Frivolities At The Levers

There's nothing quite as relaxing as having a good little bit of bbq and having a few close friends over. As is always the case at one of our parties, the adult beverages seemed to be in over abundant supply. Last night, we ran the gauntlet - starting with yuengling and a few code blues, moving on to margi's provided by Carrie & Craig, and finishing off the night with a little scotch.

The night was not without it's bumps, as the bbq didn't spend quite enough time in the smoker or oven. I was disappointed as I had to rush through cooking it, as I got started a little bit later than I had wanted to. There's one rule to follow when it comes to great Carolina-Q - "Low & Slow". It was good, but it wasn't the 'fall off the bone, melt in your mouth' bbq I'm known for. The homemade mac n' cheese that the Barrs brought was delicious, and C&C provided some great appetizers. All was going well until boxee refused to cooperate on a few occasions. It only seemed to get worse when the warmin tried to fix the issue. Of course her wrath was directed at me (for whatever reason...I can't say!), and I was tackled for no apparent reason! So, the only movie we watched all the way through was the cult classic "Red Dawn" (one of the best movies of all time!). "The Office" wasn't streaming right, "Clash of the Titans" only made it half way through before it stopped working, and "Inglorious Bastards" was taking forever to transfer to the movie server. About that time was when the warmin tackled me (again, for NO good reason!). By the time we had "Inglorious Bastards" streaming up on the big screen, it was time for everyone to head home at around 11:30. A good time was had by all, and as always, it seems like whenever we get all our good friends together, hilarity ensues.

Perhaps one of the highlights of the night was I hear Barr lapping his whiskey and water. Hey...wait a second! That's not Barr! That's Hoser getting in on the fun. Needless to say, she enjoyed her first taste of whiskey, and pestered him for another drink for the rest of the night!













Here's a picture after Hoser learned her lesson on alcohol after waking up with quite the hangover the next morning!

Reminders

I have a horrible memory. I *should* put those yellow sticky notes all over everything. But this isn't about those types of reminders, nor the ones where you leave a message on your answering machine reminding you to do something, or tell your wife to remind you to do something.

I got the biggest reminder you can imagine over the last 2 days. The reminder that we're all mortal beings with finite amounts of time on this earth, and that in fact, no, we are not invincible. That day put the fear of God back into me. That's for sure.

It was just an ordinary day at work, and I was stressing about trying to get taxes done given that it was the 14th. I was staring at my computer screen, and all of a sudden, my vision started to get blurry. I didn't think much of it, because it's happened before and gone away on its own. Today it didn't. Instead, my right hand started to get numb. Then that hand came back, and my other hand went numb. What the heck was going on. Then it got really scary. I was having labored breathing. At that point it really started to get serious because I knew something really bad was wrong. I rushed down to Lake Norman Regional Hospital, and by the time I pulled up to the front door, I'd lost a bunch of motor skills, though luckily still able to walk. It's a miracle I made it there driving. They put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me back to their ER immediately seeing that I was having trouble breathing. I must say Lake Norman Regional Hospital did a wonderful job. I had 4 people all over me as soon as I walked through the door. They gave me a bunch of potassium which was low, and ran a full gambit of tests.

My breathing slowly returned to normal, and there was more blood drawn and more tests. I got a CT and MRI. I saw the neurologist the next thing Thursday morning, and he told me both the CT and MRI looked clean. Instead of something like a brain tumor or a stroke (thank God!), he told me I had, had a "complex migraine". See, a "classic migraine" by itself is bad enough, and typically amounts to a really, really bad headache. The "complex migraine" doesn't want the body to feel left out. So, like I did, you can lose vision, the ability to speak coherently, motor skills, and other kooky stuff.

The one good thing about the complex migraine is that you can see them coming on hours ahead of time, and typically prevent them going beyond a headache and a little blurry vision. Another good thing is this is only the 2nd time in my life I've experienced anything beyond blurry vision, so they are extremely rare (and I hope they stay that way!)

I have to admit during the worst parts of this whole experience, there was about 30 minutes there where I really thought, "This is it." While that's about the most terrified I've been in, well, I guess my whole life, I think coming out on the other side of something like that is a true eye opening experience.

I've vowed to change many of the negative aspects in my life. I used to have an occasional cigar, those are pretty much gone. I used to take adderral for A.D.D., I'm getting rid of that because it would mess with my heart and might have helped cause this whole fiasco. I'm going to focus on eating better (well, at least most of the time - I can't give up pizza after all!) I'm going to try to cut back on drinking. I plan on trying to treat people in general better, and spend more time with the friends and family I care the most about without worrying about the petty stuff. I'm going to start focusing on the juice in life, and stop wasting time. You never know when your time's up, and when mine is, I want to look back and say, "I had a great life". I encourage everyone else out there to do the same.

A big thanks to my family & definitely my wife for being a rock throughout this ordeal. Love you guys!

Hoser couldn't wait for me to come home!

Warren Buffet, JR In the House

Ok..ok...so its a *tinsy* bit early to start proclaiming myself as the Warren Buffet, Jr when it comes to investing (In fact, it sounds like I could learn a lot from the B.O.B.!) But after a year of dabbling in the market, I've finally started to put together a small winning streak.

I suppose I need to explain my investing background. The title of my last blog entry on investing was, "If you don't lose, you win!" I've started to turn that around of late, and ACTUALLY (I know, I was just as shocked as you probably were) made a little bit of money. I've been in Lowes (LOW) for a few months now to the tune of 12%, and I just recently tried my hand at a hybrid investing method of maximizing dividends on stocks with low entry levels that have been around for > 8 years, along with many of the facets I picked up from Warren Buffet.

