> have you EVER cashed in even partially on any of your stock investments?
I moved around some of my first investments in stock funds early on in my career. After a long rally on the stock markets in 1998, I started investing. Unfortunately, that coincided with the "Asian crisis" and a downturn, so I was spooked and exited one of my positions with a sizable loss. As buzz around AMD, K6 and Athlon was increasing at the same time, I then put those assets into AMD instead. And I have been adding since, mainly averaging down at the troughs.
I have bought and cashed in on other small individual stock investments, but it has been forced. As you may remember, I invested a small sum in MIPS in 2011, which was bought by Imagination Tech a couple of years later. I had a nice gain on that transaction. Unfortunately, I followed MIPS by reinvesting the gains in Imagination, which didn't fare as well. Finally, in 2017 they collapsed when they were deserted by Apple. I didn't fully understand how dependent they were on a single product, the iPhone. Also, I thought there would be a place for a competitor to ARM in the IP licensing industry. However, that didn't pan out. Instead, MIPS ended up sold and now pushed as an open ISA, something I speculated about years earlier would be a good idea. The decision to open MIPS came years later, though, only as a reaction to the collapse of Imagination and the arrival of the open RISC-V ISA. It may be too late for MIPS now.
In 2015 I took a small position in Soitec, which has done nicely since, as FD-SOI has been widely adopted and is now growing fast, alongside other SOI products, such as RF-SOI for 5G.
Anyway, those investments were only peanuts on the side. I have had and still have most of my assets in secure instruments, stock funds and AMD. My stock fund investment is tracking the oil-soaked Norwegian main index. I am currently considering moving that to a Scandinavian green stock fund instead, which is already doing much better.
Finally, I am a Norwegian citizen, so I am indirectly invested in the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world, the Government Pension Fund of Norway, currently with over $1 trillion in assets, mainly stock market investment all over the world (it is prohibited from investing in Norway, as not to drive inflation). With the small population in Norway, that is about $200 thousand per citizen and growing fast. Hence why I don't worry about retirement. As you know, I am not a big spender. I am sure Norway will take good care of me when the time comes.
In the meantime, my AMD gains will keep me secure, it seems. Go Lisa! |
