That's it. That's the post. Tech gets all the headlines but Tobacco has quietly been one of the best performing stock categories in the world. BTI, MO, PM, IMBBY, JAPAY are all excellent. Telecoms have also been quietly nice, but way more bad apples to watch out for in that segment.
Getting into BTI at $30/share with a 10.5% yield in 2023 feels like a cheat code.
Just thought I'd share this since it's kind of funny and I think a lot of people are misguided nowadays, especially with the current looksmaxx thing . Obsession with appearance, presentation, status etc. All a red herring for the most part. Those things only matter insofar as they reflect your personality and overall way of being.
So I'm 6'2 and was always considered conventionally attractive. I really don't mean to be obnoxious, in fact I barely pay any attention to my appearance at all, this is just what I've been told many times by people who recently met me. Have very, very oddly prominent eyebrows and blue eyes, thin, broad shoulders. A lot of people used to tell me I should model and things like that. Got a couple girlfriends when I was a teenager and those relationships went fine and ran their course. Truly. I never was broken up with and have been very fortunate in regards to these, they all ended for reasons to do with things outside the relationship.
At brief points in time throughout college I'd have a fling or two but not that much.
The problem is that I have always been socially awkward. Extremely, cripplingly socially awkward. Once people get to know me they tend to think I'm alright, but this always makes the most wildly varying impressions on people the first few times they meet me, and almost no one gets past that. I have no idea how I could dislodge this inherent strangeness. Sometimes they think I'm super cool and don't care about anything and are a bit intimidated by me, other times they think I'm all shy and flustered due to nervousness (which can be true but is not often the case), or that I don't like them, or am bored. None of this is true. My mind just wanders all the time, feel extremely detached although I care deeply about the few people I'm close to.
I think the single worst possible combination for interacting with people you don't know, *especially* women, is autism/social ineptitude and depression. And I probably have some degree of both, but horrendously high levels of depression. So there's the combination of poor understanding, interpretation of how people feel, tendency to drift into subjects no one cares about or drop the subject of a conversation. With the sluggish pace and over-cynical mood of depression. My looks and my personality are extremely incongruent. I look kind of like some 90's musician but have the personality of a 70 year old alcoholic. (no issues with substances by the way)
Was raised almost entirely isolated, no siblings, father was an erratic military vet whom I sometimes got along with, but usually avoided due to how jarring his behavior was. Shrieking in the middle of the night, publicly berating me at random etc. Parents mostly hated each other. No hobbies, friends, anything. Best friend spiraled away due to heroin addiction, first girlfriend went insane during college (a while after we had split, but I still considered her a friend) and was in and out of mental hospitals. During covid two people in my family offed themselves. And most of this time I just read books. Day in day out.
I think the isolation at a young age is the thing that's most unusual for people to experience, and this sense of strangeness is impossible to shake. Anyways, back to the main topic. Women: their number one strength, I think, is being so good at living in the present. And I've always been bad at that, totally scatterbrained/dreamer type.
Almost every interaction with them goes so hilariously badly it's hard not to laugh after a while. Especially now that I'm recovering from a 1.5 year long illness and what few social skills I had have atrophied. They always seem a bit nervous to speak to me, or excited, at the start. And then there are waves of surprise, worry, and disgust or fear that inevitably light across their faces the instant I try to talk to them for more than 20 seconds at a time. I think being aloof freaks people out more than being openly hostile. It gets to the point where I'll generally avoid talking to them if I can help it, since it takes immense effort to mask and never gets very far anyways, or I'll intentionally be poorly dressed/groomed to avoid getting noticed. If I'm dressed up, and get noticeably more attention because of it, it just leads to more people getting let down. Which I try to avoid doing just because it seems easier going unnoticed.
Part of it might be some kind of "uncanny valley" thing, where the fact they previously considered some level of attraction to me makes them especially repulsed. The odd thing is a very small minority find me really funny but generally I get treated like a leper. And I guess this should bother me but I'm in my mid 20s now and rarely knew anything else. The best relationship I had the girl essentially chased me down, like "you're my boyfriend now, what are we doing today?" and I just kind of went along with it until we caught feelings for each other. Only time I really felt happy btw. But even then her friends had similar, wildly varying reactions. A couple of them kind of made moves on me (I declined) but it was still more common to see this sense of confusion and alarm.
Schizotypal? Maybe?
Ok now who actually does go for me, the 1% of women are usually:
-Late 30's/early 40's single women, sometimes divorced housewives and the like, who don't care about personality so much, they just want someone they can be physical with and not have to worry about anything else.
-Artsy, bisexual girls who are attracted to androgyny. I notice this type, when they date men, go for tall, thin guys with expressive looking eyes. And since I fall into this uncommon niche for them, they seem somewhat forgiving of my strangeness. Sometimes. Often they react the same way as most. A lot of them are emotionally unstable also; it's a little hard to help them, but sometimes it feels like you did alright, and that they're better off for you having known them.
I wouldn't even call it eccentricity either, as a person I'm as boring as they come. Although I can riff about some interesting topics depending on the person and I go to a lot of concerts. If I actually get into a relationship with someone it tends to go quite well, but the initial impression is so wildly off-color that 99% want nothing to do with me. After a while I've just accepted it.
450mg Wellbutrin has helped a lot with getting through daily life, depression symptoms wiped me out for a couple years and I thought it could be permanent, and I'm relieved to see this is not the case anymore. But for everyone on the outside looking in, I don't think they can tell, which seems a bit of a waste. I can never, ever get through to them.