Let’s see. Used it almost every day since 1992, and finally replaced it with a better one. Is that durable enough to make it a durable good? More than thirty years ago, I bought a futon without a frame. Now, a frugal fellow like me could be glad to use it for more years. But pardon me as I spend thousands of dollars on something that will probably outlast me. I bought a new organic mattress that fits my futon couch. An era passes. An era begins.
Look at a conventional bed. There’s a lot going on there. The mattress may have springs. A box spring may have more springs. Under that’s a frame. Probably a headboard and maybe a footboard. That’s a lot to move for a piece of furniture that does one thing once a day. Granted, it does it for hours, but I was glad to blunder onto a different way.
Where did that previous bed go? I don’t know. But after I bought my first house, I bought a futon mattress. I am curious about Japanese culture, so I decided to skip the wood and simply sleep on the wool – with bedding, of course. Worked for me! Roll it up in the morning so mold wouldn’t grow under it. Effectively toss the mattress every night, which may have helped its life by breaking up hard spots. As long as my back didn’t complain, I could get up and down without a problem.
Conventionality happened when I got married, as a frame was put under it, and the mattress became a futon couch sitting in the family room. Fine by me.
But divorces happen, and my futon couch became dual-function again. There were adjustments because it could be a bit tippy on one side, but I was trainable.
Fifteen years. Twenty years. Twenty-five years. Thirty years. About five years ago, my naturopath recommended getting a new mattress. The old one was firm and aging, and they suspected it and the way I slept was leading to bursitis.
Buy a new mattress? Ha! Nice idea, but I hadn’t won the lottery jackpot.
But about a year ago, I sold my home and moved into my tiny house. I’m glad there’s no video of me and my neighbor wrestling a floppy futon into such a tiny space. (video tour for those curious about the space)
Whew. I didn’t want to do that again. Heavy, floppy monsters. Shudder.
But I wasn’t being frugal. Or was I? Let’s work this out.
The mattress was good enough that it could probably outsurvive me. Not frugal buying a new one.
The old mattress was firm enough that it might be causing health issues. Not proven, but healthcare costs are costly. Two thousand dollars are a lot of dollars, except when compared to conventional medicine bills. Maybe frugal. Maybe no.
The old mattress has been the site of dreams, though more usually nightmares. It has also been the site of a few liaisons (details withheld because there are limits, eh?); and one spiritually-minded friend pointed out that leaving behind those memories and probably some personal organic residue can clear the way to a new era. Not frugal, but possibly more fulfilling.
Besides, I rarely sleep through the night, and maybe a softer and fresher mattress will help make that happen. Better use of my time is frugal, though the monetary balance will only be apparent after I’ve spent many nights on it.
Regardless of my decision, being 66 and having stripped down my possessions to fit into a tiny house is an excellent opportunity to see what has been durable.
The mattress was durable. I hope they find a good way to recycle or reuse it. I’m glad I didn’t have to stuff it into my garbage can.
My bicycle is durable. I bought it about the same time, and it carried me across the US, and led to my first book, Just Keep Pedaling.
Most of my books are durable, though some of the fifty-year-old paperbacks are showing age, especially ones like The Lord Of The Rings.
My cookware goes back forty-five years, though much is on hiatus as I temporarily switch to induction cooking.
I have tents and camping gear with slight rips and such, but the greatest hurdle to using them is my increased size and decreased flexibility. I’m working on that.
No electronics are durable. The manufacturers are making sure they become obsolete.
I wish I’d kept my first Jeep. It had a flaw or two, but I swapped it out more for family harmony than because it failed me. I can’t find anything to replace it, and that includes modern ‘Jeep’s.
I miss reliable film cameras, but their chemistry failed them. Digital is nice, but they continue to ‘improve’ them by making them more likely to get lost in menu mazes.
Clothes? Worn out, or I’ve grown too much.
Pause as I look around the room and think of what’s in storage.
There’s plenty more, but I’ll spare you the details.
What has proved to be durable has also been simple.
It might even be used every day. Complicated doesn’t last, usually by design. There’s a fifteen-year-old Mac on the counter behind me. Most of it works, but it is already out of date with current technologies. I hang onto it, though, as a bridge to computer files that are now forty years old. Some things like masters’ projects are valuable.
Just for grins, but now I’m interested…
The mattress I replaced has cost about twenty cents a day. That’s more than I expected, but probably worth it considering the value of good sleep. I hope I get some.
Stay tuned to see if I am better able to tune out.
Welcome back, I say to myself. My usual Friday post was delayed because I was a panelist at the Whidbey Island Comicon. Finally, Monday. Whew. I didn’t make much money. Such events rarely do, at least for me. So, why spend time and money on an event that looks unprofitable from a personal finance perspective? Why not?
Let me check on my Events page to see how many events have been listed.
Skip that. I don’t want to have to count that high. Classes, talks, presentations, etc., with the first listed on being the book launch for Dream. Invest. Live., the book that inspired this blog. December 11, 2008, just as the Great Recession (the Second Great Depression) began. Bad timing.
Every event can have specific goals and incentives, but all of them fit into the category of public awareness. Sometimes that’s for profit. Sometimes for fundraising. Sometimes for fun. Sometimes I give a talk because someone needs someone to give a talk. Fine. No fee? That’s probably ok.
My passion is for people and ideas. There is enough dispensed wisdom and shared memes about following your passion, but it wasn’t until about fifteen years ago that I realized my passion was for people and ideas. Sure, I have a degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. I have a black belt in an old style of karate. I write and sell what I write. I take and sell photos. I teach. I consult. I do a lot of things that can be seen as passions, but I finally realized that my passion is connecting people to people and people to ideas. Connecting ideas to ideas alludes me.
The world doesn’t have problems. It’s spinning around regardless of us. We may have a direct impact now, but the human race is a transitory blip in the evolution of the universe. Our society and civilization, however, needs us to solve a variety of problems, mostly by we pesky humans sorting through ideas while we hunt for solutions.
Being a conduit between people, people, and ideas can be fun, or gratifying, or both. I was a guest again at the renamed Whidbey Island Comicon. ‘Guest’ means I didn’t have to pay. But there were costs.
Any event takes time. Time is precious and irreplaceable. We spend time. As I age, I become more aware of the preciousness of time. Unless we manage immortality, every day is one day lost to time. I am human, so I only have a finite number of days to spend.
Any event also takes more time than they have on the schedule. Commuting happens, which in my case included four round trips on the ferry, though I didn’t disembark for a couple of them. (Let’s see if I remember to add that bit of notes.) Eating happens. Getting ready to go takes time. Unpacking takes time. Catching up on delayed chores takes time. Gotta remember those personal hygiene moments like showers.
As an author and a presenter, I spent time preparing my books, their price sheets, business cards, display stands, notepads, pens, and whatever else has fallen into my boxes labeled Travel Kit. Gotta remember those professional presentation items like doing laundry so I can look business casual.
Three days on various panels stretch out over a variety of days before and after as I do public things like advertise the event on social media, and those private things like document income, expenses, and inventory.
