists led by Marc Giannoni in a note to clients last week.

On the earnings side, all eyes will be on how ripples from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last month impacted the country's biggest banks.

In recent weeks, smaller regional banks like Western Alliance (WAL) and First Republic (FRC) have sought to calm investor nerves by offering updates on any deposit outflows. JPMorgan, Citi, and Wells Fargo were part of a consortium last month that injected some $30 billion in deposits into First Republic to shore up the struggling lender.

Last week, data from the Federal Reserve showed another $65 billion in deposits left the U.S. banking system, with Bloomberg's Alex Tanzi noting most of this decline came from large banks. In each of the prior two weeks some $120 billion flowed out of small banks while some $126 billion left the overall banking system during the week ended March 22.

In his annual letter to shareholders published last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote: "As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come."

Dimon noted that while these events have been challenging, they are "nothing" like what happened in 2008. But avoiding a 2008-like scenario, in Dimon's view, does not make this bank crisis a good thing by any means.

"Any crisis that damages Americans' trust in their banks damages all banks — a fact that was known even before this crisis," Dimon wrote.

"While it is true that this bank crisis 'benefited' larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd.""

MY COMMENT

It will be interesting to see the CPI data this week.

It will also be interesting and a good thing to see the start of the earnings for the first quarter. Last quarter in the end was not bad and certainly....no where near.....what all the experts were predicting with their doom and gloom.

I note a near total absence of much about earnings this time around.......they all predicted some time ago that thee first two quarters of this year would be bad....ugly. the absence of any comments now as we are about to start earnings tells me......that they are now backing away from the prior predictions.

As usual the first week or two of earnings will be dominated by the BANKS.

 

Seems like a normal negative open today. The short term markets lately have been simply negative at the open often. Will the day move positive today.......who knows. AND.....who cares. it is all about the long term....not the next 24 hours.

I have scanned at least a hundred articles today in the financial world. The result......nothing. It is just a no-news day in the financial world. We have the typical fear mongering topics today...... the coming credit crisis, a bit about earnings, etc, etc. But even the fear mongering seems muted today.

 

Here is one of the few relevant articles that I saw today.

Apple’s Mac shipments fall more than 40%, worse than major rivals

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/app...an-40percent-worse-than-major-rivals-idc.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Key Points

• Apple Mac shipments fell 40.5% in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the same time the prior year, market intelligence provider IDC said.
• Apple’s worldwide PC market share dropped between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, from 8.6% to 7.2%, according to IDC data.

Apple’s worldwide computer shipments fell 40.5% year over year in the first quarter of 2023, amid a broader contraction in consumer demand, according to research firm IDC.

All five of the largest computer makers — Apple, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo— saw double-digit drops in first-quarter shipments, reflecting weaker demand and persistent inventory woes. But Apple’s decline was the biggest of the bunch.


Apple’s worldwide PC market share dropped between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, from 8.6% to 7.2%, according to IDC data. The company shipped 2.8 million fewer devices year over year in the first quarter of 2023, according to IDC.

It’s not entirely unexpected. Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in February that Apple expected double-digit declines in Mac and iPad sales from the year-earlier period for the March quarter. Mac revenue fell 28.66% year over year during the December quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the time that the challenging macroeconomic environment affected iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch sales.

Apple shares were down about 2% on Monday morning.

“The preliminary results also represented a coda to the era of COVID-driven demand and at least a temporary return to pre-COVID patterns,” IDC said.

“Even with heavy discounting, channels and PC makers can expect elevated inventory to persist into the middle of the year and potentially into the third quarter,” IDC researcher Jitesh Ubrani said in the report.

PC manufacturers will suffer in the near term, the IDC report said, with growth expected to pick back up by year-end.

There is potential upside for PC manufacturers, IDC said. Weakened demand gives companies a chance to finish “rejigging their plans” and iron out supply chain kinks. That breathing space will be quite helpful to companies such as Apple, which has started to push suppliers and assemblers to move their operations beyond China.

An Apple spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Apple will report its March quarter earnings May 4."

