{"id":65305,"date":"2025-12-27T10:20:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T15:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=65305"},"modified":"2026-01-02T14:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T19:04:18","slug":"lessons-from-2025-the-ultimate-christmas-wish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=65305","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from 2025. The ultimate Christmas wish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Things I learned in 2025::<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ Stay the course. Everyone who stayed the course did better than me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ It&#8217;s OK to bail on companies whose fortunes go awry, usually when management shoots itself in the foot.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ Stocks go up because of emotions. Emotions come in waves. This year was not the year for the Magnificent Seven. Too many people questioning that it was\u00a0 &#8220;overpriced.&#8221; The train left the <em>Mag Seven<\/em> station a while back.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ AI is real. It is and it will transform our lives. Just as it is transforming mine. Though ChatGPT was an overnight sensation &#8212; the fastest ever &#8212; its effect on boosting cash sales and real earnings will be slower. I have no doubts. If <em>Cheap Harry<\/em> (me) is paying real money each for it today, everyone else will, sooner or later, use it and pay for it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">All of us are expecting our vendors to use AI to win our favor. Last night I made a dinner reservation on the phone with an AI bot. It worked painlessly. Much to my surprise.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Amazon has snuck in Rufus. Ask it questions about the product you&#8217;re keen on. You&#8217;ll be impressed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The AI continuing boom will have massive implications.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Barclays analysts say out half the G.D.P. growth in 2025 stemmed from &#8220;spending on data centers, chips, power grids, networking equipment and other AI-related capital expenditure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Going into 2026, corporate investment in A.I. shows no signs of slacking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Booms do attract competition, which makes picking stocks harder. Nvidia is no longer the only company making AI chips. Think Nvidia as a maker of general purpose, but pricey, AI chips. Think companies like Google, Broadcom. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and AMD, now also making AI chips.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Hence I&#8217;ve broadened my own stock portfolio. It now looks like an ETF, with no focus. Call it <em>Harry&#8217;s Chosen Stocks ETF<\/em>. I now own banks and gold miners. You can see my stocks in the blog&#8217;s right column. What you can&#8217;t see is the weighting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This amazing chart is the story of 2025.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It shows the stock of a big gold miner Barrick compared with the Magnificent Seven.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-65307\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/B-with-Mag-7-800x506.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/B-with-Mag-7-800x506.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/B-with-Mag-7-768x486.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/B-with-Mag-7.jpg 936w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>At our age we all become dividend guys<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">LADR is an 8% dividend payer, which increases. It&#8217;s a REIT. It lends on and owns commercial real estate. It gives conservative lending and investing a whole new meaning.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Its shareholders are ETFs and funds enjoying LADR&#8217;s high yield.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Both Fitch Ratings and Moody&#8217;s Ratings currently maintain an investment grade rating with a stable outlook for the company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ Moody&#8217;s Ratings: Baa3 rating with a stable outlook.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: left;\">+ Fitch Ratings: BBB- rating with a stable outlook.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As they say in Australia, an 8% dividend yield is substantially better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Do not expect any significant capital appreciation. It&#8217;s a fine dividend stock, pure and simple.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Favorite cartoons<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65310\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/watched-when-you-were-sleeping.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"457\" height=\"535\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-65311\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/holy-crap.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"257\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-65312\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/good-bowel-movement.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"312\" height=\"464\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Look what AI did to me. This is scaring the bejeebes out of the grandchildren.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_65314\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-65314\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-65314\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Harry-Santa-Claus.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"346\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-65314\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">See you soon &#8212; <em>Harry Newton<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Things I learned in 2025:: + Stay the course. Everyone who stayed the course did better than me. + It&#8217;s OK to bail on companies whose fortunes go awry, usually when management shoots itself in the foot. + Stocks go up because of emotions. Emotions come in waves. This year was not the year for [&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-65305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65305","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=65305"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65320,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65305\/revisions\/65320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}