Yep. I bought more stock. But the markets had a terrible week? Rephrase that. Stocks are on sale! So I bought some more, but I also did more research, reflected on history, have painful reminders of catching falling knives, and am glad to buy at discounts. Sounds dull because it is about finance? Trust me. It hasn’t been dull for me. Here’s an update on what, how, and why.
Regular readers know I compile a semi-annual report about my portfolio. (Semi Annual Exercise Mid 2024) This year has been energized because I sold my house, which gave me money, which gave me money that is partly going into the stock market. (Time To Buy But What) Most of the money remains as cash. I’m just not that impulsive.
But I’ve been watching the markets as usual. Even when I am not trading, I watch because it is a real reality show with real consequences. Earlier this week there was news that startled lots of investors. It seemed based on nervousness rather than specific news. The upsets were in the mega-cap stocks like MSFT. My much smaller companies (hey, I own a tiny tiny slice of each – so, mine, mine!) had their stocks affected, but the companies were doing what they’d been doing. That suggest their stocks should too. It doesn’t work that way, of course. Ah, but it was also earnings week for most of them.
News? Not really. Minor disappointments. The perpetuation of hope. Patience continues to be exercised. But their prices changed as skittish investors skittered away because others were skittering away in other companies. Yo. Dudes. Nothing changed, except the price. I bought more.
I did not, however, buy more of everything. At this point conservative investors (not the political kind) may moan about ‘here he goes again’, while more speculative investors may brush off my old style of Long Term Buy and Hold. I figure that puts me in the middle.
I hadn’t suddenly found a new investment, so I reviewed my existing investments. Recent history and fresh earnings reports told me that nothing much had changed. They’re mostly startups, and they’re trying to start up. Always chaotic.
Allow me to review (partly for my own records) how each looks, kinda like a mini-update to my Semi-Annual Exercise.
GERN – They won FDA approval, but the stock hasn’t moved. But, they also are slowly rolling out their commercialization scheme. Progress. Slow, but progress. But also my largest holding. Mathematically they may be the best near-term ROI. In terms of divesification though, I set them aside.
LCTX – Another biotech working towards approval, but that’s a ways off. In the meantime, their stock languishes, but I have a personal limit on how many shares I hold. I’ve maxed out on LCTX.
XOS – They’re where my SOLO shares went. Management has yet to impress me or the market. I’ll give them more time.
WNDW – Management had a major mess that they ‘should’ have recovered from, but evidently, not yet. The company, not just the stock, the company is worth less than some mansions. The stock trades so infrequently that a days volume is a few thousand dollars. I’m sure some independent retail businesses are busier.
LUNR – My space investment, and while I am a fan (my degree is in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering), I consider them risky enough to hold but not add too. The next success may mean I can’t afford to buy in, and that would be good news too. But not now.
SLDP – Really liking owning stock in a solid battery company. I’ll hold, but Samsung’s news seems to have dampened enthusiasm for small companies as if a mega-corp has established dominance.
That leaves the two I bought.
MVIS – The electro-optical component company that has been trying to start up for about thirty years. Yep. They sucked me in again. My history with them is long (follow the hashtag https://trimbathcreative.net/tag/mvis/). Considering my increased portfolio, it felt like a good time to buy more, almost as a balancing issue, but also because I continue to hold optimism for their technology. Their management, well…they’ve yet to find anyone who can get this motor started.
QBTS – Talk about a technology that has great potential, is tough for analysts to analyze, and it cheap – and it got cheaper, at least since I bought it last time. Going to my max number of shares was an easy decision. Why’s the stock down? Analysts understand steadily higher profits. Technologists understand that technology is rarely steady. Leaps happen. Sometimes the leaps are in the science, or the manufacturing, or in the customer base as customers realize why they need it. Once upon a time I had FFIV. Paraphrasing their CEO (the best I’ve met), sales took off when the word about the product got past the gatekeepers of purchasing agents and got to the IT staffs that said they needed to have this, even if management didn’t understand it. I can see that happening with QBTS. I hope. Maxed out.
Google Finance
Through all of this, I am fortunate enough to have over four decades of experience. I’ve cut myself on falling knives before. Falling knives are stocks that are falling. Trying to catch them on the way down can be painful. Conventional wisdom is to let the knife fall, then pick it up. In the reality of the stock market, stocks stop falling somewhere before they hit and stop. They bounce in mid-air. I bought MVIS circa 2000 after the stock fell 20%. Split-adjusted, it peaked at about $500. It ‘bottomed’ at under $30. I bought more. This week’s purchase was at $0.92-ish.
Google Finance
Meanwhile, circa 2000, I bought FFIV after it fell from about $60 to about $20, about where I bought it, and sunk to about $3. Somewhere I bought more. When it hit about $40 about ten years later I sold and made a large downpayment on my first real home. FFIV is trading at about$189 as I type. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes I wonder how my life would’ve been if I’d held, but that would’ve required living in a rental owned by rats and occupied by black mold. Decisions and choices.
Fear not! AI is already taking over. Any debate is moot. It’s not done, and there isn’t much we can do about it. Congratulate yourself on adapting so well, so far.
AI is not AI is not AI. There are many levels of AI, and we’ve already met the earliest models of them. Think automation. Compare life from fifty years ago to now. We’re using lots of things that are at least somewhat intelligent. A coffee maker isn’t an ideal of artificial intelligence, but it is smart enough to take your commands, brew the coffee, and turn itself off – and maybe stay on just to keep it warm. ‘That’s not AI.’ No, but yes, at least at the level of a toddler savant.
A coffeemaker is not an ultimate AI, but it is a start.
Spell check is just looking up what you typed against a dictionary. But spell check has to use some intelligence to guess at which word you really wanted. Now, it has graduated to grammar check. It can even have opinions about tone and measures of reading level.
Spell check wasn’t doing the writing, but it can now. And, it is getting better.
Cars are things. We drive them. But, since the introduction of power steering and power braking, our driving has been assisting. That may be a built-in response, but then we upgraded to cruise control, and anti-skid, and power-sharing in 4WD, and now lane-assist, separation distancing, auto parallel parking, and features I’m not familiar with because my car isn’t that fancy. Auto-start? Come-when-you-call? Autonomous operations? Cars have advanced far enough that owners have given up control of maintenance, and mechanics have to trust the computer about what to work on before a human hand does more than open the hood.
Auto automation is not waiting for the ultimate AI; it is doing what it can do with what it has.
Thank the Baby Boom age for what happened to the home. There were some labor saving devices prior to World War II, but soon after peace, the machines began to need user manuals. Now, washing machines are smart enough to confuse users about what cycle to use and why. Ovens and cooktops have safety features that make sure we don’t hurt ourselves, evidently because they take better care of us than we do. Now, so many of them are so intelligent that they can tell us what to shop for. Train yourself on their new language of timers and beepers to draw attention back to their/our task.
We’ve come a long way from fires for cooking and streams for water, largely because of the increasingly smart systems we’ve created.
For centuries, the most common non-human security system was a dog, or even better, dogs. Maybe some geese. Now, we don’t even have to get up to get the door, or even be home to talk with someone who walked onto the porch – or back door, or into a garage where they shouldn’t be, or… There are systems that detect people and critters, launch a drone, and give you a real-time video of what is happening. These are not dumb systems, but they are getting smarter. Our habits are unique and preditable enough that the sensors can identify the people and the pets, and notify us if something or someone is unfamiliar. Lock or unlock the house without being in the same time zone.
A somewhat intelligent entity is now a gatekeeper, concierge, and guardian at the gate.
Words were pen and paper. Photos were click and shoot and develop and print. Neither now exist without at least the opportunity to be corrected and improved according to points of style that relied on humans before.
How many people would get lost without GPS?
Voicemail menues and Help bots try to outguess what we want and need. They may save companies money. They may ruin consumer approval. They can be dangerously wrong, but they are young and maturing.
Resumes are read by bots before humans see a few of the total.
