I enjoy investing and think it’s a lot of fun, but sometimes responsibly buying and holding a diversified portfolio of companies can admittedly get a little dull. Fantasy Investing can help with that a little bit, but sometimes I just want to make utterly irresponsible and recklessly bold predictions without having to actually risk any money on them because, well, they’re most likely going to end up being wrong.
Have you heard the doomsday stories about how unprepared Americans are for unexpected expenses? The numbers vary: 40% can’t cover a $400 expense, most would go into debt over a $500 expense, only 39% can cover a $1,000 emergency. They all tell a similar story, though: many Americans don’t have any significant source of savings that they can draw upon.
The year is coming to an end. For many people that means it’s time to come up with new year’s resolutions. Some might be thinking of tax loss harvesting, using up the remainder of their FSA balance, or maxing out an IRA contribution. Those are all very noble endeavors. I’m looking forward to (and simultaneously dreading) the first quarterly check-in for the Freedom Portfolio. One other thing I am looking forward to? Starting the first annual Paul vs the Market Fantasy Investing season.
It seems like an eternity ago that Amazon (AMZN) was above $2,000 a share and was the second US publicly traded company to hit a $1 trillion market cap. In reality, it was a mere two months ago. Since then, the market has taken a tumble, with Amazon falling particularly hard, losing about a quarter of its value to sit at around $1,600 a share.
Disney (DIS) reported their third quarter earnings on November 8th and they were pretty good, especially for a company the size of Disney. One of the reasons I like the company as an investment is how impressively diversified they are in how they make money (TV shows, movies, amusement parks, toys) and how they seem to excel in all the different things they do.
Shopify is one of only two Enterprise level positions in the Freedom Portfolio, but many people might not recognize the name. So what does Shopify do? Put simply, they make it easier for small companies to set up an e-commerce solution and sell things online. They have products to assist setting up online stores and to deal with fulfilling orders.
There were a lot of surprises in Tesla’s (TSLA) third quarter earnings report, which is the last one with Elon Musk as chairman for at least three years, although he will still remain on as CEO.
When the market seems to be dropping precipitously every other day, it can sometimes be hard to keep perspective. By my rough calculations, the Freedom Portfolio is down around 15% in this month alone, so I can certainly sympathize with the pain some people are feeling.
After missing their subscriber estimates in the second quarter, Netflix (NFLX) rebounded in a big way with their third quarter earnings this week. Here are my key takeaways:
During the tumultuous dew days for the market last week, I wrote a very short piece where I said, “I’m not selling a single share today and have no intention of selling any shares anytime soon”. First, I have a confession. In my haste to get something timely out that day and my desire to use the strongest possible language to convey how strongly that I felt that people shouldn’t be selling their positions in a panic during the two day market drop, I used some imprecise language.