Just an FYI on a new show we're really enjoying...Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency! It's based on the Douglas Adams book (have not read this one but of course his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of my all time faves).
Here's a trailer for it. The ratings on Metacritic are a bit divided between Critics and Users, I guess it is that kinda show but this time I totally agree with the User ratings. From what I hear the show doesn't follow the books plot super closely but I can definitely tell from the dialogue...it is Adamsesque!
Seems BBC America developed the series and Netflix is also helping distribute it, so I presume you could watch it there (that's not how I got it). Hmm, just googled it, seems you can! Also I'm a fan of Elijah Wood, glad he plays an integral role...guess it's hard to avoid typecasting after playing Frodo!
TekSavvy - Not perfect but by far best ISP out there
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
If like me your ISP is TekSavvy then you may have received a nice rebate on your monthly fee's this month! By the way, TekSavvy "rents" Rogers' infrastructure, this is important to know because it could lead to 1 drawback of switching to them, if you seem to have a lot of issues with Rogers and it's not your entire area but specific to your home than going to TekSavvy may not be a good idea...Rogers will definitely put your name at the back of the line when it comes to servicing your request! I've not had any issue with just our house in 6 years here in Whitby so works for me!
We're in a Grandfathered plan, we get 60 Mbps down (this is essential if you have a few people in the house and each has 1 or 2 devices on the WiFi, each device takes part of the stream...last I checked my Router I think I saw ~10 devices! <For the hacker minds out there, yes all devices are ours haha> ) and 10 Mbps up (this is very useful if you want to make HD video calls or if you want to be a good P2P node), also we have a 400 Gb monthly cap, which I do make use of!
Most importantly, I have the best most stable modem out there (now I sound like Trump ;-) the Motorola Surfboard! Unlike Rogers or Bell, TekSavvy has been very good at letting their customers use virtually any Modem they want until recently...now it seems all their higher speed packages require this sub-par unstable Modem (technically this one is US version).
So while I still recommend anyone that can to go with TekSavvy (they offer much lower prices for equivalent speed/usage than Rogers or Bell and have great customer service), this new wrinkle (which I'm sure is Rogers doing as I think they get a cut of these modems) makes me hesitate on this great deal I just saw...I could switch to 100 Mbps down/10 Mbps up with Unlimited cap for $63.95 (that's not just an intro offer for a few months like you see on Rogers or Bell sites -- and that's just a few bucks more than I'm paying)!! I'm checking with TekSavvy now but I don't think they will allow my modem (even though it's a DOCSIS 3.0 and can handle speeds to 300 MBPS +) to switch to that deal :-(
If that is the case, we'll stick with our deal for now and I'll keep researching that CISCO modem that's required for these new high speed packages. They def get a lot of bad reviews but I think it's mainly cause many people try to use the Router component of the modem to save money instead of buying a good Router...as you might guess the Router part of the modem is a piece of crap. I would recommend that nobody ever use the Router component of a Modem/Router combo but instead buy a good modem such as mine or something equivalent and use these types of Combo Modems in Bridge mode (ignores built in Router, can flow thru your better one).
At some point when they're offering 1 Gbps speeds (Rogers & Bell I think already do) at reasonable prices we'll definitely have to switch, so I'm hoping at that point they have a good modem option (like they did in the past) or at least the Modem component of these CISCO's is decent (but I have my doubts, most average modems can't handle the complexity of P2P traffic - I had one once, would hang all the time, whenever I noticed no internet, I had to power cycle the modem).
We're in a Grandfathered plan, we get 60 Mbps down (this is essential if you have a few people in the house and each has 1 or 2 devices on the WiFi, each device takes part of the stream...last I checked my Router I think I saw ~10 devices! <For the hacker minds out there, yes all devices are ours haha> ) and 10 Mbps up (this is very useful if you want to make HD video calls or if you want to be a good P2P node), also we have a 400 Gb monthly cap, which I do make use of!
Most importantly, I have the best most stable modem out there (now I sound like Trump ;-) the Motorola Surfboard! Unlike Rogers or Bell, TekSavvy has been very good at letting their customers use virtually any Modem they want until recently...now it seems all their higher speed packages require this sub-par unstable Modem (technically this one is US version).
So while I still recommend anyone that can to go with TekSavvy (they offer much lower prices for equivalent speed/usage than Rogers or Bell and have great customer service), this new wrinkle (which I'm sure is Rogers doing as I think they get a cut of these modems) makes me hesitate on this great deal I just saw...I could switch to 100 Mbps down/10 Mbps up with Unlimited cap for $63.95 (that's not just an intro offer for a few months like you see on Rogers or Bell sites -- and that's just a few bucks more than I'm paying)!! I'm checking with TekSavvy now but I don't think they will allow my modem (even though it's a DOCSIS 3.0 and can handle speeds to 300 MBPS +) to switch to that deal :-(
If that is the case, we'll stick with our deal for now and I'll keep researching that CISCO modem that's required for these new high speed packages. They def get a lot of bad reviews but I think it's mainly cause many people try to use the Router component of the modem to save money instead of buying a good Router...as you might guess the Router part of the modem is a piece of crap. I would recommend that nobody ever use the Router component of a Modem/Router combo but instead buy a good modem such as mine or something equivalent and use these types of Combo Modems in Bridge mode (ignores built in Router, can flow thru your better one).
At some point when they're offering 1 Gbps speeds (Rogers & Bell I think already do) at reasonable prices we'll definitely have to switch, so I'm hoping at that point they have a good modem option (like they did in the past) or at least the Modem component of these CISCO's is decent (but I have my doubts, most average modems can't handle the complexity of P2P traffic - I had one once, would hang all the time, whenever I noticed no internet, I had to power cycle the modem).
Secular Bull & Bear Markets (Part II)
Friday, January 20, 2017
I can't say this is the final part of this story as it has become my main investment thesis and I'm sure there's much more to discover but it will likely be the last part for awhile. The two main topics to cover are how to invest in this once in a generation buying opportunity (i.e. getting in early on a Secular Bull) and where to invest once it ends (this likely will not be needed for decades!).
Let's start with what instruments to invest with, Mutual Funds are still very popular among the general population but they are dinosaurs, on their way out...albeit slowly since my preferred instrument the ETF requires a Discount Brokerage platform. This is a bit more complicated to setup and trade. Two huge reasons to go with ETF's are huge savings (see Ex. 1 below), especially over the long run and much more variety to choose from (more precise, Mutual Funds are more blunt instruments).