Ads aren’t broadcast but are selectively provided based on intelligent guesses based on our recent activities. Spooky.
Doctors, even at the sophisticated level of surgeons, are tapping electronic databases instead of educated and experienced humans. We give them the power.
“I Am Not A Robot”, and the burden of proof is on the human while the power is in the machine.
And then, there’s true Artificial Intelligence. What I’ve written above this paragraph is a series of nuanced interpretations of intelligence. Power steering didn’t start as intelligence, but by design, intelligence was incorporated into something that wasn’t human. We’re done that throughout our culture and civilization.
One simplistic way to typify Artificial Intelligence is to embody the necessary skills and actions of a human into a machine. We’ve been advancing that front for decades. Rather than worry about the arrival of AI, recognize that we’ve been enabling it throughout our lives.
Humans are all part of a wide spectrum of skills and actions. None of us can do it all. No regular, stereoptypical AI can do it all. Some of us are great mechanics, but not most of us. An AI can be great at one thing, or a few things, but may not be able to do something some other AI can do.
AI has been arriving like a rising tide. I expect jobs to be lost and industries to fade away, but that has always been the case.
The AI I think is more valid to worry about is the AI that comes after the early AIs. Programmers are already losing control, or at least an understanding of AIs. When AIs start creating better AIs, even ‘our’ AIs may not be able to understand what has happened, what it’s motivations are, and what its intent might be.
That’s the AI that is more than an unknown, it is an unknowable unknown. And, there’s a chance that it will arrive within the period of a mortgage, a career, and definitely a lifetime.
So, here’s the potential personal finance bent on this topic. What do you do about it? For those of us not in the industry, the topic is not academic. I ask myself whether my investments will make sense in an AI-dominated world.
The same question applies to my lifestyle. I’m glad I moved to a simple tiny house. As simple as it is, little lights populate the night. One caveman image was of someone sitting by a fire at night, ringed with the glowing eyes of creatures watching the human that is huddled by the fire’s security. My nightly walk to the kitchen is accompanied by one-eyed LEDs showing that many somethings await. Fortunately, they are less likely to attack.
And, what if they break? My area underwent an internet outage last night. I planned on working on my book (the sequel to Firewatcher), but I managed to go dancing instead. But that also means I’d doing more work on a Saturday. Those few hours were critical to some, undoubtedly, but they were an inconvenience to most, at most.
We’ve been driving ourselves to a world where we’re more integrated and automated, and more vulnerable to everything working. Reliability and sustainability are not as valued in the economy as new regardless of improved. Maybe an AI will be smart enough to properly prioritize things without the distraction of human emotions.
Maybe we’ll embrace the impartiality of AI protection, AI justice, AI elected offcials, etc. It might take much from where we are to advance AI to the point that we relinguish control on such systems in an attempt to remove bias and injustice.
We’ve been riding this tide for decades. I doubt we can stop now.
In terms of investing and lifestyle, I take AI as a given. It is going to happen because we’ve been making it happen for a very long time. I haven’t reduced my considerations to a short, concise set of strategies, but I think there’s real non-academic value to adjusting my life given that assumption. I’ve got the tiny house; how about the large lot of land to go with it? Maybe I should as an AI for help.
(Irony: I now tend to have Grammarly review and suggest edits to my writing. I don’t blindly accept its direction. As a writer, it is still young. But, I can already see that I’m becoming a bit antiquated by picking my own words, breaking rules to make a point, and trying to be more human in my writing. Welcome to the new world.)
As if there wasn’t enough to do, my move made Kaiser Permanente move – move to cancel my insurance. Isn’t bureaucracy grand? You don’t have to answer that. Their move makes some sense, I guess. I moved to an area they don’t cover, so they can’t cover me, so they canceled my coverage. Surprise! Time to get new coverage. STAT. I think I did it, but I have doubts.
Welcome to Port Townsend, yet another tourist town and not far from where I lived since 2005, Whidbey Island. One ferry ride away – and be prepared for cancellations. I’m guessing that most moves mean many of the same things for many people: lots of change of address forms, arranging for new services, getting familiar with where, what, and when things are available. Same here. Two months into the move, and I’ve filled out lots of those forms, and am not done yet. And then I went to the doctor.
I say doctor, but I probably should be more specific and say naturopath. Traditional services created and then perpetuated the conditions that have spawned over a decade of anxiety attacks. I’m not going to describe what, how, and when they did the things they did because – get this logic – it could trigger another anxiety attack. One of the reasons for the move was to get healthier financially, as well as healthier in all other ways, too. That’s why one of the things I’ve already done is to say thank you and good-bye to a marvelous naturopath on Whidbey, Dr. Molly Fox, and begin working with Dr. Rosalie De Lombaert near downtown Port Townsend (on the waterfront, cool.) Both are good folks, or at least they put up with me.
The precipitating episode ensues. Prepare for serendipity, or at least synchronicity.
I was sitting in my car just after my first long session with Dr. Rosalie. (She types fast! And I gave her lots to type about. Hey, I’m 65. My body has been through a lot.) Even before I start the car, I get a call. Is it from Dr. Rosalie’s assistants about some form? No. By chance, it is someone at my previous insurance company, Kaiser Permanente, calling me about refreshing a prescription. Do I want to do so? Sure. Oh, by the way, I have a new address. Please mail it there. Fine. No problem. OK. That’s taken care of.
About 90 seconds after I hang up, I get another call. KP (because I’m getting tired of typing Kaiser Permanente) calls back with a short message. Because I moved, my insurance will be canceled on the last day of the month, about ten days away. Erp. Eep. Uh oh? I’m on Medicare. Doesn’t that make a difference? (By the way, bows to the poor caller from KP. It was her first week. They were coping with the Blue Screen Of Death syndrome, and I think I was her first cancellation. She was somewhat traumatized and stressed. What a way to start a job.)
I hadn’t even left the parking lot, and my medical world had changed.
Long-time readers will know that I Do Not Like forms, or bureaucracies, especially medical ones. Ugh. Where’s my anxiety medication? Oh, right, I need more of that.
One distinction I’ve learned to make is that insurance isn’t care. For years, I’ve dealt directly with providers as much as possible. Doctors and nurses are reasonable and see the direct connection between what they do and what it does. Insurance isn’t care. Insurance may enable care, but it is there to care about the cash primarily. At least, that’s my experience.
Grumble. Gripe. I still do not understand Medicare. From what I understand, I’m covered by Medicare regardless, but it seems like the system is largely administered and enabled by the insurance companies. I don’t know why health insurance companies are supposed to be better than the government at managing such a system, but I’m guessing lobbyists are involved.
Ignore grumble and gripe. I’ve got less than two weeks to find something that checks the boxes.
Go online, of course. Medicare, insurance companies, health organizations all have an overwhelmng amount of information, much of which seems redundant. (BTW I mistyped ‘much’ as ‘mush’ and I think describing the info as mush might be appropriate.) For a few days I tried educating myself, again. Nope. I was barely more successful this time as last time, which was only half a year ago. Call for help.
Help! Dr. Rosalie referred me to a well-known firm (hey, they have ads before the movie trailers in the local theater), Kristin Waring. My deadline was July 31. There was a weekend coming up. They could fit me in early July 31. Timely, but without much of a margin.
I’ll skip the suspense and mention that we met, and they did an excellent job (application pending.) I’ll also point out that the move helped manufacture a glitch. It was because of my insurance card and the move.
Lots of legalese flies around insurance, the government, and therefore, healthcare. As I mentioned when I signed up for Medicare, the amount of necessary disclosures, disclaimers, and actual descriptions are overwhelming. From one source alone I received more words than I put into one of my books, and there are mutliple sources. Reading it all would take hours or days. Understanding it could take longer. Comparing the plans could take long, and involve spreadsheets of data. Yeah, help.
