Lima Days 1-2

Living in Lima is like practicing for the Primal Blueprint diet where Mark Sisson describes the best exercise as low intensity exercise like walking while mixing in a few sprints.  In Lima cars don't stop for you as you cross the street.  So you end up walking a lot and sprinting from curb to curb.   It's no joke here (I think the worst place I've seen is still Cario where people successfully cross freeways on a daily basis).

My parents live in the San Isidro district know for it's fine Italian dining.  I haven't had any of the Italian food here yet, but I did check out some menus the other day.  The cuisine here is taking on Italian in a new way - fusion this and fusion that.  The most interesting one I've seen was Japanese Italian fusion.  Didn't look appetizing, but I think I may have to try it.  

I challenged myself once already by eating beef heart.  See video.  I've never had beef heart.  I always thought I could do Fear Factor, but I'm not cut out for it.  I had a difficult time with the heart.  It was cooked well, seasoned well and tasted just fine, but the idea got to me.

Pisco sour is their national drink.  I'm not a big fan of it.  Tastes like margarita mix, probably cuz it's a lime/simple sugar concoction mostly.  I've gravitated to Cusqueno beer.  Lite taste and pretty cheap.  Seems to be the beer of choice.

~

2x Silver and 150$/oz

AGQ
Today, while listening to Peter Schiff a 30yo caller asked about "diversifying" in silver.  This 30yo's version of diversifying was own 50% physical silver in the form of American Eagles and 50% paper silver.  The paper silver is the ETF AGQ.  Here's how AGQ compares to the paper silver ETF SLV.

After checking out AGQ, I'm interested.  Not sure I'm going to buy, but I probably will.  Not sure if AGQ is backed by physical silver or not, but the caller's rationale was that he can ride up the paper silver gains and if there is no counter-party fraud (ie if the silver ETFs are indeed backed by physical silver) then the paper silver WON'T go to zero.  If there is counter-party fraud then the physical silver will shoot up as the paper silver crumbles (I have no idea if that will be a net gain or net loss).


$150/oz
It's surprising to me that Jim Cramer buys physical silver too (video).  I thought buying physical silver is just for whackos.  There he mentions an article in the Financial Times (aka "FT") which I thought was interesting.  In the article (available once for free and the after that you need a subscription to read) a banker predicts a price of 150$/oz for silver, which reminded me of the Stansburry fear-mongering video that's been making the rounds.

Imagine what happens if silver goes to 150$/oz and AGQ is legit. What happens to AGQ?  Wow.

Here's a graphic from the Financial Times article:

Out with GOOG and in with NGD!!!

After listening to Pierre Lassonde on King World News, I decided to sell my 2 shares of Google and buy an equivalent amount of $s of New Gold shares at $10.11/sh.

I don't have a bear case for Google; it's still my "search" of choice, but I just don't have a really bull case for it.  And I had already held my shares of GOOG for more than 366 days, so my gains qualified as long term capital gains.

Lassonde makes a pretty good bull case for New Gold.  Gold itself is returning to it's proper place in society as a money - or so the people selling gold for paper are telling us.  Central Banks are printing, so gold is "rising" (it's really in part just holding it's value against other commodities, BUT it's rise, according to others, is also due to it's 're-monetization'.).

Lassonde makes a good case for Franco Nevada Corp, which I think is this stock.  I'm looking to buy.

dow down on europe/greece woes

10,200 - dow
1191 - gold
17.80 - silver

what am i thinking?
i'm thinking of buying the 2011 january 20$ calls on slv.
i'm thinking "why didn't i sell when the dow was 11,200ish?"
i'm thinking "i can SELL EVERYTHING right now and i'll only be down 2%."
i'm thinking "richard russel said to get out YESTERDAY."
i'm thinking "the dow broke it's 300d moving average. GTFO!"
i'm thinking "the flash crash was REAL."
i'm thinking "be fearful when others are greedy. be greedy when others are fearful."

Tito Motz - Your neighborhood handyman!

My cousin is a great handyman! Give him a call. He does great work. He worked on my rental years ago, and I would definitely hire him again.
Raul Ramon S. Gonzales
Tel: 650-757-6883
Cell: 650-430-8697
Email: motz_ph@yahoo.com EMAIL HIM!

movember

i'm not the only one with a strange mustache.

as you may know i'm trying my best to look like magnum p.i. by growing a "movember" to raise awarene$$ for prostate cancer. interestingly enuf, here in buenos aires, this dude here with the bald spot was trimming the movember on a manequin.

damn manequin's 'mostache looks much better than mine.

buenos (aires)

arrived in buenos aires today.

first impression: es muy humido!

for those who don´t speak spanish, that translates to: gosh i need a drank!  (not really, cuz i just had 2 amazing glasses of wine.  the ¨glasses¨ were probably an entire bottle.  i´m not complaining, i´m just saying....)  i´m here in buenos aires argentina for a couple of days then it´s off to iguazu falls.  pretty excited to see water fall from VERY high to VERY low.  don´t know why that is as i see that happen in the shower as well.

other impressions: guys kiss each other on the cheeks as a way to say hola.  the dude at the airport who brought our luggage to our taxi kissed the taxi drive (male) on the cheek when they met.  both sides.  the taxi driver returned the favor.  maybe they´re father-son.  most likely not.  so that makes me feel like i´m more in a european city than santiago, chile, which seemed more american. 

dinner around the hotel started at nine pm.  (btw i´m 5hr ahead of u in california.  that´s right.  i´m in the future.)  as of 11:30, it still seems like there´s a fair amount of people out at night.  wish vacaville was the same way. 

i´m about 218ft below sea level according to wiki.  weird.  a couple of days ago, i was 13,000ft above sea level and wishing mommy was there to make the pain go away. 

strange.  everyone here speaks mexican.  just like vacaville.