Sorry I’ve been away so long
It’s been quite a while since I posted here. Darn it! So much has happened that I couldn’t keep up with it all. I keep getting lost in the news and lost all my time to write. But I will try to get better.
The whole war thing
I get the impression that our current president is getting bored with the war. He just doesn’t talk about it that much. For a while there he was getting excited over targets and attacks and stuff, but now he’s just sort of in a wait and see mode. He is trying to use economic sanctions to drive Iran’s economy even lower than it is right now. I don’t think that the leaders in Iran care about the economy. I get the impression that the conditions of their citizens just don’t play into their goals. To be honest though, I don’t think our leaders do either. No one except us little people seem to be concerned about affordability and the price of food and gas.
Oh, yeah, the president is going to bring in a bunch of beef from some other country (they don’t say who it is) and not apply tariffs as long as they charge 25% less than the current rate. The beef farmers are all up in arms about it, and I don’t blame them. This just doesn’t seem like the right move since it is undercutting our farmers who are already struggling with expenses to produce beef and the lack of cows on their ranches. Besides that, some of the beef coming from other countries could be tainted with something bad. Fortunately, I don’t eat a lot of beef, but I do like a burger now and then.
A.I. and the struggles in the market.
It seems like a bunch of crazy things have been happening with the AI centered stocks. In fact, I got tired of the stress of watching some of them and ended up selling them. Yup, I sold some stocks. One of the big ones I got rid of was Micron. It would go up to 1300 dollars one day and then drop to 600 dollars the next, then go back up and then back down. It was daily, and that got to me too much for me. I waited till it got up over 1100 and sold. It dropped right after and has been down in the 800s and 900s ever since.
I got the impression that someone was just playing with the stock and it was making me crazy so I just dumped out of it. I only had one share anyway. That was all I could afford when it cost 398.00 when I bought it.
Changing my direction
I’ve been talking about changing my balance of stocks and just have been afraid to actually go through with the plan. I admit, I am a nervous nelly and overthink these things. But I am shifting to a more dividend investment style and this was one part of it. I also sold my SMCI and Sofi stock. I just bought them at a bad time. I still believe in them as a company, but when I made the purchase, I was a bit naive. They were way too high, and the same with FMC. They are never going to get back to what they were when I bought them. I also sold what I had of Meta, which was only about a third of a share. All of these were just going nowhere and bouncing around.
I still have some of my tech stocks though. I was really very heavy in them and it needed to be cleaned out. I have been looking through my list and trying to figure out which ones I am just emotionally attached to and which I own because I believe that they are good companies. With the money from the sales of the stocks, I bought some mREIT stocks to just bump up my dividend percentage rates. But I am also trying to come up with some better plans.
I still have AMD, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Intel, and Palantir. I just wish the tech stocks hadn’t gotten so volatile. Watching them go up and down so much at a time was just too much for my stomach. I have more plans to improve my situation but I am not going to move to fast. That’s just not my way.
Political Tension
It’s been crazy with the president doing things that just seem like he’s only in that position to line his pockets. It’ bothers me to a certain degree. Not that I can do anything about it but it seems like an unfair advantage. I have to admit it though, I expected nothing less from him. I read his book. I kind of knew what type of person he was. But all that is out of my control, so I just do the best that I can. He seems to be stirring the pot in a lot of directions, probably because he is distracting us from the Epstein Files and I think he’s afraid that he will lose control over all his people soon. He might even be out of a job, and I think that scares him.
Did you hear that he found another way to get his name back on the Kennedy Center? How about all that money he spent on the reflecting pool which is still in bad shape. I heard that they repainted it again and it’s started peeling away already. What about his ballroom? Yeah, that went from a place to hold events to a bunker, probably because he is afraid that the Iranians will be going after him. He also has a bunch of comments about Natalie who is his assistant that prints out only document that say nice things about him. I guess she also does a lot of his posts, and some speculate that there is more there than just being a good assistant. She does seem to be a googlyeyed fan, but it worries me that she seems to also be advising him on how to run the country.
Seems that a lot of people are bailing on him as well. But the guy that went after him so hard for the payment to a porn star is suddenly a best buddy again. Probably paid off. Or promised to be paid off. I don’t think our president actually pays anybody. He is known to cheat anyone he can, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this goes south again.
And lately there is that Canada Trade War, which is just starting. Although we have instituted tariffs on their products coming into our country from Canada, they are threatening to do tariffs in their country starting in September. I don’t blame them really. It seems like our president is just trying to get every other country in the world to hate us.
I used to be proud of the United States and being a citizen here, but now I’m just embarrassed. I don’t know if we can ever get the respect back. I know I don’t want to be the next president. It’s going to be a very rough position.
