If you bought Nvidia stock instead of the original Titan...

I bought $13K of JC Penny in 2005 and now it's bankrupt.

Why’d I buy JCP, because an older investment friend advised it saying I was too heavily invested in technology (Intel, AMD, nVidia and ATI) and needed to diversify. He said JCP had been around > 100 years and wasn’t going anywhere.

Oh to have a crystal ball...

Hard to know when to buy these tech companies, but I personally wouldn't buy nVidia right now.
 
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It’s pretty much always like that. Really frightening when you extrapolate out. If I had invested rather than bought a nice mountain bike in 2003 I’d have money for a really nice car etc. At the risk of being old man ish, staying off the ultra high end and investing the difference is smart. I definitely wish I’d done it more. I’m lucky now that I can spend more but I’d have a ton more money if I’d been more sensible.

With NVidia shares if you’re smart you’d get more than that. Being a bit more active can net big big gains even just off the same stock. Even at the simple obvious level I operate at I’ve sold them 3 times in two years and bought back in twice (am out atm). Plus trading off the margin of course.

Still nothing close to my best investment decision though. Got made redundant and bought two months wages worth of Amazon stock in 2001. If it had been 4 I’d probably have retired by now. Obviously I’ll never have anything like that success again, but it seemed obvious at the time. Our office was getting a van full of amazon boxes every day. F’ing capital gains just makes it a forced saving plan though.
 
What's even crazier is Monster Energy drink stock. MNST was a penny stock until the mid 2000s. You coulda put in a couple hundred back then and would have over a $1 million today. No one coulda predicted how far that took off.

But you know what's even scarier? 96% of stocks don't even beat short term treasuries, and you are taking largely an uncompensated risk by investing in individual stocks. You might win some, but statistically you're much more likely to lose than to win. In other words, picking stocks is actually a pretty dumb strategy from a logical perspective, it's like buying lottery tickets. Yeah somebody might win 500 million bucks, but the rest of those buyers were actually just throwing money away. It's basically gambling.

This is why Buffet says he bets he can beat virtually any active investors just by buying the S&P index. Which is true.
 
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It's way easier to just dump it in a top 100 index fund and call it a day.

If a highly paid mutual fund manager of an aggressive growth fund still 99% of the time under-performs a top 100 index fund; If you think you could do better, good luck. Looking at these more highly managed funds and seeing across the board they, at best, perform on-par with an index, is all you need to know.
 
I purchased nvidia at 12 per share :) to bad i sold at 60 . I should have kept it.
 
Taking financial advise from random strangers on [H], what stock do you guys recommend buying right now?
 
it's like buying lottery tickets. Yeah somebody might win 500 million bucks, but the rest of those buyers were actually just throwing money away. It's basically gambling.

I think it's more like playing poker - you think you have the skill to beat the house, even though you likely do not. There's no skill in buying a lottery ticket.

For example, any [H] enthusiast knew Ryzen was going to be a winner the moment the benchmarks went live. At the time, AMD's stock was 1/5 what it is today, a few years later. My only regret is that I didn't buy more of it!

That said, your point still stands - you're more likely to do better with some low-risk, low-yield, low-excitement instrument like treasuries.

Taking financial advise from random strangers on [H], what stock do you guys recommend buying right now?

Nothing right now.

Stocks are up from the depths they sunk to back in March. A couple months ago, The Rona was not as well understood and there was much more uncertainty about how bad it was going to get. The situation seems to have stabilized but there are still thousands of Americans dying daily due to this awful virus. News you see of people partying at Lake of the Ozarks on Memorial Day Weekend is not an accurate reflection of most Americans' sentiments. Folks still are not eating out, they still are not traveling, they're still not buying cars and making other big purchases.

I think the current highs are temporary and when the Q2 earnings are reported in early/mid July, stocks will mostly tank again. Q2 is going to be BAD. Unemployment will recover to an extent but it will still be BAD. I know 'everyone knows that so it's already accounted for in current valuations,' - except I don't think folks know how bad Q2 really is, and the market likes to react strongly to strongly negative data. There will be many bargains to buy up in early/mid July. I bought into a lot of travel stocks back in March and plan to buy more (from different companies) if I turn out to be correct and the market dives again in July. Those to me are going to be medium-term investments - I'll want a new car in about three years.
 
