Jan 26 2026

I had my "cosmetic surgery" to remove all the lipomas last Friday! They removed 37 of them! I have cuts all over, mostly around my waist. I was very surprised at Zuna's unwillingness to work extra hours during my surgery. She also declined to watch Jethrow for Jackie for her upcoming birthday event. What a stranger! Was she born in the year of cold blooded snake, like stinky? Should scale back our generosity? 

I have been thinking about friends. Are they all good friends? How about the ones that only contact you when they need something? I hosted a former co-worker from NYC days. I only heard from him before he wanted to make a trip and play some golf in FL. How should I deal with people like that? ABG (Always be giving?). Or my friend's friends can have the soup of my chicken soup?

Chris Hohn's TCI Fund is a monster fund now with $70 bln AUM! My former co-worker! He is worth almost 12 Bones! Why do I suck so bad? My speculative strategy in the stock market lacks consistency, timing has been more wrong then right, over-trading, didn't pursue long term buy and hold strategy (I didn't believe in it). It is time to make some adjustments. Hohns strategy is very similar to Warren Buffett's and Li Lu's as well. His holdings are GE (plane engines, high margin biz), V, MCO, SPGI, MSFT.

Mom is a priority now. Maddy wants to take care of her now! I am very proud of her! I feel ashamed that I have been slacking off. Louise has been super helpful too. Stinky is not a good human being. I dont like people who have no empathy! His last chapter will be lonely one. 

SNAP

 Thesis: 

• The co. beat in 3Q25 and guided higher for 1Q26. 
• Price/sales at 2x
• Key catalyst is the co is charging for storage: 
• Chart looks at the Crossing point of the 80-15 day SMA
• Personal note: Jim Lazaridis' daughter (16) is still using snap with her friends, planning to pay for the storage! 

Risks:

• The co has not figured out how to make $ from its users like FB. 
• Financial metrics is horrible
• Not a usual value/compounding investment
• Turn around story
• New Management?
• New Strategy?
• potential takeout candidate
• Entry $7.8, short term support $7.2 (50% loss exit) and Long Term support of 6.9 (100% loss exit)
• Potential add: after the reversal of current slide from 9 to 7.6 (5-6 days?)

Free Limit: You get 5GB of free storage for saved Memories.

• Over the Limit: If you exceed 5GB, you'll see alerts and get a year of temporary storage for excess memories.
• Paid Options:
  • Standard Plan: Around 100GB for about $1.99/month.
  • Snapchat+: Includes 250GB for the subscription fee (around $3.99/month).
  • Snapchat Platinum: Offers 5TB for a higher fee (around $14.99-$15.99/month). 

The company is the cheapest social media stock. Here is a snap summery of the 3Q25:

Beat on revenue and EPS:Snap reported revenue of $1.51 billion and a loss of $0.06 per share, beating analyst estimates of $1.49 billion in revenue and a loss of $0.12 per share.

Daily active users surpass expectations:The company's key user growth metric, daily active users (DAUs), increased 8% year-over-year to 477 million, exceeding the consensus estimate of 476.31 million. Positive Q4 guidance issued:Snap provided an optimistic outlook for the fourth quarter, projecting revenue between $1.68 billion and $1.71 billion and an adjusted EBITDA of $280 million to $310 million, both surpassing analyst estimates.

Jan 16 2026

 I got up last around 8:40 am, even though I woke up around 8:19 am. I spent an hour on my phone around 5 am. This is the problem. There is no reason for me to check my phone/internet/messages/other fun things at 5 AM! 

I started doing a morning routine, stretching, doing golf swings (I should listen to Genghis Khan music!). This should be the routine every day, even with TT. Live by example!

War trade is being put on: 

Up: defense related stocks (AVAV, BA, NOC, LMT, RCAT), Oil, Ag (NTR breaking out, MOS, CF (the         cheapest)).

Down: Retail (LULU, DECK, CPRT?)

NTR is very interesting, chart wise, CF is the most attractive ag name.

Real estate: 

• the electrician Eric has been great! He is fixing and accommodating me and my contractors inconsideration actions at Redington Shores
• Need to find a new plumber in Hudson for the permit!!! Time to beg:(, Started to ask people around: Chris, Ken, Jim, Mark. Chris hopefully!
• Eric mentioned something interesting: it would be difficult to take a loan out of the properties in the flood zone where the flood insurance may be required (expensive). Moving away from h2o?

Small experiment on trading. We shall see. 

ASML has gone parabolic along with other semi-equipment makers. The top should be near. 

