Continued from this entry…
As noted, 2001 (from the last 3 months) through January 2007, the stock market and my portfolios were basically out of sight, out of mind. Plus I also had a bunch of health related issues during this period; the worst was the anxiety attacks which caused my blood pressure to race out of control to the point where I felt like I would pass out (or worst, thought I was dying). Chronic fatigue eventually set in due to the lack of sleep. It was literally hell where I’ve blanked out that period up until early 2003 to the point where I don’t recall much details (put it this way, I don’t want to).
In 2003, I made it a priority to leave the US and headed off to Japan (an opportunity presented itself at the right time). One of the objectives was to just get the hell away. The other was to attend the concert of a Japanese artist I was interested in at the time. Japan and more specifically, its culture (both traditional and modern day popular culture) and music has been an interest dating back to childhood. Thus, there was always this constant draw. Back in the 90’s, a friend (half caucasian/half Japanese) who was a Yale graduate (in neural network engineering) headed off to Japan with the purpose of living in a completely different culture. He even picked Sapporo, Hokkaido as the place since it would force him to learn the language (in Tokyo for example, you can get away with very basic conversational skills for awhile). After 3 years, he had picked up the language (both spoken and written) and was doing contract work as a Mac software developer (primarily working on games and doing some of the translation). At one point, he almost convinced me to give it a try. So I sort of wondered how much life would be different today had I done that in the mid-90’s because during the period before 2000, Internet access was a foreign concept in Japan; it remained a domain of higher education and didn’t really take off until the government began subsidizing the installation of fiber in dense metropolitan areas in order to boost high speed broadband access (by 2004 though, Asian countries including Japan had moved past the U.S. in this area). This last point is pertinent since this would have been a natural fit for me with my data networking/enterprise computing background.
Anyway, being in the madness that is central Tokyo was like a breath of fresh air. Full of contradictions and dichotomies but still, an experience which reinvigorated me by providing a whole new perspective and point of view. Almost anything goes there even though from a social and cultural perspective, sticking out isn’t necessarily considered a positive. 倭 (wa) or harmony is a concept created out of necessity; a land locked island nation where the bulk of the population have little choice but to live in close proximity to each other – thus peaceful relations is a must such as to not cause 迷惑 (meiwaku – inconvenience or trouble to others). Everything Japanese is derived from this including tatemae and honne, gaman (enduring hardships), 出る杭は打たれる (deru kugi wa utareru – standing out will subject you to criticism), murahachibu (ostracism by not fitting into society), and even 苛め (ijime – bullying). Some of Japan’s well known social ills (hikikomori, suicides, etc) result from the pressures of having to conform to what society expects of individuals.
Wait, why is a post about my investing adventures turning into a short overview of something else? It is relevant in every way… the period from 2004-2007 was a learning period for me about my cultural heritage and would shape my way of thinking going forward. Learning even more granular details about this (compared to the superficial knowledge I had before) gave me an entirely new perspective on life in general and what my personal purpose on this planet was for. In 2005, the answer became even clearer when I watched Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford. I could never really find a reason for why I always found myself beating to a different drum from others. His line about not being trapped by someone else’s dogma finally answered the question I’d been internally asking myself for years since I had those discussions with my now late classmate friend. What exactly is normal?
I can fully understand how for some Japanese nationals, the ones who don’t conform to the norms of their society, must feel (and why many of those end up finding solace outside of their home country). All of this was like an epiphany to me where things became crystal clear. Money was not the motivator anymore. Money can only buy one so much happiness. Yes, having lots of it affords one to be financially set which therefore, sets the wheels in motion to personal freedom to do what you want with your limited time on this planet. Modern day currency is a fallacy if you look beyond what the powers that be who hold the purse strings want the average person to think as the norm. They were the ones selling the dream which many people could not afford. They were the ones who provided these loans to people who shouldn’t have qualified for them. They were the ones selling people on the notion of using their equity to take on even more debt. This whole bullshit that was being tossed onto people pissed me off to no end because the average joe was being screwed left and right. My detest of politicians (the vast majority of their ilk being scum of the earth) and their posturing grew even greater such that I did most of my venting in that area on other sites.
Modern currency is fiat currency – it has nothing but the promises of the issuing government backing it (look at what happened in 2011 with some countries for example). Wealth defined by this actually worthless piece of legal tender is yet another fallacy. Consider if you are happily married and have kids – that family right there is worth more than its weight in gold because you cannot put a price on that. There are a lot of hard working people out there who are just barely making ends meet. I know because I work with some of these folks in various capacities now. But you know what, many of them are the most down to earth people I’ve met. While they may not be financially wealthy, they are wealthy in many other ways (a concept which would be foreign to most investment banker types working on Wall Street where most everything they do is ego driven even if it means screwing people they know out of their money). Money beyond a certain amount also it loses its intrinsic value. Rhetorical question – what is the purpose of someone having so much of it (answer: it’s a social status and ego thing for many so they can buy the biggest house, the most expensive car, a Rolex watch for each day of the week, and any other visible forms of commercialism symbolizing wealth). One can’t make much use of it once they leave the physical realm though (there is no purpose for being the richest person in the grave). This little side rant defines my point of view going forward and I know many won’t agree or understand which is fine. However, I feel that explaining why I do what I do and beating to the beat of my own drum is the honest thing to do.
