John Lounsbury's  Instablog

This post has 15 comments:

Register or Login to rate comments »

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
I am long VZ...and WFC (and WFC prefered), too, of those listed.

Also added some Buckeye Pipeline (BPL) on June 20. It was downgraded, I believe, yesterday, which I think is a complete joke, as Buckeye is already down about 20% recently. Yielding over 8%.

Miss knocking around with you, John!
30 Jun 2012, 05:59 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
I should add that VZ is on my, "Watch to Dump" list.

Set top box revenues should plunge hugely as Internet streaming comes more and more into vogue.

I'm hoping within two years, I will no longer have set top boxes in my home; that's over $600/year lost to Verizon just from my home alone.
30 Jun 2012, 06:02 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Maya - - -

I have owned BPL in the past and it is on my watch list right now. I have a 12% trailing stop (mental, I don't trust thinly traded markets). I bought in the 20s, I think around 23 for the first buy and two more up tom 28 the last time. I'm in it for the dividend but will bow out if it hits 39.50.

I'll also sell if it hits 50. I can find better than 4% yields with a lot less risk than a dividend cow with a PE above 50.

You should check out GEI - I'm there all the time. Only over here a few times a week, although I'm hoping to improve on that soon.
30 Jun 2012, 11:54 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
John: I actually do go into GEI, more and more regularly. I really like the layout, and the quality of the articles surpasses SA.

A fun aspect is that every once in a while you bring some scientific or cosmic development to the front page. I almost alerted you to a recent Mayan discovery which proves all of this End Of The World stuff is pure "bunkum," including this link about UPenn's fantastic Mayan exhibit, which does the same (and is principally about Copan. You know I love that!).

Here's the Washington Post link:

http://wapo.st/LPAZUi

The Axion Power Concentrator I started on SA 11 months ago has now surpassed 22,000 comments. For eight months I was the lone moderator, and with some very active trolls, I was on the lifeguard stand 24/7, doing vast, hours long battles, which seemed to heat up more frequently in the middle of the night, on weekends, holidays, etc.

It was very time consuming. But, I have turned the reins over to several folks, and then within a couple of months, the trolls were finally outworked and gave up, especially because they had no idea who was deleting their disingenuous, abusive and highly disruptive comments. One troll was relentless, and was the same who basically made OptionsGirl so fed up she has nearly stopped commenting altogether. She hasn't been in Quick Chat for months.

I had SA deep six a couple of the troll's ID's, but then all he would do is fire up four or five more.

Axion Power is far and away my favorite high risk, high reward pick. Stop/start vehicles are coming in a huge way during the next few years -- JCI thinks worldwide, 35,000,000 per year by 2017. And every AGM battery made by Johnson Controls, Exide, Enersys, and private concern East Penn, tests show, that the those batteries will fail within about 8 months. The car will still work, but the stop/start feature won't.

Testing shows Axion's PbC battery will last 8.5 years, and here is a really cool fact, Axion's PbC battery can accept a charge, or do a discharge, 2 to 4 times faster than any lithium battery.

Norfolk Southern has bought some Axion batts and is in the final testing stage for retrofitting their yard switchers to be purely battery driven. An over the road order is expected later this year. Not a lot of sales, but since NSC has tested every other battery out their and has chosen the PbC as the answer, well, it's a pretty darn good feather in the cap for this unheard of nanocap.

Prediction: In 8 to 12 months, Axion Power will be up 400 to 500%. (Right now, I'm down about 50% in my gamer account; my brokerage account is down about 35%. I ain't selling, and may still add more, making me stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid overweight!)

I wrote an article/summary about my June 21 visit to the Axion Shareholders Conference, which was received pretty well, despite a few editing errors:

http://seekingalpha.co...

I agree that BPL's P/E is high. But over the past few years it's treaded between $60 and $67, before this latest drop. It should revert to the norm, and I should get 20% growth with an 8% yield while that happens. That's why we invest ;-) Hope!

Enterprise Transfer Partners (ETP) has a much better P/E of 8.85 with about the same yield. If it dips to back $42, I'm a buyer.

Molycorp preferred looking juicy right now, too.

Always a pleasure, John,

Bill
1 Jul 2012, 05:34 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
Oops!

Here is the first, the original link to my article. These Axion Power Concentators pile up fast!:

http://seekingalpha.co...
1 Jul 2012, 05:58 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Maya - - -

You may have missed it because it was never linked by any other articles but we posted the Mayan calendar discovery by archaeologists in May: http://bit.ly/MllhzI

Our friend Derryl left a comment on the article that the earth crosses something called the "galactic equator" on December 21, 2012, apparently a very rare event. I have not looked into it but it sounds like another possible "galactic" or "cosmos" news story that we could post.

Perhaps the end of the world party in Guatemala could be converted to a crossing the equator party.
1 Jul 2012, 07:02 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
John: I guess I did miss it.

I do like the "Crossing The Equator" idea!

I'll stick with my "12/21/12: Ending Of The World Fiesta," name. It'll be in Copan, Honduras, and we may be going live via the Internet. I'll let you know. Trying to line up some notables...to bear witness to the sky cracking open. Where's H. G. Wells?

The galactic equator occurring on a single day I find, well, humorous. But our solar system is indeed crossing our galaxy's equator, giving all the charlatans and doomsayers another chance to say the polarity of our entire planet will shift within 24 hours, or rather, instantaneously, this December 21.

