{"id":61857,"date":"2023-12-17T18:57:34","date_gmt":"2023-12-17T23:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=61857"},"modified":"2023-12-17T18:57:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-17T23:57:34","slug":"lunatic-markets-and-their-lesson-for-investing-you-and-i-have-electronic-passports-just-we-didnt-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=61857","title":{"rendered":"Lunatic markets and their lesson for investing. You and I have electronic passports &#8212; just we didn&#8217;t know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is brilliant:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-61864\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/lunatic-markets-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"367\" \/><br \/>\nLet me tell you why.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">My father, escaping the Nazis and the Russians, came to Australia in 1939.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">By the mid-fifties, he sliced enough onions in his hamburger shop to start an investment bank. He funded businesses that didn&#8217;t exist in Australia, like lolly (hard candy) factories to gelato bars to nylon factories to tire distribution (think Mavis).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">He financed Jewish Europeans who, like him, had run to Australia in 1939. His business was so successful he was able to pay his depositors 24% annual interest.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It was a wonderful business &#8212; talented men with European experience &#8212; and no hope with the xenophobic Australian banks who wouldn&#8217;t lend to people who spoke only faltering English with a strange accent. Think Henry Kissinger.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Shift to America, 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We are overbuilt with office buildings, apartments in the sunbelt and retailing space that can sell you more clothes and shoes than you can ever give away.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In 2023, there&#8217;s oodles of money looking desperately for a place to make 24% a year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Hence &#8220;lunatic&#8221; markets (see cartoon above).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The classic lunatic market company is Intel. I figure they have spent billions getting into everything from video conferencing, to computer telephony, from self-driving car gadgetry to cellphone chips. Lunatic markets (for them). Maybe one or two make a shekel, but he vast bulk lost them billions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I have some idle shekels. I look away from lunatic markets. I search for new opportunities which are:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Scaleable &#8212; like those that use the cloud.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Have major technological breakthrough advantages, like AI.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">+ Have immensely talented, honest, hard-working entrepreneurs. Like Jensen\u00a0Huang who founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has served since as president and CEO.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I&#8217;m desperately searching for companies who are using AI in ways that will make their companies hugely more profitable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take Amazon: They use AI in the robots that pick all the stuff that you and I buy. They also use AI to make their website increasingly better. Which is why you and i like shopping there and don&#8217;t go to our local, poorly-stocked mall. Amazon also has AWS\u00a0 &#8212; Amazon Web Services &#8212; which sells AI cloud-enhanced, scalable services. AWS is their most profitable business.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take Google. AI is improving Chrome daily. Check it out. It&#8217;s sort of like ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take Apple. You can easily see what AI (and brilliant) programming to doing to how increasingly useful our iPhones are.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take Microsoft. AI is improving all their products. Microsoft wants every corporation in the world to be 100% reliant on them for all their computing and collaboration needs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I own shares in all these.\u00a0 But the impact AI will have on them is not the extraordinary impact AI has had (and is having on NVIDIA).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I want a pure-play AI with visionary, talented, entrepreneurial management.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">That&#8217;s my dream.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Anyone got any ideas?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>The War<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-61861\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Wailing-Walll.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Wailing Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So she went to check him out. She went to the Wailing Wall and there he was walking slowly up to the holy site.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">She watched him pray. After 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, she approached him for an interview.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Pardon me Sir, I&#8217;m Rebecca Smith from CNN, What&#8217;s your name?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Maury Fishbein&#8221; he replied.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Sir, how long have you been coming to the Wailing Wall and praying?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;For about 60 years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;60 years! That&#8217;s amazing! What do you pray for?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and hatred to stop, I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;How do you feel after coming here and praying for 60 years?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Like I&#8217;m talking to a wall.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>In Lisbon, Portugal<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Lisbon airport ranks among the ten worst. We waited two hours while the understaffed immigration officers slowly processed the thronging incoming travelers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Fifty feet away were dozens of unused machines for travelers with electronic passports. They speed you through in seconds, not hours.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So where do I get an electronic passport?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Turns out I already had one and didn&#8217;t know it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Idiot me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Google says &#8220;The simplest way to tell if your passport is biometric is by looking at the cover.\u00a0<b>If there&#8217;s a small, gold camera logo at the bottom, then it&#8217;s biometric<\/b>. Otherwise, the technology held within a biometric passport has become so advanced and the components so small that you can&#8217;t feel any lumps or ridges at all&#8221; on the back cover where your chip is.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So, check your passport for this gold symbol on the front cover.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-61872\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/e-passport-symbol.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"438\" height=\"323\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I bet you have an electronic passport. The U.S. government has been issuing e-passports for eons. But not telling anyone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And you and I didn&#8217;t know it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Now, for the first time ever, you may have learned something from my blog.<\/p>\n<p>Something that may save you hours.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Tomorrow, we&#8217;re going on a walking tour of Lisbon. The weather is sunny and cool.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We lucked out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Anyone got any good stories on how they or their company is using AI?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Send me an email, please, or post in comments below. Thanks. &#8212; <em>Harry Newton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is brilliant: Let me tell you why. My father, escaping the Nazis and the Russians, came to Australia in 1939. By the mid-fifties, he sliced enough onions in his hamburger shop to start an investment bank. He funded businesses that didn&#8217;t exist in Australia, like lolly (hard candy) factories to gelato bars to nylon [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61857"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61878,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61857\/revisions\/61878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}