Treasuries, Vaccines, Anniversaries, & More

“You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race…and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place.” – Dr. Seuss.

When our children were young, we often read books by Dr. Seuss to them. Hop on Pop, The Sleep Book, Fox in Socks, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! to name but a few. The good doctor often found entertaining ways to convey important truths, truths like, sometimes the best course of action is to do something, and sometimes the best course is to not do something.

For most investors now is probably a good time to just enjoy the ride, a sentiment advanced by James Taylor. However, there are a few things that we can do which could make the ride more enjoyable later on. Firstly, invest. Stocks are on sale. Secondly, given the Fed’s actions it may make sense to adjust your bond holdings, particularly if you expect inflation to revert to somewhere near the levels of the prior decade.


As the Fed has raised interest rates fixed income yields have increased, especially shorter duration offerings. Consequently, we have purchased individual 1-yr treasury notes in some accounts with a yield-to-maturity of 4.3% as shown below. Likely, we will purchase some additional 1-yr notes in coming weeks, or perhaps longer duration treasuries. The Schwab Short-term Treasury ETF that all of our client accounts own also have higher yields now. Of course, assuming short-term rates are pushed still higher the values of these securities will fall some, but when rates fall again – as I (and others) expect to be the case – the values will increase. In the meantime, our clients are benefiting from higher yields.


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Healthcare researchers doing amazing things:

Rectal Cancer Disappears After Experimental Use of Immunotherapy. 100% Remission of Rectal Cancer(!)…These same remarkable results would be repeated for all 14 people — and counting — in the MSK clinical trial for rectal cancer with a particular mutation. Click here for more on this.

The co-founders of BioNTech are hopeful to have mRNA vaccines against cancers by 2030. BioNTech: Could Covid vaccine technology crack cancer? – BBC News


About corporations, fossil fuels, and generic drugs:

Whether ESG? The initials stand for environmental, social and (corporate) governance, and in the investment world today there are debates, conflicts, even lawsuits waged over whether ESG filters should affect the investment decisions of investment managers. Some investment managers, and some investors like the idea of choosing not to invest in “sin businesses”, like tobacco companies, or socially problematic companies such as those involved in the fossil fuel industries, or those seen as not treating employees well. Their motivation may be based entirely on the idea that they don’t want to support these types of businesses. They may also believe that over the long term “better” businesses will be more profitable.

And what about a PBC? A Public Benefit Corporation is not strictly speaking motivated to maximize profits. This type of company might meet the criteria for being included among those companies held in an ESG portfolio. One such company is the Mark Kuban Cost Plus Drug Company. The stated goal is to lower prices for generic drugs by removing the middlemen (insurance companies) and using a cost-plus pricing strategy. For anyone who is interested the company website shows the prices for many commonly used drugs.


Also note:

Jayne and I are celebrating 50 years of marriage this year. 50 years! 50 years of uninterrupted happiness and bliss. Well, maybe there were times when the happiness and the bliss were interrupted briefly by arguing and agitation. But almost always our years together have been joyous and wonderful, at least for me. She might see it differently, I don’t know.

Nonetheless, during the period November 10 through 19 we are having a big family celebration at Walt Disney World. We’ll have laptops, tablets, smart phones and encrypted internet connections available to communicate and handle any business needs during this time, but our responses may not be quite as quick as usual. We hope you understand.

And now a few words about marriage from someone who’s been there:

Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.

Marriages are made in heaven. Then again, so are thunder, lightning, tornados and hail.

From the husbands guide to mathematics: If you have $20, and your wife has $5, she has $25.

When someone is murdered the police investigate the spouse first. That tells you everything you need to know about marriage.

Husband: When we got married, we agreed that I would make all the important decisions, and she would make all the unimportant ones. Would you believe in 50 years of marriage not one important decision?


Miscellaneous:

In the year 2022 most people spend a lot of time navigating computer applications. While a mouse or other trackball device is often the primary negotiating tool the keyboard can also be useful. I find that certain keyboard shortcuts provide a quick and easy means of commanding my computing machines to do my bidding. Consequently, a periodic review of shortcuts is worth my time.

Here is a link to Microsoft Windows keyboard shortcuts. I recommend that you review these from time to time. Did you know that Control +Z will undo your most recent action, or that Control +A will select all items in a document or window?


Thanks for reading!

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