Halloween & Me-ven

Here we are in the Season of the Witch, a time of year that since the early 20th century has been completely secularized but was actually a deadly serious religous observance throughout most of history. Now it’s a time for putting on cool costumes and partying. And we love this ritual we go through of doing horror movie marathons. Last night I published the list of 16 of my personal favorite horror movies of all time. But in modern times, I think the world has lost sight of why we party, why we wear all these weird costumes, why we carve up pumpkins and decorate our houses with all kinds of symbols of death, decay, and corruption, why we give out treats and why oh why we have this affinity for watching horror movies and scaring ourselves silly at this time of year. No, I doubt there are many people who know why we do and why we are. We just know it’s fun.

The world by and large has forgotten the origins of Halloween, probably the oldest of all holidays save Passover, older than Christmas. So tonight I am going to pay tribute to this wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) holiday that is so popular that it has long since become the biggest party night of the year, and talk about where it came from and how it personally affects me.

Mike's Picks for the Best Horror Films of All Time

This is a very long post, the longest I’ve ever made and probably ever will make as a single event. But Halloween is soon upon us and as a post about what I consider to be the best horror films of all time, it is timely and will no longer be relevant after this weekend. So I’ve been writing this all day determined to publish it tonight since I’ll be writing about the origins of Halloween tomorrow.

They’ve been running horror films on all the cable channels, as they always do, all month long. This used to bug the hell out of Dad. He hated horror films and he hated the fact that so many were on all October, couldn’t wait until Halloween so they would end. I felt pretty much the same way. I’ve never been a particular fan of horror movies, but I do like them when they’re good. But they do have to be really good.

Mike's Finance Primer: Ch. 3A - "Lust for Gold!"

Just kidding. This really isn’t part of my finance primer at all. Rather, it’s about this terrific film I saw on TCM the other night called "Lust for Gold." It was such a remarkable story that the actual events that the film was based on may be the subject of one of my future screenplays. This is a film that is screaming to be remade. This is a blockbuster in the making.

Mike's Finance Primer: Ch. 3 - The Technicians

In the last two postings, as an introduction to my experience at the Michael Price investing seminar earlier this month, I’ve talked about the two opposing types of investors, fundamentalists and technicians. The last posting was devoted to a discussion of fundamentalism, a school of finance that uses the strategy of "buy and hold" to analyse a company’s "fundamentals," then buy quality companies and hold on to them for long periods of time. Buy-and-hold assures reliable annual returns over a long period though there will certainly be many dips, sometimes significant dips, over short periods. And it’s not even necessary to understand fundamentalism to effectively use buy-and-hold. Just choose the quality companies that have already been selected by the Dow index. What could be simpler?

Today I will discuss the flip side of the coin - the technicians.

Mike's Primer on Finance (Chapter Two)

Last Wednesday's posting gave everyone a prelude of how I came to be in Bert Ward’s seminar on Michael Price’s investment strategy and FastTrack after a ten year association with the West Bloomfield chapter of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). But for any of what I’m about to discuss to make sense, a basic primer on finance is a necessary prerequisite for those of you who may have a very sparse grounding in investing. So what follows is Mike’s Five Minute course on an Introduction to Finance. And the Five Minute course really boils down to just one sentence: at its bare bones basics, investors fall into two major categories: fundamentalists and technicians.

Warren Buffett Is a Socialist!

For over ten years now, I have been a member of the West Bloomfield chapter of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), a group I began attending as a first step in exploring a career move I’ve been deliberating upon most of my life, that is transitioning from the business management side of industry (which is where I’ve made my career for 35 years) over to the portofolio management side.

George Goes Global!

Due to taxes and other pressing issues (but mostly taxes), I have been unable to publish a posting for a month now. I am especially anxious to give everyone a detailed report on this amazing seminar I took over two weekends on the very powerful investment strategies of Wall Street guru Michael Price. For immediate publication, my friend George in San Diego (also a fellow USC alum) has asked me to pass along to everyone that he will be the featured guest on the radio program "Live An Inspired Life" on this coming Saturday morning October 23rd.