Monday, August 26, 2019

Stock Market Averages Reporting: Personal Financial Pornography


Stock Market Averages Reporting: Personal Financial Pornography

Bull markets end with a whimper – not a bang
Old stock market cliche

          The mainstream print & broadcast media, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC blare headlines and screeches again when the Dow Jones Average was down 600+ points and at one point 800+ points during the day.
          The world was coming to an end – and at least a precursor (to fit their anti-trump narrative of Paul Revering ‘a recession is coming a recession is coming).
          Now 600 or even 800 points on a Dow Jones of 26,000 is 2.3% or 3% respectively. But 600 points – 800 points screams ‘Katy bar the door hold on to your 401k for dear life.’
          To put things in perspective – if the Dow Jones Avg was split to reflect a Dow 1000 – a 2.3% and a 3% drop would indicate a point loss of 23 or 30 points.
          Do you think a 23 point or 30 point nominal loss would get screaming print headlines let alone high pitched concern with graphics on cable & the broadcast media? Yet, 23 and 30 point loss would be the same relative loss as 600 and 800 points on a Dow Jones 26,000?

And the same Financial Pornographic Media calls Professional Wrestling Fake?

Friday, August 23, 2019

ENOUGH(sm) – Jewish Personal Financial Planning vs Personal Financial Planners Life Planning Definitions


Definition: ENOUGH(sm) – Jewish Personal Financial Planning‘healing personal financial anxiety, puttin’ money in its place, to elevate, align & connect to one’s signification/assignment, what one is meant to do, meant to be – enough to live for; enough to live on

(1)    ENOUGH(sm) – Jewish Personal Financial Planning connects’ one’s means with meaning – beginning first with meaning  and secondly determining the ‘means’ requirements (not the other way around) or better yet
(2)    ENOUGH(sm) – Jewish Personal Financial Planning harmonizing meaning and means.

The above is in contrast to those in so called personal financial life planning who start their definition with aligning means to meaning as this approach has the cup (the means) more important than the coffee (meaning) though the alliteration sounds good.
Meaning first - means second.
Really?
When there is a why (meaning) - the how(means) becomes easier.
When the how (means) is first rather than just a constraint (i.e. within limits) --- the why (meaning) is often just a rationalization 

Alignment/aligning is a 'with' - whereas harmonizing is AND with the priority first on meaning and second on means versus the reverse.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The Personal Financial Anxiety Exam/Checkup© for Healing Personal Financial Anxiety


The Personal Financial Anxiety Exam/Checkup©
for Healing Personal Financial Anxiety

  1. (In an audience) how many DON’T suffer from anxiety over finance, money?
  2. (In an audience) how many find money/finances causes them financial anxiety?
  3. What does money represent to you?
  4. On a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being best, one being worst) relative to what money represents to you, as Dr. Phil would ask, how’s that doing/happening for you?
  5. How much is enough to you? How do you know the amount? How did you calculate this?
  6. If you had sufficient (enough) money to get what money represents to you and nothing else, would that: a) reduce your financial anxiety and such that the rating changes to what 1 to 10; b) from 1 to 10 how content would you be? (If below 7, is the financial anxiety merely symptomatic of a larger concern: something is missing – unfilled, lacking?)


Wednesday, May 22, 2019

The More Opioid Part I & II


 The MORE Opioid (I) of Happiness

Fun – amusement, entertainment, pleasure
Happiness – cheerfulness, glee, delight
Equanimity – calmness, composure, poise, level-headedness
Content – satisfied, pleased, sufficient (enough)
Flow – where challenge (stimulation) engages competency such that when looking up all of a sudden 3-4 hours has passed what seemed like 10 minutes.
Who is rich?
One who is satisfied (content?) with his portion (lot)
Ethics of the Fathers 4:1

          Happiness is a sensation- a state-  externally derived & relative typically requires higher and higher dosaging & or ((MORE)) dosages to maintain the sensation for of altered state (not to be confused an ‘altar-ed’ state). And the pursuit of ‘Happily Ever After’ (‘hopeium’ – a mental opiod)is a sisyphian illusion that has made Disney billions and monetized organized religion’s pitch of ‘after life insurance’ in annual dues, pledges, contributions, and willed pecuniary bequests while disappointing millions & getting Peggy Lee a Gold Grammy for Is That All There Is.

