Almanacs “Farewell to 2009, a year in which almost everyone was wrong - Edmonton Journal” plus 4 more |
- Farewell to 2009, a year in which almost everyone was wrong - Edmonton Journal
- On Native Ground - American Reporter
- Reader reminder: Beware of property tax scam - The Almanac Online
- Charlie Munger on How to Become Rich - MSNBC
- A few words about winter - Albert Lea Tribune
| Farewell to 2009, a year in which almost everyone was wrong - Edmonton Journal Posted: 19 Dec 2009 10:35 AM PST Writing a column for a living can be humbling. When you're wrong, there's nowhere to hide. Your gaffes become a matter of public record, and they remain there forever. Over the past year, I've taken a few pokes at all the high-priced gurus who inexplicably failed to anticipate the worst recession since the 1930s. But today, as I look back on this crazy, turbulent year, I can only sympathize with them. I've made some big goofs myself. So as 2009 draws to a close, before I kick sand in anyone else's face, let me own up to my own failures. To wit: Back in March, a few days after U.S. stock market indexes hit their lowest levels in 12 years, I dismissed the then-fledgling stock market rally as meaningless. "The global economy still sucks, and it's likely to remain in the ditch for the rest of this year, notwithstanding Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's hope-and-a-prayer pronouncement that the recession might end in 2009," I declared. "That's not exactly a firm basis for a new bull market." Oops. Wrong. Fuelled by rock-bottom interest rates and huge government stimulus packages, equity indexes have been on a rocket ride ever since. Despite ongoing worries about the durability of the recovery, the S&P 500 Index has soared some 64 per cent since March, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up roughly 60 per cent, and Toronto's lead index has advanced more than 50 per cent. Sure, those gains could be unwound in 2010 if the recovery falls apart. But that's no excuse. While I fixated on all the things that were wrong with the economy in 2009 -- and there was plenty wrong -- I merely missed the biggest equity rally in history. Then, I compounded my mistake by stubbornly refusing to capitulate. Dumb. Of course, I wasn't alone. A few others missed the train too, including Elliott Wave disciple Robert Prechter, Gluskin Sheff strategist David Rosenberg, Morgan Stanley guru Jason Todd, and perma-bears like Nouriel Roubini (alias Dr. Doom), the oft-quoted New York University business prof. Usually reliable market indicators were no more accurate. The so-called "January barometer" -- developed by Yale Hirsch, founder of the Stock Traders' Almanac -- was a flop in 2009. If stocks nosedive in January, Hirsch's benchmark dictates, the whole year will stink. Well, it didn't work out that way. Although markets tanked in the first month of 2009, it proved to be an anomaly. Likewise, forecasts for Toronto's main equity index were all over the map in 2009. Merrill Lynch Canada economist David Wolf predicted the S&P/TSX Composite Index would end the year at the 8,000 mark, while George Vasic, UBS's market guru, saw it hitting 12,500. Vasic later slashed his target to 11,000, the same level forecast last January by Avery Shenfeld, CIBC World Markets' senior economist. With only a few trading days left in 2009, Shenfeld's forecast looks closest to the mark. Wolf is in line for the booby prize. And what about oil prices? After peaking at $147 US a barrel in July 2008, crude crashed to a low of just $33 in early 2009. It subsequently bounced back to the $80 range, although it has slid back to the low $70s since. With wild gyrations like that, I don't envy the energy analysts who have to forecast average prices for the year. But by and large, they've done an admirable job. Most expected prices to bounce back in the second half of 2009, and that's what they've done. According to a Reuters poll of energy analysts last January, crude prices would average $55 US a barrel this year. Through early December, the actual year-to-date average was about $61. On the other hand, the surging loonie caught more than a few gurus by surprise this year. Craig Wright, the Royal Bank of Canada's chief economist, figured the Canadian dollar would approach 80 cents US by year's end. Instead, the loonie threatened to reach 98 cents a few weeks ago, before retreating. It's currently in the 93-cent range. That's not far off the 90-cent level that Donnie MacKay of Greystone Managed Investments forecast last January, when he addressed the Edmonton CFA Society's annual forecast dinner. Gold also surprised on the upside in 2009, touching a new high of more than $1,220 an ounce in early December. But even as the gold bugs began forecasting $1,300 gold by year's end, prices for the precious metal staged a sudden retreat. By Thursday of this week, gold had plunged below $1,100, while the battered greenback rallied to a five-week high against the loonie. Although most forecasters expect the U.S. dollar to resume its descent in 2010, as massive government deficits and feeble economic growth weigh on the currency, don't be too surprised if the current rally in the greenback continues for a while. Why? Because it's the opposite of what everyone expects. And in a year when just about everyone has been wrong -- including yours truly -- that seems like a fitting way to end it. glamphier@thejournal.canwest.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| On Native Ground - American Reporter Posted: 19 Dec 2009 08:19 AM PST On Native Ground | MY BACK PAGES: WATCHING MY CRAFT CHANGE OVER 30 YEARS by Randolph T. Holhut American Reporter Correspondent Dummerston, Vt.
