So, I've set up this experiment in finance, having to do with one of my IRAs and a model for investing that relies on dividend income as opposed to capital gains. Since this experiment is occurring in a non-taxable account, taxes are not an issue just yet. There are a few more years before I can begin to withdraw from this account.
I started the experiment earlier this year, and sold everything in this portfolio in the January February time frame, and began to purchase stocks that 1) had a significant dividend yield, 2) had a significant dividend payout ratio, 3) had a history of dividend increases and no dividend cuts, and 4) had the fundamentals to continue those dividend increases into the foreseeable future. I took out seven positions in different companies, two of which where financial institutions. The idea is that I won't need to touch this portfolio for several years to come, except to reinvest the dividends that have been earned.
The theory is that just because a market can evaluate the price of a share of stock, on a daily if not an hourly basis, doesn't mean that information is terribly useful to any one holder of that stock. The question that shareholders should ask is, "what kind of cash return is this company making for me." By focusing on the dividend and not on capital gains, the focused is placed not on the day to day vagaries of the market place, but on the fundamental operation of the company in question, and the even simpler question of whether or not the company will make its quarterly dividend. As shareholders, we become less speculators and more owners.
So how is it all working out, given the recent turmoil in the stock markets. Not bad, but there continue to be some rough spots, particularly in the banks that I have shares in. But, so far, no one company has cut their dividend, one company has increased a dividend slightly, and the portfolio is generating about 4.5% in cash on an annual basis. Still, this experiment is not yet complete. I will update this post some time in December to check on the performance of this new portfolio style.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Low Energy Navigation
The subject of this post was prompted by another post in the Archdruid Report nearly a month back, and by the follow-up discussion. The Archdruid had reported that he had passed his Amateur Extra FCC examination, which entitles him to the highest level of amateur radio privileges. It is quite an achievement. Some how the follow up discussion included a thread or a mention of GPS, and the question was asked about pre-GPS navigation, and how that could be carried out.
GPS has somewhat trivialized navigation for the user, making precision navigation accessible to anyone who can operate a receiver. (True story -- I was in Sacramento last year traveling with another engineer. We had just landed at the airport and had just rented a car, as well as a hand held receiver. I gave the printout with the address of the hotel and the receiver to my colleague, and asked him to direct us to the hotel. Although he had never used a receiver before, he had the address entered into the device and guiding us to the hotel before I hit the freeway. No instructions, no help from me) My concern is what happens if any one of the three legs of the Global Positioning System fail. It would seem that the weakest parts of the triad are the control and the space system, but no doubt others have come to this conclusion as well, and contingencies have been prepared. The user segment is as strong in the near term as the various power supplies, but in the longer term even batteries run down. In any case, I'm concerned with how to determine one's position on the earth without electronic navigation aids.
The principal method has been celestial navigation, using the predictable motion of the earth and planets to triangulate on the sphere one's position. The tools to do this are still readily available. To obtain a fairly precise location (perhaps one to two decimal places after the minute), you'll need a sextant of some sort and an almanac. The traditional marine sextant is a wonderful solution, but requires an artificial horizon when using the sextant in-land, like here in Tucson. There is an aviation sextant that has some compensation for the horizon built-in but I don't believe aviation sextants have been manufactured for some time. The second item, an almanac, can be filed through the acquisition of a current Nautical Almanac. This document, jointly published by the US and UK governments, costs about thirty dollars. There is also an almanac published by McGraw-Hill and written by George G. Bennett. This is a compressed almanac that carries data for five or so years, but lacks the precision of the Nautical Almanac.
I've forgotten the third element required for a celestial navigation solution: an accurate time piece. Just about any quartz wristwatch is accurate once the error from UTC is known.
Using a sextant and the Nautical Almanac, I've been able to determine my location to about 5 miles, which I don't think is bad given what I'm using for a horizon. I've used the reduction equations documented in the back of the Nautical Almanac, and programmed them into a calculator. However, there are a number of documents that provide for other reduction of the sextant and chronometer measurements, but reduction is essentially the solution of the navigation triangle for the unknown quantities. Before the advent of calculators solving this triangle was not trivial; although closed-form solutions exists, computing of those solutions is involved.
The next steps in achieving a low energy navigation solution for me is to first determine a replacement for the various almanacs. Essentially, this requires generating an almanac from local astronomical measurements. The final step would be to create a low-cost, reproducable, but sufficiently accurate sextant. I doubt if I get to this last step, but that would create a totally local and independent navigation system.
