The "Lost Decade For Stocks" was a difficult period for investors. The S&P 500 index made zero net gains from March 2000 to March 2013. Just as the market recovered from the Dot-com crash, we walked straight into the Global Financial Crisis. Those of us who were invested in the stock market during that period experienced a market (S&P 500 index) that fell -49%, spent the next 5 years in slow recovery, only to fall another heartbreaking -57% during the GFC.

Any stock market investor who told you it was easy to stay the course is frankly lying. We had many investor colleagues who fled the market for good. They pivoted to residential property investment (they're still there to this day and doing well). Between 2008 to 2010, the financial media regularly publicised the death of the "buy and hold" investing strategy. Imagine ... the very paradigm that lies at the foundation of long-term investing was being challenged, and very loudly.

Even in hindsight, experts who spent a career studying the stock market questioned whether "buy and hold" was a realistic strategy for the private individual investor. We're emotional creatures and those very emotions can get in the way.

(Our intention isn't to rake Professor Andrew Lo over the coals, he just happens to be the expert/academic that always comes to mind)

Looking back, maybe the only thing that kept us going was the fact we were both in our peak income earning years (35 - 45) and had savings to put to work. Our portfolio balance was still growing thanks to our healthy cash inflows. The market certainly wasn't much help at the time. We lived off one salary and invested the take home pay from the other. Call it luck or being too lazy to research alternative investment opportunities, but we managed to keep trucking. Investors who stayed the course and continued to dollar-cost average were handsomely reward in the decade that followed. Frankly, if we hadn't stayed the course, we wouldn't have been able to retire early.

Mr Market is going to test you from time to time. Recognise the times when he's up to his usual shenanigans and frankly, flip him the bird. You're too focused on getting things done.

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While General Motors owns 80% of Cruise since buying out SoftBank's stake in the startup in 2022, it's safe to say that GM owns the company. While GM is in the business of producing and selling vehicles, why would GM want to be in the robotaxi business? Mobileye, an autonomous driving tech company, does not want to be in the robotaxi business because its more complicated than providing hardware to robotaxi operators. Also, GM would make more money in the long run by selling better vehicles to consumers every year than to push a world where everyone relied on robotaxis to go from Point A to Point B.

As I researched more about Cruise, I learned that Cruise is GM's autonomous driving project. As Cruise vehicles are better able to navigate the hectic streets of San Francisco, GM is able to transfer that technology to their GMC, Chevy, Buick, and Cadillac vehicles and provide more advanced driver assistance capabilities. Chevy and other GM brands do not need to do their own research and development of autonomous driving capabilities when they have Cruise doing all the hard work for them. In her 2022 CES keynote presentation, GM CEO Mary Barra said that she is aiming to sell personal autonomous vehicles to consumers by the middle of this decade. A reason for why an automaker like GM would want to focus more on selling personal autonomous vehicles and distance themselves from turning into a major robotaxi operator is simple: the profits are juicer when you're selling a vehicle than when you're building vehicles to operate as a robotaxi.

Image Credits: Screenshot/GM

While the costs of building a robotaxi remain high, rest assured that through economies of scale and vertical integration, those costs will go down significantly. Cruise has embarked on an ambitious cost cutting program where it aimed to cut costs by 90% over the long run. Most of the cost reductions comes from developing more of their hardware in-house. One of the biggest things Cruise has developed in-house is the chips that they use in their hardware. Their chips, called Dune, can be seen as parallel to what Dojo is to $TSLA. Another big thing that Cruise has developed in-house is their own computing board. The latest computing board that they've developed, the C7, will have the Dune chip. Cruise has found that by developing their own chips and computing boards, they can reduce costs by 90%, see a reduction in mass by 70%, and see its vehicles reduce energy consumption by 60%.

We've seen $AAPL products increase immensely in performance when it designed its own chips for its iPhones, Airpods, and Macbooks. $AMZN designed the Graviton2 chip for its AWS data centers and they provided 40% better performance than $INTC x86-based chips. It's smart for Cruise to choose to make its chips in-house. The success of Cruise's in-house chip efforts is what might've inspired Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley to make Tesla's Dojo supercomputer chip to be his new bull thesis.

Image Credits: Roberto Baldwin

GM is smart for pushing Cruise to offer fared rides to people. GM is also smart for using its majority ownership in Cruise to transfer IP from that subsidiary into its other subsidiaries and making GM's vehicles competitive to what Tesla and other automakers are offering when it comes to driver assistance technology. As more people are being pushed to come to the office, people will demand a vehicle with near-autonomous capabilities to make the commute more bearable. Without Cruise, GM will have a harder time developing its autonomous driving tech in-house and will have to rely on inefficient startups to develop the technology themselves or license it from a competitor like Tesla.

As car ownership becomes more expensive, the younger generations are starting to lose hope on owning a car. We've seen this with homeownership and how more members of the millennial and Gen Z generations are pessimistic on the opportunity to own a home in the future. If ever car ownership remains unaffordable, at least GM has Cruise to offer those people a robotaxi network that they can rely on to go from Point A to Point B 24/7, but that will be available in the future. And if ever people do prefer to own their own vehicle but want autonomous features, GM will be ready to provide them with their own personal robotaxi.

Shelly $SLYG enters into a ground-breaking partnership with Vodafone.

Shelly will equip all Vodafone sites in Africa with Shelly Pro devices.

