Evidence shows that shares, over the last 100 years or so, have pretty much out-performed most other investments.  Over the last 8 years they have been a major winner and of course, once something has become a major winner it is often a bit late to enter the market at that time.  People who have taken a conservative investment policy over the last 4 or 5 years, hoping for the market to come down, have been left behind and the best place to have had your money in recent years has been in an index fund.  Having your money in an index fund is not always exciting, and I like to choose some of my shares myself.  I of course have my losers, the biggest of which at the moment is a company by the name of Allergan.  You no doubt are hearing that name and saying no wonder he is doing badly, I’ve never heard of it, but one of its products is a product which people never see coming up with new uses for and which is used by a large number of people, particularly ladies over the age of 35 and that is Botox.  Previously, it has been a big winner for me, doubling from the original price I bought it at, but in the last 6 months it has slid quite some way.  

My biggest winner of my life so far, and which continues to do well, but not at the initial levels, has been Google.  I have always believed in their model, and I was probably the first attorney in South Africa who did advertise on Google.  I bought the shares at that time assuming that if my competitors did not take out adverts, I would score on the advertising side and if they did copy me and eventually follow me, then as Google got more business, I would make a lot of money out of the shares.  I just thought for me, and I understand there is no investing “science” behind what I am saying, I was going to win one way or the other and I certainly have when it comes to Google, particularly based on the fact that my initial investments in Google when the Rand was at R8,12 to the Dollar and then again a year later, somewhat unbelievably, at R7,20 to the Dollar.  During that time the share price has actually multiplied by four and obviously on the currency alone it has almost doubled.  I will try and write about the other shares I believe in at a later stage, and they include Starbucks, Tesla and Disney.

There is a tremendous effort by many people, including my wife, to distinguish between what is recycling and what is garbage and put them in the separate bins.  I think it is tremendous – we can all help the world in terms of reducing rubbish as well as recycling where we can.  Having said that however, I must say that I repeatedly run into problems trying to understand what is meant for recycling and what is garbage and some of the things are not always clear-cut.  In particular, the signs on rubbish bins or on packets I think need to be a lot clearer and a lot more obvious with specific colours indicating that something is garbage and another colour indicating that something is for recycling.  To try and work out the two a lot of the time is just too confusing for me and if it is too confusing for me, I am sure that many others struggle with the same problem.  If you want something to take off, you need to make sure it is absolutely obvious, understood by all and that the symbols and/or colours make it very clear what it is.

“The Case Against Sugar” is the new book from Gary Taubes.  He is also the best-selling author of the book, “Why We Get Fat”.  I have previously read and written about “Why We Get Fat” and I am currently reading his brand-new book.  He says the purpose of the book in his author’s note is to present the case against sugar – both sucrose and high fructose corn syrups as the principal cause of the chronic diseases that are most likely to kill us.  He points out that a third of all adults are now obese, two-thirds are overweight and almost 1 in 7 is diabetic and 1 in 4 will die of cancer, yet we continue to ignore the prime suspects for all of these diseases and act as if sugar is just a source of harmless pleasure.  He says that the Case against Sugar is an argument for the prosecution of sugar, as if it were a criminal case.  I love to read these types of books at the beginning of the year, particularly when I realise that I am certainly addicted to sugar myself and that it is a major problem in my life that I need to tackle, so I hope that books like this will be an inspiration to do so.

I thought for today’s blog I would ask a simple question and that is what your favourite app on your phone is?  I would love to know what apps you use, what you find useful and which, amongst the apps that you use, are the ones that interest you the most or you have the most fun with.  I like a few golf ones I won’t bore you with, also the weather apps and Bloomberg for business news.

The J&B Met is an example of the power of an enduring brand.  The best evidence of the fact that it is so effective is that we still mention their name even though the race is no longer the J&B – they are not the sponsors anymore!  They however sponsored it for so long that people like me still think of The Met as the J&B Met.  It is really the best horseracing day in South Africa and overshadows the excitement of the July Handicap and the Summer Cup.  The July is a busy day, it has some very close races, but I don’t think the racecourse has as true an a track as the one that you find at Kenilworth and I far prefer the crowds and the people in Cape Town and the way they dress to the crowds you see at the Durban July.

The bottom line is that the Cape’s most famous horserace, which is on the last Saturday of January every year, is now sponsored by Sun International.  They will have to sponsor it for a long time before we can forget about J&B who sponsored it for 39 years and that really does show you that a brand name cannot be built up overnight and it needs to be sustained with consistent advertising, promotion and good work over many years until it reaches the stage where people like me incorrectly identify the race, which truthfully should simply be called The Met, with a brand which no longer sponsors it.  Incidentally, J&B is marketed in South Africa by Diago SA. 

I was quite impressed with my set-up for my new computer, and I say new because I’ve had it for about a year, which was 32Mb of RAM.  I really thought it had far more power than most computers would have.  I have been struggling recently in trying to put together some videos on Adobe Premier Pro, which is a video editing software and my computer keeps crashing on me.  I went back onto the website of the specialist company that put together my last computer – a super silent computer which makes almost no sound at all – to see what specifications they recommend for using Adobe Premier Pro.  They say 32Mb of RAM is an absolute minimum!  In fact, their recommended set-up has more RAM that I even knew was possible these days which is 512Mb!  All that I have to do is to find a computer that combines that amount of RAM or perhaps half of that, because I am not putting together major international movies, that goes together with a fairly silent system!