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Since March, he's bought this 6 times and it kept moving higher. It's up 26% since the June 25 low of $273. It is losing near-term momentum, for sure, and is vulnerable to a deeper decline. When it does, the stock will pause, and he will continue to buy more, because this is the Mag 7 stock that will stand above the others.

It's in the midst of a breakout.

He recently sold this at $431, citing lack of momentum--that was not a good trade. He likes the fact that the new CEO is now buying back stock, being aggressive and putting his signature on the company. He bought $10 billion of Alphabet and Home Builders at $7 billion. Sure, some deals will not be good, but to make on omelette you have to crack some eggs.

The bad news is already priced into private equity stocks, but earnings are moving up. Fundraising is strong.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz is completely reopened, the US has drawn down a lot of inventory while bumping up production. Pipelines will continue to do well. There's a lot to do in energy even if the Strait reopens. Oil is a definite buy.

The runway is not over, but risks are growing. Bottlenecks in supply will be resolved, but the beneficiaries will actually be software stocks. She's rotating to software, where the fundamentals are intact and earnings are growing. 

Free cash flow is large and it pays a 3.5% dividend, better than peers. You need a stock like Apple to contrast with the high-beta semis stocks.

With Apple, there are always fundamental issues--manufacturing, chips, China, competition--which heat up as the PE rises, now 33x. If you're overweight Apple, they reduce their holding until the market climbs on the bandwagon when Apple is cheap and people load up. It always happens. She is happy to hold.

There is demand for their chips. Claude, ChatGPT, all these AI applications need more chips.

He sold half his position. It was frothy at $330 going into earnings. There's margin pressure from the rising costs of chips going into their new iPhones. While others were saying that Apple finally was going AI, he's still waiting. If you have an oversize position, takes some profits. But if your average cost of $15 and you're long term, then you'll pay a mighty big capital gains tax. Doubts this will fall back to $200. The fundamentals have not changed. Overall, the chart moves up with ups and downs. If this falls to $270, he's back in. Now, it's too expensive at 33x PE. He'd add at 25x PE though doubts we'll reach that.

He recently bought two tranches, averaging $1,000, though today at $877. He thinks the cycle will be elongated, so buying MU at 6x forward PE with earnings growing through the roof. He doesn't believe demand for their chips will plummet. The hyperscalers' reports of late show only growth.

Strip out the stock holdings from its market cap and look at only the operating companies, it trades at 13x forward PE. Those companies include Burlington Northern, Berkshire Energy, Precision Cast Parts, etc. That's 13x PE for the American economy plus the stock portfolio on top of that. Also, they bought Alphabet on the secondary, and are buying back their own shares. He finds this all compelling.

In the last 5 years, annualized return was 27% vs. the S&P's 13%.

Going back 2 weeks ago, Chairman Warsh talked about a more laissez-faire approach to how the Fed is going to handle interest rates. That is, let's stop intervening in the markets and see what happens. Following that press conference, it would appear there's been a loss of confidence in the Fed's ability to manage inflation. They've been putting out small fires along the way, with Scott Bessent on the weekend talking about keeping the cost of the US deficit under control and interest rates down. It's all linked to inflation expectations.

When we look at what the market's pricing on inflation, the long-term outlooks are very benign. We have what's going on in the Middle East impacting oil prices -- spiking one day and down the next, war on/war off. It's causing a lot of anxiety. Equities don't care whatsoever about that, as they're high on earnings and AI. But at some point they might, and then we'll see multiple compression.

If we look at where long-term interest rates were coming out of the dot-com bubble, and before we got into the era of 0% Fed policy and negative interest rates all over the world, the US 30-year traded between a low of 4-4.25% and a high of around 6%. That's probably the trading range for 30-year yields, slightly less for 10-year yields, and we need to get used to it for decades to come. Unless there's some kind of revelation in the US Congress as to how to balance the budget ;)

He understands very well Israel's message to the world:  We are not going back to a world where Hamas and Hezbollah are threatening Israel. Until that happens, the IRGC has to stop funding them and Iran has to recognize Israel's right to exist. Under the current regime, that's impossible. So the war will keep going.

For political reasons, Trump doesn't want too much noise between now and the midterm elections. He'll downplay it and talk about peace and deals. Once the midterms are over (one way or the other), the conflict will escalate.