Example 1: Say you managed to create a solid retirement portfolio that averaged 10% return per year using ETF's, even if you managed to do the same thing with a Mutual Fund portfolio you would definitely have lost 2% a year or more on MER! So some simple compounding interest calcs show
the growth of $100,000 over 30 years in the 2 scenarios (one at 10% per year, the other at 8%).
Amnt_30y_ETF = $100,000 * (1.10)^30 = $1,744,940 (Yay!)
Amnt_30y_MutFund = $100,000 * (1.08)^30 = $1,006,265 (Boo!)
So from here on I will focus on ETF's but I do realize as I said many people will have to use Mutual Funds so my two recommendations are find ones like TD's E-Series (lower MER's -- equivalent to an expensive ETF) and try to find as close a match as possible to the ETF's I'll recommend here.
A very old rule of thumb was, 60/40 Equity to Fixed Income, made for a well diversified portfolio with little given up in return. While that was true and worked great say starting from 1980's when Interest Rates spiked up to 20% and then over 30+ years fell down to nearly 0%...it's going to be much less true in the next 10-15 years as IR's rise from 0% to potentially 20% (this is because Bond prices are inversely proportional to IR's moves). This is partly why I'm going to go with something more like 90/10, there's many more reasons but the other one I'll state is because Warren Buffet says so!
So where are we, we'll use ETF's (if we can) and go 90/10 Stocks vs. Bonds. However, I know from my External Manager days that even most Asset Managers in the world (except the very best) have trouble beating the Indices so I won't even try and build my own Index with stocks (1 company I've been right about even before they went IPO in 2004 is Google but it'd be risky to just go with Google though maybe not haha). So we will be buying Index ETF's and not Stocks. I should also mention that my own personal portfolio is a bit more sophisticated (only time will tell if it's better), I won't be going into 90% Equity Index ETF's but instead a combination of Equities and what I call Alternative Assets such as Water ETF's, Infrastructure ETF's, Gold, etc. All I will say here (maybe I can expand on this in a future post) is that I found some great Alt's that I really believe in as future investments and so far they've had great returns of their own while having very low Beta & Correlation to S&P 500!
Until an investor gains much more knowledge about say what Regions of the world (e.g. Developed vs. Emerging) or Sectors (e.g. Tech vs. Consumer Staples) will outperform in the next few years, my recommendation is to just stay at Benchmark weight (the Benchmark I use is this -- I will give some reasons shortly). This isn't as easy as it sounds as the Indices (i.e. Benchmarks) are rebalanced once or twice a year so you'd have to decide if it's worth the commission costs, if it's not then you will have been at benchmark weight at the beginning then drifted away, is this good or bad? Nobody knows for sure!
If you are OK to have your long-term retirement portfolio in USD (opens up much more choices for ETF's like the Benchmark I mentioned, the ETF called VT) then we're almost done as I'd say buy 90% VT to keep things simple, and if you want to learn more of the finer details over the years, great after that you can refine things but if not then just stick with VT. I'm however very skeptical of the prospects of the USD in the long-term, for example the Innauguration today! So over the next 30 years I wouldn't be shocked if a Black Swan event like USD losing it's place as the World's reserve currency played out (with Trump in power, I wouldn't be shocked if this happened in the next 4 years! haha). So if you are like me you'll want to have your portfolio in CAD, this means there is no equivalent to VT available in CAD today, that means we need to recreate it with what's available.
Probably the 2 most famous ETF creators are iShares & Vanguard, I prefer the latter for many reasons...the 2 main ones are that they tend to be way cheaper (MER) and usually smarter (that's a longer explanation and perhaps a touch subjective). So in Canada we could get close to VT by using this iShare ETF but it has a few issues, doesn't include Canada so would need to buy (in the correct proportion) a Canada ETF but worse than that is that you will be underweighing Small Cap stocks (except in the US). There's a long standing market premium associated with 2 factors in Equities, Small Caps and Value, this is a very important idea to understand!
It's a good idea to try and keep the portfolio as small as possible but still be able to express all of your investment views (I have many views but the 2 key ones are that in the next 30y I'll be betting on Emerging markets to outperform Developed ones and the Tech sector to continue it's growth over all others!). If you have no views, then we can create your long term portfolio with just 3 ETF's!
Roughly we can put 85% of our Portfolio into VXC below, this low MER ETF represents all Cap sizes (Large, Mid, Small) and as far as I can tell doesn't bias towards Growth (over Value which would not be what we want!). This gives us exposure to Emerging stocks as well, only thing missing is Canada but that's an easy fix.
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/individual/mvc/detail/etf/overview?portId=9548&assetCode=EQUITY##portfoliodata
Next, we can put ~5% into Canada (I've never seen Canada weight relative to the World go out of the 3-5% range). Again as above, this has all Caps and not biased towards Growth.
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/individual/mvc/detail/etf/overview?portId=9561&assetCode=EQUITY##portfoliodata
For the final 10% unallocated, if you want to keep things very simple, could invest it in XBB DEX Universe Bonds (the widest variety of investment grade CDN bonds). If you want to make things a bit more interesting you could do something like ZGI 4%, ZRR 3% and IAU 3% (this is a USD Gold ETF, long story but the CAD version was delisted and I have yet to find a suitable alternative). I would wager over the next 30y that ZGI, ZRR & IAU outperform XBB (won't list the long line of reasoning now). Also, ZRR & IAU provide inflation protection...to some degree ZGI might as well.
So there you have it, a very cheap and well rounded portfolio is just 85% VXC, 5% VCN & 10% XBB!
Two final items, first, when is a good time to put this portfolio into action? This is very hard to answer other than to say next time Equities correct. What I'm going to do is wait till the VIX get's to 40 (VIX is the Volatility Index -- when the VIX get's in the 30's...will need to monitor this very often, I'm talking intraday). At that point Equities should have corrected quite nicely...but will it be a smooth ride to retirement?Unfortunately not...take a look again at that 10y rolling returns chart from Part I, even in Secular Bulls there are quite a few huge downturns so you'll have to brave the roller coaster!
Finally, what happens if this Secular Bull is much shorter than expected (or even if it's not)...where do we put our money then? Well it's not Equities...I've found Gold to be an excellent place and Real Estate, Long Bonds potentially as well especially if IR's are high at that point but not if they are low!