GPS has somewhat trivialized navigation for the user, making precision navigation accessible to anyone who can operate a receiver. (True story -- I was in Sacramento last year traveling with another engineer. We had just landed at the airport and had just rented a car, as well as a hand held receiver. I gave the printout with the address of the hotel and the receiver to my colleague, and asked him to direct us to the hotel. Although he had never used a receiver before, he had the address entered into the device and guiding us to the hotel before I hit the freeway. No instructions, no help from me) My concern is what happens if any one of the three legs of the Global Positioning System fail. It would seem that the weakest parts of the triad are the control and the space system, but no doubt others have come to this conclusion as well, and contingencies have been prepared. The user segment is as strong in the near term as the various power supplies, but in the longer term even batteries run down. In any case, I'm concerned with how to determine one's position on the earth without electronic navigation aids.
The principal method has been celestial navigation, using the predictable motion of the earth and planets to triangulate on the sphere one's position. The tools to do this are still readily available. To obtain a fairly precise location (perhaps one to two decimal places after the minute), you'll need a sextant of some sort and an almanac. The traditional marine sextant is a wonderful solution, but requires an artificial horizon when using the sextant in-land, like here in Tucson. There is an aviation sextant that has some compensation for the horizon built-in but I don't believe aviation sextants have been manufactured for some time. The second item, an almanac, can be filed through the acquisition of a current Nautical Almanac. This document, jointly published by the US and UK governments, costs about thirty dollars. There is also an almanac published by McGraw-Hill and written by George G. Bennett. This is a compressed almanac that carries data for five or so years, but lacks the precision of the Nautical Almanac.
I've forgotten the third element required for a celestial navigation solution: an accurate time piece. Just about any quartz wristwatch is accurate once the error from UTC is known.
Using a sextant and the Nautical Almanac, I've been able to determine my location to about 5 miles, which I don't think is bad given what I'm using for a horizon. I've used the reduction equations documented in the back of the Nautical Almanac, and programmed them into a calculator. However, there are a number of documents that provide for other reduction of the sextant and chronometer measurements, but reduction is essentially the solution of the navigation triangle for the unknown quantities. Before the advent of calculators solving this triangle was not trivial; although closed-form solutions exists, computing of those solutions is involved.
The next steps in achieving a low energy navigation solution for me is to first determine a replacement for the various almanacs. Essentially, this requires generating an almanac from local astronomical measurements. The final step would be to create a low-cost, reproducable, but sufficiently accurate sextant. I doubt if I get to this last step, but that would create a totally local and independent navigation system.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A Return to Geocaching
July was a very busy month at my household, which is my excuse for the lack of blog entries. The principal event has been our yearly vacation, which this year was very special, as KC and I celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We ditched the kids :-; with my sister, and flew to the Big Island of Hawaii, and stayed there for a whole week. It was a beautiful place, and we both enjoyed our stay at a very posh resort on the northwest coast of the island. The most vigorous thing I did that week was to take a day out and go geocaching, romantic fool that I am.
Now geocaching is a very peculiar occupation. I have yet to decide if geocaching is a hobby, a past time, or a sport. Like many recreational activities, geocaching has aspects of all three categories. It is a hobby, in that there is a kind of craftsmanship that goes into 1) creating and placing the caches, and 2) searching for and finding all but the most trivial of caches. It certainly qualifies as a past time, as one can spend a great deal of time involved in it, just for the love of it. Geocaching certainly has a sport quality about it, as players keep statistics of their finds, and match statistics against other players. Regardless though of how geocaching is classified, for me it is an enjoyable time.
After a long hiatus, I have finally returned to geocaching. The sport has changed considerably since I was involved six years ago in 2002. The receivers were not as advanced, and the number of published caches was much smaller than today. It was the purchase of a new GPS receiver that prompted my return to the game. The receiver that I'd been using for six year was somewhat old, and in light of our upcoming trip to Hawaii I decided to go ahead and purchase a new instrument. I purchased a top of the line eTrex Vista HCX from Garmin, which more than meets my expectations for a GPSr. The sensitivity of the receiver is much improve from the models at the turn of the century; acquisition inside my house is now possible and likely, whereas my earlier models would only acquire in doors very infrequently. The amount of storage is limited by the amount of storage on your micro SDD card, and downloads over USB 2.0 are significantly faster that over RS-232. My particular model has a built-in digital compass and altimeter, which is an advantage when outdoors. Finally, the color maps are superior to the map display in my old eMap receiver.
But geocaching is more than the receiver. It is also the database of caches and associated information that is accessed through www.geocaching.com. That database is now integrated with Google Maps, integrated with a Garmin receiver driver, integrated with a number of third party software applications, all of which combine to allow a cacher to pinpoint one of thousands potential caches in a particular area for a find. The database allows hunters to log their finds through a web interface, so the status of a particular cache can be tracked through the years.