Amongst and amidst all of that KP, sent me new cards, probably to reflect existing coverage, a new year, signing up for Medicare, and I don’t know what else. They didn’t all fit in my wallet. They weren’t dated, so I couldn’t tell which was most current, so I guessed and picked one. Months later, here’s the move, that’s the card I have, and it’s the card I relayed to the helpful person at Kristin Waring.
Wrong card. I found that out an hour or so later when she called to tell me that. I had photos of old cards, but they were probably too old. I might have the newest card, but I’m guessing it is still in a box, on a shelf, in a storage unit – maybe.
Thanks for the help. Where’s that anxiety medication?
No need. I’ll spare you those details too. She resolved everything, but in the meantime and keeping in mind the deadline, I’d called and emailed several sources, as well as scoured my computer files for photos of the cards.
As convoluted as this experience may seem, it is the easiest experience I can recall in years. And this amount of stress is for health care, and one of my major health issues is stress. It is at times like this when I become more of a fan of universal healthcare, even just to eliminate bureaucracy.
From an automated email and one from a real person, I believe I might or at least should have insurance coverage as of August 1, 2024, which is tomorrow as I type. I should get notification of that within a week or so. So, if anything happens within the next week, … I decline to describe such a scenario.
Despite all of this insurance confusion, I am glad that I’ve already arranged for health care that I am willing to pay for out of pocket. Health care is that important to me, and thanks to selling my house, I can afford to pay direct. I have begun working with Dr. Rosalie. I already have a dentist. I have arranged for a mental health counselor (who would’ve been handy, but we haven’t met yet). Vision care will happen, but I’ve been busy.
I’ll probably wait until I get a new card (hopefully only one is necessary), and then arrange for more sessions. Being poor (from my perspective) for the last several years has been demonstrably unhealthy. I’m 65. I don’t want to wait at getting healthy again. Other luxuries are now affordable, but I can’t think of one that is more valuable.
If all works well, I probably won’t write about it. There’s always other things too. In the meantime, I pause, enjoy the sunshine, and starting making a healthy meal with veggies in it – and a thing or two that the doctor may not approve of. Apologies. It’s been a day, eh?
How odd is it to write this? Yep. Odd. And yet, as one friend put it, I can be disarmingly honest – which may just be another way of saying that I over-share, or surprise people, or scare people, or something else. Personal finance is not always about finance; sometimes it is personal, about being a person. Selling my house and buying a tiny house had literally brightened my life. Yep. That was weird, odd, and a surprise.
It sounds trite. It sounds like the Wizard of Oz going from black and white to color. Lately, colors are brighter. Scenes are sweeter. The world looks better. The local Chamber of Commerce and tourism folks would probably love to say it is all because I moved to Port Townsend, which is an attractive place; but I noticed the change even when I re-visited my old neighborhood on Whidbey Island.
OK. I’m a curious fellow, so rather than just say, ‘huh, that’s curious’, I asked why such a thing could happen. I haven’t changed medications, or had any procedures (but arranging for new health care will be chronicled in a new post soon). In particular, greens were greener, but I also noticed more variations in the shades and hues. Lighting patterns were amplified. The world looked better.
For some background, I am also a photographer. I’ve sold my art and produced a ten-book photo series of Whidbey Island (photos, books). I notice light and color. I notice them more, now. (note to photographers: It was as if my HDR was switched on. Not exactly, but kinda.)
photosbooks
I’ll spare you the convoluted introspection that made me realize why it was happening. I’m debt-free, again.
Being debt-free improved my eyesight? Yep.
Being poor is unhealthy. I’ve just spent over a decade of dealing with the aftermath of what some friendly finance professionals called ‘a perfect storm of bad luck’. I called it My Triple Whammy. Details throughout this blog.
It can be difficult to understand how fundamentally different lifestyles can be. For those years, I was increasingly stressed and focused on surviving my financial upset. As my stress and focus intensified, my awareness of the world became increasingly narrow. Gotta make money, yes. But also, avoid anything that will cost money. Don’t hurt the car, or the house, or the career, or…, or…, etc. And overall, don’t hurt my body. Don’t hurt my Self. I couldn’t afford it.
I could still enjoy the colors of the changing seasons, but my brain reduced their priority. Gotta get the work done. Gotta spend as little as possible. Offers to go to free concerts weren’t free because they’d cost gas and time. Pay what you can takes care of the cash requirement, but it can’t cover lost work. The opportunity for joy is dulled.
Now that I am debt-free, I’m feeling better in other ways. My dreams have improved. As one friend said, I look lighter. I’m guessing my posture has improved (and has a long way to go as I sit scrunched typing this.) More money in the account, thanks to the house sale, means more time in bed. I’m even trying to relax. Still working on relaxing. That has deeper history.
And I pause. Yes, there are mean people out there. Yes, there are fine people in poverty. And yes, they can literally be seeing a different world, a darker world, a less vibrant world. Maybe they can’t afford entertainments. Maybe they can’t afford food. There’s no surprise if they can’t afford housing. Imagine how the world looks when you can’t afford a place to sleep, care for kids, doctor visits, family visits. I’ve yet to visit my father’s grave. (Maybe within the next several months.) When I see a car with a headlight out, or duct-tape across a window, or a fender held on with bungee cords I am now more likely to wonder about what else they can’t afford, and where their car is on their priority list.
I’ve seen the reports that objectively quantify the effect of income on life span, housing, etc.; but there’s less-tangible effects, some at least partly quantifiable, some highly individualized and subjective. I do not wonder why so many people see different ideologies, especially, if they are seeing different worlds.
I thought I was going on a bike ride organized by some local authorities to tour affordable housing issues and possibilities. Well, yes; but, no. It was a ride of the historical features of the area that must be kept in mind while creating housing solutions. I was confused, but it was a bike ride, so I didn’t care. Two hours of riding around my new neighborhoods? Sure. Whatever they wanted me to get out of it, the theme that stayed with me is impermanence. Things don’t stay the same.
I moved to Port Townsend about two months ago. But, I didn’t move to Port Townsend proper. I moved to the outskirts that simply use Port Townsend as a mailing address. Port Hadlock-Irondale holds about 4,000 people. Port Townsend has about 10,000, making it The Big City. I live between them. They’re planning on making Irondale bigger. Bigger happens. The surprise came when I learned that about a hundred years ago, Irondale’s plans were to grow to 20,000. They had Plans!
Something happened.
The history of the Quimper Peninsula (I think I got that right) is an interesting story about a region that was poised for dramatic growth suddenly was looked over as steamships sailed to Seattle instead of harboring in the tall ship friendly port of Port Townsend. The region had iron ore and coal, which was a combination that made Pittsburgh famous, but the railroads decided to stop on the other side of the Sound. Plans abandoned and stranded.
We rode to the site of the old mill. Now, it is used as a beach. It is easy to overlook the ruins of the kilns and docks, bricks and concrete either washed by the surf or used as canvas for graffiti. Where did the slag go? Where did the coal come from?
Now, the area is growing again thanks to being near Seattle. The people gotta go somewhere.
But my mind went back to when I lived in a Seattle suburb which has massively grown, Bellevue. (Sold a house for ~$340K circa 2001. Last time I checked, it was priced at ~$1.2M.) Ah, but Bellevue was suburban enough to be near trails in hills and forests with wildlife. The place was called Cougar Mountain. In some places in the world, it would be a mountain, but in Western Washington it is really only a large hill when compared to the local snowy peaks and occasional volcano. The cougar part is appropriate. Residents should mind their pets.
Before Seattle was big, before Bellevue was big, Red Town was big. Whatever their relative sizes, Red Town’s future was encouraging because they found coal. Coal on the West Coast? Excellent! Find some iron ore and the area could be the other Pittsburgh.
Now, it is even easier to overlook the ruins as the edges of a temperate rainforest cover the town’s remains. For me, the largest evidence of the past was the gated, fenced, and blocked entrance to the abandoned coal mile.
For years, the area has been growing again thanks to being near Seattle. The people gotta go somewhere.
I caught myself before I asked too many self-referential questions, but my family home was just outside Pittsburgh, near a few mills and an abandoned mine. I was bicycling past echoes of my past.
