Distraction

Fooling the people…

…all the time?

For how long?

What’s the historical precedent?

Did anyone get away with such behaviour…

…forever?

No.

No one…

…ever…

…has gotten a free pass…

…to indulge in reckless actions, …

…insulting the entire world’s intelligence, …

…obstructing the earning power of all but self, …

…the king with no clothes, …

…with obnoxiousness at its peak…

… ad nauseam.

Since nothing seems to be happening, as in there seems to be no change in the situation, and things keep taking a turn for the worse after showing some signs of healing, what’s the recourse?

We bide our time.

Time turns the table.

We hone our skills.

Silently implementing our long-term work, we dabble with the new kid on the block, AI, to create new systems. We work at seamlessness. Connectivity. Automation. We’re working at 25x. Thanks to AI. From a complete skeptic, these last seven weeks have turned my tide towards areas which were but a dream.

There was a pinpointed trading system I wished to implement. I’ve spent my years learning many skills, but not the languages and infrastructures to create such trading systems. Not required now. I don’t need to know anything about programming languages and such infrastructures. Creation is now about dialogue. A sincere dialogue with Claude, over seven weeks, has resulted in a multi-layered, automated trading system, semi-seamless, in that order yes or no is still in the hands of my human self. I can make the system completely seamless, have kept it semi out of sheer choice, just saying. Even things like app to app connectivity are completely handheld by the AI, till successful completion and implementation.

System will not go live till required success rate is hit consistently. Tracking and understanding performance has now become a breeze. Fine-tuning, almost daily, is a religion. All thanks to the AI. One must give credit where it’s due.

Now, why, for a long-term investor like me, does the question even arise?

Why even create a trading system?

Income?

That’s one reason. Main reason for me?

No.

So, if income is not the main reason, then what?

Distraction.

Distraction?

Yes. I wish to take my attention away from my long-term portfolio. Perhaps open this once a month, on a weekend. Operate through GTTs only. No interaction at all during market hours. Forget. Switch off. Out.

Why?

No focus means no action. That’s the space where we want to be. We will act once a month, and that should be good enough. Give the long-term a chance to become very long-term.

So you’re saying that your attention remains on the video game action.

Yeah. Working life is punctuated by the video game action of trading. Seamlessly, with max automation except actual buy and sell implementation. In fact order is fed into trading account through the AI itself. The implementation angle is the money loading from my end. Without fuel, the order is rejected by the trading platform.

Wow.

Yeah.

A whole new world.

Yeah.

25x seems right.

Yeah.

So a lot of people could be doing the same thing as you right now, right?

Yeah.

Where’s your edge?

It’s how you handle after entry. That’s where the edge is. How you manage. How you exit.

And how?

Hey, that’s the edge, remember. Not going to give that away. That’s my hard earned edge over more than two decades. Earn your own edge. There’s no substitute for diving in.

Could somebody replicate your edge through AI discussion and development?

Others could develop an edge, yes, through AI. It won’t be my edge though. I don’t care what others develop. I’ll just keep honing my edge and making it sharper day by day, trade upon trade, tirelessly. My edge will keep adapting.

What’s the end outcome for you, from this exercise?

Well, ideally, for me, the tool that I’m creating for the sheer purpose of distraction, shall then go on to yield…

…regular income.

Fading Deception

Manipulating…

…the masses…

…towards something to be bought…

…or something to be sold…

…when whales are out to buy or sell, respectively, …

…is the bread and butter order of the day usual suspect chicanery that one can expect in the marketplace.

Unnerving?

Relax.

It’s normal.

How else would a whale feed on a school of fish?

Meaning, how would a big institution, or a many-big-institutions-conglomerate loosen the public’s hold on their holdings, to sell en masse if the big people are buying. Or, vice-versa, how else would the BigFats offload bulk onto the unsuspecting FatteningPigPublic, if the BigFats (BFs) are selling bulk?

Deception…

…is a handy tool that comes to hand.

Offloading Korea? Gold? Silver? Oil? Something AI with no fundamentals? Create the hype, reel after reel, rant after rant, roadshow after roadshow, till all and one’s Aunty believe the story, and when these latters start to act, BFs start offloading.

