The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog)

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Texas Rangers Lead The Series -- Three Games To One -- October 31, 2023

Locator: 45884SPORTS.

Next game tomorrow night, I believe.

Tonight's score:

11 - 5 at the start of the bottom of the ninth;
two runs in the ninth and that was it, 11 - 7

*********************************
Halloween

See comments for jackets.

Rambling On Investing -- October 31, 2023

Locator: 45883INV.

Earlier I posted by thoughts about blogging about EVs and renewable energy going forward.

Now, some rambling thoughts about macro-economic data.

I will continue to follow macro-economics and will occasionally / link macro-economic data, but this past year, I've realized my attitude with regard to macro-economics has changed significantly. Macro-economic data means almost nothing to me -- not to be taken out of context.

I don't invest in real estate, art, vintage automobiles, 24-year-old Scotch, gold, silver, bonds, -- which pretty much leaves equities. All things being equal, about the only thing that can really affect my personal portfolio now is tax policy -- annual taxes that I pay. Macro-economics affects my portfolio but it affects everyone's portfolio, as does tax policy. I can't do anything about macro-economic data; about the only thing I can affect is my personal taxes.

As you know, I don't time the market and stay fully invested.

I have five buckets of stocks from which I choose -- the various companies might vary a bit and the buckets could change over time. But I have a fairly robust and guaranteed, as much as anything is guaranteed, revenue stream which will go into the market each month.

So, regardless what the macro-economic "charts" show, I'm still building positions. I will sell if things change, but it takes a lot to get me to sell when cost basis trends toward $0 and dividends keep increasing -- which is true for most of my energy companies.

With regard to macro-investing, even the big banks, fund managers, fiduciaries, life insurance companies, and respected analysts can't agree.

After that group (big banks, fund managers, fiduciaries,life insurance companies, and respected analysts) we move into "folks" with political slants -- ZeroHedge, PowerLine, Breitbart, NY Times editorial board, Washington Post editorial board, etc.

Nobel laureates can't even agree on the cause of inflation, yada, yada, yada. And forecasting GDP is so difficult, they do estimates every other day or every other week, depending when data is released.

Everything I've read suggests Buffett and Munger buy when they see good value and don't really pay attention to macro-economic data -- I'm sure they do, but Buffett has said he doesn't watch macro-economic data, but watches for good value. A lot of their decisions are also affected by tax policy -- and with the huge amount of cash they have, tax policy has a huge impact on what Buffett / Munger do and don't do.

Exhibit A:

Back in my early days of investing, back in the early 1980s I suppose, I started building a position in Steris. Working in the medical field, I saw firsthand how much Steris was being bought by hospitals. But then something changed with macro-economic data. I've long forgotten what but it had nothing to do with Steris the company per se, but, regardless, I sold all my Steris, probably in the late 1990s.

This is what I sold back in the 1990s or whenever it was:

Apple: Comparing The M3 Laptops With The M2 Laptops -- Scary Fast -- October 31, 2023

Locator: 45882APPLE.

It is impossible to articulate the "jump" from the M2 laptops to the M3 laptops just announced. Maybe this will help.

Again, the M3 laptops are not for "you and me." Their target audience:

Hollywood film industry (directors, producers, editors, cinematographers, animators, etc.)
biomedical researchers; and,
serious gamers and game developers.

My primary laptop, a Macbook Air. If I'm reading this correctly, a "2018" design -- five years old -- and a single core. A single CPU / core. GPUs? I have no idea but probably none, but rather just a graphics card. No unified memory.

Unified memory? Explained here. When you hear Tim Cook say "unified memory," that's codespeak / euphemism for Apple Silicon which has 1000% replaced Intel in Apple computers.

I have an M1 MacBook Air which I bought maybe a year ago when it went on sale for a short period of time. I feel guilty using it because my current Intel-MacBook Air works just fine.

I have no idea why I'm "saving" the M1 MacBook Air but I just hate to quit using anything that is still perfectly good and meets all my needs.

Anyway, enough of that. Look at the M3 laptops vs the M2 laptops.

The M3 family:

As a reminder, prior to the "M3" announcement, earlier this year it was the M2 chip.

If nothing else, compare the huge jump in "unified memory": 8GB vs 128GB. That explains the audible gasp I heard when the Apple spokesman introduced the M3 MAX.

From CNBC:

Apple announced three new chips, all under the broader M3 product banner. The current generation of chips is the M2.
There is an entry-level M3, a 40% faster M3 Pro, and a 250% faster M3 Max chip for AI developers and 3D artists.
Apple says all M3 chips can get up to 22 hours of battery life on a laptop.
The M3 has a 8 core central processing unit and up to a 10 core graphics processing unit.
The M3 Pro has a 12 core CPU and an 18 core GPU.
The M3 Max has a 16 core CPU and as many as 40 cores on its GPU. Apple says it can be used for developing artificial intelligence software.
Apple says that its current-generation GPUs are 1.8 times as fast as the GPUs on the M2 chips.
Apple says its CPU cores on the M3 are 15% faster than M2 CPU performance cores for heavy workloads. The M3 processor is 60% faster than its M1 processor, Apple said.
The new chips are built on a 3 nanometer process, which is currently the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

From social media after the M3 announcement:

Chips, semiconductor: link here.

Home page for tech: link here.
The cloud: link here.
Streaming: link here. Streaming wars.
Spatial computing: link here.
Generative AI: link here.
Apple Silicon: link here.

Goldilocks Opportunity For Investors — Happy Halloween, 2023

Locator: 45881INV.

From The WSJ.

Cash has rarely been this hot on Wall Street. Financial advisers warn holding too much can burn a hole in your portfolio.

With markets rocky and cash earning 5% or more, investors have boosted their holdings of money-market funds to a near-record $5.6 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute. Both individuals and institutional investors are piling in—asset managers now have roughly one-fifth of their portfolios in money-market funds, State Street data show.

Cash was trash for years on Wall Street, where low interest rates left investors buying every dip, saying there was no alternative to stocks. The prospect of a prolonged period of higher rates has upended that thinking, buffeting both stocks and bonds while increasing the returns offered by some of the safest, shortest-term investments such as money markets. Yet many advisers caution that fees, taxes and inflation all undermine those returns. And one of the biggest costs is opportunity:

By pouring money into cash, investors miss out on potential gains from holding a broad portfolio of stocks, bonds and other riskier investments. “Money-market funds are a rational place to be for the next six months. But over the long term, taking risks pays you more,” said Wylie Tollette, chief investment officer for Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions.

“Keeping any more than a small allocation to cash in your portfolio, for any longer than the short-term, will ultimately cost you thousands or millions of dollars.” Though often treated as akin to a bank account, the funds differ from normal savings accounts and other cash-like investments, such as CDs. They typically lend cash to banks overnight (backed by Treasurys), park it at the Fed or invest in Treasury bills maturing in a few months. Still, they are considered equivalent to cash because investors generally expect to get their money back whenever they ask. To that end, the funds try to maintain a net asset value of $1 a share.