Day 762

I had another quarterly review with my financial adviser today. These periodic reviews have been pretty depressing for the past several years. I'm a conservative investor by nature, and for many years my portfolio had a solid foundation of municipal bonds, treasury bills, and very predictable equities. All that is out the window now. The interest rate on treasuries is near zero. Municipalities are defaulting on their debts. Even the best blue chips can drop ten percent in a day if somebody sneezes in Europe. What's a guy to do? We ended 2011 right where we started, even though there were innumerable ups and downs along the way. People like me don't make money in the market anymore. There are very few attractive options. Day traders make money. Day traders lose a lot of money too. That's why I'm not a big fan of short-term trades. It's all a big gamble now.

I finally got the Dalmatian Rescue website updated today. I found time to write another watch article as well. Since it was a holiday, there weren't as many messages from clients. There was a message from the Shop NBC folks though. It said to hurry up and finish the demo I promised them. I've been avoiding doing this demo because I know I don't have the time to do it right. It's going to be a one take wonder when the time comes. Apparently that time is coming very soon. I had to promise them something by tomorrow. What the hell. Tomorrow doesn't look like a very busy day. I'm definitely not an on-air talent, but most of the people on these shopping channel shows aren't either. I just need to remember that they were the one to ask me to be on the show. I certainly didn't ask them. My goal is just not to embarrass myself too badly.

Quarterly estimated taxes are due tomorrow. I need to remember to send mine in this time, especially since I completely forgot about the last quarter. Oh well. I'll catch up on things tomorrow. It's not like I owe the government a lot of money or anything. I just didn't make that much last year. Maybe this year will be better. It would be nice to make enough to offset the loses my financial adviser told me about today.

Shelby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day