Printable version of this story DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I got my first job in journalism at the age of 18 in the spring of 1980. I was a freshman in college and landed a night shift gig at WSPR, a radio station in Springfield, Mass. News came over an Associated Press teletype machine at 65 words a minute. Changing the heavily inked ribbons was always a chore, not to mention making sure the paper didn't run out. Stories were typed on battered old manual typewriters that dated back to the 1940s. Computers? Still a new-fangled technology that hadn't yet seeped down to this level of the business. The Internet? There were only a few hundred people using it. If you needed to look up an address, you got a phone book or a city directory. If you needed to confirm a stray fact, you pulled out The World Almanac. They were still using reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a razor blade and Scotch tape were your tools for editing audio. It was still an analog world, with dials and meters and black telephones with dials. In the fall of 1985, when I started working in newspapers, video display terminals were cutting edge technology. Two years later, I went out and got my first computer - a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop. With its built-in 300 baud modem, I could file a story anyplace I could find a pay phone. Cellphones? That was as futuristic as the communicators they used on "Star Trek." There were still a few smokers in the first city room I worked in. The barroom downstairs was still a place where you could find reporters between shifts. The building also shuddered just a little from the giant presses when they fired up, and the stairwells were coated with a thin film of ink. That first newspaper company I worked for - the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Evening Gazette - had four morning and six afternoon editions and a dozen bureaus in the county it published in. There were two separate news staffs, and even though they worked for the same company, the competition was still fierce. One of my several jobs was working in the morgue - the newspaper's library - where we still clipped stories out of each day's edition and filed them away in envelopes. When a reporter or editor needed background on a subject, my job was to retrieve the right folders with the right clippings in a room filled with hundreds of cabinets with files that went back decades. Pneumatic tubes brought pictures up to the composing room, and page proofs came down to the copy desk the same way. The darkroom was just that, a dark room filled with a dozen photo enlargers and photographers rushing make prints on deadline. I eventually learned how to do darkroom work and how to go from taking the film out of the camera to producing a finished print in under 30 minutes. The photos from the AP came one at a time from a LaserPhoto printer, in 8 minute intervals. Waiting for photos was a constant hassle. The old photographers I encountered then were old enough to have used Speed Graphics - the bulky, hard-to-focus 4 x 5 inch cameras that were the newspaper standard from the 1920s to the 1960s. The old compositors I encountered then were old enough to remember linotypes and the smell of melting lead. The old editors I encountered then were old enough to remember pastepots and black pencils and making and remaking a newspaper on the fly with a few written instructions and a lot of teamwork in the mechanical departments. Pagination - making a pages on a computer - was just starting to creep into use. I remember the first such unit - a Mac Plus - which was used to make graphic. Within 10 years of seeing that Mac for the first time, I would be making pages on a computer. The compositors - the wizards with Exacto knifes that could do just about anything you asked, just don't touch the type, please - were out of a job. Automation changed lots of things. I was replaced by a