monadnocks

I can safely say that we got torrential rain tonight. It’ll be interesting tomorrow to see the extent of the erosion, etc.

I was at Costco today along with what felt like half of New England. I'd say about 90% of the people were wearing masks. And given the wide range of people - elderly man slowly making his way through the bakery all the way down to the couple with their two very young children - I'd hazard a guess that at least some people there either were ineligible for vaccines or had immune systems that weren't in the best of shape. (Or had family members with the same constraints and were trying not to bring home something besides beer and burgers.) Remember going to large conferences and expecting to get Con Crud? Either from the plane, the dry air, the crazy hours and bad food or just being mashed in with 25K people? Maybe it won't be so prevalent if there's some basic hygiene like hand washing and limiting the number of people completely mashed into a space. I'm looking at you DefCon in 2019 - minimum of ten minute waits to ride the freight elevator because the regular elevators were so overloaded. Or my last robotics conference where one of the ballroom talks was so full that people were literally sitting on the floor so that they could hear it.

Small world! My parents used to live on Plumtree Road in Springfield. Their neighbors called to tell them about the tornado coming; they had seen it from their attic windows. My old high school got hit that day. That neighborhood (north side of Plumtree Rd.) definitely took some damage. Luckily my folks were OK and stayed with my sister for a while. I think their power was out? The house was fine, thank goodness.

Unlike many of you.. I never met James in person. And in one of those strange Internet ways, I do feel like I knew him in some ways. As so many said, his energy and positivity for so many things was such a hallmark. Even though many of James' blockbuster storms never came to pass, I did read his posts, cheering him on, hoping that he'd get the snowbanks he wished for. Rest is peace, James.

On Friday I was driving through upstate New York and it was pretty toasty. The car thermometer read 91-94 for pretty much until we got close to Albany. As a northern New Englander, I'm completely OK with the Memorial Day weekend forecast. It'll be terrific for doing hours of work in the garden.

One of our local towns is having town meeting outside, Saturday at 9 AM. Want to bet it goes quickly?

Thanks! I’ll take a look in the morning.

Thinking about industrial metals tonight. I don't know much about that sector so just learning. Brief Google search for ETFs doesn't seem to have a lot of promise. DBB holds a lot of an Invesco mutual fund - AGPXX - and a fair amount of treasuries. JJT did well but the structure isn't one that I feel like I have a good handle on predicting its future success plus its focusing on just tin. What's a good way to get some exposure to this sector? Any ideas?

We've got thunder now.

We have a light coating of snow with a mix of rain and flakes at 33.5.

Thinking about a June road trip to the mountains of Wyoming. Maybe there will be snow there...

I also got the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday. Like others, my arm hurt but not too much. I did have two days of less than 100% but I also didn't slow down either. I felt worse with the shingles vaccine.

Agreeing the response by @Whineminster here. It does seem like this is a trend to make money capitalizing on publicity. A brief search of "reddit.com ARKX" yields a fair amount of interest there. I wonder if this will effectively be a meme ETF? I'm not interested in playing the momentum game now so I'll bail on it. I do believe that there's room for space-focused active management funds to do well. And thanks for the information.

I've got a small amount of underperformers that need to go and have been looking for something interesting. This would fill the "let's see how it goes" portion of the portfolio. Any investing I do for the 1, 2, 5 or 20+ time frame meets with all the research.

I found this page: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/solar-panels/going-solar/sizing-and-design which gives you the size of the panels, etc. The warranty info is here: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/solar-panels/learn/solar-service-warranty

ARKX is going to launch on 3/30 ( https://seekingalpha.com/article/4416500-emerge-ark-space-exploration-etf-ready-for-launch ) I've never bought an ETF on opening day. Will it be easily available?

I was reading about this earlier and came here to see what people were thinking and ended up researching solar / EV rebates / tax incentives.

Those incentives in MA are much better than what I can find for NH too. I'm not a NHEC customer so all I can find is the federal credit for a level 2 EV charger. Any ideas for other tax incentives or rebates?

As far as mortgage escrows go, take a look at the T&C you have for getting out of it. In general, even though savings accounts are paying next to nothing, the escrows are paying substantially less. If you can, just get out of it, just make an automatic deposit to a designated savings account so you'll have the money come tax time. And set up auto pay for the insurance and you're good to go. At least Ally and Marcus are paying 0.5% on savings accounts.

Happy spring everyone. No robins on the lawn here but I did see a turkey vulture the other day. I've still go some perma-pack in the shaded areas but sunny areas are bare. It happens that that the grass is in the shady areas so it'll be a while still before any lawn care is needed.

Do you have an emergency fund? That's what I'd do with extra money first and park it in a savings account paying the best you can find. It's generally 0.5% these days. Do you have a 401(k)? Getting at least your employer's match is probably the next best choice because you're guaranteed to get that return. Hippy's right - there are some exceptionally low cost ETFs out there. You could take Supernovice's breakdown and implement it in a group of ETFs.

If I remember that storm correctly, we didn't have any real icing issues here but my BIL who lived in Nelson at the time was out of power for a week.

Same boat. I doubt this will last until Friday.

It's not technically off-roading or mudding but some of the dirt roads that I typically drive on can have up to 8" ruts in soft mud. The same roads have correspondingly great "potholes", washboarding, etc. at times. You can drive on paved roads to get to the same location but you're going to spend quite a bit of time going around. I live on a hill and the road was put in before the current standards which I believe limit the grade to 9%. It would fail that test but thankfully it's paved. Last I knew (probably a decade ago) my town had 30% paved roads. It's substantially cheaper to repair with gravel and a grader.