Gyroscopic Investing

Considering a market at all time highs, what percentage of your portfolio are you targeting for your VP?

I don't usually shrink or grow my Vp or pp. New cash tends to go to my pp, but not necessarily to bring it up to a target percentage. (I am only concerned about the %'s within the pp). For at least the first half of this year, I will be making large payments toward home renovation, so new new cash.

So, I guess nothing's changing. The pp is still about 1/3 of my total.

Around 10% VP which is just one position (VT). As for predicting the future, that's not my bag. I will however note that 2014 will be the 100th anniversary of a certain event that took a lot of people by surprise. Food for thought...

Desert wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: Around 10% VP which is just one position (VT). As for predicting the future, that's not my bag. I will however note that 2014 will be the 100th anniversary of a certain event that took a lot of people by surprise. Food for thought...

I'm guessing you're referring to Henry Ford increasing the wage of his workers from $2.40/9-hr day to $5.00/8-hr day. 
http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1914

Ok, and then a world war started also.

Yep yep. That's it!

I am buying up the gold stock ETF's. There are down 80%.  Gold is within a few hundred dollars of their probable lows if it gets that far. I see a hard snap back in these etf gold stock funds which could go up 40% to 100% inside of three months of when they start to move. Positioning now.  I like the risk/reward here.

Ad Orientem wrote:

Desert wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: Around 10% VP which is just one position (VT). As for predicting the future, that's not my bag. I will however note that 2014 will be the 100th anniversary of a certain event that took a lot of people by surprise. Food for thought...

I'm guessing you're referring to Henry Ford increasing the wage of his workers from $2.40/9-hr day to $5.00/8-hr day. 
http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1914

Ok, and then a world war started also.

Yep yep. That's it!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall ... you-think/

Interesting story there. This is the first I have heard about this.

Is there an industry of today that would benefit from something like this? I can only think of military or oil.

I think doubling military salaries would create the inflation the Fed wants and force the private sector to compete with salaries. Sounds kind of like Rome though.

Desert wrote: Henry Ford was a strange man.  His anti-semitic publications, his control over his workers .. it paints a pretty grim picture of the guy.

Thomas Edison and Charles Lindbergh might also be included in the group of famous Americans from that era who were perhaps a bit less heroic than their public images suggested.

Desert wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

Desert wrote: Henry Ford was a strange man.  His anti-semitic publications, his control over his workers .. it paints a pretty grim picture of the guy.

Thomas Edison and Charles Lindbergh might also be included in the group of famous Americans from that era who were perhaps a bit less heroic than their public images suggested.

I don't know much about Lindbergh, but I've heard the stories about Edison.  Edison was obviously angry at being spanked by Tesla.

Lindbergh was a pretty heroic guy and a big thinker, but he gets demerits for being a racist Nazi sympathizer who maintained at least two other secret families in Europe and who was never honest with his other children about who their father was.  I think that his children in these secret families just knew him by a made-up name like "Klaus de Flyinguy" or something like that.

Edison was a lucky slob with a knack for hiring smart people to work for him and a cruel streak that extended through his affairs with the entire animal kingdom, whether it involved screwing Tesla out of credit and compensation for his innovations in the field of AC electricity, or killing Topsy the elephant with electricity in a publicity stunt designed to discredit AC as a viable form of electricity. 

Desert wrote: I just looked up Topsy .. Edison's a tool.  I wish I could connect some big DC voltage to him right now.

Edison also invented the electric chair as one more way to show how "dangerous" AC electricity was compared to DC.

In other words, Edison was okay with killing elephants AND people basically as publicity stunts if it allowed him to gain a business advantage over his arch enemy Westinghouse.

Edison also apparently killed LOTS of dogs with AC electricity to create the public perception that it was too dangerous for household use.

I don't know whether Edison was actually smart enough to grasp the scale of Tesla's genius (Edison was basically an uneducated but hardworking tinkerer/entrepreneur), but if he was I can't imagine how intimidating Tesla must have been to him.  It was like the electricity equivalent of the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs rivalry, except imagine a world in which Bill Gates had succeeded in completely destroying Apple.

AC is dangerous, particularly at the 60Hz frequency we use.  The specs we picked are just about the worst possible.

Xan wrote: AC is dangerous, particularly at the 60Hz frequency we use.  The specs we picked are just about the worst possible.

Other than the obvious electrocution danger, please describe some of the other dangers.

I love the book, The Big Switch: From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr.
Great book on this subject.

MediumTex wrote:Other than the obvious electrocution danger, please describe some of the other dangers.

Other dangers?  Like what?

Edison was an interesting guy, ruthlessly competitive and schooled in the Old Wall Street tradition of corporate infighting, taking-no-prisoners when it came to stock manipulation and business skullduggery.

During the controversy over AC vs. DC, Edison suggested that the correct terminology to be used when people died from an overdose of electricity should be "Westinghoused" instead of  "electrocuted."

Xan wrote:

MediumTex wrote:Other than the obvious electrocution danger, please describe some of the other dangers.

Other dangers?  Like what?

I don't know.  That's why I asked.  I thought you might be talking about cancer from high voltage lines or something like that.

MediumTex wrote:

Xan wrote:

MediumTex wrote:Other than the obvious electrocution danger, please describe some of the other dangers.

Other dangers?  Like what?

I don't know.  That's why I asked.  I thought you might be talking about cancer from high voltage lines or something like that.

120v 60hz is particularly dangerous (more so than other specs), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock.  I think this is what Xan was originally referring to.

rickb wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

Xan wrote: Other dangers?  Like what?

I don't know.  That's why I asked.  I thought you might be talking about cancer from high voltage lines or something like that.

120v 60hz is particularly dangerous (more so than other specs), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock.  I think this is what Xan was originally referring to.

Right, Rick.  It only takes a tiny amount of current at those specs to kill a man, if it goes through your heart.

Xan wrote: Right, Rick.  It only takes a tiny amount of current at those specs to kill a man, if it goes through your heart.

And according to the Wikipedia article (I'm not an electrical engineer), only a tiny amount of current at that frequency is enough to stop you from being able to let go, if you had the misfortune of tightening your muscles to grab something that turned out to be electrified.

Pointedstick wrote:

Xan wrote: Right, Rick.  It only takes a tiny amount of current at those specs to kill a man, if it goes through your heart.

And according to the Wikipedia article (I'm not an electrical engineer), only a tiny amount of current at that frequency is enough to stop you from being able to let go, if you had the misfortune of tightening your muscles to grab something that turned out to be electrified.

AC is definitely dangerous if your body comes into contact with an exposed wire.

I would say, however, that on the scale of household risks, I would probably put the fall risk associated with wet bathroom surfaces and the fire risk associated with gas powered appliances ahead of the risk of being electrocuted.

For anyone who owns a home built before the 1970s, it is often a good safety investment to replace the electrical breaker/fuse box with a new breaker box.  I had that done on a 1946 home I once owned and I'm glad that I did.

MediumTex wrote:I would say, however, that on the scale of household risks, I would probably put the fall risk associated with wet bathroom surfaces and the fire risk associated with gas powered appliances ahead of the risk of being electrocuted.

Maybe.  If you have tamper-resistant outlets when children are around, you have GFI outlets anywhere near water, etc.  But only in terms of being a user.  If you switch over to making any kind of home improvements: adding a ceiling fan, replacing a light fixture, adding a dimmer switch, changing the outlets to match a new paint color, etc, then electricity quickly jumps to the top of the danger list.