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Personal Moral Values and Trading


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Personal Moral Values and Trading

  #1 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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I had the idea of starting a thread about alignment of personal moral values and trading where people can post their ideas on how they should align. (If you were of the view that they shouldn't then you could start a different thread.

If a company is doing or acting in a way that is less than what you believe in should you buy their stock?

If you believe in helping others can you support those who don't?

Is your business life, you way of making income, separate from your spiritual beliefs or moral beliefs?

Should I do business with "bad" people if it is easier or more profitable to me or get a product more cheaply?

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  #2 (permalink)
 
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 wldman 
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not have the Cain and Abel story totally correct. Are you assigning personality and attributes that are based on some parallel interpretation?

That said...I'm tracking with your point.

Hope you find resolution.

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  #3 (permalink)
 Cloudy 
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Thanks. I'm having some personal issues. I'll check the story again. Maybe various interpretations and my memory may be off.

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 wldman 
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more important to me would be if I could help you through the personal issues.

DB

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  #5 (permalink)
 Cloudy 
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re: OP, the questions can be difficult and personal thought provoking. I still have a hard time with it if I think that deeply about it.

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  #6 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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I would like the thread to be of "one mind" aligned to the one goal of good, goodness and doing good.This would be different from most threads where people are in two camps arguing back and forth. That is not what I have in mind.

Using an example to clarify, imagine you are at the meeting of a Lions club - a social organization of business owners for doing good within their community. The topic is building a low rent housing facility for seniors who have low-income. The discussion might be:

I'm an architect and my firm could donate the architect services and work with our contacts at the city for the zoning.

I have a stone work company and we could contribute the flag stone for the walk-ways and the lower siding. it looks really nice to cover the concrete lower walls from the foundation.

I have a construction company and I know many of the team would help out at a lower wage rate and even donate some Saturdays. We could work with the lumber company to get all the framing at cost.

etc.

The meeting doesn't have some sharpies in it seeing how they can make a profit off of twisting it into a slum dwelling built as cheaply as possible and scamming different government services.

-------
So in effect the thread would be a collection of like minds contributing to theme.
Napolean Hill describes his "master mind" as a group of individuals aligned to a common purpose.

In reading of Edgar Cayce many times he was warned that the group must avoid discord or it will fail.

---------
So others who are of the mind all that matters is the money. love of mamon is fine, doing bad for money and riches is ok, etc should post in another thread.

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  #7 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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I have not picked this first example as a perfect example. It is picked because I just read it and it fits.

So what I like about this:
- he respects the union and the workers and refers to "Manitoba is our home". That is he is not trying to outsource everything and undercut his employees.
- he respects the environment.
- he is staying within Canada and stable countries that protect their workers and their environment. In Peru they are working with the people and have good relations and things are going smoothly because of it.
-he is honest.

Essentially when reading this I get the feeling/impression/message of an honest good person managing his company with fairness and goodness and not cutting corners.

So in this company, I would feel fine in investing.
Here i an aligning myself with good.


---
source Northern Miner:
Dec 19, 2012 6:07 AM - 0 comments
TNM's Mining Person of the Year: Garofalo a steady hand on the Hudbay tiller
TEXT SIZE bigger text smaller text
By: John Cumming
2012-12-19

In these times of economic and political turmoil, boring has become the new exciting.

With mining companies of all stripes running aground on the shoals of cost overruns, nationalization movements and environmental opposition, any executive that manages to guide a company to fiscal health, sustainable growth and positive community relations stands head and shoulders above his peers. And so this year, Hudbay Minerals president and CEO David Garofalo is our Mining Person of the Year for his fine job in making Hudbay a standout success story amid the dwindling list of mid-tier base metal miners.

Garofalo is a accountant by training, with a B.Comm. from the University of Toronto and a Chartered Accountant designation. He started out in 1990 as treasurer of Inmet Mining before joining Agnico-Eagle Mines in 1998 and becoming CFO in 1999. That was back when it only had one gold mine — the pre-expansion LaRonde in Quebec’s Abitibi region — and penny pinching was the order of the day, as gold traded for just US$250 per oz.

