Taking Stock

     There are quite a number of subjects which I'll likely never understand, such as the rules of cricket or pickle ball, even though both are widely popular.  Add to both of those, the fields of physics, politics, and the stock market.  Now none of that means that I'm not interested in such subjects; but as one of my friends said to me, he wanted to use his time to explore only those things in which he was interested in or at least those areas in which he felt that he could make a difference such as volunteering somewhere.  All of which made me think of the occasional times when I've talked with friends who had indeed worked in the field of physics, their talking of how easy it was to understand organic chemistry (what??) and how the world around them made sense --as it would for anyone, they told me-- if they understood physics.  My pickle ball friends, who play almost daily, are much the same in telling me how easy the rules are and how easy the game is on the body, even for beginners (I should note that both of my friends have suffered a few minor injuries while playing).  Cricket, well, the idea that a single game can take days and days and the "runs" can climb into the hundreds caused me to give up on that, figuring that even as a spectator I'd be looking at my watch (does anyone still wear old-fashioned timepieces anymore, at least ones which only tell time and not that of your heartbeat, love life, or sleep patterns?; from what I've been reading, such smart watches are giving way to smart "rings" which are far less bulky).  Of course, the collectible watch market is soaring in value (as in starting prices of $25,000 and moving into the hundreds of thousands).  Which brings me to the world of stocks...

     My parents get all the credit when it comes to the world of stocks, and more importantly, financial advice.  Their overriding pieces of wisdom throughout my adult years were 1) try to get out of debt; and 2) "play" the market only if you can afford to lose the money (their advice was the same for Las Vegas).  My parents seemed to understand far more than I did when it came to stocks, even delving into commodities (they told me not to get into that).  And financial advisors?  They couldn't see the logic of paying someone to "gamble" with their assets.  So when my wife and I bought our house, those bits of advice stuck with us and we did our best to accelerate the payments (many mortgage calculators exist to give you a rough idea of how many years you can cut off by making even just one additional mortgage payment each year).  When times got tough, we stuck to our guns and suddenly, our house was paid off.  So imagine my surprise when talking with several of my friends and discovering that they still had a mortgage payment, even after 30+ years.  And I was equally surprised when another friend told me that he had sold his house and gave his financial advisor much of the proceeds to invest (some $800,000); after 2 years, he discovered that his advisor had only returned his portfolio back to his original "investment."  As AARP wrote: The total U.S. stock market suffered a nail-biting 21 percent drop in 2022, only to be followed by a 24 percent surge last year....The 10 biggest stocks in the S&P 500 --the ones whose fluctuations have the biggest effect on its movements up and down-- make up a 32 percent share of that index, which is around the biggest share the top 10 have had over the past 36 years, according to Goldman Sachs.  That can make the entire index sensitive to tremors in just those few stocks' daily pricing...The current dividend yield of all the stocks in the S&P 500 is 1.47 percent.  That's down from the 1.8 percent average over the past 25 years, and the 3.7 percent average over the 25 years prior to that.  Last I checked, you could dump your money into an online bank such as Ally and make 4.2% on your savings.  Had my friend put his $800k into Ally, he would have at least emerged with $67,000+ over those two "lost" years with his advisor.  Which is what I think my folks were trying to tell me about the market being a gamble.  You can make, and also lose, money in the "market."  And those advisors aren't free by any means, wrote NerdWallet, saying: Some traditional advisors don’t think the fee they would collect on a small balance is worth their time and won’t take on clients with less than $250,000 (some charge a flat fee but many charge a percentage of what you giving them; if my friend's advisor "only" charged him the typical 1% of that money, he would have paid him $16,000 over those 2 years...and that was just to break even).  So let me stop right there and say that many of my friends DO use a financial advisor and that many of them have done well; and again, none of this is meant to be taken as any sort of financial "advice" since, as I mentioned, I don't really understand the market (nor do we use a financial advisor).  All that said, the only "advice" my wife and I could tell our friends was to "do the research" and "run the numbers."  It's easy enough, whether it's about deciding when to take your Social Security (for us, the "numbers" told us that we would be 88 before we would break if we waited until "full" retirement age, advice that Barron's also wrote) or how much to take out of your RMDs (the IRS tables have us living until 96).  What applies to us as retirees may be --and likely is-- far different from anyone else, especially if you're still in your younger, working years.  But researching what's best for you (and finding a licensed financial advisor with your interest at heart), and running your own numbers is my advice.  All that said, the AARP article added: The number of families holding individual stocks, according to the Federal Reserve, is 21 percent -- not much different than 35 years ago,  Yet the percentage of American families with savings in the stock market has nearly doubled, to 58 percent.  Las Vegas, here we come...

