<p>Interesting doct.</p>
<p>“DS, who just graduated with a 3.9 in Chemical Engineering, has had a few interviews but no offers yet. It’s stressful.”</p>
<p>That sucks.</p>
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<p>This is true. My laptop is five years old and runs fine. It would probably be fine for the next five years. A replacement is a want. There have to be enough new features and benefits to get me to replace it. I look at the models every years and there hasn’t been enough so far. 12 hour battery life could be the tipping point for me.</p>
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<p>I think that penetration rates are around 50% but my guess is that the other 50% or so isn’t in the market for high-end phones. Tablets are still selling quite well as improvements are still ramping up.</p>
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<p>Small losses are good.</p>
<p>Daughter just received an email for an interview next week. A small bright spot in an otherwise bad week.</p>
<p>I think the next big change to happen to laptops will be when we can get power consumption of displays and wireless communication down. I think battery life will really be an important part going into the future, especially if the push is towards more and more cloud-operated programs.</p>
<p>I remember talk a while back of moving towards fuel cells for electronic devices. Instead of charging up at the wall, you just refill a small canister of methanol. Stuck at the airport? Pay $1 for a refill on your battery. I’m not sure if the idea has gone out of favor as lithium-ion batteries have gotten better and better, though.</p>
<p>BCEagle91, </p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter.</p>
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<p>Yup. Anyone with a high-GPA Chemical Engineering degree has to be a hard-worker and good at time-management. I don’t think that MA, or perhaps even New England, is a particularly good area of the country for Chemical Engineering though. One of my sisters has a CE degree from Penn from back in the early 1980s and she really struggled to find work - she had some work on and off. I think that other areas of the country had higher demand for CE grads than the Boston area.</p>
<p>Is he looking at graduate school?</p>
<p>I found two openings in Cambridge for Chemistry jobs that don’t require a Phd:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www2.apply2jobs.com/BroadInstitute/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=1061&sid=68[/url]”>https://www2.apply2jobs.com/BroadInstitute/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=1061&sid=68</a></p>
<p>This one is at the Broad Institute (niece worked there and son’s manager is some kind of high-level director there) which is a non-profit set up by Harvard and MIT to do all kinds of unbelievable stuff.</p>
<p>[Cheminformatics</a> and Data Analyst](<a href=“http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=YmJnZW5lcmljLjgzMzM3LjE3NjBAcGZpemVyLmFwbGl0cmFrLmNvbQ]Cheminformatics”>http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=YmJnZW5lcmljLjgzMzM3LjE3NjBAcGZpemVyLmFwbGl0cmFrLmNvbQ)</p>
<p>This is a cheminformatics job. It like a cross between chemistry and computer science. I think that cheminformatics and computation chemistry are good growth areas but most of these positions that I run into want advanced degrees. This is similar to my son’s area in Bioinformatics. Biology jobs are hard to find and many don’t pay well but marry biology with computer science and you have an area with good career and job prospects. It’s hard to get in without an advanced degree though.</p>
<p>I know how tough it is when you have kids looking for work. I was hoping the second round would be easier but I actually think that it’s going to be harder. The job market seemed better in early 2012 than it does right now. That’s strange because the unemployment rate is down significantly now and unemployment claims are down significantly. I think that those numbers just don’t reflect people dropping out of the workforce.</p>
<p>Power consumption of CPU and graphics are going down thanks to process improvements. Intel is making 4G radios for Samsung so they can drive down power consumption there too. I think that there’s a new display technology that should improve power consumption there too and the super-high-res screens certainly need it. I think that 12 hours of battery is outstanding as it is and I expect to see fairly big improvements as Intel goes to 14 NM in 2014. 12 hours is well more than I would need though. How much battery life are you looking for in a laptop? I think that it would take two or three years of processor improvements to get another 50% improvement.</p>
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<p>I like the idea that NYC is using with solar charging stations. These are for phones and tablets right now but it would be cool if you could eventually do it for laptops. One thing that could help would be a standard laptop battery. You need power? You bring your battery into a kiosk and exchange it for one that’s charged for $3. I could see someone doing this for Apple laptops because there are so many of them and they have a very small product line.</p>
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He is interested mostly in biotech companies, he minored in biochemistry. There are a lot of biotech companies in MA.</p>
<p>Grad school is not in the picture at this point. He wants to work for a while.</p>
<p>He’s got an interview coming up next week in NY, he doesn’t really want to leave MA but… fingers crossed.</p>
<p>Hope your daughter has good luck.</p>
<p>BCE, agree on swappable batteries. That’s also one of the ideas for how to deal with the possible future of battery powered cars. Instead of doing all this junk with fast charging of your car, make it so you can just stop at a service station and swap out your car’s batteries in 2-3 minutes. That gets rid of the concern of “What happens when I need to replace my batteries in 5 years,” as the cost will become part of the refill charge. Make it so you don’t actually own the battery, but treat it more like the canister of propane you buy.</p>
<p>I think 12 hours on a full scale lightweight laptop is a great target. Especially if I could see that on something in the $500-$700 range. The idea your work laptop could wind up on the same charging schedule as your cell phone would be nice. </p>