Happiness corresponds to an economy, to calculations, to weighings. It needs varieties as much as contrasts (external comparisons- jds). Satisfaction (enough –jds) is as fatal to it as impediments.
Perpetual Euphoria, Pascal Bruckner, p37

The promise of happiness is confused & conflated with contentment. Contentment is function of equanimity & ‘wanting what one has & is’ unlike happiness, the sensation of which is at best fleeting and never enough. Happiness also is confussed with fun. Whereas happiness is a state – fun is a circumstance usually tied to an event -  which has a higher component of self indulgence, absorption and yes the self idolatry of ‘its coming to me, it’s to me, I deserve it, and or cause I say so from on high’ (a derivative of Peggy Noonanitis.) While fun and happiness intersect at the need for higher dosaging and dosages for their ‘hit,’ equanimity rises above the good and the bad. Akin to a high wire walker, equanimity  navigates life using the a long pole swaying as needed left and right as walking straight across otherwise yields a fall. Equanimity accepts the Thomas Sowell thought ‘there are no solutions only tradeoffs.’ Happiness wants T’HE solution and fun wants it with ‘a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants’ (per Chuckles The Clown’s slogan in The Mary Tyler Moore Show).
          Though equanimity yields composure and possibly allows a certain contentment, it is not a contrary to seeking ‘flow.’ Equanimity gives context – flourish to flow – so it doesn’t overflow.

          The foil (Snidely Whiplash) to equanimity is the implied worthiness of oneself of the acculturated (and genetic?) requirement of MORE. (2) MORE may be disguised as enough (defined as ‘just a little MORE’) but this enough is an Enough imposter.
          Just a little MORE is never Enough let alone being Enough. Not Enough means one has Less and therefore reinforces the quest & imperative of MORE for happiness, for fun, for ‘enoughness’ – requiring increased and ever increasing dosages.
          The MORE Opioid.

Happiness Opioid Epidemic

1.- Opioids are substances that act on opioid receptors to produce morphine-like effects. Medically they are primarily used for pain relief, including anesthesia. (Note: Opiods are not to be confused with Ron Howard who played Oppie on The Andy Griffith Show – Mayberry RFD.)         
2.-This MORE is not be confused with developing one’s chalek (portion) endowed by Hashem. This MORE is externally comparative (more, better, now – compared to – which has a way of becoming less, worse, later – sacrificing what one needs for what one doesn’t need. One is reminded of the Zusia story in terms of comparison:

When the day comes that I must account for my life, I will not be asked, “Why weren’t you Moses?” I was not equipped to be Moses. But I dread the question, “Why weren’t you Zusia?
—Reb Zusia of Anipoli

 The MORE Opioid Parasites II:
Coveting, Seizure & Never Enough

A cheap Kia has more appurtenances and luxuries
than did a top-of-the line Mercedes twenty years ago
Professor Victor Davis Hanson, The Case for Trump, p220

          In rationalizing & justifying their policies of theft, seizure & confiscation, a foundational strategy of the Democrat Socialist Left is class & economic envy & its derivative tactics:

·         the call for redistribution (the MORE opioid) as well as
·         being victims of economic ‘inequality’ (besides which ‘you didn’t build it’)

The Democrat Collectivist Left points to there the statistic that there has not been a real raise of average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees per the Bureau of Labor Statistics of $23.26 since 1972 (in 2019 dollars).

Really?

Actually using the more accurate Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index from the Commerce department rather than the conventional CPI-W (consumer price index) to adjust compensation results in real hourly compensation levels shows the compensation levels are 27.7% higher (in real terms) today than they were in 1972.

