Why ask me?\u00a0 Why not ask Patel? I thought.\u00a0 Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.\u00a0 He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.<\/p>\n I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not<\/em> hitting the long ball.<\/p>\n He asked me about stocks.<\/p>\n This is what<\/strong><\/span> I knew: \u00a0My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.\u00a0 John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, \u201cThe investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.\u201d\u00a0 You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and<\/em> when you sell.<\/p>\n In March 2009 the New York Times <\/em>business-page headline was \u201cAre We There Yet?\u201d\u00a0 There<\/em> meant the stock market\u2019s bottom.<\/p>\n In March 2009 the price\/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.\u00a0 (Trailing 10-years figure.)\u00a0 The worldwide P\/E was even lower, down to 10.\u00a0 It was a good time to invest, but scary.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My Uncle Lou<\/strong><\/span> and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.\u00a0 They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.\u00a0 I was in.\u00a0 I immediately ripped open all the packs.\u00a0 I was 9.\u00a0 This was my first speculative investment.\u00a0 I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.\u00a0 Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e.<\/em>, dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.<\/p>\n The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.\u00a0 His wife and kids couldn\u2019t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have a job down there.\u00a0 He didn’t have a house.\u00a0 I hope he knew Patel.<\/p>\n —-<\/span> An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel. Why ask me?\u00a0 Why not ask Patel? I thought.\u00a0 Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels. The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.\u00a0 He thought maybe I knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6674"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8536,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674\/revisions\/8536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/patel-motel-300x278.jpg\" "\\"patel")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/cocot-nut-bars-Davis-Baker.jpg\" "\\"cocot")
<\/a>Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,”<\/a> which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.\u00a0 Went up a week ago.\u00a0 The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"