The Long Term Investor

No way.....I hate washing boats. I hate even more scraping all the stuff off the bottom. Part of the time we lived up there we were on low bank waterfront on the Sound. We had a boat out on a buoy. We had to scrape the bottom every once in a while. We eventually painted it with the paint that is now BANNED to stop the growth...it worked pretty well.

SO NO.......I dont do boats.

 

Posting EARLY today....by a couple of minutes.

I have to take off and go to my amp tech to have him look at......one of my two primary amps.....that is sounding odd to me. It works fine and is not making any noises....but the sound seems brittle and thin. I changed out the power tubes and that made no difference. So off to the shop. A 1967 drip edge Deluxe Reverb with a JBL D120.....a very early Silver Face.....with the early black lines on the face...... that was manufactured with FULL ON Black Face spec's. My other primary playing amp is an EXTREMELY cheap.....I am talking GARBAGE QUALITY....... Chinese amp.....a Belcat.....that I used as a platform to heavily mod it to what I wanted...so a one off custom. I have sold off many of my amps over the past years. All I have left other than the above is a 1966 Black Face Twin with JBL D120's, and three Music Man 112 RD 50's from the early 1980's with road cases.

Anyway....ended the day in the RED. BUT I got a nice beat on the SP500 by 0.51%. I ACTUALLY had two stocks....yes two....in the green...NVIDIA at +2.86%, and COST at +0.72%.

ALL in all a medium level loss on a NASTY day. AND....SURPRISE......the Ten Year Treasury yield has plummeted to 1.192%.....so much for inflation. Onward and upward from here.....once we get past this little bit of TEMPORARY INSANITY.

 

This little article reflects a very good....OMEN....for the REAL tech leaders when they report earnings in a week or so.

IBM shows strongest revenue growth in three years

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/ibm-earnings-q2-2021.html

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

Key Points

• IBM surpassed expectations on the top and bottom lines.
• The company spent $1.75 billion on acquisitions in the quarter.

IBM shares rose as much as 4% in extended trading on Monday after the enterprise technology and services provider reported second-quarter earnings that came in stronger than analysts had expected.

Here’s how the company did:

• Earnings: $2.33 per share, adjusted, vs. $2.29 per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
• Revenue: $18.75 billion, vs. $18.29 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Revenue grew 3% year over year in the quarter, according to a statement, the fastest growth in three years, as the company laps a quarter that saw meaningful impact from the coronavirus. In the previous quarter revenue had grown 0.9%. The company reiterated its expectation that revenue will grow, rather than decline, in the full year.

“The overall spend environment continues to improve,” CEO Arvind Krishna said on a conference call with analysts. “With the economy reopening in many parts of the world, many markets and industries are getting back on track. We see this in North America and in select industries.”

IBM’s Global Technology Services segment, containing managed services, outsourcing and support, delivered $6.34 billion in revenue. That was up slightly and above the $6.23 billion consensus among analysts polled by FactSet. IBM continue to expect to spin out the Managed Infrastructure Services component of Global Technology Services, under the name Kyndryl, by the end of the year.

“While our performance with existing clients remains strong, as we would expect, the sales cycles for new logo clients is elongating as they await further information related to Kyndryl,” said Jim Kavanaugh, IBM’s finance chief.

The Cloud & Cognitive Software business, which includes Red Hat, contributed $6.10 billion in revenue, up 6% and more than the FactSet consensus of $5.93 billion.

The company’s Global Business Services consulting unit had $4.34 billion in revenue, growing almost 12% and higher than the $4.03 billion FactSet consensus.

“Clients are accelerating their rate and pace of digital transformations using cloud and AI to gain operational insights, increase productivity and create new growth opportunities,” Kavanaugh said. The company has been investing in building skills for competing cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, he said.

Systems revenue, including hardware, came out to $1.71 billion, which was down 7%, meeting consensus.

In the quarter IBM spent $1.75 billion on acquisitions, the most in a single quarter since it closed the $34 billion Red Hat deal in the third quarter of 2019. It said it was acquiring process-mining software company myInvenio, application-management company Turbonomic and Salesforce consulting company Waeg. The company also announced 2-nanometer chip technology, as well as new artificial-intelligence features for its Watson Studio software for building models.

Excluding the after-hours move, IBM shares are up 9% since the start of the year, while the S&P 500 index is up almost 13% over the same period.

MY COMMENT

IF IBM can put up great numbers.....that is a HUGE OMEN for the companies that are the.....actual.....tech leaders. Of course......after today....the market was looking for any sort of good news to latch onto. It has been a long time since IBM was any sort of market leader.......so.....if they are doing well.....others should be making some REAL money.

I just HOPE the reporting companies from here on dont get too COY with the forward looking statements. We need honesty....but....we need companies to help to restore and build confidence.....in a responsible way.

 

Well we FINALLY made it to the NVIDIA 4 for 1 stock split. It has been a long haul from May 21 when it was announced to today when it happened. I dont know why they let it drag out for so long.

The good news......for most of that time up to about 7 market days ago....they kicked ass being UP nearly EVERY day. They FINALLY wore the markets out and started to lose the bubble about the middle to the end of the week before last.

