I wrote Cautiously. Cautiously a few days ago. I remain cautious. Which means lots in cash. Some in high yielders. And writing covered calls on stocks I actually like, like BHP, Apple, and the gold ETF SGOL which has dropped a lot but hasn’t broken its 200-day moving average, yet.
Sentiment fluctuates widely. One day to the next. A reflection of general uncomfortableness with the economy, jobs, and the BIG problem at thousands of banks — commercial office and shopping center real estate.
10 Dow Stocks Investors Should Avoid. The Street did a neat piece. On JPMorgan, the author wrote
JPMorgan Chase(CAG) is the best of a bad lot. The function of a bank is to allocate capital and manage risk – two things that no large financial institution has done well for some time. Worse yet, financial institutions have a long history of rewarding management while diluting shareholders through numerous equity offerings — this is poison for long-term investors.
In the opinion of this author, buy-and-hold investors should avoid bank stocks entirely. The banking industry is extremely competitive, susceptible to macroeconomic events and relies on human capital for competitive advantages. The odds are not in your favor.
The article is here.
It’s a perfect time to get in shape, lose weight, do some exercise, learn some new skills, see the world, smell the roses, etc. Why do so many people blame their medical ails on their doctors, not themselves, their obesity and their lack of exercise?
Remember the three young American hikers, who got arrested by the Iranians? A year later, they’re still in jail. The woman is in solitary confinement. The Iranians have not allowed their Iranian lawyer to visit them once. Not once. And you thought the Taliban were bad. The Iranians are nuts. Read the outrageous story. Click here.
Harry’s latest technology.
I bought an iPhone 4 yesterday. It is a nice phone. It actually makes calls. I haven’t had a dropped call. And the data is fast. I’ll resist the temptation to do what every other blogger does — prattle on endlessly about the phone. Maybe another time.
Great (?) Jewish Humor
+ My mother is a typical Jewish mother. Once she was on jury duty. They sent her home. She insisted SHE was guilty.
+ Any time a person goes into a delicatessen and orders pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.
+ It was mealtime during a flight on El Al. “Would you like dinner?” the flight attendant asked Moshe, seated in front. “What are my choices?” Moshe asked. “Yes or no,” she replied.
+ An elderly Jewish man is knocked down by a car and is brought to the local hospital. A pretty nurse tucks him into bed and says, “Mr. Gevarter, are you comfortable?” Gevarter replies, “I make a living….”
+ Three Jewish women get together for lunch. As they are being seated in the restaurant, one takes a deep breath and gives a long, slow “oy.” The second takes a deep breath as well and lets out a long, slow “oy” The third takes a deep breath and says impatiently, “Girls, I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to talk about our children.”
+ And one final favorite: A waiter comes over to a table full of Jewish women and asks, “Is anything all right?
Harry Newton, who’s thrilled to be alive.
The fastest, cheapest and simplest way to speed up your PC -- laptop or desktop, PC or Apple -- is to replace your present, spinning, hard drive with a solid state one, like this Corsair. Kensington also makes a Notebook Upgrade Kit which includes an SSD and cloning software which works, even for Windows 7. I have a Kensington. It works, like the Corsair, flawlessly.
Ultra-tiny. Ultra-light. Best device for go-anywhere WiFi Internet access. Use in cars, buses, other peoples' offices, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, or in your home if you can't get FiOS, DSL or a cable modem. 
Best family vehicle ever. All-wheel drive goes anywhere. Ultra-reliable. Our family has had Outbacks for 15 years. We presently have three. The 4 cylinder does 27 MPG, or so. Not shabby. You don't need the 6 cylinder. Buy the automatic. Easier to drive.
When your WiFi router is at one end of the house/office and you're at the other, plug this thing in near where you are. Bingo. Your wireless signal will be stronger and faster. You can carry it wherever you go and simply plug it in. Once programmed (which is easy), you never need to reprogram it. It remembers even when unplugged (and hence unpowered). Some places sell it for as little as $25.
My most useful travel gadget -- ever since I discovered (1) I don't need to suction it to the windshield or plug it in. It will run happily for four hours on battery sitting in my lap. (2) I can walk or bicycle with it and it still gets me to where I want to go. (3) It takes a $150 SD card which means I can use it all over Europe, though some parts of the east (like Poland) are a little sketchy. The Garmin nuvi 350 is now obsolete. From what read of the specs, the new Garmin nuvi 205 for $120 is a perfect replacement. It actually has some features that mine doesn't have, including being smaller. When choosing a GPS gadget, software is key. Ease and logic of use, etc. I like Garmin GPS software. It's much easier to use than other GPSes I've used (e.g. the horrible ones in Hertz rent-a-cars).
For 25 years-plus, I've used this remarkable text editor to write thousands of magazine articles and my 1200-page dictionary. If you need to get words "on paper" fast, this is for you. The Semware Editor (TSE) has about four million features Microsoft's Word doesn't have -- but should. Best, you can program TSE to be anything you want -- from a dictionary producer, to a list of things to do, to an HTML editor, to a super-fast search engine. To test it (free) and /or buy it (cost $99), Click 
Firefox is the best Internet browser because it's open source and hence has zillions of plug-ins and add-ons to make it do what you want it to do -- not what Microsoft, Apple or Google want.
My favorite Firefox plug-ins are Showcase, MeasureIt and ScreenGrab.