computer terminal in the paper's morgue. Indexing was now done with a few keystrokes, not with a heavy steel straight edge tearing pages. Digital photography made the darkroom obsolete. The teletype printers disappeared, and wire service news came flying into the mainframe computers at thousands of words a minute. And now I feel as ancient as the people I met when I started out, the tribe that started out in the 1940s and 1950s, when newspapers were king and the work that reporters did was the stuff of movies. Twenty years ago this month, I went through my first buyout. The T & G had been sold two years before, and changes were in the works. Being a junior member of the staff who lashed three part-time jobs into something of a living, I was thrown overboard immediately. But I was struck by how many people, the elders of the paper that I looked up to and learned from, chose to take a buyout and leave than stick around and face an uncertain future. Most of that generation left, and I got my first education on the harshness of the newspaper business. The morning and evening papers merged the following year. The T & G's bureaus started to disappear. The presses moved out of the hulking old building on Franklin Street and went to a remote site a few miles away. The papers were sold again, this time to The New York Times Co. They eliminated zoned editions this year and the paper is struggling to survive. Since that bleak Yuletide two decades ago, I've been through three more newspaper sales. I've become an elder, talking about the old days of afternoon papers, pasting-up pages, teletypes and darkrooms to a generation that Googles phone numbers and needs MapQuest to find an address. And I've watched my profession go from fat and sassy to threadbare and dying in one generation. I'm still young enough to be a bridge between the analog and digital eras, and still looking forward to the shape of journalism to come. The tools we have now to tell stories were barely dreamed of when I started out, but I recognize how important they are and working to master them. We just have to remember that the need to tell stories is primal, and that storytellers will always be needed. What will the young reporters I work with now be saying when they look back at their careers 20 years from now? Will they be talking about that gruff and crabby gray-bearded editor they had as their first mentor? The rickety first-generation iMacs that they have to use to write their stories on? The lack of reliable Internet and cellphone service? Or will they talk about working in newspapers at a time when they became quaint relics of a bygone age? My love for the printed page is still abiding, but it's hard to remember what it was like before the Internet, before desktop computers, before digital cameras and voice recorders, before the avalanche of data that pours from the Web each day, before the 24-hour news cycle, before all the changes that I have seen in nearly three decades of broadcast, print and online journalism. The past is a nice place to visit, but the future is still the place I hope to see. Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for nearly 30 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2009 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.
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| Reader reminder: Beware of property tax scam - The Almanac Online Posted: 19 Dec 2009 08:04 AM PST "It is time to remind your readers not to be duped by the official-looking 'Property Tax Reduction Form' that instructs property owners to mail a coupon with a fee of $189," says Gail Sredanovic of Menlo Park in an e-mail to The Almanac. | There is no fee for asking the county assessor to review your property value, she says. "In fact, the county may have already done so." "At the very least," she adds, "do not respond until you have checked with the county." ■ Check the news release from the San Mateo County assessor.