Than last week was pretty much a disaster for the stock. TODAY.....gets things back on somewhat of a positive footing as the stock was nicely positive today........and...... the new.....LOWER PRICE....kicks in tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how investors respond.

 

I see this little TEASER of an article online....today......it is actually not bad.

How to hang on to your money when stocks are sliding

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/4d09bc90-3ac5-3f57-83ee-1b33b3404f4a/how-to-hang-on-to-your-money.html

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

How you navigate a bear market for stocks makes the greatest difference to your long-term investment returns.

That’s important to remember at any time, but especially when the stock market is selling off sharply. No one knows whether the U.S. market’s weakness is the beginning of a bear market, but we do know that one will occur sooner or later. So now is a good time to pick a strategy you can live with through that bear market.

Much depends on getting this right. Indeed, Jeremy Grantham of Boston-based GMO argues that the next bear market “could very well be the most important event of your investing lives.”

I therefore find a silver lining to Monday’s market decline: It forces us to confront how we would likely react during a full-fledged bear market. If you’re scared by a 2% tumble, just imagine if the S&P 500 SPX, -1.59% plunged 57% (as it did during the Great Financial Crisis) or 49% (as it did when the internet bubble burst).

Confronting these unpleasant memories is necessary because the all-too-common pattern is to throw caution to the wind when the market is high, and then throw in the towel at the bottom. That’s just the opposite of what you should do, of course, since it means you’re buying high and selling low.

Even professional stock-market advisers are vulnerable to this behavioral pattern. At the top of the U.S. market in October 2007, for example, as the Great Financial Crisis-induced bear market was beginning, the investment newsletter model portfolios monitored by my Hulbert Financial Digest were 58% invested in equities, on average. By the March 2009 market bottom, 28.4% of these portfolios were in stocks.

As you can also see from the chart below, the same pattern occurred during the bursting of the internet bubble. At the top of the U.S. market in March 2000, the newsletter model portfolios’ average exposure level was 69.5%. At the October 2002 bottom it was 38.9%.


It’s crucial for you to break this pattern. To be sure, it’s unrealistic that you will be able to identify the precise top and bottom, which would enable you to have a higher equity exposure level at the bottom than the top. A more realistic goal would be to determine the equity exposure level that you can keep constant throughout a bear market.

A 100% equity exposure level doesn’t qualify for most of us. As Claude Erb, a former fixed-income and commodities manager at mutual-fund firm TCW Group, put it to me once in an email: “The people who can truly stomach the volatility of a 100% stock portfolio are either catatonic or dead.”

What the News Means for You and Your Money

This psychological truth is illustrated by those investment newsletters whose model portfolios were fully invested in equities at the October 2007 bull-market top. Their portfolios were just 26.2% invested in equities at the March 2009 bottom — or more than 70 percentage points lower. In contrast, consider those advisers whose recommended equity exposure at the October 2007 top was in the 40% to 50% range: Not only were their equity exposure levels no lower at the March 2009 bottom, they in fact were marginally higher.

So even though those more conservative portfolios may have looked silly when the market was riding high, they definitely got the last laugh. They were in a good position to take advantage of the stock market’s snapback rally from the March 2009 bottom.

Being only 40% to 50% invested in equities may not be the right exposure level for you. But you should waste no time finding what that right level is. At the bottom of the next bear market you’ll be glad you did."

MY COMMENT

I guess I am either CATATONIC or DEAD....since I try to stay 100% fully invested.....all the time. MY simple answer to the question in the title to the article.....JUST DONT SELL ANYTHING....and....DONT TRY TO TIME THE MARKET. YES....I know....impossible for most people.

As noted above.....the so called professionals are...EXPERTS....at buying high and selling low. In any situation....it is the so called professionals that are LEADING the PANIC.....every time. They panic early and often....at the drop of a hat.

The market in general should be TOTALLY EMBARRASSED by what happened today. Lets see if it can redeem itself tomorrow and over the course of the week.

 

A few RANDOM observations.

1. The Ten Year Treasury is now at a yield of 1.199%......YES, there is NO inflation.

2. The SP500....after today is now at year to date....+13.38%.....STILL above the long term average annual total return.

3. NO.....I will DEFINITELY NOT....be doing any sort of trade on the ROBINHOOD IPO.

4. CHINA....is now STICKING IT TO THE MAN.....see the article I put up on the prior page about them pulling their companies back from USA market listings.......good for them. Total GARBAGE anyway. Of course....."THE MAN".....is the US government and USA stock investors.

5. LOOKS like this leg of the BITCOIN MANIA is over or at least slowed down...there has been little good price action lately for traders and very few articles to drive continued MANIA. BUT.....it always comes back....sooner or later.

6. BUMMER......the SPAC MANIA only lasted about 4-6 months. Most have been DISMAL FAILURES. I mean....COME ON....what could possible go wrong with investing your money in a blind pool with no idea of what it was going to be used for.....and....knowing that a HUGE percentage of he money would go to and benefit those that run the pool.

