Saluki

Picked up a few shares of PETS and CPNG. PETS had a 35% pop after earnings, probably because of short covering, and is back down to where it was before the pop. I have a medium size position in CPNG and I nibbling a little on the dips to take it to 4 or 5% (plus some LEAPs).

Probably too small a company for most people, and there isn't a separate post on here, but I'll add Mind Technology (MIND) to the list of drone companies that are off the beaten path. They make underwater imaging stuff, like Kraken, which is useful for telecom, oil and gas, and defense industries, but not actual drones. Because I have a terrible track record with stuff that has cool tech but no profits, this is in the too hard pile for now. I'm mentioning it here, to keep all the drone stuff together so it's easier to find. It's a very small company and if you do a search for "Mind Technology" the results will be overrun with websites for mediation, spirituality and healing crystals. What's interesting is that they had some sales, but they also had a callable 9% preferred stock. So the little cash that went in one door, went out the other door. They recently converted the preferred to common. Besides diluting the common, which sucks for the bag holders, the preferred holders who wanted a steady 9% payout were probably not happy about owning an illiquid micro cap common stock and the selling has cratered the stock price. So while it's not profitable yet, by getting rid of the 9% financing, it may get to profitability soon. In the watch pile until then, but if anyone has thoughts on it, feel free to chime in.

There are many doctors who smoke or are obese, yet give you health advice. It's not that they can't do it, it's that it is difficult because of a lot of it doesn't involve math, it's temperament and emotions. A Nobel prize winner, I forget which one, who worked on capital assets pricing model and asset allocation was asked how he invested his own money and he said he put it half in stocks and half in bonds . That's stuff that your grandpa's accountant will tell you to do. The interviewer asked him to justify this decision that was suboptimal, according to his own research. He said that he just wanted the decision that he didn't want to think about and with the least amount of regret if he was wrong. If he invested his money all in particular stocks and lost a bunch of it, not only would he be upset that he lost money, but he would be a laughing stock among his peers and the Wall Street guys would have a field day lampooning his research to their clients and getting rich off his mistakes. That statement is all ego, not logic or math. I think another valid criticism is that the criteria he used isn't incorrect, but it has an obvious overlooked flaw: survivorship bias. You don't see all the companies that tried for the "big hairy audacious goals" and went bankrupt because they stretched too far. Just because something worked the first time, doesn't mean that it was a good idea and that you should do more of it. Maybe the ones that kept doing it stumbled afterwards. Maybe that type of culture allows a company to grow, but growth leads to inefficiency. When Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy because they couldn't survive if they didn't produce X numbers of vehicles, they wouldn't think twice about laying off someone who's work was slipping because his wife was undergoing cancer treatments. Do you think they would do that now? Do you think Microsoft would do that?

It's my 3rd biggest position, about 11% weighting in my portfolio. My thesis is that it's cheap when consider the price versus he growth and tailwinds. If you take the market cap divided by ~180k acres it's about $16k an acre, which is pretty cheap for anything near the water in any state, so as a friend of mine would say "it's not rocket surgery." I did this video about a year and a half ago, which only has 300 views, but it has most of the good things I saw in it. When I first started buying ($20, then $15), I didn't think the recreational stuff was a money maker, but it turns out that it was, so the original thesis is intact, but their are other lottery tickets in there too. This is the earliest buy I found, but the smarter people bought in 2022 in the $30s and have a much better IRR than me on this. Acquisition Date Quantity Unit Cost ($) Cost Basis ($) Value($) Gain/ Loss Gain/Loss (% 02/27/2019 (Long Term) 80 15.51 1,240.66 4,090.36 2,849.70 229.69 My timing sucks sometimes (because of the ancient trading curse), but it tends to work out okay if my research and thesis is correct and I don't mind paying for something if it's a better company than when I first started buying. CPNG at $14 looked great because it was growing fast and finally went from losing money to breakeven. I didn't mind buying more at $23, because it's still growing fast and is now really profitable with margins getting bigger because of the operating leverage. I think Bruce stepping down spooked some people, but he's still trimming the same way as before, not dumping shares like Buffett and BAC. It probably wouldn't be $51 if he was still on the board, but he was the chairman, not the CEO. All the operations people are still in their seats and still doing their thing to create value.

Added a little JOE, NTDOY and KRKNF.

Two factor authentication is your best defense. When people get hacked, the ruse usually involves calling them and saying that caller is from Broker X and you have been hacked, and that we are sending a confirmation code to make sure we are speaking to the right person, and when they read it back, the scammer gets past the authentication. But that's a human failure, not a tech failure. I don't do this (YET) but I heard an FBI guy say that you should false information on your social media (or multiple social media accounts with different information) so that when AI scrapes your profiles and tries to guess your password, or get past your security questions, using stuff you provided like birthdays, kid names, etc., it will have a lot of noise. If your brokerage allows longer passwords, try a pass phrase that is easy to remember but hard to guess. "WhatWouldBuffettDo$2d@y"

There used to a segment on the Adam Carolla show called something like "Rich man, Poor Man", where they talked about things that rich people and poor people have in common, but not the middle class. Having 10 kids is something Elon Musk has in common with a lot of hood rat dead beat dads. Giving your kids unconventional names, not vaccinating your kids etc. Not going to college, not working, and expensive clothes are the trappings of wealth, but also the trappings of poverty.

Added a little CPNG and JOE.

I thought this was a good use case for the abandoned Google Glasses project, or Meta's project with the Raybans. I have seen where it can translate the speech into text that you can read on the glasses, like the heads up display on a fighter plane, but I didn't know that they had audio in the works. This is an amazing development, and would make it 100x easier to travel to other countries. Your glasses could translate the signs for everything into your native language, and the earbuds could allow to understand what is being said.

For those who want to do the opposite of me to take advantage of the trading curse, I sold all the ENPH in my taxable accounts. Enjoy the double from here By the way, last year I bought a little MELI and quickly sold for a 20% profit because I thought it was overpriced. Even after yesterday's 16% drop, I would be up more than 100% if I did nothing but sit on my hands.

Bought a share of MELI to remind me to study it more. Also added a couple of CPNG LEAPs and a little of the common in my retirement account.

I'm trying not to buy more until I sell off stuff, but I couldn't help myself and bought a couple more CPNG leaps since I didn't want to lay out cash for the common.

Trimmed some GOOG again to keep it at 20%. I also trimmed a little HHH in my retirement account. I know Ackman said that he considering making an offer for the whole thing, but my retirement account is valuable real estate and I've been waiting for this to turnaround since the pandemic.

Trimmed some TAYD, which was up double digits today, and trimmed some GOOG to keep it at the portfolio weight I want. I still like both companies but I'm trimming to get my margin down a little before the end of the year.

I bought a couple of LEAPs on CPNG. Added a little PM, which is down on no news for some reason. Trimmed some GOOGL on the pop this morning to keep at it the weighting that I am comfortable with.