Blackwell

A member of my WS investing group told me he woke up on November 5 and saw his account was down $680,000. Then he went for a run. 😂 Back in 2010, he was almost 30 and working in Texas. The financial crisis was still fresh in everyone’s mind, but he figured U.S. stocks would eventually recover. He put $70,000 into $SPXL , an ETF that targets three times the S&P 500’s daily return. He planned to hold it for a year or two. Two months in, he was already down about 30%. He held on. In 2018, he retired at 38, still holding the position. Then came 2020. In just over a month, he watched $1.1 million turn into about $260,000. He held through that, too. When he talks about those 16 years, he says the stress probably took a few years off his life. That’s where I think our ws group can help him, even after all these years. He’s already retired. If that position dropped 77% again, would it change how he lives? Would he still want that much money in one fund? Those are good questions to talk through with other investors while the market’s quiet and he has time to think. Last November, his position was worth $3.24 million. The market reminded him of the dot-com bubble, and he came close to selling. He never placed the order. By May, his original $70,000 had grown to $4.09 million. During election week, he said his account gained $400,000 one day and lost $680,000 the next. I was surprised he could shrug that off. Then he mentioned the tariff selloff the previous April, when he lost more than $900,000 in two days. The run made a little more sense after that. He’s in his 40s now and still drives a 2013 Toyota Camry. He says his net worth is over $10 million. He’s single, has no kids, and lately he’s been thinking about who he’ll leave it all to. It’s easy to say you’d hold for 16 years when you know how the story ends. If you’d watched $1.1 million turn into $260,000, what would you have done the next morning?

ALRIGHT the first one was questionable if it was simply personal but this one definitely is… So why the hell is Nvidia $NVDA stock crashing from a personal affair?

I’m 72. I started with $420,000 more than 40 years ago, and my assets are now worth over $100 million. Here are the 8 rules I use. Save them for the next time one of your stocks makes a big move. ① Before I buy, I write down what I expect the business to do and what would prove me wrong. Two sentences usually do it. ② Down 5%, I check the news and the rest of the sector. If they all fell together and nothing changed at the company, I usually leave it alone. ③ Down 15%, I reread the latest earnings report. Did customers pull back? Did margins shrink? I want an answer before I put another dollar in. ④ Down 25%, I ask myself how much I’d buy today if I owned zero shares. If my answer is zero, I can live with my original cost basis. ⑤ Up 5%, I let it sit. If I bought it for three years, one good afternoon doesn’t change much. ⑥ Up 15%, I check whether my earnings estimate has moved too. I’m happy to hold a stock at a price where I wouldn’t buy more. ⑦ Up 25% or 35%, I look at how much of my account that one stock now represents. If a reversal would make me lose sleep, I trim enough to sleep. ⑧ On a short-term trade, I keep the planned loss at my stop to 1% of my account or less. If the trade needs a wider stop, I buy fewer shares.

$1 million in $VOO or $1 million in $CHPY? One shows about $10,600 in annual distributions. The other shows $497,500. Which would you rather own? Here’s how 15 ETFs stack up using their trailing 12-month payouts and the latest available U.S. prices through Nov. 11, 2026. The quotes were taken at different times, so the dollar amounts are approximate. $VOO · 1.06% · $10,600 $VIG · 1.45% · $14,500 $SCHD · 2.94% · $29,400 $DIVO · 6.40% · $64,000 $BALI · 7.89% · $78,900 $TDVI · 8.01% · $80,100 $GPIX · 8.37% · $83,700 $TYLG · 9.09% · $90,900 $OVL · 9.59% · $95,900 $GPIQ · 10.67% · $106,700 $JEPQ · 12.14% · $121,400 $QQQI · 14.69% · $146,900 $SPUC · 15.80% · $158,000 $AMZP · 18.74% · $187,400 $CHPY · 49.75% · $497,500 That $497,500 is the number that made me look twice. It’s what a $1M position at the quoted price would pay if the past year’s distributions repeated. Payouts can change, and some funds can distribute part of your capital back to you. I’d also want to know what my shares were worth after those payments. @grok Pick one to hold for five years. Which ticker gets your $1M, and why?

Buffett's first investment has nothing to do with the market. It is communication. He tells students that while they are learning complicated formulas, they are overlooking the skill with the biggest payoff. Learn to communicate better, in writing and in person, and your value rises by at least 50%. Without it, the best idea in the room does nothing. His image for it is a man winking at a girl in the dark. Nothing happens. The good news is that it can be learned. Buffett took a Dale Carnegie course himself, and he still jokes that he should have taken a longer one. Why this one? Because nobody can take it from you. Follow me for more investing insights.

Six rules for picking stocks, attributed to Warren Buffett. He does not use them. There is no forward P/E in his process. There is no PEG ratio. He has said plainly that forecasts tell you a great deal about the forecaster and nothing about the future, and both of those metrics are forecasts. What he actually says he looks for is four things: a business he can understand, a durable competitive advantage, honest and able management, and a sensible price. Notice what is missing. No screen, no threshold, no ratio below 25. The checklist is easy to share and easy to disprove.