Holyagnostic

Growing Money (part two)

There are many ways to grow money. Timing the market is one of them. But that strategy's champions have batting averages that are so low that timing doesn't make the cut on Holyagnostic's team.

His "more excellent way" is by no means anything more than A way to make a money garden grow. It is not THE way. His way has some powerful research and statistical evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness, but Holy reveals here for the very first time the primary reason for his choice of this method. Holyagnostic is lazy.

When Holy started reading Scott Burns in the Dallas Morning News and saw the phrase Couch Potato Portfolio, it was a Damascus Road experience. It was a way to use only two Vanguard mutual funds with an occasional re-balance of the percentages in each to consistently outperform over 80% of the thousands of managed funds in the universe. Burns added a third fund and called it the Tequila Portfolio.

Evolution of the concept can be found in a proliferation of what MarketWatch.com calls Lazy Portfolio's.

Google and digest all of that and Holyagnostic will reveal his variation of the theme in the next post.

Growing Money

For twenty five years Holyagnostic was professionally in the money growing business. He began with Presbyterian Ministers' Fund, a company that at the time was the oldest life insurance company in America (1711). Benjamin Franklin did their printing. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were clients. The Harvest Fund was their one and only mutual fund. The company worked exclusively with ministers and only hired reps who were ministers as well.

After seven years, Holy formed his own company, Minister's Financial Services, in order to expand the investment options for his ministerial clients.

The last seven of the twenty five years were spent as a National Manager of an estate planning company and Financial Consultant with Merrill Lynch Private Client Group.

The one constant throughout the career was that most of the folk for whom it was Holy's job to grow money were ministers. And he was very comfortable in that world. Being a preacher's kid and spending twelve years getting the finest education that Texas Baptists could provide while pastoring or serving in other church staff positions created a confluence of experience that enhanced his ability to work in an ecclesiastical world in a secular capacity.

With that kind of background and training Holy's ears perked up when reading a minister's blog in July of 2010 that contained the announcement that the Rev. was getting completely out of the stock market. One year later another minister blogger reported that he was doing exactly the same thing.

Holy has tremendous respect for both of these pastors. They have both taken on Baptist establishments, one with what we used to call the Foreign Mission Board and the other with what was known as the Baptist General Convention of Texas. They both confronted and challenged intrenched bureaucracies without losing integrity or making fools of themselves. Their endeavors, examples, and styles have made them heroes in Holy's eyes.

But investment gurus they are not. Holy expressed his disagreement in the comment section of their blogs. One has cut off comments which removed Holy's response and the other deleted his post Hopefully, neither removals were done in response to Holy, but the action took from the net Holy's brilliant :) rebuttal of their investment decisions.

Let's analyze the decisions and recreate Holy's advice.

Both decisions were made on the basis of fear. In investing, that emotion is as poisonous as its polar opposite, greed. At the beginning of July in 2010 the market had been in correction mode for a bit. That is the professional's euphemism for the fact that the market was down. The first investor didn't want to lose anymore. He was going to bonds instead of stocks. The second investor in July 2011 had some profit, but was reading headlines that sounded ominous. He too was afraid of loss, but was not specific where he was going to park his stock exit money.

Both decisions are an attempt to time the market. The most exceptional professionals cannot do this well. While there is a bell that rings on the New York Stock exchange at the beginning and close of each day's trading, there is no such signal at the top and bottom of the market's cycles. And one has to make two correct decisions--when to get out (the one already made by our minister investors) and when to get back into the fray. Then they must continue to make their moves again and again and again...

After a year we now have performance numbers that enable us to evaluate whether the decision to exit at the end of June 2010 was a good one. Almost to the day he posted his blog, the market (as measured by the Wilshire 5000 index) was reaching its LOW for the year and over the next 12 months would blast upward by 26.6%. The only way we can completely gauge his timing prowess is to know if he got back in at some point during that year, but the fact that he has already blown the first decision, does not bode well for his abilities to make the second decision with any success.

Our second minister wrote of his exit around July 6 and the market is up 2.3% since, an annual pace of 68%. The numbers do not look good for him either. But it is early. He too will have to make the 2nd timing decision in the future.

As the Apostle Paul liked to say, "There is a more excellent way."

To be continued...

