I thought this article about phantom limbs was interesting, and may say something about how our brains are to a degree pre-wired to expect certain sensory input.
The patient was born with a deformed hand that didn't have several fingers. After a bad accident that required the amputation of that hand, she started having phantom pains of a 5-fingered hand that she had never had.
Click here for the article: "Phantom Finger Points to Secrets in the Brain"
So far my tomato plant seems healthy - better than the past 2 yrs where the tomatoes tended to die on the vine. Here's the first red ones of the year.
I was listening to my playlist today and John Mayer's funky take on the blues standard "Crossroads" came up. I really like Mayer's interpretation of this song. Here's a youtube video of a live performance with extended intro and solos from the Letterman show. I know some folks, especially blues fans, don't like to or want to give Mayer credit for his fretwork, but I dig his style.
Alternative Energy stat of the day from solarindustrymag.com
"Renewable power, excluding large hydropower, accounted for 44% of all new generating capacity added worldwide in 2011 - up from 34% in 2010."
You don't see it as much yet, but it seems a tipping point is nearing wrt power generation. More and more applications are seeing alternative energy approaches becoming feasible.
The investment implications are still cloudy. I eventually want to be long in this space, but now there's so much competition that hardly anyone is making money.
I'm a shareholder of online Pet pharmacy PetMed Express PETS. I was reading their annual report and came upon this statistic for the United States which surprised me a bit: "The dog and cat population is approximately 165 million, with approximately 62% of all households owning a pet."
I found the 62% figure to be high. I don't have pets right now so I guess I tend to think that the majority of people are like me and don't have pets - but I'd be wrong. I guess I'm in the 38% minority that doesn't have pets.
Some more info on spending on pets: "According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, pet spending in the United States increased 5.3% to $51.0 billion in 2011. Pet supplies and medications represented $11.8 billion, or 23% of the
total spending on pets in the United States.."
If you do the math on that it works out to $11.8 B / 165 M = approximately $71.50 in average spending on each animals pet supplies and medications annually.
In total spending on pets it works out to $51.0 B / 165 M = $309 annual spending on each pet.
These annual spend figures really are pretty low and don't surprise me alot.
A friend posted a link to a viral video of Noah's cover of LMFAO's tune "I'm Sexy and I know it", which I thought was awesome, so I looked at some of his other tunes. I actually thought this cover of Gotye's "Someone that I used to know" was even better.
Here's a pic of what we did with that broccoli you gave us. This isn't the crappie you gave us (it's catfish from Kroger), but the crappie will be looking like this too before too much longer:
and here's one from memorial day
I read this quote from super-investor Bill Gross on Forbes' website today:
"The whales of our current economic society swim mainly in financial market oceans. Innovators such as [Steve] Jobs and [Bill] Gates are as rare within the privileged one percent as giant squid are to sharks, because the one percent feed primarily off of money, not invention."
Here's the full story: What Investors Can Learn From Apple, McDonald's And Wall Street's Blunders.
This quote encapsulates much of what I've come to believe about how the financial industry has become a parasite on the economy.
Check out some of this otherworldly landscape of the Tabletop Mountains - Tepui - in Venezuela.
Here's a cool little piece by Warren Buffett talking about his thinking back when he was 25 years old just starting out.
quote:
The thing is, when I got out of college, I had $9,800, but by the end of 1955, I was up to $127,000. I thought, I’ll go back to Omaha, take some college classes, and read a lot—I was going to retire! I figured we could live on $12,000 a year, and off my $127,000 asset base, I could easily make that. I told my wife, “Compound interest guarantees I’m going to get rich.”
Pics for my Dad (and others) - Nashville Hail 3-2-2012. Not snow. It's about 75-80F degrees here. This all fell in about 10 loud minutes as the storm moved through.
I hear just about 10 miles away they got it much worse. this isn't that bad I guess.
check out this story about some big bugs thought extinct - except they found some under one bush on an otherwise deserted rocky island. fun story - and the bugs are huge.
It's been an exciting few months in the stock market recently as long positions have done well. Following the run-up and run of buying I've decided to take a little bit off of the table given some uneven economic data along with international concerns like Isreal/Iran, and the always present Greece and significant economic slowing across Europe that I've heard discussed in several conference calls.
In addition I was just running out of interesting buy opportunities so I changed approach and raised some cash. (Most of my funds are in retirement accts so tax impacts don't come into play very often for me).
These are my first sells of 2012.
NEU - Newmarket was my largest position and it has continued to act weak following the conference call, so I liquidated. I actually expect to re-establish the position as mgmt characterized the slowdown they saw in Q4 as inventory drawdown, especially in Europe, and said it was not due to lost customers. They sell petroleum additives and there's only so long folks can go without re-ordering. But the stock currently is just short of buyers so I'll step aside for a while.
TEO - I took about half of my Telecom Argentina off the table. Again, I'll be glad to re-establish the position at lower prices, but it's just too weak in this market. The conference call for the company sounded excellent to me, so I gotta think the market is concerned more with international issues (seems like it reacts particularly negatively to bad news in Europe), and concern over Argentine regulatory issues the company may have to deal with. Sounds like alot of analysts are concerned the dividend may be in question due to Argentine govt influence. (TEO is traditionally a big dividend payer). This is still a long term hold for me, it's just smaller now than it was. Will re-buy more on pull-backs. All the metrics tell me this is still cheap.
CHL - China Mobile. Sold my full stake after watching it bounce around in a trading range for several years. It pays a very nice dividend also. I expect to repurchase should it fall back to the 47 range. The metrics look very good on this one. They may be getting the AAPL i-phone soon so might see upcoming bump, but it's near the top of it's range and I promised myself the next time it got here...
WFR - a small position betting on rebound of semi-equips/solar. while those areas in general have done well for me - WFR was the dog of the bunch and it may be too wounded and not the best vehicle to invest in this theme.
In selling I normally try to pair losers and there's a couple of recent buys in the material area I'm keeping an eye on (CLF and BBL in particular), but here are my larger position by size now.
LHCG - LHC Group - home health
SNDK - Sandisk - digital storage - flash drives
AFAM - Almost FAmily - home health
EBAY - eBay
TEF - Telefonica SA -
CLF - Cliffs Natural Resources - mining - iron ore in particular
DAR - Darling Intl - grease recycling
ASML - ASML HOlding - semi equips
HITK - Hi-TEch Pharmacal
VECO - Veeco Instruments - semi equips
TEO - Telecom ARgentina
BBL - BHP Billiton - diversified mining
.... and I'll stop there. the rest tend to be smallish positions, many more speculative small caps so I'll stop here.
Happy investing all