The links for Gold and Long Bonds are below and I found an amazing chart that sums up the Real Estate question nicely (focus on 2000-2010 as most of that was a Secular Bear).
http://goldprice.org/gold-price-canada.html
This is a great resource, for our purposes here focus on Long Bonds (L.Bond) returns in the table from 2000 to 2009, you can see how great they did (can also look in the 70s during that Secular Bear). As a final note on this, I tend to like Provincial Long Bonds a lot!
PeriodicTableofAnnualReturns
Let's start with what instruments to invest with, Mutual Funds are still very popular among the general population but they are dinosaurs, on their way out...albeit slowly since my preferred instrument the ETF requires a Discount Brokerage platform. This is a bit more complicated to setup and trade. Two huge reasons to go with ETF's are huge savings (see Ex. 1 below), especially over the long run and much more variety to choose from (more precise, Mutual Funds are more blunt instruments).
Example 1: Say you managed to create a solid retirement portfolio that averaged 10% return per year using ETF's, even if you managed to do the same thing with a Mutual Fund portfolio you would definitely have lost 2% a year or more on MER! So some simple compounding interest calcs show
the growth of $100,000 over 30 years in the 2 scenarios (one at 10% per year, the other at 8%).
Amnt_30y_ETF = $100,000 * (1.10)^30 = $1,744,940 (Yay!)
Amnt_30y_MutFund = $100,000 * (1.08)^30 = $1,006,265 (Boo!)
So from here on I will focus on ETF's but I do realize as I said many people will have to use Mutual Funds so my two recommendations are find ones like TD's E-Series (lower MER's -- equivalent to an expensive ETF) and try to find as close a match as possible to the ETF's I'll recommend here.
A very old rule of thumb was, 60/40 Equity to Fixed Income, made for a well diversified portfolio with little given up in return. While that was true and worked great say starting from 1980's when Interest Rates spiked up to 20% and then over 30+ years fell down to nearly 0%...it's going to be much less true in the next 10-15 years as IR's rise from 0% to potentially 20% (this is because Bond prices are inversely proportional to IR's moves). This is partly why I'm going to go with something more like 90/10, there's many more reasons but the other one I'll state is because Warren Buffet says so!
So where are we, we'll use ETF's (if we can) and go 90/10 Stocks vs. Bonds. However, I know from my External Manager days that even most Asset Managers in the world (except the very best) have trouble beating the Indices so I won't even try and build my own Index with stocks (1 company I've been right about even before they went IPO in 2004 is Google but it'd be risky to just go with Google though maybe not haha). So we will be buying Index ETF's and not Stocks. I should also mention that my own personal portfolio is a bit more sophisticated (only time will tell if it's better), I won't be going into 90% Equity Index ETF's but instead a combination of Equities and what I call Alternative Assets such as Water ETF's, Infrastructure ETF's, Gold, etc. All I will say here (maybe I can expand on this in a future post) is that I found some great Alt's that I really believe in as future investments and so far they've had great returns of their own while having very low Beta & Correlation to S&P 500!
Until an investor gains much more knowledge about say what Regions of the world (e.g. Developed vs. Emerging) or Sectors (e.g. Tech vs. Consumer Staples) will outperform in the next few years, my recommendation is to just stay at Benchmark weight (the Benchmark I use is this -- I will give some reasons shortly). This isn't as easy as it sounds as the Indices (i.e. Benchmarks) are rebalanced once or twice a year so you'd have to decide if it's worth the commission costs, if it's not then you will have been at benchmark weight at the beginning then drifted away, is this good or bad? Nobody knows for sure!
If you are OK to have your long-term retirement portfolio in USD (opens up much more choices for ETF's like the Benchmark I mentioned, the ETF called VT) then we're almost done as I'd say buy 90% VT to keep things simple, and if you want to learn more of the finer details over the years, great after that you can refine things but if not then just stick with VT. I'm however very skeptical of the prospects of the USD in the long-term, for example the Innauguration today! So over the next 30 years I wouldn't be shocked if a Black Swan event like USD losing it's place as the World's reserve currency played out (with Trump in power, I wouldn't be shocked if this happened in the next 4 years! haha). So if you are like me you'll want to have your portfolio in CAD, this means there is no equivalent to VT available in CAD today, that means we need to recreate it with what's available.
Probably the 2 most famous ETF creators are iShares & Vanguard, I prefer the latter for many reasons...the 2 main ones are that they tend to be way cheaper (MER) and usually smarter (that's a longer explanation and perhaps a touch subjective). So in Canada we could get close to VT by using this iShare ETF but it has a few issues, doesn't include Canada so would need to buy (in the correct proportion) a Canada ETF but worse than that is that you will be underweighing Small Cap stocks (except in the US). There's a long standing market premium associated with 2 factors in Equities, Small Caps and Value, this is a very important idea to understand!
It's a good idea to try and keep the portfolio as small as possible but still be able to express all of your investment views (I have many views but the 2 key ones are that in the next 30y I'll be betting on Emerging markets to outperform Developed ones and the Tech sector to continue it's growth over all others!). If you have no views, then we can create your long term portfolio with just 3 ETF's!
Roughly we can put 85% of our Portfolio into VXC below, this low MER ETF represents all Cap sizes (Large, Mid, Small) and as far as I can tell doesn't bias towards Growth (over Value which would not be what we want!). This gives us exposure to Emerging stocks as well, only thing missing is Canada but that's an easy fix.
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/individual/mvc/detail/etf/overview?portId=9548&assetCode=EQUITY##portfoliodata
Next, we can put ~5% into Canada (I've never seen Canada weight relative to the World go out of the 3-5% range). Again as above, this has all Caps and not biased towards Growth.
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/individual/mvc/detail/etf/overview?portId=9561&assetCode=EQUITY##portfoliodata
For the final 10% unallocated, if you want to keep things very simple, could invest it in XBB DEX Universe Bonds (the widest variety of investment grade CDN bonds). If you want to make things a bit more interesting you could do something like ZGI 4%, ZRR 3% and IAU 3% (this is a USD Gold ETF, long story but the CAD version was delisted and I have yet to find a suitable alternative). I would wager over the next 30y that ZGI, ZRR & IAU outperform XBB (won't list the long line of reasoning now). Also, ZRR & IAU provide inflation protection...to some degree ZGI might as well.
So there you have it, a very cheap and well rounded portfolio is just 85% VXC, 5% VCN & 10% XBB!
