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Weather: Mostly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening, then partly cloudy after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 50 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. This week’s guest: County Commission Chairman Andy Dance. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The gatherings occasionally feature a special guest.
Echoing Air’s free Baroque concert: Echoing Air, the Indianapolis-based Baroque chamber ensemble, presents a free concert at 3 p.m. at the Jeanne M. Goddard Center on the campus of Daytona State College, 1200 W. International Speedway Blvd., Daytona Beach. The concert will feature music by George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, Claudio Monteverdi, Thomas Tallis and more. For more information contact Julia Truilo, [email protected], 386-547-3882.
Special enrollment day at Daytona State College: Come to Daytona State College from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a special Enrollment Day. Attendees will be registered for a $500 scholarship drawing. If you have questions about going to college or how to enroll, we’ve got answers. Meet with representatives from Admissions, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, Registration and Student Accounts who will guide you through the enrollment process. It’s a “one-stop-shop” in our Student Center on the Daytona Beach Campus. Click to select your appointment time. Space is limited.
Juneteenth Freedom Day at AACS, noon to 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). There’ll be music, entertainment, games, a bounce house for the kids, vendors, jewelry, crafts, barbeque and other foods. Call 386/447-7030.
Democratic Women’s Club of Flagler County meeting at 6 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
Live From the Waterworks: Gamble Rogers Folk Festival’s Monthly Concert Series every third Saturday at The Waterworks, 184 San Marco Avenue St. Augustine. Doors open at 6 p.m., music starts at 7. The annual event celebrating the life and music of folk legend Gamble Rogers. Through June 2024. Check performers and book tickets here. Read more details about the festival here.
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every third Saturday RAI hosts Live Standup Comedy with comics from all over Central Florida.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: Covering that unusual meeting between the Flagler County Commission and the Ormond Beach City Commission in the middle of May, which featured a superb fencing duel between our county’s Sean Moylan and their city’s Cliff Shepard, the two attorneys assigned to mediate, I was a bit surprised, if not a bit taken aback, if not a bit shocked, if not a bit … well, anyway–by the signs on the chairs in the picture above, which made me wonder: imagine if Palm Coast did something like that in its chambers at City Hall. We’d probably have an Intifada by the feayeens of Hidden Lake and the B Section and the E Section. Can there be so many developers in Ormond Beach? (The picture is a bit late: it just got back from processing at Kodak in Rochester.) Come to think of it the signs aren’t that different from “press” signs Palm Coast places at a side table, an accommodation meant to be just that, an accommodation, though it always seems to me presumptuous of any of us in the press to sit there, or to have special accommodations of any kind. Especially when it puts us on the same plane as, say, developers.
—P.T.
Now this: Johnny Cash’s “Delia.”
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
Doll had learned something during the past six months of his life. Chiefly what he had learned was that everybody lived by a selected fiction. Nobody was really what he pretended to be. It was as if everybody made up a fiction story about himself, and then he just pretended to everybody that that was what he was. And everybody believed him, or at least accepted his fiction story. Doll did not know if everybody learned this about life when they reached a certain age, but he suspected that they did. They just didn’t tell it to anybody. And rightly so. Obviously, if they told anybody, then their own fiction story about themselves wouldn’t be true either. So everybody had to learn it for himself. And then, of course, pretend he hadn’t learned it.
–From From James Jones’s The Thin Red Line (1962).
Pogo says
@P.T.
Not Homer, but who is — thanks for the quote.
Well worth one’s time
https://www.google.com/search?q=James+Jones+author
I don’t think people like to read about themselves or about others as they really are. It would be too horrifying.
— James Jones
Pogo says
@Now this, as is often the case, become a feast
Viewed Mr. Cash on YouTube, and it led to this too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQdnl0_IuRg
Cutting grass and grocery shopping aborted again.
Ray W. says
Another random thought.
What is today often called the Eisenhower Recession occurred between August 1957 to April 1958. At the time, some called it the Asian Flu Pandemic Recession. Somewhere between 70k and 116k Americans died during the pandemic and worldwide some one to two million died. Another of the trigger mechanisms for recession was a drop in Department of Defense purchasing. A third mechanism was thought to be the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956-57. Since some of the world’s oil traveled to Europe and to the U.S. through the Canal, a modest shock to the world’s oil markets occurred.
During the short time frame of what economists define as the actual recessionary period, American GDP fell by 3.7%. Unemployment rates rose to a peak of 7.4%. Some 2 million workers lost their jobs, bringing the total number of unemployed to 5.1 million, but the effect, in part, was regional. Automobile sales dropped from 8 million in 1954 to 4.3 million in 1958. Detroit saw a 20% unemployment rate for a short time. Overall industrial production dropped. Business investment levels plateaued. Exports declined.
In response, most of the economic stimulus was executive in origin. Yes, the independent Federal Reserve Bank cut the discount loan rate to 1.75% to stimulate borrowing. The Eisenhower administration accelerated already started construction programs and new construction projects that were awaiting funding were started, i.e., what we would call today “shovel ready” programs were started ahead of schedule. Rural electrification projects were rushed into action. A restriction on zero-down home mortgages was withdrawn in order to stimulate home construction. The federal government provided financial assistance to states to extend the time period for payment of unemployment benefits.
