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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandeep who wrote (16362)	7/23/2023 6:01:01 PM
From: Kirk ©	Respond to of 26764

You know I bought my first shares of MSFT in 1993 after visiting WESCON for work in Vegas to scope out what devices might use IR to communicate before the cost of BlueTooth would fall enough to replace it. I "invented" a spreadsheet in 1979 using UNIX to do cost accounting for a project I was put in charge of. I learned I could cut weeks of nonproductive time out of schedules waiting for cost accounts to tell us designers this or that design choice was too expensive. During the 80s my boss told me to buy these new fangled tools, Lotus 123, Excel, Word, etc. to do it far more efficiently and share with the group how I liked them. Then I started using email to write up reports for meetings to share with the group bypassing the secretaries. By the time I got to Vegas in 1994, it was clear what these great productivity tools were giving engineers would explode into the rest of society so I bought MSFT and more IBM stock to go with my HP stock. I used profit taking dollars from employee matching shares in the stock purchase program to fund these purchases in the name of diversification. Currently MSFT is enjoying anticipation that it will benefit from AI the same way it benefited from selling software packages to regular folks in the 1990s tech boom. I've also noticed they don't give a flying FRACK about long time customers like me who are upset their W11 is a major downgrade from W10 to make it more like Crapple and thus easier to support upgrades for "simple users." So, it is more like a good scam company that profits off customers rather than giving us great products. That may EVENTUALLY hurt it but it sure hasn't hurt Google for being a company that steals IP content from "partners" like me or any major newspaper. Complain all we want but own the damn stocks. Same with drug companies, oil companies, etc.... Now those original MSFT shares have a cost basis of $2.43 each... so I sell $5K or $10K a year to trim a bit... then trade it around a core position in my IRAs and Newsletter Explore Portfolio. I expect it will have SIMILAR ups and downs as seen in the two decades after my first purchase but my long term shares will pay over 100% dividend of $2.72 on the original $2.43 price, so I can safely ignore it other than trim the holding when it gets too large compared to my overall portfolio. Given I often use the cash to buy something else that is way off its peak or more MSFT in my ROTH when MSFT has a bear market correction, I'm in no hurry. To get specifics of my buy and sell targets, you'll have to read pages 5 and 24 of my July newsletter.