www.markholder.org

 Like a great many others, I recently watched “The Vow”, a documentary series about the NXIVM personal growth cult, with a mix of curiosity and incredulity. As a child in the 70s, I watched the tragedy in Jonestown play out on the nightly news and have been intrigued by cults ever since. Strangely enough, there were two cults operating in my hometown a few years back, so there was always some easy research at hand. NXIVM appeared to be an executive-level self improvement group on the surface but things got weird. Submission, late night calls from the leader, eventually women branding themselves with a symbol that no one bothered to look closely at and see the founder’s and an associate’s initials incorporated into the design. Like I said, weird. The members weren’t the downtrodden that Jim Jones preyed upon; NXIVM recruited the wealthy and educated, all the better to give the group image a boost.  This is where my call of BS radar beeped. One of the members was a filmmaker named Mark V

 I haven't posted much about the COVID world because, frankly, it is overwhelming. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions infected, lockdowns ongoing, economies teetering or skyrocketing on the words of government agencies or private investors. As I write, my podunk rural county leads the state of Georgia in resurgence of transmission of the virus and PEOPLE ARE STILL GOING AROUND MASKLESS. I know, it's all about "muh rights" or whatever, but what about your responsibilities to others and society as a whole? Common courtesy? Human decency? Enough of the rant. Let's talk about investing in a "this is not investment or financial advice and is not meant to be taken as such" kind of way. Today's topic: real estate investment trusts.  A Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT for short, is a trust that owns and operates commercial real estate, such as housing, apartment complexes, malls and shopping centers, industrial parks, storage, even cell towers. A Mort