7/27/08 – Fireworks!

Here in Vancouver every summer they have the international fireworks competition called The Festival of Lights. There are four nights of fireworks over English Bay—two Wednesdays and two Saturdays. Each night one of the three finalists gets to show their stuff, then on the fourth night are the finals. This year Canada, the U.S., and China are the finalists.

Lucky for us, the Agora Financial conference always falls during part of the competition. Last year Canada’s show was spectacular, but this year’s didn’t match it. Last night was the U.S. and it was really amazing, with a theme of “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.” There were red hearts in the sky, very romantic accompanying music, and some of the most extravagant multi-showered fireworks I’ve ever seen. I wish it were possible to capture it on film but a regular camera just couldn’t do it justice.

Wednesday we see China—theirs was definitely the best last year—but we’ll miss the finals on Saturday since we have to leave Vancouver on Thursday. It’s been a somewhat quiet weekend, but here are some photos from the community market area over on Granville Island, where I walked over for more blueberries this afternoon.

7/26/08 – Post-conference Wrap-Up

Well, it was a great conference. This is my third year and it seems to get better every year…which really means I am still learning a lot every time I come. One highlight this year was the speech by Jim Rogers—you know, the guy who founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros and wrote Investment Biker about his motorcycle ride through six continents in 1990-92? Well, he was there to talk about his more recent three-year (ending in 2002) round the world trip in a Mercedes convertible with his fiancé (whom he married during the trip), as well as his perspectives on the world and investing.

One of the things he told us is that in a major survey people were asked what their #1 dream was, and the dream that came out on top was a road-trip around the world. So now I understand a little bit better why people seem to enjoy reading my blog. FireCat and I have two countries under our belt now…perhaps we’ll make it around the world before we’re done.

After Rogers’ presentation he took questions so I told him that three years is a long time to be on the road and asked him what he most enjoyed doing in his daily activities. He said mostly it was the adventure—the unknown, the challenges each day, sometimes just staying alive. He said he likes talking to the people, the different foods, even just finding a place to stay, and that it’s a huge sensory feast.

I could identify with all of that! Then he said that at the end of the Q&A he would tell a story before he left, and he remembered to do that. His story was that after traveling all over the world (They began in Iceland and went east and after they hit North America they went to Alaska, came down through Vancouver and California to Los Angeles and then to New York), he was doing a presentation in San Jose, California that showed their little bright yellow car. Afterwards, a woman came up to him and asked, “Are you telling me you sat beside each other in that little two-seater car every day for three years?”

When Mr. Rogers said yes, she told him, “My fiancé and I drove from Connecticut to California together and we haven’t spoken to each other since….” (along with a few more graphic details of what they thought of each other after the trip). LOL, at least FireCat and I had an experience more akin to the Rogers’ trip! ;)

OK, I promised to try and identify a good stock tip for you from the conference. It can really differ based on your investing sophistication and life situation, but here are a few:

-- Several people said to short long treasury bonds. One simple way to do this—if you don’t want to buy put options on an ETF or short bonds in the futures market—is to buy RYJUX, an inverse fund on long-term government bonds.

-- Common consensus the past couple of years has been to get out of the dollar. However, a few are now expecting a bounce in the dollar before further downside. Jim Rogers said he will use that bounce to sell all remaining dollars he has. No one advises the Euro as an alternative though and one guy thinks the Euro may not survive at all when it is tested for the first time in the upcoming economic downturn.

-- There were a lot of differences regarding commodities in the short term, but everyone still seems to think they are the place to be long-term (for the next 10 years or so). One company discussed was QCC—based in Canada but traded on the AMEX—that makes real estate loans in Canada where prices have been strong because of commodities. Their price is depressed because no one wants to own lenders right now, but they have no U.S. loans, no subprime loans, have not lost money on any loan in 17 quarters and they can be bought at a discount to book value (“like trading six quarters for $2.00”). Plus, they pay about a 12% dividend. I owned some before the conference and I will be buying more.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the fireworks competition.

7/21/08 – Vancouver...run-up to conference week

We’ve been having a nice time in Vancouver but it is HOT here. Our apartment is covered with windows all along one side—makes for nice light in the room but the solar effect is dramatic. I suppose it’s a good thing in the winter since it rains so much here, but right now I need to stand in front of the window fan to cool off if I’m not outside.

I registered for the conference this afternoon. It will be a nice mix of investment advice, financial education, networking with resource explorers, and evening festivities including cocktail parties, a big-band dance, a concert with the California Guitar Trio, and a screening of the indy film I.O.U.S.A….and all this for free because I was smart enough to sign up several years ago for a lifetime membership with this investment service called Agora Financial. It’s one of the highlights of my year.

Of course there are the more mundane aspects of life to tend to as well. I did laundry today, FireCat went to the grocery store and of course we are trading every morning. I’m stuck in a short position in a credit card company during this bounce in the financial companies. Luckily it started coming back down after American Express reported this afternoon so I guess I’m not gonna go broke after all. LOL

Yesterday I took a walk over to Granville Island where they have a community market and a lot of working artists’ studios. It was a nice day but on the way back I decided to save my feet and take the water taxi back instead of the long walk over the bridge. It dropped me off at the Aquatic Center on Sunset Beach so it was only about 4-5 blocks from home—much better! I’ve had some nice walks up around English Bay to Stanley Park as well, so at least I have been getting my exercise in. Now if I could just remember to take FireCat’s camera with me when I go I’d have some photos to show you too.

