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The beginning of the month was very sluggish in sales. I knew our industry was slow, but it had never been this slow in over ten years. Since I “study” metaphysics by observing reality, I was thinking that perhaps there is a metaphysical solution to this problem. Sales had been down by 40% and I was not sure if I would have to change the way I do business to compensate for this loss. However, I noticed one thing. I was behind paying my programmer by a few weeks. I owed him $3000. The minute I wrote the checks and put them in envelopes, the incoming money flow shot up immediately.

Another thing I noticed is that tything or giving money to reputable charitable organizations really helps keep your income up. Metaphysically speaking, if you help others, and sacrifice your heard earned money for the sake of someone else’s welfare, the universe will help you succeed. The universe’s goal is to help the worthwhile people make their way up the totempole and keep the selfish people at the bottom.

So, if business is slow, or you need better luck, be better about paying people, tything, and do daily prayers as well!

It seems nonsensical to have a minimum wage. In a free market economy wages are set by supply and demand. The minute some socialist government like the government of the United States wants to start meddling with wages, there will be a lot of unemployment. Young boys who have never had a job are not worth minimum wage. They’ll sit around unemployed and then get into selling drugs while illegal Mexican immigrants take the jobs that those young boys were morally entitled to. Although the illegal immigrants are paid under the table, they are paid a market wage which is about $4 per hour which is a lot less than the $10 per hour in California. Now, they want to raise the minimum wage.

Minimum wage means unemployment for blacks and more illegal immigration which brings crime, drugs, kidnappers, mafia, and more. Having minimum wages increases the chance that employers will have to break the law out of economic necessity. After all, how can you hire Americans and give them benefits, when your competition is hiring illegals for $4 per hour with no health insurance?

Since America is a country that is selective about which laws they enforce, you should have less laws. Less laws means less problems enforcing whatever laws you keep. If they enforced illegal immigration laws, there would be fewer workers which means higher market value wages. In that case, the market wage for restaurant work and other cheap labor might be $12 to $15 per hour without government meddling.

What about having a maximum wage? Nobody has ever talked about it before. Maybe doctors shouldn’t get paid more than a certain amount. Maybe a clerk at McDonalds shouldn’t make more than $15 per hour no matter how good they are. I feel we are regressing deep into socialism while China has become a playground for capitalists. Invertendo is the word my spiritual Master uses to describe this situation where we become the opposite of what we were and someone else becomes what we were instead.

Do you invest in stocks? I have been doing so for years, but I’m paying a lot more attention to my investments these days. I created an algorithm for picking the best stocks based on several factors. But, one of the most important factors was something I overlooked at first.

I see a psychic regularly, and he is able to channel departed souls as well as living human beings. Since I believe that Warren Buffet is the wisest of any investor I’ve ever heard of, I decided to channel him for stock guidance. Rather than just asking him what stocks he likes, I asked his consciousness what factors he thought were important that weren’t in my algorithm.

My stock algorithm takes into consideration P/E ratios, stability of earnings, equity ratios, growth rates, dividends, credit ratings with S&P, longevity of the company, and more. But, I felt that I must be missing something.

Stock Tip #1 — company culture
Warren’s consciousness told us that the company culture is very important, especially of the management. As an investor, you cannot get to know the management of a company just by reading about them which puts you at a huge disadvantage. But, he said that some of the companies I was interested in had a bunch of narrow minded old guys running the show and that they would probably run the huge company into the ground. It was more than 100 years old, more in debt than any other company of its class, and with a mediocre credit rating as well. It’s sad to see such a huge and well established corporation look like it will go under in the next 20 years, but that was the reality that I was seeing. So, the answer was obviously not to buy a single share of it.

Stock Tip #2 — intuition
This next tip came as somewhat of a surprise to me. But, Warren’s consciousness told me that I need to trust my inner feelings and intuition when picking stocks. Coming from a great investor from a Western culture, this came as a surprise. But, maybe this is a good idea. I actually used my intuition a bit before when picking bonds. I had a great feeling about Coca-Cola’s future just like Warren does. But, I didn’t like something about Johnson and Johnson. Warren Buffet doesn’t own any JNJ stock, but I have 15% of my investment money in JNJ. I feel they are a stable company, but something is just off in my feeling about them. Wells Fargo had a wonderful feeling about it. But, the company where I felt best is Starbucks. Starbucks is much smaller than the huge conglomorates I usually put the majority of my cash into. They are a little fish that could get out-done by a competitor or bought out by a conglomorate in the food industry such as Proctor & Gamble or Kraft Heinz one day. But, I can’t deny this feeling of enthusiasm and growth potential that I feel.

