Sal's Corner

What if you could not fail?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? What if you could not fail?  What would you differently in your life? What would you have done differently?  My objective is not to dwell on the past and make you realize that shoulda, coulda, woulda, and now you could have been a very successful person.  My intention is to make you aware that thoughts are the main driver of our lives.  What we think is what we are.  Your thoughts eventually become who you are.  Think about it, if you think you will not succeed at any new venture, you will probably not even try it, your mind will convince you and find ways to make you quit and perhaps not even get started.  But is it really true that our mind is always right?  The only thing that our mind is right about is the fact that it will make you go in the direction of your thoughts.  Take a minute and think about successful people that you know, now let me ask you, how many of those would you consider to have an exceptionally high IQ?  It is not about how much intelligence you have, but how you use it.  Do not let you thoughts defeat you before you even get started, I guarantee you that at the end of your life you will be regretful about the things you did not do or try than about the things you did.  Think as if you could not fail, pursue your dreams, think big, aim high, it does not cost one penny more to think big than to have pity on you.

This weekend I started listening to an audio book, "The Secret," great book, it will make you aware that successful people are not successful by random luck, through their thought they have thought themselves into the success they currently enjoy.  Grab you copy today, after listening to the audio book, I will go ahead and order the paper book, it is a book that you will want to read and re read until you master its concepts.

Have a great day!

Beware of the Marathon Runner Who Smiles

Whoever told you that success is easy, he/she was lying to you.  Success takes time, patience and effort.  It may be simple, but surely it will not be easy.  The best analogy is a Marathon runner, thinks about, they run 26.2 miles, but they do not have happy faces, and the training is not trivial, the have to train for months in order to be able to even finish.  When have you heard someone say without any training: "There is a Marathon next week, I think I'm going to run it?"  Sometimes the things that we want or dream do not and will not come overnight, and we will have plenty of times to double guess or doubt ourselves.

That brings me to my second topic, if you are an airplane pilot you are familiar with this, and even if you are not, I'm sure you have heard of flying with instruments.  Flying with instruments is very helpful when the weather conditions are bad.  You trust the instruments, you do not trust your senses, as they can betray you.  Remember John Kennedy Jr?  That's the reason e crashed back in 1999.  The reason I bring this up is because when things are not going your way, you have to trust your instruments, you have to be able to keep the end in mind.  If there is a statement that will always be true is this: "This too shall pass."  No matter what, the current situation you are in will always change.  Good times end, just as bad times do.  If you are going through a rough spot in your life, trust your mission, trust your beliefs, trusting your senses could lead you to make a bad decision.

This weekend I'm tiling one of my rental units, it's a lot of work, but I will save enough money to make it worth my while.  Tomorrow I'm traveling and I will have more time to read, and hopefully write.  Have a great weekend!

Lucky # 13

My son finished his soccer season yesterday on a great note, scoring 2 goals to end up with 13 total for the season.  He has been counting every goal throughout the season and yesterday on a very hot and humid Texas afternoon he scored 2 goals.  He sure was proud and needless to say, so was I, and I was not proud of his 13 goals, I was proud of the way he fought and thankful for his dreams and his energy to pursue them.  I'm almost done reading "The Courage to Succeed," it is a good book with great bits of inspiration.  Did you know that the chances of achieving something you truly desire and put your heart into are better than 95%.  The key word here is putting your heart into it.  Many of us desire and wish many things, but we never take action and never do anything about it.  If nothing else, I wish I can inspire my son to live by the core values (integrity, honesty, respect, humility, etc), but more important to never stop dreaming and never stop working on them.  They say that Thomas Alba Edison got asked how was it that he never gave up when he failed a great number of times before discovering the light bulb, his answer was that he discovered many new ways as to why a light bulb does not work.  He never gave up.  It will always be better to die fighting than live without trying.

It was a great weekend and we closed today with a great mothers day.  We celebrated my wife and gave thanks for her presence and her many gifts to our family.  We truly adore her, although we do not ever show it, sometimes we make it the best kept secret in the household, but not today.  We thank her for all that she does for us, and specially the kids for truly loving them and for nurturing every idea and dream they have and never discourage them.

Congratulations Mom!

Small Giants

It took me almost 2 weeks to get caught up with all my reading, but I'm finally back on track.  This weekend I started reading a book that I got a couple of weeks ago, the title is "Small Giants," this is a book that should be read buy anybody that dreams or aspires to have his/her own business.  The book describes how a number of companies have chosen to be great over being big.  One thing that caught my attention is the the theme of social responsibility, and how great companies go to great lengths to give back to the citizens and communities where they exist.  After my second week at Shell I was proud to learn that Shell also gives a significant amount of their money back to the communities where they operate.  I do believe that it is important, if not critical, that we give back from what we have.  It reminds me of the pitiful amount that my former company gave last September reacting to employees inquires about the company's efforts with regard to the hurricane.  I will not disclose the amount they gave, but it is the equivalent of giving $5 dlls for every $50,000 dlls earned a year.  I was ashamed when I heard this, it certainly does not reflect the actions of a company that wants to be the first in its business.  This morning we moved our watches an hour ahead as a result of daylight savings, and I must admit that it is kicking my butt, it was pretty tough to wake up to go to church this morning.  I will try to go to bed earlier than usual tonight. 

