Here's My Quandary...

Here's my quandary, guy at the gas station asking for money while I am paying a ridiculous amount of money to put gas in my car: If you didn't have enough gas to get back to Riverside, why'd you come down here in the first place?

My favorite of these many incidents that I have been forced to endure occurred during my Quietly Working days.

I had pulled an all-nighter and was really sick to my stomach at the time. I needed to go down to the office to get some stuff to work on later in the day and on my way to the office, I had to make a detour to get some gas.

Before I could even make it to the gas station, I am behind a strip mall, hurling into a dumpster. After gaining my composure, I then head to get gas so I can get to the office and get home for some sleep before getting back to work. Those of you who know me know that I won't let a little thing like a stomach flu get in the way of getting my work done.

So, as the sun just starts coming up and I stop at the Chevron on PCH in Newport Beach, this guy comes over to me and asks me if he can have some money because he needs to get back to Riverside.

I found myself instantly sorry that I had wasted a good hurling in the dumpster instead of doing so on his shoes. I work for my money, Mr. Beggar, and I do it while sick as a dog. How dare you come ask me for some of my money, especially when you look like a healthy, able-bodied person, obviously of enough whit and determination to try to scam me of out some of my hard-earned cash! I do, however, love the look on their faces when I, unlike I am sure so many of their other victims, say, simply, "Nope," and keep going on about my business.

Non-U.S. Revenue Percentages...

One of the most important aspects of investing your hard-earned dollars is to ensure that you are diversified to guard against fluctuations in sectors of your portfolio that may be overweighted, such as what happened to a lot of people in 1999 when they were overweighted in tech and what happened to people at Enron who were way overweighted in their own company stock.

It pays to do a little digging because things may not always be as they seem.

For instance, you may be invested in a U.S.-based company thinking that you have covered the U.S. portion of your portfolio, when in fact, most of that company’s revenue is coming from more unstable foreign sources.

Below, find the 15 largest U.S. firms and the percentage of their non-U.S. revenue...

Intel - 80%
ExxonMobil - 75%
Coca-Cola - 70%
Chevron - 63%
IBM - 63%
Altria Group - 62%
Proctor & Gamble - 53%
Cisco Systems - 50%
AIG - 44%
Pfizer - 43%
General Electric - 41%
Johnson & Johnson - 41%
PepsiCo - 36%
Dell - 33%
Microsoft - 32%

A Little History Of Actual "Monopolies"...

In 1911, at the Justice Department’s request, the U.S. Supreme Court broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, which began in 1870. It was split into 33 companies, including Jersey Standard (Exxon), Socony (Mobil), and Socal (Chevron).

In 1945, a federal appeals court found that Alcoa had illegally maintained its monopoly over aluminum ingot production, which began in 1888. The company was not broken up, but the government strengthened competition by selling its own wartime plants to Kaiser and Reynolds.

On January 8, 1981, after 13 years of litigation, the Justice Department dropped its effort to break up IBM for allegedly monopolizing the computer industry.

Also on January 8, 1981, AT&T signed a consent decree with the Justice Department ending Ma-Bell’s century-long telephone monopoly. It agreed to divest its 22 local operating companies, which were then recognized as the seven Baby Bells.

In June 2000, a federal judge found that Microsoft had illegally maintained its monopoly on PC operating systems and ordered the company split in two. A year later, however, portions of the ruling were overturned, and Microsoft then settled, avoiding a breakup.