Michael R. Hicks's Blog, page 4

Reading of In Her Name: First Contact, Chapter Two, Part One

This episode starts off the second chapter of . I made a bit of a change that I hope won’t cause any consternation (if it does, or you have any other feedback or just want to say hi, let me know, lol!), but I decided to just try and get at least some reading done every night so I can try to get an episode posted every day or two. So, some of them, like this one, won’t be the entire chapter and won’t run as long. Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know! Reading a story out loud for any length of time is actually rather taxing – I’m not sure how professional narrators do it.

In any case, I hope you enjoy it and stay safe out there!

Find it on:

Apple PodcastsAnchor.fmSpotify

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Automatic Investment Management by Robert Lichello

Heads-up: some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you happen to buy something, Amazon gives me a little moolah.

[image error]Automatic Investment Mangement, or AIM, is an amazing concept once you get past the outrageous-sounding title of Robert Lichello’s book, How to Make $1,000,000 in the Stock Market Automatically. I’m not going to claim that I’ve made a million bucks (yet, but I’m working on it) by following the amazingly simple formula offered in this book, but after I started using AIM my portfolio started gaining rather than losing, so I’m going to claim that as a win. Just as important, I stopped having ulcers about what the market was doing!

After years of banging his head against the wall, Lichello came up with a simple math-based approach to investing that, using stocks with significant volatility, has the potential to generate huge returns over time with very minimal risk. There’s no gimmick and no gotchas to this system, and anyone can do it. Moreover, you don’t have to start out with a ton of money: you could take even $500 or $1,000 and put it to work without losing sleep.

I’ve been trading in the stock market for going on five years now, and I’ll wager that at one point or another I’ve tried virtually every “trading system” out there. Many of them will make you money if you have a cast-iron will and can steel yourself to the inevitable losses that almost all of these systems incur, in exchange for the less frequent large wins that, over time, will generally move you ahead.

Unfortunately, I simply don’t have that emotional fortitude. The market is driven by fear and greed, and despite my best efforts to stick to a given plan, fear eventually won out. I certainly won some decent trades, but I lost a fair bit more, and my net balance was in the red. I hadn’t lost my shirt, but enough to sting. Worse, I felt like I was caught in an endless cycle of frustration. But I also realized that, like it or not, the stock market is the best way to leverage your money and build wealth…IF you can find a system that works for you, and if you can stomach it.

So, despondent and beaten, I sat out for a while, with everything in cash on the side while the market did its thing, mostly rising. Then – I kid you not – I saw an ad or something (I can’t remember now exactly what it was) for this ridiculous sounding book in one of those spinning racks in a grocery store somewhere. “How to Make $1,000,000 in the Stock Market Automatically.” Yeah, right. What a preposterous title! What moron would fall for something like that?

I checked out of the store and headed home…only to be plagued by thoughts of that ridiculous book. Cursing myself for a fool, I started looking into it…and bought the Kindle version of the damn thing from Amazon. If nothing else, I figured I’d probably wasted more money on worse things.

As it turns out, I think that’s probably the best money I’ve ever spent. The first part of the book is a recounting, told in a very engaging first person view by Lichello, of his trials and tribulations, which culminated in losing his shirt, along with millions of others, during the bear markets that hammered people in the 1970s, particularly in 1973, when the Dow lost over 45% of its value. More recently, those who saw their lives destroyed by the 2008 Financial Crisis can sympathize, with the Dow losing nearly 55% between October of 2007 and March 2009. And the times we’re in now – April 2020, as I write this – are uncertain, to say the least.

Getting to the meat of it – Lichello’s Automatic Investment Management (AIM) system – he describes both how he came to develop the system, and then steps you through it. It’s one of those things that, while perhaps not on the same level of genius as Albert Einstein’s E=MC^2, is nonetheless nearly as elegant, and likely will have a far greater direct impact on your life.

The mathematical system Lichello devised uses basic math that most fourth graders could easily grasp. I’m not going to go into all the details here, because while the system is simple, explaining how it works takes a fair bit of work. Suffice it to say that it’s a nearly ideal (although still imperfect) method to buy low and sell high, while preserving and protecting capital if the market plunges. AIM is also immune to the principle of many “systems” that work as long as only a few people do it, but when thousands are doing it, the system fails. AIM is entirely math based, telling you how much to buy or sell (or hold) at any given point for your stock value.