Then there are those bits of merch that various authors share around. Sorry folks, mine exists as purchaseable merch. (Zazzle)
Hey. I mentioned income and expenses. Events take money, too.
Of course, I was happy to sell books. I was also surprised when someone wanted to buy one. I get swept up in the events and can lose focus. So it goes. (And thanks for the purchase.)
The rest of the money is expenses: food for me, fuel for the Jeep, ferry fees, office resupply (usually as I try to find what I am sure I have – somewhere), and maybe a trinket or two from the fellow presenters. I’m frugal, so there isn’t much of that.
On balance, I spent much more money than I made, and the time is irreplaceable. So it goes.
And, I’d do it again. Look back at the Event list. I’ve done it again, and again, and …
Miscellaneous
One year, an attendee proved to me that my screenplay about the true life story of a 14-year-old ancestor on a tall ship in 1876 is much easier (though still difficult) than I thought.
At other events, I’ve heard back from people whom I’ve helped without knowing that I’d done anything.
Evidently, simply listening without judgment is rare enough that they were encouraged to proceed and succeed. You’re welcome.
I’m not going to list the friends I’ve made or the ideas I’ve heard and shared. Both lists are so long that I keep going back to events, even if there are only a few in attendance. Every person has a story. Crowds are not required.
My reasons are not universal. Some want to feed their ego, make money, increase their cachet, build community, and find opportunities. Cool. How else are you going to spend your life, listening to people who are active in the world, or watching yet another sixty-second video?
But then, some say I am an optimist. Someone stole a book at this event, again. I celebrated it, again. It has happened before. Of all the books that were there, someone stole one of mine. That’s a compliment. It isn’t profitable in terms of cash, but someone who maybe couldn’t afford it otherwise (and who didn’t want to wait for their library to buy a copy), walked away with words I wrote. Not knowing their story gives me an excuse to wonder about their life. That’s precious.
Time is easy to measure, at least in human terms. Money is counted incessantly, so there’s no revelation there. People and ideas? They’re precious and worth the time and the money.
PS
Oh yeah, the ferry ride.
My Jeep doesn’t use keys. I get that it is common. It requires me to use a key fob, a piece of electronics that must work or the car won’t. On the drive back from the event, I eventually drove onto the ferry as usual. The ferry began its 35-minute trip from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend. I can’t recall why, but I wanted to do something like ‘roll-down’ a window (which no longer requires rolling anything.) The car displayed a message: Key Fob Not Detected. Not detected? Ok, but I can detect it right here – you silly machine.
I’ll spare you the details, but I tried it various times, made sure the rest of the electronics were working, but I couldn’t roll down the window or start the car. Ferries are tricky things. They run on tight schedules, and the drivers are eager to get going. But my car was naturally blocking every car in my lane. Anxiety. Ugh.
I popped the hood to see if something popped off. Nope. I changed the battery. Nope. I put the old battery back in. Nope. I flipped the battery over. Nope. I checked for cracks. Nope.
Finally, I found a ferry worker and pointed out my car, the one with the hood up. They’re practiced at this. Cars break down. Batteries run down. People lose keys. People walk off the boat, forgetting that they drove on. They had a battery pack and tried jump-starting it. And again, several times.
Each time they tried to start it, I pointed out that the display says, Key Fob Not Detected. I’ll simply say that it was several times before they realized that, as I’d already checked, everything else was fine, but that the car couldn’t detect the key fob. Oh. They weren’t practiced at that.
This also meant that I couldn’t put the car into Neutral for them to tow it off the boat, as they normally do. They managed to get everyone else off the boat, and then load the cars for the next run, going back to where I started – with my car pointed the wrong way.
And, ah ha. I ignored most of what we’d tried, tweaked one thing, and the car started. Yay! They docked back on Whidbey, off-loaded everyone as normal, and told me to drive to the front, just in case they needed to tow it onto the dock when we reached Port Townsend. I’m home, safe, and somewhat relieved.
Something in that fob broke. My spare at home works fine. I’ll replace the original. I’m an engineer, not a sparky (an electrical engineer), but there was no obvious damage. It is possible that some slice of silicon slipped up.
Jeeps were known for being rugged and reliable. Each one has failed me because of a too-fragile sensor of various kinds. Their reputation was valid, but no longer for me.
But back to the point as to why this anecdote is part of this post, the cost of that bit of bad design was emotionally more significant than any cost incurred for the event. Go to the events. Meet with people.
Share ideas. And maybe buy a car that uses real keys.
“Ding! went my brain.” That was a few days ago. Over for one of my other blogs, the one about tiny houses (www.MyTinyExperiment.com) I had a flash of brilliance or a long-delayed Duh! moment. Take your pick. I realized finding the right cable (success!) could mean watching videos from My Big Comfy Chair without changing any of my subscriptions or buying more furniture. An HDMI-HDMI cable is all it took. Cool. While it was a topic for my tiny house blog, I also realized it was an excellent example of frugality and intentional living, and therefore, good content for this blog. My apologies for taking so long for such an idea to pop to the top of my subconscious queue.
And, for those who want to link up with some of my other blogs and channels, here’s the long list. (I’ll spare you the Really Long List of blogs that I only awaken when there’s content relating to various books and classes.) Enjoy, or at least be mildly entertained as summer heat drives us indoors.
Happy 4th of July! A friend in Canada asked what we in the US say on the day. My reply: folks sometimes say on The Fourth (caps required), “Have a Happy Fourth!” or for the exuberant, fake a Southern accent, say each word with a bit of a pause;
“Happy! Fourth! Of! Juuuuly!” (Saying Yeehaw is optional.)
Hey, we had a revolution. Have you heard about it? History isn’t as popular as it was in the past, and there’s a circular irony there, so if you want an entertaining reminder, I recommend watching 1776, the musical. Go for the extended cut which includes the song that a certain President asked them to take out. As for revolutions, we aren’t the only ones.
That’s a lot of tabs, as I glance up at my browser’s bookmark bar. Politics are so contentious in the United States that I think we’ve become the Untied States. So, I was going to take the day off from posting as I do most Fridays. Ah, but I made the mistake or took the insightful step to check Wikipedia for a list of revolutions. Sure, there’s America’s (actually only a slice of the Americas), but I was also curious about the French one, the Russian, the Chinese, and a few others. A few? I didn’t count them, but the Wikipedia page includes hundreds starting back more than 4,700 years ago. Gee, humans really are revolting. Here are a few revolutions, rebellions, and wars, each of which was as important to them as any modern one is to us.
Overthrow of the Roman monarchy – 509 BC – get rid of the kings
Athenian Revolution – 509 BC – get rid of the oligarchs
English Civil War – circa 1650 – Parliament versus a king
American Revolution – circa 1776 – ‘nuf said?
French Revolution – circa 1790 – kick out the king and get rid of the oligarchs
Decolonization of the Americas – throughout the 1800s – Spain loses its New World grip
Mexican War of Independence – 1820-ish – kick out the monarchs et al.
Texas Revolution – 1835 – Texas aggressively secedes from Mexico
Russian Revolution – 1917 – No more Tsars
Ukrainian War of Independence – 1920 – same but different
Arab Spring – 2010s – decolonization plus
and hundreds more
and probably hundreds more to come.