          The statement from the leftist liberal progressive Democrats of stagnation is wrong and one could say deliberately deceptive – not only in terms of real increase but also in the quality of what the same compensation per hour adjusted for 2019 dollars now buys. (Thus compensation is understated and overall inflation overstated)(4).
Gramm & Early in The Myth of Stagflation rhetorically ask: do these numbers (from the Bureau of Labor statistics) describe the life one has lived over the past 45 years when (in comparison with 1972):

·         American homes today are much more spacious and modern. The proportion of homes today that have two or more rooms per person is up 33.5%.
·         The share of homes with two or more bathrooms has more than doubled;
·         central air-conditioning is more than three times as common;
·         and the share of homes that have dishwashers is up by more than two-thirds.
·         Most homes in 1972 had televisions, but only about half were color sets. Today they are all color and most are flat screens in high definition, attached to cable or satellites.
·         The average home in 1972 had at least one phone, but none had cellphones or internet access.
·         Kitchens today are stocked with a far wider array of foods, including out-of-season fruits brought from half a world away and a vast variety of prepared foods.
·         Compared with 1972, this abundance costs an ever smaller portion of families’ budgets, freeing up some $3,200 on average to spend on other things.
·         Cars last 81.3% longer and are 72.7% safer, and many have GPS navigation and premium sound systems.
·         No standard model lacks air-conditioning or power steering.
·         The share of the population with college degrees is almost three times as high.
·         Americans live 7.4 years longer and their median age is almost 10 years older, yet the proportion of people reporting poor health is 20.3% lower.
·         Real median household net worth is up 172.2%.” (1)

The aforementioned brings up to “the MORE Opioid” Parasitic Pushers Dealer tactics of The Democrats

(Animal Farm) where all are equal and some more equal than others
Napoleon (The Pig) in Orwell’s Animal Farm

          The deliberately misleading compensation statistics employed by  the Democrat Animal Farm Napoleononic Korachs (2) (Pocohauntus, Sanders, Comrade AOC, reBUTTogieg, and Amy ‘(I) don’t think there are “legitimate reasons” to investigate the people who opened the (Mueller) investigation’ Klobuchar), are in addition to the following to inflame, engender, & elect:

·         calls for redistribution (theft)
·         anger at income inequality and therefore rationalizations for theft
·         lies (actually have a great respect for the truth and therefore use it sparsely like Mayor BUTTigieg stating the tax cut helps overwhelming the rich omitting:

(1)    the 1% pay 37% of the taxes
(2)    top 10% pay 69.47% of the federal taxes
(3)    to play the income class envy card omit:
·         the bottom 50% paid 3.7% of federal taxes (thus the top 1% pay 1000% more than the bottom 50% )
·         the bottom 90% pay 30.5%
·         the top 50% paid 97% of total of individual taxes
(4)    tax revenues are estimated up 3.3% (from 2018 3.33 trillion to 3.44 trillion in 2019)after the Trump tax cut – it is spending that is up as high as 9.7% (4.1 trillion to 4.5 trillion) for same period proving the Trump tax cut didn’t cut revenue. (3)
·         electing the parasitic mooching Korachian politicians ‘who appeal to the baser instinct of envy & the MORE opioid ‘we you being taken advantage of’ (f**ked) to justify – whether true or not.

Also if MORE Opioids (“MORE-fiend) are not forthcoming, then the Democrat Pushers play The MORE Opioids Cold Turkey Withdrawal Tactic: equality of misery – aka ‘if I can’t have it MORE, you can’t have what you have’ or worse, ‘if I can’t have MORE seize, confiscate it from you, you can’t have it either.’

And the Philistines (Comrade AOC, Pocohauntus, Sanders et al?) stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham, filling them with earth
Genesis 26:15

          Thus the Democrat MORE Opioid MORE-ality Withdrawal Class Envy refrain – with apologies to the Bee Gees ‘if we can’t have it (& yours), neither will you.’
         
