RE:RE:RE:RE:My heart is in the right placemrbb wrote: playing devil advocate, why aren't you knee deep in cathie wood ARK funds now or even from couple years ago? Surely all her funds have disruptor companies in them.
Regarding your analogy why africa didn't buy up old western analog switches, i can explain that one but not at this time. I came out neutral from the dot.com boom/crash. My early day mistake was i held them for too long, thinking it would change to world like you said. I won with JDSU because i sold at the very top and lost on nortel/bce for holding too long. Nortel is a NOT a dot com crash story, it could have been a telecom juggeraut made in canada. Nortel went bankrupt because china raped and hollowed out Nortel. Cisco also died from chinese theft too but made a somewhat recovery after 20 years of nursing. I hope your nortel engineer friend didn't divert his company pension benefit into nortel shares, those victims suffer 2 losses: lost of their pension plus some have to pay income tax on the phantom capital gain on their stock option.
Experienced wrote:
I agree, mrbb, that the Government should leave well enough alone and let the natural market forces do the work. When Governments get involved, history has shown that they screw things up and the same will happen during this transition.
Getting back to the issue of oil and future oil demand, there is clearly a difference of opinion here and IMO that is nothing of short of wonderful. Differences of opinion is what makes a market. If everyone thought the same there wouldn't be a market.
Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that in a way both sides of the argument are right - there is a massive move to EVs which offset by growing use of oil in the 3rd world and world oil demand and prices for the foreseable future stays flat. The question then becomes as investors which would you rather own, a company whose revenues while great stay constant or perhaps rise with inflation, or a company that is growing its revenues well in excess of inflation? I can tell you right now I would vote for the latter which is something I have done for 50 years and it has paid off for me. Did I get it right every time? NOPE, but the winners more than outweighed the losses from the losers.
The way I see it, the world is changing as it has since since history began. The challenge today as investors is that the speed of that change is accelerating. Investors that see where the change is going and invest accordingly make a lot of money. Those that ignore or fight the change don't do as well. It is a simple fact. As an example, based on advice from engineer friends that were working on the digital switch at Nortel in the 1970s who told me that this technology would allow for the convergence of many technologies and would change the world, I bought in and ended up owning many companies over the years that grew like wildfire. Conversely, people who either didn't see this change or were deniers, lost money by investing in companies that were declining or whose revenues stayed flat. IMO, the same thing is happening today in regard to EVs and renewable energy in general and in companies that are developing technologies to solve the problems associated with this transition. This is where a growing proportion of my investments are going.
The world in the future is going to look at lot different than it does today. Either you accept that fact or not and invest accordingly or you don't. The choice is up to you. Over my lifetime I have seen so much change that I know where my vote is going.
And....if I may....in regards to Africa buying old ICEs from the West, I ask the question - "Did Africa buy all the old analog switches that the West didn't need anymore or did they skip that step and go directly to cell phones (digital switches)?
Actually, if you recall from an earlier post that I made a bundle on the demise of Nortel. It was the same engineers that tipped me off about how the company was cooking the books on sales. So they were out before the sheet hit the fan and I had reversed my longstanding position before the general public had started to figure out what was going on..
Your comment though about those Nortel employees who stayed with the company and the pension plan is very accurate. The same was true of many JDSU employees. During those times I had clients from both these companies and those that heeded my advice got out with their shirts still on their backs.
As for Cathie Wood....eh...as far as I am concerned she has made a lot of rookie mistakes in the last few years (enuff said). I think you have mistaken my posts about disruptors. I don't necessarily invest in the disruptors, I look at the big picture of where things are going and find companies that can make money solving problems that the transitions make. So for example, the private company that I am invested in has a technology to save other companies around the world lots of money in electricity costs because politicians will screw up the transition to a less carbon centric world. I also have investments in companies that produce electricity that have done very well over the last few years.
By the same token, I shun companies that are in sunset businesses.