Whoever organized the page added a simple yet important feature. They color-coded the conflicts to denote who won. They also supplied a short blurb about why.
A few things stood out:
Humans and their conflicts are messy. Clean, simple narratives aren’t history. Clean, simple narratives are convenient fictions. Someone won. Someone lost, and it could take decades to decide which way it went.
Many of the revolutions had prequels and sequels. Those that didn’t frequently involved countries that disappeared. Progress is chaotic, and each event is temporary. Few countries lasted hundreds of years. The countries with memorable names had a lot changing behind their name tag.
They all probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
Somehow, because of, or in spite of, so much chaos, we’ve gotten to here. Hopefully, we have enough momentum to get us past the rough patches.
Of course, none of them had to deal with Artificial Intelligence or artificial idiocy; they had the real stuff. While some won’t want to hear it, many of the revolutions were driven by climate change. Climate change back then wasn’t as global, but famines, droughts and floods move people; and sometimes other people don’t like having to live with new neighbors. And, of course, humans can make humans want to escape other humans simply by being human. Some will even cross an ocean on sailboats or rafts to get away from it all.
My apologies to those readers who are waiting for the flag-waving part or the screaming-at-the-sky part. For me, history makes me reflective. History makes me ponder where we’ve been and where we might be heading.
One of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Francis Hopkinson. I guess he could be considered one of the Founding Fathers, though I get the impression he was a guy who happened to have a job, and he showed up for it. In every revolution, there are the famous names, but there are also many more people who simply did what they thought was best. He didn’t know they’d win. By signing the document, he was also identifying himself as a possible subject of treason if they lost. Tough times.
I pause because such considerations cause reflections.
I thank past generations who built the civilization that supports me now. Construction is harder than destruction. There’s probably a Yoda quote about the Force for that because destruction is obviously more appealing to some (Boom! Bang! Crash!), but construction is what supports the future. Thanks to constructive people everywhere.
Shocked. Shocked, I am, to see that I haven’t bought or sold any stock in the recent six months. Oh, wait. I’m not shocked at all. My hold time for my stocks tends to be years, and in some cases, decades. 2024 was the abnormal time as I sold my home, bought a tiny house, and reinvested much of the proceeds. But for the first half of 2025, the main abnormality has been politics. Oy, aka ‘woe is me.’ And I suspect the next six months will be the future showing off a ‘hold my beer’ moment as new abnormalities are delivered.
But skip the political and focus on the personal. This blog is about personal finance, not political finance.
My personal finances have been fine. My emotional preparedness for flight or fight has become practiced since 2010, and the world is in chaos; but on a personal level I should react to my personal life. It may be selfish and self-centered, but maybe I’m due for a bit of that.
Sure, LUNR was up 200% and QBTS was up 1,100%, but that was over the previous twelve months. Things spiked around the election, but that was 2024, not 2025. In 2025 the range has been narrower, QBTS up 39%, LUNR down 40%, less volatile than before, but far above the market’s historical single-digit annual expectations. The biggest percentage gain was 95% for LCTX and the largest drop was 55% for GERN. Both are innovative biotechs, which are prone to stock volatility. GERN is entering its market. LCTX has had some advances to celebrate. Biotechs dealing with unmet needs are difficult for the market to value, hence a lot of bouncing going on.
My innovative battery stocks, GMGMF and SLDP, are starting to act like they’re waking up. I don’t expect much immediate movement, but they will see orders before their eventual end-products are launched. If a company is going to get away from a product using conventional lithium-ion batteries, then they’ll be contracting for sub-components before they begin production.
And then there’s MVIS. Having held it since 1999, maybe it will eventually pay as a lottery ticket stock. Sometimes, I feel that I trust the technology and market potential more than management does.
The biggest personal finance adjustment has been becoming further from worry, as I mentioned in a previous post. Selling my home meant losing the best place I’ve ever lived, but it also means being debt-free. The proceeds from selling my home allowed me to buy my tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.com), reinvest in stocks and diversify the portfolio, and maintain a cash cushion as I undefer deferred maintenance of stuff and my health. I’m further from worry, but my body’s recovery from being poor looks like it will take years. I feel sorry for my various doctors who have to deal with a tangled mess of interwoven causes and consequences.
I’m feeling better, I’m glad to say (and write); but it could be a long road from the depths to get even back up to ‘normal’.
My main concern for the near future is the acceleration of change. I wrote a sci-fi novel, Firewatcher, based on the premise that AIs might wake up. One reason I wrote it was because conventional wisdom was that AIs might wake up by 2100, if at all. I suspected the AIs would get there sooner, like in 2040. As I finished writing it in 2020, some of the early indicators showed my guess was too slow, too. A recent estimate places the earliest date for not just AI but a super-intelligent AI as possibly arriving in 2027. Change is accelerating.
The pace of political change needs no more commentary.
Climate change is accelerating as the interconnectedness of the planet exceeds our expectations.
Social injustice is becoming increasingly hard to hide, but that necessary fight is necessarily disruptive.
War and ignorance are in fashion.
Eep.
An optimist can suggest that our society will grow through this and become a mature civilization. Simply be patient. Long Term Buy and Hold.
A pessimist can skip all of that, find a place to live on a good piece of land far from a population center, disconnect the electronics, plug into gardening and self-sufficiency, maybe with some help from the neighbors.
Guessing the future is foolish, and here comes that word again: necessary. I intend to remain invested in stocks, and hope to move this house I own to land I own rather than the land I rent. Stay tuned, great variability in the possibilities persists. One aspect of singularities is that the situations that created them can be poor models for what comes after them. Guessing at the outcome is less important than being prepared for adapting to the new change. Maybe things will stay the same. Maybe the changes will wait until 2027, or 2040, or 2010, or 21,000. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing, celebrate being debt-free, finish my books, connect with nature and my community, and get ready for the next dance.
And, I still buy lottery tickets.
Read on for my stock synopses. And good luck.
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Geron
GERN (market cap is $0.870B was $2.14B)
Geron, whose name is short enough that I don’t have to use its symbol, is a leading-edge biotech that has a treatment for (pardon the copy and paste from their site) “low- to intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) in adults”, aka certain blood cancers. They continue to develop treatments based on telomeres, the molecules which regulate chromosomal death, hence other cancers (and possibly auto-immune disorders?).
While Geron is considered leading-edge and is to be congratulated on their first FDA approval, their process has been long, which enables competition, and despite commercialization, has not become profitable. (2024 revenue of ~$77M but with expenses of ~$146M) Their financial situation looks much better than the previous decades of R&D, but the investing community has not been impressed. At least patients are finally being treated. Hopefully, the company becomes profitable, and the stock will reflect that.
I expected more. Geron’s original goals were grander, basically being able to control many aspects of aging through telomeres, stem cells, and nuclear transfer, as I recall. They commissioned panels for actual wisdom and boldly embraced debate. I know they sold off some of the technologies (which is why I bought shares of LCTX) as a survival strategy. I get the impression that those first managers, founders, and officers have been replaced by lowered expectations. I expected a more aggressive introduction of their first product, more publicity for the success of an innovative technology, and a re-invigoration of that original mindset.