For that portion of the FlaglerLive community that seems both memory impaired and research disabled, the Eisenhower Recession was the first of the 10 recessions occurring during my lifetime. Some think our times are terrible and we aren’t even in recession. We haven’t been in recession since the end of the Trump Recession of 2020, which was actually due to the ravages of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Those who refuse to accept that the forty-year average 30-year mortgage rate from 1984 to today is roughly 7.5% howl at today’s 30-year mortgage rate of less than 7%, as if we have never seen such rates before. We have. My first mortgage rate was 13%. The loan officer with whom I interacted told me that he didn’t ever again expect to see single-digit mortgage rates.
Do I long for the Reagan years when I paid 13% on my first mortgage? No. Do I long for the days four years ago when we were in one of the most abrupt and shocking economic upheavals of my lifetime, when over 20 million people applied for unemployment benefits in one month? Absolutely not. We were so much worse off four years ago than we are today, it is absurd to think that one political party is actually using that theme as its bid for election to the presidency.
Pogo says
@Ray W.
Another welcome dose of eye wash, clean air, and well stated honesty. Thank you.
I’d be most interested in your views on the ramifications of this:
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+market+cap
The warning on rearview mirrors (objects may appear larger…) keeps coming to mind.
Ray W. says
Nvidia might really be worth every penny of its $131.88 stock valuation as of June 14th. Thank you for the link. I found that on January 30, 2015, the prescient among us would have paid 48 cents per share. However few the investors were on that date over nine years ago, if they have continuously held the stock, it has multiplied in value just over 274 times.
But just how many of us, Pogo, are actually prescient? Many of us who hurry to catch up to emerging trends, hoping to ride the wave however late the takeoff lose in the end.
Perhaps Warren Buffet has it right when he describes the importance of having an exit strategy prior to whenever anyone invests in anything. As Buffet describes it, if one decides to study the valuation of a particular stock, one must eventually decide what he or she expects over a term of months or years of the stock prior to investing in it.
If one decides that the stock should grow by a hypothetical 12% in a six-month term, then if the stock is languishing at 1% after 4 months, one should accept the possibility that one’s initial assessment was incorrect. Yes, the stock might suddenly explode in valuation, but the likelihood of that happening is slipping away as the time plods on to the six-month decision point. If the exit strategy formed in advance mandates sale of the stock if it is dramatically underperforming at four months, then do it before the six-month mark, because the theory of opportunity cost mandates that the longer one holds onto an underperforming asset can actually cost money. If one sells the underperforming stock and invests in another stock, the next stock might perform as expected. Don’t hang on to an underperforming stock just to hopefully prove that you were smart.
If the stock, however, has gained 20% over the same four months, then it has overperformed your expectations. In this scenario, just as in the underperforming scenario, your initial assessment has been proven wrong. Hanging on to an overperforming stock in hopes that it will continue to overperform could also be a mistake. Either way, if you were wrong in your initial assessment, and you cannot explain why you were wrong, you might be foolish to continue to hold the overperforming stock. Once a stock is behaving outside the parameters of your studied expectations, i.e., when you don’t know why it is doing what it is doing, you should exit from that position.
The example Buffet gave to underscore his investment strategy pertained to the run-up in crude oil prices during the second term of the Bush administration. Investors projected on future oil production deficits, because of the 50-year-old “peak oil theory” as it pertained to worldwide crude oil production. Speculation evolved into the fantastic. Prices rose and rose and rose some more. Oil, selling at roughly $40 per barrel
eventually peaked at over $140 per barrel as investors jockeyed to catch every last dollar in profit. Buffet described his team’s decision-making process. As I recall the article, the team got into the futures dance when oil was still in the $60 range. Once oil futures hit $118 per barrel, the team voted to get out of the market, because the futures market had begun behaving in ways that the team could no longer defend. The exit strategy mandated that once they no longer could explain why the market was behaving as it was, they had to get out. The uncertainty of holding on too long persuaded them to sell.
On the other hand, a man I respected and worked side by side (long since passed away), bemoaned the drop in Chrysler stock in the early ’80s. He had bought at just under $30 per share. As I recall, he sold at 10 cents per share. It ultimately dropped to 7 cents per share when, miraculously, the Reagan administration announced a loan bailout for Chrysler. The money was to tide Chrysler over until its K-car line and the new minivan line went into production. Chrysler paid back every penny of the bailout and the stock rose precipitously to around $40 per barrel. My friend bemoaned his fate a second time. He was an Italian immigrant who had made a life in America, and Lee Iacocca had been hired to run Chrysler. That was enough for him to buy Chrysler stock.
