I thought it might be interesting, for the length of a book, to consider the ordinary things in life, to notice them for once and treat as if they were important, too. Looking around my house, I was startled and a little appalled to realize how little I knew about the domestic world around me. Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, playing idly with the salt and pepper shakers, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea why, out of all the spices in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to those two. Why not pepper and cardamom, say, or salt and cinnamon? And why do forks have four tines and not three or five? There must be reasons for these things?" [From a part of the Introduction to Bill Bryson's book "AT HOME"]
And there must be a reason why Padma sent me the above photo after having had lunch in the Bay with another Indonesian friend? Afterwards, she introduce her friend to the joys of op-shopping at Vinnies where she also found Bill Bryson's book "At Home", which she photographed and WhatsApp-ed to me with the message "???", to which I replied, "YES!!!".
I had already bought a paperback edition of the book just after it had rolled of the presses, and even lashed out on its audiobook to help me combat my incessant insomnia, but I'm not one to refuse a hardcover (albeit without dustjacket), if it is offered to me for as little as $2.
Those two dollars are a better investment than the $22,000 I just paid for 10,000 shares in Pilbara Minerals, an up-and-coming lithium miner which I had recommended to a grass-cutting friend up the lane many weeks ago. He prompted made several thousand dollars in profit and has since abandoned his grass-cutting business. I mean, why sit on a noisy ride-on mower for hours and hours when you can earn multiples of the same income by simply clicking the Commsec website's SELL-button?
I have never been a trader, and even less one of those so-called day traders. Instead, I steadily invested in shares that pay fully-franked dividends, and today's foray into speculative shares proved the point because almost as soon as I had paid $2.15 for each of my Pilbara Minerals shares, they dropped to $2.07. Mind you, they come with 12 STRONG BUY recommendations, so I may hold on to them for a while.
On the bright side, my favourite shares, BHP, made a reasonable come-back in recent weeks, and yesterday, despite the announcement of a 26% drop in profits, rallied 65 cents, before closing at $42.12 for the day. That must've been a little too optimistic, because this morning they opened 73 cents down, and then skidded another 49 cents. They've since settled around $41.66, or 46 cents down on yesterday's closing.
Following the sharemarket is not so much about economics and the state of the world as about your own emotional responses as you see your portfolio nosedive by ten or twenty or more percent, and then recover just as quickly. It's fear and greed, and fear and greed again.
Which is why reading is a much better investment, as knowledge never loses its value, and while you are accumulating it, you enjoy yourself.
BHP closed the day at $41.75 which is better than I'd expected, as it is "only" 37 cents down - see above chart. This is the sort of chart those "cowboys" use in their daytrading seminars: "Buy at $40.80", they say, pointing to the left of the chart, "and sell at $42.05", pointing to the centre-left of the chart, conveniently forgetting that their "advice" is based on hindsight. There is no crystal ball for the sharemarket, but if those "cowboys" really knew that much about the market, why do they sell their "knowledge" in exchange for a few hundred dollars' admission to their seminars, instead of acting on it themselves? They're the best example of the old adage "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
