July 5 Post
Hi Again,
Happy 4 th of July!
Take a look at our scorecard! Our scoreboard shows a gain of 8.7% for June 2023!
And a net gain of 39% since 1/1/23! Our portfolio is well diversified; but we hold a
lot of technology stocks that did very well during the past 6 months. Per CNBC,
NASDAQ had the best first half of the year since 1983! In our portfolio, you cannot
see anything that is at a loss. Looking at the scoreboard, the stocks with the best
performance (from the initial purchase date) are as follows: Apple -737%, AMD-
210%. Uber-201%, WYNN-195%, TJ Max-159%, Microsoft- 152%, Delta-148%,
Goldman Sachs-146%, Boeing-137%. Google-137%, GE-133%, Netflix- 131%,
Facebook/Meta- 109%, Tesla-102%, JP Morgan-89% , Southwest, Disney and
Intel are between 9.5% and 24%. This is a good time to buy all those 3. More about
Disney later.
On a daily basis, a million times over, CNBC anchors ask “Wall Street experts”, “Is
this a new bull market or is this a counter rally in a bear market?’. My reply, “it
does not matter; focus on your strategy and discipline”. That is the way to make
money in the market. There is no “stock market”; it is just a “market of stocks”. My
strategy is when a “good” stock go down by 50% or so, start buying it in small
installments. Sooner or later, it will bottom out. If you kept buying more and more
shares as it went down, you will be in a good position when the stock bottoms out.
There is a saying on Wall Street that, “no one rings a bell when the market or a
stock hits a bottom”; but if you listen intuitively, you will hear that “bell” in your
mind/heart. On my personal account, using that strategy, I made over 100% on each
of the following stocks; Tesla (bought when Elan Musk sold shares to buy Twitter),
Meta/Facebook (when market wrote off Zuckerburg for not cutting expenses),
AMD (when the stock fell to $65 as Wall Street chastised it for having an inventory
problem), Neflix etc. Sometimes one has to wait years to get the desired results;
and that is what I had to do with Boeing. If these stocks fall below my initial
purchase price, I will buy more so it a win-win situation. The secret is to keep 25%
to 50% in cash at all times and not to try and maximize gains on your portfolio. On
my portfolio, I have 60% in “cash”.
Greed and “FOMO” destroys many investors and money managers. What is
FOMO? Fear of Missing Out. For individual investors, it is mostly greed. When
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others get a better return on their investments, it is difficult to be satisfied with
one’s portfolio or gains. For professional money managers, FOMO is a huge
problem. Let us assume that a money manager, due to his “discipline” and
“wisdom” does not take part in the market during a bullish period; then his bosses
as well as his customers will lose faith in that money manager which will lead him
to the unemployment office. A good example of this is the summer of 2020. Now
all prudent market analysts state that the market going up during the summer of
2020 was totally irrational. Due to covid, there was no sports betting during the
summer of 2020; and with the trillions of dollars that went out by the government,
sports betting people and companies started using Wall Street as a casino. That was
the first stage. Then computer programs based on trends moved the market higher.
Thereafter, money managers joined in.
Now as promised, let us focus on Disney. Over the past 5 years, I have gone in and
out of Disney. It looks very attractive now. As with Meta/Netflox/Tesla/AMD, all
“Wall Street Gurus” are negative on Disney. For me that is a good sign. Get in now
and when the trend shifts, your gains will increase. Recently Disney got hit by
many waves of bad news. When a stock gets hit by waves of bad news and yet stop
going down further, it is a vey good sign that it is close to a bottom. Selling pressure
is close to getting exhausted. Only the long-term believers are left. During the
month of June 2023, Disney has been moving between $88 and $93. According to
the chart, last time Disney fell below $85 was in 2014! 9 years ago! In technical
chartist lingo, there is a “floor” around $85 for Disney. Let us assume that Disney
falls below $85 to $70 or below and stay there for a few months; then according to
chartist lingo that $85 level becomes a “ceiling” for the Disney price. In other
words, at that stage, it is safe to assume that Disney will not go higher than $85 for
a long time to come. In fact, according to the chart, if Disney falls below $85,
Disney could even go down to $25-which is extremely unlikely. This is how you
can make a “calculated risk”. All Wall Street experts are negative on Disney but
that is music to my ears as I know that as always, they are WRONG! If we lose on
Disney, it is not a big deal; losing a few “battles” to win the “war” is not a problem.
With respect to new trends, I have a different strategy. With this AI (Artificial
Intelligence) craze, I put in a little bit of money in to several AI stocks and ETF’s. I
am waiting for them to go down to buy more but they all keep shooting up. There
again it is a win-win situation. Even though Nividia (best in AI) has been always
too expensive (very high PE), I bought some Nividia on 10/11/22 at $117 per share;
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on 6/30/23, I had a “paper gain” of 260%! Experts expect Nividia to fall soon but I
do not think it will fall more than 25% from it’s 6/30/23 high. I am praying that
Nvidia will go below $150 so I can buy more! A calculated risk! Most (5) of my
other AI stocks/ETFs were bought between 5/26/23 and 6/13/23. On one of those I
have a 5% gain and the losses on the rest range from -3% to -1%. When those
losses exceed -25%, I will buy more.