Two final items, first, when is a good time to put this portfolio into action? This is very hard to answer other than to say next time Equities correct. What I'm going to do is wait till the VIX get's to 40 (VIX is the Volatility Index -- when the VIX get's in the 30's...will need to monitor this very often, I'm talking intraday). At that point Equities should have corrected quite nicely...but will it be a smooth ride to retirement?Unfortunately not...take a look again at that 10y rolling returns chart from Part I, even in Secular Bulls there are quite a few huge downturns so you'll have to brave the roller coaster!
Finally, what happens if this Secular Bull is much shorter than expected (or even if it's not)...where do we put our money then? Well it's not Equities...I've found Gold to be an excellent place and Real Estate, Long Bonds potentially as well especially if IR's are high at that point but not if they are low!
The links for Gold and Long Bonds are below and I found an amazing chart that sums up the Real Estate question nicely (focus on 2000-2010 as most of that was a Secular Bear).
http://goldprice.org/gold-price-canada.html
This is a great resource, for our purposes here focus on Long Bonds (L.Bond) returns in the table from 2000 to 2009, you can see how great they did (can also look in the 70s during that Secular Bear). As a final note on this, I tend to like Provincial Long Bonds a lot!
PeriodicTableofAnnualReturns
Livionex - Dental Gel
Friday, January 20, 2017
A few years ago, when my daughter Chiara was 1 or so, I wanted to find a great toothpaste without Fluoride. There are some people who think Fluoride is a super toxic chemical and some (like the average Dentist) who think it's harmless. As usual the answer is somewhere in the middle. The Harvard study shows that definitely in developing brains (i.e. children) Fluoride can have Neurotoxic effects (IQ, learning, etc.). Clearly it's not something that happens overnight, it's an accumulative affect over time, these are the hardest ones to prove. In adults, these affects were well known but those were based on a single very high dose (I don't recall seeing repeated low dose research on adults but I'm playing it safe :-)
Anyway, I decide to focus on toothpastes that have no Fluoride, while the kids still have their baby teeth, I don't think having the best toothpaste is a top priority (as it's not cheap, I'll get to that later -- I think for them just brushing and rinsing is already pretty good) so we use this one, Chiara likes the flavor and it has no bad ingredients!
I still needed to find a top notch toothpaste for us to use and of course the kids once they are past the baby teeth stage. There's many Organic ones with no bad ingredients but my research showed quite a few people reported more cavities and other issues after using them awhile and visiting the Dentist. So after much searching, I was stoked to find a Dental Gel called Livionex, started by a Silicon Valley startup that ignores all the current fads etc. and just focused on solving what's really the core problem, bacteria getting a foothold and building colonies on your teeth, thru years of research and some brilliant chemistry they solved the problem and it has been tested by many researchers. This Dental Gel works better than Colgate Total which is the leading "popular" toothpaste.
Here's a great article from a well respected Dentist in the Huffington Post, describes the problem most people are facing today and the solution (i.e. Livionex!)...very informative, well written. Now, one drawback is the price and the fact I have to order from the US, so I'm hoping as the word gets out there and more people buy it, they can lower the price and sell in Canada too! Oh and we've used it for 2 years or so now, our dental appointments have been quicker than ever since, it def works!
Huffington Post Article on Livionex
http://www.livionexdental.com/ReviewsList.asp?ProductCode=LIV4413&Reviews=Y
Anyway, I decide to focus on toothpastes that have no Fluoride, while the kids still have their baby teeth, I don't think having the best toothpaste is a top priority (as it's not cheap, I'll get to that later -- I think for them just brushing and rinsing is already pretty good) so we use this one, Chiara likes the flavor and it has no bad ingredients!
I still needed to find a top notch toothpaste for us to use and of course the kids once they are past the baby teeth stage. There's many Organic ones with no bad ingredients but my research showed quite a few people reported more cavities and other issues after using them awhile and visiting the Dentist. So after much searching, I was stoked to find a Dental Gel called Livionex, started by a Silicon Valley startup that ignores all the current fads etc. and just focused on solving what's really the core problem, bacteria getting a foothold and building colonies on your teeth, thru years of research and some brilliant chemistry they solved the problem and it has been tested by many researchers. This Dental Gel works better than Colgate Total which is the leading "popular" toothpaste.
Here's a great article from a well respected Dentist in the Huffington Post, describes the problem most people are facing today and the solution (i.e. Livionex!)...very informative, well written. Now, one drawback is the price and the fact I have to order from the US, so I'm hoping as the word gets out there and more people buy it, they can lower the price and sell in Canada too! Oh and we've used it for 2 years or so now, our dental appointments have been quicker than ever since, it def works!
Huffington Post Article on Livionex
http://www.livionexdental.com/ReviewsList.asp?ProductCode=LIV4413&Reviews=Y
Stanford -- Caffeine may counter age-related inflammation
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Stanford researchers provide more evidence caffeine can lower heart disease via an anti-inflammatory effect. Inflammation, especially as you age, sets the ideal environment for heart disease, arteriosclerosis, etc. to play out. A great example is one of the most common issues that affects most North Americans as they age, but somehow the name is not well known...metabolic syndrome.
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/01/caffeine-may-counter-age-related-inflammation-study-finds.html
Coffee is the most common source of caffeine but many types people buy daily, especially novelty coffee's such as pumpkin spice latte's have many artificial and other unhealthy ingredients. If you are making your own or go to a good quality shop then that's fine. My fave source for caffeine is Matcha Green Tea (David's Tea -- Ceremonial Matcha is pretty good) , which is different then regular Green Tea, in that it's the entire leaf dried and crushed up to form a powder. This means you are getting all the special nutrients & caffeine at top levels, this is why a cup of Matcha has about the same caffeine level as a cup of Java.
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/01/caffeine-may-counter-age-related-inflammation-study-finds.html
Coffee is the most common source of caffeine but many types people buy daily, especially novelty coffee's such as pumpkin spice latte's have many artificial and other unhealthy ingredients. If you are making your own or go to a good quality shop then that's fine. My fave source for caffeine is Matcha Green Tea (David's Tea -- Ceremonial Matcha is pretty good) , which is different then regular Green Tea, in that it's the entire leaf dried and crushed up to form a powder. This means you are getting all the special nutrients & caffeine at top levels, this is why a cup of Matcha has about the same caffeine level as a cup of Java.
Living on Dividends or Coupons?
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
This topic becomes more and more important the closer we get to retirement (if we don't achieve the Star Trek economic society I am hoping for in 20-30 years than I'm pretty sure the retirement age will be much closer to 80 than 65 :-( So we probably have time to think about this but I don't like to waste time educating myself on new/important topics.
