Who's 3D?

Tonight I went to see the movie Cloverfield (Save your money. No matter how small the price of admission it isn't worth it. I actually had more fun counting product placements than trying to follow the action.) and saw something that concerned me. In the lobby there was a poster davertising some kind of live concert movie by some singer I'd never heard of. But the singer is apparently backed Disney. And Disney is releasing the film in Real D technology. I must say that this was worrying to me for purely financial reasons: I have taken a a large gamble with my IRA: I have invested in Dolby, who have a competing 3D movie technology.

But wait, let me back up a little and tell you my investment strategy. It is really simple and is based on something I heard a a NFL Offensive lineman say one time. When a reporter asked what is team was going to do to win he said, "We have to to score more points." It was that simple. So, every day, with my IRA my goal is to score more points that the other team. The other team is the S&P 500. So far, I'm doing really well. I am up over 800% in 3 years, and that is with $0 in new contributions. I don't know what the S&P is over 4 years, I just know that almost every day I score more points. For example, today the S&P fell by 21.46. (No I don't know what that means. But for the purposes of my game I think of it as points.) But my portfolio went up by 0.02. So, I think of myself as winning today's game by 21.44 points. Now again, almost every day I win. I do it, mostly by picking stock that are in businesses that sound like fun. I know, it sounds silly. But at least for me, silly seems to be working.

Among the fun companies I have bought were a grocery store chain that I enjoy shopping at (but can't afford to shop at), a company that operates tramp freighters (come on, haven't you always wanted to work on a freighter, traveling to all the port cities in on the pacific? Besides all the officers of this particular company were Greek or Russian and I figured they were Orthodox.), a company that retrofits buildings to use LED lighting, a gold mining comapny, a company who emplyes deep sea divers to weld together oil piplines on the ocean floor, and a company that is big in audio, video games, and 3D movies. Yes, I mean Dolby.

My first experience with Dolby was in my Dad's 1974 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. I don't remember how it sounded, but ever since then, I have thought of Dolby as the Cadillac of sound systems. So, when I read that Dolby was getting into 3D movies, I thought "Cool! I'm think going to get a piece of that." So, I did some research and found out that this little San Francisco company is multiple revenue streams and has built a rock solid reputation in the video game industry for delivering superior sound quality. So, I bought a lot of Dolby shares. (Keep in mind that "a lot" is relative. To most investors my "a lot" is probably laughably small.)

So, tonight when I saw that Disney is going with the Real D format I freaked out a little bit. As soon as I got home from the movie (Which, again, was a waste of time and money.) I hopped on the internet and started looking around. As it turns out, Dolby is the easiest 3D format for theater operators to use, and provides the best 3D movie watching experience. I am much relieved.