{"id":63008,"date":"2024-07-31T12:47:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T16:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=63008"},"modified":"2024-08-01T16:57:20","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T20:57:20","slug":"enchanted-bet-the-farm-be-prepared-for-the-agita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=63008","title":{"rendered":"Enchanted? Bet the farm? Be prepared for the agita."},"content":{"rendered":"

When you’re enchanted, bet the farm.<\/p>\n

Enchantment doesn’t come along very often — maybe two or three times in your life.<\/p>\n

That’s paraphrasing Charlie Munger.<\/p>\n

My first enchantment was my own publishing business. I knew where we were going. I kept expenses low by not being extravagant. And, most importantly, I had a partner, Gerry Friesen,\u00a0 who could do brilliantly at all the things I was lousy at — like sales. thank you, Gerry.<\/p>\n

After we sold the business in 1997, I floundered around looking for the “perfect” investment to put all my wonderful (if totally unexpected) gains.<\/p>\n

I flounded around for years. I didn’t understand that “Wall Street” did two things brilliantly – selling newly-rich suckers like me and inventing “exciting” new things to sell them.<\/p>\n

What they did excruciatingly<\/u> badlly was managing those things — i.e. making the investments they sold me pan out over the years. Wall Street’s attention span, I learned, was somewhere around a nanosecond, shorter than a gnat. My investments were for my old-age — and that, hopefully, was years away.<\/p>\n

I could give you a list of all the rubbish I invested in. You’d conclude instantly Harry was an idiot. Which I was. A gullible idiot.<\/p>\n

A dear friend from Australia ended up on Wall Street. He did very well. One day he started a biotech fund — which he knew nothing about. But I thought he did. I invested $1 million. When the fund later went 100% bust. I mumbled something about losing a million. His reply: He lost $10 million.<\/p>\n

Then, as now, I was thrilled by technology. The PC was strong. Software was exploding. The Internet was starting. You could sell things on it. Networking companies were exploding.<\/p>\n

Then came the Dotcom Bust.<\/p>\n

Harry was back to exciting (but safe and high-yielding) muni-bonds. Thank you Todd for saving my tushy. Thank you Todd for teaching me “When in doubt, stay out.” Repeat: “When in doubt, stay out.”<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today’s love — AI and its primary beneficiary. Nvidia.<\/p>\n

It’s my single biggest holding,<\/p>\n

It’s exciting when it goes up — which it’s done for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

Then came mid-July. And the world thought two things:<\/p>\n

+ AI will never pay off for all the people buying Nvidia-stuffed data centers.<\/p>\n

+ So we’d better “rotate” into something else like health care (yuch) and banks (double yuch).<\/p>\n

\u00a0And the world did. And so my huge holding in Nvidia was shedding hundreds of thousands of dollars in the flick of eyelid, viz:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Every day I’m more and more depressed.<\/p>\n

But then came today….<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now I’m in Seventh Heaven — or whatever the expression is.<\/p>\n

So what have I learned? Anything?<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

Wall Street’s talking heads need a story. The latest one is “Rotation.”<\/p>\n

Tomorrow’s story? Who knows?<\/p>\n

The only thing I know is that earnings, sales and forecasts count.<\/p>\n

Nvidia, I believe, has them in spades.<\/p>\n

If you’ve made money because of my Nvidia Nagging<\/em> in recent months, send me a Thank You email.<\/p>\n

If you have doubts, be my guest. Invest in the S&P 500. You would have done OK this year. You would have avoided all the Nvidia Agita.<\/p>\n

But you wouldn’t be rich.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That’s it. I’m off to the Olympics in 97 degree heat. Double yuch.<\/p>\n

A Shout-Out to Amazon’s Kindle<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m reading this on my iPhone. It’s fascinating.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I love Kindle. You can read it on your iPhone, your iPad and your laptop. It’s all synched by wonderful Amazon which is up 2.7% as I write this.<\/p>\n

Be careful<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I caught our 76-year old housekeeper climbing a ladder today.<\/p>\n

An 81-year old friend of ours tripped in Time Square and broke her arm.<\/p>\n

Hold the railing going down stairs. The most dangerous stair is the last one.<\/p>\n

Don’t lift your heavy bag into the overhead compartment.<\/p>\n

In short, Don’t Do Stupid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

See you soon. — Harry Newton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you’re enchanted, bet the farm. Enchantment doesn’t come along very often — maybe two or three times in your life. That’s paraphrasing Charlie Munger. My first enchantment was my own publishing business. I knew where we were going. I kept expenses low by not being extravagant. And, most importantly, I had a partner, Gerry […]<\/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-63008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63008","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=63008"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63025,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63008\/revisions\/63025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}