Just as one example, let’s take a look at the ups and downs of the 1970s to use as a reminder that the market isn’t ALWAYS in bull mode. I started the AIM machine with $10,000 in “stock” using the Dow, and $10,000 in cash, buying in at a non-optimal point (i.e., not at an ideal low), the close of March 1964, and ended it at roughly the same price in July 1982. Why those dates? Because a “buy and hold” investor would have made just about zero on his investment after 18 years. Ouch.

Now, I did “cheat” a little and instead of using the actual Dow figures, slid the decimal to the left two places (i.e., 900 would become 9.00), as AIM needs to have enough share liquidity to function properly in making buys and sells. But the percentages and where AIM would buy and sell would remain the same. This is, after all, just to illustrate how AIM works.

So, AIM goes in and, as you can see, buys on the way down (accumulation), and then sells on the way up (distribution):

Dow Jones Industrials in the 1970s

 

By comparison, an AIM investor would have increased the portfolio by 13% . Now, that doesn’t sound like much, but consider:

I ran this using the MOST conservative options for AIM, without any of the options that help maximize returns.This is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is hardly a lively chart – AIM thrives on volatility.The ending accumulation doesn’t take into account interest you would have been able to make – which probably would have been at least 5% APR at the time – on your cash holdings.The biggest drop in your portfolio from your starting amount of $20,000 would have been -10% – at the very bottom of the market in 1974! Your capital would have been protected while others were being wiped out.Your held shares would have increased by roughly 32%.

That last one is huge. Because the Dow then increased over 200% before the 1987 Crash. AIM would have been selling on the way up to save up cash, then would have again gobbled up a bunch of shares during the crash.

Anyway, don’t let the sluggardly performance of the Dow example above put you off: turn AIM loose on frisky stocks with lots of volatility, and it can churn out some serious money, and there are a variety of ways to tweak it to improve its performance that don’t require you to be Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius. I’ll probably do another post or two on more volatile examples to show some of AIM’s potential.

The most important thing, for me, at least, is that with AIM I don’t feel stressed all the time about what the market or my stocks are doing. I know it’s going to buy shares when prices go down enough, and sell shares to store up cash for future buys when prices rise. And there are various tweaks you can do to improve its performance — all while preserving your precious capital.

Again, I haven’t made a million bucks (yet), and I’ve lost a lot of time dithering and screwing around with it. That’s part of the reason why I’m writing this and future posts on investing: to hold myself accountable to sticking with the system, and to show others things to do and NOT to do on their investing journey.

Anyway, I highly recommend Lichello’s book on AIM – check it out on Amazon!

 

 

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Reading of In Her Name: First Contact, Chapter One

Welcome to my very first podcasting episode! As a very small part in helping folks get through the,COVID-19 pandemic, and after some requests from various folks, I decided to share an audio version of my with you, starting with the first book of the series,  (which is FREE as an ebook, by the way).

Now, keep in mind I’m NOT a professional narrator, okay? So this isn’t going to be as good as what you may get from audiobooks on Audible. But hey, it’s from the author, it’s from the heart, and it’s free during these troubled times. I hope you enjoy this one, and those yet to come!

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Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (Pacific War Trilogy): War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942

Heads-up: some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you happen to buy something, Amazon gives me a little moolah.

[image error]One of the things I decided to do while I had a bit of extra time during the COVID-19 Pandemic was to catch up on some history, in this case on the Pacific War during World War Two. There are a ton of books out there on the topic, of course, a number of which I read ages ago when I was younger, and I was looking for a fresh perspective. After poking around on Amazon and reading a lot of reviews, I settled on the Pacific War Trilogy by Ian W. Toll, and I haven’t been disappointed.

Toll gives a great account of the events leading up to the Pacific campaign in Pacific Crucible, and continues on in the second book, The Conquering Tide; the third book, Twilight of the Gods, has yet to be published, but I’ll be picking that one up when it comes out.