Garofalo helped Agnico nail down financings that allowed the company to grow prudently through mine expansions and asset purchases, without having to hedge production in a rising gold environment. In 2009, a year in which Agnico raised about a billion dollars, Garofalo won the award for “Canada’s CFO of the Year,” an honour that’s usually handed out to CFOs from much larger and more established Canadian companies.

At a breakfast meeting a few weeks ago with The Northern Miner in Toronto’s King Edward Hotel, Garofalo recalled that with Agnico president and CEO Sean Boyd being young and dynamic, it was increasingly obvious that he’d need to leave the Agnico cocoon to lift his career to the next level.

Garofalo took the reins of Hudbay Minerals as president and CEO in July 2010, and in speaking with him, it’s clear he relishes the role.

Prior to Garofalo stepping in at Hudbay, the management situation had devolved into the Gong Show of Canadian mining. To the delight of journalists, there had been a string of management comings and goings, overheated conference calls, out-of-the-blue acts such as a failed takeover of Lundin Mining (stopped only by a Hudbay shareholder revolt) and dubious moves such as the purchase of the violence-plagued Fenix nickel project in Guatemala (quickly sold at a loss after Garofalo took charge).

Garofalo says one of his most important first moves was to push for the rapid development of the newly discovered, gold-rich Lalor volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit in the Flin Flon belt. It was a bit of a departure for a copper-zinc miner like Hudbay, but with Garofalo having come directly from Agnico and its gold-rich VMS assets at LaRonde, the new direction was a natural one.

Hudbay now has three projects in construction in Manitoba’s Flin Flon belt and south of Cuzco in Peru, which will more than replace lost output from two closing mines in Manitoba.

“Manitoba is our core business,” Garofalo says. “It’s important to keep talented people and not lay them off.”

Garofalo speaks with paternal fondness of Hudbay’s “farm system” — a constellation of 15 to 20 junior grassroots exploration companies in which Hudbay owns small but significant stakes. Describing juniors as “severely capital starved,” he’s happy to take the portfolio approach and leave the grassroots stuff to the juniors while Hudbay’s crack in-house team, which is particularly adept at geophysical surveying, focuses on brownfield exploration.

“We need to think in five-year timelines,” Garofalo says, blaming the dip in Hudbay’s production this year mainly on a lack of planning five years ago, when assets weren’t being dropped into the project pipeline.

“All the money in mining is made in drilling and building, not in cash flow,” Garofalo says. Two of the most successful “graduates” of the farm system have been VMS Ventures with its Reed project in Manitoba, and Norsemont’s Constancia copper-gold deposit in Peru, which is now being built into a US$1.5-billion mine by Hudbay in its first major development outside Canada.

Taking place in the heart of a boisterous land like Peru, Constancia’s development is again notable for its lack of over-the-top protests, crippling cost overruns or multi-year delays. Indeed, with the global economic recovery limping along, Garofalo sees this as great time to build a mine, as costs for goods and services have softened, and quality personnel are increasingly available.

Hudbay is able to jump on these opportunities because of its strong financials, which were cemented by its management team pulling off the feat of raising its market capitalization in cash in recent times.

Garofalo also sees unique opportunities ahead for Hudbay, as base metal titans such as Xstrata and Glencore shed non-core assets in response to their investors’ pressing need for liquidity.

At the same time, Garofalo has learned a few hard lessons about overextension during his Agnico days, recalling how Sean Boyd commented that the “most important lesson you learn by building five mines at once, is don’t build five mines at once!”

While less bullish on zinc, where supplies have soared since silver prices took off, Garofalo is guardedly optimistic about the prospects for copper prices and for all miners generally in the years ahead, predicting that “money will swing back to quality assets.”

After two years with Garofalo at the helm, that means it will most certainly swing back to Hudbay.

