'Two cents' is too little

Do your homework

Find economic moats

Have a margin of safety

Hold for the long haul

Know when to sell

I'm not giving away any secrets or the book away. This is what's on pretty much the first page.

There is a strategy people sometimes follow when dealing with stocks. Let's say they bought WGS stock for $10,000. And lets say it went up to $20,000. They will sell $10,000 worth of that stock and say, "Now all the money I have in WGS is free money. It's ok even if the stock goes down to 0, I will still have not lost any money."

Well, they may be right because it is actually true. In fact, if the 10K goes down to 5K they would have only lost 5K (instead of the entire 10K that they had gained.) So it is actually profitable. And I don't blame them for thinking that way.

However, they would be well advised to remember that money is fungible. Completely.

As I get older, I become more forgetful. I rarely get a chance to post here. But this blog is my namesake. So I must know how to add a post here or update one. I will write it here so that I will know how to do it.

I go to johnvarghese.com (this blog page), then click on "Sign up". At least that is what I did today. I guess, that took me to the "Sign in" page, which is just as well. Then my chrome automatically filled in the username and password. The username was my jv4b... gmail (which I think Abraham George (Aby in East Bay) is the only person outside my family who has recognized it - although that was a dacade ago.)

About 1/6th of the people who trade on the stock market do so before or after the market is open. So 5/6ths of the total participants are missing during these times.

So when the Nasdaq closes at 4PM eastern, when companies post their results those specific stocks are volatile for about 20 to 30 minutes and begin to settle. Around 5 to 10 minutes after close, the general trend is evident. If it is going up, you can buy some stock at 4:10 pm and sell them at 4:20 pm. Usually for a profit. Or keep them until next morning. The pre market session will raise the price a bit more.

If you just want to see a list of stocks that are going up after hours, you could look here https://www.tradingview.com/markets/stocks-usa/market-movers-after-hours-gainers/

Yahoo finance is a decent place to find the upcoming earnings. But there is a lot of crap there too because these are not confirmed. A more decent place is https://www.earningswhispers.com/calendar and one even more decent is probably msn.

Update:

Don't pre-purchase

I was tempted to buy some stocks in advance of the earnings call to get an extra margin of profit. Turned out to be bad because they just went down. So the lesson is to just wait until 1:05 and only buy the ones that go up. Software companies will continue to go up until 1:30 Eastern.

Update:

My dearest cousin Georgy

Mike Tyson in his heyday, was once asked by a reporter, I believe before he was going to fight Evander Holyfield, "you are probably the most analyzed athlete in history. Your opponents have reviewed your every move in slow motion and probably planned counters to your every punch. Then how do you keep winning?" Tyson replied, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

But until we get punched, a plan is good to have. So hopefully these tips will help you make a plan.

Must visit places:

Sintra

At a place called Sintra - Pena Palace and Garden, Castle of the Moors, Quinta De Regaleira.

Sintra is one place you cannot miss. Going to Sintra is a train trip. This is on a separate train that is not part of the metro. I think it cost roughly $2.5 per person one way. So take a round trip tickets so you dont have to waste time when you come back. There is no discount. Children are half price.

Lisbon has an excellent public transport system. But when you go to Sintra, don't depend on their public transport system. You don't have enough time, and as a bonus at the end of the day will be easier and much cheaper to just call Uber.

You will have enough time to visit all three places and shop as well. But get there early. But not too early because all the palaces only open at 10 AM.

Pro tip: The roads are just one big circle. So go to Pena Palace first on Uber and visit there.

Pena Palace, overlooking the bluff (above), and inside (below)

Then walk back to the castle of the moors - don't get on a car or anything.

Castle of the moors

Next go to Quinta by Uber.

Quinta De Regaleira

Each of the three places have an hour or more of walking involved.

Sintra will take one entire day out of your trip.

If you decide to take the bus instead of Uber at Sintra, then make sure you go to the very front of the train when you get in. That way you will get to the bus before the others - who can line up behind you. Get off at Sintra (not Portela de Sintra which is the previous station.)

Line 28

This is a 7 mile tram ride through the City. You can do just one trip, or break it up into many smaller parts. It takes you through many of the historic parts of the town.

Belem Tower

This place is very famous, but we did not go. This is closed from time to time. And you have to stand in line to get tickets first, then stand in line to go inside. Since this is a small place, they only send a few people in at a time. We visited, but did not go in.

Belem Tower, Lisboa, Portugal

Monument of Discoveries

Experiences

Now that you have covered Sintra, you can spend as many days in Lisboa (Portuguese for Lisbon) as you like. Everyday is filled with some of the best experiences. There are many places to visit, and we did visit them. I will list them. But more importantly there are things you can experience in Portugal that you cannot anywhere else.