     So, leaving out the Roth conversions, the mutual funds, the ETFs, and all the other stock jargon that can swirl over your head like a fog, I move onto yet another area that seems to "make sense" but of which I also have little if any understanding: the world of physics.  When theoretical physicist Matt Strassler began to "explain" the world of physics, that is explain it to someone like me who is clueless (he tries to show that gravitational waves and seismic waves and are far different from sound waves...what??), he began his book this way: If you, like me, harbor deep and existential questions regarding why we are here and what life is about or ought to be about, and if you stare into the empty eyes of the night wondering what it means to be a human being, then I suspect you may find insight, more than you may imagine, through a better understanding of how the universe functions within us.  A personal lesson that I myself have learned, drawing upon my long experience as a physicist, is this: it is only with a clear image of how mind and body intersect with the world that one may hope to find a road to thorough self-knowledge, and to a full appreciation of what it means to be alive.  As to those "waves," his book is titled Waves In An Impossible Sea (he "explained" the title this way: Obviously, you and I can't move through solid rock; we'd face stiff resistance...Yet seismic waves, waves in the Earth's rock caused by earthquakes and volcanoes, don't have this problem.  They can travel directly across our planet from one side to the other facing no resistance whatsoever.  How do they manage this little miracle?  It's not so mysterious.  To the rock, our bodies are alien; the rock resists our presence in its territory.  But seismic waves are vibrations of the rock itself.  They belong there.)  As one reviewer wrote: Strasser urges readers who want to understand the cosmos to resist the alluring but misleading guides of observation and intuition.  As with stocks and finances, that carnival talk of physics leaves my head nodding in agreement but walking away puzzled.  Yet both of those fields would be easily overshadowed, in my mind at least, by the "world" of politics...

     First off, who would want to do such a job, at least on a state or federal level?  My trip to the landfill made me realize that trying to reach and please so many different segments of the population would be close to futile.  How could I understand what the local farmer was going through when the only ones at my lobbying door (and filling my war chest) were the mega-corporate farmers?  Throw in the rural hospitals facing off the giant corporate ones, the small stores against the behemoth chains, the generations-old family home against the nation-wide developer, and the reservation desert lands sitting parched while massive feedlot operations drain the aquifer and you quickly come to realize that each of those entities may have a legitimate "beef" against what would be best for them and "the country;" but having to impose a blanket rule tend to leave you with the utilitarian view that it is okay to sacrifice a few for the good of the many (although the Max Planck Institute --he being famous in physics circles-- wrote that such a view varies among the different countries and cultures of the world and our Western world may be among the minority in feeling that way).  So step back for a minute and lower your defenses (I'm tempted to say " drop your weapons" but I'm trying to be a bit more civil)...here's what we have approaching us in less than four months.  An old president.  And that's not just my opinion because polls show that 86% of voters feel that way about Biden, and 62% feel that way about Trump (they'll be 82 and 78 respectively come election day).  In this campaign of ignoring No Country for Old Men, we --the country once-looked upon as the strongest in the world-- have two candidates who (as one caller on NPR noted) each feel that they are the only "savior" for the country, won't listen to any of their closest aides, and won't listen to the sentiments of the voting public.  Those tee shirts making their way across the media circles with checkboxes --[X] Convicted Felon, [X] Rapist. [X] Racist, [X] Bankrupt 6 times, [X] President-- and Biden's statement in March 2020 --Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me.  They are the future of this country.-- all have the world wondering how this can be the only two presidential candidates American voters feel are "qualified."  Really?  Biden's son got convicted, and Trump's son told the press that America had become "a third-world shithole."  And these are the sons of our two "fatherly" figures?  Wrote The Week about what many European countries were reporting online: In most Western democracies, a felony conviction would be disqualifying in the eyes of voters, if not the letter of the law [note: our Constitution has no provision to prevent felons from becoming President].  But in the U.S., it might boost Trump's chances of winning in November -- immediately after the verdict, polls showed his odds above 50 percent for the first time.  What has become of America?  Now both camps are digging in citing Biden's past votes during his 6 terms as a Senator, and Trump's nearly doubling of our federal debt (the most of any President to date, with another $4 trillion more if his promised additional tax cuts are implemented, said the Congressional Budget Office).  Tit for tat, back and forth, well he said, but yeah you said...and now both young and old are wondering if this is indeed the best we, as a country, can offer.  But then as Shirley MacLaine once said: It is useless to try to hold a person to anything he says while he’s madly in love, drunk, or running for office.  Still, I thought that the chief editor of The Atlantic summed it up best when he wrote: By “us,” I mean, of course, the voting public, but I especially mean the editors and headline-writers of my industry, who sometimes succumb to one of the most pernicious biases in journalism, the bias toward coherence.  We feel, understandably, that it is our job to make things make sense.  But what if the actual story is that politics today makes no sense?