If you managed to save up a nice retirement amount by that time and you don't have a fantastic pension (most of us don't) then you'll need retirement income! Typically the best way to achieve this, say you had $1m in retirement savings, is to invest in a Bond portfolio (5-10 bonds depending on a variety of factors, esp. your fear of default!). Some key facts/things to keep in mind:
If you managed to save up a nice retirement amount by that time and you don't have a fantastic pension (most of us don't) then you'll need retirement income! Typically the best way to achieve this, say you had $1m in retirement savings, is to invest in a Bond portfolio (5-10 bonds depending on a variety of factors, esp. your fear of default!). Some key facts/things to keep in mind:
- Ideally you buy Govt of Canada bonds, then there's virtually no credit (i.e. default) risk but this will lower your income a lot (no risk no reward!). Looking at this list of CDN bonds (yields, coupons etc.) the best example I can see is a 3.5% coupon CAD bond that yields 1.9%. It's selling at a premium as well but even if it wasn't and you can buy at par, this would earn you $35K a year only
- So what this means is that you'll need to take some Credit risk, hence why I said 5-10 bonds (to diversify that risk). People often jump to Corp's but don't overlook some great Provi's & Muni's! Again consulting the list, I see what must be a typo! There's a Que bond being sold at a huge discount with a 10% coupon and a yield of 98%!! It matures in 2056 so that may have something to do with it but assuming the source is correct, this bond will pay you $100K per year till 2056!
- So that example above is an outlier, typically though with some Provi's, Muni's and Corp's you could have a portfolio (keep in mind we're in a ultra low interest rate environment, so retirees now have it tough, when you retire you want very high IR's {assuming you paid mortgage off doh!}) that maybe avg's a 6% Coupon, so $60K per year. At times of higher IR's you could probably get that $60K per year with only $500K in savings!
I've always thought Bonds were the way to go no question but I'm learning more about this and it seems there are times Dividends could be the way to go (I guess for a temporary amount of time). One thing to keep in mind is that in cases of default etc. Bond holders are higher in the Capital Structure, and while recovery rates can vary greatly, recovering as much as 50% in not unusual but Equity will go to 0! Also, key fact in favor of bonds is that while holding them you are moving towards a known payout (face value) but while holding Equity this is far from certain (though to be fair, stocks with high dividends tend to be blue chip companies who's market price {& Div's} is slowly rising -- look for Dividend Aristocrats).
Having said that, I've recently run across a lot of discussions on receiving income via Dividend streams so I'll post that, I can't say as much about it now as it'll take me time to digest and study this area more. But as I said, it's something to consider as an alternative and I could see at certain times it may be a superior path or perhaps could lead to a combination of bonds + stock portfolio.
Read the responses of "Jim Watkins" & "Eric Rodriguez"
This analysis finds stocks with great yields that are not overvalued
Health News
Monday, January 9, 2017
More evidence just published on the benefits of a Med diet...especially for seniors. A key component of such a diet is to have a high quality Olive Oil, expeller pressed (as opposed to hexane extracted) and ideally unrefined (Olive Oil shouldn't be used to for high heat cooking such as stir frying anyway -- for that I recommend this excellent slightly refined organic Canola Oil).
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/01/08/0536231/new-study-finds-mediterranean-diet-significantly-reduces-brain-shrinkage
I'll also include links to my main supplements and the reasoning behind taking them. The first one is Quercetin, the 2 links below (sources are highly reputable, especially for health related matters this is key...so much dis & misinformation out there!).
Discusses mainly Querectin's anti-aging benefits, think of it as a janitor cleaning up garbage cells (cells that no longer divide, essentially dead)!
https://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2015/20150309agingcell.html
Discusses the many other benefits such as it's anti-inflammatory & anti-histamine properties!
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/quercetin
As with all supplements, efficacy is key, you see Quercetin tests for example are done with the actual compound Quercetin acting on say a blood sample but things are not so simple in real life, if you take Quercetin you will have to ingest and hence metabolize (to some degree) before it reaches your blood stream and at that point it will no longer be exactly what you put in! Cheap supplements cannot take this into account, they just go for the cheapest form of the compound. This doesn't mean you have to spend $100 for a bottle though either, there's supplements like that out there but often those companies are either way overcharging for a quality product or just ripping you off entirely with a cheap to make knock-off! So it takes a bit of research to find the right one. I found the highest efficacy Quercetin (note it may have a different chemical name as it only becomes Quercetin after metabolization) and also Multi-Vitamins as well.
http://naturalfactors.com/product/bioactive-quercetin-emiq/
http://www.ultralaboratories.com/EmeraldLabs/MEN%2045%201-Day%20Multi/index.php
Finally, the single most important Vitamin (based on current research) is D, a lot of people still believe Vitamin C is the immune booster but it's actually Vitamin D that regulates your immune system and the Recommended Daily Amount is very slow to get updated. The Harvard article on Vitamin D shows that based on current research the typical daily amount should be around 2000 IU (not 800 as is the old RDA). Vitamin D is one of the few Vitamins that is difficult to get naturally at those doses (unless you spend a lot of time everyday in the sun and that's not most of us these days, especially in the winter). There is ongoing research that most people (especially in Northern latitudes) are deficient in Vit D and they found strong links to Multiple Sclerosis and Type 1 Diabetes risks!
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamin-d/
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/01/08/0536231/new-study-finds-mediterranean-diet-significantly-reduces-brain-shrinkage
I'll also include links to my main supplements and the reasoning behind taking them. The first one is Quercetin, the 2 links below (sources are highly reputable, especially for health related matters this is key...so much dis & misinformation out there!).
Discusses mainly Querectin's anti-aging benefits, think of it as a janitor cleaning up garbage cells (cells that no longer divide, essentially dead)!
https://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2015/20150309agingcell.html
Discusses the many other benefits such as it's anti-inflammatory & anti-histamine properties!