CAPITALISM FOR THE RAPTURE

With the rapture headed our way tomorrow, Holy is wishing that he had opened a new business. For a non-refundable fee (does $1000 sound like a nice round number?), Holy will agree to pick up your pets and arrange for their care during the great tribulation.

Seven Hundred Words

View of the room used by Earnest Hemingway to write in Key West, Florida.

In February, Holyagnostic and She Who Must Be Obeyed decided to hop in the Silver Bullet and point it toward the South until the thermometer that measured the outside temperature registered at least seventy degrees.

They made no specific plans other than a goal for the amount spent each day, a rough route that eventually would bring them to Key West, Florida. The meager preparation made every day a new adventure with an abundance of choices. Tallahassee, Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater, Naples, Bocca Raton, Key West, Miami, and Lake City were the stops. They then took short excursions from their base camps in each location.

Key West provided the temperatures for which their quest had begun. And just off Duval street, Holy encountered the ghost of Earnest Hemingway and the guilt trip began.

Holy writes something almost every day. A personal journal with a 36 year history and scores of books are filled with the minutiae about what he experiences, thinks, feels, and has opinions.

Holy also has an Algonquin Round Table that cusses and discusses the goings on in the world. You are invited to join. Test your ideas and thoughts with some really sharp people who remain as anonymous as they want to be. We go by avatar names Check us out by clicking here. At one time a strip search was a requirement to make sure that potential joiners are not planning to become spammers. The test is not that strict these days.

Facebook is another place where Holy exercises some additional scribbling, but he admits that it is a medium that he really doesn't like. He is not wanting to play with farm animals or grow crops. He isn't really interested in the pictures that you took of your drunk boyfriend. Triviality rules the day. Is it because Holy has the wrong friends?

OK, there have been some reintroductions to some people from long lost years in the past. Those years were populated by these old friends as we explored the world which was mostly concerned with the monumental struggle of coming of age. Those contacts with distant people from what now seems to be another planet,have been good. It gives a look at the trajectory of our lives

In addition, most days usually include some comments at blog sites and in response to an occasional newspaper or magazine story.

The Holyagnostic blog is reserved for the times when an experience, thought, opinion, or feeling is worth exploring in longer form depth. It is the most difficult of the writing that Holy does. In all of the other places the flow of words are mostly "stream of consciousness", off the cuff, quickly thrown out for consumption. But here he gives careful consideration to the crafting of the sentences and the flow of the ideas. Even the sound and cadence become important. Holy reads the content out loud in order to attempt to duplicate the voice that will be heard in the reader's head. In other words, it's hard work.

And here came Hemingway out of the mist of time to lay the guilt trip. The guide at the writer's home in Key West was giving Holy and SWMBO the spiel. They were standing with a group of about fifteen others.

"He would leave the main house in the morning and go to the room he reserved for writing. The 'office' was located in an adjacent building on the second floor. He had a walkway built so that he wouldn't have to climb the stairs."

Then this one who had memorized this sum of brief details about Hemmingway said it, "He wrote 700 words a day and then went to Sloppy Joe's, a bar that was then located a few blocks north, to drink, talk, and sometimes gather a group to go fishing or boxing."

"Seven hundred words a day," said the guide.

Holy thought, "That's all?"

From the question came this post. How hard could it be to write such a small amount every day?

Earnest Hemingway's experience in posting as a war correspondent, demanded short concise editing for the stories transferred by telegraph. Those stories needed to be about 700 words. The habit continued into his novels.

There. It's done. Seven hundred words, by golly. And it only took four and a half weeks! Holy is off to Sloppy Joe's. He knows this is the way to his own Old Man and the Sea.

The Peanut Man Chapter Nine

Xavier Banbridge, who got his nickname, The Peanut Man, from selling bags of peanuts on the streets of downtown Birmingham was now a wealthy man. He was treating Holyagnostic to a meal at the Summit Club overlooking the city where he and his wheelchair had become a local tradition.

"It changed my life," were his words to Holy as he pushed a baseball scorecard from the year 1957 across the linen tablecloth to Holy.

Holyagnostic examined the pencil marks that described all of the transactions on the field from that day that was now decades in the past.

"Turn it over", said Xavier.

Holy flipped the card over and there in one of the blank sections on the front were a series of numbers:

1000
2000
4000
8000
16000
32000
64000
128000
256000
512000
1024000

"If one had $1000 and could double it only 10 times, he could become a millionaire," Daddy B. had told him.