Using the method I just described, I came across the company Mind CTI Ltd (MNDO) around a week ago. Up 11.74% since. I had to double check and make sure I didn't accidentally short the position.

It's early in the game, but the new methods appear that the can *at least* keep from losing money. I try to remember. "Focus on not losing, and the winning will take care of itself". With that in mind, I just put a stop loss in at a 5% gain.

Investments - As long as you don't lose, you win!

The concept sounds simple, right! Over the last few years, I've learned one single, all encompassing thing when it comes investing. Risk management is everything! It's a universal principle that applies to every area of investing from foreign currency to real estate to stocks and every other investment under the sun. Heck, it even applies to poker.

The single biggest mistake I've made up to this point is walking up to the plate, and trying to hit a home run with every investment I've made. The key that I've found to mastering risk aversion is to learn as much about a position before you enter it. It has to make sense from both technical & fundamental standpoints. The most important thing I've learned....don't try to reinvent the wheel.

With that being said, I found this great article on Warren Buffet - the man I consider the most successful investor of our time, and incidentally, who's triple A rating is darn near that of US treasuries!




Here are the highlights from the strategies that Buffet has implemented:

1) Has the company performed consistently well and is it currently undervalued? Undervalued positions can be found by searching out the company's ROE (Return on Equity). ROE refers to the increase that an investor sees in their share values over a period of time. The equation to determine Roe is as follows: ROE = Net Income / Shareholder's Equity A key thing to remember is that this figure you should be analyzed over a longer period of time, say from 5-10 years. Simply looking at 1 year is not enough.

2) How has the company handled its debts? The debt/equity ratio is a gauge of the strength of the company. A company with little debt means that the equity in the company is being built with shareholder equity, not by borrowing. The debt/equity ratio is determined by the following equation: D.E. = Total Liabilities / Shareholder's Equity. For a more stringent test, investors sometimes use only long-term debt instead of total liabilities in the calculation above.

3) Are the profit margins high, and are they increasing? The equation to discover the profit margin is: P.M. = Net Income / Net Sales. While a high profit margin is key, an increasing margin shows a strong management team is in place that continues to run the company well. P.M. should be analyzed going back at least 5 years.

4) How long has the company been public? Buffet only invests in companies that have been around for at least 10 years and are undervalued. He pins this on how he believes the company will perform in the future.

5) Do the company's products rely heavily on a commodity? Buffet tends to shy away from companies whose products are not differentiated from competitors. He also steers clear of companies that rely heavily on commodities such as oil or gas. Buffet only invests in companies that he understands, and he recognizes the importance of strategic differentiation. He refers to this differentiation as the company's "economic moat". The more differentiated the company is, the safer the company.

6) Is the stock selling at a 25% discount to its real value? This is the hardest part to recognize. To check this, an investor must determine the intrinsic value of a company by analyzing a number of business fundamentals, including earnings, revenues and assets. Once Buffett determines the intrinsic value of the company as a whole, he compares it to its current market capitalization - the current total worth (price). If his measurement of intrinsic value is at least 25% higher than the company's market capitalization, Buffett sees the company as one that has value.
One of the important elements of this figure is that Buffet does not merely value a company according to its liquidation value, but also by its intrinsic value. Things such as name brand value, and other things not found on the financial statement come into play.

"Conclusion
As you have probably noticed, Buffett's investing style, like the shopping style of a bargain hunter, reflects a practical, down-to-earth attitude. Buffett maintains this attitude in other areas of his life: he doesn't live in a huge house, he doesn't collect cars and he doesn't take a limousine to work. The value-investing style is not without its critics, but whether you support Buffett or not, the proof is in the pudding. As of 2004, he holds the title of the second-richest man in the world, with a net worth of more $40 billion (Forbes 2004). Do note that the most difficult thing for any value investor, including Buffett, is in accurately determining a company's intrinsic value. "

So that's all well and good, but what about Real Estate investing.

The real estate market has been in the tank lately, producing some great cap rate's for multi-family homes. I plan to do some more research on what makes a good investment property and blog about it here, but I have found one really great tool that I've been using for valuation purposes. The web site realestatecritic.com allows you to simply punch in the numbers on investment properties, and it automatically spits out any report that you are looking for. I've seen cap rates on the properties I've tested on it in the 5-35% range. Whether those numbers are good or not will be the tale for another blog entry!

B.O.B. and L.E.V. hit the links in notorious tiger woods pimp like fashion...

Last Wednesday, the boss and I decided it was time for a little R&R, so after working all day (literally) on Tuesday (until 3:30am) so I could take Wednesday off, it was time to hit the links at what was supposed to be one of the nicest courses in the area, Skybrook:



We weren't overly impressed with the condition of the course. The layout wasn't bad. The community surrounding the course was very nice. There were virtually no water holes though, and the grass was in terrible shape. The greens weren't bad, but were utterly unpredictable.

With the help of a few silver bullets and yuenglings, a good time was had by all. Here's a few shots of the B.O.B. & myself in action!

I'm ashamed to say I still managed to bogey the hole! Curse you 3 putts holes! Curse you!


The B.O.B. just misses the green..


Club speed is key to a long drive!


Bob had to skip the last 3 holes so he would be in time to pick up the wife at the airport. But then...trouble in paradise! I finish up the 18th and I'm on the way back to drop off my cart, and guess what happens...



All we needed was an excuse! But I'm sure April enjoyed the ride in the ranger!!