     Regardless of which side you're on, if any, what is the end result being sought?  Be it Putin or Xi, Trump or Biden, Netanyahu or Khamenei, despot or dictator...what is the goal?  The Woody Guthrie song "This land is your land, this land is my land," is as controversial now as it was then, or seems that way with all the wars gong on.  Just one example is the quote: If the Qin should ever get his way with the world, then the whole world will end up his prisoner.  That quote is attributed to the first self-named "emperor" of China, Qin Shi Huang.  To watch the recent documentary on the terracotta warriors (Qin is also credited with creating the Great Wall), it a fascinating peek into the mind of such narcissistic rulers.  His "warriors" (only 1200 have been restored so far, each taking nearly 3 years to put together, and archeologists believe there may be 8000 or more buried, including horses, jesters, and other trades of the emperor's realm) merely surround an even larger area, what is believed to be the emperor's tomb (it has yet to be explored or opened due to the fear of possible booby traps...think Indiana Jones).  This "tomb" and its surrounding warriors --all built for just one emperor-- is the size of Manhattan.  But when the archeologists first discovered the terra cotta warriors, they found them all broken into pieces and destroyed by fire.  Was this from an earthquake or other natural event?  Unlikely, came their conclusion.  It would appear that the damage was deliberate and caused by another ruler or by battling armies.  Leaders come and leaders go, as do dynasties and empires.  So again, what is all this squabbling about, this drive to "rule" the world, or something that seems like the world to their minds?  It all makes my head spin and makes me want to head back to the dizzying, but seemingly simpler world of financial "empires."  Not.  But an excellent view of how even the fighting in this world can take its toll comes from the overlooked film, Fair Play, a movie recommended by a reviewer in the London Review who was upset at how many good and even great films get nary a peek by the Oscars (and this movie was indeed quite powerful, even if you've never heard of the actors).  

     So if not the world of politics or the world of finances (really, what's that all about as well?). I fall back onto the world of physics.  And as difficult to grasp as its concepts may be, it begins to sound better than trying to figure out those other fields.  Added Strasser in his book: ...we are not merely residents of the universe, living within it as we live within our houses and apartments.  Nor do we swim through the universe as fish swim through the sea.  We are aspects of the universe, as seismic waves are aspects of rock and as sound waves are aspects of the air.  A better understanding of how the cosmos works, then, is a path to a better understanding of ourselves.  We can gain insight into our senses, our muscles, our brains, our conception of what we are.  Our connections to the outside world and to each other, our ability to see, hear, touch, interpret, communicate become clearer.   Central to all of these are fundamental though counterintuitive principles of physics, conventionally thought to be accessible only to experts.  But perhaps it's time for conventional thinking to change.  

     Time for conventional thinking to change.  Imagine a new idea of how politics are run, of how getting ahead is defined, of how we can simply try to look at things differently, and see the good.  The other morning, the clouds were lighting up the sky, and dissipating almost as quickly.  And as I walked my dog, I kept looking for a good shot, one which would capture that wide-open feeling I was seeing; but no matter how many pictures I took, it just wasn't there...too dark, too light, too many trees in the way or phone lines or rooftops.  And it was near the end of my walk, as the clouds spread further and further apart, I felt that maybe the "perfect" picture wasn't the point; that the clouds were showing me exactly what I was feeling, not a perfect scenario but a world spreading apart, but beautiful all the same.  And I heard in the back of my mind the birds, and the Byrds with their Biblical take on Pete Seeger's song: A time to gain, a time to lose; a time to rain, a time to sow; a time for love, a time for hate...A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.

Our young 16-year old teacher, Sadie...

    But it was something even stronger than the clouds, or seismic waves, or physics that reached me later that day...the passing of our oldest cat and perhaps the only rescue that we've had as a weeks-old kitten (most of our rescued animals are either older or have truly been rescued "young" from a feral life).  Our Sadie was tiny when our friend saw some young girls tossing her back and forth, then throwing her into a bush.  As my stern friend approached, the girls quickly pulled the kitten out of the shrub and asked her if she wanted to "buy" the kitten.  A scowl and her words "gimme that kitten" quickly changed the girls' mind and she called us up.  She would be heading to work but felt that we should venture out to her place to view this kitten, one which she wouldn't be able to care for but felt that we might.  It was a hot day, and when we drove up, all of her blinds were down to block out the sun and the heat.  But wedged between the blinds and the window (how that kitten managed to jump up to the ledge we'll never know) was this kitten, staring out at us as we drove up.  Some 16+ years later, she was still purring away as she slowed then stopped eating.  She had lost a lot of weight but even the vet was puzzled as test after test came back normal.  By January she was only 5 lbs. and when we took her to the vet, she felt that we should consider putting her down.  But she was still quite active, we said, eating away and jumping up on the counter whenever she had a chance.  By March she had lost a few more ounces but the vet admitted that she otherwise looked healthy.  The months went on and she was still gobbling down food and drinking water, but not gaining weight.  Then, a few days ago and a full six months of her beating the odds, everything slowed.  We picked her up and again, heard her immediately begin purring.  Back on her bed, she glanced at us then laid down, now staring ahead.  We changed her bed pad now and then, and waited.  At the first sign of her having any pain or discomfort, typical of kidney failure or a seizure, we were ready to rush her down to be euthanized.  But none of that came.  She went into our closet, I petted her and she purred, then next I looked, she had moved somewhere else.  Cats seem to know when death is near and often look for a place to hide or in the wild, to vanish.  And somehow I knew this was happening so I talked with her a last time and mentioned that somehow, even if we were just a bunch of scattered atoms in the cosmos, we'd be back together... then left her alone.  A little more than an hour later, she lay still.  There's a lot of things I don't understand, including those topics mentioned earlier; but the closeness and love of an animal, all the way to the end of its life, may be that final conundrum... something you simply can't comprehend, yet totally understand.  And are happy to have learned that...