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/quercetin
As with all supplements, efficacy is key, you see Quercetin tests for example are done with the actual compound Quercetin acting on say a blood sample but things are not so simple in real life, if you take Quercetin you will have to ingest and hence metabolize (to some degree) before it reaches your blood stream and at that point it will no longer be exactly what you put in! Cheap supplements cannot take this into account, they just go for the cheapest form of the compound. This doesn't mean you have to spend $100 for a bottle though either, there's supplements like that out there but often those companies are either way overcharging for a quality product or just ripping you off entirely with a cheap to make knock-off! So it takes a bit of research to find the right one. I found the highest efficacy Quercetin (note it may have a different chemical name as it only becomes Quercetin after metabolization) and also Multi-Vitamins as well.
http://naturalfactors.com/product/bioactive-quercetin-emiq/
http://www.ultralaboratories.com/EmeraldLabs/MEN%2045%201-Day%20Multi/index.php
Finally, the single most important Vitamin (based on current research) is D, a lot of people still believe Vitamin C is the immune booster but it's actually Vitamin D that regulates your immune system and the Recommended Daily Amount is very slow to get updated. The Harvard article on Vitamin D shows that based on current research the typical daily amount should be around 2000 IU (not 800 as is the old RDA). Vitamin D is one of the few Vitamins that is difficult to get naturally at those doses (unless you spend a lot of time everyday in the sun and that's not most of us these days, especially in the winter). There is ongoing research that most people (especially in Northern latitudes) are deficient in Vit D and they found strong links to Multiple Sclerosis and Type 1 Diabetes risks!
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamin-d/
EDGE: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?
Sunday, January 8, 2017
The Edge is a great site, their motto is "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves". At the end of each year they publish a question and answers from some of the most influential thinkers of our time. Last year's question touched on one of my fave topics...AI!
The responses they publish are varied enough that you see arguments/points of view from pretty much all sides of the issue. My own view is that this is yet another area of human conceit that will eventually be overturned (think back to the Sun revolving around the Earth issue...where we literally thought we were the center of the Universe haha). What non-experts don't usually realize is that computers (even Super Computers) had a computational capacity far far less than humans for so long that when AI (e.g. machine learning) programs ran on them it was never going to be a fair contest. Even now, by the best estimates (from Computational Neuroscientists etc) our fastest Super Computer is ~1000x slower than the avg. human mind! But in narrow tasks, even ones now that are not so much about number crunching (like the game of GO) AI can beat the best humans on the planet!
https://www.edge.org/contributors/q2015
I'll leave off by paraphrasing my fave Future guru Ray Kurzweil, he says one reason why most people have trouble believing in his timelines (his biggest prediction is that The Singularity will occur by 2045) is that they have not been trained to think exponentially, instead the default state is to think linearly which is good enough for most day-to-day experiences but not for appreciating the pace of science & tech. He has a great metaphor/puzzle for this, imagine a pond that on day 1 has only 1 lilly pad, if we assume they double daily and that on day 30 the pond is 100% full then on what day was it only 1/4 full? The answer of course is 28, just work backwards...on day 29 it was half full! The point is the doubters would be looking to be in the right (that the pond will never be overrun with lilly pad's) all the way till around day 28!
PS So many Movies and TV shows now are based on these topics, I highly recommend these below!
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/her
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/ex-machina
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/humans
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/westworld
The responses they publish are varied enough that you see arguments/points of view from pretty much all sides of the issue. My own view is that this is yet another area of human conceit that will eventually be overturned (think back to the Sun revolving around the Earth issue...where we literally thought we were the center of the Universe haha). What non-experts don't usually realize is that computers (even Super Computers) had a computational capacity far far less than humans for so long that when AI (e.g. machine learning) programs ran on them it was never going to be a fair contest. Even now, by the best estimates (from Computational Neuroscientists etc) our fastest Super Computer is ~1000x slower than the avg. human mind! But in narrow tasks, even ones now that are not so much about number crunching (like the game of GO) AI can beat the best humans on the planet!
https://www.edge.org/contributors/q2015
I'll leave off by paraphrasing my fave Future guru Ray Kurzweil, he says one reason why most people have trouble believing in his timelines (his biggest prediction is that The Singularity will occur by 2045) is that they have not been trained to think exponentially, instead the default state is to think linearly which is good enough for most day-to-day experiences but not for appreciating the pace of science & tech. He has a great metaphor/puzzle for this, imagine a pond that on day 1 has only 1 lilly pad, if we assume they double daily and that on day 30 the pond is 100% full then on what day was it only 1/4 full? The answer of course is 28, just work backwards...on day 29 it was half full! The point is the doubters would be looking to be in the right (that the pond will never be overrun with lilly pad's) all the way till around day 28!
PS So many Movies and TV shows now are based on these topics, I highly recommend these below!
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/her
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/ex-machina
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/humans
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/westworld
Secular Bull & Bear Markets (Part I)
Saturday, January 7, 2017
I began investing in 2000, I only knew maybe 10% of what I know now but I knew just enough to wait till that Tech bubble corrected, which happened in the spring of 2000, there were 2 good spots (not being able to see a few years ahead these were truly local minimums) to get in and I did...I didn't have much to invest and I was young so I went aggressive into a Global Tech Fund. The returns were looking great till closer to the end of the year when I realized that these bubbles (unlike real ones) don't burst all at once, they can do so in many stages and I got in way to early!
I had to focus most of the decade paying off student debt so I just watched the markets, then of course 2008 happened...learned a lot studying that! At that time at work I was hearing a lot about Cyclical Bull & Bear Markets (they tend to follow the Business Cycle) as opposed to Secular Bull & Bear Markets (which follow much longer cycles, not correlated much to the Economy), one of my fave market gurus Barry Ritholtz discusses the differences here.
Finally, in 2010 I had decent size lump sum to invest but having grown up on the markets from 2000 to 2010 you can imagine I didn't have much faith in a standard 60/40 (Eq/FI) play or even just buying the World (MSCI World ETF - otherwise known as a Beta play). I had done calcs on how those standard investments would have done from say late 70's to just before 2008 (30y period) and the returns were impressive but that wasn't as real to me as what I actually saw happening from 2000 to 2010. Also I had lots of ideas I had assimilated in my career and backtesting (as it can often do) told me let's try them, so I gave myself 5 years to have a concentrated portfolio of whatever my best ideas are at the time and see if with some luck (AKA market timing - as I later learnt is by far the biggest key!) I can make some real money! I definitely had some good trades, I believe it was the Debt-Ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011 that I decided to put 90% of my portfolio into Gold! That worked great, amazing to see how quickly you can make money, then when I was up 15% I had to decide how to get out...I ended up using a tactic from when I was a Quant for a Quantitative Equity PM, nothing fancy just pick a level 2% below and watch for that. But of course I also had trades that went against me (more than 50% of the time as I do not seem to be better than most at market timing)...such as a Deep In The Money SPX Put strategy (basically a way to short S&P 500).
