Which stocks will boom in 2024?
Clearly, I have no idea. Nobody does.
Best I can do: I can outline a framework for thinking and make some guesses.
I have two “loves” — scaleability and momentum.
The best scalability is any business that relies on the cloud to make and deliver its services. You can start with 100 customers, have a thousand next week and a million in a month. If you made bread, you’d have to build factories. That takes time and money. The cloud doesn’t. Amazon has already done that for you.
The second love is momentum. Nvidia is classic momentum because it has exploding profitability selling stuff for the new AI — the hottest business since tulips.
I like fat drugs, like Ozempic. They have momentum (a lot of fat people). But they have issues, like high prices and some weird side effects. The hope is these drugs will curb dozens of other diseases — broader than any ever.
I love how they’re manipulating genes to solve diseases. But I don’t have the skills to predict which biotechs will succeed in the manipulations business.
I own Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. That’s it. I’ve lost my shirt in other pharma/biotechs.
My third love is companies that are using AI in a big way — like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Hence the name “The Magnificent Seven.”
My remaining momentum love is crypto. It’s going up. It has no value except for crooks and money laundering. But it’s going up because it’s going up. And it has one good thingee — no one can measure it. For example Apple’s price earnings ratio is 31, cheap. Nvidia’s P/E is 65, expensive. Palo Alto Networks is 169 — nose bleed.
This year, some oil stocks and cruise ship operators did well. But, for my taste, they’re too much like factories. The price of oil goes up. They go up. But oil doesn’t always go up. There’s too much madness. There’s no pandemic. So people go cruising. But cruising is a fad. Susan and I have been on two of them. We’re never going on another one — unless it’s the Galapagos. Some of our good friends like them. We don’t.
Today’s NYTimes front page
It’s an epidemic: They caught more than 190,000 in November. U.S. officials said they “removed or returned” more than 400,000 between May and the end of November.
Why? These people are escaping violence and a hideous regime in search of a better life in the U.S.
How should the U.S. respond? With joy and love. Most of us will never understand what these people have been through. Horrible is too weak a word.
What now? Welcome as many as we can. We need the labor. We need their gutsiness. We need their drive, their ambition, their energy. We need their imagination.
Immigrants have always done well for this country. I’m one. I’m proud of what I accomplished. My partner Gerry Friesen was from Canada.
Heh, Elon Musk is from South Africa. Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) was born in India. Jensen Huang, President of NVIDIA, was born in Taiwan. Google’s Sergey Brin was born In Moscow. Levi Strauss was born in Germany.
There’s also Albert Einstein, George Soros and zillions of others in the entertainment biz. Hollywood was founded by immigrants.
At $1.38 billion Barbie is the highest grossing film of 2023
Barbie is a Mattel doll. She’s hurt young girls who aren’t perfect like her. No one is. Hence a need to convince young girls that they can become successful doctors, lawyers, engineers and even president of the U.S. So, with twisted logic and an equally twisted “plot,” Barbie’s new message emerges — you can be anything you want and feel good about yourself.
I watched Barbie on Delta across the Atlantic. I loved it. You can watch it on Amazon Prime.
Which brings me to the plethora (aka confusing array) of available streaming video services — from Amazon to Netflix, from Disney+ to Apple TV, from Hulu to Peacock, from YouTubeTV to ESPN, and a zillion more.
If you have decent Internet speed (and an HDMI cable), the world is your oyster. I like YouTubeTV because it has networks and tennis — unlike Netflix which has Netflix movies and nothing else. Amazon has Amazon movies it’s made and many it’s acquired — like Barbie.
No one should have cable TV — like Spectrum or DirecTV — unless you get streaming Spectrum which looks the same as cable Spectrum, but costs half as much.
Don’t give any of them a normal credit card. Give them a one-shot card from X1. Otherwise your many subscriptions being billed automatically each month will put you into the poor house, without passing Go and without collecting $200.
Barbie, the movie, has a lame ending. She grows a vagina and makes an appointment with her gynecologist. Ken also grew his implement. It’s not clear if Ken developed UTI and had to visit his urologist. Welcome to the real world.
Barbie didn’t do Mattel any good:
But it did Netflix (which didn’t have Barbie) considerable good.
Stupid, but still funny
Unless you own part of an office building in some ailing city…
Still dreaming of Madeira
It’s winter and we’re swimming in the hotel’s pool. Madeira weather year round is about as perfect as it can get. This is the capital Funchal’s harbor.
From Quora
Since the year 2000 when Vladimir Putin became the president, almost 50% of existing hospitals, 40% of schools, and 30% of kindergartens have been closed down, for the sake of “efficiency”.
Our health
Everyone has a cough. It could go away by itself. It could get worse and become pneumonia. Mine did. I took two regimens of these anti-biotics horse pills before I felt halfway decent. I wish I had visited my wonderful doctor, Jerry Clements, earlier. I thought i knew what i had. i was wrong.
Don’t be dumb, like me. Go visit your doc when you start coughing.
The one reason everyone between 65 and death should wear an Apple Watch is when you fall down the last step and can’t get up, it will call you an ambulance. You need a Series 9 watch. You can get one from Best Buy or Amazon or, soon, Apple.
See you soon. — Harry Newton
