What a 2022 it's been for me financially- after starting the year's blog entries with "ER Nurses," my portfolio needs medical attention at an ER due to about the umpteenth nosedive this year just days before Christmas- this is one of those "coals in your stockings" years for stocks. After numerous false bottoms where the market had a prolonged slump but bounced back just enough for me to feel complacent again and hold on to my tech stocks (at least I didn't own crypto I guess!) it plunged even further down in a slow spiral of hell to me FINALLY throwing in the towel on trying to time a bottom and adopting the gloomy outlook for 2023 that the inflation and high interest rate environment dictates. It sucks but I have to put my money in a wait for it.......savings account.
Turns out, possibly one of the only silver linings of rising interest rates is that the individual investor can also capitalize on the higher interest rates by getting some nominal interest in savings accounts, like not 0.1% anymore......now some banks are offering 3.5%, 3.75%, 4%, etc (mirroring the federal interest rate, except, a little less of course because banks need to make money!) Getting a small interest of +3.5% to 4% is better than say, oh, I don't know, a NEGATIVE 50% return from Amazon shares this year (and not necessarily an improving outlook in 2003, although I guess it's harder to drop too much farther from here) so allocation to a savings account it is. For 2023, instead of most people's promises to lose some weight, my resolution is to stop being overweight.......in tech stocks. Damn them.
Winter is just a bad season for people with dry skin, like me. Itchy everywhere, lotion required, static everywhere I touch, essentially death from a thousand cuts. But I can't complain; I could be in Chicago where they're gearing up for winter by "hoping for the best, preparing for the usual" (a co-worker on a call with a dry sense of humor said this about the looming winter snowstorms hitting the city delaying or cancelling many flights on possibly the worst weekend to have those issues- Christmas weekend). Or I could be in Antarctica right now....everyone imagines what Antarctica or Alaska is like in the summer to do a fun trip, but what about winter? Brrrr. I'm reading a history of the coldest continent and some strange stuff, like a plastic bust/statue of Vladimir Lenin at the Pole of Inaccessibility (constructed as part of the Cold War dick-measuring contest between US and Russia), Primus stoves used by explorers to heat stuff up easily, sealing clubs made of penis bone of a seal or walrus (yes apparently walruses have penises and they are hard enough to create a club out of it, including ones with scrimshaw on it), and a King Sejong Island on King George Island that has hydroponic (meaning growing things without soil) fruits and vegetables (hard to grow those things on Antactica, I guess). Also, King Sejong has got to be the most famous name used by Koreans for things around the world......I once knew a co-worker named Sejong, he was very proud of his name. Also, they used pee flags to mark territory in Antarctica. Yup, a pee flag is exactly what it sounds like: plant a flag and have some yellow snow around it.
And finally, Antarctica is becoming a popular spot for weddings. Actually, now that I'm interested in all things Antarctica, I wouldn't mind going to a destination in Antarctica. I'd just bring on a lot of lotion.
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