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Two of my favorite organizations have just jointly announced a wonderful program to offer investment clubs an opportunity to move up to the next level of convenience and efficiency in executing their trades, and to do so without paying any commissions. For clubs, which frequently trade in small, odd lots, this can substantially cut down the cost of each transaction and increase the return on their shares. And there are other benefits as well.

FolioFN, recently renamed “FolioInvesting,” is a folio brokerage, which means that they have the technical capability to not only execute trades conventionally on the various exchanges, they also can execute window trades, an exciting new means of permitting their clients the benefit of inexpensively trading on a dollar basis rather than a per-share basis.

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Charley Reese, retired Orlando Sentinel columnist, wrote a column some years back that I believe should be preserved as a classic. You may read it here: “The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes.” He’s updated it since he first wrote it, but only to change the names of the individuals who occupy the positions he speaks about.

Although you might have read it at one time or another, I think it’s worth another read since it so articulately and succinctly expresses my view as I’ve expressed it here from time to time.

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Let’s talk about unrealized gains. Are they real? Or are they “only on paper?”

As you can probably tell, I’m spending more and more time trying to widen the gap between us “real investors” and the herd out there whose members think investing is gambling on the stock market. So, this topic provides a good opportunity to highlight that distinction.

When the typical trader out there buys a stock, her sole focus is on buying it at a low enough price so she can sell it to someone else at a higher price and make money on it.

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A while ago, my wife, Dianne, came home from an afternoon of shopping and couldn’t wait to show me something she’d had her eye on in the department stores for a long time but would never spend the six-hundred bucks they wanted for it. She had come across it for $29.95—a price at which it had come to rest after a series of automatic markdowns in one of the outlets she occasionally visited. The item was still selling in the mainstream stores for the original price; and, after carefully checking to be sure it was not counterfeit, imperfect or irregular, she had triumphantly carried it home.

That item—I think it was a leather, vanity-labeled purse—had a value of around $600 because the department stores could buy them at wholesale, mark them up enough to make a decent profit, and there was plenty of demand for them at that price.

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As do most of us, I remember vividly where I was when I first heard the breaking news of the World Trade Center disaster. And I remember, too, how that entire day and the days thereafter were consumed by the events of that day.

My memory goes back to past occasions——Pearl Harbor and Dallas come quickly to mind——when events so tragic and incredibly heinous occupied virtually our every waking hour and dominated all of our thoughts.

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cau-cus \’kaw-kus\ n. [origin unknown] (1763) : a closed meeting of a group of persons  belonging to the same political party or faction, usually to select candidates or to decide on policy; also : a group of people united to promote an agreed-upon cause.  [Merriam-Webster]

The Democrats and Republicans have their caucuses. There’s a Black caucus and a Blue Dogs’ caucus. There’s even a Friends of Lichtenstein, a Congressional Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Equality Caucus, and one to support soccer! And there are many, many…many more.

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Today, I think I’ll post something about investing for a change. You’ve been pretty patient about my indulging myself and mouthing off about current events. So I owe you one!

Some years ago, I accepted an invitation by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) to participate in their regular feature: “Pro Pix,” a contest that, until I came along, was restricted to professionals who were willing to vie with each other to produce the best performing portfolio over a six-month period. I accepted the challenge with the condition that I be permitted to use the required bi-weekly commentary to tout the virtues of long-term investing and make it clear that a six-month time horizon was not a reasonable basis on which to judge success.

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That goofy group has really done it this time!

I mean, I learned “Conservatism” from Barry Goldwater, formed my economic and social belief system after reading Ayn Rand, and proclaimed myself to be a “Compassionate Conservative” when Dubya was still fighting acne—waaay before he thought he coined the term. And I’m proud of my country, my military service—our Constitution, and even the Supreme Court that’s responsible for keeping it intact.

Although my comfort zone was well to the right of middle, I grew up respecting traditional liberal idealism because, as my mom used to say, “If you shoot at nothing, you’re bound to hit it!” So we need people like that to give us the vision to aim for the things that can make our country still better than it is.

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We Americans used to be so supremely confident of our position at the forefront of scientific achievement. How much of it was real and how much was wishful thinking it’s hard to say. We were sure caught by surprise when the Soviets launched Sputnik. But President Kennedy’s vision, leadership, and appeal to national pride saw us catch up and then some—showing the world we were capable of rising to the occasion and doing almost anything the imagination might conceive, given the national will to do it.

Well, here’s another opportunity. Two items in today’s news caught my attention: The first was an article that spoke about a concept first introduced in 1968—eleven years after Sputnik was launched and a year before humans first set foot on the moon. This was the notion of collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it to earth via satellite.

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Who would have thought that legislative bad judgment could have such swift and telling consequences on our country! Normally, when the Congress of the United States makes a mistake, the full measure of tragedy surfaces so gradually that both sides have plenty of time to collaborate in creating credible reasons to blame each other. And the public seldom gets the true picture until long after the dust has settled.

Not so this time. The length of time that it took the (as usual, well-intended) horribly bad legislation to translate into a deal Wall Street couldn’t refuse—and a temptation our financially illiterate public couldn’t resist—was astonishingly short.

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