I was raised in West Mifflin. Never heard of it? Why would you? It is a suburb of Pittsburgh. Contrary to popular perception, Pittsburgh didn’t have the most mills. The messy, nasty, smelly, and amazingly productive mills were outside The Big City. Our house was within a short bike ride (even for a teenage me) of a few mills. Beneath much of it was an abandoned coal mine. As kids, we played in the remnants of mine subsidences. Friends toured the flooded shafts on air mattresses.
We rode around a slag dump, a slag dump that was supposedly the largest man-made mountain. Steel mills make steel, but between iron ore and pure steel there’s a lot of byproducts. Slag is like molten lava. The mills had a railroad that carried it to the dump, then dumped the ore down the self-made mountain in a splash of lava and a shower of sparks. Evidently, my parents would have date nights when they went there to watch the cheap light show.
About the time I was in high school, developers decided to use the defunct part of the slag dump as a site for a massive shopping mall and more. Being kids, we rode around the construction site when we could. Mostly, I rode around the raw slag. To break it up, the construction crews had to use a bulldozer pulling a grader sometimes being pushed by another bulldozer. Not dirt. Lava. Solidified lava. The tale of Century III Mall actually warrants some YouTube videos and a wikipedia page. According to wikipedia, it was the world’s third-largest mall for a while. Pittsburgh was growing. People were moving to the suburbs and shopping. Soon, that wikipedia page and those videos may be all that is left. They’re tearing down the mall.
Impermanence
OMG. Things are changing! Should I simply write the word: Duh?
Massive buildings can vanish within a lifetime. I’m guessing that grand plans usually don’t succeed. Some do, but even they aren’t likely to be permanent.
Currently there are dramatic changes in climate, politics, technology, and society. That’s the norm. Preparing for a change to a New Normal may not be as important as preparing for change followed by change, ad infinitum. Conventional wisdom may have been wise, but conventions are changing. I’m more interested in plans that are built around adaptation rather that some new convention.
It is romantic and nostalgic to remember simpler times. Spam would have a tough time if we only used rotary phones. But, if I dial 9-1-1, they have a better chance of knowing where I am and can contact me at the scene of wherever. How many lives has that saved?
As usual, I bring this back to personal finance (and I’ll spare you my thoughts on shopping malls and such – for now).
I continue to hear conventional wisdom based on the boom times after World War II. These times aren’t those times. Work hard, yes. Spend less than you make, yes. Invest the rest, yes. But work has changed; so much for life-time employment and benefits. Spending has changed; as minimum wage isn’t survivable, and affordable has less to do with prices than with employment (IMO). Investing is no longer expensive commissions, but its internal competition is already people versus algorithm. And the changes are accelerating.
One of the reasons I sold my house was because I wanted to be better prepared for change, even without knowing what that change will be. My most immediate worry was any possibility that my Social Security would effectively or totally vanish. I got out of debt in case inflation gets truly out of control. I moved off a beautiful island because basic infrastructure, like ferries, isn’t being managed responsibly. I continue to stay in a place that is temperate and with local resources like water. (I might even get solar on my house, pending management’s proposed sale of my leased property. Another topic.)
I live alone, but in terms of lifestyle, I am not alone. Several friends are becoming increasingly nomadic. Sell the house. Buy a van, or a boat, or a lot of airline tickets, or tour the world through epic house-sitting adventures.) Why only live in one place? I could even imagine moving, and I only got here two months ago.
The only constant is change. Even the pyramids will crumble. If the conventional wisdom isn’t changing, maybe you’re the one to challenge and change the convention.
Ah, the weather has changed. I mowed the yard in a light mist that turned into a dull overcast, which has now become clear blue sky. It is about time for me to change into clothes to dance in. There’s a dance late this afternoon. It’s down on the waterfront, by the old pier. You can even see the abandoned dock that is stuck in the mud but not connected to anything else.
That caught me by surprise. I forgot how to play my lottery game. For years, I’ve played this game with myself. What would I do if I won the lottery? I’d imagine a range of answers from winning $1 to winning $1B. This week, I realized I’d been so busy moving into my tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.com) that I hadn’t played the game in a while. Instead of mentally rattling off a list of possibilities, my answer was a blank. How’d that happen? What did that mean? Cool. Being debt-free had deeper effects than I expected. Unintended consequences can be quiet – and significant.
Here’s one example of how the game, or rather the exercise, went just a few months ago. Win $1. Thank you. Can I have another ticket? Win $10. OK. I’d like a ticket for the next ten drawings. (In WA you can pre-buy tickets 25 drawings in advance. Handy for lazy gambling.) Win $100. Give me the money! And the money will go into my wallet, merely delaying my next trip to the ATM. Win $1,000. Give me the money, or better, give my bank the money – with maybe a $100 splurge. (Which is less than some folks spend in dinner without noticing it.) Win $10,000. Nice. Not much more of a splurge. If I had any debt, pay off a chunk. Invest the rest. Win $100,000. Pay down debt. Fix up the house. Take care of some medical bills. Splurge a bit, which might be a trip to visit family the next time the weather discourages hiking, but I want a break. Hello, Amtrak. Win $1,000,000. Hello, doctor. Hello, realtor. Something nice near the Salish Sea. Win $10,000,000. Hello, philanthropy. And all the rest. Win $100,000,000 or more. Take lessons from the people I’ve met for whom excess wealth damaged their perspective. Philanthropy, for sure. Keep it simple, but with the ability to do so Very Comfortably.
So, I saw the lottery board flashing at the local convenience store which kicked off the return to that exercise – and realized nothing came to mind. What? Where’d those ideas go?
It took me about three days of occasional and casual introspection to finally realize that my lifestyle is now so much less driven by debt (e.g. effectively none) that many more of my needs are being met. Prior to selling my house on Whidbey, I was living with a mortgage, a home equity loan, and credit card debt. Every day, deferred responsibilities nagged me to get something done; but I couldn’t because I would have to go deeper into debt. Ah, but if I won the lottery, those nags could be silenced.
I sold my house. The debts are gone. My view is gone, too. (But the world literally looks better, which may be the topic of a subsequent post.)
Frequently, I hear criticisms of poor people who shouldn’t be playing the lottery. For me, the lottery played two major roles and a few minor ones. 1) Desperation. If working hard isn’t getting rid of personal poverty, then why not try an occasional $1 bet? The odds are very small, but not buying a ticket means the odds are zero. It could happen to you! So they say, and evidently, it does happen to random people. 2) Mental health. I’m not going to dig for Sun Tzu’s quote but basically, there’s a tremendous difference between being trapped versus knowing there’s at least one way out of a bad situation. Knowing I had a ticket in my wallet meant that there was a possibility of a way out. It might be highly improbable, but improbable is not impossible. A $1 ticket was an economical way to alleviate at least some anxieties – and was a lot cheaper than the preferred but expensive professional counseling. There’s a third approach presented by some economist. There’s an entertainment value to the ticket. Compare the cost and benefit of a $1 and the dreams it enables to the cost and benefit of a movie ticket. A movie lasts 2 hours and costs $10-$15. The movie’s cost is $5-$7.50/hour. $1 worth of a movie is roughly 1/5 of an hour. If buying a lottery ticket lets someone dream for more than that amount of time, it was a better deal than the movie, and cheaper.
And my brain’s recent response wasn’t working from desperation, a mental health break, or the need for escapism.
Imagine a pause in there because I paused at that realization.
Being in debt with more money going out than coming in was more than a financial shift. For years, I’d been in a haze of desperation, mental health issues, and wanting an escape. That consumed more than a small amount of my mind.
That much more of me is now free. (Had to go for the rhyme as I typed that.)
I pause as I type as I think about the millions of people who feel the need for an escape. They can feel trapped and desperate, especially because conventional wisdom no longer is reliable. As usual, the folks who may need counseling are the ones least likely to afford it. Maybe this is a source of the tons of anguish we’re seeing played out in our world.