It was curious that yesterday I took some time off my daddy duties to go and read to a coffee house that just opened close by.  As I was reading "Small Giants," I met the owner of the place and through him I found out that is it not a franchise (although it looks like one), the owner is from Argentina, and he started this with a partner as a side business.  It is exciting for me to meet people with an entrepreneurial spirit, I hope he succeeds in this venture, Good Luck!  I will probably have to go back and try to learn from his experience.

Eat that Frog

While on vacation I read a book on procrastination and how to get rid of it (Eat that Frog), in short, how to achieve your goals.  Although, the book is basic, and most of the concepts you may already know, the author finds a way to put it  a way that makes you take action.  If you want to achieve your goals, and you are tired of putting it off until "tomorrow," this is a book you must read asap.  The book is written by Bryan Tracy, who is one of the best motivational speakers around.  It contains concepts such as "one step at a time," start with your hardest task in the morning," and go at it until finished, plan a day ahead, make sure to lay out the tools before you start a task.

It is worthwhile, an excellent reading before I get started on my new job tomorrow.

Integrity

Success is more than just being smart and able to persuade people.  Success goes beyond this, in order to be truly successful, you have to posses the courage to meet the demands of reality.  In other words you have to have character.  Be able to face any situation in life with character.  That is how integrity can be defined.  Many companies and organizations have very intelligent people, however, they lack the character needed to reach their full potential.  You will not find a true leader lacking character.  To have a professional will, married with deep care for your employees will turn you into a very successful individual.  Character is to never give up and to face averse situations with an unwavering will to keep going.  I started listening to an audio book titled "Integrity" yesterday, and this is the main message that the author conveys.  If there is one thing you can teach your kids and leave as your legacy, it would be integrity.

The Year of the Dog? It Seems More Like the Year of the Tiger

China is celebrating a new year, and this year will be the year of the Dog.  Meanwhile in the US it seems like it will be another year of the Tiger... Woods, that is.  I got to watch a little bit of golf today, and for a change Tiger Woods won again.  This guy is really amazing, not bad for his 1st tournament of the season.  I had always said that betting against Tiger is a sure way to lose money.  The Superbowl is next weekend, and to be honest I do not care who wins.  I just have not watched a lot of NFL football this season, I'm not even sure I'll watch the game, but if I do, I will make sure to comment on it.

Today we had dinner with some friends that were very gracious to have us over, and I say very gracious because with 4 kids we can really make some noise.  Mark is an oil trader and I had aver nice conversation with him, he's a very shrewd individual, and I learned a lot about oil trading from him today.  Oil trading is quite different from stock trading, some of the fundamentals apply but it is not for everybody.

I'm almost done with "The Success Journey," the bottom line is that to be successful you have to be persistent, have a good an positive attitude, and take action.  I cannot stress enough how important is to take action, this is where a lot of us fail miserably, and never forget that the joy is in the trip.

Have a great week, and don't forget to check in later this week as I will be commenting on Mr. Greenspan last meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve where he will raise rates one more time. 

Success is a Journey

I just started reading "Success is a Journey," by John C. Maxwell.  Even though I'm just in the first pages, it promises to be a good book.  It focuses on the fact that success is not having money, or being good looking, or popular.  According to the author success is having a vision and a purpose, and working towards it.  I will be doing a more in depth blog when I finish reading the book.

The stock market keeps going down, whether this is a correction or something worse I "dunno", but tomorrow I want to share with you a few techniques that could help you minimize your loses in the market.  It is based on leading, and lagging indicators, and if you follow them you are likely to avoid or limit your loses to the minimum.  Signs of inflation are still in the air, so this means the Fed may not be done raising rates, and this will not be good for the market.  As I said a few months ago, and I repeat today, I believe we are in the 2nd phase of a commodities bull market and a stock bear market.  This phase will test us and see if we can keep our positions, or just sell in panic.  Looking at the chart of the Dow, what worries me is that the last 2 sessions where the Dow has lost over 100 pts, the volume has been increasing.  Anyway, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what does Mr. Market has to say.

