The Seattle Mariner’s are headed to the post season.
AAPL’s stock price is cratering.
UCLA’s football team played some defense.
The seven day forecast is for more summer.
Is This The Upside Down?
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Tag Archives: Seattle Mariners
Sports Extravaganza
Athletic competition is the key to remaining semi-sane these days.
And right now is peak sports. Let me amend that. Peak niche sports. Your Seattle Mariners with their 14th straight victory. Stellar performances at the World Track Championship meet down Interstate 5 in Eugene, Oregon, also known as TrackTown, USA. The thinning of the Jumbo Visma herd in the Tour de France with the podium still to be determined.
And most memorable, Cameron Smith is the ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’. That’s a title I would love to have some day. Maybe next year.
If There’s Any Justice In The World
If the Seattle Mariner magic continues this weekend and they close out the season with a sweep of the “Los Angeles” Angels and make the playoffs, all will be forgiven and forgotten by each and every Specific Northwesterner: Jeff Bezos, the endemic, the unprecedented heat and wild fires, the traffic nightmares, the fractured politics, the Seahawk’s defense, the antiquated airport, the creeping wetness and darkness.
92-70. See it. Believe it.
Postscript: 91-71?
Say What?
So confusing. Start with the headline, “Seattle Mariners’ Kyle Lewis awarded American League Rookie of the Year in unanimous vote.”
If that’s not disorienting enough, fast forward to this gem:
“The Georgia native is the beginning of what could be a formidable young outfield in Seattle. Jarred Kelenic, who was acquired in a trade with the New York Mets, and Julio Rodriguez are ranked among baseball’s top prospects.”
Have the words “formidable” and “the Seattle Mariners” ever appeared in the same sentence?
I hereby declare these strange times.
Wednesday Assorted Links
1. Mariner fans enjoy the fast start because this does not bode well.
2. My parents were well-to-do. When my dad unexpectedly died, my mom was lost in grief and overwhelmed with many new financial responsibilities. Some widows are providing others with much needed roadmaps.
3. When it comes to financial well-being, it’s sad how poorly elite Kenyan runners do.
5A. My last book. Highly recommended.
5B. Current read. Mind blowing. A mentally ill person creates a religion.
Weekend Assorted Links
1. Trump flip-flops fly off the shelf. To the creative go the spoils. (thanks DDTM)
2. Best iPhone photos from around the world.
3. Try doing nothing for awhile.
4. The Seattle Mariners lead the league in this every year.
5. I turned 57 a few weeks ago. This reflection on “the spiritual black hole of upper middle age” couldn’t hit much closer to home. (thanks SMW)
6. How to adapt this to upper middle agers?
7. At what level of wealth do you lose your soul?
Think Differently
PressingPausers have proven to have little interest in personal finance. Correction. PressingPausers have proven to have little interest in my thoughts on personal finance. Big dif. So why do I persist? Idk.
Just like getting dressed in the morning while on sabbatical, the fact that NO ONE will read this is liberating. Whatever shorts and t-shirt I left splayed on the floor last night are good, not many peeps are going to see me anyways as I write a blog post NO ONE will read. If a blog post falls in the woods. . .
Classic investing advice is to keep investing expenses to a bare minimum; determine what balance of stock, bonds, and cash will enable you to sleep well at night; and keep trading to a bare minimum.
In the US, investors currently have 56% of their assets invested in stocks or more than 10 percentage points higher than its historical average of 45.3%. At the top of the bull market in 2007, it stood at 56.8%. This has a lot of analysts worried that a correction is coming.
Another investing maxim of increasing popularity is to stop trying to outsmart the market. Instead, as Kendrick Lamar advises, “Be humble!” His next vid will prolly be about investing in passive index funds like this. The chorus. . .”Be passive!”
Another oft-repeated investing maxim is never invest more than 5% of your net worth in any individual stock because they’re far too volatile. A mutual fund or exchange traded fund is a basket of hundreds or thousands of individual stocks that go up and down at different times, thus creating a smoother, steadier, long term increase in value.
But damn is AAPL en fuego. Check this missive from a Vanguard forum of knowledgeable investors I’ve taken to reading recently. Wait a minute. That last sentence presumed you’re reading this, which you’re not, so note to self—revise that. This missive from a Vanguard forum of knowledgeable investors has me thinking about chucking conventional investing wisdom and improvising like #3.