INTU has gone down almost 15%. Dunno what is going on, but the valuation was high. The high flyers can just tank if the perceived growth slows down a little. 

AXON, DUOL, were the examples. 

Jan 14 2026

Fascinating story about IBKR, interactive brokers and the story of the its founder: Thomas Peterffy! 

I am selling AMP to buy IBKR. AMP has been a great compounder, but its AUM is underperforming, +7% yoy when the market is up almost 20%. They experience capital outflow issues, Not IBKR, which has been growing like weeds. The only negative for IBKR is its valuation (30 PE), but its growth rate should justify it. 

After seeing some good companies, VITL seems a little inadequate, so I am getting out. 

I need to add to AMZN, which I traded terribly. 

Siberian winter is over, the warm weather has been disrupted by a cold front. I need to look for greener pastures once again! 

My son Andres is so dear to me! He has done things for me nobody else would, not even my real children. I hope he can move closer to me and I love close families around! 

T 04-21-2020

Market

Down around 2% in all indices. IWM a little more. After learning more the CV (Corona Virus), it is hard to get rid of it as it seems. China tried to open and close cities/districts numerous times on re-occurring the spread of the virus. The re-opening of the economy wont be a V-shaped. There were increasing demand by politicians of the west to hold China accountable. The disaster, brought upon to the world by China, is unprecedented and may be comparable to the Great Depression. What do you expect the people who suffered feel about China and Chinese. A backlash is expected.

Crude oil is down 38% (down 56% by noon) this morning! The world realized there is not a lot of demand.

Portfolio

• NVDA - Get out because it seems it is still a semi-conductor stock, not a steady fast growth company. 
• PINS - Sell because it is too dependent on Ad sales. 
• OKTA - Great growth story
• AAXN - Growth stock with no competition, increasingly expand their business from Tasers to body cameras, to cloud offerings
• ROKU - this OS for smart TVs (1/3 of all TVs have their OS). They get paid on hours streamed. 
• EBAY - the most boring stock there is with no growth prospect. Sold PayPal, and there is nothing exciting about it. It rallied 15 days in a row! Short?

NVDA

 Investment Thesis: 

• The co makes the key semi chips for AI: GPU, dominating the field (90%+ market share)
• High Growth: the Latest 3Q25 saw a rev increase of 63% and EPS of 67%. 
• Growth Margin: 73%
• Operating Margin: 63%
• ROA: 66%, ROE: 91%, ROIC: 83%

Risks

• Sustaining these incredible high growth rate and high margin depend on ever increasing capex from hyper scalers (google, msft, meta, amzn). Msft spent $120B in year on AI, for instance, others are spending similar amount. Can this be sustainable? The slowdown is inevitable. The question is when. 
• Druckenmiller says invest on future, not on past nor present! (I skate to where the puck is going). 
• It is possible other players can step up the purchases when big techs slow down their capex?
• Competition: Google has TPU (Tensor PU), which is cheaper and seemingly more efficient for specific tasks. Gemini, which leads their peers, was trained on TPU. Google will make it available to others including META. Amazon and other have their own custom silicone as well. 

Technicals

• It is at the 80 day and 15 day moving average cross point. I lowered the position size from over 10% to 3%. 

Trading: 

• Initially, I got in at a decent level and position size.
• Subsequently, I bought high (on fake breakouts) and sell low (loss cutting:(, numerous times. 

Jan 13, 2026

 I played a round of golf with Nick, my accountant. He was very happy to see me and very warm! It was good to see him and he paid for the round! I played terribly. Only one good hole where I chipped in for a birdie, 2nd this year! The whole family has been great! I talked about stock and RE investment with Jim, and play golf with the senior. They got me into two RE deals with $100k+ in profit! Their fees are a little more than my previous accountant who was not slacking off big time, but well worth it! I was planning to see them at the pier this Saturday. Hopefully my sore throat is not going to get worse. Xiao Tan is coming all of a sudden (surprise, surprise:)

The Siberian winter is over. I still have a lot of unanswered questions, but they are unlikely to be known. It is a little unsettling with these mysteries to be buried. "天涯何处无芳草". Too much investment and little return:(. Loss cutting!

I was experimenting exiting incremental investment with little losses, but there is too much noise to make this an effective strategy. I bought LULU at $208, then the stock tanks to $202, I sold 1/2, then the stock rallied back to $209. Should I buy back the sold shares? I think it might be better to set an exit point at the significant point in the chart? 

