Update on AAPL

Alright so some pretty big news from Apple hit the internet yesterday as they announced they are quitting their pursuit of an EV.

It looks like Apple found EV manufacturing to be very capital intensive and fairly low margin (even though they planned to sell their car for $100k USD). Seeing how they typically enjoy very high margins on products like iPhones and Airpods, this is understandable. 

The EV world is very hard, trust me I know this as an early investor in Fisker. Years later I totally regret investing so much in Fisker as they are now down to penny stock territory. When it comes to EVs, it looks like Elon was right when he said "anybody can build a prototype, but mass scale manufacturing is the real challenge." Well looks like Apple decided wisely this was not a route worth taking, so they abandoned the project all together.

As an AAPL investor, I am happy about this... why? Well because they just announced they are shifting resources from the EV to generative AI. 

Back In January, I predicted Apple would reveal their AI strategy in the near future, . and they just did tease it so I am happy. I believe the consensus is that AI will somehow include adaptive AI to their current ecosystem, possibly upgrading Siri so its something you can actually have conversations with. Maybe it will be able to do things like order an Uber for you with voice commands (similar to the Rabbit r1). Time will tell. But now with AAPL now officially on the AI train, I am confident that AAPL is a stock you can safely hold for the long run. And... if their AI turns out to be sh*t, they at least have the cash to keep buying aspiring competitors. 

Good luck. 

PLTR in the Spotlight

Time Magazine just released an interesting story about my favorite current stock.. Palantir. 

With more positive news in the media after another successful quarter earnings wise, PLTR is currently trading at around $25, a 50% gain over the last month!

Its looking more and more likely that this firm will soon be included in the S&P 500, as they are now eligible to join. The future looks bright for these guys.

The chart below illustrates Palantir's annual revenue for the last five years.

Speculating with QSI

Alright ladies and gentlemen time to have some fun and tell you about my latest speculative investment. Now before I continue I have to point out this is very risky and isn't for the faint of heart. If you have extra money, time and a high risk tolerance.. then keep reading. However, if you don't..  then simply buy (or keep buying) VOO and QQQ and watch your wealth grow that way. 

So my latest investment has been into this firm Quantum SI, ticker symbol QSI. At the time of writing, this stock currently sells for about $1.54 a share, so it's considered cheap, very cheap. 

But who are these guys? QSI is a life sciences company that focuses on next generation protein sequencing. If you did well in high school biology you might remember why proteins are so important. Protein sequences can help us understand how our bodies react to things like cancer, diabetes and all the other fun diseases Americans get from eating too much McDonalds. 

QSI has this breakthrough new machine called the Platinum. The Platinum is a small device that can go into any diagnostics lab and diagnose almost any biological molecule, like proteins or small DNA molecules. What makes this different is that it's the first chip ever to be able to actually see the structure of a single protein. 

The breakthrough tech in this machine is a chip-based protein sequencing platform 

that separates proteins and then literally digests them into peptides, giving scientists new ways to analyze these molecules based on their shape and function. Advances in semiconductors are making gene sequencing technology more useful, and can help in curing diseases and such. Also worth noting that QSI has over a thousand patents issued or pending for this technology. With advances in predictive AI, the potential here is massive. 

They are still a small company though with a market cap of only 218M currently. But a breakthrough in tech here would see expansion that could grow this into a firm worth billions. I'm not the only one who sees potential in these guys either, Kathy Woods of Arc Investment is a large investor in this company. 

With interest rates eventually coming down this year, and more money flowing into new tech firms, I think this one maybe a hit, it's definitely one to watch for sure. 

More info here.

Good luck!

The Bitcoin ETFs are here..

So, as previously mentioned, the unthinkable happened and the SEC somehow approved Bitcoin ETF's, meaning the flood gates have opened! Major financial institutions (BlackRock, ARK Invest, Invesco and Fidelity) are already offering Bitcoin ETFs that you can purchase thru your online trading platform. 

I went ahead and purchased ARKB (two lots at $50 and $42.50) since Cathy Woods has been bullish on BTC for years now, unlike the old school financial players like Blackrock who were calling bitcoin a scam just a few years ago. Also, ARKB is waiving all ETF fees for 6 months, so that's a positive. 

Does this mean I'm suddenly a butt-coin bull? F*ck no... but this to me is a good diversification step just in case this finite digital currency goes to 1 million like the bulls(h*t) say. More corporates may start carrying BTC on their balance sheets, and more retail investors might bite on this since this almost makes bitcoin a legit investing tool. So why not throw some more skin in the game? 

For your reading pleasure, here's a quick snip on the Greater Fool Theory.

In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price.

My Artificial Intelligence Strategy

First post of the year and it's about everyone's favorite topic... artificial intelligence, here we go.

I think by now, we have all played around with ChatGPT or Bard and are sick of all the AI talk, correct?

Watching the highlights of last week's CES2024, literally every product presented (from coffee makers to cars) praised that product's revolutionary AI. Frankly, it's getting a bit out of hand. I don't require AI to make a f*cking coffee. However, there was one trend I saw which... could be good, could be bad. Anyways I researched it a bit, so here are a few thoughts but first... a backstory.

Back in 2005 or so when I was dumbass university student, I met an older gentlemen (ugh probably was about my current age) in one of my business classes. He went back to school because he lost his job and his savings during the dot-com bubble bust of the early 2000s. He was a software developer who lost out when all those tech start ups of that time failed, causing a crisis on the NASDAQ. Well due to zero interest rates that followed the 2008 financial crisis, tech came roaring back since then, and that guy is doing probably well right now... I hope. But this quick story shows that every field is cyclical, and even the most in demand work can become nearly obsolete due to technological advancements. 

Why am I telling you this? Well one of the crazy trends I saw at CES, was the democratisation of AI. According to many execs sitting atop the tech world, the future of development is without code. Meaning, instead of learning difficult programming languages to develop apps and programs, one will simply talk to a prompt like its a human, and that AI will spit out the app framework. Sounds cool right? Sure, but not if you're a developer I'm thinking. In Eastern Europe (specifically here in Poland and Romania), developers/programmers are among the highest paying careers, how will their work change with this "no code" programming? Hmmmm....

Well as an investor, this should make us happy right? Firms will not have to pay huge salaries to programmers since it will be an easy skill to pick up (boosting their bottom lines).. and it might fuel a new wave of tech start ups and such. Because of this, simply investing in QQQ is the safest bet to have your capital increase due to the AI revolution. 

But I have another AI play that's a bit more... low key. Some have found it weird that while major players such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and Google are already capitalizing on generative AI (or marketing that they are), Apple seems to be lagging far behind. I do not find this weird, AAPL is hardly a firm which invents something remarkable as of late, if anything they wait for somebody else to do it, then create a better version which everybody then wants to purchase. The last 3 AAPL key notes didn't even mention AI unlike the other tech giants. However, AAPL just recently made a pretty significant stride towards bringing generative AI to our iPhones and MacBooks. This could be a hit and catapult the share price forward once they finally reveal their AI in the near future, likely late 2024 or early 2025. 

So, my AI strategy is to be bullish and keep buying QQQ, AAPL, and last but surely not least, my favorite future trillion dollar company, PLTR.