Happy 2006

Best wishes for this year that is very much in diapers.  First a quick anecdote, a few days ago I gave my son $5dlls (he's 5 yrs old just for reference), and I told him he would have to put 1 in his savings account, give $1 to charity and spend the other $3 as he pleased, a day later he tells me: "Dad, could you take me by the bank, I need to go deposit one dollar," but then he goes on and says, "and Dad, you will have to give me one more dollar because after putting one in the bank I will not have my 5 dlls I will only have $4."  Anyway, at his young age he's already learning some smart tricks, too bad it did not work with me.

Saturday night, and before the new year arrived, I sat down for a nice meal with my wife after putting our 4 kids in bed, and we started writing our goals, I must be honest, I was a little anxious as I did not want to put in paper something that I knew would be hard to accomplish.  As I thought about this, I also thought about a quote a read a few months ago that said something like this: "Goals are dreams being acted upon." We wrote our goals last Saturday, and I plan to keep a copy of my specific goals in a place where I can be reminded on a daily basis.  If you haven't done so I recommend that you write down your goals, use your imagination and think about the person you would like to become in 1, 5, or 10 years, think about all the things that you need to do to get there and write them down.  Like Bear Bryant once said: "It's hard to be aggressive if you do not know who to tackle."  In the same way, if you do not think about, and write your goals, you will get lost and will be more prone to not accomplish anything.  So go ahead and make 2006 the year that made the difference.

Just to update you in my reading, I picked a copy of a book titled "The Undercover Economist," is by Tim Harford, he's (obviously) an economist and explains the way the world works in a very easy fashion, he answers trivial questions as to why do we pay so much for a coffee at Starbucks, to why can't we buy a decent used car, to things the supermarkets do not tells you.  I'm halfway through it, and I hope to comment more on this book as soon as I finish it.

Best Wishes in 2006!!!

What's in Store for 2006

I was trying to decide whether I will try to write my thoughts about what I think will happen in 06 in a blog, but I decided that a) it is not my job, b) it would be a useless exercise, and c) I will be wrong.  On the short term nobody can tell you what's going to happen, except God, however on the long term I can let you into some wisdom that I have learned from very brilliant minds. 

Back in March I gave a friend a stock recommendation, he did not buy it but kept a close watch on the stock throughout the year, a few weeks ago we were looking at the stock and seeing that it had gone up 20%, besides paying about 3% on dividends, he asked me how come I knew that it would be a good buy back in march.  My answer to him is that you do not have to re invent the wheel or be Einstein to figure out certain things.  I do not consider myself a genius, I would say I'm average, however I like reading a lot, and I try to read as many financial/economics publications/newsletters/books/etc that I can get my hands into.  You may be wondering where am I going?  Back in February I read a book called "The Vital Few vs the Trivial Many," in this book George Muzea talks about investing with the insiders (insiders are people within the company that knows what's going on).  All public officers are allowed to buy or sell stock of their company within certain periods.  The book explains why if you invest with the insiders your chances of making money go up significantly, after all who knows the company better than them? 

It is quite easy to check insider information on a company nowadays, and if a CEO is buying big chunks of shares for no apparent reason you know there is a good chance the stock may be headed up, this is what happened with this stock I recommended my friend, back in march I notice the CEO was buying stock in lots of no less than 20 to 30,000 shares, this was no pocket change for him, as it represented a good portion of his current holdings.  The man is 51 yrs old and he's already a millionaire, so why would he be wasting his money buying stock that would go down?

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that you do not have to be a wizard to know what will happen in 2006, in the short term I do not know who's going to win the masters (although I'm rooting for Woods), or who will be the Soccer World Cup Champion (here I would not mind a Mexican Miracle, but I know I'm pushing it), or when is the US going to withdraw from Iraq (not even Bush knows that).  What I can tell you is that if you read enough books and magazines, you start getting a pretty good idea of economic trends.  I can tell you that the dollar has the odds against it, I can tell you that Japan is booming and I don't think very many people have noticed this, I can tell you that gold as boring as it may be, could be the safest investment in 2006, I can tell you that commodities (gold, aluminum, cooper, steel, cement, lumber, oil) are in a bull market bound to last at least 5 more years, and although I may not be able to tell you whether they will go up or down tomorrow, I can tell you they will be higher 5 years from now.

One more thing I can tell you is that on a personal level success is a choice, it does not happen by luck, although a little luck can go long ways to help your success.  In 2006 what happens to you will be determined 80% or more by what you do.  If you have the determination, desire, and discipline to make something happen in 2006, I will not bet against you, the first step will be to dare to write it down.  Do you want to exercise more?, meditate more?, pray more?, make more money?, start a new business?, get a better job?  Everything is possible, but you have to start by wanting it bad enough to make it happen.  Tomorrow I will keep writing on what I see coming in 2006 and beyond.

By the way, do you want to know what stock I referred to in the first part of my blog? the ticker symbol is AFG.