Well, it’s a busy day tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, so I’ll probably not post again until the weekend. I’ll try to identify the best stock tip of the week and let you all know. ;)

7/19/08 – Vancouver is still here, and now we’re back too

We finally arrived in Vancouver Wednesday night—VERY late. Luckily, we had keys from Alana and she was willing to go home and let us pay the rent in the morning, as we had a little adventure on the way here and were not able to meet her at 8:00pm as planned.

We had stayed in Portland the night before, after a lovely dinner and visit with a friend of FireCat’s from his technology days. Christian (who now works at Intel) and his wife are from Corsica and they have two smart, well-mannered and personable young boys so we had a delightful evening with them all…good conversation and I love hearing that French accent.

The next morning we traded at Starbucks, then hit the road. We were lucky enough to get through Seattle just before 5:00pm without hitting too much traffic and thought we were doing fine. However, south of Bellingham a bit FireCat pulled over to the side of the road. I was talking to my mother on the phone so I thought he was being polite in stopping so I could finish the conversation before we crossed the border and couldn’t use our cell phones. However, I soon realized that he was jacking up the car. Uh oh.

Sure enough, we had a flat tire on the front right of the TradeMobile. This had not happened to FireCat since he bought the van last October so he didn’t know that whoever put those tires on must have done it with some electric tool. No matter what he tried—and he’s a pretty strong lion—he couldn’t get the lug bolts off.

After he gave up I called AAA and was hearing it would be an hour before they could get someone there, when a Washington State Emergency crew pulled up and offered help. They couldn’t get the lug bolts off either but the guy had a special tool that he tried and that worked. Yeah!

Next stop at the next exit was to get new tires because we didn’t trust the spare and didn’t want to deal with more problems in Canada. Luckily there was a WalMart there so we got by pretty cheap. However, it took two hours before the TradeMobile was ready to go again. At least we had time for some pizza while we waited because I was famished by this time.

Finally, we were on the road again and got to the border about 9:30pm. I had my computer on my lap looking at google earth for directions while the border agent asked FireCat a lot of routine questions about whether we were carrying firearms, etc. He answered no to everything except when the agent asked him whether we had over $10,000 in cash and FireCat said, “I wish.”

After all the questions the agent told us to pull into Stall A and go inside. Hmmm, never had to do that before. So we went in and the uniformed guy behind the counter had a bunch more questions to ask us, like where are you from, where are you going, what do you do for a living, where is this conference being held, how long will you be here, etc. Then he took our passports and told us to go have a seat.

After a while he called us back, returned the passports and said we were free to go. FireCat asked why this happened and the guy said that something about the way we answered the questions in the van were questionable to the outside officer so they wanted to run a background check on us, but everything looked fine.

Well, I told FireCat that no matter how much we wished for $10,000, I think the border agents prefer yes or no answers. FireCat, however, thinks we were targeted because—besides driving a van and coming in fairly late at night—my fancy laptop with a map glowing from it made them nervous. Whatever it was, I’m sure it’s comforting for the Canadians to know that America cares just as much about letting terrorists out of the U.S. as they do about letting them in. LOL

By the time we arrived, got some Canadian money and went to bed it was 12:30am and we had to be up for trading at 6:00am the next morning…but besides all that, we had a great visit with my Dad in Eureka on the way up and a beautiful drive through the redwoods and forests of Oregon and Washington. I’m hoping to do a few hikes and berry picking on the way back…and I’ll be sure and leave my laptop in its case the next time we cross the border.

7/13/08 – On the Road Again

The TradeMobile is back in action, and what a whirlwind departure this one was! We didn’t expect to leave for another week but I noticed an apartment for rent in Yaletown, Vancouver for the last two weeks of July. Problem was, the owner wouldn’t hold it for us without a deposit and getting money to Canada would take awhile, besides the risk of sending a cashier’s check to someone I don’t know.

However, the owner turned out to be a delightful 25-year old woman who’s a cyclist and she was coming to San Jose for a 100-mile bike race on Sunday, so she said she’d let us have the apartment if we took cash to her in San Jose on Saturday. So we jammed for two days to get ready to go and here we are.

It took a bit of doing getting out of town yesterday though. After a late start, we got half an hour up the road and I realized I had forgotten my passport. So we drove back home and it wasn’t where I keep it. So we spent another hour tearing the house apart before I finally found it tucked into a small folder—what was I thinking?!

We finally arrived in San Jose at 8:00pm, dropped off the deposit and picked up the keys, and went for a nice dinner at Gordon Biersch, one of Firecat’s favorite restaurants from his software days in Silicon Valley. We drove up to San Francisco where we found a nice level street beside a city park near the Golden Gate Bridge and slept until about 9:00am in the van. After some Peet’s coffee, pickled eggs and fresh blueberries we’re on the Redwood Highway north to Eureka to visit my dad tonight.

Yeah, it feels great to be back in action! I was exhausted trying to get everything done to leave home for a month but after a good night’s sleep I’m full of energy and looking forward to another adventure. This time we will be driving and “camping” through some of my favorite forests where I grew up camping as a kid in northern California and Oregon, so there’s a lot of warm nostalgia for me in that. Plus, by the time we’re on our way back through in early August, the blackberries ought to be ripe!