<p>Wireless charging technology has been something that I can’t wait to hit prime time in a big way. I’ve seen there’s ideas out there for “charging boxes” and whatnot, where you can just dump all of your battery-powered gizmos in at the end of the day, and they’ll charge without wires. Imagine one of those in every hotel room.</p>
<p>Right now I have a home phone system that communicates with my cell phone via bluetooth. When my cell gets called, it rings all five wireless phones in my house. Once I finally upgrade to a smart phone, I’d love to be able to have a wireless charging station sitting right next to the phone, so at the end of the day I put my phone on it and it’s fresh to go every morning (also, no need to worry about bluetooth killing the battery while I’m talking to someone). The promise of (hopefully) a standard in wireless charging would mean a complete end to the need for various adapters. The prevalence of short-range bluetooth/wifi in other household devices might mean we only need USB cables for a small handful of devices.</p>
<p>[Tesla</a> unveils 90-second battery-pack swap - Jun. 21, 2013](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/21/autos/tesla-battery-swap/index.html]Tesla”>Tesla unveils 90-second battery-pack swap)</p>
<p>Tesla announced 90-second battery swaps, coming to their supercharging stations.</p>
<p>The wireless charging idea is nice but the devices to do this are currently somewhat pricey. I love the charging solution for my Nexus 7 though. The Nexus 7 has POGO pins. I have a stand and you put the table on the stand and it charges (you can also send audio to speakers with it). </p>
<p>I have a cable for my phone in my office and at home so I just plug in when I’m at my desk. I could get one for the car too. My daughter typically charges her phone in the car.</p>
<p>I think that the MicroUSB plug is a pain but it’s pretty effortless with the new Apple connector. MiniUSB isn’t bad either but that’s on its way out.</p>
<p>I can’t see swapping battery packs for cars to ever be practical on a large scale. A busy gas station gets hundreds or thousands of cars per day. How are they going to store and move around so many battery packs? Especially if there is no standardization?</p>
<p>To say nothing of the charging load… every gas station will need its own substation.</p>
<p>I don’t think that a gas station would have to worry about hundreds or thousands of Teslas coming through per day.</p>
<p>I think that your typical Tesla owner charges their car at home and at the office (we have charging ports for cars in our covered parking area). The supercharging stations are for trips. They have them along I-95 so if someone is taking a long trip, then they can stop at one of these to recharge their batteries. The new method would allow them to swap out their batteries. I have no idea what the procedure looks like or whether or not there’s a mechanical device that automates the process.</p>
<p>Tesla can provide solutions that others can’t because of their clientele.</p>
<p>notrichenough, if they can charge a battery pack in 30 minutes to an hour, they might not necessarily need an enormous warehouse. There are those sorts of devices that are out in various parking lots, so you car can get a charge while you do your grocery shopping.</p>
<p>And a gas station needing a substation might not be much more of an investment than a bunch of underground storage tanks.</p>
<p>BCE, check the timestamp on that CNN article. They must have seen my post and decided to rush to print. ;)</p>
<p>Looks like they say $500k for one of these machines. A quick google said $1.5-2.5M to open a franchise gas station.</p>
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<p>This is kinda disappointing, as it means you can’t do a loop-style trip. I think a program where you pay a monthly lease fee to use any of their in-network batteries (with discounted or complementary swaps) might be a neat way to go.</p>
<p>Agree about the cradles being nice, but I’m always frustrated when I travel. Need to get a cable for my phone, laptop (two, since they’re always two-part), camera charger, one for my electric razor, one for my noise canceling headphones, etc. A universal wireless solution just seems so darned convenient. One of the things I love most about my Kindle Touch is if I turn wireless off it’ll last me the equivalent of a few thick paperbacks.</p>
<p>The pricing model could always change for the charging station. I’m sure that Tesla stays in fairly close contact with their customers and will be able to get a good read on what their customers want. Their customers seem fanatical. </p>
<p>I would like Apple to add a USB port to their charging bricks for MacBooks.</p>
<p>I see more and more small-power devices going to Micro-USB as an option.</p>
<p>I think that a power-brick, micro-usb and adapters from micro-usb to other formats would work for most cases.</p>
<p>I was thinking beyond just Tesla.</p>
<p>Is every manufacturer going to build their own set of charging facilities?</p>
<p>To charge a Tesla in 30-60 minutes requires 85-170 kW of power, times however many charging stations they provide. That’s a <em>lot</em> of power. If they don’t have enough, I might have to wait a few hours before I can charge… pretty inconvenient, so peak access requires overbuilding, which is expensive…</p>
<p>You aren’t finding 85kW circuits in your office parking lot.</p>
<p>How many charging stations are they going to put at each facility?</p>
<p>Who is going to build the power plants to drive all of these stations when there are millions of EVs on the road? It’s virtually impossible to get to new generation facilities built as it is.</p>
<p>I am going to talk about trading. This week was my worst week of the year and luckily I can’t say that every week.</p>
<p>Today the stock market was ok.</p>
<p>Can’t say the same about the bond market. </p>
<p>[TLT,MUB</a> | Stock Prices | Quote Comparison | YAHOO! Finance](<a href=“TLT,MUB;_ylc=X3oDMTIzbnY1bGZvBGtleXcDVExULE1VQgRtaWQDbWVkaWFxdW90ZXNzZWFyY2gEc2VjA2dldHF1b3Rlc2J0bgRzbGsDbXVsdGlfcXVvdGU-]TLT,MUB | Stock Prices | Quote Comparison - Yahoo Finance”>TLT,MUB;_ylc=X3oDMTIzbnY1bGZvBGtleXcDVExULE1VQgRtaWQDbWVkaWFxdW90ZXNzZWFyY2gEc2VjA2dldHF1b3Rlc2J0bgRzbGsDbXVsdGlfcXVvdGU- | Stock Prices | Quote Comparison - Yahoo Finance)</p>
<p>Intc, intc, intc? Wth? Drops 1.20 in 3 days. That is worse than the stock market.
