The Investing Game

5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks

One Winner!!

 Current Status (-$3,419.92)

Week - 39

The Dying Breed!

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What is Compassion..?

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My wife suffers the effects of arthritis. She receives a drug infusion at a nearby clinic every few weeks. In her most recent treatment this past week, she had an unusual encounter which she then related to me. A somewhat elderly woman had also been there for a similar reason and refused to be treated by a young black girl who worked there. Essentially, she did not trust the girl’s abilities based on her race! This was of course upsetting to the young lady who, as it turns out, is highly qualified and skilled at what she does. The young woman then moved on to attending to my wife’s needs but appeared visibly shaken by the incident. 

The infusion process takes about an hour or so to complete. The girl had time to recover and engaged my wife in a conversation about her experience. You see up to that point in her young life, she had only heard of but never actually felt the sting of having the blatant racism of another human being confronting her face to face. It occurs to me that in a way, that’s a good thing. Perhaps we actually are moving towards a place where fear and hatred based on race or origin will one day exist only in history books. The presence of this particular elderly woman however makes it clear, we are not there yet!

I do prefer to believe that she is of a dying breed and when she passes on, there will be no others to take her place. At least I hope that this is so, the sooner the better. Not to say I wish death upon the poor unfortunate woman. Let her live the remainder of her days in peace and let her take the delusion of her superiority to the grave when she goes. 

I have mentioned that I am an avid golfer. (How’s this for a side trip?) One of the great founders of the modern game was a man named Bobby Jones. I won’t detail his career or accomplishments, they can be easily researched. A story often told about Mr. Jones is how he once called a penalty on himself during a tournament which ended up costing him the win. No one else had seen the ball move and he could have easily let it pass without notice. During a post round interview a reporter praised his integrity. Mr. Jones responded that, “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.” Essentially pointing out that ‘integrity’ is what you do when no one else is watching.

This brings me to the subject of compassion. (That didn’t take so long, did it?) Specifically, while it would be easy to feel compassion for the young woman who was the recipient of the above cited slight, that would not rise to a praiseworthy level of compassion. You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank. More difficult is finding compassion for the elderly lady who casually inflicted the offense. I work in a health care environment, it is easy enough to see a child with a twisted spine and feel compassion. It can be more difficult to find a woman with a twisted mind and have the same response. If this can be done however, the path away from answering hate with more hate becomes easier to find. 

I can’t know what experiences poisoned her mind. We are all products of our circumstance, I believe. Unless we each find a way to question our fundamental values, we simply act in the way we are trained. My wife remarked at the young technician’s skill in administering the needle and I trust the young lady’s own sense of self worth was not seriously shaken by a single random affront from a soon to be extinct relic of a dying age. For myself, I choose to look upon the poor unfortunate older woman as just that. Poor in spirit, unfortunate in living a life of delusion, and doomed to be remembered not for her great capacity for compassion but for her shallow appreciation of those surrounding her. 

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I think I’ll pause here for a few moments before I continue on with the rest of this entry..

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A very positive week to close out Q3! This week’s gains were topped off by a brilliant Friday run by my original chart leader Iqstel (IQST). An announcement of pending production results in a  bold 43% percent gain of over 58 dollars pushing this stock up into second place. My current leader, High Tide (HITI) held off the surging challenger with a solid 15% Friday gain of its own to cap a +22% gain on the week. Despite showing recent gains and favorable regulatory news, Mind Medicine (MNMD) slipped from last week’s lead into third with this week’s largest dollar loss. A Friday rally of over 6% saved the week from being even worse than it was. 

 Other significant gains included Ozop Energy Solutions (OZSC) shaking off a sluggish start to rally almost 45% by the week’s close! Smartmetric (SMME) +25% and Cyios Corp. (CYIO) +14% were also found in the positive column this week. Bottom feeder SinglePoint, Inc. (SING) even managed to eke out a gain of two bits. I’ll mention that this represents a 1.4% overall gain in value, and isn’t that a little sad for a stock that was trading at two dollars and fifty cents when we started this journey some nine months ago? I remain confident, the big rally is just around the corner… Great Panther Mining found itself face down in the dirt when it took a dump...truck sized tumble of over 30%. Very disappointing as you know how much I love my dirt diggers!

Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print for this week. I’m looking for a strong closing quarter to bring this little experiment back to respectability. Have a good week, stay safe and may the stock charts be ever in your favor!

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