Bought The Dip Baby
It is a fabulous Saturday morning. The sun is out after almost a week of rain and gloomy weather. As much as I love a free car wash, I fear the lack of sun only added to the somber news I received at the doctor’s office this week. I have officially been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I am happy to have brought an end to my restlessness with figuring out what exactly is going on with my stomach issues.
On a more positive note, I made some money. At the end of last week, we saw a huge economic downturn that truthfully upset me. Any indication of our country heading towards a recession adds panic to the market. From the information that I have collected so far, there was some anxiety surrounding the disappointing unemployment number report that was released the week prior. That combined with the rising prices in consumer goods, and the steep decline in bitcoin, really stirred the pot for investors. I did come across some research that some macroeconomic factors with overseas currency values have also played a part in this downturn, but I couldn’t tell you anything about that in confidence, so I will leave that information out.
I stand as someone very confident in our country’s ability to withstand difficult times. We can blame a lot of our sudden difficulties on questionable policy making, but I will always advocate for a “we can come back from this” approach. So what did I do when I saw the market downturn occur this week? I bought into almost all of the stocks on my watchlist for the month of August and July. By Friday (yesterday), the market had already recovered a majority of its losses.
Here are some tickers I looked at:
AAPL
VNQ
CIBR*
*The asterisk simply means that I added to my positions, this stock was already in my portfolio.
I will make this short and sweet:
AAPL = Apple Inc
The popular device maker has invested a lot into the future of AI, and has used this evolving technology to incentivise mobile users to upgrade their phones more frequently, or at least to this next generation of iphone. Certain AI features will ONLY be available on the next iPhone series. Apple’s increased revenue in services, rather than device sales leads me to believe that they are looking towards a future of offering more software improvements and stop this nonsense with just adding more cameras to the back of iPhones. Let’s be honest here, the majority of users turn to their phones for productivity. It’s time to start creating products that help support that vision.
VNQ = Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund ETF Shares
I took a small position here. Not a fractional share, but just one. VNQ is a REIT fund that I have been looking at since June actually, so it was added to my July list. It’s got a good amount of assets in commercial real estate. I promise to stop talking about AI soon (I lied), but with the growth of investment in this space, data centers are becoming a priority for open and large scale real estate that has literally been sitting on the market for longer than normal periods of time. I see growth here. I bought it at the dip.
CIBR = First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF
This ticker probably deserves a longer post. Another ETF, but this time in cybersecurity. So I initially debated for a while whether to invest in either CIBR or BUG. I am incredibly glad that I decided to actually purchase both and just make a larger position into CIBR. I can not tell you how much it disturbs my peace to admit that the combination of AI and data threats/leaks is lethal. I see a huge push for growth in cybersecurity. I think what really pushed me to purchase more CIBR was remembering that the US armed forces is actually changing up a bit of structural requirements to see more internal promotions within IT and military intelligence. It was sort of like confirmation for me to be like “ok, not only is my local county doing more to protect against cyber attacks, but the military is literally making this a priority as well”. It might be a little difficult to see as an outsider but do you know how large this issue has to be for the military to already be struggling with retention, and still choose to not drag their ass on this particular issue? Woah.
Yesterday, I had a deeper discussion with some friends on my instagram to see what they bought during the dip and how much they profited from the “bounce”, I see a lot of tech stocks.
Have a happy Saturday everyone! I am back up and feeling like myself this week. Get outside and move the body that not everyone has been blessed to have this weekend.
Frank.