So, should I trust my feelings, or just invest based on what the numbers are telling me?
I decided to let my feelings be part of my algorithm and represent up to 10% of the points awarded to any particular stock.
Good idea?

In this digital age, it seems that everyone has at least twenty ways that they can be contacted. The U.S. government requires us all to have a physical address where we can receive mail. But, why not have an electronic address registered as well? What if we are out of the country and can’t get our mail? Or what if we just prefer electonic mediums as a backup for important corresponpondances.

One issue I have with the internet is that governments seem to be decades behind the eight ball in regulating what is going on. There is so much cyber hacking, pornography, spam, and other bad stuff going on. Our government is always there to tax us, but do they protect us as well? Not so much, at least not in 2016 on the internet.

There could be an official separate folder in all email accounts where government or official mail such as bills could come which would be spam free. Additionally, the government could take a closer look at the spam that is coming in and try to determine what is legitimate and what is not. We use opt-in lists, but I still get spammed every day in my gmail account. I thought gmail knew how to filter this stuff out. Maybe not! Or maybe I need to mark more of it as spam so they’ll get a hint.

One day the government will catch up and one day the internet might be the primary form of corresondance. If you have five email accounts, you’ll have to register one with the government and keep that one. But, there’s a great advantage here. If you move, you need to change your physical address. But, what if you could keep your email address for life? Maybe that is not such a bad idea especially if the address could be queriable in government records so your old friends could look you up. Currently, Facebook serves that niche, but what if uncle Sam could?

My friend is very pro index while I am more pro buying stock. But, there are times when indexes are better than buying stocks.

Stock Buying Diversification
Some argue that diversification is “safer” or a better practice when buying stocks. The S&P crashed by about 60% in 2009 and there is nothing “safe” about losing 60% of your money no matter how diversified it is. You are not safe in a fund, because you do not know what you are getting or how badly it will crash. Additionally, many of the companies you are getting might have PE ratios that are far too high to be a suitable investment and might have unsound financial practices as well, not to mention inefficient business practices. I like to invest in the best and forget the rest. I once had a safe mutual fund and lose more than half my money in 2002 when the market crashed. I learned a valuable lesson. Know what you are buying and see how hard it crashes when it crashes. Now, that we have had a 2002 crash and a 2008 crash and a 2015 reset or perhaps two resets, I am familiar with checking stocks to see how badly they crash.

My Stock Algorithms
I created a clunky, but suitable algorithm for picking stocks. I use it along with my basic judgment as no algorithm is perfect — at least no algorithm that I am smart enough to create. In any case, I didn’t want to invest in too many stocks as it becomes too much work to track. So, I decided to have four main stocks where 85% of my stock money would go and then have a handful of others each having a smaller investment of about 2-3% of my total stock expenditures. It took a few days for me to decide on my lucky four, and I made sure they were all in different industries as well. I made sure that three of the four stocks were stable in previous crashes because I don’t want to lose my money. Having four stable stocks that don’t crash is a lot safer than a mutual fund with 100 stocks that all crash every time there is a stock market crash. Additionally, my big money is going into companies that are roughly 100 years old, and they survived the Great Depression making them very stable, not to mention their stable financial and managerial practices.

When are Indexes Good?
For older companies that have been around since the Great Depression, there are so few of them, and they are such large conglomorates, that I don’t think you need to diversify so much. Coca-Cola owns 500 different beverage companies. They have more diversification within that one stock than most mutual funds. I can analyze each older company by hand since there are so few around. But, newer companies that don’t have a stable track record, don’t have stable income and engage in innovation require diversification. It is possible that an industry with 300 players could be reduced to two players after the others get weeded out. Innovation is a risky game and the minute someone beats you innovating a popular product, then you could lose most of your business.

For Biotech and Tech, indexes seem like a better idea than buying stocks with the exception of IBM which is a much more established conglomorate that does not engage in innovation. Between Apple, Verizon and Samsung, how can you know which company will out do the other one in a few years. I suspect Apple will win the game, but the Koreans might surprise us all as they are pretty smart over there. Between the various biotech companies, how do you know which one will have the next breakthrough? Most of those companies are less than 25 years old. It is so unpredictable and none of the companies have a solid track record. For these types of unpredictable industries a fund is better. Additionally, for utility companies, their margins are so low and their debt is so high, it might be safer to buy a fund.

So, for me, I’ve decided to get both stocks and indexes. But, probably more stocks than indexes. I will be investing in a biotech index in the next few weeks. That is one of the fastest growing market segments. I don’t know if they’ll continue to grow, but I suspect they will until they can figure out how to clone us.