At around the same time, a small group of Harley employees and Harley family members bought out the company from the American Manufacturing Federation (AMF). AMF had run Harley into the ground, extracting every bit of value without investing in new products. The new private ownership group plowed investment funds into developing the “Evolution” line of engines. Nearing bankruptcy, Harley persuaded the Reagan administration to impose a 50% tariff on all Japanese imports over 700 cc in engine displacement. The tariff made the old-style Harley products price competitive with the Japanese manufacturers, and sales rose. In time, the Evolution engine was released, and Harley’s short-term future was safe. The tariff ended, but Harley sales continued to rise. When the stock went public, many bought shares just for evidence that they supported the Harley lifestyle; there could never be an exit strategy for them because they never intended to sell, no matter what.
People invest for a wide variety of reasons. Some overvalue their investing skills. I don’t suppose Buffet is one of them. Some place emphasis on emotional valuations. My Italian-born friend was certainly one of them. Some invest to reaffirm their lifestyle choices. Harley owners fell into that category; they just wanted to frame the paper evidence of their share ownership and hang it on their shop or garage wall.
Some might call capricious investors, those who buy and sell at whim, people who overvalue the extent of their investing skills. Others know they are buying for emotional reasons and hope for the best. Others correctly place value on a stock by what it means to them. Owning the stock is enough, no matter what happens to it.
But what of the investor who relies on what some sociologists call “motivated ignorance?” Can people invest in Truth Social’s parent company by willfully blinding themselves to the investment facts that indisputably exist at the time they buy? Just as “prescience” based on study and accumulated wisdom can be a gift to be utilized by an investor like Warren Buffet, can “nescience” describe the Truth Social investor who now cannot understand why the stock is dropping in valuation? Some bought at its peak of $175 per share. Less than a year later it is still likely overvalued at under $40 per share. Nescience can be described as an active decision to remain in a state of ignorance. If presented with strong evidence against a held position, evidence that disproves an internal narrative of what is right, a nescient person will reject the evidence in order to avoid the psychological distress of realizing that one has been lying to oneself.
Does this view explain to all FlaglerLiver readers why I so commonly comment that all people have the right to wander through life fooling themselves, including me? It is the adherence to intellectual rigor and the willingness to follow reason to whatever end it takes us that demonstrates the wisdom of our founding fathers. They followed reason, despite their political differences, and conceived a liberal democratic Constitutional republic. They then elected their fellow citizens and sent them to the ratification commissions that ratified the Constitution.
Is Nvidia’s market cap overvalued? Undervalued? Just right? I don’t know. Check to see if Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway ever held Nvidia stock? If so, did it sell some or all of its Nvidia shares recently?
Happy Father’s Day everyone. My younger son tells me he has forgiven me for talking him out of buying Netflix stock in 2005. He had saved about $5000 and was soon to leave for basic training in the Navy. I didn’t tell him not to buy the stock. I suggested to him that going into the Navy was a major life change. I asked him to consider whether he could fully anticipate every possibility that the new lifestyle would bring. If he couldn’t, I argued that he should hold onto the money until he got settled. He could then invest it, once he knew better how he wanted to live his life. He didn’t invest in Netflix then or later, though he invested in other choices.
None of us knows all ends. None of us can predict the future. The best we can hope for is to guess the future.
My son is semi-retired now at the age of 38. He worked hard, invested wisely, set exit strategies for every investment, and put himself in a position where he can do this. He is letting the Navy invest in his future by using the last three years of his GI Bill eligibility to earn a college degree in finance. He earned it.
Honorable discharge after five years as an air traffic controller. A letter of commendation in his file for saving the Navy millions of dollars by spotting a discrepancy in a purchasing program. He innovatingly provided a solution to an unexpected problem. As an E-5, he led a team that stripped old paint from a task force support ship while the carrier he was assigned to was in drydock. His team then used a highly specialized form of paint to repaint most of the interior of the ship. But a civilian work crew was stripping and repainting classified areas of the ship that contained electronics warfare equipment. All of the civilian crew held security clearances to be in that area of the ship. While my son held the requisite security clearance, members of his Navy crew did not. Civilian contractors were using the same paint to repaint the interior of the electronics rooms of the ship. One day, my son’s team ran out of paint, so he bought some paint from the civilian team. He compared what the civilian crew paid for their identical paint from an independent supplier with what he was paying the Navy supplier. At the end of every workday for the next several months, he placed an order with the civilian crew, and the next morning they delivered to him all the paint he needed for that day’s work. His crew stripped and repainted most of interior of the ship. When finished, he submitted the payment invoices to an auditor for review. Sometime later, he was called in to explain to the auditor why his work had come in millions of dollars under budget. He explained what he did and why he did it. Next came the letter of commendation. My son could have been “nescient”, he could have willfully ignored what was obvious to him. Many people do. He didn’t. He acted to the betterment of the Navy, which to him was his duty.
I argue that every time JimboXYZ erroneously blames the Biden administration for today’s inflation when the pandemic and its aftermath is actually to blame and when Trudenflation is the more accurate and appropriate term, he is being willfully ignorant of the actual facts.
I hope this provides a semblance of an answer to your request.
Pogo says
@Ray W.
Yes it does, and thank you for this, and all your contributions. A toast to knowledge — and its increase, even without compound interest, the dividends are reliable.
A few words of my own: there is only one winner in Monopoly; four Aces are nothing when an empty hand with deeper pockets can buy the pot.