Green Spider Monkey Now In Charge (Humor)

The study of formal religion is a waste of time. Every moment dedicated to the performing of religious rituals or the studying of the significance of specific spiritual doctrines is wasted, scandalously squandered. If you think you can know the unknowable, you are an idiot. Those who mine inspiration from tracts claiming to glean special information from secret supernatural sources are double idiots, since they aren’t even doing their own thinking. No membership in any group, industry amongst any number of people, will ever yield any certain proof in matters which are simply beyond human perception to divine. Faith is a contrivance, not a virtue.

There, I said it. It doesn’t make me right. And “Faith is a contrivance, not a virtue” is more of a catch phrase than it is a contention substantiated by any of the previous statements. But why go on and on? I clearly disbelieve. That is what I am clearly out to say.

My statement of faith is that I disbelieve. There is a whole raft of things in which I disbelieve. Recently I took my devotion to an actionable level, specifically in regards to my 401k.

Like many of you, I have long shoveled money at various 401k funds in hopes that not having some pittance of money now will lead to having less of a pittance of money some time when I am no longer in a position to determine the scope of my earning power. Whatever eventually resides in the 401k will constitute the funds I will be living off of sometime in the unknowable future—assuming I live past my use by date. Frankly, it’s a stupid idea on several levels. If it wasn’t for the free matching pittance, found money come on common to all such schemes, I would have never bothered with the scam.

It is a scam, too.  If it’s being sold as a supplement to living on the dole (Social Security), that’s one thing. If it’s being sold as a replacement for any social welfare or an actual dedicated retirement fund, then it’s a mere waste of time. If it’s being sold as a way of making you rich, it is a scam incarnate. It’s not much of a scheme, in any light.

Here’s a pile of money that we aren’t going to tax you on. (Similar to your also not taxed on health insurance.) As with the health insurance, your employer may pitch in some other money, which he will not be taxed on. At some level, your gain will be about 50% on this pile of cash. So far, it’s not a bad deal. But there’s a catch. Well, several.

First, there’s a limit on how much you can salt away—free of taxes, that is. It’s age-protracted, but it generally caps out at 7%. As for your employer’s contribution, its cap depends of his generosity, plus any rule he wants to make up about vesting or whatnot. Whatever amount of cash this winds up being, it cannot be used. Not without a penalty. If you actually live to the age of 67 or so, you can use it then. And you will be taxed on it then. Or you can use it to buy a house.

But that’s not really where the scam is. If all a 401k were what I outlined above, it would only be the worst annuity insurance program ever conceived of—promising to refund the premiums of my employer and myself at some term date. No, the scam is in what the money does while you are not using it.

There are funds, you see. Masses of asses, just like yourself, can choose from a menu of incomprehensibly defined and oddly labeled funds of your employer’s choosing. Each of these funds is managed by a very nice young lady who is governed by a set of mathematically determined rules. So the person in charge of making you wealthy (or less un-wealthy) has all of the autonomy of your average fast food cashier. And the results are generally what you might expect. The funds invest, en masse, in whatever is fashionable (or defined) and perform about a standard deviation worse than the average for whatever class of vehicle they have invested in. When things go well, the funds do well. When things are bad, the fund tanks too. Predictably, no one has ever gotten wealthy by investing in any of the funds most people have a chance to invest in. What you really get, beyond maybe your own money back, depends on the overall condition of the world at the time you cash out. No better. Almost always a little worse. It’s a Lemming Casino.

My own various funds—and I have had up to twenty—seemed to lose the majority of my employer’s contributions. If I had just taken the money I had put in and the match my employer gave me and stuffed it in a mattress, I would have been far better off. I began to disbelieve in the logic of it all. So I cashed most of them out.

And threw myself a drugs and sex soaked bacchanal. Thus explaining my lack of posting for the past few weeks.

Kidding. Really. I’m too cheap to take the 35% tax hit for any reason. I rolled them over into a self-managed IRA instead, and began making investments in stocks.

Let me tell you about stocks, or ‘equities’ as us in the know sophisticates like to call them. They’re mostly dope dreams. A few of them are actual companies with working businesses and free capital and employees and products which aren’t websites. And some of them have real profits. One would think that sorting dope dreams from actual firms would be the key to picking a good stock, but it isn’t. And I would tell you what the key is, but I don’t know.

And neither does anyone else. Much like Model Railroading, there is no cap on the amount of time and money you can spend playing with the stock market. And much like Model Railroading, it largely goes in circles. The distinctions between Model Railroading and Stock Investing are so few that it seems as if the two hobbies have simply come up with different naming conventions.

