NVDA

I agree with you Smorg, that it sure feels like a short term peak here, and as I alluded to what I would do in my note yesterday, I sold 2/3 of my NVDA position, and will hold the rest, and potentially add more at a later time as I think it is a great company, just overextended currently.

I’m more than happy to take the 240% gain in the 9 months I’ve held the stock, just wish I had added to it during the run (just had my small starter position).

This type of investing is different than I’ve been doing for most of my 10 years with the Fool, during which time I would basically never sell. But for the last 1-2 years I’ve taken profits when companies either seem way overvalued (sold 2/3 of my UA at a PE around 90, have not bought back yet), or when a “known” fall is coming (sold 1/2 my CMG after the initial food safety incident, have bought back some of that significantly lower).

I feel this board is mostly responsible for giving me the confidence to make these recent “shorter term” moves (applied to my older holdings), or as called here, modified buy and hold investing. I thank Saul and all posters here for their views and insights.

Here is the real world issue, if you are adequately diversified so that say NVDA is 2, 5, 105 of your port, then it is not a big deal. Long run (meaning course of many years, it probably goes higher, although the circuitous route it takes to get there is tbd), short run it probably stops running in the near to mid-term and has a traceback of a material amount. Could even be as far as 50%, although that type of drop is very unlikely given all NVDA has going for it.

So run the math, if NVDA were to fall say 25 or 30% tomorrow, would that unduly destroy your port?

If it were are you willing to stay with it when it recovers (although that could be years)?

You will see that the overall impact on your wealth will not be that great either way if you are well diversified. So practically speaking, stop fussing over it.

If you are not well diversified, and a potential 30% crash or greater is of real concern to you, even if you are confident that some day it will recover, then it becomes a very material issue to consider.

Remember how much money was lost in stocks like AOL and Iomega after enormous run ups. However, these losses were caused by disruptive technologies eating away at the disruptive markets that these companies had previously created.

NVDA is still in the nascent age of a new disruptive technology. No one is coming along to disrupt their technology, nor to make it obsolete, or yesterday’s news. This is cutting edge stuff. NVDA is at the cutting edge of enabling these new markets that take visual machine learning like autonomous driving. So I do not consider it something like AOL was when broadband swept in, or Iomega when USB cards or whatever made the scene.

If it keeps you up at night, given this, diversify from it (but remember those pesky taxes. I owe $17k from 2014 - had to sell something to pay other taxes…sucks yes, but reality.

Those are my two cents on the matter from a practical perspective because frankly no one knows how a stock will fluctuate, but we can figure out whether it is (a) a bubble - no, (b) subject to disruption - no, not now, (c) market maturing - again no.

As such, it is still a viable long-term investment. Doesn’t mean it will be a good one for awhile. So ask yourself how you would feel if it were cut 30% or more, even knowing the business has a long way to grow still.

Okay, with one exception, NVDA did lose out in the mobile GPU game, which is disruptive to desktop.

But nuff said. Keep it simple. Don’t over think it.

Tinker

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NVDA is still in the nascent age of a new disruptive technology. No one is coming along to disrupt their technology, nor to make it obsolete, or yesterday’s news.

We don’t know that. Apple has changed direction on their automobile project at least twice so far. They could end up making a hardware/software bundle for OEMs to incorporate into their cars to add autonomous driving abilities. This isn’t too far from what companies like Mobileye, Continental, Delphi, and others are already doing - and with Apple’s chip design abilities (giving them a nice advantage in mobile devices) and their software prowess, they could be disruptive to the industry. Yes, even disruptive to Tesla+Nvidia.

Remember how much money was lost in stocks like AOL and Iomega after enormous run ups.

Some of that lost money in Iomega came my way! That was technology (Zip Drive) that I knew very well and I also knew that the company was a piece of crap. That was a big help in selling at the right time. LOL

Denny Schlesinger