Over time there have appeared a number of variations on the traditional cache which typically consists of a container filled with various "treasure" hidden under a pile of rocks or brush. One variation has been on the size of the cache container. The classic container is an ammo box, and the variation is to use a smaller container. If an ammo box is a standard sized cache, then a sandwich box is a small container, and a 35 mm film canister is a micro container. There are smaller container that are known as "nanos" and are devilishly difficult to find. Another variation is dispense with the container altogether, creating a "virtual" cache. Since the virtual cache must also dispense with the log as well as the container, proof that the cache has been discovered must take some other form, such as requiring a photograph of some feature near the cache site, or by answering some questions that could only be answered with intement knowledge of the cache site. An earthcache is a variation on the virtual cache, which requires demonstrating some knowledge of a geological feature of the earth. A mystery cache requires the solution of a puzzle to reveal the location of the cache coordinates, and a multiple cache is similar in that the final cache of a multiple, which contains the log, can only be found through the discovery of a sequence of caches.
Finally there are the people. I attended a "cash in and trash out" or CITO event and met some of the more active local cachers. I think they are an intense and nice group of people. Some are quite competitive, while others are more interested in the adventure. There are as many approaches to caching as there are individual cachers. A future post on this subject will review my own personal goals and approaches to caching.
Now geocaching is a very peculiar occupation. I have yet to decide if geocaching is a hobby, a past time, or a sport. Like many recreational activities, geocaching has aspects of all three categories. It is a hobby, in that there is a kind of craftsmanship that goes into 1) creating and placing the caches, and 2) searching for and finding all but the most trivial of caches. It certainly qualifies as a past time, as one can spend a great deal of time involved in it, just for the love of it. Geocaching certainly has a sport quality about it, as players keep statistics of their finds, and match statistics against other players. Regardless though of how geocaching is classified, for me it is an enjoyable time.
After a long hiatus, I have finally returned to geocaching. The sport has changed considerably since I was involved six years ago in 2002. The receivers were not as advanced, and the number of published caches was much smaller than today. It was the purchase of a new GPS receiver that prompted my return to the game. The receiver that I'd been using for six year was somewhat old, and in light of our upcoming trip to Hawaii I decided to go ahead and purchase a new instrument. I purchased a top of the line eTrex Vista HCX from Garmin, which more than meets my expectations for a GPSr. The sensitivity of the receiver is much improve from the models at the turn of the century; acquisition inside my house is now possible and likely, whereas my earlier models would only acquire in doors very infrequently. The amount of storage is limited by the amount of storage on your micro SDD card, and downloads over USB 2.0 are significantly faster that over RS-232. My particular model has a built-in digital compass and altimeter, which is an advantage when outdoors. Finally, the color maps are superior to the map display in my old eMap receiver.
But geocaching is more than the receiver. It is also the database of caches and associated information that is accessed through www.geocaching.com. That database is now integrated with Google Maps, integrated with a Garmin receiver driver, integrated with a number of third party software applications, all of which combine to allow a cacher to pinpoint one of thousands potential caches in a particular area for a find. The database allows hunters to log their finds through a web interface, so the status of a particular cache can be tracked through the years.
Over time there have appeared a number of variations on the traditional cache which typically consists of a container filled with various "treasure" hidden under a pile of rocks or brush. One variation has been on the size of the cache container. The classic container is an ammo box, and the variation is to use a smaller container. If an ammo box is a standard sized cache, then a sandwich box is a small container, and a 35 mm film canister is a micro container. There are smaller container that are known as "nanos" and are devilishly difficult to find. Another variation is dispense with the container altogether, creating a "virtual" cache. Since the virtual cache must also dispense with the log as well as the container, proof that the cache has been discovered must take some other form, such as requiring a photograph of some feature near the cache site, or by answering some questions that could only be answered with intement knowledge of the cache site. An earthcache is a variation on the virtual cache, which requires demonstrating some knowledge of a geological feature of the earth. A mystery cache requires the solution of a puzzle to reveal the location of the cache coordinates, and a multiple cache is similar in that the final cache of a multiple, which contains the log, can only be found through the discovery of a sequence of caches.
Finally there are the people. I attended a "cash in and trash out" or CITO event and met some of the more active local cachers. I think they are an intense and nice group of people. Some are quite competitive, while others are more interested in the adventure. There are as many approaches to caching as there are individual cachers. A future post on this subject will review my own personal goals and approaches to caching.
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