Buying Core Indian Tech? Lambast the country and the world with non stop ranting for 5 months and continuing. Flood its social media with panic reels about the collapse of Core Indian Tech with its debt-free-ness and its cash on the balance sheets, something whales want to own, and watch the underlyings crash, lapping them up as huge bargains.

Disturbed?

Manipulation is irritating.

However, it sets up opportunities.

Buying opportunities.

Selling opportunities.

It’s woven into the nature of markets.

Material and emotional life is about wheedling a few bucks out of someone, or keeping someone’s affection trapped with emotional blackmail.

Markets are a reflection of life itself, thus.

Why should one be alarmed, then, when short-term life-dealings are also found in the markets?

Any way out of this conundrum?

There is.

Remove the noise.

Move away from the one-month thought process, the three month one, the six month one, the one year one. Move longer term. 5 years. 10. 20. No noise now. Fundamentals will shine and translate into EPS spikes into price spikes. That’s all. That’s how markets work. This takes time though. Time enough for manipulation to come, do its work, die down as noise always does, and then the real game starts to play.

If you still can’t handle it, move onto some other play.

Or…

…teach yourself to stay long-term.

Best way to learn is to put your money on the line, hit, try, fall, get up, repeat, till you stop falling.

Ensemble

Amidst the…

…frenzy…

…of reels, posts, communications, reports, research and what have yous…

…concerning the ongoing image battle of AI vs Core IT…

…it is extremely difficult to keep one’s head and vision clear.

What does the future look like?

A flurry of multitudinous pathways emerging does not mean utopia yet.

Forward outlook, especially a lucrative one, is not about exclusion.

Coming on to the scene with an attitude of trampling everyone else out of the scene – is this sustainable?

No.

Going into the future with partnership?

Yes. Sustainable. Let’s look around. Who’s forming partnerships?

Core IT. Yes. The impulse to continue to thrive is a strong one.

AI? (Yes). No. No. Unsure. No. Yes. No.

The frenzy that results after having spent obscene sums with steady revenue streams only developing since recently is so frantic and haphazard, that one’s left hand sometimes doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

Pulling at the same string in the same direction will maximize revenue stream.

Hostile attacks at Core IT, every few days a new one, is not the way forward.

Is this a case of ‘as the leader does so do the subjects act’? A kind of a concerted strategy? To stomp on everyone’s heads and declare oneself king.

King?

Perhaps for a day.

Long-term market leadership requires craft.

Craft comes from years of honing.

Speak track record.

Who has this?

Core IT.

AI has at max what? Capability. Not craft. For craft, one needs to grind.

New kids will need to work as an ensemble within business infrastructures.

Not without.

Within.

Inclusion is in.

Exclusion is out.

Boo to exclusion.

Imagine a scenario…

…when Core IT comes out with something…

…much…

…much…

…cheaper.

Even in that scenario, it will choose to include. That’s why it’s made money for five decades back to back.

Remember that word.

Inclusion.

Staring Facts in the Face

Mongerers…

…are very, very busy.

After all, the target is in a corner.

Why not strike massively, and keep striking?

Punish the vanquished multiple times per misdemeanour.

Unfortunately, Core IT has gone quiet.

They’ve stopped caring about their share price.

Focus is now on intrinsic growth, not on quarter to quarter looking good attitude.

Pushed to the wall, the instinct to survive and regain lost ground is on all fours.

Forget about all this, is the aggressor AI actually so capable as to completely substitute the need for Core IT with regard to enterprise level programming, already?

No.

Perhaps in a year?

No.

5 years.

No.

10 years?

Possibly not.

20 years?

Possibly yes.

And, look at the mass reaction.

Masses believe they are ready to take over, like, yesterday.

Then comes the black box introduction.

AI companies are offering a black box to corporates, which will be their in-house AI, all data stays at home, let’s all bypass Core IT.

Does the data stay in the black box? Does it go anywhere? Does anybody know?

No.

Where is the trust coming from?

A bank entrusting its internal data to a black box, the big four doing the same, doctor’s records, hmmmm, not adding up. To a human under non-disclosure agreement? Plausible.

Departments being trained in corporates to become the tech arm?

It’s like an additional wing being added to a hospital, to handle book-keeping. Use the wing for expanding the hospital? What a preposterous idea! Let’s all become jack of all trades. Why even bother specializing. For that we have AI, right, to handle the specialist surgeries?

Panics almost always take to ridiculous trajectories.

This one has now cracked open genuinely clean-balance-sheeted free-cashflow-generating companies. Who have decided to take on all blows without responding. Probably want their CMPs to hit three digits and then some before announcing anything. They seem to have forgotten what buybacks are.

With nothing to go on, where do you stand, regarding Core IT?

Clean balance sheets.

Zero debt.

Track record of navigating through disruption.

Free cash flow being generated year upon year.

That’s enough.

Two choices.

Hold on to your holdings and look elsewhere currently, for investing.

Add on, as in average down.

Depends upon your risk profile, which option you choose.

Liquidation, for me, is not an option, given this :

Clean balance sheets.

Zero debt.

Track record of navigating through disruption.

Free cash flow being generated year upon year.

What am I doing?

Till lately I was averaging down.

Recently, I stopped averaging down in Core Tech. That’s a change in trajectory. Ya, have been investing elsewhere recently. Going to hold Core IT through, and accumulate further only above my buying averages for Core IT stocks. The exact change that’s happened is that now I need these stocks to speak out with their deeds and propel themselves to above my buying averages, before buying more. Might not happen soon. That’s fine. The reasons for comfort in holding are these :

Clean balance sheets.

Zero debt.

Track record of navigating through disruption.

Free cash flow being generated year upon year.

As long as these reasons exist, holding beyond while focusing elsewhere is the change that’s happened at Magic Bull.

Why, you ask? Why a change from the staunch attitude earlier?

It’s a matter of being in tune with one’s risk-profile. Till it wasn’t speaking up, I was comfortable averaging down. When it started to be bewildered by the goings on, I changed to being comfortable holding.

It’s ok. One can’t have the right opinion all the time. For a while, one can be wrong also. In those times that one feels one can be wrong also, making the switch from averaging down to only holding is ok, provided these exist :

Clean balance sheets.

Zero debt.

Track record of navigating through disruption.

Free cash flow being generated year upon year.

Only Misses for the DoomNixers

Stadiums full.

This is what we see at the FIFA World Cup.

Gloom and doom about no one travelling to watch…

…seems to be nixed.

Are any doomsdayers amounting to anything?

AI taking over and slaying all else?

It’s a collab. No one’s taking over anything completely.

US markets were supposed to crash…

…like yesterday. And with that, the world.

Whenever a full blown crash does happen, it will very probably be at a time when most shorters are exhausted, read in big losses and retired hurt, didn’t want to use the word bankrupt.

AI is supposed to lead the ‘bubble burst’.

Has AI just smelt some monetization in collab with the back-offices of the world?

Back-offices have the capability to hold the system up on the back of their picks and shovels work, which, obviously, DoomNixers ‘nix’ themselves upon. You see, it’s not glamorous enough. They didn’t see it at all thus, and stumbled and fell.

Here’s another one : No one can beat the effthurteefiive. True? Hmmm. We saw what we saw.

Attackers felt they would bring the opponent down over the weekend. Opponents, fighting for their lives, seem to have emerged better than their attackers.

When one fights for one’s life, one fights with every ounce of resource and every joule of energy.

The Dean at his Univ advised Max Planck to study Music instead of Physics, since he felt that every meaningful thing in Physics had been discovered already.

Max Planck went on to found a whole new branch of sciences. Quantum Physics. On which anything and everything today is based.

There’s this thing about optimists. They believe in their systems, their hard work. Their ability to fight for their lives. For their systems. For the passing on of their legacies.

Max Planck fought for the entire field of Physics, and what a legacy he’s passed on. Conventional Physics builds the framework, and Quantum allows us to traverse the Universe.

Core Tech is fighting for its life. Pushed to the wall, it will devise a way to emerge, as a monetizing handholder for AI to be implemented. It’s fought for its life many times before and has emerged victorious, and very lucratively.

There are two paths emerging here, in the example with Core Tech.

Path one – DoomNix. Pronounce it dead. Invest elsewhere, with expensive valuations.

Path two – research. Find companies that are transforming with the times, with clean balance sheets and free cashflows. Invest in these, as valuations are very reasonable currently.

One can even follow both paths MINUS the doomnixing. Meaning that one takes punts in expensive companies, no idea how that will pan out in the very long-term, and one also invests in very reasonably priced and transforming Core Tech, with clean balance sheets and free cashflows. This will give a decent return in the very long-term.

We leave the doomnixing to the pessimists, nay-sayers, lacking-in-hopers, non-believers in themselves and in good systems – this breed will keep collecting misses in life.

Having expunged the breed from our eco-systems, we stride ahead with our very long-term bullish view in our growth market, since the essence of sitting on a compounding portfolio for multiple decades is…

…an optimist mindset.

Fable me this

Fable…

…we’re being told about…

…Fable 5…

…is that Frontier Country has disallowed its usage…

…for non-Frontier Countries or semi-Frontier Countries.

Thing is, …

…not every country needs to be a Frontier Country to make the world go round.

There’s a front-end, fine, accepted, and it seems to be calling the shots. To the extent of over-estimation of its own capabilities. Over-reaching. Over-stretching. Over-everything. That’s the front end. They’re doing what a front-end would do, in its position, and perhaps more.

However, there’s a back-end to everything in the world. Some countries are great at being back-offices to the world. Please understand, that the front-end can’t function long-term without cowork with the back-end.

Back-end streamlines.

It monetizes.

It affords the front-end penetration.

Infrastructure-seepage.

Bridging of the getting used to gap.

Bridging of the trust gap.

Process pinpointing.

To lever to becoming an accepted norm, front-end needs back-end, forever, since remaining the norm is also a priority.

The episode with Fable 5…

…reeks strongly of something big back-firing…

…in the front-end’s thought process.

They came sweeping in, full of over-confidence that they had something which would wipe everything else out.

Caused havoc.

Meanwhile, back-end started to adapt. FAST.

Some four months into the storm, fronties realize that backies have the usage figured out, and are implementing so fast, that very, very soon, their numbers promise to be fab.

Panic.

What to do?

Deny the backies usage of the frontest-end, i.e. Fable 5. Lest they overtake us in looking good.

Ha.

Just gave yourself away.

We know you now. WE SEE YOU.

And we’re going to use this dawning realization to our benefit.

We’re holding the line.

Our back-end is rock-strong, highly adaptive, and will find a way to monetize any situation.

Anything you throw…

…at us. We…

…will…

…monetize.

We’re just doubling down in our own back-yard.

On our own horses.

Period.

Life at Frontier Minus One

Sanity prevails…

…at frontier minus one.

Rat race is within the underlying’s…

control.

Virtual / quasi / substantial / semi debt-free-ness…

exists.

Free cash-flow generation on the balance sheet is…

…common.

At frontier minus one, the narrative is …

…under control…

…as proven by self-determination of speed of change…

…and by exhibition of substantial growth.

Not at breakneck speeds.

Not by borrowing to the hilt.

Not by greedy behaviour.

Not by indigestible trajectory.

Not by a reckless ‘not giving a damn too bad if you’re not so fast’ attitude.

Life at frontier minus one…

…is somewhat balanced, with a flow.

Innovation at frontier minus one is achieved much faster

…than at frontier minus two, but much slower than at…

…frontier zero zero.

No tech company that wishes to thrive well into the future is currently functioning at…

…frontier minus two.

Either the transition to minus one has been made, or, it’s in the process.

Why not go for the jugular? Straight to zero zero.

Everyone has their role in this puzzle.

Imagine an older civilization going into battle.

There was a front line, paving the way, at immense cost.

There was a reserve support line, with artillery, first-aid, communication, and what have you.

There was a third line with supply, reinforcements, semi-trainees doing other stuff normally, etc.

There was aerial support, naval support, intelligence, research and analysis staff etc.

All combined to create an ensemble of actions.

Cut to now.

Warfare has changed.

Immense cost is still there, but immense cost to the front line, as in cost of life, has been reduced greatly, speak drone and missile warfare, supported by AI backed intelligence and analysis.

Point is, innovation, a different way of thinking, disruption and all their cousins will find a way to make things affordable, implementable.

That’s the way civilizations move forward.

Not for you or me to change. It’s the way of the world.

And that is what frontier minus one banks upon.

Meaning, to keep functioning at sustainable levels, slowly, painstakingly, in the process, simultaneously, finding a way, a connect, to frontier zero zero.

The connect can be of co-work. Amicable. Win-Win. You earn, we earn.

At frontier minus one, the world view is not to annihilate, but to…

…accommodate.

To win…

…together…

…in…

symbiosis.

Symbiosis

Imagine…

…the most value you can imagine.

That’s what this word is worth.

Especially now.

What’s the truth?

Existential question.

First we had everyone and their aunties proclaim the death of core Tech companies.

Hmmm.

Core Tech companies, and their chief protagonists, thought otherwise.

Number of believers kept waning though.

Until recently.

Something started to reverse in belief systems.

AI was behaving fantastically utilitarian with a human holding the reins.

Meaning, there needed to be a human there, for practical purposes.

Frontier AI deployed engineers to be the human face. Or so one was told.

Came the trust issue.

Do we double up on our trust in this no track record magician who just showed up out of nowhere?

Do we entrust privileged client data to the unknown?

Do we strip ourselves naked, TWICE?

NO.

Everyone and their uncles have answered with an emphatic NO.

Who is the human handler – the go-between – the trusted face – the rein holder?

Someone with a track record.

Proven.

Tried, and…

trusted.

Self-propelling.

With no liabilities. Spell ZERO DEBT.

With copious FREE CASH FLOW to INNOVATE FREELY…

…to navigate the reins successfully and as per the requirements of an enterprise.

Who is this entity?

None other than…

…our own very well known…

CORE TECH.

Leaner.

Hungry to prove its point.

To have its raison d’être acknowledged, and paid for.

To earn and compound steadily.

Forget about dying. Let’s talk about long term thriving.

Then, we had the captains of frontier AI admitting, that yes, ‘we do need core tech handholding to be implemented successfully’.

Gone was the initial hubris, that ‘we had come to wipe out old thought patterns, and all old systems’.

Reality had dawned, and these captains at least had the decency to admit it.

Actually, they had realized that their existence now depended upon how much their infrastructure would seep through. And…

…that no one was trusting them enough to hand over the job of seeping through to them, but much rather, to trusted old compatriots, to Core Tech.

So they came forward to shake hands.

Good.

Symbiosis.

We want to move forward on the back of this symbiosis.

There will be gigantic and fast development on the back of this symbiosis.

We are looking at space travel, space colonization, disease control, climate change, cheap solar, cheap desalination, perhaps even alien integration and partnership – unimaginable perhaps a few months ago, but possibly conceivable on the back of this symbiosis.

There’s new talk which has recently emerged, from the other extreme, and needs to be discarded, like its mirror image on the opposite side of the bell curve. This is the talk of frontier AI dying out because of becoming unaffordable.

Well, in whatever shape it exists currently, frontier AI does have tremendous capacity to solve problems.

Let it do just that on the back of this symbiosis, and earnings will start to flow.

Core Tech won’t let it wither, frontier AI has now become their raison d’être too.

Don’t you see it?

Two universes are converging, each needing the other to survive.

In the end, they become one universe.

Companies will merge. Synergies will multiply. Mega projects will be achieved, faster, more bombastically.

Earnings will flow.

Where do you want to be?

Remaining a doomsdayer will not help you.

Get into the flow.

Invest into debt-free, free cash-flow generating core tech as value deepens.

Look for debt-free, frontier minus one, free cash-flow generating semi AI companies, research these thoroughly for any red flags, and if those found are manageable, put in some funds.

If you find a frontier tech with manageable debt and a reasonable balance sheet, with a PEG ratio (price to earnings ratio divided by earnings per share growth percentage for the fiscal) somewhat under control. ok, put in some money there too.

Get out of the doomsday mindset.

Put your money to work, and then lock it in for another twenty years. Leave the compounded proceeds to your children.

Now.

Let the crashes come. There will be compounding post crashes too. Just look at the monthly chart of an IT index from 1995 to today. Dot-com peak looks miniscule and low compared to the levels of the monthly chart today.

Enough talking. Do the recce and then let’s talk.