I randomly encountered a video on value investing channel discussing the concept of compounder where a company, which may not be a high grower, yet can still produce mid-teens or 20%+ rate of return per year! There are numerous great companies like this: AXP, which grows revenue in single digits, but their earnings are either returned to back to shareholders thru DVD or buybacks, or reinvest in their own biz with high returns (returns on invested capital). Their EPS almost tripled in the past 10 years, stock up 500%+ returns! Consistency is important. Even Apple, a mature co with about 7% rev growth, still managed to more than triple its EPS and 11x in stock price! A boring co does not mean boring returns! Here a example video on Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6c_5yK69pQ

There are many stocks like that: CPRT, V, MA, HCA, GWW, DBOE, AMP, GOOG, META, HD, IBKR. This is especially great for people at or close to retirement! Power of compounding!!!

I have been a growth chaser all of my investing (or day trading) life. You can do well, but the risk profile is different! You can achieve great returns but you dont have to! 

I am waiting for the Electrician to get his work done at Redington shores. 

Waiting for Romeo, whom I just called and he needs a little push. 

Waiting on Chris Teeter who is drawing up plans for Grove St - a drawing can cost $10k extra work and headaches.

Jan 9 2026

 Switched auto insurance from geico to State Farm, saving $2k/year. 

Trouble in NJ: the inspector noticed someone (Andres) living in the fire-damaged building:( The inspector demands an inspection. Why are they so strict?

Rafael the renter in Hudson backed out:( Needs to find new tenants. Should I reconsider resuming airbnb?

Start working on selling two rentals in PA!

Raise cash for renovating the Grove St! Sell some stocks. 

Jan 8 2026

 Tie Tie is 2 today!!!

Started a small position in COPART (CPRT). Heard great things about this co. AMP chart gives me a buy signal as well. starting a position later! Another great compounder. 

I also need to have a closure to the Russian cold winter. I am in FL, a tropical paradise. Dont want be prisoner in siberia! 

Jan 7

 I was at the Hudson Apts. My broker was very sure that we found a good tenant for the left Apt. No deposit and 1st month rent so far. 

My broker also told me about an off market duplex, which has similar size as mine, that is looking for a buyer. It sounded very appealing on paper, only asking for $250k, with potential income of $3k per month. It is water front too, next to my current duplex. I offered $230k. They told my broker that they already had a $250k offer with mortgage. I countered $250k contingent upon inspection. I demanded to see the property. They wanted me to sign the paperwork thru email. When I read it on my email, it turned out they are a wholesaler whose name sounded Indian (all of my bias bells started ringing:). 

Saw inside, a disaster. Only 1 bedroom apt on each side, not like 2 bedroom apt on mine. $1200/month on each side. Even a $150k offer + $80k renovation cost ($230k, my 6 months worth of work, just for $2400/m?). It does not work! Pass. Plus, I cannot trust the wholesaler, who apparently don't have solid backup offers!!!

The stocks that went up on Venezuela kidnapping, came back down! The VP did sound very cooperative. The US only accomplished the kidnapping only, nothing else, no regime change, no oil?

In the past, I add more shares to an existing position when there is a breakout in the chart. However, if the stock came right down and go lower, I may choose not to do anything in the past. This caused more losses because the position size was so much larger (after additions). I decided to sell out the added shares if the stock failed the breakout. In other words, the added shares have a different stop loss price than the original shares. We will see if the improvement helps the portofolio. 

Jan 5 2026

 First day of trading after venezuela's kidnapping of her president Maduro. CVX/SLB incating higher because they already have some presence in the country

Real Estate: I need to meet Yury for some remaining jobs, needing to be at Hudson to cleanup and make sure it is ready for the new tenant. I should go tonight! 

My investment return in 2025 was unsatisfactory: single digits vs. almost 20% for spx and more for ndx. 

Here are some of the key reasons: 

1) Overtrading! - need to study my trading patterns and reduce mistakes.

2) bought at the high and sold at the low: When the vix index jumped 2 pts, I usually reduce exposure, but failed to increase exposure on the rebound. What was worse was: effectively my max exposure at the market peak and lowest exposure at the market bottom - worse timing! 

 bought CNQ because it came down 6% due to invasion of venezuela (over done). The co has a long history of increasing dvd and long reserve life. 

added 200 shares of vitl at the support level. If it breaks, I need to unload these and more. 

added small PBR, which only came in 1.5% on maduro. 

Happy New Year

Random thoughts : 

• Trade reviews
• Strategy reviews - Value?
• Think more and react less
• Deal with my biggest enemy - myself