<p>Doct, love that link. I thought the story was going to state that young people are more aware of popular trends…</p>
<p>What a market - it just keeps coming back.</p>
<p>I was talking to a friend of mine who is getting divorced. He is 66 and receives about 6,000 a year in SS after paying for Medicare. </p>
<p>It looks like he is going to be offered about 700000 in a divorce settlement. He says he needs about 50,000 a year to live. Without going into specifics, I think he is correct. If he lives to 90, he is going to be short somewhere around 500,000. There are bigger problems in the world than this but I find this disturbing.</p>
<p>[Microsoft</a> Confirms Investigation into Intel USB 3.0 Issues on Surface Pro Tablets - Bright Side Of News*](<a href=“http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/4/12/microsoft-confirms-investigation-into-intel-usb-30-issues-on-surface-pro-tablets.aspx]Microsoft”>http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/4/12/microsoft-confirms-investigation-into-intel-usb-30-issues-on-surface-pro-tablets.aspx)</p>
<p>“There is a lot of discussion going on over Intel’s admittance that the first batch of 8-series chipsets for the upcoming “Haswell” microarchitecture will have a problem with the specific USB 3.0 devices. First and foremost, we do not believe that this is a part of any Thunderbolt conspiracy (which really is utter non-sense). Intel is one of the creators of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), standard with whom the company worked with Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and numerous others.”</p>
<p>Intel screwed up the SATA ports on early Sandy Bridge chipsets and this affected me. I had to file an RMA with Newegg. They sent me a motherboard. I had to take out the old one and install the new one (not a piece of cake) and then mail the old one back. I also had to go out and buy my own thermal paste (you use this in-between the CPU and the heat sink) because the CPU comes with it but you have to clean it off when reapplying and it’s a trip to Best Buy and a couple of bucks.</p>
<p>The article mentions millions of units. That’s a bit surprising to me unless they’re using the new chipsets with IB as well as Haswell. BTW, the typical fix to these kinds of problems is a motherboard replacement, which, as you might imagine, is not cheap in terms of materials or labor.</p>
<p>"I was talking to a friend of mine who is getting divorced. He is 66 and receives about 6,000 a year in SS after paying for Medicare. </p>
<p>It looks like he is going to be offered about 700000 in a divorce settlement. He says he needs about 50,000 a year to live. Without going into specifics, I think he is correct. If he lives to 90, he is going to be short somewhere around 500,000. There are bigger problems in the world than this but I find this disturbing."</p>
<p>and the thing that is really disturbing is that he will have much more than most 66 year olds.</p>
<p>Just what is needed…more problems for msft and intc…</p>
<p>“and the thing that is really disturbing is that he will have much more than most 66 year olds.”</p>
<p>That is disturbing…</p>
<p>Well fortunately I don’t own intc or msft but intc is a very big customer of my company. Intel’s issues haven’t seemed to impact it at all though.</p>
<p>They aren’t going to fix the bug. The bug is that USB devices that are plugged in don’t wake up after sleep or hibernation. So you have to unplug them and plug them back in again. Wonderful. So you have a keyboard, mouse and headphone and you have to unplug and replug them when you wake up from sleeping. That’s just the experience that I want.</p>
<p>Rev 2 of the chipset ships at the end of July. OEMs could work around the problem on desktops by adding a PCI-bus device with USB ports but you’d have to route stuff to the back. I think that I’d want to make sure that any Haswell system that I buy will have Rev 2 of the chipset. I normally sleep my Windows system and I have a lot of USB devices plugged into my home system. The problem may not cost Intel anything this time in terms of recalls but it will ding their reputation. I’d also guess that Microsoft is really, really, really upset. I think that they’re a little touchy about their reputation these days.</p>
<p>I think that Intel is doing quite well on their server business. My son told me that their organization needs more horsepower for an application. I asked him what they were using now. He said that they were using an over 32 core system with a ton of fast and expensive storage. But the application shares the server with other applications. He’s going to try a software fix so that maybe they won’t need more hardware. Of course they’re planning on a lot of expansion so they are eventually going to need more hardware.</p>
<p>speaking of k1’s, anybody know anything about SMM. It was recommended to me and it doesn’t issue a k1.</p>
<p>That’s a monster of a chart. It looks to be so new that it’s hard to get fundamental information. It appears to be kind of a mutual fund or ETF that buys the stock of other companies. Are you going to do some digging on it or are you already in it?</p>
<p>I went to dinner with my cousin last night who’s been a broker for 40 years and has many of his clients in it. I’m going to look into it.</p>
<p>Okay, please post your findings here. I will do some digging on it next weekend when I see your analysis.</p>
<p>The volume of junk mail in my mailbox has gone exponential. I have piles of mail, mostly junkmail to go through. We’ve been getting a lot more spam phone calls on the landline too which has me thinking of getting rid of it. Is this economic progress? Maybe there are consumers that spend all of their time shopping.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.salientpartners.com/funds/mlp-midstream.html]Salient[/url”>http://www.salientpartners.com/funds/mlp-midstream.html]Salient[/url</a>]</p>
<p>“The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its total assets in securities of Midstream Companies and MLPs.