17th century captains of ocean going vessels, noted polarity shifting way back then, when true north was as much as five degrees or more off what their compasses were telling them, against their sextant readings.

Here's something very cool.

Has the "God-particle" been found? July 4th, a BIG announcement may be forthcoming:

http://bit.ly/LMUaYF
2 Jul 2012, 11:05 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Maya - - -

We often post things that behave like old soldiers and just fade away. We'll repeat this story in December and give it another fade-away opportunity.

I have been following the Higgs boson story looking for a way to offer some perspective different (or expanded) from the one story out there now (you linked to one posting of that story).
3 Jul 2012, 02:43 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
Here's the (or one) announcement. Pretty amazing that physicists are on the threshold of understanding how mass is acquired.

http://bit.ly/LnKaLC

Have a great 4th!

BTW: How can I use this God-particle to increase the mass of my wallet contents?
4 Jul 2012, 01:20 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Thanks.

I may be able to use that video.

I am thinking of trying to write an article that might be entitled":

"What is a Boson and Who Works for It?"

Would try to cover two things:

1. A common language definition of the two classes of elementary particles (bosons and fermions), with familiar examples.

2. How important the "discovery" of the Higgs boson is on a list of the greatest physics events of all time.

One of the most difficult concepts to get across here is the probabilistic nature of this "discovery." The 5-sigma threshold used in the analysis is not absolute, but has about one chance in 1.7 million of being wrong. That would be equivalent to saying a disease does not exist because only 4,100 people have it currently. That would be less than 1 out of 1.7 million.

Maybe the threshold should be 6-sigma, a common quality objective in manufacturing and other processes. That would correspond to 13.8 out of 7 billion, or 1 out of 506.8 million.

But even 6-sigma is far from absolute.

So this "discovery" may correctly be placed on a list that also contains Galileo, Newton, Einstein, measuring the charge of an electron, splitting the atom, definition of the dual nature of light (particle and wave) and the discovery that millions (tens or hundreds of millions?) of planets are in the correct positions in space to be able to support life as we know it; but the probability can be calculated that the placement there could be removed in the future.
4 Jul 2012, 04:15 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Maya - - -

Well, I put something up: http://bit.ly/LsKAAA
5 Jul 2012, 11:34 PM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
Excellent. And a bit funny, or ironic.

Read your above comment earlier today, and did some fun pondering over the next hours. Finally sat down to write back, to only learn just now that you have already, "put something up."

Understanding what a 5-sigma event is in physics, one with a one bad guy out of 1.7 million good guys of certainty, that miniscule potential of being wrong...this God-particle, if it does exist, is possibly one of mankind's greatest discoveries.

With those odds, where can I invest?

Guarantee going forward I will be investing some hours trying to figure this quantum physics out. Would love to know what Brian Greene thinks about this development. Or, for that matter, what Morgan Freeman's excellent "Through The Wormhole" series would have to say.

Off to read your article! With the caveat that everytime mankind gets closer to understanding universal, or multiverse design, we learn that we are even farther away from understanding any theory of everything.

Latest in, is a discovery that in 2013 our Milky Way black hole will be dining on a massive cosmic fart!

http://yhoo.it/LStWs4

b
6 Jul 2012, 12:27 AM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Interesting link. Maybe we will cover flatulence destruction sometime before or when it happens.
6 Jul 2012, 02:54 AM Reply Like

Mayascribe Comments (8253)
 
Remember the best selling novel by Dan Brown titled "Angels And Demons?"

With all this hot and steamy weather here around Philly, I hunkered down and took in a couple of movies this weekend, and one of them starred Tom Hanks, romping around the Vatican.

I had forgotten that the main doohickey in this fast-paced film was the God-particle.

I did link in your article to Quick Chat, and another fantastic one you wrote about the future growth of cities I linked into the Axion Power Concentrator.

John Petersen loved that article, as for years he has touted that perhaps the single most powerful and least understood chance of the world pulling out of global recession is through the expansion of the consumer classes in the second and third worlds.

I agree.

In the second half of this decade I believe investment opportunities will abound in all things consumed.

Still worried that the banks and investing houses are still so highly leveraged, and yet so little regulation with teeth has been enacted by the current administration.

Another movie, well, a documentary, I took in was Matt Damon's "Inside Job." (2010) A fantastic recount about what happened before Lehman, the legislative actions that allowed insane leverage, the who's who made hundreds of millions of dollars while purposely and intentfully bankrupting the concerns they were in charge of, and what little action has been done since.

It's all stuff we both know, but to see it all combined the way Damon did, it made me feel like I was getting hit in the head with cannon ball after cannon ball.

Still amazes me that most of these crooks are still in power, still have Obama's ear, still are getting paid huge sums for speaking engagements, still getting paid huge lobbying sums...when rightfully so, many of these bastards should be in jail, and all of their fraudulently acquired assets clawed back or appropriated.

We should have fastened a lot of these folks into this helicopter!

http://bit.ly/OM3ZLC
8 Jul 2012, 05:07 PM Reply Like

John Lounsbury Comments (3914)
 
Thanks for the recommendations and link posts.

I actually liked the book "Angels and Demons" better than "The Da Vinci Code".

Dan Brown has a thought process I find fascinating when formulated into a story.

Another book that has the same detail of thinking and good story telling is "Raising Abel" by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
8 Jul 2012, 11:30 PM Reply Like