Equity Markets on January 30, 2017.

One of the many sources of our inspiration during our long weekend in Manhattan was at the 9/11 Museum.

Manhattan was our destination for this past long weekend. For a little business, quite a bit of pleasure, and a whole lotta inspiration, my bride and I hopped a jet to the city.

Mr. & Mrs. Pearly Pig paying homage to the Charging Bull — something the markets have seen over the past couple of months… as seen in the Barron’s cover story — “Dow 30,000.”

Most of the time I write from my home office… or one of the many amazing coffee shops in Des Moines. But this weekend I picked up my copy of Barron’s on the streets of Manhattan and dug through it’s optimism-meets-pessimism schizophrenic commentary at my usual frenetic pace in the city’s financial district. The streets were full of financial folk and tourist folk side-by-side, and Mrs. Pearly Pig found some shopping reprieve at the local financial district T.J. Maxx located across the street a hundred feet from the New York Stock Exchange while I spent time paying homage to my financial sport.

Once leaving the exchange, we meandered down to Battery Park to get caught up in the mayhem of it all. Tens of thousands of people had come to protest Trump’s weekend decisions… those decisions that are causing protests in airports and cities around the country and world.

Barron’s is usually on top of it all, which isn’t hard to do being a weekly financial mag. But because Trump’s executive orders came so late on Friday, Barron’s didn’t have the opportunity to weigh in on the matters as of the time of the weekend’s publication. Not that I believe nationwide protests will influence the market this week. They won’t.

While sporting around Manhattan and getting to know some locals, we learned that over 800 languages are spoken on the island — a place that is a true microcosm of the planet and nothing other than the greatest melting pot on earth — but that is no new news to any one that finds themselves in New York with any type of regular frequency.

The city is a fascinating study of democracy, of history and of unity, not to mention a place that wreaks of human progress.

But I digress in the romance of the whole place and we need to get down to business.

This week’s portfolio is found here, and is indicative of this edition’s cover story — “Next Stop: Dow 30,000.” With only ten stocks making the cut for this week’s Picklist Portfolio, there were more “sell” recommendations in this week’s edition than “buy” picks. Thus the optimism meets pessimism schizophrenia we have come to know and love in Barron’s.

In this blog I really want to explain why these Picklist Portfolios are so cool for you, so keep reading. Won’t take you but a few more minutes.

We set out to create The Pearly Pig as a quick one-stop shop to see what Barron’s and other financial rags are saying and doing. So a long drawn out post here would be counterintuitive to our cliff notes heritage and the brief but meaty summaries for which we strive.

But to be sure, we are excited for this week’s portfolio and how it may boost our investment portfolio. Each week we look for the best ideas in Barron’s, and we go over to Motif Investing to build a portfolio — giving our special take on the weight of the portfolio. You can find The Pearly Pig’s portfolios at Motif Investing here.

For you, that means that you can do a few things.

First, it may be time for you to shift some money from your checking and savings accounts to work harder for you. I understand you may be nervous and want something that has a shot at growing more than your checking and savings accounts. I got it. That’s exactly why we do what we do at the Pearly Pig.

Second, you want something safer than just a stock pick. You also want something better than what the junky mutual fund industry offers you. I get that too. Motif makes it super easy for me to build a portfolio of stocks for you to grab. And they make it super easy for you to invest whatever feels right to you — from $250 to $25,000. You’d rather grab a basket of diversified great stocks and not put a helluva lot of money in it. We got you.

Lastly, you may have a small little 401k or IRA that needs a place where it’s not forgotton. At a broker or financial planners? Or still at that job you had 3 careers ago? Let’s resolve to get it working better today. Motif Investing makes it easy to bring it over, The Pearly Pig makes it easy for you to identify some pretty cool investment opportunities — in a super easy way.

A snippit from a Barron’s article in the 1–30–2017 edition. Great ideas abound. The Pearly Pig digs through the clutter and the noise to give you the good stuff.

We believe that some of the best ideas for investing and for putting our cash and small IRAs to work come out of each edition of Barron’s Financial. We also know that most people don’t have the chance to dig through each week’s 112-pages of financial idea goodness. So every weekend we get to work. For you.

We haven’t seen an investment platform like Motif Investing, and technology has really created some amazing opportunities for investors and savers. We build the portfolios, and you simply put some money to work in these portfolios by pressing a few buttons. Need to sell and go to cash? Easy. Want to buy a stock or basket of stocks. Easy. Want to hop on to my portfolio idea and control it the entire way? Easy.

Of course — this is the stock market folks. It’s not gambling, but it’s the ownership of things. Which means those things could be more valuable or less valuable when you go to sell them. So the idea is to put your longer term money to work here, not money you’ll need in the next months or year or two.

There are a lot of great places to get financial advice and tips — more than we can count. But there’s not too many places where you can grab some easily digestable ideas and take action in less than two minutes… for under $500. Whether you want to put $250 to work, or $25,000, this portfolio may be the right thing for you.

We want investing to be super fun. Easy to understand. Intriguing. Engaging. And we always invite your input on how we can do better. But one thing we do know for sure, is that the long track record of Barron’s stock picks will help us get to where we want to go. For Mr. & Mrs. Pearly Pig, that means we want some pretty significant financial independence… soon.

One more thing. You like what we’re doing here? You want our weekly summary email delivered straight to your email box? We’d love to. Just shoot me an email at ryan@thepearlypig.com and we’ll get it going for you.

Ryan @ The Pearly Pig