“Hi—
Long time lurker first time poster. Thank you to all who have contributed to my education here, absolutely invaluable.
I’m writing about my mother and father in law’s finances, which I am slowly taking over at their request.
FINANCIAL PICTURE
Savings
$425k in various super low interest checking / savings accounts
Investments at Fidelity (unlikely to change brokerages):
Rollover IRA: $675k of which
* 86.8% AAPL he’s a lifelong Apple fanboy, bought $11,500 worth way back when, which is now $575k.”
Hindsight is 20-20, but if I was my daughters age again, for every $2 dollars of savings I could set aside, I’d put $1 in a super safe certificate of deposit and the other in AAPL. And then rebalance annually and pay 15 or 20% on the capital gains. As the aforementioned anecdote intimates, I would’ve done really, really well adhering to this “barbell” plan.
But this way of thinking suggests I’m suffering from an advanced case of “optimism bias” which causes a person to believe that they are at a lesser risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others. Note to self—AAPL can’t continue its recent run. VTI is a much safer, wiser, long-term instrument for building wealth. VTI is also long overdue for a serious correction, or to use the fancy pants mathematical phrase, a regression towards the mean. It’s as certain as the Mariner’s August playoff fade.
Sometime soon, the half of the barbell holding certificates of deposit earning 3-4% is going to bring great comfort.
The 5 Most Important Things You’ll Read All Week
1) Have you noticed? Increasingly, bloggers are inserting numbers into post titles to increase readership and improve search engine rankings. “5” has replaced “3” for most popular number. “17” is trendy too. I don’t know why numbers increase readership and improve search engine rankings. I find it disingenuous at best and insulting at worst. As if all anyone can process anymore is a list. My one-time use of it here is sarcasm. I should start a movement. . . force a number into your title and we’ll refuse to read what follows. Who is in?
2) Imagine a world in which everyone reads and discusses books with people different than them. My favorite story from last week.
3) The Seattle Mariners are the best team in baseball when it comes to this.
4) Is this a trend. . . dad’s helping grown daughters who aren’t necessarily interested in their help? I’ve never offered unsolicited advice to my daughters. . . that’s an additional serving of sarcasm. One of my daughters’ friends laughed at her dad for sending her an article on “How to save and invest money”. Another “couldn’t believe” her dad mailed her bicycle to her at college, then assembled it during a visit. The “extremely large” bike box was difficult and embarrassing to pick up at the mail room. The two wheeler was used one or two times during the school year. This isn’t limited to dad’s and daughters. Parents often presume their young adult children want to save money, invest wisely, prepare healthy meals, bicycle, etc., etc. Maybe I should start a movement where parents let their young adult children know they’re interested in sharing different “lessons learned” if and when they’re interested. And then we’ll sit back and wait for our young adult children to ask us for help.
5) I’m filing this under “Sometimes I Amaze Myself”. I’ve done it again, I’ve come up with a brilliant idea. This one will enable me to extend my triathlon career for many more years. Based upon my swimming, cycling, and running training log, I have a very good feel for how fast I can swim 1500 or 1900 meters, how fast I can ride 40k or 56 miles, and how fast I can run 10k or 13.1 miles. That means all I have to do is guess how bad my transitions would likely be, and presto, I can spend a few minutes on-line on Mondays to see what place I would’ve finished had I actually shown up at that weekend’s races. This way I save tons of coin and race every weekend without swimming through seaweed or increasing my exposure to the sun. I “won” my age group at a few recent races.
A Work in Progress
I need a personal motto.
A recent headline from Yahoo Personal Finance (YPF) read, “Apple Rebounds to $600, Time to Buy?” For the love of investing fundamentals, someone please alert the knuckleheads at YPF that the objective is to buy low and sell high. “Apple Plummets to $400, Time to Buy?” would make a hell of a lot more sense.