Nothing right now.

Stocks are up from the depths they sunk to back in March. A couple months ago, The Rona was not as well understood and there was much more uncertainty about how bad it was going to get. The situation seems to have stabilized but there are still thousands of Americans dying daily due to this awful virus. News you see of people partying at Lake of the Ozarks on Memorial Day Weekend is not an accurate reflection of most Americans' sentiments. Folks still are not eating out, they still are not traveling, they're still not buying cars and making other big purchases.

I think the current highs are temporary and when the Q2 earnings are reported in early/mid July, stocks will mostly tank again. Q2 is going to be BAD. Unemployment will recover to an extent but it will still be BAD. I know 'everyone knows that so it's already accounted for in current valuations,' - except I don't think folks know how bad Q2 really is, and the market likes to react strongly to strongly negative data. There will be many bargains to buy up in early/mid July. I bought into a lot of travel stocks back in March and plan to buy more (from different companies) if I turn out to be correct and the market dives again in July. Those to me are going to be medium-term investments - I'll want a new car in about three years.

Agreed on the Q2 results, most people I know are just buying stocks right now like nothing happened. Hopefully you're right about the market diving again, I would love to put some of this profit I've been making from day trades on investments because I won't be day trading forever when this WFH thing lifts.
 
It's way easier to just dump it in a top 100 index fund and call it a day.

If a highly paid mutual fund manager of an aggressive growth fund still 99% of the time under-performs a top 100 index fund; If you think you could do better, good luck. Looking at these more highly managed funds and seeing across the board they, at best, perform on-par with an index, is all you need to know.

I think Ray Dalio explains this best. The stock market doesn't go up or down in the short run because of the economy, it goes up and down based on availability of credit/money. Since the US money supply went up 30% after the crash, the stock market is up almost the exact same percentage (28-29%). The average increase of money supply over the last 10 years is about 12%, the stock market goes up about 11% a year. Over the long run (many decades) it follows the earnings of businesses and the asset inflation from liquidity injections eventually have to be sorted by corrections (i.e. 2000 and 2008). Buying the total market means you capture the entirety of money flows, i.e. it's a true inflation hedge, whereas stock picking is risky in that it's likely to miss out on the majority of the gains from money flows.
 
Anyone claiming they know what the market is going to do is full of it. Just follow the simple guidelines of buying low and selling high and you will be ok.
 
If I bought bitcoin instead of the original Titan...

Most of the growth of BTC was already over by the the time the Nvidia Titan came out. It would only go up around 80x from 2013 to the 2017 peak.

Wheras the previous 3 years it basically went up over 100,000x.
 
Hard to know when to buy these tech companies, but I personally wouldn't buy nVidia right now.

Why? Nvidia is expanding in a smart way. Their acquisition of Melanox or whatever it's called just means they're going to become bigger.
It won't surprise me if they are the driving force behind next-gen AI.
But then again, I could be wrong, since no one can predict the future.
 
Why? Nvidia is expanding in a smart way. Their acquisition of Melanox or whatever it's called just means they're going to become bigger.
It won't surprise me if they are the driving force behind next-gen AI.
But then again, I could be wrong, since no one can predict the future.
I have no special insight other than I think the whole market is due for a correction due to covid related interruptions. I don’t see how its only -10% off highs right now. When if it pulls back, I don’t think tech stocks are immune. I’d rather have index or mutual funds in general as well — but thats only because I’ve been burnt hard on individual stocks too many times. I’d prefer picking up health sector right now, or long term picks to feel comfortable weathering the next correction and its difficult to have much confidence in an individial tech company more than a couple product generations out. In an uncertain market nvidia just seems riskier to me. I’m no expert investor however.
 
