December 26th 2020
- Target: $1,100,000
- Current Balance: $1,206,000
- Remaining: Nothing! Reached and exceeded my financial goal
Back in November of 2019 I had set a target of 1.1 million USD in assets to 1) be able to leave work and 2) make enough reliable return to sustain my inflation adjusted economic footprint. The starting point of this financial journey was 600k in assets spread across my two investing accounts (E-trade, Robinhood), 401k, and bank account. In the last year we had seen economic turmoil in the form of the trade war with China as well as potential political instability from tensions with Iran. These talking points vanished from news headlines as the once in a lifetime pandemic waxed and took a hold of the global population. Many people have been negatively impacted by Covid not only losing loved ones but also losing financial security and some measure of freedom. Covid has been and continues to be a true black swan event and economic patterns have been utterly disrupted. Those that were positioned in technology and other sectors that benefited from the lockdowns, social distancing policies, and changes is behavioral patterns witnessed an influx of wealth.
On one hand, I believe it to be poor taste to advertise success when so many others have seen and continue to see hardship. On the other hand, I assuage these notions by reminding myself that I had been diligent about preparation, financial education, and daily assessment of the macroeconomic conditions via hours of daily reading. All the while I shared my perspectives whenever I could to whoever would listen. There are certainly philosophical discussions to be had surrounding the morality of pursuing economic freedom during a global pandemic. However, I think that topic goes beyond the scope of this post and since at least one of the core goals of this blog is to empower others to reach their financial goals I will focus on just that.
Philosophical discussions aside, lets get down to the numbers and talk about positioning for the near term. There is a new Biden administration that will be sworn in in just a few short days, we are in the midst of another fierce resurgence of the virus, the mass vaccination programs have begun, and the recovery has yet to apex. What am I holding now and how will I be positioning myself to ride out the recovery?
My current holdings:
- AAPL
- ABBV
- AMD
- AMGN
- AMZN
- ASML
- BABA
- BRK.B
- CVX
- DAL
- DIS
- FB
- GILD
- GLDM
- GOOGL
- LHX
- MA
- MSFT
- NVDA
- O
- SLV
- SCHW
- T
- TSLA
- V
- VZ
- WM
I’ve highlighted in bold what I consider to be recovery stocks and I have almost exclusively been adding to these positions with some notable exceptions. My recovery positions are underpinned by several core themes. Namely, they are value stocks (ABBV, AMGN, LHX, T, VZ, O) , airline (DAL), inflation hedges (GLDM and the more speculative SLV), financials (MA, V, SCHW), and oil (CVX).
One notable exception to the recovery stocks that I’ve been adding to is AAPL. AAPL just released their own custom silicon for their Macs and I don’t think the analysts and general public has caught on to just how special and powerful the silicon is. Secondarily, not only is their silicon a technological marvel, it should improve their supply chain as they no longer have to purchase CPUs from Intel. Furthermore, the costly R&D efforts spanning the past three to five years to develop this chip has already mostly been financially subsidized by their core businesses. Moving forward, I expect this to have a positive impact on their balance sheets and the financially accretive power of their new in-house silicon paradigm should show up in the next few quarters.
Pado Pado 