          Forget ‘I want my MTV!’ ‘I want my MORE opioids’ and if not, we’ll plug your wells till they is no MORE

Plugging the wells of economic freedom, & meritocracy.

Tums™ for the Tummy & MORE-on Opioids for Envy

(1)    Note an aside: statistical deception relative to ‘quality’ considerations is not just restricted to quality of compensation but occurs almost normatively relative to the quality of earnings reported by public companies. As one Fortune 500 Chairman once related to me when he asked his then Big 8 Accounting firm ‘what is my earnings for this quarter? The reply was, ‘what do you want it to be?’ In security analysis, there is a concept of ‘quality of earnings.’ Earnings are not earnings are not earnings with all the games that can be played by management and its colluding ‘independent’ accountants – to numerous to mention. And the above ‘quality of earnings’ games is compounded by the ‘creative accounting’ of what is called EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization.
(2)     Korach – is the story of ‘good (masquerading) reasons’ (invoking 14kt phony egalitarianism) so Korach could displace Moses (the real reason) as the leader of the Jews. PS 14kt phony Korach got swallowed by the earth alive – along with his acolyte followers
(3)    Yet Mayor reBUTTogieg blamed the deficit on the Trump tax cuts going to the wealthiest when revenues increased!. Note it  was Congress increasing spending and the deficit – but this failed South Bend Mayor (all resume, no achievement for South Bend, many failures) engages in creative accounting – to play the income class envy card
(4)    Inflation is not inflation is not inflation. Long Term Care and so called ‘higher education’ inflation runs 300-400% over the overall inflation rate. Furthermore, inflation’s impact is a function of income level and place in life cycle.

Friday, March 8, 2019

Why The Dow Jones Industrial Average Should Be Split (Like A Stock)


Why The Dow Jones Industrial Average Should Be Split (Like A Stock)

The nominal vs the relative

The nominal gets exaggerated (to extreme hyperbole & catastrophizing by the Financial Pornography Media) versus the relative.
Ok the Dow Jones is down say 500 points.
Whew that's terrible - head to the hills!
But 500 points is but 1.96% on a Dow Jones of 25,500.

Put another way if the Dow was say 1000 and it went down 19.6 points would your panties (pants for the PC police) be in an uproar?

This is the confusion of the nominal with the relative.

So, here is a suggestion  - split the down - I'm sure some mathematician can make this feasible & work - like a stock.
And while they are at it - create another dow jones industrial average - the same one - but adjusted for inflation - to reveal real purchasing power but that's another story

Of course CNBC and the likes lose their blaring headlines (for clicks) etc.
But in context - 1.96% is 1.96% regardless 19.6 points or 500 points as it is a question of the denominator.

And maybe with the lower denominator - people won't need to buy as many Depends.

ps The nominal exaggeration is 'a panting waste'

Thursday, February 7, 2019

The Fraud of ‘Personal’ Financial Planning “Personal financial planning has failed and continues to fail”


The Fraud of ‘Personal’ Financial Planning
“Personal financial planning has failed and continues to fail”

  • the reality: so called personal financial planning is really but financial planning applied to personally held assets
  • there no metric of client perceived success other than assets under management as the Trojan horse for personal financial planning success
  • there is no metric of what retention should be –(i.e. a contra intuitive standard by what year should be out of the engagement -   whoops – no mas AUM?) (assets under management compensation %)
  • AUM is contrary to the underlying foundation of ‘personal financial planning’  comprehensive and holistic. With the emphasis on assets under management per a loose thread of a sweater analogy – only the presentational thread (AUM) is tended to – though other parts of the sweater may be falling apart.
  • The retort – ‘this is the way ((AUM)) it has been done’ forgets Tom Paine’s admonition, ‘a long habit of doing the wrong thing gives it the superficial appearance of being correct.’
  • This ‘personal’ financial planning is a Trojan Horse for financial planning of personally held assets (not the person) – a misnomer.
  • This financial planning of personally held asset – abdicates the thirst for meaning – the will to meaning per Victor Frankel - aligning personally held assets to client’s person mission and values especially in two of two major market: a) 55+ seeking what next, significance, making a difference, the next chapter) and b) and the millennials who, are not FIRE devotees seeking the financial wherewithal to drop out (but without fully preparing for ‘to what, and what for’)