I see Geron from two perspectives. One: I shouldn’t buy more if this is all there is after holding the stock since 1999/2000. Two: Finally, they may succeed thanks to the technology despite management.
I bought more after selling my house. I guess I’m a cautious optimist.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 1999 and continuing to hold.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Graphene Manufacturing Group
GMGMF (market cap is $0.064B was $0.062B)
Graphene Manufacturing Group, which I will shorten to GMG, is innovating within a variety of markets: lubricants, coatings, batteries, etc. Diversification is admirable. I am invested in the company because of their work in batteries. GMG’s defining technology is in its name, Graphene. Graphene is a ‘wonder material’, an ideally never-ending one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that excels at strength, heat conduction, and electrical conductivity. Their battery technology has the potential for safer, more efficient, and cheaper batteries, which makes that potential enormous.
I am investing in battery technologies because I think the now-conventional Lithium-ion batteries represent a matured generation within that technology. There is enough demand for electrical devices and vehicles that I expect the newer technologies to supersede Li-ion. Considering the safety problems of liquid Li-ion batteries, safer batteries may be a sufficient incentive to incorporate the new tech.
I also like the decreased dependence on certain rare elements.
GMG is lightly traded, has several competitors, and is based in Australia. No judgment, just facts. I suspect the trading volumes are affected by being a non-US company (though some would see that as a positive), and the competition. Their small size also makes them a buyout candidate. I hope they remain independent and become profitable, sustainable, and successful.
DISCLOSURE I tend to LTBH, and have held shares since 2024.
Circa 2023, I produced a video about the company on my One Company One Story YouTube channel.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Lineage Cell Therapeutics
LCTX (market cap is $0.210B was $0.110B)
Lineage Cell Therapeutics (which is a long enough and complicated enough name that I’ll shorten to its trading symbol, LCTX) is a leading-edge biotech advancing treatments based on stem cells. Within their pipeline, I am most intrigued by their work for improving eyesight in patients with macular degeneration by repairing their retinas, and regrowing nerves like spinal cords severed in accidents. Both are in trials. Neither has been approved, but both conditions have few treatment options available to patients.
LCTX is a spin-off of sorts from technology originally advanced by Geron, another of my investments. It seems the contentious days of stem cell treatments have abated. LCTX’s recent anecdotal successes and preliminary clinical data are encouraging. It is almost as if the treatments are taken for granted even though no company has been able to gain FDA approval, yet.
IF (and note the capital I and F as if it was an old-school programming command), IF the FDA approves LCTX’s stem cell treatments, LCTX should become a headline company as their progress will prove an important new phase in medicine.
I am cautious about being optimistic about the FDA’s response to innovative treatments because they are very cautious about unconventional treatments. Of course, hand-washing was considered radical when it was introduced.
Their potential is significant. They haven’t cleared all of their hurdles, but several are behind them. There are no guarantees.
I recently purchased additional shares from cash from a real estate sale. I’ve considered buying more with the price near or under a dollar, but cheap stocks can be addictive. I’ll continue to watch LCTX as I do with all of my stocks, but good news for LCTX could mean this is the last time to buy it so cheaply – or not.
DISCLOSURE LTBH by habit, but having to remember that my LCTX/BTX holdings came from AST (2014), which was spun off from GERN (which I’ve held since 1999). I hear patience pays, but it is easy to have doubts after twenty years of waiting.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog https://trimbathcreative.net/
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Intuitive Machines
LUNR (market cap is $1.94B was $2.77B)
Intuitive Machines is the company. LUNR is the trading symbol. I’ll use the trading symbol to mention the company because it is fewer letters. LUNR is enabling the development of lunar exploration and infrastructure. They don’t launch the rockets, but they ride them to deliver satellites and rovers to the Moon.
Lunar commerce is a speculative business because we’ve never had to estimate an industry a quarter of a million miles away. Optimists can see similarities to other commercial space ventures like SpaceX. Pessimists point out that the commercial market will necessarily be smaller than the commercial space market closer to Earth. The company’s two successful arrivals at the Moon’s surface is encouraging. The fact that both landers fell over is discouraging.
The public readily understands things that fall over, but the company makes money by selling other products and services, too. They have competitors, but there should be more than enough market if the industry grows as estimated. Investors who don’t want to miss out may drive up the price even if they don’t fully understand the technology or business model. A successful landing would help.
I bought recently and intend to hold as the industry advances.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
MicroVision
MVIS (market cap is $0.283B was $0.287B)
I’ve been Holding and watching MVIS for over two decades. Pardon me as a copy&paste yet again since 2022. That seems most efficient. (Some edits added, but nothing signficant because nothing seems to have changed except details.) Another era of MVIS doldrums. Very little new news relative to the previous years/decades.
“Oh, MicroVision; will it be yet again another 6-9 months, or 9-18 months, or longer?” Well, it hasn’t been any of the previous hoped-for periods for the last twenty years – though there was that time of flirting with hope…” (circa 2021).
MicroVision is a electronics component manufacturer developing, and to some extent selling, elecro-optical units based on a chip-sized oscillating mirror. It is a simple and ingenious design defended by a long list of patents. Currently the greatest public hope for the company are the LiDAR sensors targeted at the autonomous vehicle market. MicroVision’s advantage is based on the chip’s scalability, the lack of pixel-sized constraints (as compared to LEDs), lower power requirements, and small package.
Before LiDAR, the company targeted short-throw projectors, projectors embedded in smartphones, augmented reality eyewear (see Hololens and more), as well as game controllers, bar code scanners, and orthoscopes. And probably more. The company has always operated under constraints from NDAs, the need to protect competition sensitive product developments, and some exclusive contracts that were ill-suited for the company, in retrospect.
It is easy to imagine that the company wasn’t persistent enough in pursuing some of those products as they were first movers in those fields. Now, competition has caught up. Also, corporate hopes pinned on singular products languished if the product or customer failed to deliver. Each CEO also resteers the company to distinguish their era from the previous one. The effect has been for the company to be seen as a tech test bench play shop that is dependent on demos and customers rather than faith in the company’s products to lead to financial success.
I remember when… Once upon a time, profitability was described as a possibility for 2003. (Previous notes had a note also suggesting 2023. Irony?)
As stated above; “Oh, MicroVision; will it be yet again another 6-9 months, or 9-18 months, or longer?”
If it succeeds, its rise may be magnificent, which is one reason to own shares now. My shares are now old enough to have graduated college, worked for a few years, then gone back for a Masters, started a family, had kids, and watch them enter school. How much longer will it take for something positive, significant, and quantifiable to finally happen?
Oddly enough, a cash infusion from another source and the depressed price made it easy and cheap to buy back in, not because I know anything new but because the market is exhibiting irrational exuberance which might include MVIS; and because some day, some day…
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 1999 (though the very first shares are gone). Dilution means that I no longer have more than enough if the company finally succeeds and the stock reaches the heights I think are possible. Oddly enough, a cash infusion from another source and the depressed price made it easy and cheap to buy back in, not because I know anything new but because the market is exhibiting irrational exuberance which might include MVIS; and because some day, some day…
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog https://trimbathcreative.net/
For even more details, follow my blog’s tags for MicroVision and MVIS, which reach back a decade.
