Juggling Dynamite

Income-seeking investors are today naively looking for shelter in some of the most heinously over-valued assets of all time.  Dividend income is always sorely insufficient compensation for huge capital losses. Losses of more than 50% were experienced in these equities in both the 2001 and 2008 bear markets. Utilities, financials, telecom, REITs.  Defensive, not!

Not only that, but as many companies have already started doing, once cash flows get tight corporations cut dividends (as they should) and equity holders are left with zero recourse. That’s when capital losses rapidly accelerate as everyone races for the exits at once.  You’ve been warned.

Tell your broker utilities are NOT “safe”… pic.twitter.com/XAhvh4k2KC

— Cory Venable CMT (@CoryLVenable) February 26, 2016

There are wolves in the dividend house… pic.twitter.com/1EGSTq06lr

— Cory Venable CMT (@CoryLVenable) February 26, 2016

Once we develop good conversation-listening skills ourselves, we are likely to notice how few people have them and may often come away from social interactions feeling bored, depleted and even abused. Good conversation is a skill one can learn, but we have to care enough to develop it. Great refresher on the do’s and don’ts in this clip.

When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations — and that most of us don’t converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. “Go out, talk to people, listen to people,” she says. “And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.”  Here is a direct video link.

SP500 @ 1,942 enters upside resistance area (yellow circle) on this previous post of Feb 17th…will G-20 help? pic.twitter.com/Dr5q4pafkF

— Cory Venable CMT (@CoryLVenable) February 25, 2016