For those AUM apologists, know this. My dad was a Trojan wholesaler. I inventoried Trojans for my dad. I know Trojans. I know personal financial planning and AUM is not personal financial planning but rather a Trojan Horse woofing personal financial assets in leaky unnatural Lambskins™ clothing.


if you are kind when you should be cruel
you'll be cruel when you should be kind
Judaic thought

Friday, February 1, 2019

Local, Global & Loco (In Loco Torment Us)


Local, Global & Loco (In Loco Torment Us)

We will do and we will hear
Exodus portion Mishpatim

Local – restricted, limited, narrow, confined, micro
Global – comprehensive, restricted, inclusive, macro
Loco – kooky, wacky, bonkers, looney, cockamamie, mentally disturbed (mentally challenge PC for snowflakes)

We will say we hear and we will ignore & complain
Apologies to Torah portion Mishpatim

Story:

          Years ago when I was in a fee only personal financial planning practicing/evangelizing the concept of ENOUGH, even then, an investment, which several of my clients were in, went down to fraud. Despite due diligence done by several pension plans, admission of this asset for surplus by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners etc etc – fraud was committed – and the investment became worthless.
          Other planners – all MORE planners, heard it from their clients –  to the tune of ‘why did you put me into this investment in the first place’ and blaming, complaining, bitching, kvetching at these planners about this ‘their investment.’
          Yes, my clients who invested called. Their question – I believe the right question – was ‘do I (we) still have Enough?’
          The distinction – the MORE planners practicing More – had a focus on which one, what kind (investment) therefore managing assets – not managing goals. This ‘which one, what kind’ investment  is  ‘local’ focus – which results in these ‘loco’ reactions.
          Enough focuses – spotlights -  on each goal – enough relative to each objective – the global goals.

Local vs Global

          Stipulation: $200,00 portfolio – regardless of the foolishness of not putting the $200,000  into the context of a goal – after tax, after inflation, start date and duration.
          The individual invests $5,000 in a stock and it goes to $2,000. The 60% loss is local and the focal point/spotlight of the individual. However, if the individual focused on the $3,000/1.5% loss relative to his or her $200,000 portfolio would he or she be as ‘loco’ with this global perspective?
          ‘MOREon,’ particularly managing assets under management compensation in personal financial planning, filters the focal point to the local rather than the global aggravating the already ‘loco’ behavior & reaction of clients.

          Recently there was a 1000 point drop in a day in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Questions of nominal versus relative decline (4% decline) aside let alone the fanning of the loco flames by the pornographic personal financial media, individuals were kvetching bitching, complaining about their individual stocks & their portfolio (not their objective) to their planners. In the defense of the planners (a rarity for me) even though they are parasitic Moreon’s collaborating in the local not global perspective, not one of the hosts (the Moreon individuals) called any of these planners I’ve subsequently talked with over the next week or so when the Dow Jones recovered the 1000 points plus a couple of hundred points in addition –to say thank you for calming me down let alone apologizing for being ‘loco’. 
          Not one.
          Local -not global- is ‘loco.’

Friends of mine, who were not clients, were ‘loco.’ Not one of them that had called and complained kvetched and bitched during the market decline called even after the market recovered in a week or 10 days – to apologize or let alone even recognize the recovery. Not one even though they each have had a copy of my book Enough.
          Not one.
         
          Thus, a title this cockamamie syndrome of Local Loco MOREons – In Loco Torment Us©.

We will ignore, kvetch & complain & not hear of it
Again apologies to Torah portion Mishpatim