Financial insight

During the current bull market, deflationary assets (industrials, technology, financials, communication, consumer discretionary and real estate) have greatly outperformed inflationary assets (commodities) for most of these past 10 years.

I"ll sell CIL the potash company.It had a great run under Mr Doyle, but he is gone. 

Depression

I lectured today in Ariel, the students got interested in the Middle East water economy and arrived home late. The ICON Design Center gym project meeting (I was absent) ended well. Ireceived an ugly mail from the Vaad HaBayt (the house consorsium) because a humidity issue and that ended my bliss and depressed me. Tomorrow will be a new day.

Yesterday I sold shares of the Israel Corporation and today they sunk 5%. The owner decided to get out of the oil refining business and to sell his shares in BAZAN the Haifa Refinery. I have sold at the peak, for once. Today I read that the Eugene Wigner paradox, that in the quantum realm there are no facts, has been demonstrated. Two persons can see the same "fact" differently and both be right. How can that be? No one knows. One possible solution is that the universe is a simulation. But who would create such thing and for what purpose?

Alexandria and the scientific consensus

The  congresswoman knows  what scientific consensus is:  “It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?” 



One thing is admirable and encouraging: the American political system is open to advancement of minorities and women (regardless of their intelligence or lack of it).  

Swimming up river

I am having a stressed a period with much urgent work and little sleep. In the class today but I gave a wrong answer and it was noticed. I had much cash in my pocket and lost it, probably in the toilet. It is difficult but I am not depressed. There are few people of my age working, I am meeting boys and girls less than half my age.  This month I am paying ten thousand dollars of tax and yearly accountant fees, and today I sold some losing shares. Nothing special. I should be angry and depressed but I am not.

Sunni Defeat

America is celebrating the dissolution of the Islamic State and the return of the Western girls who had  joined it and are emerging with their half-blood children. There is nowhere a reflection that ISIS started as a rebellion  of the oppressed branch of the Islam against Shia aggression, in Syria and Iraq, as well reborn Iran. Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudi are Sunni and they lost. Now Iran will self-destruct, I dont know how. But it is an impossible regime, a secular people ruled by a medieval clerical clique. What makes it so durable is the surprising moderation of the clerics, but America will soon find the way to irritate and drive crazy those fanatics/

As expected after Obama and Hillary, the Democratic party is moving towards a Third World anticapitalist ideology. Till now it is declamatory  extremism, but America could end like Venezuela, God Forbid! The stupid rejection of Amazon in New York is a sinister omen of the things to come.

Stress, in a good way

I am much behind my timetable and telling excuses to my clients. I have sent out lots of proposals and almost all have been accepted. In some cases I had even accepted advance payments. I am not going to get overstressed and paralyzed by pressures and fear. No drinking till I finish this cycle. 

Weekend work lost

On Thursday there was a storm over the city and lighting struck and confounded my computer. One day was spent in trying to repair it but no success. I tried to diagnose the problem using my other computer, and said "power ... something" with easy 20 steps. Gave up. So started up my heavy laptop, but the Lenovo had erased all the programs "while you were away". I spent the morning re-installing Autocad and I am still at it. Tomorrow shall take it to "Ay-gor" (as in Dr. Frankensteen) to repair. I shall have to hear out the complaints of my clients that are opening supermarkets without the permits.

Spent some time visiting daughters, one is being sent by the NICE to Madrid, other is teaching and doing a M.Ed. and the last one preparing papers on why her students are missing classes. Her reasons are very PC (she wants to succeed) and supported by lots of academic references. I told her that it was all nonsense but then  - resigned -  helped her to be more convincingly politically correct.

She was selected to represent the stakeholders in some EU educational program. If Greg Cochran reads our papers, he would surely think we are typical liberal crazies, but my daughter is not in the position to write that her students carry a heavy load of defects, as it would not be acceptable nor conducive to receive a diploma and draw a salary.