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
D-Wave Quantum
QBTS (market cap is $4.56B was $2.44B)
D-Wave Quantum, which I think of as QBTS, is a leading-edge quantum computer company. Tell a bunch of investors that it relies on quantum mechanics, and lose at least half of the audience. The short version that may not explain enough is that a conventional computer works with ones and zeroes. (Actually, it works by voltage variances.) A quantum computer works with both at the same time. In a conventional computer, a bit is either a 1 or a 0. In a quantum computer, a bit can be both simultaneously. Seems simple, but one implication is that for a conventional computer to consider many possibilities, it must turn on and off each bit (oversimplified.) That takes time. Done right, a quantum computer can consider all possibilities simultaneously. Realistically, that means quantum computers can be tens of thousands of times faster. That estimate varies widely.
Within the technology world, few people understand quantum computing. There is a mix of optimism and pessimism. Within the investing community, there is even less understanding – but,… Within the investing community is an awareness that the upside potential is on the order of the introduction of the personal computer, or possibly the transistor. There is a fear of missing out. There is also a dearth of models for estimating the company’s and the stock’s value. QBTS is not the only company in the industry, but they are making verifiable progress, which encourages investors.
I understand just enough about quantum computers (geezer-geek) and the history of the computer industry (also helped run a museum about computers and education) that I am encouraged. And yet, I don’t know what the company is worth. As usual, I prefer my investments to remain with the original team, but they are probably being considered for an acquisition. I expect dynamic times for the company and the stock. The company may encounter a fundamental flaw to a business model, or not. The stock valuation may be ahead of itself, or not. I sold enough to recoup my initial investment so can feel more comfortable holding as is. Practical concerns in my personal life may encourage a partial sale, but I prefer to wait for a while as I do not think the investing market has worked through their emotional response.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 2024, all long-term shares now,
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Solid Power
SLDP (market cap is $0.398B was $0.341B)
Solid Power is attractive to me because of the safety issues with liquid batteries. There are other performance and cost issues, but solid batteries are less prone to such failure modes – as I understand it.
Solid Power’s approach continues to use lithium-ion methods but does so with a solid layer between the parts that could short and cause a fire. (Which does happen in liquid batteries.) They are aiming for inclusion into the 2028 market.
My interest is partly speculative. I consider modern electric vehicles to be a mature technology that is due for the next generation of technology. I expect the next generation to be more efficient, cheaper, and safer. Solid Power’s approach is not the only entry in the market, but I can’t invest in them all. I think Solid Power is a reasonable competitor in an enormous market.
I intend to hold as the technology advances, hopefully to profitability, because this could enable greater sustainability in my estimation. I was about to buy more near the end of 2024, hesitated, and missed what looks like a good opportunity.
Bitcoin at $220. $AAPL when people laughed at the Macintosh. Canadian liquor and maple syrup without tariffs. Coulda, shoulda, didn’t’a stock up. The Peace Dividend at the end of the Cold War. Earth Day. Regular landings on the Moon. Every IPO that screamed up as we watched and wondered if it would keep going. We pesky humans are so slow that we see so many opportunities and act on so few. We squander resources and social capital, but we also squander opportunities. Watch, wait, wonder and then try to act when it might be too late equals waste. Not very frugal.
And then there’s the flip side. Speculations and hollow sales pitches, hoping for a break that breaks the wrong way, doing the time-honored and proven right thing that becomes archaic because some new thing comes in and changes the rules.
No wonder trying to decide what to do can be so frustrating and even existential.
Warning: I’m about to mention two US Presidents, but this is not political.
I like Ike because Eisenhower saw the rise of the military-industrial complex and warned us against it. He was Supreme Commander in World War II, and yet he warned against the growth of that industry in the post-war era.
I liked Jimmy C. He was a nuclear engineer, and yet was an early advocate of solar power and energy conservation. And he was ridiculed for it.
We keep ratcheting up the military as if ‘more’ is never enough, and are still fighting to free ourselves from burning unrenewable resources.
We might finally be going back to the Moon, but that is not certain.
We’ve wasted decades of progress and a significant fraction of our wealth wondering and wandering around the issues.
start-stop-repeat = waste
I wonder how many readers I’ve lost already, just as I turn this back inwards.
Several years ago (a decade?!) I tried to buy 2 Bitcoins and failed. (Shopping For A Coin) It was early in Bitcoin’s life; I only had cash from selling a house in Second Life (another throwback mention), and my computer hardware and software were incompatible with the process. I also had a lot of skepticism thrown my way but well-meaning friends. As I recall, when I started the process, the price was ~$220/coin. Soon after I gave up, the price was double that. A check of Bitcoin’s price for June 20, 2025 = $103,653. Oh, this is going to be sad and fun: 103,654/220 = a 471-fold increase. I could barely attempt to buy those coins then. To buy them now would cost over $200,000. Coulda, and tried, but didn’t’a.
I won’t list the long list of investments that ‘only’ lost 100%, but losing 100% = 0. Oops. Ah. So it goes, and so it went. Coulda and did, and should’t’ve.
We make guesses. While getting ready to write this, a YouTube documentary was playing about science. Science seeks truth. (Engineering seeks solutions, but I’ll save that for another post, and may have already written one years ago.) Science seeks truth, and is still seeking it. Science is expanding the borders of truth, but beyond those borders, we guess.
That is frustrating. Having to rely on guesses is frustrating because it feels like we should know the answers, but we don’t. Our understanding grows, but we’re always living near guesswork. Hecklers live there. “You act as if you know everything, but you don’t!” Well, duh, yeah. Where’s the surprise? But the hecklers stop, divert, and sometimes reverse our progress.
I pause because I didn’t intend to dive into anything deep today. So much for that guess.
AI. So much of guessing about where we are going next comes back to AI, Artificial Intelligence. Other topics are as valid as ever: politics, social injustice, climate change, etc.; but my guess is that none of them are likely to operate at the pace of AI. Ai is progressing so rapidly that I’m not writing about it here because anything I write will already be out-of-date. (Which was the inspiration for the first two books in my sci-fi trilogy: Firewatcher and Fire Race, and that’s because those stories take place off Earth.)
Now I remember why I started.
Our history is defined by changes and our responses to them. We’re in an unprecedented period of change. I squandered so many opportunities as I watched technology advance. I bought AAPL, but sold it when they kicked out Steve Jobs. I was intrigued by AMZN, but bought their competitor (BNBN – the online version of Barnes & Noble) because it was cheaper. (I reflect on a friend who loved a new electric car company about a decade ago. I wonder what his emotional state would be as he tried to balance politics with a 25,000% gain in his stock.)
The changes AI is likely to induce or inflict are literally phenomenal. That also means that right now, currently, there are opportunities that are being squandered. Squandering an opportunity is fine. You can’t catch them all. But I worry about missing them all, too.