7. MORTGAGE rates are holding at low levels.....DUH....see #1 above.

 

CLOSE.....We used to have Miele many years ago. Now I am using a Dyson ball type vacuum....that is about 15 years old and still works great. Also have a Dyson Animal "stick".

ALL great investors get their investing ideas while vacuuming......a good time to think. I know....on good authority...that Buffett and Peter Lynch also vacuum their own houses.

 

Today....with the nice open....shows what a total embarrassment....yesterday was for the markets. Irrational insanity.

 

A little article on the COME-BACK market today.

US STOCKS-Wall St rises after steep selloff, strong results boost IBM

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-stocks-wall-st-rises-140645516.http

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

"July 20 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes rose on Tuesday, as economically sensitive stocks rebounded after a sharp selloff in the previous session, while International Business Machines (IBM) jumped on strong second-quarter results.

Shares of the blue-chip technology firm climbed 3.7% as brokerages raised their price targets on the stock following robust growth in the company's cloud and consulting businesses.

Nine of the 11 major S&P 500 sector indexes were trading higher, with the S&P 500 banks index rising 0.7%.

Focus is now on earnings reports from companies such as Netflix Inc and Chipotle Mexican Grill due later in the day.

The second-quarter earnings season is underway, with 41 companies on the S&P 500 having reported their numbers so far. Of those, 90% have beaten consensus estimates, Refinitiv data showed.

Analysts now expect a year-on-year S&P 500 earnings growth of 72% for April-June period, as per Refinitiv data.

Wall Street's main indexes ended sharply lower on Monday, with the blue-chip Dow Jones index logging its worst day in nearly nine months, as a surge in Delta variant infections sparked a broad sell-off on fears about renewed COVID-19 shutdowns and a protracted economic recovery.

"We have been in a straight line, almost straight up, and the market needs to shake it off once in a while. It (Delta variant) was an excuse to accelerate some selling yesterday," said Anthony Minopoli, chief investment officer at Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors.

"We're looking at the Delta variant as a short-term situation but really more focused on what's happening with employment, inflation and keeping an eye on if there's any change in tone coming from the Fed."

At 9:43 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 231.32 points, or 0.68%, at 34,193.36, the S&P 500 was up 16.57 points, or 0.39%, at 4,275.06 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 13.12 points, or 0.09%, at 14,288.10.

Shares of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related firms Coinbase Global, Riot Blockchain, Marathon Patent Group, and MicroStrategy Inc fell between 2.4% and 4.3% as bitcoin slipped below $30,000.

Halliburton Co rose 1.1% after it posted a second-straight quarterly profit, as a rebound in crude prices from pandemic lows buoyed demand for oilfield services.

Peloton Interactive Inc rose 3.6% after the fitness products maker said it would provide UnitedHealth Group's millions of fully insured members access to its live and on-demand fitness classes for a year at no additional cost.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.26-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.67-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and no new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 11 new highs and 38 new lows."

MY COMMENT

A good accurate basic article.....WITHOUT......all the gratuitous commentary that I am seeing in other sources that are trying to fear monger the virus and the drop yesterday. Headlines and articles trying to.....claim.....that stocks today are......."STRUGGLING".....to come back from yesterday.

NO....the markets have been straight up from the start today.....without a second thought.

AMAZINGLY....we are seeing a 90% BEAT by earnings so far. That has got to be a historic rate. Over the past few months there have been many many articles DOUBTING the upcoming earnings. As usual.....totally WRONG. I dont have any answer for it....but....the level of inaccurate and flat out false information that is being spouted in what used to be the financial "NEWS" is ridiculous. OBVIOUSLY...much of it is simply unsupported personal opinion.....packaged as "news". I feel SAD for people that are younger and actually MIGHT give some of this info credibility......as newer investors.

 

I see elsewhere.......that stocks today are having a "WEAK BOUNCE".....or....are "CLAWING THEIR WAY BACK". What planet are these people on? Or....an "I" out of touch with reality?

My reality....the market opened and stocks SHOT up by 500 points.

 

I LOVE those LIBERTARIAN titles.....Emmett. I suspect that many if not the majority of men....vacuum the house.

 

HERE is some historical data on the "little" drop yesterday.


The Dow's worst day since last October
Ten largest single-day percentage drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the past year

Oct 28 '20
−3.43%

Sep 3 '20
−2.78%

Oct 26 '20
−2.29%

Sep 8 '20
−2.25%

Jul 19 '21
−2.09%

Jan 27 '21
−2.05%

Jan 29 '21
−2.03%

May 12 '21
−1.99%

Sep 23 '20
−1.92%

Sep 21 '20
−1.84%
Source: FactSet. As of market close on July 19, 2021.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/18/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

MY COMMENT

So.....just part of the investing experience......and.....irrelevant to the longer term markets and gains that are achieved by simply holding through the corrections and bear markets that are part of the NORMAL investing experience. As you can see from the above...this WAS NOT a shocking event. AND.....all those BIG drops happened over the course of......JUST......the past year.

 

I think most men vacuum so they have some response to the common.......and probably true...... complaint that they dont do anything around the house....."what do you mean, I vacuum".