Reset

Together with Rhone:

Reset:

The wife and I took a trip to Cabo for the week. This was our first vacation away from the kids in nearly 3 years. While we both love the kids more than anything, we just needed a little break to reset.

Also, since we were staying at this beautiful destination and resort I decided to take a week off of social media, specifically Twitter, so that I was more present and living in the moment. Highly recommend.

I never issued a public statement stating I was taking the week off from Twitter so it was kind of funny when I realized that at least 10 of my friends actually reached out to ask if everything was going okay.

When I responded why they asked if I was doing okay, the common response was “because you haven’t tweeted in few days”. While I definitely appreciate those who reached out, it sort of opened my eyes that maybe I’m spending too much time on the Twitter machine when people can tell that I haven’t tweeted in a few days. Granted the last few times I took a week off, it was due to deaths in the family.

Throughout the first few days on vacation I found myself involuntarily picking up my phone when there were dull moments. But as the week went on I found myself embracing these moments of doing absolutely nothing. Not scrolling. Not reading. Not watching TV. Just taking it all in.

Normalize doing nothing.

Covid protocol:

To travel to Mexico we were each required to take multiple Covid tests to ensure we weren’t bringing any disease to the resort. This is not currently a requirement or mandate issued by the federal government but seemed like a good idea to prevent a lot of sick people from traveling and spreading their sickness.

While we were in Mexico, one thing I had noticed was that they wear masks everywhere. It didn’t matter if they were inside or outside, every worker wore a mask. This could be a government or resort mandate but they seemed overly strict about it. I even saw a guy riding a bicycle on the side of the road wearing a mask when the heat index was easily over 100 degrees. I’m still in the camp that you don’t need to wear a mask outdoors if you are distancing yourself from others. This was rarely the case down in Mexico.

To travel back to the United States you need to provide further proof at the airport that you do not have Covid by taking a test within 72 hours of your flight that shows you are negative. While this is obviously not a foolproof method for preventing sick people from entering other countries and spreading the sickness, it undoubtedly helps quite a lot—assuming the tests and testing procedures were accurate.

This was probably the point of greatest stress for the vacationers because a positive test would require you to quarantine down in Mexico for another 10-14 days (who pays for this?). Thankfully we passed our Covid tests and were allowed to come back. I also intentially left my laptop at home so I would have been pretty screwed for returning to work if I had to quarantine. Oops.

For a brief moment a couple of days into our vacation, I forgot Covid existed.

It may sound odd but I think a lot of it had to do with being over saturated with Covid headlines on social media and in the news. Once I removed that stimuli, I found myself being much more carefree when walking around indoors or having conversations with others. Also, not to say that I live in a state of fear from Covid, but it’s just always seems to find it’s way into the back of my mind.

If you feel that Covid keeps dominating your conversations and thoughts, maybe it’s time to take your own little vacation away from the news and social media.

Excess:

The place we were staying at was gorgeous. From 7 to 10pm every night we were served free drinks and huge spreads of delicious local foods. It was all included in our trip so of course I went ballistic on all of it. Now I’m 10 pounds overweight.

Waking up the first morning I had a pretty significant hangover. Not enough to demobilize me for the morning round of golf but it was a noticeable hangover that lingered. However, that didn’t stop me from imbibing even more throughout the trip.

By the last night l just couldn’t get myself to drink or eat any more carbs. It was downright gluttonous to a point. We were just eating to eat and drinking to drink—not even hungry or thirsty. I don’t know how these Instagram travel influencers do it.

Overall the trip was a success. There were no major hiccups on the flights, the Covid tests or on anything else we had booked. We made a lot of new friends and enjoyed our time away from the rat race. We got the reset we needed and will continue spinning the hamster wheel early Monday morning.

Hopefully my boss didn’t see this.

Performance Update:

Now let’s see how the People’s Portfolio did this week…

The major indices took a dip for the second week in a row. September is seasonally one of the worst months for stocks. The S&P 500 closed under its 50 DMA for the first time in 3 months.

On Friday, we voted Target (TGT) to replace the SPDR Biotech ETF (XBI). Unfortunately, I was on my return flight from Mexico when the market was closed so I had to make the trade a few hours earlier than I wanted to. As it turns out XBI rallied nearly 2% after I sold it (rigged). We still took a small loss on the name.

Our portfolio is turning pretty heavy towards the consumer as we now own Shopify, Amazon, and Target. Here’s a quick snapshot of the portfolio according to TradingView.

Waste Management (WM) is on the chopping block next week for the 2nd time. We’re currently holding onto a 7.96% gain over the past 19 weeks. The stock has been on a straight line higher since the beginning of July but has begun to pause the past few weeks.

Keep an eye out for the new Twitter poll every Friday. Follow along in real-time with nearly 300,000 others on Public.

Portfolio News Highlights:

The biggest stories affecting our portfolio this week:

• SEC considers payment for order flow ban (Yahoo)

• Nvidia Stock Got Two Price Target Hikes. The Market Shrugged (Barron’s)

• Square (SQ) Ups Touch-Free Payment Efforts With Cash App Pay (Zacks)

• Airbnb Hosts in College Towns Fumble the Big Games With Too-High Rates (WSJ)

• Carillon Tower Advisers: “Penn National Gaming (PENN)’s Sports Betting Initiatives Remain Strong” (Yahoo)

What Else We’re Reading:

Blogs/Articles:

1. Can Economics Grasp What Ecology Says? - Duncan Austin

2. Why Do We Sleep? - Van Savage and Geoffrey West (Aeon)

3. The Business of Fear: "Bear Porn" and Finfluence - Lily Francus (Substack)

4. Four investing mistakes ramp made and how you can learn from them - Ramp Capital (The Pursuit)

Books:

The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat - Matt Siegel

Need new reading material? Visit my Amazon page for my most purchased book recommendations.

Tweets of the Week: