It seems I should have hold on to my $AXP American Express stocks in last few years, as I just look at the 3 main credit card companies in the US, note Visa and Mastercard are pure credit card networks, while American Express is essentially two companies: one is a bank, another one is also a credit card network (and it’s much smaller than Visa and Mastercard in that aspect). Here is their 5 year stock price comparison chart.
Warren Buffett Talks Visa and Mastercard (2018)
Peter Lynch
Also, I need to review this at 6 minutes mark more often: Peter Lynch: Why 1% Investors Don’t Fail. The Charlie Rose interview was done in 1993, I believe. Because they talked about Bill Clinton a lot, and some other clues.
I agree with Peter Lynch re: the 2 points that he raised.
ONE – Grass is greener on neighbor’s yard. In a recent blog post, I talked about a mechanical engineer chasing hot dot com or telecom stocks in 1999 here. I am guilty of this too.
TWO – Applicable to me very well: patience, $AXP is a good example of the stocks I owned but I traded it away too quickly. There are many similar examples. In the old days we have to pay transaction fees, and basically, it’s harder to make money with all the fees. Now, even without fees, we miss the upside of a stock if we don’t have patience (or faith, or confidence) on a stock. I agree with Peter this “quick trading” is similar to gambling 🎰. Update 11-14-2025: USA Today – There’s a reason you’re so hooked on soda. It’s not entirely your fault. While I usually don’t buy into the conspiracy theories, I do believe some of the promotional tactics that’s being used in the business (including Coca Cola and Pepsi) went a bit too far. Yeah, Robinhood App is included too.
Reference: Peter Lynch Wikipedia
Sell the winner and keep the losers
Something I realized that I was doing a lot recently. The initial reason or one common reason I don’t sell stocks was my long position is under water. But as I think more, I sold the winner instead – although I usually made a little bit of money. This strategy if amplified, would be really bad if the losers keep losing, e.g., $LULU, $WSC and previously $LEG and so on. I really need to re-examine my strategy here. It’s not about the monetary loss, but more about the opportunity cost as well as over-diworsify. I think ideally, I want to own 10 or fewer stocks and have time do research on them. Otherwise, it’s just like gambling: which I want to stay away from, and which is also the one reason I am trying to use less Robinhood App.
The reason I was talking about or reflecting here is because over the time I realized that #discipline is the key to investing success. And I need more of that.
More on discipline: I think it probably means I should reduce the number of stocks I own at one time, as well as the screen time on the stock trading apps.
(Update 11-12-2025) This tweet caught my attention.
If you put 2% of your portfolio into something and it became a 10 bagger, I’m not impressed. But if you put 20% in and it became a 10 bagger, that’s real skill. The difference isn’t just in return, it’s in conviction. How much you allocate before the outcome is known says far more about your investment acumen than the result ever will.
Warren Buffett’s 2 approaches to diversification:
“Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea, but a lot of people have gotten rich on their best idea…”
Deleting the trading apps on my phone?
I actually did it a few times. Last few days I happened to listen to this song – 烟 (许佳豪) – 删了吧『要不你还是把我删了吧，我咬紧牙关命令我发出这句话。』【動態歌詞】 || 何璟昕 (Ayen) – 刪了吧（粵語版）『終於你決定把我刪了吧，如此不上心竟開始應復都無暇，無心的我道出一聲晚安吧 你滿足嗎。』【動態歌詞MV】
Different topic, but same idea. I recall the pre mobile phone days, the life is much simpler, and we don’t have to deal with deleting someone from our WeChat contacts, or text messages and so on. Similar for stock trading too – we only have access to the computer at the brokerage firm, and a lot of people have to share that computer. Unless you really have a lot of money and you will have access to the VIP room at the brokerage firm.
Strategy shift over the years
(Update 11-13-2015) I believe that’s how Warren Buffett did over the years. For example, he did “cigar butt” style of investing, and eventually switched over to Coca Cola, Gillette and American Express “blue chip” types of companies. The recent example is Apple.
I think I need to similar switches for some of my accounts, e.g. the original Robinhood App account.
Plan of attack: I have 27 shares of $V now, and my initial plan is to hold both meaningful number of shares of $V (30?) and $MA (20?), for longer term. That means I will sell some smaller stock positions.
K shaped stock market
I talked about K shaped economy here. Also refer to CNBC – AI stock boom leaves many behind, economist says: ‘It really widens the wealth and income gap’
It seems to me the stock market is also K shaped, in the sense that big tech and AI/semiconductors companies were doing very well in last few years, while the rest of the market, including the rest of the S&P 500 companies were just doing so-so. Per Google AI Overview “how much stock market gain is due to ai”:
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks have been a highly concentrated force in the recent stock market rally, accounting for approximately 75% of the S&P 500’s total returns since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. (Source: Fortune; moneycontrol)