Small Talk

One Market, the old Union Pacific building, when the sun came out last week.

Weather
The weather has been choppily inconsistent, with March’s warmth followed by April’s storms. The cold dampens spirits, but it also lowers the pollen counts and keeps the mosquitoes at bay, a fair exchange in my book. The spring heat made me guilty of premature extrapolation; I had turned off the furnace but had to re-light the pilot over the weekend when the temperature dipped into the forties.

Stocks
When the Internet bubble burst, I stopped opening my brokerage and 401(k) statements, because ignorance, while not blissful, was not depressing. After four years my portfolio has recovered much of its losses, and I’ve started to check my share prices every day, a sure sign of a market top.

The stocks that I seem to have done the best with are the companies which call me a customer. This is a variation on the strategy touted by former Fidelity guru Peter Lynch:

amateur investors can continue to reap exceptional rewards from mundane, easy-to-understand companies they encounter in their daily lives.

I’ve held Apple Computer (AAPL) and Pacific Gas and Electric (PCG) for many years and recently bought SBC Communications (SBC). Their prices always fell after I bought them, so Warren Buffett I’m not, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m getting back a little of the profits they’re making off me.

Fitness
I’ve never joined a gym in my life---which is obvious by a glance at my physique---but the promotion was too good to pass up. The local fitness club did a database search of all residents who, to the best of its knowledge, had never been a member of any gym in the area, and offered a two-year membership for $200. (They’ve been around for over ten years, and I just have to use the facilities for three months in order to extract fair value: yes, I did consider the risk of business failure.) Sloth sometimes does pay.

Politics
While democracy has gotten all the ink, we are reminded this week that there are ancient institutions that employ, successfully, other methods of naming their leaders. The College of Cardinals will soon select the next Pope, the direct spiritual successor of Saint Peter, and it will be hard to argue they did a poor job the last time. And the death of Monaco’s Prince Rainier, who was a beloved and successful monarch, bequeathed the kingdom’s keys to his son, Prince Albert. Sad to say, there is no foolproof method of identifying the philosopher-king, the chimerical individual who is wise, virtuous, and a seeker of truth and who has risen to prominence without succumbing to human appetites and failings. © 2005 Stephen Yuen