SPEAKING OF GAMBLING, a company named Schwab has invented a new mini-game at the Stock Market casino, where they will sell you “fractional shares” called Schwab Stock Slices™ which is Schwab’s version of the five-dollar table, always a tough thing to find at the non-stock-market casino, small stakes betting, so this is very Democracy, letting the small, tiny, and micro-investor in on the game. This new Low Roller angle opens up a whole new wagering window in my scratch-off tickets and lottery world! Schwab will let me buy teensy slices of stock market pie, so the next time I score on a regular State-Approved wagering ticket, I’m going to double-down into the next Circle of Sell! Late Stage of Capitalism!
Disclosure: I am already a “player” in the stock market because like 10 years ago, my brother bought me one share of Apple Computing (AAPL) for my birthday. It’s one of those gifts like dedicating a star, and you get a Certificate of Authenticity, but as opposed to forcing a Colonial name on a flaming ball of gas a kabillion light-years away from my house, a share of Stock Market is worth money right now!
My bro also bought me a share of WWE Wrestling, but I lost track of the paperwork and the State of Maryland decided it was Unclaimed Property, seriously, my mom found my name in one of those crazy-giant UNCLAIMED PROPERTY lists of people’s names in the newspaper, which they still print, on paper. When I claimed it, they (and you know who They are) had sold my one share, so I received a check for about $40, I think. I don’t mind not owning that wrasslin’ stock though, because I think the owner is kind of a putz.
My AAPL share, though, I haz Apple phone and computer, so I feel like I’m paying myself, and that share of stock has “split” a buncha times, so I have like 20 shares of AAPL now, plus I get a fucking dividend! Lemme stock-splain you the way a Dividend works: You just sit on your ass and own some shares of Apple Computing and they (we already talked about Them) mail you a check for—last time I checked—seventy-seven cents per share, every three months, or “quarterly” as people in the World of High Finance say. I still say “three months,” though. Dividend! I get 77 cents times 20 which equals like $15! For doing nothing! It’s fun to smoke a cigar and drink brown liquors and talk about my Position in the Market and stuff. My position is Baby Bird, where I sit there with my beak open, flapping my arm-wings, getting $15 a quarter regurged into my mouth-wallet. Awrk!
This big famous stock market business person Warren Buffet owns like TWO HUNDRED MILLION SHARES shares of Apple! So he rakes in like two hundred and fuckton million times 77 cents or something for sitting around being Warren Buffet, that is his Dividend. This is some really fuzzy math, but that’s gotta be around a hundred and fifty million bucks every three months? Quarterly! Dividend!
It doesn’t matter what a share of Stock Market is worth as long as you’re getting a dividend, right? I listen to the Bloomberg radio and all the touts do on there is tell each other what stocks are worth, and none of ‘em really know, but they’re all part of the same hypocrisy—or Belief System, if you will—because what they do know is if you jump in and out of the market at the right times, that’s where you make some real dough, as opposed to buying some stock and sitting on it like it’s a bank account, that’s for saps, unless you are actually participating in the company (by Getting Paid, dividends), as opposed to owning shares of a thing that changes its price every day.
With stocks, you can be all scientific and Buy the Dip and stuff, or you can do it the Good Old American way and get some Inside Information. It’s exactly like a casino, fixed! However, once you understand the “House Edge,” which shows you the odds of the game, you have achieved the next stage of Gambling, in which you ignore Facts and try and Get In On It anyway because you think you can Beat The House.
People who count cards and figure out ways to screw with slot machines are just doing the same as those White Collar Inside Information traders. You cannot win if you do not cheat!
Speaking of which, did you see this stuff about Google and my company that I told you I get paid dividends from, Apple? I didn’t authorize this or anything, but it looks like—and again, I didn’t know anything about this, and you can’t prove anything—Google pays Apple billions of dollars so that the Google is inside the Apple, whether you like it or not. You can read all about it with your Apple in a newspaper on the internet:
Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google’s search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple’s annual profits. That’s not money Apple would be eager to walk away from. [The New York Times]
This kinda stuff makes my head hurt, because, like, I hate to say it—because it might hurt my Dividend—but shouldn’t Apple be paying Google for its wonderful software that goes in their phones? What is Google paying for, is it buying the people who look at the phones, who look at the ads? Hey, go ahead and Google to see whose stock doesn’t pay dividends, Google!
A Schwab-suggested circle of Schwab: fifty bucks! Spin that wheel!
I know I said all that stuff about Dividends, but I like Action and so I really would like to be a Player and buy more Stock Market, and with that Schwab thing, maybe I can dive in and buy pieces of stuff I like or am forced to use? This is what I would buy:
- A Potato Chip Company: Fritos.
- A Hard Liquor Company: Whatever company owns Casamigos mezcal or Wild Turkey whiskey.
- A soda pop company: Coke, even though they say they are turning off TAB, they messed up when they messed with the saccharine, seriously. Anyway, Fresca is way better Diet Soda, cut it with plain iced tea for a refreshing low-calorie beverage, maybe throw some Wild Turkey in there and see what happens, but I wouldn’t put Casamigos, that shit’s $50 a bottle, I would go with Hornitos Tequila or a similar speed-rack-quality brand, cheers. Mostly though, I want to go to a shareholders meeting and tell Coke to stop this bullshit with importing their own Mexican coke to sell at the supermarket and manufacture Coke in the United States with real sugar in it and not corn syrup, because I can tell the difference, and this thing where Coke sells a 16-oz. bottle of Mexican Coke at the supermarket for around a buck-fitty in a glass bottle while they are selling the Corn Syrup Coke on the next shelf for like, five bucks for 12 12-oz. cans, which is about 144 ounces of Corn Coke going off at a Unit Price of what, three cents an ounce? And the Mexican Coke is nine cents an ounce? Because it’s imported? I’m not good at decimals! And hey, what about the Carbon Debt to get that Mexican Coke all the way up north? How is this sustainable? Anyway.
- A Marijuana Company: Not MED MEN, they are creeps.
- A Fast-Food company: Bill Gates! He had ten million shares of McDonald’s, and he just dumped it, but he’s holding on to his Arcos Dorados, which is McDonald’s in Latin America. I totally enjoy Egg McMuffin, and whatever they got in Uruguay is probably solid. I bet Bill Gates has eaten a lot of McDonalds. I would buy Taco Bell, though, because they are the cheapest, and I support that mission. Seriously, a bean burrito with extra tomato, that shuts you down for the rest of the day, appetite-wise.
- A Cable Teevee Company: Which I will not name but the initials are C.O.M.C.A.S.T., and I do not like them but I have to pay them to get on the stupid Internet, I do not have a choice, it’s a Monopoly where I live.
- A Netflix Hulu Disney Home Box Company: If they are not already A Single Company by the time this column is published.
- A Beer Company: Narragansett, because that’s the beer that the shark fisher Quint drinks in the major motion picture Jaws. Dead eyes!
- Stupid fucking Apple Computer Company: Because I work on their Machines to earn my daily bread and now that I know about Warren Buffet I feel like I’m chained to an oar in one of those Roman Galley deals and the guy with the whip is telling me I have an opportunity to buy stock in the company that makes my manacles.
I also wish I had some Affordable Health Care though, as an investment? I think it is a good idea. Can you buy stock in that besides paying for your Health Care? Is that bad? Are we already doing that?