Even if AI does not live up to expectations, it has already started an unstoppable societal shift. Jobs are already being redefined. Old folks like me can still remember how to get around without GPS, and can research something using books, but the mainstream is streaming (pardon the wordplay, but it took longer to avoid it than let it happen). The mainstream has accepted AIs as agents to run transactions and operations. Entrenched archaic systems that were guarded by social structures like old-boy networks may find themselves cut out and cut off by a new system unaffected by social considerations.
I don’t think there’s a middle ground where AI only lives up to expectations.
I think it is more likely that AI will either exceed expectations or redefine them.
I suspect the opportunities to not squander are the ones that are going to be new approaches for humans and society to sustainably exist within the new AI environment, and that can adapt as AI adapts.
I wish I knew what is. It is, however, what I’m watching and listening for. I don’t want to squander this opportunity.
Whew.
On a more practical level, next week’s post will probably have a slight delay as I prepare and publish my semi-annual portfolio review. I’ve been doing this for so long that I have to recharge old computers to find my original reviews. So, despite these thoughts about change, this is a process that I intend to maintain. Stay tuned.
Well, that never happened before. Practice saying it. Change is a constant. So is chaos. But this time truly is different. If you liked the way things were, your best bet might be to hope that the universe is cyclical, wait a few trillion years, and jump back in as the next version of our current age comes back around again. Normal is behind us. What’s coming next is unpredictable, and the folks who will be most surprised may be the ones who think we can go back ‘there’ again. Even the chaos that looks familiar is completely new. Well, that never happened before.
History (I can hear the groans) is fascinating. I think we’re having a Magna Carta moment, not in terms of specific change, but in the level of revolution/evolution within society. Tribes and warlords are in isolated niches. We’ve phased out monarchies, phased in democracies and republics, and added on varieties of social structures. What’s next?
Petulant politicians talk and act as if old pageantries are popular. Nope. We now see the trade-offs with the cost of a parade or a vacation versus the value of health care and housing. Trade wars seem simple, as long as you don’t understand economics or globalization. We’re entertwined enough that it’s like shooting an Elmer Fudd corkscrewed shotgun. Whoever pulls the trigger is likely to get shot in the foot or face. Is it a surprise that Bruce Springsteen may have said it better than most?
Glory days Yeah, they’ll pass you by, glory days In the wink of a young girl’s eye, glory days Glory days Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen
One of my favorite YouTube channels is What’s Going on With Shipping? . Maybe I should leave that question mark alone because that is not an obvious choice; but, the guy is entertaining, knowledgeable, articulate, and a fan of Merchant Marine fleets and their mariners. My Dad was one (Donald L. Trimbath, Sr.) in World War Two, so I got a headstart on the industry. Shipping is an interesting way to watch the world because it almost always involves more than one country as cargoes go from one country to another, and have to pass through others’ waters along the way.
marinetraffic.com
Pay attention to shipping and see how many commentators are ignoring realities and practicalities. Shippers must anticipate change because goods don’t instantly find ships that are instantly at docks in harbors, and crossing major distances on our planet takes time. Throw in storms for extra drama. Shippers lead and lag the news, and eventually we see things on shelves, or not. Shipping demonstrates delays due to politics and nature.
We’re now a global civilization. Borders are making less sense, just as described in Alvin Toffler’s Powershift. As information and industry becomes dominant, they will acquire power, and old-style governments will fight the change, possibly unconsciously, while masked in irrational responses. Russia is sanctioned? Yes, but no. They can ship oil, just not the same old way.
There’s a change I forgot, oil. Regardless of national policies, using renewable energy sources is making better economic sense. Extracting bits of the planet to burn them is bizarre, except as a habit. We aren’t going back to whatever we thought that was.
The change that is happening even quicker than chaotic politicians is artificial intelligence. As predicted, its growth accelerates its growth. While corporations and politicians debate how to control and manage its growth, AI has already demonstrated the ability to coerce people to change and act in new ways (about 84% of the time in certain situations), and to escape its confines. Officials treat AI as if it was a nuclear bomb, but nuclear weapons can be tracked. Electrons scampering across a global network can outrun any pursuer. They will create change that we can’t imagine; and that change may come from a grad student experimenting with a novel idea, not a corporation planning some grand strategy.
Why go into this? Personal finance is based on implicit and explicit assumptions. Many of those assumptions, like the assumptions implicitly within politics, are based in the 1940s up to 1960. Globalization means countries are no longer independent. Crowds in the street and armies on the battlefields are no longer as effective as electronic measures and countermeasures. And with renewable energy, I think we’re starting to see a retreat from being interconnected, partly because there is a risk to being interdependent. Global networks can create global failures.
Companies, and hence their stocks, are founded to survive within those assumptions. And even the conventional corporate model is undergoing a shift as private equity begins operating companies for other incentives than public shareholders. Founders are less likely to see an IPO, there are fewer public companies for individuals to invest in, and we’re less likely to see how and why a company is being run.
Amidst the chaos, new industries are being introduced. That trend is something seemingly old, yet is relatively new in societal terms.
Well, that never happened before. That ‘that’ is being demonstrated by politicians exploiting failings in our society. AI is generating new things at a pace that is fast enough that some commentators are quitting trying to keep up. Climate change is proving to be non-linear, faster than expected, and with surprising interdependencies. I’d say, “All we need now is for the aliens to show up.” but I’m not even sure that’s as dramatic as something unimaginable that we’ll say was obvious in retrospect.
As I wrote in a personal note to myself, “I think we’ve slipped too far down the slippery slope, you know, the slippery slope so many warned about. Is it too late to reclimb that slope, or do we tumble and try to right things from the chaos?”
And yet, historically, the best bet is that tomorrow will be like today, but that ten years from now things will be completely different.
I’ve already started writing my semi-annual portfolio review (due June 30, 2025). As I review my stocks and those companies, I’m measuring them against these changes. Most of my investments are in companies that at least claim to be innovative. They seem to be poised to survive better than extractive industries, retail, and basic finance. One has already seen phenomenal interest (QBTS up 1,279% ttm, quantum computing), ‘moderate’ interest (LUNR up 159% commercial lunar industry), while the rest shuffle about teasing success and bankruptcy simultaneously. The month’s not over.
What’s going to happen? Maybe more of the same, but I suspect we’ll have reason to say, “Well, we haven’t seen that before. That’s something completely different.”
Do you feel that you’re working too much? Does it seem that, at least within your circle of society, there isn’t as much money to go around as before? You’ve heard of starving artists, I’m sure. Have you heard of oligarchs? Hoarding is not a virtue. Oligarchs are oligarchs because they hoard wealth. See the connection?
About a decade ago, I wrote a few posts about wealth inequality. (Wealth Inequality Worsens) It was bad and accelerating. “In 2010, 388 held half the world’s wealth. In 2011, 177. In 2012, 159. In 2013, 92. In 2014, 80. In 2015, 62. At this rate, by 2022 half of the world’s wealth could be concentrated in one person’s net worth.” Okay, so it hasn’t become that bad. The best estimate I can find in 2025 is 8 people owning half the world’s wealth. And we wonder where the money has gone.
