Juggling Dynamite

Most so-called investors and advisers focus on getting cash into publicly traded stock and corporate debt securities (where underwriting and investment fees are highest for promoters and allocators).  In so doing, the thinking is all about what might be won.

Few do in-depth pre-work to determine how much one can afford to wager on risky bets in the first place.  Even fewer have a price discipline to determine what assets are worth before they are bought or sold.  This recent Wealthtrack segment is a good recap of timeless principles that are repeatedly overlooked, ending in foreseeable pain.

An interview with leading financial journalist Jason Zweig. Since 2008 Zweig has written the widely read “The Intelligent Investor” column for The Wall Street Journal. That, of course, is the name of the investment classic written by Benjamin Graham, considered to be the father of value investing. Zweig has an intimate knowledge of the thinking of Graham because he edited the last revised edition of The Intelligent Investor with a forward written by Warren Buffett who calls it “by far the best book on investing ever written”.  Here is a direct video link.

The World Health Organization acknowledged yesterday that the world had missed the opportunity to eradicate COVID-19 as the virus continues to spread and mutate: “We had a chance in the beginning of this pandemic,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, said Tuesday. “This pandemic did not need to be this bad.”  The video below updates on Delta, the fastest spreading variant to date.

Covid-19’s Delta variant is proliferating world-wide threatening unvaccinated populations and economic recovery. WSJ breaks down events in key countries to explain why Delta spreads faster than previously detected strains. Here is a direct video link.

In a related story, yesterday, the U.K. became the first western country to announce tax increases to support its state-funded National Health Service as it struggles to manage a backlog of millions of patients in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The U.K. government will increase payroll and dividend taxes by 1.25%, respectively, to raise £12 billion, equivalent to $16.5 billion, a year starting in 2022.  This is just a start; other countries will undoubtedly follow suit with more tax increases.

The larger issue, of course, is a government-subsidized food system in the west that is making populations sicker and more vulnerable to illness with diminished productivity and quality of life, every single day, from birth.

Until we address the food issue, literally, from the ground up, we will continue to have an unsustainable sick-care system that will suck ever-escalating funding away from everything else that we need to invest in.

Being paid in highly volatile digital currencies that are pumped and dumped by speculators hourly, is a risk that workers cannot afford.  After rebounding nearly 75% since July, Bitcoin fell 10% in an hour yesterday and the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which tracks some of the largest digital tokens, lost as much as 19 percent.  See:  Bitcoin crashes as El Salvador rollout, price pump falter:

El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as its national currency, allowing people to use a digital wallet to pay for everyday goods. Here’s what the impoverished nation’s risky experiment looks like. Here is a direct video link.