Digressing, having what was supposed to be a comfortable retirement nest egg basically decimated is a huge demoralizer. (Note that I’ve considered my Apple employee stock options/restricted stock units as out of sight, out of mind since this entire “investing adventures” thing is about what I had invested with savings). Therefore, the entire notion of even trying to do it again seemed far fetched. But at Macworld San Francisco in 2007, the long rumored iPhone was finally announced. For myself, this was the 2nd chance that I was looking for. Having not paid attention since late 2001, I’d missed out on the whole iPod related run which really began in 2004. By 2007 though, the growth prospects of the iPod was already being questioned since that market was basically mature. The iPhone changed all of that, but it wasn’t specifically the iPhone itself which grabbed my attention. It was the software powering it. It was basically, one of the core reasons which I had initially invested in Apple 10 years earlier in 1997 (none of the things I worked on at Apple was considered a tip-off either because most everything was already on a “needs to know basis” which were held tight to the vest by senior executives). It was that original premise which I’d originally had a 10 year time horizon to come to fruition. Little did I realize that this original vision was not that far off (internally, Apple was even farther ahead since they had been working on what was initially the iPad form factor first for at least a few years before the 2007 introduction of the iPhone). It was the premise of the software assets (and engineering talent) which Apple could find uses for in various platforms and form factors.
The iPhone didn’t represent a phone to me. That was just Apple’s marketing moniker which made it easy for the average person to wrap their mind around. To me, the device was a pocket computer which just so happened to have telephony hardware as part of its feature set. And because Apple was starting off with a blank slate by leaving off a lot of features (GPS, camera, 3G, etc), this meant there would be room for growth as those features were added on. The mindblower though was the UI; they brought a touch interface to market in an entirely intuitive and useful form. The concept of touch wasn’t new. The problem with such technologies is bringing them to market in a meaningful way. This is one of Apple’s key strengths and something that the Street has been consistently slow to decipher. Apple’s initial projections as far as capturing a percentage of the growing smartphone market were also modest. Basically after that keynote, I knew this was one of those rare opportunities for at least the next decade. A chance for me to re-engage that necessary evil known as the stock market by using the information and knowledge to my advantage. This time around, it would be different as it would be buy, accumulate, hold for the long term (no short term bullshit like day trading, options, etc). There would also be clear time horizons and points where I would divest some shares to actually lock in profits.
One of the key mantras of being invested (whether it be individual equities, mutual funds, a 401K, government sponsored 403b or 457b) is to have a diversified portfolio. I understand the basis for that but after looking at where both my 403(b) and 457(b) stood after almost 20 years, the overall ROI was craptacular. The remnants of my once vast AAPL portfolio however had an insane ROI; in 2007 at $85 per share, it represented a 1600% gain. Excuse me, but where else can you get that sort of return? Savings account? Treasuries? Mutual Funds? My premise going forward was to go against the conventional grain and not buy into the bullshit that is being shoveled out by so called financial and market “experts”. My rationale has always been to pick and choose a select few companies and understand everything they do so that I can make my own informed decision. Part of this whole process involved taking on an even more devils advocate approach and being super critical of decisions being made. I’m no stranger to having flamed some decisions made with regards to Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. I don’t see any advantage at all to loving everything Apple does (like some Apple fans do). They are like any other company which is run by people, and therefore, has such traits as human fallibility and flaws. Sugar coating crap when it is crap does no one any good. The main problem for me was that I took my eye off the wheel and got side tracked into something called day trading and essentially mortgaging the future with some the decisions. I take full responsibility for that and have no one but myself to blame.
With this entirely new outlook, I set my entry point. In the past, I might have decided to just jump in after the announcement was made at Macworld. Knowing the rigged and manipulated nature of Wall Street market makers and the stock market in general (which is why we had that huge clusterf*ck in 2008 that sent the world financial markets into turmoil), patience would be a virtue. Price range? $75-85 per share. After an entire month, it was clear there was a line of resistance at $80-82 since (chart below).
So I pushed my limit order up… eventually in March, I got in at $87.50. These were my first purchases of AAPL since 2000 and represented a new beginning and the start of the recovery from the bitchslapping and portfolio decimation which had occurred 5 years earlier (but at the time, had felt like an eternity).
つづく 〆(･_･｡) – to be continued
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