The partnership will initially give Shelly access to all 20 African countries where Vodafone is active + 40 partner networks. The activities in Africa are only the first step on the way to a global rollout.

Here my week ahead, dividend wise 😉

The 2008 recession scarred homebuilders unlike anything the industry experienced before. Because of that, homebuilders have been building homes at a slower pace today despite a growing number of people demanding homes and constant talk about housing shortages.

We are seeing something similar happen with energy companies. Since the severe commodities downcycle that started around the time of Brexit and ended with the pandemic recovery, energy companies have been reluctant to boost their capex spending. More energy companies would rather pay more in dividends and share buybacks than invest in new wells.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world is relying more on the Middle East for oil. American oil producers could expand their oil drilling but, because the federal government has made energy executives frustrated for many years, energy companies would rather stick to the wells that they have and not bother with expanding oil production. It wouldn't matter if one party gains majority rule or not.

Investments in green energy were suppose to be a great way of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, with all the money we pour into green energy, green energy tech today isn't as great at producing energy as compared to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is great but historical events have scarred policymakers from becoming pro-nuclear energy. We need to boost investment in green energy R&D because we need to focus on finding more reliable and efficient sources of energy production instead of sticking to the current solutions that we have and double down on them.

With the West seeing increased energy demand from manufacturers reshoring their factories, cars going electric, and AI applications being power hungry, it wouldn't surprise me if Western leaders start buying energy from nations that it once sanctioned, like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Those nations will cash in on the insatiable demand for energy. The Middle East can expand production but after they've been sanctioned by the Biden Administration on their advanced semiconductor purchases, I doubt they would want to lower energy prices for the West ever again.

The world will have to deal with an energy crisis for a period of time before breakthroughs like nuclear fission become reality. For now, companies will have to worry about managing their energy costs.

$MCD profitability reigns supreme

+0.21% green for the day. Planning on adding more $O this week on weakness.

Up +0.19% for the day

Robert Sinn with another excellent session, worth your time if you invest in junior exploration companies:

Hello everybody. Paypal seems to have been criticized by the media and many investors due to the huge stock price decline. In my opinion, this drop in price represents an excellent opportunity to revisit Paypal valuation:

I would like to hear your thoughts about my valuation assumptions and the value per share of 100$.

$BRK Insurance float since 1986, this is part of Buffett's secret sauce and why his company has done so well over the years.

Source: @tsoh_investing

Let that sink in ... and let me know ;)

Transense Technologies $TRT.L FY 22/23 results:

▫️Revenue +34%

*iTrack +29%

*Translogik +17%

*SAW +146%

▫️EBT +222%

▫️EPS +64%

▫️Distributable reserves of £2.9 million (vs. £1.2 million)

▫️Potential customers for SAW increased to 57 (from 24)

Mid-term financial goals 2023-28:

▫️healthy iTrack license income growth will continue before reaching a peak in June 2025

▫️royalty income in FY 25/26 is expected to reduce to a level comparable with FY 22/23

▫️Management is confident that the two active business segments can compensate that to maintain the overall level of profitability and earnings

Cisco's Surprise $28 Billion Splunk Acquisition Raises Questions on Wall Street 📊

In a move that caught many on Wall Street off guard, networking giant Cisco Systems $CSCO has announced its intention to acquire cybersecurity firm Splunk $SPLK for a hefty $28 billion

Right now, we're witnessing a growing number of Gen Zers graduate college and enter the workforce. Seeing what the early cohorts of Gen Z are doing with their hard earned money is interesting. According to a BusinessInsider article, they're splurging on social activities.

I was surprised to read that there are members of Gen Z that would spend $500/month on social activities to find friends. One of the people interviewed for the article, Lynette Ban, admitted to it when being interviewed for the article. Other members of Gen Z are taking memberships at rock climbing gyms, martial arts studios, and take art classes to find friends. When taking everything together, Gen Z is clearly spending more on social activities than pre-pandemic.

As much as we think that they may be over the top with their spending for social activities and should instead focus on building their financial foundation, the people interviewed in the article said that they do have some financial anxiety but believe that the money they spend on social activities are worth it. Especially if these people work remote jobs, the need for finding events after work to gain social interactions is bigger than if they were working in the office.

When reading the article, I couldn't help but think of how bullish this is for Eventbrite $EB, a former unicorn startup. Eventbrite is many people's go-to app for finding events near their area. As much as we'd like them to be used for selling and distributing Taylor Swift concert tickets, Eventbrite is focusing more on local events and on empowering small event creators. With more people willing to splurge on social activities, I can see more paid tickets being sold on the platform, which would mean more transaction revenue for Eventbrite.

Starting a new position in $EGP here. Last quarter, around these prices was where the business issued more shares, making this a supported buy area.

They're returned over 13% CAGR over the last 20 years, and with the US moving to pad manufacturing at home, industrial REITs like EGP will only continue to benefit.

$EGP builds, acquires, and renovates industrial spaces in major sunbelt states with an emphasis on location, not lease rates. Their customer base is well diversified, most of their revenues come from tenants leasing space under 100,000 sf (this is huge, as most of the vacancies I can research are happening in much larger facilities), their growth strategy of recycling capital out of limited upside projects and into better growth prospects in targeted areas has worked well, and they have strong and flexible balance sheet to support continued growth prospects.

I can’t speak to the eastern states in their portfolio, but through my banking career in financing industrial projects I can say that California, Arizona, and Texas are super hot markets for their kind of products.