Let’s skip the stuff about nukes, World War III and trying to figure out just how crazy Putin really is.
Let’s accept that one day soon the war will be over.
The world will get back to some form of normalcy, albeit without Russia.
I’m going to give you a list of the reasons I feel good about our world and our investments. But first, I beg you to curl up in an easy chair, plug in decent headphones and watch this.
This talk will give you a far better idea of the future than my puny words ever can. Watch it all. It just keeps getting better. When you’re through, ask yourself, “Do I own enough Nvidia?”
Your answer will be “Heck No.”
I will give you a handful of takeaways from the keynote:
+ Nvidia has accelerated computing by a million times in the last decade. And seems confident that it will do even better in the next decade.
+ Nvidia’s new Hopper H100 GPU chip has 80 billion transistors. You can hold the chip in the palm of your hand.
+ Nvidia is no longer the graphics processing chip maker we all love for games and graphics. It now plays in (and excels) in everything from robotics to self-driving cars, from digital factories to biotech/drug making. And more.
+ There isn’t a company in America that isn’t working with Nvidia to improve its functioning — from Amazon and robotics to Salesforce and AI. And zillions more.
That’s it. Now go watch the video and be blown away.
Now to some of my other “feel goods”:
+ From Joel Ross today:
The venture capital start-up world boomed like never before in 2021. The deal count was up over 40% from 2020, and the dollars were $329 billion, up from $166 billion in 2020. Half the deals were under $10 million. Over 4,000 new companies raised capital… It does speak well for the country that there is so much innovation going on.
+ There are two new satellite Internet systems going up: Elon’s Starlink and OneWeb. Both are planning to blanket the earth with high-speed 24/7 Internet — from Podunk, Idaho to the Antarctic. So far, OneWeb has 146 satellites in orbit. Starlink has 1500. I have friends who are using Elon’s Starlink. They love it.
+ There’s a new enzyme that will fix plastic so you can recycle it and plastic will no longer destroy the oceans.
+ There’s a new drug that will cure HIV. The first person has been cured.
+ A customer of Nvidia has developed a new drug on Nvidia hardware/software platform. The drug has been tested on Nvidia equipment. No human guinea pigs. It’s the first all-computer drug presented to the FDA for their approval.
Markets during wartime are confusing
They go and up down from day-to-day, like a whore’s drawers. (Australian expression.)
I read this:
Baron Rothschild’s line about buying when there is blood in the streets and selling to the sound of trumpets is a great contrarian battle cry. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. Although I know some Russian banks today that you can buy real cheap.
Stocks to buy, in my humble opinion: Apple, PANW, NVDA and ADBE, which is down hugely. I also have positions in energy — DVN, OXY, ENB, and CVX. Except for OXY (Buffett’s favorite), all the energies yield nicely.
Up in the mountains
Susan and I came up to Breckenridge, CO to join the grandkids in one grand skiing adventure.
Breckenridge’s base is 9,600 feet, which is very high. It gives altakakas (like me) headaches and drains your energy — unless you’re six and eight –Peter and Eleanor.
I used to be a good skier. I tried skiing on Monday. I fell and fell. I gave up skiing that afternoon and booked a tennis court later today.
This is funny, though tasteless
Some nonsense from Russia
Fascism (what Putin believes in ) embraces a mythic past, where the nation, once great, has experienced humiliation and loss of land, the result of weakness and decadence brought on by liberal democracy. To make up for these losses, real and supposed, fascist leaders encourage violent reassertion of previous greatness, as well as the destruction of liberal democracy in favor of a one-party state or, more typically, a single autocratic ruler (i.e. Putin) who is synonymous with the nation.
In the Russian nationalist version of the mythic past, Ukraine is central. According to this mythology, there are no Ukrainians — just lost Russians living, whether they know it or not, in the heart of historic Russia.
In Putin’s ideology, it is Ukrainian liberal democratic citizenship that represents the real threat to Russian greatness.
Fidesz (Viktor Orbán Hungarian party, a Putin look-alike) has told its base that the opposition “will take away their pensions, will cancel the minimum wage,” will send their children to fight in Ukraine and will “allow sex change operations for kindergartners without the consent of parents.”
Makes sense?
See you tomorrow, or so.
— Harry Newton