I’ve finished Pacific Crucible, and am about halfway through The Conquering Tide. While Toll’s books are more expensive than most regular Kindle fare (as I almost never by hard copy books anymore), if you’re interested in this topic they’re worth every penny. Toll is able to pull together not only the overall strategic picture from a variety of extremely well-researched viewpoints, but to also show the Pacific campaign through the eyes of both Allied and Japanese participants in the conflict. On top of that, he weaves in the important events on the home front of the various nations that I wasn’t even aware of from my previous readings.

The other thing about these books is that Toll’s writing is engaging and isn’t dry reading like many historical works tend to be.

So, if you’re interested in the war in the Pacific, I highly recommend you check out Ian W. Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy.

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Screw The Toilet Paper – Get A Bidet!

Heads-up: some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you happen to buy something, Amazon gives me a little moolah. 

A bidet. Yes, a bidet. While it’s a common gadget in much of the rest of the world, in the United States people tend to laugh at the idea, if they even know what one is. In case you don’t know, a bidet is a gizmo attached to the toilet (or a replacement for the toilet seat) that cleans your bottom with a spray of water that leaves your tush actually CLEAN instead of just smearing stuff around with toilet paper. As soon as the run on toilet paper started after the COVID-19 pandemic jumped to the fore, I found a basic bidet on Amazon and ordered it. My only regret is that we didn’t buy one ages ago. And we liked it so much we went all-in to buy a fancy one from Omigo (which really should be Omigod).

I would never have thought about doing a post on bidets, but they’re actually a lifesaver when everyone’s going nuts over toilet paper. On top of that, we cut down God knows how many trees every year, use up water and chemicals to process them into toilet paper, fuel to haul the rolls around, and then all that toilet paper becomes added waste to be disposed of. And as I mentioned above, you’re bottom does NOT get clean from wiping it with toilet paper. Don’t believe me? Try smearing some peanut butter on your arm and then wipe it “clean” with toilet paper. Then tell me you’re not going to wash your arm to actually get it clean (and licking it off is cheating). The same cleaning principle applies Down There.

[image error]When Toilet Paper madness set in, I just decided it was time to give a bidet a try. Seeing people in Costco and other stores, frantically buying a bazillion rolls of TP (when here I was worried about FOOD) made me realize that risking infection to go fight with other people to grab some Charmin just wasn’t on my bucket list. So, I ordered a Tibbers Home Bidet from Amazon. It’s very basic, and easy to install. You just pop off the toilet seat, put the bidet on the bowl, the seat back on top, replace the bolts, and tap into the water supply with the included hardware. Anybody can do it in maybe 10 minutes. Then we got some cheap plain wash cloths to use to dry with, and just toss them in the wash. No toilet paper. And your butt is CLEAN.

The downside to the Tibbers model was that it only has rear wash, which was fine for me, but women have different plumbing (obviously!) that requires a front wash option.

So, I started looking around, and almost all the bidet options on Amazon were sold out. So I started looking at other options, and after reading some reviews, settled on an Omigo Bidet. Now, I’ll say right up front that these are NOT CHEAP. Ridicule me if you like, but I rationalized the purchase this way: it’s something we use multiple times a day, every day, and I can say that I’ve probably paid more for things that I’ve used a lot less. If it makes you question my sanity any less, I also got a couple of portable bidets, both for the days when we can go camping again, and should the water supply ever become a problem. Looking at it from an international perspective (I’ll stop at nothing to rationalize this!), high-tech bidets are STANDARD in many places overseas. We’re the ones who are backwards. So there.

Anyway, like a lot of higher-end bidets, the Omigo(d) can do just about anything related to cleaning your tush. I may never get off the toilet again.

The thing does just about everything but carry us around in the apartment. I gave it a full spin, and…it worked as advertised. I just used the push-button “do everything” option, rather than futzing around with all the various settings. But it worked and worked well. I think the only thing it falls short in is “front drying” for women, based on a report from my wife.

But if it comes up short in your estimation, just return it within 90 days for a full refund (minus shipping). And they also have less fancy/expensive models to choose from.

So, get off the toilet paper bandwagon and get yourself a bidet!

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What’s The Word On New Books?

You may be wondering where I am in terms of writing new books. Folks, I’m sad to say that I’m still looking for my damn muse. I’ve tried repeatedly to jump-start my writing, but the brazen wench (my muse) is off in Tahiti or something and refuses to answer her phone. Copious infusions of wine and chocolate haven’t tempted her back, so I have no recourse but to remain in a holding pattern. Believe me, I haven’t stopped writing because I wanted to, but if I try to write without my muse, it’s going to be crap. And I’m not going to inflict that on myself (as I’ve always written first and foremost for myself) or you.