So all that leads to the most mind blowing investing concept I learned in ~15 years. I saw that I will need some type of diversified portfolio (with the occasional overlay - MAYBE) but how could I trust the markets I grew up with in 2000 to 2010 (which by the way was a Secular Bear!)? The answer was get a better understanding of Secular Bull/Bear markets, which is easier said than done as it doesn't come up in the Investment world that often since PM's/Traders look for short term incentives...so finding a sure (as sure as it get's in the Investment biz) fire way to make money that only takes 20-40 years (depending on starting pt) isn't going to be a hot topic! But at the start of 2016 I saw this chart and it blew my mind!
Everything I knew and had been thinking about just came together and clicked into place once I saw this amazing chart, the key is that these are 10-year rolling returns, that's a fairly long time for the market (economic cycles usually last 3-6yrs) so we're getting a look at the forest not just the trees! I have a spreadsheet where I track major Indices and all ETF's I'm interested in, so I thought I should recreate the above and why not add a few more periods, namely, 5y, 15y & 25y!
In this last section, I'll explain a very simple strategy I came up with based on all this that does a pretty good job of letting me know when the market is getting too hot (end of a Secular Bull) and too cold (I call it the end of a Secular Bear but most gurus would call it the low point of the Secular Bear). I use Yahoo Finance for free data and they only have S&P 500 data going back to 1950 so I can't recreate everything on that chart but it's enough. Once I had the 5y, 10y, 15y & 25y rolling return vectors I studied them a bit to see what "too cold" would mean and what "too hot" would mean, just made an intuitive guess for cutoff levels then applied conditional formatting to highlight those periods. Then I thought, what about times when all 4 periods fall into too cold/hot at the same time, if that happens it should be very significant! Turns out it is and that's the power of this model, I'll give you a couple of examples (please note I'm not saying I can call market tops and bottoms in any accuracy greater than months but at these time scales it's quite sufficient...and it's not super difficult or impressive, at 10y or 25y the patterns move like glaciers!).
So as we go thru time (starting 1950) my simple conditional formatting technique calls for the low point of that particular Secular Bear (began in ~1959) in Sept-1974 (again that's based on monthly price levels) and if you look at the S&P daily data, it's very close to the daily low which I think occurred in Aug-1974. So this would have been a great time to get into the market (just buy & hold), then ride that till the next time we see a convergence of the cond. formatting which was Dec-1999. At this point the 25y rolling return coincides with the since inception return and it's over 1800% (this would take a $100k portfolio up to $1.9m)!!! Turns out Dec-1999 the S&P level was 1469...this time my method was off by ~8 months as the true top came Aug-2000 but only slightly higher at 1517 (based on monthly data but daily was somewhere nearby)...now this I don't mind at all because while my method got me out a bit early it was actually before all the crazy volatility of 2000! Finally, the Secular Bear ensues and as is the case, rallies are outweighed by pullbacks and there's a general strong headwind which culminated in 2008/09. This is when the 4 rolling returns once again coincided to indicate a low of this particular Secular Bear, in monthly data terms it was Feb-2009 and the S&P was all the way back to 735! Again my method was a bit off, the daily data showed the true bottom in March-2009 at just under 700, close enough I say! So this would have been the ideal time to get in and if I had money in early 2009 and I had this methodology worked out I would have gone all in (S&P is currently near 2300). But from my 4 rolling returns I can see what that great chart above shows, we are either in the latter stages of the Secular Bear or in the early stages of the next 25-30y Secular Bull!! Hooray!!!
Here's a chart I put together that follows S&P levels and the 4 Rolling Returns, it gives a nice visual (esp. the 25y return shows how near the end of a Secular Bull things get crazy and you make most of your money!) but I wouldn't rely on it to get in or out...the conditional formatting time series is what I use for that. So that concludes Part I...in Part II, I will explain some simple/cheap ways to fully participate in this next Secular Bull and even where to put your money if it ends early (meaning during a Secular Bear...hint it ain't Equities haha and not even Bonds really...something more shiny 😀).
I had to focus most of the decade paying off student debt so I just watched the markets, then of course 2008 happened...learned a lot studying that! At that time at work I was hearing a lot about Cyclical Bull & Bear Markets (they tend to follow the Business Cycle) as opposed to Secular Bull & Bear Markets (which follow much longer cycles, not correlated much to the Economy), one of my fave market gurus Barry Ritholtz discusses the differences here.
Finally, in 2010 I had decent size lump sum to invest but having grown up on the markets from 2000 to 2010 you can imagine I didn't have much faith in a standard 60/40 (Eq/FI) play or even just buying the World (MSCI World ETF - otherwise known as a Beta play). I had done calcs on how those standard investments would have done from say late 70's to just before 2008 (30y period) and the returns were impressive but that wasn't as real to me as what I actually saw happening from 2000 to 2010. Also I had lots of ideas I had assimilated in my career and backtesting (as it can often do) told me let's try them, so I gave myself 5 years to have a concentrated portfolio of whatever my best ideas are at the time and see if with some luck (AKA market timing - as I later learnt is by far the biggest key!) I can make some real money! I definitely had some good trades, I believe it was the Debt-Ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011 that I decided to put 90% of my portfolio into Gold! That worked great, amazing to see how quickly you can make money, then when I was up 15% I had to decide how to get out...I ended up using a tactic from when I was a Quant for a Quantitative Equity PM, nothing fancy just pick a level 2% below and watch for that. But of course I also had trades that went against me (more than 50% of the time as I do not seem to be better than most at market timing)...such as a Deep In The Money SPX Put strategy (basically a way to short S&P 500).
So all that leads to the most mind blowing investing concept I learned in ~15 years. I saw that I will need some type of diversified portfolio (with the occasional overlay - MAYBE) but how could I trust the markets I grew up with in 2000 to 2010 (which by the way was a Secular Bear!)? The answer was get a better understanding of Secular Bull/Bear markets, which is easier said than done as it doesn't come up in the Investment world that often since PM's/Traders look for short term incentives...so finding a sure (as sure as it get's in the Investment biz) fire way to make money that only takes 20-40 years (depending on starting pt) isn't going to be a hot topic! But at the start of 2016 I saw this chart and it blew my mind!
Everything I knew and had been thinking about just came together and clicked into place once I saw this amazing chart, the key is that these are 10-year rolling returns, that's a fairly long time for the market (economic cycles usually last 3-6yrs) so we're getting a look at the forest not just the trees! I have a spreadsheet where I track major Indices and all ETF's I'm interested in, so I thought I should recreate the above and why not add a few more periods, namely, 5y, 15y & 25y!
