Here’s a rarity, telling both sides of a story. Recently, I’ve posted about the successes of a couple of my stocks, QBTS & LUNR. Now, go check the news and probably find scores of articles on a variety of topics. Writing advice I’ve received is to portray a clear, definitive, concise narrative. Regular readers know I am not concise. I try to be clear. As for definitive, most publications stick to one perspective and emphasize it. Only tell the good or the bad, but don’t confuse people with both. Prepare to be confused.

However, I don’t expect any of my readers to be confused. Regular readers have read posts from the ups (DNDN & AMSC), and the downs (DNDN & AMSC), as well as the long-lingering languishing (MVIS).

Life is real. There are ups and downs, and trying to keep my eyes closed for half of it would mean missing a lot.

This week was a week of corrections. QBTS is down about 50% from its spiky high. LUNR is down more than 50% from its high in January; having your rocket lander fall over will do that. Some say sell. I did. I sold a bit of QBTS on its rise. I missed the peak, but I didn’t expect to hit it. I sold a bit earlier. Then, I covered my initial investment. The recent sale realized a profit that covers other investments. I am left with 60% of my initial holdings, and am glad. Sure, the stock is down, but such is the nature of startups.
Sure, LUNR has had two landers land, then tip over. But both companies are not managing by the headlines. Aside from those news items, the companies are progressing their technologies, their products, and their partnerships.

There are no guarantees. There’s the risk. Hopefully, there’s a reward. Hopefully, there are many rewards: advancing quantum computing and space commercialization are nice profits, too.

This does not mean I’m going to go out and celebrate the fallbacks in their stock prices.

Investing in small, startup companies means great volatility. They have relatively few investors. Many of the investors are individuals. Every stock purchase and sale can swing the stock price more significantly than a sale of MSFT. MSFT needs hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in trades to move the price. There are investors who can do that, but they exist in a hyper-competitive realm of financial institutions and oligarchs. I don’t want to have to dance with those elephants. But that also means that my stocks, when found and favored or abandoned, can swing more abruptly.

From what I’ve witnessed, few investors have that level of risk tolerance.

I have that level of risk tolerance, and have felt its consequences.

Within this blog (and in my newest book, Muddling By), I’ve described my Triple Whammy where a moderately diversified portfolio was swung upwards by positive news (DNDN & AMSC), impressive speculation (MVIS), and subsequent shatterings of those dreams. Criminals were responsible for the first two failings. Bad luck affected the third. Having those happen as the Great Recession (the Second Great Depression) was happening, which meant I couldn’t sell my house or get a regular job.

And I’ve continued to chronicle the progress here, in this blog – because the story doesn’t end because I wrote a book, or someone got elected, or a new technology was invented, or whatever.

The recent fallbacks were episodes in an ongoing story. Only acknowledging the highs means ignoring parts of living. Stocks go up and down. I acknowledge both. I may act because of it, but I’m more likely to simply watch it.

One reality of my investing is persistence. ‘Keep at it’ seems a silly phrase for something that is simply doing nothing more than watching, but it also means watching the ups and the downs, and watching them well enough to know when something fundamental has changed. Things have changed at the companies I am invested in, mostly. The biotechs (GERN & LCTX) are progressing through clinical trials and some commercialization. The battery companies (SLDP & GMGMF) are progressing their relative technologies. QBTS is being recognized as more than a quantum computing lab bench. LUNR is surprising some by acquiring companies, almost as if they plan to live up to their seriousness about commercializing space. MVIS, well, MVIS, … If MVIS ever succeeds, maybe I’ll write a book about it. If it doesn’t succeed, decades of investor anxieties will join those from thousands of other failed ventures.

So, yes. There was some retreat in some of my investments, but for me, and for this post, it is important to acknowledge both sides, the ups and the downs, and not to rely on headlines and sound bites that are only one or the other. Life’s more complicated than that. Good.