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| Charlie Munger on How to Become Rich - MSNBC Posted: 19 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST If you don't know who Charlie Munger is, you're missing out. Let's just say that if it weren't for Warren Buffett, Munger might hold the title as the world's most famous investor. And not just because Munger -- Buffett's right-hand man, and Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK-A) co-chairman -- is an extraordinary investor. He is, of course, and he's a multibillionaire. But what makes both Buffett and Munger so appealing to everyday investors is their ability to distill complex investing topics into simple sentences. Buffett's words of wisdom have been repeated endlessly. But Munger doesn't get enough face time. One of his most overlooked contributions is a very simple 10-point list called the "investing principals checklist," spelled out in his book Poor Charlie's Almanac. Without further ado: 1. Measure risk Circa 2003-2007, investors loved banks because they were big and made lots of money. What few asked was how much risk they were taking. Right now, investors love companies like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Quality Systems (Nasdaq: QSII) because shares have gone gangbusters. Those who properly analyze how much risk the run-ups have added will end up happiest. 2. Be independent Maybe the hardest part of investing is that the greatest odds of being right come when most think you're wrong, and vice versa. If your plan is to watch CNBC and invest in what the most talking heads like, you'll likely end up with average results at best. Some of the biggest winners of 2009 are companies like Ford (NYSE: F) and American Express (NYSE: AXP) -- both of which elicited nothing but giggles and blank stares earlier this year. 3. Prepare ahead The past decade was defined by delusions of success: By a house, and you'll be rich. Have a credit card, and you'll be rich. Buy penny stocks, and you'll be rich. Live in America, and you'll be rich. None of it was true. But this fact is as true today as it's been for eons: The best way to become financially successful is to work hard, save harder, learn a lot, and invest patiently and prudently. That, or work at Goldman Sachs. 4. Have intellectual humility A related Munger quote: "The iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth." Sad, but true. You're not Warren Buffett. You don't know what's going to happen next year. Most people probably can't fully comprehend what Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) does -- though its business may seem simple on the face of it. You might not even know what a balance sheet is. It's OK. And not just OK, but vital to admit it, and either pass on things you don't understand, or learn from someone who does. The alternative is going at investing roulette style. Las Vegas is for that. (Better food, too.) 5. Analyze rigorously There's truth to the adage that people spend a month researching a new dishwasher, but 10 minutes researching a new stock. Take your time. Be patient. Be selective. Read annual reports. Crunch numbers. Get other people's opinion. This is your hard-earned money we're talking about. 6. Allocate assets wisely Last fall, stock funds were liquidated en masse while money market funds got inundated with demand. No doubt this was because investors feared the worst was ahead. But it also took a big, scary event to make people realize their allocation was dangerously skewed. Too many stocks, too little cash. The worst part is that most of these investors had to either sell or increase cash savings at precisely the same time stocks were cheapest. 7. Have patience Last fall, I interviewed famed value investor Mohnish Pabrai. I asked Pabrai what his edge as an investor was. "Control over my emotions" was his succinct answer. "That's it?" I asked. "It's huge. You'd be surprised," he responded. He couldn't be more right. It all comes back to one of Buffett's most famous sayings: "The market is there to serve you, not instruct you." 8. Be decisive Related to the previous quote, last fall Pabrai began scooping up shares of cratering companies like Teck Resources (NYSE: TCK), which later exploded in value. Pabrai's main fund has risen by more than 100% year to date. His decisive actions speak for themselves. 9. Be ready for change If the past two years taught us anything, it's that what you don't think can happen not only can, but probably will. In both personal finance and investing, there's no more dangerous place to be than relying 100% on a certain set of circumstances. That's just not how life works. 10. Stay focused As Dale Carnegie said, "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." It doesn't get better than that. Onward Fool contributorMorgan Houselowns shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Google is a Motley Fool Rule Breakers selection. Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway, and Quality Systems are Motley Fool Stock Advisor picks. American Express and Berkshire Hathaway are Motley Fool Inside Value recommendations. The Fool owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway and has adisclosure policy. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| A few words about winter - Albert Lea Tribune Posted: 19 Dec 2009 06:38 AM PST Published Saturday, December 19, 2009 My neighbor Crandall stops by. "How are you doing?" I ask. "Everything is nearly copacetic. I have heard it said, 'It is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable.' Why couldn't I be something in the middle, like being moderately wealthy and just a little moody? I hope you are working on my Christmas list. Feel free to get me everything on it." "Keep clinging to that raft," I say. "I see by your primitive scrawl that you are desirous of being gifted a robot. That's not going to happen." "I had a robot when I was a boy." "I know you didn't make it in your farm shop. Where did you get a robot?" I ask. "Have you outsourced your brain to India? Pa got it at Sears and Robots." "You've been spending far too much time eating cheese puffs and watching Andy Griffith reruns," I say. "How is your new truck running?" "It's great, but it's not new. I would never buy a new pickup. I am a firm believer in never owning a vehicle that is worth washing. I like having free time." "Are you getting good mileage?" I ask. "Am I ever. Once a week, I have to drain a little out of the gas tank to keep it from overflowing. Merry Christmas." Thoughts on winter Fall is too short — always. Spring turns into summer, summer into fall, and fall into winter. It brings order to a world that tends to be disordered. We gripe about the heat and brag about the cold. The house shivers when the furnace kicks on. It has heard the predicted misery — the weather emergencies and the rumors of blizzards.  Al Batt I like winter. Even the person who dreads its arrival will admit that winter isn't all bad. There are no ticks, no mosquitoes, and no poison ivy. An insulating blanket of snow covers the dandelions. Winter gives cause to look out the window and reflect on important things. Gray and woolly days allow one to listen to the snow whispering to the ground. A day clad in snow and wearing a frosted beard makes time for clear thoughts. Winter cleans the landscape. The world appears stripped and clean. Winter is an abstract — a sparse world full of secrets. Snow makes every house look cozy. There are things to note when the air has the sharp edge of the season's turn. The lovely snow before it's tramped down. Stubborn leaves vibrating in the wind. Most of the fall colors have emptied onto the ground and have become fallen lights strewn over the landscape. The shimmering white of snow buntings flying over bended grass. The sighs of one tree branch rubbing against another. Cardinals looking like ripened fruit and robins, pretenders to the crown of harbinger of spring, overwintering in sheltered areas like river bottoms. Frozen lakes presenting a world under glass.  A robin of winter by Al Batt. Winter is a serious time. We plod along, bodies buried in layers of clothing. We find the leeward side of things. Our steps are mincing, our comfort is in the insulation. Anne Bradstreet wrote, "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." Weather forecasting He had lived many years. He knew things. He had studied the weather. He told me that he had found a way to predict the number of annual snowfalls with a "The Old Farmer's Almanac" sort of accuracy. He noted the date of the first snowfall and that number would be the total number of snowfalls. If the first snow came on Dec. 10, there would be ten snowfalls of enough depth to track a fox (about 1/4 inch of the white stuff). A woman advised that her grandfather claimed that the length of the longest icicle hanging from a roof would be the amount of snow that would fall that winter. Q and A "What is a blizzard?" According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service, a blizzard means that the following conditions are expected to prevail for a period of 3 hours or longer: Sustained wind or frequent gusts to 35 mph or greater; and considerable falling and/or blowing snow (i.e., reducing visibility frequently to less than ? mile). I've been reading This from Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe by Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill, "Eratosthenes, a Greek scholar and the chief of the famous ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt, around 240 BC, knew that in a town far to the south, Syene, there was a deep water well. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year — June 21 — the full image of the Sun could be seen reflecting, for a brief moment, in the water of the deep well in Syene precisely at noon. Therefore, the Sun at noon must be passing exactly overhead in Syene. He noticed, however, that on this same day, the Sun did not pass directly overhead in his hometown of Alexandria, which was 500 miles due north of Syene. Instead, it missed the zenith, the point directly overhead in the sky, by about seven degrees. Eratosthenes concluded that the zenith direction was different by seven degrees in Alexandria from that in Syene. Using some elementary geometry, he could determine the diameter of Earth and found it to be 8,000 miles. Eratosthenes derived the correct result for Earth's diameter to an astounding precision of better that 1 percent, assuming Earth was a sphere." Albert Lea Audubon Christmas Bird Count Will take place on Monday, Dec. 28. Counters needed. Please email me at snoeowl@aol.com or call at 845-2836 for information. Christmas Bird Bount Check your feeders. Look for fruit bearing trees like crabapples and mountain ashes for cedar waxwings, robins, and bluebirds. Look at utility wires for American kestrels, eastern bluebirds, and northern shrikes. Check out a bird at the top of a tree — it might be a rough-legged hawk or a northern shrike. Cedar and pine trees are fine places to discover robins, cedar waxwings, bluebirds, crossbills, and owls. Thanks for stopping by "Happiness doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have. We can be happy with little and miserable with much." — William Dempster Hoard "A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions." — Wilson Mizner DO GOOD. MERRY CHRISTMAS. Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE THIS STORY? Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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