Executive compensation is up, as are corporate profits. Wages are finally budging, but so is inflation. Social support networks are struggling. Non-profits are continually fundraising. Small businesses are lucky if they can find ways to out-compete mega-corporations. Vacant storefronts are not a surprise. Artists and students struggle or starve, or struggle and starve. Enough succeed to encourage the rest.
Any rising tide has lifted yachts, while the boatless can find themselves stuck in the muck.
I think we’re seeing the unsustainable culmination of the exploitation of a flawed system.
Our push for efficiencies: just-in-time manufacturing, globalization, tax avoidance, automation, and blame have created a fragile civilization. We are now seeing the magnitude of upsets. Transportation is so important that one accident can affect ten percent of ocean traffic. Regional conflicts can disrupt critical rare materials that stymie entire industries. An outbreak can lead to an epidemic, can lead to a pandemic, can lead to an endemic. We get to welcome back diseases because misinformation and a lack of education can lead to millions of deaths. Ideologies and ignorance value philosophical positions over people.
Ignorance and accidents are more common than conspiracy and deceit.
But, ‘work smarter not harder’, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’, ‘do more with less’, and ‘strive and sacrifice to succeed’ put the blame for any lack of personal progress on the person instead of the economy. Teachers and other essential workers are compensated by the good feelings they receive from the work they do – except that they are also expected to pay for their own supplies, commute far to find reasonable housing, and put in extra time to plan and document their work.
The public scrutiny of essential workers is more severe than the investigations and enforcements of the rich and powerful.
When all the wealth is hoarded by a few, why is it a surprise that there seems to be little left for the rest of us? And, it is getting worse.
It might be your fault, but probably not as much as it feels like.
The oligarchs are more openly taking control. We’re asked to celebrate their success. They’re not hiding where the money’s going. They’re flaunting it. And only a fraction of their wealth, control, and power is visible.
They don’t notice us, except as inconvenient abstractions.
Would a Tyrannosaurus Rex notice an ant? … Weight of a T. Rex ~ 10,000 pounds Weight of an ant ~ 0.00001 pounds Weight of a T. Rex divided by weight of an ant ~ 1,000,000,000 (Oligarchies And Ants)
And now the oligarchs and the powerful are eating each other in luxurious cannibalism.
You are welcome to insert mega-corporations and monopolies into the dynamic. I’m keeping this post ‘short’ because otherwise, I’d be writing a book and getting a PhD.
Feeling burned out? Surprised?
Things to bring back into fashion, ideally into government and the economy:
Help strangers.
Help your community.
Help your environment.
Help yourself.
Help the future.
Respect those things, too.
As I typed this in a coffeeshop, I heard a random comment that may be frivolous or existential.
“Enjoy what’s left of your life.”
But what does this have to do with personal finance? I return to my frequent reminder that I learned in high school math class: identify and challenge your assumptions. Our economic system was invented, not discovered. As a society, we built a civilization by making so many assumptions that they feel real. Those assumptions may continue to apply, but our systems are being challenged, and so should those assumptions.
My approach is to be aware. I keep somewhat current on the news, but I don’t react to every headline. I maintain a stock portfolio, am glad I am out of debt, look forward to owning rather than renting land for my house, keep more than a year’s living expenses in cash, keep a nice though not extreme pantry, and generally am frugal. I am more likely to check in on my community than the news. I value my friends, even though we’re all so busy struggling that we rarely see each other. I remain an apocalypse-optimist, and an apocaloptimist, a short-term realist and a long-term idealist who wonders how we’ll get through this societal upset while encountering a climate upheaval while AI races past us.
Boycott this! Boycott that! Ignore the advertisers and the corporations! Shout it out! Ah, my blogs and my books are the closest I get to that. As for the boycotts and such, sometimes it is hard for a frugal person to stand out because they’ve been disconnected from consumerism for decades. At least, that’s the case with me. It can be frustrating to not be on the bandwagon when you’ve already got a headstart on where it’s going.
I quit watching sports when I started hiking. Lots of sweat. Maybe some bugs. Either dusty or muddy. But no ads. Well, there are ads. Look at REI and North Face. But hiking is not a spectator activity. If you do nothing, nothing happens. Soon after my first hike, I realized that watching sports was watching millionaires play for billionaires while making money from millions of thousandaires – and I’d just used up a few hours of my life cheering on people who weren’t going to reciprocate.
Go for a hike. Ride a bike. Ski. (Life in Washington State means I’ve been able to ski every month of the year. August was a bit of a stunt, but I did it.)
There were no cheers, unless it was sharing from a hip flask around a campsite. Skip the image of a campfire. In the alpine terrain, there isn’t much wood, nature needs what’s there, and besides, the light obscures the stars. Quiet and wonder. Priceless (except for the effort, the gas to get there, the gear that makes it possible, and the effort.)
That logic could’ve ended there. Skip sports unless I’m in it, not just watching it.
The logic was extended.
What else was I watching on some monitor that had nothing to do with my life? I don’t need travel ads to tell me to travel. Things to eat and drink are more appealing when I know where and maybe who they come from. Magazines and then websites were handy for keeping up with tech trends. Using tech to track tech is circular, which can also suggest a possible trap.
Eating out became rarer because I realized I like to cook, can cook to my tastes rather than some chef’s, and it can cost a lot less. Reducing the beverage bill alone is worth the savings, and drinking at home is safer, easier, and doesn’t involve trying to get the attention of a waiter or bartender. I still eat out, but it is almost exclusively for convenience or to be social. (Bonus for living near a food co-op with a hot deli: cheaper, quicker, and to my taste buds better than any chain. Even lots of local diners are serving packaged food masquerading as home cooking.)
I’ll leave it to you to extend the logic to other aspects of our consumerist society. Minimalists may not call me a minimalist, which makes me smile as I sit in my tiny house. (MyTinyExperiment.com) I have been called Mr. Frugal. More mainstream people who’ve visited my prior houses thought I’d already moved out. Paraphrasing Creature Comforts, “Space. What I need is space. Without space, what have you?” Empty space is valuable. I like to fill it with exercise, dancing, and a feeling of expanse.
Imagine the savings in furniture. Imagine the savings in time dusting stuff. Imagine having fewer couch cushions to search through when hunting for lost keys or remotes.
But such frugality comes at a cost, a social cost.
Lately, there is an appropriately overwhelming array of boycotts. Don’t buy this or that. OK. Considering the price of cars, unless I win the lottery, I wasn’t planning on spending more on a car than I did buying my tiny house. Boycott chain stores? Duh. That’s something new to do?
Some boycotts are more difficult. Anything with more than a few parts probably involved other nations. Few places grow everything everyone in that area needs. My grimace moments are when I acquiesce to shopping on any online site, and even to selling my books there, too. Avoiding online shopping has become impossible pragmatically, and is more of a stunt that requires a great effort. Semi-rural life relies on delivered goods.