When intc was trading 25.40 on Wed… I was thinking 25 close on Friday. So…that was the way my positions were set up. There was plenty of
open interest in the 25 options to peg the stock at 25. There was also
plenty of open interest in the 26 options, but the calls were close to zero so I did not think that was a factor. The 24 strikes had plenty of open interest
but I did not expect intc to drop 5 percent in 2 1/2 days. Maybe
I was just wishing the stock would not get close to 24. :)</p>
<p>My positions were long intc stock, and in addition, I had the Jun 22 buywrites on with the 24.50 and 25 strikes. I was long stock and short
24.5 calls. I was long stock and short the 25 calls.</p>
<p>This meant I get longer as intc drops and shorter as intc rises. I lose more and more as the dtock drops.</p>
<p>The stock market gets hit Wed. After the fed meeting. No problem. Intc
closes 25. Great price for me.</p>
<p>Thursday morning…markets are getting crushed premarket. Intc is trading 24.80. No problem. Then the normal trading day begins. Intc is
quickly 24.60 and looking crummy.</p>
<p>So…below 24.80… My intc 25 buywrite is a loser.Below 24.35…my intc 24.5 buywrite is a loser. And of course my long stock is losing as intc drops.</p>
<p>So…intc closes around 24.20 today. The buywrites are losers and the long stock is a loser this week.</p>
<p>Bad week.</p>
<p>I rolled the options starting Thursday so I am now long stock and short the 24 calls, the 24.5 calls and the 25 calls that expire next week. I am almost 1 for 1 now. Long stock and short calls. I started rolling as the stock dropped yesterday so the prices for some of the calls were great, but I still lost. I cut my position down a little too. When I lose I cut my positions down…at least temporarily.</p>
<p>My biggest position is in munis. I am not long MUB but I am long similar issues that make up the MUB index. My bonds are non rated or rated a little lower than the bonds that are represented in the MUB index.</p>
<p>We can all see how MUB has done this week and over the last several weeks. Ouch.
However, if munis and other bonds keep selling off…I could buy more and stop trading this option crap. So part of me wants rates to rise and part of me doesn’t. I think there are quite a few people out there thinking the same as I am. What I don’t want to happen is to buy more bonds and see inflation pick up and rates continue to rise. That would suck.</p>
<p>When I lose somewhere…I just like to get out and move on to something else. This is why I closed out Japan. My best trades and investments usually work right away. I know Peter Lynch said his best investments sometimes started working 3 years after he invested but that is too long a time frame for me. Worked for him…</p>
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<p>The folks at their office charge for 8 hours so that’s different. The charging stations are high-power because of the expectation that people don’t want to wait for a long time on a trip.</p>
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<p>I think that the Tesla stations have two or four along 95.</p>
<p>My 6/22 spy ratio puts spreads worked out well (161,158, 154) and (163,159,158). Some of my other trades not so good. Did pretty well selling weekly puts. I’m going long in spy 1/18 itm calls with put spread protection. I’m gone for the month of July and will not be easily able to follow the market. Ideally I’m planning on buying more and more as the market drops but it will be my luck it will happen in July when I can’t do much about it. If it drops enough 10% or more, I probably won’t bother with buying put spreads.</p>
<p>Doct,</p>
<p>Have a good time in July…</p>
<p>I am curious about ETF’s. One guy I just flew with was very enthusiastic about them, while I had never even thought about getting any. I doubt I can get any in my 401K account, but I think my kids can get them in their Roths. Vanguard apparently doesn’t charge for the trades. I think. Any opinions on ETF’s?</p>
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<p>I only use them to play a sector or for leverage. ETFs have costs in them that reduces their total return so it is better to go with individual stocks for max return. If I think a sector will perform well but I am unsure which stock in that sector is the best to buy, I might just buy the sector through an ETF. I also buy ETFs designed to track the market but move three times the market. Thus, if an index goes up 1 percent, the ETF tracking that index goes up 2 percent.</p>
<p>ETFs are kind of like “advanced” mutual funds because you can trade them immediately rather than waiting the next day.</p>