Reviewing my Jeans & Shovels Stock Picks

#65

Author

Born Analog
June 12, 2024

Nine months ago in issue 16 - seems like forever ago - I laid out my thoughts on some investments that I thought would be great assets to hold for the long run to take advantage of the AI powered economy. I saw the above quote from the great American investor, Peter Lynch, earlier this week and thought that I would review their performance. As before, nothing herein should be construed as investment advice, it’s just my take on the world and designed for discussion only. Let’s dive in…

My world view at the time of writing in October 2023 was that becuase of long term trends, largely driven by technological advancement, there were only two asset classes worth investing in: select technology stocks poised to benefit from the Age of AI, and select cryptocurrencies that would benefit both from technological advancement, regulatory gains (think mainstream crypto ETF’s) and the Liquidity Cycle caused by the debasement of all currencies via things like the unprecedented printing of money since the financial crash, but particularly since the pandemic.

For the record, the stocks I mentioned as being in this category were as follows: NVIDIA, Tesla, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet. My cryptcurrency picks at the time were Bitcoin, Etherium and Solana. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to review the respective performance of each asset and give some thoughts on where I think they will go next. I cannot stress enough, that I am not qualified to give any financial advice; this is only written to stimulate discussion and provoke thought. Here’s a table to show what has happened:

Asset

Code

Price 16/10/23

Price 10/6/24

Change ($)

Change (%)

High, period

NVIDIA

NVDA

 $ 46.10

 $ 122.09

 $ 75.99

165%

 $ 125.59

Tesla

TSLA

 $ 250.05

 $ 174.84

 $ -75.21

-30%

 $ 299.29

Microsoft

MSFT

 $ 331.05

 $ 425.62

 $ 94.57

29%

 $ 433.60

Amazon

AMZN

 $ 130.69

 $ 186.12

 $ 55.43

42%

 $ 191.70

Apple

AAPL

 $ 176.05

 $ 195.02

 $ 18.97

11%

 $ 199.62

Alphabet

GOOG

 $ 139.73

 $ 175.01

 $ 35.28

25%

 $ 179.95

Bitcoin

BTC

 $ 27,162.63

 $ 69,924.59

 $ 42,761.96

157%

 $ 73,750.07

Etherium

ETH

 $ 1,558.31

 $ 3,692.19

 $ 2,133.88

137%

 $ 4,092.28

Solana

SOL

 $ 21.92

 $ 161.65

 $ 139.73

637%

 $ 209.70

It’s been an interesting, and largely very happy experience. On the stocks front only Tesla has shown a loss, but to be honest, I would see this as an opportunity to acquire more. Long term, with not only cars, but robotics and energy, I only see positives ahead and am joint most bullish on this stock along with NVIDIA, which has significantly outperformed. (The prices shown for NVIDIA are adjusted for the recent 10:1 stock split.)

Cryptocurrencies have all had a stellar run, none more so than Solana. At ti’s peak, it was almost a 10X investment which is unbelieveable in such a short time frame. Long term I remain very bullish on all three. Bitcoin rules the crypto roost and is the bellweather asset in the class.

Overall, as a portfolio, $100,000 dollars invested evenly across the portolio in mid October last year would today be worth $130,398.08 taking everything into account. Not bad performance for a invest and forget portfolio.

Let’s see what the next year holds…