Nobody Asked Me, But…

I subwayed down to Wall Street, late fifties, when the market was topping out in terms of valuation. Next 20 years saw a progressive contraction of the market’s price-earnings ratio.  

I married near the bottom of such misery but first I told my intended I had put on some silver straddles in London that could bankrupt me. Did she still want to marry me? Well, we’ve celebrated our fiftieth anniversary so to hell with the S&P 500 index.

Friends keep sending me 500 page Eco books by economists unknown and unheard of. I do reread wisemen like Keynes and Kissinger.

As a teenager, I sold blown-up cat balloons at the Macy’s Day parade that started in the seventies, Central Park West. I’d make 50 bucks, then serious money for a 13-year-old Bronx boy. Today, I own a barrel full of Macy Stock which is not exactly a classy Walmart or Costco. Low priced stocks comprise a major theme for me.

 Let Buffett wallow in Apple, his ego enhancement piece of paper. If the Magnificent Seven double again from here, when will “enough be enough?”

I’m looking for boring stocks to own like GE, GM, Alcoa, even Goldman Sachs. These are boats that get lifted in a snappy economic setting.

Coming season, don’t read any annual reports or proxy statements. No predictive powers found herein.

You could do worse than own 2- year and 10-year Treasuries. 

My favorites, low pressure income play is among the MLPs. I can sleep OK with Enterprise Products Partners yielding 7%. Better than a junk bond.

I remember Rudy Giuliani when he was young, good looking and talked softly after the 9/11 misery in the Big Apple. 

My bravest political act was throwing a tiny flag of Old Glory into FDR’s campaign convertible cruising on Fifth Avenue. I got a big smile back and the FDR wave,  too.

I sold out my Boeing position as its airframe assembly problems intensified. My biggest mistake so far in 2023.

I knew Donald Trump back in his casino days. He’s a case of a lousy businessman getting by talking up his inventory.  Now, it’s Mar-a-Lago which I could’ve bought for $15 million, but I flubbed it. 

I’ve fared better collecting contemporary art rather than fashionable equities. Like Polaroid and Xerox which flamed out. 

Andy Warhol and the graffiti kid, Basquiat,  who chalked up subway cars, were my icons.  I got to know Basquiat better. At a dinner party. He asked me to pass him the butter. 

Basquiat graduated from chalking up subway cars to go and tell what it was like for a black kid to find himself in NYC. 

Early on, I turned down half-a-dozen of his pieces at $2,500 each.  Now they go for a hundred million. Nobody’s perfect. 

Love and Pesetas.