Model Railroading doesn’t have as many touts. A tout is a person who tells you how to do your lay-out. In Model Railroading, the tout is the guy who knows how to match scale pieces together or is a master of period detail or knows how to contour sponges well. In Stock Investing, the tout is someone who claims to be rich or is represented as having X billions of dollars under management or is the representative of a bank with X billions of dollars in equities.  In both hobbies you have touts which are out to sell something and touts who are just trying to be helpful. In stock market investing, few of the touts are willing to show you their real lay-out.

The word ‘tout’ actually comes from the world of horse betting, where no fortune has ever been made and many a wage lost. The classic tout approaches the bettor as he is about to place a wager and offers some advice, such as “Banner Bob in the third.” If that horse should win, the tout will return and request a tip. If the horse doesn’t win, you either won’t find the tout or he’ll just weakly smile at you when you do. Chances are, however, he will be bugging someone he did give the name of the winning horse to.

If he knew the name of the winning horse, why didn’t he tell you? Because he didn’t know. He gave the names of several horses to several people in hopes that the people who bet on what turned out to be a winner will tip him. At racetracks, it’s a fairly harmless scam.

In Model Railroading and Stock Investing touts aren’t generally working for tips. Some are just enthusiastic hobbyists. And some are disguised salesmen. Beware of both. But unlike horse betting, you do need the tout—up to a point. Without the tout, you’re going to do something silly, like putting three tracks on the same transformer, or making an incline over ten degrees or forex trading or buying penny over the counter stocks or investing in the VIX. There is, however, a point where you need to turn them off. At least in Stock Investing, once the tout goes into his astrology rain making happy dance and you understand about half of it, you’re ready. Do it or don’t. You now know as much as anyone else.

So I did four months of this crap. Without going into my background, this wasn’t entirely virgin territory for me. I am fairly well versed in the ins and outs of financial vehicles. My heart really isn’t in this, but I brought my ass in hopes my mind would follow.

I bought a bunch of crap. I bought stocks. I bought stocks in companies with businesses. Most of the businesses, I understand. Most of my stocks pay dividends. I am in every defined sector. I have more than one stock in every sector. The majority of stocks I hold are in firms I have some familiarity with—although a few of them I only became familiar with through this exercise in probable financial auto-Darwinism. End of my freaking investing paradigm.

(I have pipe dreams of becoming a specialist in investing in women’s fashion retailers. My research plan is to regularly visit stores and see which ones are busy. And it’s girl watching, too!)

Allow me to describe my portfolio (previously denoted as the crap I bought). It is a fortress portfolio, designed meticulously to weather all storms yet seek opportunity in an adventurous but calculated manner. Each of its components reflect and contribute to a synergistic wealth building reflex, combining good fundamentals and timing independent opportunity cost reverse parallels. No, wait. That was the prospectus of every fund I was ever in. My portfolio fortress is a random pile of tea spoon chunks of name brand goliaths and off brand micro bigs. Right now my fortress is suitable for Aquaman. Or maybe the Moleman. If current trends continue, it may be a fortress at the Center of The Earth. In short, it’s underwater.

Something about this buy low sell high thing evaded me by investing at the height of the market. Unlike the Model Railroad set, if the portfolio breaks I don’t have to vacuum the pieces out of the carpet. In truth, I’m two months in and I’m doing as well as I would have had I done nothing. Maybe a little better. If I become the Oracle of Wherever I Live, I’ll let you know. I should be fine, unless interest rates spike, which would drag equities straight into the toilet. Eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom. I am now the green spider monkey flying my financial plane.

My Portfolio

All aboard the tramp scam

Flim flam lightly capitalized

on a raft of crafty buzzwords

set sail to provide

my retirement.

Powered by reverse engineered buggy whips

Stockpiled high with carbon paper and

Pirated batches of White Out

We navigate with algorithms

Anagrams and voices in the heads of others.

Please squander the sweat of my brow

You black magic man.

Other Updates and Excuses. Ajax Telegraph, author of this Wonderblog, would like to announce the near completion of his novel, tentatively titled WAD OF TYPING. Actually, that’s more of a description of the work’s current state than it is a working title, but what do you want for not done yet. Currently also in the works is an expansion of Weird Detective Mystery Adventures, soon to be found resident on HIL-GLE.COM’s web pages. And next on our Wonderblog will be what pathetically little I have on Ideal Magazines.

The Wonderblog is now coming off our second best month ever as far as web hits are concerned. Thank you all for stopping bye!