Unless of course Apple is headed to $1,001. Which leads to another recent YPF headline, “Top Analyst Thinks Apple Could Hit $1,001”. “Top Analyst” is code for really smart dude who knows way more than you and me. So I guess we should believe him. Wait. He’s also referred to as a “market pro” which means we HAVE to believe him. Thank you top analyst market pro. Since each of my APPL shares is about to go up $400, I think I”ll buy that Cervelo R5 bicycle I’ve had my eye on. More evidence of his intelligence—he covers his ass with “Could”. Here are some other “Could” headlines:
• Relative Unknown Ron Byrnes Could Win the British Open
• The Seattle Mariners Could Win the American League West
• Presidential Candidates Could Take the High Road
• Despite Barely Passing High School Chemistry, Ron Byrnes Could Cure Cancer
Then there’s “Dr. Drew” who received $250k to promote Glaxo’s antidepressant drug. Of course Double D never revealed anything about the payments. Most egregious, he repeatedly used his television pulpit to say it helped cure problems that exceeded what the FDA approved it for. Another doc (among many) was paid a cool $2m to promote the drug.
Daily reminders to read between the lines and remember things aren’t always as they may appear. Reminders too to get some splashy adjectives or a personal motto for yourself.
Cable news networks do it. CNN is “The Most Trusted Name in News”. The Supreme Court rejects health care mandate. Opps! Fox News is “Fair and Balanced.” Opps! And regular people who make wild-ass stock predictions do it. Top analyst, market pro. Another recent YPF headline read, “Goldman’s ‘Rock Star’ Gives His Market Outlook”.
Maybe I should follow suit. The examples illustrate an essential element of moniker or motto making. They don’t have to be true. Repeat them enough and create a hypnotic effect. So aim really, really high.
I’m thinking something like “Ron Byrnes, rock star blogger, friend of small animals, a tribute to humanity.” On second thought, it’s probably unwise to alienate large animals. A work in progress.
No doubt, that right there, “a work in progress,” is what my wonderful wife of 25 years (this week) would recommend for my personal motto.
I Predict
One year ago, I predicted the Seattle Mariners were going to win the World Series. Finishing the regular season at 61-101, they just missed the playoffs. Their anemic offense set records for futility. I am the original April Fool.
A few weeks ago I predicted the Belmont Bruins were going to win a few NCAA tournament games and go farther than Arizona. Wrong and wrong.
I will not be swayed. I predict I’m going to see the sun next week when I’m living large in . . . wait for it. . . Palm Springs, California. Look for me. I’ll be the dude by the pool with a hoodie over my headphones. This is what I’ll be rocking.
I also predict Butler over KY which means you should bet on UConn or VCU (where I interviewed for a job back in the day). Shaka did too much press this week. Wasn’t smart. Beware the bright lights.
In other news, we learned this week that the President has been lurking on Pressing Pause. Wednesday’s headline read, “Obama calls for U.S. to cut oil imports by a third by 2025“. Of course any goal that exceeds a politicians term by a year, let alone nine or thirteen, is disingenuous. In 2025, Obama will be playing golf on a daily basis. I call bullshit on any politician whose promises exceed his or her term.
Every once in a while you write a post that starts out nice and focused, say on failed predictions, and then goes off the rails, and we all know what happens when a train jumps the rails.
Fitness update. See, total nonsequitur. Jumping the rails never ends well. March was very solid. In terms of Tour de France prep, I’m slightly ahead of schedule. Lighter than normal teaching schedule, injury free, no excuses. Swam 2x/week, 29,400m; cycled about 4 hours a week, 349 miles, all but 76 indoors on the M3; and ran 4x/week, 148 miles. And I’m turning into a pushup planking machine. Highlight of the month (or year, or decade, or my athletic life), when Marley spotted me too big of a lead up our hill and I held him off for the driveway victory. Lowlight, doing backstroke right on the lane line during a busy day at the pool and first brushing an unknown woman’s breast, then her hip, and then her thigh in the lane next to me. I was not arrested and I have not seen my picture in the lobby. Wonder what the statue of limitations is on something like that?
What races or events are on the schedule? Apart from waiting on the RAMROD lottery, strangely, none at present.
As soon at Butler cuts down the nets, the obvious question isn’t what to do in Libya, but who is going to win the first major golf tournament of the year at Augusta National? Tiger, Phil, Watney, Kuchar, Westwood, Double E, Kaymer, Couples, Matteo Manasserro? I’m going to go with Watney, which means he’ll be lucky to make the cut.
For tolerating this stream of consciousness, I give you Cori Schumacher, who because she’s not for sale, is the Pressing Pause Person of the Week. Link here.
As always, thanks for reading. Have a great weekend and “see” you next week.
Left to right, The Winner and the LOSER
Pressing Pause 