Blah, Blah, Blah January 28, 2011March 21, 2017 BZ It worked! By selling 10% of my BZ warrants Wednesday at $1.42, I drove the remaining 90% up to $1.76 yesterday (and sold a few more to keep it going). FZ-BZ I haven’t played this in – what? decades? – as I have not lately had occasion to try to prove I was sober. But in trying (and failing) to think of a clever subhead for “BZ,” above, the game formally known as “Fizz, Buzz, Schmeckle” somehow popped to mind. The rules are simple (and I have no doubt many of you already know them): 5, multiples of 5, and numbers with “5” in them, are FIZZ; 7, multiples of 7, and numbers with “7” in them – like “17” – are BUZZ; 9, multiples of 9, and numbers with “9” in them, are SCHMECKLE. Ready? And here you just launch right in. I say, “one.” You say, “two.” I say, “three.” You say, “four,” I say, “FIZZ” (if I were to accidentally say “five,” I would have lost the game). You say, “six.” I say, “BUZZ” (and giggle), you say, “eight” . . . and so on, as fast as possible, with excitement building as we near BUZZ-SCHMECKLE (because 27 is divisible by 9 and has a “7” in it) and – oh, boy! – “FIZZ-BUZZ” “SCHMECKLE” “BUZZ” (for 35, 36, 37) and we both grin goofily at passersby who take us for sophomores on spring break. WMT I’ve been high on Walmart for some time now, having seen it rise from $45.74 to last night’s $57.57* – a staggering internal rate of return, when you include the dividend, of about 7%. No home run . . . barely a single . . . but better than a savings account. “Don’t sell,” says Aristides’ Chris Brown: “Walmart trades at 13x forward earnings – versus 26x for the Russell 2000 – while sporting an A+ quality rating from S&P. It is the poster child of cheap, high quality stocks in a world that loves expensive, low quality ones. It’s boring; calls on it are still cheap; and its shares have recently been moving higher. Including the effect of options, WMT has become our second largest position.” ☞ As Chris grew his fund 26.8% net of fees last year, with a diversified, hedged value strategy, I am inclined to listen. *Fizz-buzz-fizz-buzz. EVERNOTE SCANSNAP AND EBOOKS Richard Factor: “You mentioned Evernote and the Fujitsu ScanSnap. Evernote sounds very useful, but the Sync process presumably means that everything you put in a ‘notebook’ is accessible to the company and, arguably, anyone who hacks their system. Sort of limits its usefulness to non-private data. Meanwhile, the Fujitsu ScanSnap deserves a blog of its own. I discovered that it can make e-books for the iPad and used it to preserve my ancient, crumbling copy of Forbidden Planet. Fortunately, my copy of The Invisible Bankers is still in good condition.” ☞ Oh, thank God. GEEK QUESTION So when I look at my list of new emails in Outlook, a three line preview follows the subject line. So I can see that so-and-so and has written me an email about such-and-such and it begins, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” OK? But then, sometimes – and I can’t see the pattern to when, but maybe 5% of the time (maybe only when the sender was sending from a Blackberry?) – I will open the email and the body of it is blank. Not even a single “blah.” I back up to the list of emails and see “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But I open it again, or forward it to myself, or try to trick it some other way, and – nope, still blank. I tried Googling this apparent bug, but found nothing. Can one of you amazing readers point me to the solution? I expect you to spend your entire weekend on this while you wait for the snow to melt so you can get your car out.