Sigh.
And I continue to buy lottery tickets, one per drawing, generally. I feel like I’ve gone from floundering and trying to tread water to having found a large piece of driftwood or a small raft. I’m still floating down where the sharks live. Forget bootstraps. I’m not aiming for a yacht, either. (Though I am intrigued by the next generation of electric boats.) But sustainably safe is still out of reach, but getting closer. I continue to write, invest, and generally do what I can to improve my life. Wish me good luck, and I wish it for you, too.
What is the value of time? Gawd. Is there ever so ridiculously obvious and simply complex question? Time is all we have. We trade it for so little, and also for so many vital things. Allow me to try to be practical and pragmatic about it, at least as applies to my reality.
Track every penny. That’s advice I’ve heard from many. I also tracked it before I was told to. Being a student can do that. In the long lost era of cash and checks it was hard to not know how much money was going into and out of the bank. Being oblivious was in fashion then, too, but then it took skill. Now, subscriptions, fees, autopay, direct deposit, and only online reporting make it easy to ignore the process of income and expense. Running over? That’s what credit is for. Isn’t it?
Track every minute. I’ve never heard that one. Being aware of every minute is more daunting despite the philosophical insights and worldview it can provide. What wonder is a flower, or the leaves and stem that enable it, or the seed at its source, or the previous flower that created it? My yard has thousands of flowers and I don’t, I can’t, dwell on every one.
It makes sense to follow the money. Money, or at least assets and worth, are required in our society and civilization. If you have more than enough money you can spend your time more freely. If you have more time but not enough money the pressure is on to spend more time on making more money.
How long does it take to account for every penny? That depends on the person, but that act requires an expense of a life being lived for something artificial.
I think it makes sense to track every penny – for a while. Gain that awareness, but don’t be enslaved to it, unless your necessities necessitate it.
I no longer track every penny. Every week or so I track my account balances to see if anything significant up or down has gone one. Usually, nothing dramatic happens.
I can’t find the quote but it goes something like this. “If you’re going to be poor, be realy poor.” Why wallow on that border between poor and not poor if you’re not making progress? I do Not recommend that, but I understand it. Being on that borderline becomes a moment by moment awareness of not having enough, guarding what you’ve got, and vainly working on and wondering about getting more, or at least enough.
A couple of months ago I sold my house. My net worth dropped by about the amount of the commissions, the other expenses of moving, and un-deferring many deferred expenses. Next week begins another round of dealing with deferred issues as I finally have appointments with doctors and dentists. I can afford that because of the equity I had in my house and the relief I got from only buying a tiny house. The cash in the account has already improved my health. My apologies to my previous doctor. My new one should thank the old one for getting me this far.
Tracking every penny seems silly compared to the arm-waving that is done with negotiating prices and commissions. One contractor’s bill was probably inflated by ~50% according to some folks familiar with the work. That’s a contractor who won’t get anymore work from me. It would have made more sense to spend the time negotiating with the contractor than counting every penny. (Regardless, I consider the work worth it because it limited the likelihood of much larger damages from a threat to the house.)
Just playing with numbers. If you have a $100,000 portfolio, maybe your IRA, a 1% change is $1,000. That’s a lot of pennies. How long would it take to track those hundred thousand pennies? How long did it take to decide on that investment in that IRA?
How long do some people spend planning a vacation?
I am not a minimalist’s minimalist, but compared to many I get by with very little. I’ve been in my tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.com) for about two months and have yet to fill every cupboard and closet. There are a lot of things in storage, but that’s getting winnowed at my own pace in my own time. The storage unit costs ~$200/month. The value of some of the items is substantial, but not needed yet. Some items are required to be stored by law. A lot is irreplaceable. Heirlooms happen. So do certain books.
The time I spend there won’t decrease the monthly rent until I lose about a third of it. That will be awhile. It is a box of assets with various doubtful values.
Two hundred dollars a month is about seven dollars a day. (Let me check the math: $7×30=$210.) Some people will see the difference in $7 at the end of a day. They may not have much more. How many people don’t know if their grocery bill was accurate to $7? How much did dinner out cost? How much did that shower cost in terms of water and heating it for a shower?
The biggest savings I’ve seen were the things I’ve decided not to buy. A simpler car saved thousands, and fewer anxieties. An electric bike might happen, but my thirty-year-old pedal bike has moved me across countries and over mountains. Dining in rather than dining out may not be socially fashionable, but tonight’s fish and veggie rice bowl from scratch tasted better than a $35 chef’s made dinner from a restaurant, at least for me. The drink was cheaper too.
Once upon a time in an online stock market discussion I was asked to lament about my largest losses. Many of us had just lost most of our holdings in a crash. My biggest mistakes weren’t stocks that went down 99.99%. My biggest mistakes were from not trusting myself and talking myself out of buying Bitcoin at $220, SBUX when it was young, the same with PIXR, AOL/AMER; or selling FFIV, etc. Pennies are important, but I spent too little time applying what I know. I allowed myself to be stymied from selling at peaks, and not buying at troughs. It hasn’t been absolute. Look a few sentences back; I’ve frequently lost >99% but I sold FFIV at $44 and it went to over $240. Gains, if they happen, can cover lots of losses. That is a big IF.
There are jokes and memes about how much a minute is worth to Elon Musk. (A quick search comes up with $6,887/minute. – wionews.com)
How much is your time worth? If a minute spent with finances save you a penny was it worth it? If a minute spent with a friend strengthens that friendship was it worth it?
Go ahead. If you’ve never tracked every penny for one month (~one billing cycle), then it can be an education. But, at some point, decide if time is more important. Are people more important? Is life more important? And if you are on the knife edge I am lucky enough to have gotten off of, trust yourself to know if the penny or the second is more important. None of us can know that as well as you can.
Well, at least it has been an eventful half-year. Good news, a lack of news, new news outlets, and life improved even without the effects of stocks.
I turned 65! Yay! Or on some mornings, ugh. Hey, they’re right. Growing older isn’t for sissies. I also sold my small cottage in the touristy part of Whidbey Island and moved to a tinier house near the touristy city of Port Townsend. The list of reasons is long. It has been bittersweet because it was hard to leave the island and the only house that has felt like home, but that sale meant I am now debt-free. I’m also view-free, relatively, but a one-mile walk changes that. 65 also means Medicare, which I have yet to figure out, and signing up for new doctors and dentists and all that stuff. That task is taking longer.
Ah, but the tasks have proved to me the value of not being poor. Having cash in the bank has improved my mood. The world actually looks better. There are hints that I will have a future to look forward to rather than a drudgery of feeding the debt payments. Ideologues make that sound academic, but it is real and definitely impacts health. Being poor is expensive. The poor are more likely to feel stress. Stress is likely to impact their health. And they may not be able to afford the care, which makes them less healthy, more stressed, and the cycle repeats. I broke that cycle. We’ll see if that improvement manifests itself soon.
But let’s talk stocks. Much of the money from my house sale went into the stock market. I bolstered positions in GERN and LCTX. Skipped MVIS because MVIS is acting like MVIS and not acting like the promised MVIS. And I diversified by buying stock in LUNR (space!), QBTS (quantum!), and SLDP (better batteries!). Of course, recently, I bought stock in WNDW (solar! but management issues) and SOLO (/XOS, EVs!, but the startup didn’t.)
It is 2024, so as much as I avoid commenting on politics, politics played a role in selling my house, getting out of debt, moving off an island, and generally planning for the future. Hey! And I’m now closer to Canada! Just in case. My bigger worry is Social Security. My expenses exceeded my income when I lived on Whidbey. I took an early Social Security because I had to. The same with my Boeing pension. Those two, combined with occasional jobs, meant I occasionally had a surplus, but that was temporary. If Social Security went away, it was easy to imagine many people having to sell their homes, which would make it harder to sell mine. It would also impact the job market as many people would desperately take whatever job was available. That would cascade into unintentional consequences. Intentional or not, cash will make it easier to ride around and through those issues. Being in debt at the same time might work if there was something like a debt jubilee, but I figured the odds of that are slim.
