Beating inflation

 Over the long-term stocks have produced the best gains after factoring in inflation, wrote Suze Orman. Bonds and cash struggle to keep pace with inflation; only stocks have a track record of earning more than inflation. Buying bank shares gives exposure to higher interest rates. She adds agriculture. 

I think real estate and art are also good. Stock gains are taxed 20-25%. Real estate gains and rent are not taxed. The minus of real estate is that it is illiquid. Maintenance and dealing with tenants are disagreeable.  

Garrulus or the Blue Bird of Happiness

 

This bluebird appeared this morning in my window. It is a good omen. It augurs happiness and success. 

For one, we have a new doctor and first thing she sent us to a complete blood test. All the parameters are normal, except low Vitamin D. I am taking daily drops. I am in remarkably good health for my age. 

If I control my blood pressure I may work five years more, till 2026. I shall focus on work, which will keep me alert and entertained. 

Those who know believe in Israel

 Those who know what is going in the world are the internet giants like Google, Microsoft, etc. The world's information passes through their computers, could be that they open letters and they make the connections, and extract conclusions. The fact that Google is investing and building server farms in Israel and laying a 500 million dollar optic fiber cable to Europe means that they believe in the long-term strength of this country and its civil order. It seems to me that they compared alternative sites, like Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Lybia, etc., and decided on Israel. Good. 

P.S.: On the above map, we are non-existent. Yet there are more Israeli unicorn startups than in all of Europe. We Jews are amazing.

Delek

Delek is an Israeli oil company that was not long ago valued as almost worthless. Now its subsidiary Ithaka bought the Japanese Marubeni and suddenly the stock is rocketing. Marubeni is a complex trading corporation, it is much involved in coal. Israelis are incredibly courageous and fear not the blackening of their hands with fossil fuels.  People are pumping money into Tel Aviv (and Wall Street. London is decaying). Today I bought TEVA. 

Potash at 800 $/ton

 The Israeli potash manufacturer produced its quarterly results (see transcript) and I was happy that they were selling to Brazil at 800 $ per ton. That is a very good price. Yet the share price in TASE Tel Aviv fell about 1%. The market appears to feel a slowing down in this quarter. I bought a lot, I have confidence in this product and this company. 

Discovering a new world

 

The world of Twitter. It makes me difficult to focus on my work. A girl posts almost naked pictures and writes "Please somebody fuck me". Somebody answers I shall be glad to be at your service". The girl answers "ichs"=pfuiia. Down Oded Kramer explains that an open desire does not mean that she is looking for a stranger. This world is new to me, I am from another era. I am a "boomer". 

I assume these are all kosher girls, they are studying and working, fast reaching their "sell-by date". What they want is a husband or at least a stable partner. They are offering easy sex only to attract candidates. They are constantly depressed and crying after each "date". It is rather hard for these girls in the current society. I pity them. 

I"ll stop reading their messages on Twitter, I cannot do anything for these girls nor with them, and certainly cannot change Tel Aviv's free culture, but they distract me from work. These days I start my day in front of the computer early in the morning and after answering business correspondence and phones, I am tempted to give a look at social media, and voila! it is lunchtime. And the projects on the table start to accumulate and with it the pressure. 

More Distraction

 I completed the design of the industrial catering plant and a proposal for a meat factory in Rishon. The owner asked me please help me, no other planning engineer is willing to take up the project. They all fear the Municipality, the Water Corporation, and the Health Ministry, and the other 17 regulators that have to approve the project. My "friendly inquisitor" Bluma retired and her sidekick Alexandra is in charge. Israeli bureaucracy is impossible, the Chinese manager of the Haifa port project (already finished) complained that it is worse than under Mao, when the Party obstructed all projects. 

I have much to do but I am distracted by twitter. One twitterist Awkwshira or whatever posted a beautiful picture (see here), after some work I found her regular look (she is tall). 

I also learned that the profession of shadchan (matchmaker) very much exists and it takes 1500 dollars to get a match ending in marriage. The HABAD religious organization offers 5000 dollars to anyone finding a husband to a girl of their community (if she is older than 25 years). The religious marry at 18 or 20, and at 25 they are practically unmarriable. That is the background of the twitter activity by these girls - they approach 25 and start having crying attacks and collapse in nervous breakdowns.  

All the above is totally irrelevant for me, it is a distraction, it makes me waste time. I have been married to the same woman forty plus years and my libido is irresponsive. My focus is on the priests of Har Bracha waiting for my plan. The original plan for the Yemeni Synagogue had been approved four years ago - the synagogue was duly built and the Yemeni settler public is using it daily -  but my plan was retroactively rejected because a recent topographic map showed that the original map was incorrect by a few centimeters or maybe, the topography has changed. It is a "Dilbert"-esque job that serves no useful objective. Yet I have to do a new plan, to cover the "Occupation" pedants' bureaucratic ass holes.