Red Legion, the tenth book of the , is (frustratingly) almost finished, and I completed the first three chapters of the second book of Vulcan’s Fury before my muse took off. Several other projects are in various stages of completion, ranging from scribbled outlines to multiple chapters. Grrr.

So, I’m just going to babble on here about the things that interest me, some of which may interest you, and hope that my muse returns at some point. I decided that the COVID-19 pandemic was a good opportunity to do a little reinvention, both of myself and the web site here, so that’s what I’m doing.

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well, and we’ll forge on from here!

P.S. If you haven’t yet read any of my books, you can check out what people have said in their reviews on Amazon…

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Getting Through The COVID-19 Pandemic

Everyone in the world is being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and I just wanted to say that I hope all of you are staying as safe as you possibly can and taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. I know that’s easy to wish and hard for so many of you to do. I’m thinking of our health care workers, first responders, employees at grocery stores and other critical service businesses, truckers, delivery people, postal workers, trash collectors, and so many more who MUST come in contact with others or things touched by others to do their jobs, and who often don’t have the proper equipment to protect themselves. If there is anything good to come out of this, I hope one of them will be to highlight just how important so many people in our society are, whom we otherwise take for granted.

For myself, I was probably less surprised than the average person about the coming of the pandemic, as my father worked for the better part of 40 years as a pathologist with extensive experience in epidemiology and virology. He, like many of his colleagues, have been warning us about this for years, and I took advantage of his expertise when I wrote Season Of The Harvest, which is a tale of a pandemic of an entirely different sort. Rather than look at how things might perhaps have been done better now, let me say that once we’re through this we should look to the future and be far better prepared, because this won’t be the last time Mother Nature unleashes her viral wrath upon us.

In the meantime, listen to the scientists like Dr. Fauci and the guidance of the CDC and WHO on how to best keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Help one another however you can, even if it’s just staying home and breaking the viral transmission chain to help relieve the pressure on our health care workers. If you can, help the millions of folks who are out of a job, who are running out of food, and help businesses (restaurants, in particular, come to mind, although there are many others) struggling to stay open as much as you can so they can remain in business and keep paying their employees. This pandemic is one of the greatest challenges this country has ever faced, and it falls to every single one of us to join hands – virtually, of course! – to try and beat it together.

For reference, here are some sources of information that I’ve found very helpful:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)World Health OrganizationAndy Slavitt on TwitterWorldometer COVID-19 StatisticsJohns Hopkins COVID-19 MapGlobal COVID-19 TestingIHME COVID-19 ProjectionsNextstrain SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Mapping

And for practical matters like food delivery, our Costco delivers through Instacart (I don’t know if all of them do), and I know some grocery stores deliver or have curbside pickup, as well. We’ve also had good success with Quick Quisine here in Hawaii for delivery from local restaurants, and of course there’s also Grub Hub and Uber Eats.

Again, stay home, stay safe, practice good hygiene, and STAY AWAY FROM PEOPLE as much as you can!

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I’m Still Alive – LOLOL

Yes, I’m still alive, believe it or not. I just wanted to share that my muse paid me a visit this morning and I cranked out 1,500 new words on RED LEGION. So, that’s roughly half a chapter, and I’m going to see if I can finish the chapter  tomorrow. There should only be one …

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RED LEGION: Chapter 20 (Draft)

This is a draft of Chapter 20 of IN HER NAME: RED LEGION. If you have any feedback on it, feel free to leave a comment(s). Enjoy!! – MRH The platoon leaders and sergeants gathered around Ortiz and Stalin after their return from the battalion briefing. Reza was there, too, at Ortiz’s order. They occupied …

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Introducing Sunsets and Sangria on Youtube

As you may (or may not!) know, my wife, Jan, and I are gypsies at heart and love traveling. Now that retirement isn’t too ridiculously far away, we decided it was time to start sharing more about our travel experiences. Well, actually, I wish we had started this a long time ago, because we’ve had … Continue reading Introducing Sunsets and Sangria on Youtube →