When it comes to stock selection, I have never been involved in it before, let alone any experience, so almost all my ideas so far come from my two predecessors, Buffett and Fisher.
The two predecessors have both similarities and obvious differences in this regard.
The biggest difference between the two old gentlemen, in my opinion, is the weight they place on the management team:
Buffett would emphasize that the company he chooses must have a threshold to a certain extent, but he particularly emphasizes that the company he chooses should have a fixed threshold to a certain extent, so that even a fool can run it well.
The old gentleman’s analogy does not mean that management is not important. In fact, when acquiring a company, he pays special attention to the quality of the management team.
He said this to emphasize that it is best for a company to have an advantage that is difficult to break, difficult to change, and undisturbed. Even if such a company encounters a bad team, the negative impact is controllable.
But Fisher is different. He attaches great importance to management. He believes that a good management team can lead the company to overcome numerous difficulties, cut through the thorns and continuously create benefits for shareholders.
Guided by two different ideas, the two old gentlemen chose to hold stocks for a long time with distinct differences:
Most of the companies Buffett chooses are beautiful and sophisticated companies in traditional industries.
But Fisher chose a number of high-tech companies that were risky and full of change in his time. It is worth noting that some of these companies are still the leaders in certain technology fields even decades later, such as Texas Instruments and Motorola.
In comparison, I prefer Mr. Fisher's method, and my original thinking also attaches great importance to the core team.
Of course, I think there are aspects of Buffett’s approach that can be learned from, such as choosing companies that have already formed certain barriers and have certain thresholds.
Combining these two ideas, I mainly target some larger and more mature companies in the U.S. stock market, but to some extent, they have strong "impulsive" and proactive companies.
In yesterday’s article, I mentioned that I began to consciously pay attention to some US-listed companies in the field of AI, such as:
Microsoft, which has become rejuvenated in recent years;
Google has always been very active;
Oracle, which started building its own nuclear power plant in order to build a powerful AI data center;
Tesla, which has been active in autonomous driving;
Of course, big names in this field such as NVIDIA are also indispensable.
After carefully evaluating all aspects of these companies, I think Tesla is most likely to create a miracle in the future.
Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google are all very impressive, but I always feel that the temperament displayed by their teams is always a little lacking in divergence and tension, and not "barbaric" enough.
This kind of "barbarism" is a quality that I believe is essential for high-tech companies that can create great miracles.
Oracle's Ellison is already 80 years old, and he can still think of building a nuclear power plant to enter the field of AI. This is crazy enough, but I think his madness is not used to the core of this field. His understanding of AI seems to be just a point, not broad enough.
Musk's understanding of AI is broad enough and his behavior is "barbaric". If his current layout succeeds, it may subvert multiple ecosystems in the future.
Regarding Tesla, I agree with this view: it is not an electric car company, but an AI company. Electric cars are just a carrier, and its ultimate goal must be to achieve AI autonomous driving.
In order to realize AI autonomous driving, Musk uses visual intelligence. According to Musk, Nvidia's GPU is not the best solution for processing visual intelligence data, because to achieve the ideal processing effect, a chip that can process the massive context collected by the visual system is needed. Therefore, Musk's team is researching such a chip.
Some time ago, Musk even said that he wanted to build an electric plane. If electric planes are all development options, can the Falcon rockets also be electrified? If all these means of transportation can be electrified, then his grand interstellar travel in the future may all be electrified. And the ultimate goal of electrification must be full AI.
In other words, future interstellar travel will be fully controlled by AI.
In addition, if the chip that Musk's team is researching can be mass-produced, this chip will likely be applied to all AI applications related to visual processing.
At the same time, Tesla's robots are also working simultaneously...
If we take all these things he has done into consideration, how many industries will be disrupted? How many ecosystems will be affected?
I agree with a (similar) point of view expressed by Dan Bin in "The Rose of Time":
Buying a company's stock is equivalent to handing your money to someone you trust and letting him create miracles.
For people like Musk, I am willing to give him my little money and let him create miracles, even if he fails, I can accept it.
The purpose of writing this article is not to recommend Tesla's stock to everyone, nor to suggest at what price you should buy Tesla's stock. Instead, it is to share with everyone my changed views on individual U.S. stocks, as well as the methods and inspirations I have learned from the two predecessors during this period of time.