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  #8 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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Brian Tracy is a writer on self-development who has written a book called "Maximum Achievement".
I have read many books in this area and for setting goals this book is the best I have read so far.

In something else a friend gave me entitled something - 25 rules for becoming a millionare - or 25 rules for success ?
one of his rules goes as follows:

One of the greatest factors to ensure your success is associating with good people. Conversely one of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is associating with bad people. This one rule can make all the difference between success and failure in life.

---
This theme can also be found in Aseop's fables - little stories of wisdom.

Some fisherman set a net for herons who are eating their fish. A crow has been hanging out the herons and is caught in the net. The fishermen are killing the herons and the crow asks to be spared as he does not eat their fish. "you are caught in our net and will suffer the same fate."

Moral : you are judged by the company you keep.

So if you hang out with the mafia and play cards with them and eat dinner with them to sell cars from your dealership to them, and you get cut down in a gang war... or perhaps nothing bad directly happens to you but you know in your heart your fancy home was built with profits from drugs, and torture.. you are gathering the treasuries of earth at the cost of your soul.

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  #9 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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Legal Disclaimer: A totally hypothetical example that is not connected to any company real or imaginary.

Let's say that you read of a major consumer electronics company that treats the worker in their Chinese plant terribly. They are making enormous profits and could easily afford to pay their workers a fair wage and provide good working conditions. They would still make staggering profits.

So you know of this and you feel this in not right. It does not fit your code of good moral behavior. Nothing illegal it just isn't right in your books.



If you ignore this and kid yourself with:
"It's Ok I'm not doing these bad things I'm just buying the stock. "
Or
"If I don't buy it others will"
Or
"I can use the money (the profits) to do good with. "
all of these are outs.



You know in your heart you are helping bad. You know that if everyone stopped buying their stock the management wouldn't get their multimillion dollar bonuses and would change their behavior.

---------------------------------------------------
You have split your investing from your morals.
You have split one part of your life from another.
----------------------------------------------------

The essence of this thread is:
----------- Don't split your spiritual life from your mundane life-----------

So in this case I, personally, would not invest in this company, even if I were sure their stock would go up.
I would not purchase their product - even if "everyone" has one. I would not assist the company in any way.
I might post the information about the ill treatment of the workers in case others didn't know of it.
If their stock started to fall from lofty heights I might highlight it as a short candidate.

It doesn't matter to me if "everyone else was doing it" or "if everyone else was making money" - the cost is too high. (Let me be clear: I am not telling you what to do - that's for you to decide.)

-------------
As a wise man once counseled: "Gather not the treasures of earth that rust and rot but rather gather the treasures of Heaven which are eternal."

[ In passing please don't play "name this tune" and try put a name to a hypothetical company. - should be an obvious legal warning, but there are so many muttonheads out there I thought I'd best spell it out.]

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  #10 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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aquarian1 View Post
---------------------------------------------------
You have split your investing from your morals.
You have split one part of your life from another.
----------------------------------------------------

The essence of this thread is:
----------- Don't split your spiritual life from your mundane life-----------


12:24 AM 1/13/2013 Saturday evening 10:24 PST

I am currently re-reading a book called "Practical Intuition" - Laura Day. In her book she guides you through the exercises she uses in her workshop to help people develop their intuitive abilities. (A very good book on the subject BTW).

In her book she describes a study done by Standford university where a group of people picked a picture that they intuitively sense was linked to the direction of silver the next day. Before the daily session, a computer randomly paired images to up or down so that there was no bias.

The result (up or down) was passed to a speculator in silver who paid the participants salary. The students batted 1000 for 3 months and made a fortune for the speculator. Then he was curious to meet the group. The group took and instant dislike to the man.

After the meeting their intuitive guesses went from perfect score to almost zero hits and the speculator lost a fortune (millions).

----------------

Most people dislike helping bad people. The group (higher selves?) disliked helping a bad person and stop passing the right answers to the group individuals. Remember they couldn't consciously mess up because no-one which images meant up or down direction for silver.

.... Interesting.

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Last Updated on February 17, 2013


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