Ideally, I’d own a nice house and the land, but in the meantime, I own the house and rent the land. And I invest. As usual, my stocks are in companies that can significantly, quantifiably, and positively disrupt their industries. A 10% rise in my portfolio will be nice, but inconsequential. A 100% rise would be a great easing, and enough in a stretch to buy land and move me and my house to it. A 1000% rise, well, that’s what dreams are made of.
Google Finance
Below are my synopses of my stocks. GERN (Geron) received FDA approval for their blood cancer treatment. In the most recent six months, the stock is up 97%, and it has yet to begin the main treatment campaign. LCTX may only be a year or two behind. And, of course, MVIS will succeed ‘any day/week/month/quarter/year/decade’.
And another, of course, AI can disrupt everything.
And, I still buy lottery tickets.
Read on. 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.
D-Wave Quantum
QBTS (market cap is $0.183B)
Pardon me as I steal from myself (via my YouTube channel’s description of D-Wave).
For simplicity, I’ll refer to D-Wave Quantum Inc. by its trading symbol, QBTS.
QBTS deserves an explanation. Quantum computing is a revolutionary computer architecture and business approach. Traditional computers use bits. Quantum computers use quantum bits, q-bits, (QBTS, get it?) devices that trap and use quantum particles and concepts. Quantum computing operates on probabilities and the reality that quantum computers can consider two truths are once; something can temporarily both Yes and No, effectively.
As problems become more complex digital models can be forced to consider all possibilities and their combinations one at a time. Model something complex like the planet’s weather and massive computers with millions, billions, (trillions?) of transistors are required. Quantum computers can resolve the possibilities with much fewer processors (a couple of thousand instead of billions), and the work faster, and do the work without requiring another era of mainframes.
Ideally, such machines should be much more efficient at modeling messy things like climates and stock markets.
As a result, IF QBTS succeeds, THEN it may be overlooked temporarily as investors try to understand such a complicated and esoteric technology and business model. At least within the human part of the investment world, it is understandable why an analyst is more likely to research coffee rather than high-tech.
Is ignorance keeping QBTS’s stock price down? I only see data from August 2022, despite the company being founded in 1999. That’s a long time starting up to get to be a start up. Alone, quantum computer could become an old overnight success; and, ironically, could possibly fade as nothing more than a technological curiosity.
Coincidences happen. Welcome artificial intelligence timely entrance. I am sure researchers in both fields are aware of each other. Each involves revolutionary implications and consequences. Each is basically struggling with finding sustainable and profitable business models. Together their capabilities could be mutually amplified in ways we can’t imagine. And ‘can’t imagine’ is one of those things that are scaring some people.
Unknowns are risks. Rewards are not guaranteed. The adage about risk versus reward is heightened. Companies like D-Wave (QBTS) intrigue me because of the technical challenge, the unknowable potential, and the celebration of decades of work from persistent humans.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 2024, i.e. bought recently and intending to hold as the technology advances, hopefully to profitability because this could enable greater sustainability in my estimation.
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 $0.404B)
Pardon me as I steal from myself (via my YouTube channel’s description of Intuitive Machines).
Intuitive Machines which sounds more an AI or robotics company, but may be hinted at better by its trading symbol, LUNR (LUNaR, get it?) They’re doing moon stuff, and more. They are offering many of the services necessary for lunar exploration: transportation (after launch), Earth-based space communications, Moon-centered communications, a hopping rover, and more.
According to NASA;
“The Intuitive Machines 1 (IM-1, TO2-IM) mission objective is to place a lander, called Nova-C, on the crater rim of Malapert A near the south pole of the Moon. The commercially built lander will carry five NASA payloads and commercial cargo. Launch is currently scheduled for June 2023.” – NASA
It landed on February 29, 2024; then, tipped over. In the world of aerospace, that’s a success. In the land of everyday expectations, that could be considered a failure, or at least comical.
This is a good example of the early commercialization of space. It is starting with NASA contracts; which is more civil than commercial. I will be hoping for true commercialization which will be business-to-business.
They are attempting something complex and impressive. But then, Space-X’s idea of recovering and reusing rocket stages seemed audacious.
The stock’s ride has been wild. Within the recent few months the range has been from almost $2 to over $13. Rocket analogies are allowed in both directions.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 2024, i.e. bought recently and intending to hold as the industry advances.
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 $0.292B)
Pardon me as I steal from myself (via my YouTube channel’s description of Solid Power).
Hello, solid power batteries. In Solid Power’s case, they are using sulfide-based electrolytes. They are solid, which is safer than lithium-ion. Evidently, they should provide higher energy, and cost less than li-ion. ‘Should’ is the key term because new technologies always have a phase during their initial introduction when theory and ‘should’ meet practicality and reality. Witness some of the stumbles that autonomous vehicles are encountering as they ‘should’ not be causing video-worthy traffic jams, et al.
Solid Power is making product and making money. Sulfide-based technologies are less sensitive to geopolitical tensions over precious metals. As or if they prove their technology, their work should become better known. They are not the only alternative battery technology. (How about graphene batteries, which are based on carbon, which is an element that is also incredibly more available?)
SLDP has been trending up in the recent six months, but it is far below it’s 2021 peaks of over $12. Revenues are up, but net income is dramatically negative. Hopefully, (not an appealing strategy) that’s the build-out prior to the build-up.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 2024, i.e. bought recently and intending to hold as the technology advances, hopefully to profitability because this could enable greater sustainability in my estimation.
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 $2.52B was $1.15B)
Geron (GERN) has been working on highly innovative biotech for decades. Decades! Finally, the FDA has officially approved Geron’s blood cancer treatment. They will probably start trying to treat other types of cancer, too. One estimate is that the treatment will cost over $100,000 which is large compared to many drugs, but is meeting an unmet need, and it may be a lower overall cost. One bit of specifity is that patients may now experience “24 weeks of freedom from the burden of red blood cell transfusions”. (https://trimbathcreative.net/2024/06/07/geron-approved/)
Years, decades ago, Geron had a diversified portfolio of innovative and somewhat controversial treatments that could fight cancer by convincing certain cells to die, and fight auto-immune disorders by allowing certain cells to live. From that broad range of possibilities they’ve narrowed down to blood cancer.
The good news for stockholders is that within the previous six months the stock has risen from ~$2 to ~$5. Such news can generate greater premiums, but dilution has so reduced the value of the shares that the premuim may already be built in.
If the treatment can be applied to other ailments, then a multiplier may be appropriate, but the investing market may wait to see if the medical industry accepts and encourages its use.
This is also the era of hyperbolic claims of price appreciation. If there is irrational exuberance, I may sell at least some shares.
My experience with the first occurrence of Dendreon (DNDN, https://trimbathcreative.net/?s=dndn) dampens my enthusiasm. They had an FDA-approved cancer vaccine, were actively undermined, the bad guys were found guilty, but the shareholders lost their money, or at least I did. Hopefully, that won’t happen this time.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 1999 and continuing to hold. I bought more after selling my house. I could buy more, but I expect I’ll wait until I hear about Geron’s plans for expansion. (From my One Company One Story series on YouTube https://youtu.be/su1AMjPEkLI )
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 $0.165B was $0.191B)
Lineage Cell Therapeutics is a leading edge biotech company developing a variety of treatments, particularly (from my investing perspective) macular degeneration and repairing damaged nerves. Their use of stem cells was considered radical a couple of decades ago. Now, they have treatments that have progressed to modified Phase 2 trials.
Phase 2 is usually years from FDA approval, but in my opinion, their treatments are significant enough and the unmet need is large enough that there may be pressure for the FDA to approve at least some earilier use. But, I am an optimist and a dreamer (and I’ve felt this way for years, but ‘feeling’ is subjective, not objective.)