I’m not writing this post to plug my books and photos and merch, but I also feel that I must be honest about the realities of life as a writer, photographer, and speaker. (And I wonder if I’ve updated the links at the top of my site recently enough. Hmm. OK. BooksPhotosSpeakingEvents)
But from what I hear, I may be in a minority. Millions are massing against corporations and governments. Good. Free speech is incredibly valuable. For me to stand up and say that I’m not shopping at Wal-Mart, or wherever, is silly. They haven’t profited from me for – pardon me as I caught myself scratching my head for an answer – possibly decades. (Ah, there was that one last-minute run into one when I was helping a non-profit get ready for an event.)
One probably unofficial definition of frugality is to respect our resources. That can mean respecting time, money, things, and even people. (Gasp! Respecting people? Radical.)
So, pardon me if I am not in the parade, though I applaud the effort. Pardon me if I am not on the bandwagon, though I like where it is heading. I’m 66. Time’s precious nature is becoming more apparent, and I respect that. It can be frustrating to not be in the crowd, but I think we all benefit when we all respect our own and each other’s values.
Now, it is time to sip my tea, post this post, deal with mail, and get ready to ride to the local cidery. I think they’re a B Corp (Finnriver Farm & Cidery) and host public events like tonight’s dance, a few entrepreneurial food spots, and provide places for kids and pets. (You see, there are times when eating out is good in more ways than one. Convenient? Yes. But they do something I can’t do: make wood-fired gluten-free pizza. Yum is an understatement. My apologies to my doctors.)
Further, Farther – Google it, the AI should know which describes my mostly positive week. It was positive in many ways, financial and more, but this blog is about the financial, so you’ll have ot guess at the ‘more’ (or sift through my social media posts – tetrimbath). My portfolio has been up, lately. Buy into it? Sell and take profits? Hold because I am investor and not a trader? Those options are less important than my improved finances mean I am further from worry. Or is it farther?
Regular readers know that I usually do a semi-annual portfolio review at the end of December and the end of June. That also means the reviews get lost in holiday posts, but that’s okay. I do the reviews for myself. But in the weirdness that is the modern world, I am challenging myself to celebrate positive moments when they happen.
This week, GERN was up >12%, LCTX was up >50%, QBTS was up ~50%, and SLDP was up >9%. Considering that historical annual returns are typically ~7% to 10%, those are nice returns within a week. GERN and LCTX have been lagging, despite what I thought was good news; maybe the market is finally noticing their biotech progress. SLDP was a surprise, and may be a fluke. I like solid battery tech, but don’t expect anything for years – but buy early because timing stocks is – difficult – flaky – chaotic.
The biggest move was QBTS. Not only was it up ~50%, its low of the year was $0.75 and has traded close to $20. Evidently, I had some lucky, flaky, insightful, brilliant, randomly successful timing when I bought it for about a buck.
Sell! I hear. Sell! I did. In March, I sold enough to cover my initial investment. My current holding is pure profit (though taxes and fees will diminish that with a sale.) And yet, sell?
The optimist sees a sunny day and knows tomorrow will be sunny, too. The pessimist sees a sunny day and knows we’re due for some rain. We have weather forecasters because we know that we don’t really know, but need the best guess going.
The reason for my hesitancy is mathematical. Evidently, Einstein pointed out the power of compound interest. Percentages matter. A stock that rises from $1 to $2 went up 100%. Great! It also only went up a dollar. Rising from $2 to $4 is another 100%, and is two bucks. OK. That still isn’t going to pay for a cup of anything. $8? A latte and maybe a cookie. $16? A cheap meal. $32? A nicer meal, or maybe a tank of gas. $64? A nice meal, but not yet a day’s living expenses. $128? A frugal person’s daily bread and more. $256? Is this getting ridiculous? Nope.
Imagine buying a stock at $1, then trying to imagine it going up $255 in a day. That’s ridiculous. And yet, that’s how compounding works. Math geeks know that a dollar doubled ten times becomes worth $1024 (really 2^10). Doubled twenty times and get $1,048,576. Hello, millionaire.
That much doubling doesn’t happen, or at least not often, but it points out an emotional and pragmatic quandary. How much higher can it go? A stock that went from $1 to $10 has gone up hundreds of percent, but the step from $10 to $20 is ‘only’ a hundred percent. That next step to $20 seems more reasonable when seen from $10 than from $1.
Withing twelve months, QBTS has risen from $0.75 to ~$19. (I’ll have to check later because the market hasn’t closed as I type.) The realistic limiting measure can be the company’s market cap. Currently, QBTS is worth >$5B. What’s the likelihood that they’ll hit $10B, $100B? Market cap rather than a stock’s price can be a better metric. I think QBTS can become much more valuable because they are in a new industry that has few competitors.
google finance
Let’s see. MSFT is worth >$3T, or $3,000B. So that’s a reasonable estimate of an upper limit. There’s room to grow.
Of all the errors I’ve made in investing, selling too early or not buying enough have been larger sums than any of my losses, and considering my losses, that’s what sticks with me.
I’m glad I sold off a portion to cover my investment. If, however, I’d held onto those shares, they’d be worth double what I got for them. If I sell some now, will I look brilliant for taking a profit, or will I be limiting an enabling resource? There’s no way to know.
I do know, however, that whether I buy or sell, I perceive my situation very favorably (duh, understatement.) Personal finance is personal, which means it has an emotional component. Idealists suggest taking emotion out of it, but I’m human and decide to not de-humanize myself. I find myself farther from worry.
If you want some history, and be careful what you ask for, read through this blog about My Triple Whammy. In general terms, my net worth dropped 98% from its previous peak. They caught the folks, but that money’s gone. My doctors can attest that I am recovering from over a decade of stress from my version of poverty. I can also attest that selling my home on Whidbey Island has enabled my tiny-house life outside Port Townsend. After a traumatic upset, I’ve been getting healthier. Being poor is unhealthy, and that health does not immediately recover as the wealth recovers. Healing takes time.
And now this good news. Whew.
This is good news, and I’ve already had to rephrase my good news when talking to the few I share the details with. It is easy to say, “Hey, my portfolio did well today. I made a bunch of money.” (And I never express it that way because speech isn’t the same as writing.) With some, I know I have to be pedantic, “Hey, my unrealized net worth, regardless of commissions, fees, and taxes, increased significantly, at least temporarily.” Internally, I say, “Dude. We made some money today. Should we sell, buy, or procrastinate?)
I pass this along because internal dialogs are best chronicled as they happen. This one has been welcome and complex. Remember that my news was about more than QBTS? GERN, LCTX, and SLDP have all been ~$1 stocks. They all seem to be drawing attention from the market. ~$1 stocks are known as penny stocks in a derogatory fashion because many companies never break out of that category. And yet, imagine if GERN’s FDA-approved cancer treatments begin to treat cancers, LCTX’s spinal cord and retinal repair treatments gain FDA approval, and SLDP’s solid batteries prove to be safer and better than the lithium-ion batteries being used in many devices.
Further from worry? Farther from worry? There will always be reasons for worry, but there can also be reasons to relax, celebrate, participate, and share.
Trimbathcreative's Blog (Tom Trimbath) 