Think about it. Ten doubles.

"How many doubles do you have left?" the Peanut Man asked Holyagnostic.

To be continued...

The Technology Hour Part II

Holyagnostic was stunned today when a phone call was made to another one of those HUGE banking institutions. The toll free number was answered on the third ring by a REAL person who was located in the United States and spoke easily understood English. There was not a computer digitalized voice anywhere to be found.

The call was generated by the need to have info that is usually given with a contact to their web site. That source was down for maintenance. Holy, with the residual fear and trepidation remaining from his earlier wrestling with a telephone tree that originated from at least the fourth ring of Dante's Inferno, dialed the number found on the back of his credit card.

Diane's greeting included her wish that the bank's card was the one that Holy would prefer to use whenever there was a choice. When Holy mentioned that he was calling because the web site was down, Diane added "reward points" to his account because of the inability to provide the web service to him. She quickly provided the information Holy wanted and took the action that he needed to be made.

All of this comes from a company that gives Holyagnostic an interest free loan for a month and the convenience of never having to carry cash. Holy almost asked Diane to marry him.

The Technology Hour

There have been some wonderful additions to Holyagnostic's hacienda over the last few months. One of them was a new roof. The process for THAT addition has been a nightmare. Contractors, insurance company, mortgage holders, schedule juggling, vacation delaying, and herds of people who said they would do something and didn't are a few of the things that have peopled and propelled the last six months. It is not over yet.

One of the largest names in the banking business "services" Holy's mortgage. Last Friday, he had a fight with the tar baby that is their phone contact system. An innocent looking toll free telephone number in small print on the payment coupon opened the door of the rabbit hole into which Holy fell and wallowed for a solid hour. The reason for the call was to find out how to get an endorsement from them on the insurance check.

Here is a shorthand diagram of the events of an hour in telephone torture Hades.

Dial #, connection made with a computer voice offer to talk in Spanish.

Request for account #.

Account # keyed into system.

System got the account # wrong.

Spoke the account #.

Computer could not "read" voice to get the account #.

Began again

Punched "0" several times and said, "Holy wants to speak to person!"

Kelly becomes the first real live person to arrive on the line.

A couple of password questions to confirm Holy is the one talking to Kelly.

Transfer to Insurance Claims Department.

Got voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--

Another voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--

Another voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--THE VERY FIRST TELEPHONE NUMBER IN THE SEQUENCE! Talk about vicious circle!

Began again.

Connected to computer voice that proceeded to read the entire coverage of Holy's homeowner insurance policy.

Began again.

Got a person, Christie, who transferred Holy to the "correct" department.

Tomica comes on the line. She cannot hear Holy's responses. "I will stay on the line for two minutes as required when there is no response," she said as Holy yelled on the other end of the line.

Began again.

Computer voice, "Can't complete number as dialed." Holy's fingers were getting fatter while his blood pressure was getting higher.

Began again.

Finally got Summer on the line who promised Holy that she would not disconnect until there was a "live" person on the line in the correct department for providing the information desired.

At last, Rachel was on the line with instructions on how she would contact inspectors for my roof. Holy would need to sign a couple of affidavits and place them along with the insurance check to another wonderful organization of competence, the Postal Service.

When the bank gets all of that, Rachel said that the bank would endorse the check and return it immediately to Holy.

Wanna bet?

Artography Chapter One

Holyagnostic and She Who Must Be Obeyed shot their last wedding on Saturday last. At 5:30PM on September 5th, the couple completed a ten year business plan.

In the beginning the idea was to photograph karate school students. The last wedding included a groom who was opening a karate school in Denver, Colorado. The first church wedding was shot in the middle of an electrical blackout by the light of kerosene lanterns. The final celebration of nuptials was held in a light deprived home in one of the ritziest sections of The Ham. Holy and SWMBO reveled in the irony.

This is the story about what happened in between.

Labor Day

Holy has learned from life and religion the importance of ritual.

Every LABOR day, he and his family gather to celebrate by Bar B Qin' a three toed SLOTH.

Recipe proviso: Remember, the ONLY cooking method for this creature is Bar B Qin'. Too many cooks boil the sloth.

Just reportin'

Headline of the Day

This is some information that...oh, look! A lizard!

"How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus"--headline, LifeHacker.com, July 27

Just reportin'