(Mostly a copy&paste for my biotech investments with the names changed)
One hurdle with biotechs is making sure the treatment is reliable, effective, safe, and commercially viable. Another hurdle with innovative treatments is gaining FDA approval in a reasonable time. Treatments for unmet needs have pressure for early approval. Innovative treatments have pressures encouraging the FDA to be cautious. We may soon see how the technical, political, medical, and societal pressures affect LCTX’s treatment and LCTX’s viability and LCTX”s performance.
Typical of innovative treatments of such critical conditions, very few patients have been treated. This can lower confidence in the results, but I have been encouraged by what I’ve seen, heard, and read. I am also Not a medical professional, so my assessments rely on larger perspectives (e.g. market, competition, etc.)
I don’t expect LCTX’s stock to steadily appreciate, but when it does it may happen so quickly that it might be too late to buy in.
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 recently purchased additional shares.
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 $0.213B was $0.505B)
Another era of MVIS doldrums. Very little new news relative to the previous years/decades.
It is tempting to simply copy what I wrote at the end of 2022, so I will; then, I’ll add more (but very little because so little has changed.).
“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.
Forward Looking Statements suggested at least some profits in 2023, but those weren’t expected to reach cash-flow positive – yet. (Comment from mid-2024 = Ha!)
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?
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. I doubt I’ll buy more because of the rest of my financial situation, and intend to hold until much higher price targets are reached.
(From my One Company One Story series on YouTube https://youtu.be/NJRgHJBW3M8 )
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.
SolarWindow
WNDW (market cap is $0.012B was $0.021B)
SolarWindow has an attractive idea: turn windows into solar panels. Solar panels don’t have to be opaque slabs stuck on a roof. Modern houses and office buildings can be more window than wall; so, grab that power! Being able to use such panels for greenhouses also enriches nurseries, gardens, and farms. Farms particularly benefit because they are more likely to be off the grid.
Alas, some management mishaps meant the company had trouble reporting its finances. That cratered the market’s confidence. Supposedly at least some of those issues have been resolved. Now, the company seems to be returning to its previous operations that involved hopes and promises but insufficient sales. Losses are shrinking, but that could also be from reducing operations.
The stock price is so depressed that there isn’t much to be gained by selling, except maybe as a tax loss, but I have too few gains for the losses to balance against. Daily volume is so low that even small purchases can shift the share price, which discourages open buying. SolarWindow isn’t the only company working on transparent panels, which may mean that they lose to competition while the regain their progress. Staying tuned.
Down to two employees (according to Google Finance). Ugh.
DISCLOSURE
Usually LTBH but only bought in because another of my stocks was bought out (just as they were becoming profitable). I bought in to redistribute the funds and increase my diversification.
(From my One Company One Story series on YouTube https://youtu.be/OHjlrqVDztI )
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.
Electrameccanica – now XOS
XOS (market cap is $0.054B as XOS was $0.040B as SOLO)
SOLO dropped. XOS bought them. I visited XOS’ web site and get the impression that they are providing both goods and services, particularly for the step-van market. In particular, their writing suggests they help businesses that are intimidated by the EV tech, or are busy enough with normal operations that they’d prefer some help.
I am a fan of EVs, but I haven’t found a significant aspect to XOS’ business model that makes they unique. I’m still trying to understand why a customer would choose XOS over the competition. Research happens.
My shares are worth less than I spent at the farmer’s grocery. I’ll hold the shares because miracles happen. So can selling for the loss.
DISCLOSURE
Usually LTBH but only bought in because another of my stocks was bought out (just as they were becoming profitable). I bought in to redistribute the funds and increase my diversification.
(From my One Company One Story series on YouTube https://youtu.be/DFLvNCV3zAE )
For more details about the stocks, here are links to various discussion boards where you can find my synopses, as well as others’ points of view. For more details about how I do what I do, there’s a book that I wrote at the request of several friends: Dream. Invest. Live. Maybe you can help my personal finances by buying a copy – though the frugal part of me recommends checking one out from a library.
The following links are to various discussion boards I follow. Many of the independent investors who contribute to the discussions provide in-depth analyses that either aren’t available elsewhere, or would cost too much to buy. The other advantage is the diversity of perspectives. Unfortunately, I don’t engage as much as I did before. Some discussions have degraded due to lack of moderators, or overly zealous moderators (oxymoron), or have too many immoderate voices. Some boards are effectively ghost towns, or feel like cavernous empty warehouses.
“Gold mines produce far more rubble than gold. It is easy to complain about the rubble. Ignore the rubble. Pay attention to the gold.”
Gold mines produce far more rubble than gold. Ignore the rubble. Pay attention to the gold. Regardless, here are the sites I continue to visit, even if it is only to lurk and listen.
I encourage you to tune in, because more voices (as long as they’re mature) make for a better conversation. Maybe I’ll read you there.
Reddit (Many will cringe, but there’s impressive quality within the impressive quantity of posts and voices. I do not post directly on Reddit because it is Reddit, as in, I read it. But in this case, I wrote it. So, I defer unless specifically requested.)
Does this seem tedious? Another long list of stocks? Well, this blog is about personal finance, and my personal finances are heavily skewed to dealing with two things: deciding what to do with the proceeds from my house sale, and prepping for my semi-annual portfolio exercise. And my thanks to those who are already asking for the update. I typed ‘two,’ but three is more appropriate. I also am maintaining my One Company One Story series on YouTube. Let’s start with that.
The YouTube channel has been building out, one video per month. That was true until last month when my change of address upset my schedule and the computer’s technology. (MyTinyExperiment.com) Connected! But two things are getting in the way of getting a video out this month. 1) The software I pay for no longer records my videos. It tells me that After I finish the episode. Grr. 2) The list of candidates to study shrunk to almost nothing. Years of episodes will do that, but so will the traumas that small companies experience. Startups don’t always do much more than start up. Sometimes, they’re stopped up. (Imagine the size of that plunger.)
For those who are new to reading my main blog, every six months, I write short (ha!) synopses to remind myself why I own what I own, and whether anything has significantly changed. I’ve been doing it for years, so some companies like MVIS and GERN had lineages. Product lines shift. Expectations shift, too. I’ve owned shares in both through the Internet Bubble, the bursting of that bubble, the Great Recession (which I think is the Second Great Depression, but only for folks who aren’t rich), and Covid, and now politics and wars and oy. Here we are nearing the end of June, so I’ve been drafting the synopses, adding as I’ve added holdings, and generally doing my regular exercise. My apologies this year as the move has encouraged me to rely on copy and paste for some stocks where nothing much changed. Still got about a week to go, more like a week and a weekend. There’s work to do.
There’s also work to do that is also part of my regular exercises, or maybe more correctly, my irregular exercises. For the videos and for my regular research I’ve waded into some stock screening sessions. (For folks who are unfamiliar with stock screeners, stock screeners are websites that allow you to apply criteria to stocks, reducing the list of thousands of publicly traded stocks down to one good one (ha!) or at least a much smaller list. It rarely provides a definitive answer, but it is a nice invitation to potential candidates. If you like, consider it like dating; lots of profiles, some look too good to be true, some may only have one mark against them, some – well, you probably get at least an idea, depending on your dating history.)
So, because this blog is public, I used a free public stock screener: Yahoo’s. In my opinion, there is no one master stock screener. They’re all just software packages and different providers package the criteria, the stocks, and the results different ways.
I am most interested in companies I can understand, typically tech. I am most interested in small companies with large potential that may be overlooked and, therefore, underpriced. I am also more interested in stocks that are traded often enough that my buying or selling won’t affect the price much.
Here’s my list.
Yahoo / Google
You may have noticed that, while the stock screener was Yahoo’s, I loaded up those stocks into Google. Different companies. Different approaches. One size does not fit all.
My next step, which I’ve already begun is to take a list of about 200-300 stocks and break it down to about two or three dozen. This can be subjective then objective. Or, objective then subjective. I’ve done this for so many years that I recognize several stocks. “Hey, there! How are you doing? What are you still doing down here? Still trying to start up?”