Cobblestones

The moment you step outside, you will see cobblestones on the road. The only constructed places you will not see cobblestones is on asphalt paved roads - which are not too many. Most of the interior roads and all the sidewalks are cobblestones. Normally, this would not be a big deal. But in this case many of these cobblestones are over 500 years old. Pretty much means all these roads were there in the same place for 5 centuries or more. It is not just outside your home, or street, or the entire city. The cobblestones are everywhere in the country.

Pastiche de nata

What is one thing you can eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or snack? Yes, it is pastiche de nata. Just keep eating it. If you want to bring anything for your beloved cousins, that is what you would bring. (they last up to two days).

You must eat them at this restaurant also. https://pasteisdebelem.pt/en/ That is where they started making it in 1837. Go inside. Don't worry if you see a long line outside. Those people are waiting for the to-go orders. You can go inside and there are a thousand seats. If you keep going in, there are more and more rooms.

They also have an excellent menu. I think we ate a lot from that menu. After we ate all those things from there (in the photo above), we ate more of the same. But I don't recommend you buy the OJ from there. For that see another tip below.

After you have eaten at the Pasteis de Belem, you can visit Mosteiro dos Jerónimos which is right next door.

Orange Juice

You may have seen at Jamba Juice how the machine squeezes the oranges. At the local supermarket, "Pingo Doce", you can use that machine to squeeze it yourself and fill it into amazingly beautiful bottles. And the price is half of what you would pay at Costco. Delicious juice. I would go back to Lisboa just for the Pastiche and the OJ.

Next time we go to Lisbon, we will not carry any water. Instead we will walk into any Pingo Doce we see and get more orange juice.

Fado restaurant

This is an experience unique to Lisboa. So at least one night eat at a Fado restaurant. They have some live native folk music and songs, accompanied by excellent food. They are all good places. There is a Fado district that is easy to find on the map once you get there.

You cannot miss the Fado dinner. In the photo above, I think that guy owns the Fado restaurant we went to. And that guy in the back is his son.

Seafood - especially the octopus

Oh man. Even if you don't like seafood, Lisboa has some of the best seafood. Codfish Croquettes. Grilled Sardines. Octopus Rice. And I forget the name - I think it starts with a C - seafood+rice.

We used this website for a reference.

Bakeries

Delicious bakeries.

Tuk Tuk

Many people don't recommend it. But we did take it. We got a private tuk-tuk. It looks like a big auto-rickshaw. But don't think it will make a sound like 'tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk'. It is fully electric and sounds like your Model X. The tuk-tuk has three independent regions it can cover. We went to two of them. The third one was a larger route which we did using the metro and buses.

Metro

The bus and metro system is awesome. On the days you plan to go anywhere away from your stay/hotel, just take a day pass for each of you. It is well worth it. We bought a Lisbon Card online. And I think we activated it when we got on the bus, and they gave us a day pass I think. https://www.lisboacard.org/discounts/

March 14

Not all experiences were fun. One was disappointing. I don't know if you know, but on March 14, Starbucks gives me a free drink. Since I was in Lisboa that day, I went to the Starbucks for my free drink. But apparently they don't do that in Portugal. Very sad.

Private tour of their April 25 Bridge

This is not something everyone gets, but we were there early just as they were opening. So Joshua and I got a private tour of the bridge. Eerily similar to the golden gate bridge.

This is inside the bridge. These are the cables that suspend the bridge.

Stay

We stayed at

Rua Nova do Almada 81. 1200-289 Lisboa Portugal Room: 5-D

We usually left at 9 AM and did not come back until almost midnight. Yes we did come back from time to time, but we stayed right in the middle of the city, so it was always very easy to come back.

Covid

I don't know if they need it anymore, but when we went earlier this year, we had to get a negative covid test, and upload the results here. When we came back we had to take an antigen test from there. That is easy. Just go to any pharmacy and ask where you can get it. Plus they had mobile stations in all the big parks.

What we missed

We wanted to go to Cascais. This is another place about an hour away (as Sintra is). We wanted to go there, but later changed out mind. It is a small seaside town that looks much like Foster City. The city apparently provides free bikes for you to bike around if you want. But it is walkable all the same.

Note, the metro day pass will NOT cover the trip to Cascais or the trip to Sintra. Those are a different kind of trains.

Other places we visited

Elevador de Santa Justa (Don't waste time standing at the bottom of the elevator trying to pay to go up. Just walk up around it (or come from above - I forget the street name, but you will end up there very often) and walk over to the top of the elevator.)

Tile museum - It is short bus ride away, about half hour. An old church was converted to be a tile museum.

We also walked around several places (and museums) around the Jeronimos Monastery as well as near where we stayed and went into the attractions, including an Egyptian museum I think.