In this last section, I'll explain a very simple strategy I came up with based on all this that does a pretty good job of letting me know when the market is getting too hot (end of a Secular Bull) and too cold (I call it the end of a Secular Bear but most gurus would call it the low point of the Secular Bear). I use Yahoo Finance for free data and they only have S&P 500 data going back to 1950 so I can't recreate everything on that chart but it's enough. Once I had the 5y, 10y, 15y & 25y rolling return vectors I studied them a bit to see what "too cold" would mean and what "too hot" would mean, just made an intuitive guess for cutoff levels then applied conditional formatting to highlight those periods. Then I thought, what about times when all 4 periods fall into too cold/hot at the same time, if that happens it should be very significant! Turns out it is and that's the power of this model, I'll give you a couple of examples (please note I'm not saying I can call market tops and bottoms in any accuracy greater than months but at these time scales it's quite sufficient...and it's not super difficult or impressive, at 10y or 25y the patterns move like glaciers!).
So as we go thru time (starting 1950) my simple conditional formatting technique calls for the low point of that particular Secular Bear (began in ~1959) in Sept-1974 (again that's based on monthly price levels) and if you look at the S&P daily data, it's very close to the daily low which I think occurred in Aug-1974. So this would have been a great time to get into the market (just buy & hold), then ride that till the next time we see a convergence of the cond. formatting which was Dec-1999. At this point the 25y rolling return coincides with the since inception return and it's over 1800% (this would take a $100k portfolio up to $1.9m)!!! Turns out Dec-1999 the S&P level was 1469...this time my method was off by ~8 months as the true top came Aug-2000 but only slightly higher at 1517 (based on monthly data but daily was somewhere nearby)...now this I don't mind at all because while my method got me out a bit early it was actually before all the crazy volatility of 2000! Finally, the Secular Bear ensues and as is the case, rallies are outweighed by pullbacks and there's a general strong headwind which culminated in 2008/09. This is when the 4 rolling returns once again coincided to indicate a low of this particular Secular Bear, in monthly data terms it was Feb-2009 and the S&P was all the way back to 735! Again my method was a bit off, the daily data showed the true bottom in March-2009 at just under 700, close enough I say! So this would have been the ideal time to get in and if I had money in early 2009 and I had this methodology worked out I would have gone all in (S&P is currently near 2300). But from my 4 rolling returns I can see what that great chart above shows, we are either in the latter stages of the Secular Bear or in the early stages of the next 25-30y Secular Bull!! Hooray!!!
Here's a chart I put together that follows S&P levels and the 4 Rolling Returns, it gives a nice visual (esp. the 25y return shows how near the end of a Secular Bull things get crazy and you make most of your money!) but I wouldn't rely on it to get in or out...the conditional formatting time series is what I use for that. So that concludes Part I...in Part II, I will explain some simple/cheap ways to fully participate in this next Secular Bull and even where to put your money if it ends early (meaning during a Secular Bear...hint it ain't Equities haha and not even Bonds really...something more shiny 😀).
CES 2017
Friday, January 6, 2017
I'm mostly following CES 2017 for the OLED TV news...seems LG's (the leader in OLED, I think all other brands have to use LG panels) new flagship is their wallpaper model (e.g. oled77w7p) which comes in 65 & 77" modes. It is literally like a wallpaper as it is so thin and separate from the base which holds speakers and I presume CPU/etc. I haven't had much chance to review it but I'd be interested on how the connections work, this type of systems calls out for wireless connections (though they are prob not ready for prime time).
Here's a great link to keep up with it via VERGE, they continuosly add links as news becomes available
"http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/5/14179174/ces-2017-tv-news-samsung-lg-sony-4k-hd-curved"
OLED is slowly becoming more reasonably priced so maybe by the end of the year I could replace my upstairs 2006 Sony XBR2 with a 55" LG (ideally a slightly curved panel -- I know purists hate them)...will keep an eye out fer sure!
Samsung once dipped into the OLED space by creating their own Panel factory, think they quickly realized how expensive and difficult it is to make even just good quality (say B+ or A-) OLED panels and they gave up quickly, letting LG be the sole/brave creators of LG panels. I really applaud LG for sticking to it, they had lots of uniformity issues in the first few years but they've mostly ironed out those kinks. Samsung (not a huge fan) are now being very sneaky, they are trying to lure customers to the next generation of TV...called QLED (Quantum Dots) but of course those are even harder to manufacture than OLED so it's not a true QLED (which is supposed to be a superior to OLED, EMISSIVE display!) but in fact some tweaks on the liquid crystals in the old school LCD display!!! So Caveat Emptor!
Here's a great link to keep up with it via VERGE, they continuosly add links as news becomes available
"http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/5/14179174/ces-2017-tv-news-samsung-lg-sony-4k-hd-curved"
OLED is slowly becoming more reasonably priced so maybe by the end of the year I could replace my upstairs 2006 Sony XBR2 with a 55" LG (ideally a slightly curved panel -- I know purists hate them)...will keep an eye out fer sure!
Samsung once dipped into the OLED space by creating their own Panel factory, think they quickly realized how expensive and difficult it is to make even just good quality (say B+ or A-) OLED panels and they gave up quickly, letting LG be the sole/brave creators of LG panels. I really applaud LG for sticking to it, they had lots of uniformity issues in the first few years but they've mostly ironed out those kinks. Samsung (not a huge fan) are now being very sneaky, they are trying to lure customers to the next generation of TV...called QLED (Quantum Dots) but of course those are even harder to manufacture than OLED so it's not a true QLED (which is supposed to be a superior to OLED, EMISSIVE display!) but in fact some tweaks on the liquid crystals in the old school LCD display!!! So Caveat Emptor!
OLED77W7P
OLED77W7P
Happy Birthday to Carol!
Friday, January 6, 2017
I guess it's a cosmic coincidence but the day I launched my blog just happens to be my wife, Carol's birthday! Happy Birthday!
Love,
Andras, Chiara & Aria
Love,
Andras, Chiara & Aria
Found on Quora - Creepiest Scariest Unsolved Mysteries
Friday, January 6, 2017
I recently found a collection of cool mysteries...one's even localish (in Burlington -- saw a CSI episode like that)
https://www.quora.com/Whats-
These days a new dimension of mysteries abounds from the internet, make sure to check the Reddit one called A858
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