MY COMMENT

Sounds about right. There has been nothing to give APPLE a boost and BUZZZZZ for a good length of time.

I am a perfect example of what is happening to Apple.....I am typing this on a 16 year old MacBook Pro. It does everything I need. Our other tech items in the hose.....another MacBook Pro that is about 8 years old and an iPad that is about 4 years old.

I am going to have to replace the oldest MacBook Pro some time since the battery is no longer holding a charge longer than about a half hour...so I have to use it as a stationary computer that is plugged in. Some time over the next year or two I will replace it with a new MacBook Pro.

We also have two iPhones....that are each about 3 years old. ALL of these items do everything we need to ever do........so no money from us going to Apple this year.

 

Here is a run down of the little that is happening today.

Stocks fall, yields inch higher after strong jobs report: Stock market news today

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-today-live-updates-april-10-2023-121105758.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"U.S. stocks fell Monday, with the Nasdaq lower than other indexes, after the release of Friday's jobs report showed continued strength in the labor market.

At the open, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) dipped by 0.6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.3%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped by 0.9%.

Government bonds yields were higher. The yield on the 10-year note climbed to 3.39%, while rate-sensitive two-year note yields gained to 3.99% Monday morning.

Crude oil (CL=F) continues to hover around $80 a barrel for the sixth consecutive day, the first time it has done so since late January.

Wall Street last Thursday wrapped up a short but volatile week, ending on a modestly upbeat note ahead of Friday's jobs report. Stocks had been wobbly earlier in the week in response to signs of a slowing economy, including weak data on private payrolls and job openings.

The stock market was closed for Good Friday. Still, the Labor Department on Friday reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 236,000 in March, slightly below consensus estimates for 240,000 and down from February's revised 326,000. The unemployment rate was steady at 3.5%, while the labor force participation rate climbed to a post-COVID era high of 62.6%.

Hourly earnings rose 0.3% compared to February’s figures. The annual gain cooled to 4.2%, below February’s 4.6%.

“The March jobs report suggests the US labor market is moving into a healthier balance as softer employment growth and cooler wage inflation suggest we're nearing the end of the Fed's rate hiking cycle,” Ryan Sweet, Chief US Economist at Oxford Economics, wrote after Friday’s report.

Following the release, markets are now pricing in a 65% probability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by another 0.25% in May, according to data from the CME Group.

Meanwhile, this week Wall Street will be closely paying attention to March’s consumer price index report out Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the index to rise 0.3% from February, lowering the year-over-year headline inflation rate to 5.2%.

“Thinking about the near-term setup, investors remain bearish, and the recession narrative was the dominant narrative last week as bad news was treated as bad news,” wrote the U.S. market intelligence team at JPMorgan in a note. “The CPI print should give more certainty around the terminal rate.”

Minutes from the Fed’s late-March meeting will be released on Wednesday, giving more insight into the central bank’s policy moves.

Another potential catalyst for markets could come at the end of the week. Some of the bank heavyweights including Wells Fargo (WFC), JPMorgan (JPM), and Citi (C) will report earnings.

Under this backdrop, commercial lending has fallen more than $100 billion over the last two weeks of March, the largest dip on record, heightening the focus on bank earnings this week.

On the economic front, wholesale inventories were $919.2 billion at the end of February, up 0.1% from January's level, below consensus estimates of 0.2%. Sales for the month rose 0.4%, lower than the expected 0.6% gain, the Commerce Department reported.

In single-stock moves, Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) shares moved down after the EV maker confirmed plans to build a major battery production site in Shanghai.

Pioneer Natural Resources Company (PXD) shares soared after a report from The Wall Street Journal hinted that Exxon Mobil held talks with the shale driller about a possible acquisition.

Shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) fell Monday morning after the company reported that their personal computer shipments tanked by 40% in the first quarter, signaling a bumpy start to the year for PC makers."

MY COMMENT

A typical day where.....no news is bad news.....for the markets.

It will be nice to see earnings ramp up over the next 1-2 months. It might be a distraction from the boring market environment that we are in at the moment.

BORING.