Up to 50% of total assets in MLPs, including any C-Corp Subsidiary
Up to 10% of the Fund’s total assets in equity securities of privately held companies
No more than 25% of total assets in debt securities of Energy Companies, of which all or a portion may be rated below investment grade and no more than 10% of the Fund’s total assets may be invested in debt securities rated CCC+/Caa1 or lower
No more than 10% of total assets in any single issuer other than any C-Corp Subsidiary of the Fund
The Fund also intends to write uncovered call options, in an amount up to 10% of the value of total assets in its portfolio, and purchase put options as a part of its hedging strategy.
HEDGING & RISK MANAGEMENT<br>
The Investment Adviser may use other risk management strategies with the intent to manage various risks including interest rate, commodity, credit and equity risk.
LEVERAGE<br>
Leverage targeted at approximately 25% of total assets.”</p>
<p>Two interesting if somewhat different takes on the current market:</p>
<p>[The</a> Fundamentals Don’t Matter Anymore - Seeking Alpha](<a href=“The Fundamentals Don't Matter Anymore | Seeking Alpha”>The Fundamentals Don't Matter Anymore | Seeking Alpha)</p>
<p>[A</a> Peek at Prior Peaks](<a href=“A Peek at Prior Peaks | Insights | Fisher Investments”>A Peek at Prior Peaks | Insights | Fisher Investments)</p>
<p>I agree that the fundamentals don’t matter anymore. My feeling is that we’ve had a deceleration in the last few months and we may be running up against the limits of the central bank, at least at $85B/month. But the stock market often doesn’t match the real economy. It’s supposed to lead but I do feel that it’s being manipulated. Of course I like that manipulation when I can take advantage of it but the goosing effect on the real economy seems to be waning. I exited on Friday so my perspective is that of someone looking in from the outside.</p>
<p>We have a ton of earnings this week so we will find out whether or not the real economy matters. Maybe after options expiration of course.</p>
<p>^^I had this conversation yesterday when I went out to the dinner referred to in post 6712. He said he has been taking profits and doesn’t trust the market. My response to this is that’s why the market is going up - nobody trusts it and everybody is waiting for a pullback.</p>
<p>I thought that was a very interesting article. (Fundamentals don’t matter anymore) Makes me want to lighten up some more. Was actually already planning to review all my dividend holdings to see what the dividend yield is and check the payout ratios. Read a recent article that pointed out some very high payout ratios in the drug stocks, T and VZ also. I bought KMB when they increased the dividend and the yield was over 4%. Now it is 3.20% Hate to give up the dividend and pay a capital gain tax, but it might be time. </p>
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<p>[The</a> Dirty Secret About The 1929 Stock Market Crash - Seeking Alpha](<a href=“The Dirty Secret About The 1929 Stock Market Crash | Seeking Alpha”>The Dirty Secret About The 1929 Stock Market Crash | Seeking Alpha)</p>