The step that will follow working within Google switches from free and public to more private. When the list is down to less than a dozen, if necessary, I’ll switch the Schwab, which I’ve been using for decades. They aren’t perfect either, but they are more detailed, more reliable, and more secure – and I can buy directly from their screens, or compare candidates to my official holdings.
Isn’t this how everyone spends a Friday night? Actually, I usually working on words as I write my books (my Amazon Author page), or going dancing (fun is more important than technique, for me.) But, as I said at the start, there’s a lot to do, so I do.
Unless something dramatic and positive happens, I do not expect to buy or sell in what remains of this month. I’m just too busy. (There’s a podcast to record, too. IntriguingCreativity.com .) And there’s life maintenance. I do intend to shrink the long list, but just enough to provide candidates for the videos. As my household finances adjust to my new old big tiny house, which needs work, then I may look at that list for new holdings, or maybe I’ll bolster existing holdings.
So much of personal finance media and offerings make the process seem only for professionals, or mathematically mechanical, or simply fancy gambling, or whatever. This may sound strange to some, but the world fascinates me, and I see no reason to act as if there isn’t drama and story because money is involved. Personal finance doesn’t have to be drudgery, and the way a person spends their time doesn’t have to be an expense. My book is Dream. Invest. Live. This isn’t a sales pitch for it, but the title is a reminder that investing is one way to possibly connect dreams to living. And that chance sounds pretty good to me.
Stay tuned. There’s a lot going on. Hopes, drama, struggles, successes, etc. Why be a spectator?
I didn’t time this to be one month from the post that inspired it, but welcome to the sequel to last month’s post: Time To Buy But What. Has it already been a month? That means I’ve been in my new old big tiny house for at least a twelfth of a year. (MyTinyExperiment.com Stay tuned for updates on tiny house life, like the fact that they announced the sale of the property just as I moved in.) In this sprint of a time, I managed to buy stocks based on the research I described in that earlier post. My portfolio has grown and is more diversified. My checking account has shrunk, but not as much as some expected/worried about. And I’m not done yet.
I regularly track companies, looking for ones that are publicly traded, can positively disrupt their industries, and might be overlooked. Overlooked can mean underpriced. Positively disrupt their industries usually means they’re in industries that should change but haven’t. Publicly traded means I can buy stock in them rather than simply be a cheerleader.
Months ago, I started producing my One Company One Story series on YouTube to pass along the little I’ve learned. That stopped about a month ago because I was moving from a small cottage with a view on an island to a new (to me), old (2006), big (360 square feet), tiny house (where the convention can be for 124 square feet.) Pardon the interruption, but one of the consequences of selling my home (which was more than a house) was turning the equity into cash, and my strategy of turning passive capital into active capital. Life is busy enough. Rather than re-research companies, I decided to pick from the companies I already profiled.
Let the buying begin.
Simply enough, I bought some of what I already have, and diversified by buying in more diverse industries.
GERN – They were close to the FDA decision on a cancer drug. I bought some more. The FDA approved the treatment. Good news.
LCTX – They aren’t as close to an FDA decision, so their price was much lower, and I bought much more. Staying tuned.
MVIS, SOLO/XOS, WNDW – If they have anything in common it is poor execution. I’ll hold and watch, but don’t see any reason besides price and theoretical potential to buy more.
Newbies
SLDP – I believe battery technology is ready for a technological shift from liquid Li-ion batteries to something more reliable, safer, cheaper, more productive, and less sensitive to geo-politics. There are many to pick from. Solid Power hit many of my criteria. Let’s try that one.
QBTS – I think quantum computing is as mature as artificial intelligence was a few years ago, a familiar term that no one really knew what to do with, until they really, really, really did.
LUNR – Space. Gotta love it, or at least respect that I have a masters in aerospace (and ocean) engineering, and was an aerospace engineer at Boeing for 18 years. I worked in space-related projects for years, which made it easy to appreciate the people who worked in it for decades and are now benefiting from those efforts – or about to. I don’t expect LUNR to be like SpaceX, but guessing the eventual victors in the lunar industry – well, LUNR has a head start.
Biotech, electrical components, energy storage, quantum computing, and lunar commercialization. Yeah. That’s diversified – in its own way.
But how did I do it?
How much to buy?
At a time like this, I strive for a somewhat balanced portfolio. I’m restarting from not much, so I picked an arbitrary value to target for initial purchases, or to leverage up existing positions. If there was no news, I’d apply that dollar amount to all. GERN had the potential for near-term news, so I elevated that one a bit. Note: I am not giving details because I do have some privacy. The main thing to notice may be that I set a common goal, and employed a simple too. I created a spreadsheet and played with the stock quantities until I had relatively equal dollar amounts. X shares of this. Y shares of that. Z shares for the other, etc.
Cool. I had a plan. Note: I also made life easy on myself by rounding off to quantities that ended in a few zeroes. I have some holdings that are 9 shares of this and 14 shares of that, but it is hard to track how a day went without doing math. A few years ago they all had similar (sad) share prices and held exactly the same number of shares of each stock. Handy, but also a bit silly.
When to buy?
I use Schwab. They aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good. (Scroll through the years of this blog to find their few missteps – unless those old ones are now dead links.) If I had a full-service broker, I could just say, “Go buy X shares of this. Y shares of that. Z shares for the other, etc.”, but I don’t like having to explain myself repeatedly. (Years ago, one full-service broker wouldn’t let me buy SBUX, and had to be talked into AMER/AOL. Forget stock losses. I lost more because I wanted to buy more but couldn’t.)
I use Schwab, but I hate paperwork. Except I like paperwork for keeping records. Trust me. This matters. The only records I have for some of my shares (MVIS) are in the paper version of the transaction records, the settlement statements. So, silly happens again. I space out my purchases so I can handle each purchase separately. I do one per day. It takes days for USPS, but that’s okay. And I drop them into a folder after making sure the data is in my database.
I add one complication. I’ve learned from when I’ve had to sell shares that it is handy to sell in the same quantities that were on the settlement statement. It makes filling out taxes clearer, and I don’t underestimate how important it is to Not Confuse The IRS. So, if I buy enough shares, I might buy them in equal quantities over several days. Yes, it is more paperwork, but maybe not as much when I sell. Silly? Compare that to the anxiety of trying to report a sale on the tax forms when the records are lost. Been there. Don’t want to do that again.
Consequence? Take a look at the edited conclusion to last month’s post. It took thirteen trading days to complete that set of purchases. I’d modify that if a stock started moving quickly, but that wasn’t the case.
The bigger picture
These monies came from selling my house. I didn’t spend it all in one place. I didn’t spend it all on one stock. (Though I did playfully fantasize putting it all on MVIS and hoping. Stock market roulette. Nah.) Instead, I notionally split the funds into three general categories: re-invest, hold in reserve, live.
You’ve made it past the re-invest part. The hold in reserve part is static, though I may hunt for a no-load mutual fund, or not. The rest is for living expenses, and to reflect that changing addresses can be expensive.
I bought the house, but it is going to take thousands of dollars to fix various things. I’m willing to spend that (saying ouch anyway) because it was originally listed at over $110K and I bought it for $76.5K. Stingy would be hoarding that difference. A major trimming of the tree cost thousands. A compact washer/dryer may, too. The list is long enough that I posted it on the bathroom door. There are lots of checkmarks to go. Anyone in the Port Townsend area willing to bid on building two decks? Know a plumber? An electrician?
Buying and selling stocks can seem to be purely for buying and selling stocks. For those of us who live lives, it is necessary to responsibly know what else to do with the money, how to handle it, and know when having a new pair of work pants is more important than a few more shares of stock.
I plan to take a hiatus from buying stocks while I research healthcare providers, contractors, and chase down bureaucratic gremlins. I also plan to restart the video series. There are always new companies or new situations for existing companies. It never ends, but for me, it is important to visit that world but live in the broader one.
Trimbathcreative's Blog (Tom Trimbath) 