And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself. - Tolstoy
We've got a big problem on our hands. People just love to hate. We piled on NFL replacement refs for sucking, that's how we spend our time. How does it feel being humiliated on newspaper covers, by announcers, by owners, by players? Does that improve their ability to officiate football games- or make a better call for YOUR team next time? I certainly think not. Why did we pour the negative energy on? Just to be dicks?
I propose that we should be a bit more careful just how much we hate on Apple ($AAPL). After winning a big lawsuit and rolling out IOS6 with a terrible Maps App, people just love to hate, while 55 million homes have at least one iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Mac in the house. Be careful what you're rooting against. Particularly when it holds the fate of your personal wealth.
There are a few empirical truths to investing, such as: You can not will an investment up or down by your own psychic forces; and, the market shall remain irrational longer than you will remain solvent. We are in an unprecedented era for our markets. This time, we're all in it together... better to use our speech more wisely and positively when we talk about apple.
I just can't stop thinking about this Louis CK clip about technology. You must listen to it. Now.
Apple Inc. is the largest public company ever. It's the greatest stock market story of all time- undisputed. It accounts for 5% of the S&P 500 index, and 10% of the Nasdaq Composite. The S&P 500 is up 16 percent this year. Apple alone is responsible for more than 2 of those percentage points. Most people believe Apple is going to going crack one of these days. It's an unsustainable rocket ship of the highest magnitude ever, and I don't want it to go down because if it begins a descent, I know that all the assets in my portfolio will fall in tandem. When the premier worldwide equity index is levered so much to a single security, whose cash balance is double that of the US treasury - things can get hairy when its value recedes. As in all your investments will go down, because program trading dominates the markets, not the individual. When Apple won a monstrous lawsuit against a company from another country... we hated on them. Such bastards right? They're going to get a check for a chilly $billy- from a Korean entity. It's not even from a US competitor!
When the non-facebook shareholders saw share prices dive after the IPO, they were having a real hoot. They just loved to hate on that Nerdy rich awkward kid who created something many of us would find life much more difficult without. But exactly who drove that valuation in the first place? With Facebook penetrating 70% of the online population, We did. These days everyone thinks they can be a Zuck and change the world after seeing an Aaron Sorkin drama, yet how many of us went to Harvard or ever wrote a single line of code? How much of what we post on our facebook walls is offered in positivity?
I would be remiss to not include my favorite facebook update this year, posted by my friend H who works for the UN and recently wrote a book about how America can regain its competitive edge and boost our global standing:
As I passed a woman this afternoon holding a cardboard sign that said, "Homeless, hungry with mouths to feed" with one hand, I couldn't help but think that more people would probably give her money if her other hand wasn't playing with the latest Ipad
(this is 100% real)
Better to simply enjoy our apple products, know that they will send their unprecedented army of engineers to work on the maps problem. Let's focus on how we can participate in making the world a better place with our apple products, or whatever hardware we prefer to use. Or don't use their products, just on principal. There's plenty of innovation left to explore. There are plenty of investments we can make in the markets that will serve us. The best investment we can make-- in a world where all US equities are tied to a single company-- is in our own ability to change ourselves.
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