Time Out Market. This is a crowded place full of tourists who want to taste any possible food. It is like a huge food court.

The Lisbon cathedral

National Pantheon

And lastly, I think we went to all the food places around where we stayed - breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert!

Distributed cloud is the future of the cloud.

Juliet: What's are some simple steps to keep in mind when I want to overlay some of my photos and videos over a nice youtube video?

Romeo: First when you download the video to overlay upon, make sure you can get the 1080 version downloaded as mp4. Some times you may only get the video without audio. That's fine. Download the video. You can separately download the mp3 for the audio. If they start together they will match perfectly.

Romeo: Then overlay your photos and videos in iMovie. When you want to upload, don't try to directly upload from iMovie. The resolution will be bad. Instead "share" (export) it as a "File". Then in your YouTube studio, just upload this file.

I see a lot of people on the Internet complaining about the shortcomings of any and all Apple products. I on the other hand am always finding ways to be grateful for what Apple makes. They may or may not put much thought into the little details.

So I am grateful that the USBC ports that I use to charge and extend the MacBook Pro are available on either side. Depending on which side of the bed I am sitting on, I like the cable to be on the left sometimes and on the right at other times.

Stay true to who you are. You have a dream. You have a vision. You have an idea. You feel the world would benefit from that idea. Stay unbelievably committed to that idea. But then be willing to challenge every how. So ask yourself everyday “Is there a different way? Is there a better way? Is there someone I can learn from?” And always pursue different alternatives to try to get to that vision but never give up on that vision.

My favorite CEO Brad Smith. 

You may have taken a break from your career because you chose to dedicate all your energy to take care of your family, or because of some other life changing event. In any case, when you decide to come back to the workforce, it is not very easy. 

In many cases, several years have passed and you have lost touch with what is happening in the industry. Especially in the software industry, where transformations are so rapid, that even those who go to work everyday find it difficult to keep up with the current technologies. You may not have the confidence to imagine that you can make it back to the workforce.

Fortunately, there are good employers out there who understand your situation,  respect your choice to take a break, and are willing to give you a second chance. Intuit is one of those companies. Intuit introduced an initiative in 2015, called Intuit Again that inspires and provides an opportunity for technologists to return to work after taking a break in their career for caregiving purposes.  Check it out at https://intuitagain.com/.

Thanks to its success in India, Intuit has introduced the initiative in the US this year.

How else can I improve my skills?

But what if you did not take a break for caregiving purposes? Well all is not lost. Intuit is not the only company out there. Fortunately for you, there is a tremendous shortage in the industry for software engineers at all levels. If you are willing to start over at a junior level, just pick a popular language or platform that you are comfortable with and attend a bootcamp. Or even learn on Code Academy or Pluralsight or Udemy a whole host of other web based training sites.

Read up on the new technologies and pick any one. It does not matter which. Look for open source programs/applications on github. See if you can contribute to them. Pick a project you are passionate about or your friends in the industry recommend, and see if you can contribute to it.

No matter how difficult it seems, don’t let the difficulty or other fears dissuade you. Stay encouraged. Very often, it is just a numbers game. Once you have rebuilt your skills, contributed to open source projects, etc., it is just a matter of time before someone snatches you up.

I have built up my skills, what else can I do?

I posted version one of this technique three years ago here. That is still applicable if you are working at a technical level. This works when you are higher up the food chain and the task is not really very technical. I only say this because I eliminated the automate step in this version.

Ok. First as soon as you get a task, see if you are probably the wrong person to be taking action on it. You could be incorrectly associated with a task for a whole host of reason. So first try to eliminate it. Even if you are the right person, see if you can avoid doing it because it is not a priority for you.

If you decide that you are the right person for the job see if it is something you can delegate. Delegation helps other people grow around you, making life easier for you. Usually the delegatee can also grow by automating the task if possible. So that is the preferred alternative. But if it is something that will not help a team member grow, this may be a good task to outsource to a specialist group within the company, or to an application or consultant outside the company.

Sometimes both delegation and outsourcing do not get you a benefit worth the effort or cost. In those cases, try to procrastinate on purpose. See if you can shelve the task - let the assigner know that you will get to it later, much later. Usually, that will be the end of it.

My philosophical learning of the day - “working software is complicated.” Corollary, “It is a miracle that everything works!”

A couple of my colleagues at work were discussing lessons we had each learned in life yesterday. Today, one of them, Jonathan Korn found this nugget and shared it with us. I share it with you. It is extracted from an interview with Jill Wetzler of Lyft. 

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Always go somewhere that’s growing, whether a company or a team. If the company is growing, you’ll grow, too; you’re not really going to have a choice. There is too much work and not enough people, and that’s where you’re really going to stretched. I feel like every significant move in my career has been in a place with a very high growth.