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I have no special insight other than I think the whole market is due for a correction due to covid related interruptions. I don’t see how its only -10% off highs right now. When if it pulls back, I don’t think tech stocks are immune. I’d rather have index or mutual funds in general as well — but thats only because I’ve been burnt hard on individual stocks too many times. I’d prefer picking up health sector right now, or long term picks to feel comfortable weathering the next correction and its difficult to have much confidence in an individial tech company more than a couple product generations out. In an uncertain market nvidia just seems riskier to me. I’m no longer expert investor however.
Diversity is key, and mutual funds or ETFs are a good way to do that. Much like you, I had been burned before, but that's also how you learn. I do a lot of research now and retain about 40% of my picks as individual stocks, typically dividend payers as to always generate reinvestment cash.

However, if you snagged nvidia in the dip, 100% worth it. Nvidia is not just gaming anymore and I see their AI business expanding, and that's not me, that's the research I have done. It's probably a bit high, but so was amazon at $300+ once. It's always a gamble, but if your looking for a quick profit, your doing it wrong. I'm buying shares in a company for 15 years down the road, not right now or even this year. In 15 years, even at it's high price now, you will still make some damn good money I am willing to bet.
 
My AMD stock ain't doing too bad. Neither is Twitter. BP...meh.

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If you want my opinion, don't bother with individual stocks. You might get lucky, but the odds are against you.

I did a lot of research and ended up just going with a good index fund. VBIAX was the best I found.

https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/vbiax/quote

Of course, there was a drop recently because of the pandemic, but the historical returns are great.

The thing with fund of funds is the expense ratio is a bit higher just to avoid personally rebalancing. You could own the total stock market and total bond market funds and just pay a 0.035 avg expense ratio and balance the fund ratios yourself. Also I generally avoid mutual funds in taxable accounts as they are less tax efficient than ETFs. Obviously in an IRA it doesn't matter either way.
 
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I bought Starbucks stock at $8 a share when the market crashed, and cashed out at $40 a share after it split twice. This was a decade ago. If I would have waited an extra decade, instead of having about $10k I would have paid off my house. You just never know...
 
This is why Buffet says he bets he can beat virtually any active investors just by buying the S&P index. Which is true.

it’s completely right, my overwhelming focus has always been on a set of ETF’s that I rebalance if it gets overweight. >14% of our gross household income does that. Even aside from anything else, our retirement is almost certainly golden.

It’s still good fun to have the discretionary fund though. I have a rule after losing $16k on telcos in early 2000s and just buy things I like. Or it is clear to me from work that it will do well. I’ve just been lucky that thanks to the likes of the [H] and working in the mobile space for 7 years that has worked out.

Amazon (2001), ARM (2006), Google (2007), VMWare (launch), Apple (2007), Nvidia (2014 originally), Facebook (launch + 2 weeks), AMD (2017). Think that’s pretty much it. Actually Some Chinese car company. I went to China before the 08 olympics and saw a lot of cars *shrug*, don’t even know when I sold it.

ARM has gone (10 bagger, woo), VMWare I sold as I think / thought they’re screwed, Nvidia I sold out recently but think they’re fine. (And actually have been a problem in my portfolio periodically for growing too much).

AMD I’m gonna hold just because I’ve got a feeling and I want to play it out. If they get IPC on the next Epyc with newly price sensitive companies and lot of cloud sales being made, Big Navi is in the ball park and the new consoles do well, I think it’s still got some legs; but it’s emotional, by rule that’s the one I should also sell. Everything else I’m stuck with because of tax.

As someone mentioned earlier, AMD was fucking obvious for the [H]ard, I’ve never advised people ever, except in March and April 2017 when I told everyone to take a look.
 
I think the current highs are temporary.

+1

when the Q2 earnings are reported in early/mid July, stocks will mostly tank again

Looks like I was off by about a month. I'm not sure whether there will be another small rally between now and mid July that'd make jumping in again briefly worth the effort and fees, so I'm sitting on the cash for now. Hold onto your butts...if we keep getting these Rona Resurgences, market could be bumpy the rest of the calendar year.
 
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