Happy Tuesday all.
Just came back from the VA hospital with my booster/full dose shot of Maderna and a flu shot. even though I had two vaccine shots last year I went in to get a booster, only to find out due to the meds I am taking, they said I need a full shot, not a booster. I told them I don't care which one you give me, just give me one. And I got the flu shot as well. Maderna shot in left arm, flu shot in right arm. Still had to do the 15 minute wait period, but again, no ill effects. Arms don't even hurt.

Jim

 

LRCX made a little money today. Fat Diesel should be happy.

 

I can't complain. I actually would prefer it to freefall until the first week of next month. They give me some stock every year and I now know how much in dollars I'm getting. Those same dollars get me more shares early next month if it dives a little. Not a big deal either way most likely. The company is gaining backlog of orders, to the tune of 5 straight increasing quarters IIRC. We're only limited by our Supply Chain right now. The business climate is outstanding.

 

Sounds like the pandemic has not affected your company. That is good news.

Jim

 

Jim, you should buy some stock in Lam Research. The backorder is because of supply chain issues. Once they get their raw materials, and start shipping those orders out, the cash register will be ringing.

 

The pandemic actually helped Lam. There's been a big increase in the need for laptop computers, faster networks for online meetings, etc. Add to that the rollout of 5G networks (which takes approx 10 times the computing power as 4G), Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and massive increases in automotive chip demand- and you see why companies like mine are doing quite well.

Another good stock buy right now is ASML, which is also part of the chip making process. They have a literal monopoly on some of the lithography steps with 100% market share. It's about 25% off it's high. Of course, no guarantees with any stocks.

 

for me personally, there have been two things that the pandemic has helped me with. One was the series of stimulus checks which helped me pay down my credit cards, and two, is the extra $200 a month in food stamps. Without that, I would need to spend $200 of my own money on food. Now I get to make larger payments to my credit cards. Oh, and recently it has helped reduce my cable bill by $30 a month with a government assistance program. the original one help reduce the bill by $50, but that one expired, and the replacement only reduces it by $30. Still better than nothing.
Well, I spoke too soon about the effects of the Covid shot. Later last night the area around the shot started hurting, and today it is still hurting. Not much, but noticeable. Feels like it did when I got the first shot last year. The right arm is still fine, so no issues with the flu shot.

Jim

 

Happy Thursday Nor Cal. Our church is having its monthly food drive today, so I will be volunteering there from 9am-11am. Might even bring home some free food. It all depends on what they have, and how much is left over. Every month we get different items.

Jim

 

Alright Jim, what did you bring home from the church? Oftentimes, gourmet stuff gets donated. I've seen things flow through The Food Bank pantry, that I couldn't afford to buy. Or maybe that's just the case with the San Francisco Marin Food Bank program. Some wealthy corporation needed a tax write-off, so they donate inventory. I know that other volunteers and employees will take home groceries. I haven't done that yet. But then again, they aren't taking shelf stable goods. It's usually perishable items which will be compost. It's better that someone eats it.

I know several people who work in education, and they all say the same thing. Whenever there's leftover school lunch food, they eat it. If the school gets an apple for every kid, and not every kid eats an apple - there's at least an entire case of fruit leftover each week. A lot of the educators know which of their students are needy. And they try to encourage those students to take the extra food home. Especially the extra milk and produce. Apples, oranges, carrots, broccoli, corn dogs, tacos, pizza, meatballs, burgers.......perishables that would be spoiled by the time you spend the extra money for a truck and driver to pick it up, and then try to work it into the inventory of a food distribution program.

Along my travels, I've also found similar situations with institutional kitchens. Hospitals, nursing homes, jails..... even the old Presidio military base. The military chow hall had to have enough food for everyone on that base, and a reasonable overage in case people wanted to have a second serving. If inflation is so bad that groceries are too expensive, my diet will consist of leftover food from the county jail and the county hospital.

As they say, "buy the dip". Technology has been dipping. A lot of the tech stocks were selling at unrealistic prices. Stock prices at 50 times earnings? A lot of the tech stocks still have a bit more to dip.

 

This past food drive was different. We never know what we will get, so it is a surprise when we have gallons of milk to hand out, and one pound ground beef packages (the ones that look like exercise weights) We were putting 6 of those in a bag to hand out. We also had juices and celery. The milk went too fast, so I didn't get one of those, but I did come home with six pounds of hamburger meat, two stalks of celery, and four or five Chipotle homemade tortilla chips. The church allows the volunteers to take whatever they need home so I get whatever I can without being greedy. There were other things there I didn't get, like cans of pink salmon, and bags of potatoes. I would end up throwing most of the potatoes away because I wouldn't eat them fast enough, and I forgot about the salmon until it was too late and they were all gone.

Jim

 

I have about 10 pounds of potato that I have to french fry. And this year, for whatever reason, I have over a dozen potato plants growing in the yard.

 

I've been buying some Facebook stock lately (FB). It's P/E ratio is only about 15 right now, well below the S&P 500.

 

I don't want to buy anything at the moment. Another down day. And POTUS has everyone scared about an encroachment into Ukraine. But the good news is that avocado imports are resuming. So maybe I could buy the dip at Safeway.

 

Yay! Avocado prices will plummet! Which is good because I like avocadoes.

Jim

 

Apparently, a USDA inspector received a death threat.I can only imagine what the unreported backstory is. But the price of gas isn't going down.