Tha Alpha Strategy, what it is, how it works

In similar economic times, the mid to late 1970's, a Economist, John Pugsley wrote "The Alpha Strategy", a book on economics and more importantly, how to protect the purchasing power of your hard earned monies through a reviewing of the role of the goods we use in our lives.

Pugsley's Alpha Strategy basically eschews investments in liquid assets in favor of banking on inflation growth outstripping returns on investments in typical consumables such as Dry Good foods, Home Cleaning Products, Personal Care Products.

A good example of the Alpha Strategy in practice is found in the common light bulb, the same Light Bulb is mandated to be replaced with mercury filled toxic light bulbs in 2012, currently a 4 pack of generic light bulbs costs 1 dollar + tax, currrently a single mercury light bulb costs 3.50 a piece.

The average American Family uses 24 light bulbs a year:

Incandescent Light Bulb Cost per year........6.00

Mercury Light Bulb Cost per year.....84 dollars

A 78 dollar difference per year, if a ten year supply is purchased via the Alpha Strategy, incandescent bulbs would cost 60 dollars, a mercury bulb 10 year supply would cost 840 dollars.

The Alpha Strategy would turn 60 dollars in cost today, into 780 dollars in cash over a ten year period..

Wheat prices have doubled, that will work it's way down into the price of familiy staples such as Rotini, when price checked, the average cost has increased 37 cents on a box of pasta, with three pasta based meals a week, or 1.11 per week in additional cost, over 52 weeks, a 50 dollar + savings can be realized by bargain shopping and stock piling a supply of pasta now, before the poor wheat harvest and additional energy costs raise prices even higher.

The Alpha Strategy is a Contrarian one, instead of trying to increase the yield from an investment, it seeks to attack Future Costs by using today's dollars to cheat inflation down the road.

The additional benefits are that your Savings is Tax Free, and having a larger then average Larder (The Average Family has about two weeks of food stored) will help to protect one's loved ones in the event of a social disruption.

The Alpha Strategy is quite old, thousands of years old in fact, it comes from a time when there was no money per se, there were however goods such as shoes or swords or food herds that wealth was based on, Desert Dwellers have practiced this for a very long time.

Winter is ending, the sun is warm is again, my illness has passed, this year I feel renewed as the plants that surround me.

Ahh so far, so good the joys on contrarianism

In today's rush to be "different" it seems to me that people forget that there is a time fro change for that difference to be actual, and not merely complaining.

For example, the stock market has been said to be in crash mode for at least 2 yrs now, fine, it is over valued, well now it is readjusting it's values thanks to an inevitable bursting bubble.

For contrarian investors, this is not a time for "I told you so" it is a time to start stalking bargains, stocks that perform, pay dividends and show long term value.

For me, there is one more criteria, they must have DRIP DIP plans available, meaning that I can directly invest, and reinvest dividend income in the purchase of more shares automatically.

This also means decisions must be made about sellling Gold or Silver to buy those shares, both have had huge increases in valuation , and like the stock market, a correction is inevitable, those are the decisions that Contrarians make, and let others chase the money by going with the herd.

Opportunity?

With the survival of my favorite Christian Forum, the crisis has passed...sort of.

I have found that if something is marked for closing, then eventually it will be closed sooner or later, terrible, but that is the way it is.

So another forum has recently been put up for sale, and "IF" things can be worked out (Lord willing) then I will be able to purchase a piece of that forum and start a Christian sub forum on it.

I've made the offer, all that can be done is waiting for an answer.

Alas, the parting of old friends

One of my favorite places on the 'Net has closed down, IMO because of budget and bandwith concerns, to borrow from a book:

One door closes, another opens

That's life.

So if any of my fellow exiles from Knifeforums stops in, welcome aboard.

Today the similarity of Christ's wilderness time and the Zen concept of "no mind" is on my mind.

Jesus spent time in the wilderness after his cousin John the Baptist was beheaded, no one really knows what he did when he was on his solourn, but it would not be unreasonable to consider that he was emptying himself, to allow God to fill him with His will.

The Zen concept of Zazen, of clearing your mind of troubles or even thoughts would seem to me to fit nicely into what Christ taught by his actions.

So in that line of thought started waking at 5:45 am, to read the Scriptures and to perhaps excercise as well.

It's a nice time to catch up and prepare for the day, a page of Proverbs, meditated upon while lifting weights  or
practicing Fencing is rather nice actually.

Ahh, the joys of zip drives

So after my long absence, I've been playing aroudn with my Comapq Aero 4/25, I've finished with the Compaq and now I have been creating a book with it, a neat hobby to be sure.

The Compaq's tiny keyboard is a challenge to work with, I normally use a laptop with an external keyboard to type with, but the Aero's lack of a port for a keyboard means that I have to learn how to type all over again.

Cool!

The "problem" that I have run into is a catch 22 in that windows 95 makes using a zip drive a snap, the Aero's native Windows 3.1, doesn't support zip drives, you have to use DOS and I hate Dos, Dos is the geek's gate across the bridge of general computer usage.

So on it goes, type and save to a cough cough "floppy disk" then save that to a zip drive, then convert that to a Open Office doucment, then edit and then ......

The zen of old school Aero laptops

My addiction has flaired up again, this time it is directed at a ancient Compaq product.

The Compaq 4/25 Contura Aero, 4mb of titanic memory, 174mb Hard drive, no external mouse, only a track ball, pcmcia floppy, Bios that is flakier than a bowl of Tony the Tiger's product.

Ahh, web searches until all hours of the night, (the Aero Faq is a wonderful resource) finding the best price on a new battery (25 dollars on ebay) new memory runs in the 4mb 8mb and 16 mb flavors, with the 16mb requiring a Bios flash to get it to read all 16mb's of Ram.

A few lessons that I have learned

1. The Aero can handle a 8gb HD, with a Bios upgrade the Aero Faq mentions that the HD has to be less than 12.7mm, which in 1997 was a problem, now it is no big deal.
2. If your Aero has not been used for a long time, and you buy a new battery for it, start the computer first, then remove the hinged door plate and insert the battery to be charged, unlike a normal laptop that you put the battery in and start as normal, if you do not, you will be staring at a POST screen that will check your memory (4096) and you will go no further as the old cmos battery has just checked out on you (me)

3. The Cmos battery part number is 3v cr1220, it also is very cheap to purchase I paid .99 cents for mine.

4. HP/Compaq (God bless them) still maintains a download page of everything that you will need to get this twitchy but cool laptop up and running. From Rampaq's to flash the Bios to downloads to restore your hibernation partition.

5. Before formating and installing your OS, be certain to have your hibernation partition installed, it MUST be installed on a wiped HD, not a formatted one.

6. The pcmcia floppy is somewhat rare, ebay had some for 40 dollars or less, new they can go for 200, unless you like laplink, or winlink, buy one of these beasties.

7. Amazon.com had the best price on memory upgrades, at 6.00 for 4mb, new that is a 130 dollar chip.

The zen part is the usefulness of such things as keyboard short cuts, remembering those forgotten Dos commands, and smiling as you type at the thought that new these little guys went for 2,000, and now they are mere pennies.

Life is a fleeting thing, sometimes what we value highly are the most uselessly hindering things of all.