The Long Term Investor

50's could be anything from 50-59. I think a couple of things here. First, young folks need to take a look under the hood when starting out with their job/career. Check out the benefits offered. Sometimes starting out in the job market can be hard and it can take a bit to find that "right" place. Do a bit of research when looking at prospective employers.

As far as planning, start early and use those benefits (retirement plans) to save and get the match. Take advantage of those opportunities when available. Also, consider doing a bit on your own with maybe a set of Roth, IRA, taxable. Research those as to what may be an advantage to do as well. Every little bit helps. Take the time to educate yourself about it.

Once you come up with a plan be consistent about it. Stay with it. Make it simple so that you can manage it easily. Especially if you are young, think about it in terms of long-term (decades). Keep that mind set. There is a huge difference in short term versus long-term.

As time goes on and it will (faster than you think) the compounding will start to work its magic. I don't know what type of target date many have, but you will be much further along and in a better position to make some decisions about it if you take advantage of the time you have now to get a plan together.

 

Yeah, it appears the RANT is on from WXYZ today. I do get it in some aspects.

However, I have a bit different opinion when it comes to some of it.

I still maintain over the long-term we have and continue to benefit from the long-term earnings, company growth, and profits. Our returns over time have proven this to be true.

I think it can be easy to drift into the short term market sentiment, the volatility, and short term fluctuations. This is readily evident in the near term and daily actions.

Over time these things will eventually align back to true center in most companies (markets). The long-term and steady growth simply outweigh the short term noise.

This doesn't mean that it cannot be frustrating at times. It certainly can be. Sometimes sentiment and reaction is an emotional response rather than a fundamental basis. There can be a disconnect in that small window of time. It can even be irrational at times and maybe even last longer than we think it should.

Of course, I am speaking in broad market terms. When you get into individual companies/stock it can be very specific based on many things. As a collective group the market is rewarded over time based on those earnings and in most cases individual companies are too. It can be volatile at specific times with individual companies, but in most cases they fare just fine on a longer horizon.

 

Many of the millennials at my job are investing and saving with early retirement in mind. We have seen the past generations(our parents) work well into there 60's and have seen how much age restricts activities or that you retired at 66 and were dead at 70. With all the saving vehicles available its really not unrealistic. I max out a 401k and roth to federal limit and the company piles another 9% on top, I max out an HSA and the company throws in $400 a year on, I have an brokerage account to bridge me from the current to retirement. In general, I would say each decade you get older you spend less than the previous decade so if you have a fully funded 401k, say $1 million at age 40 then without adding anything else to it would be around $5 million (around $3 million inflation adjusted) at age 62 I think most of us can live off an an equivalent $120k/year. $120k a year now ends up being around $60k after you lose a quarter to taxes and another quarter to 401k/hsa/benifits. Plus by 62 you have plenty of time to set yourself up with a paid off house and paid off cars.

 

Amen TireSmoke. It takes a plan and some independent thinking. Just taking the time to set up some goals and think it through.

 

AMD earnings for those interested.

AMD Reports First Quarter 2026 Financial Results

 

IMO, Palantir is not a stock that is ever going to traded on solid information. It's a stock you have to believe in, buy, and hold.

I believe most stocks are driven 50% aggregators, 49.9% gambling morons, and a very small number of people who are capable of valuing a company and investing for the long term. My apology to gambling morons on any misunderstanding my words may have caused.

I'd bet on Palantir for the long term.

Speaking of nVidia, for all the hype Jensen has been selling the last couple of months, I only see one positive thing coming out of that company. B300 is going to be a big deal. It's a wild overclock of an existing die, it's going to soak up something like 2 kiloWatts, and I'm pretty confident the odd one is going to literally catch fire. Again... not hyperbole... catch... freaking... fire. But, if they can buffalo soldier that same, hapless, Blackwell die to put out 15 to 25% more CUDA goodness, and they can convince people their NVL144 platform merits triple the energy consumption of the current NVL72, they will remain competitive with AMD Helios until mid next year.

Road to Nowhere: Before you start typing that power doesn't matter and nVidia will stay on top forever, think about it for a moment.

An NVL144 is going to soak up 300kiloWatts. That's over a quarter of a megawatt. The current NVL72 converts about 140 kilowatts of energy into heat, when fully populated.

Data center managers already complain bitterly about power consumption.

Every single Watt of energy consumed by electronic equipment is converted into heat. Rejecting 1 Watt of heat requires 2 to 3 Watts of cooling and that's if the chillers are highly efficient. Show me a data center with a spare megawatt of cooling.

Will customers follow nVidia? I don't know.

Pros - all super computing software runs on CUDA
- pressure to follow upgrade path
- nVidia hype

Cons - AMD promises 2x power efficiency
- AMD promises substantial cost savings, approaching half
- ROCm is mostly compatible with CUDA (only some legacy custom bits cannot directly port to ROCm but there is quite a bit of that still floating around)


I speculate that most customers will follow nVidia, at least at first. If AMD can get enough system wins, they will gain momentum and will gut the nVidia installed base as quickly as they can produce product (perhaps being in the lead by 2027 or 2028. If they can't get enough system wins, nVidia will have a several years to come up with an answer to Helios.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to see some behaviors out of AMD that are not flattering. I won't sell my stake in the company and I don't even know if they have real behavioral problems but I have some concerns.

 

Let me sum up the last post on NVL/Helos.

Walmart converted all refrigerators in all stores to LED lighting, 15 years ago. They knew that 1.5 Watts of LED light could replace 9 Watts of incandescent. They were extremely early to do this, when LED was quite expensive.

The reason they did this is because the fridge has to fight the bulb to stay cool. It has to reject heat that leaks in and it also has to reject the heat of the bulbs already inside the fridge. Since a fridge requires 3x the power to remove heat caused by 1x power (best case), the overall cost of that bulb is 4x draw, or 36 Watts (9 Watts for light, 27 Watts to get rid of the heat created by the bulb). Walmart knew they could save 30 Watts by swapping fridge bulbs because of the refrigeration saving leverage. It paid to swap fridge bulbs 15 years before there was a return on swapping a porch light for an LED.

Data center math is the same. If you can save $250K per year in power for the AI gear, that is a $1M saving when cooling is considered.

This is why the power savings are far, far more compelling than the 6 average dudes required to change a light bulb are aware. Not only is the saving massive, there's also lower or no cost to upgrade cooling and lower to no cost to upgrade electrical service. Massive savings. If someone gets online early (Elon Musk already kicking tires) and proves AI can work well on Helios, there will be legions of accountants keeping a picture of Helios on their night stand.

That's enough condescension for one day. I apologize but I had a laugh writing this. lol!

 

The funny thing is, I do not disagree with any of what you are saying. I am not a bind Nvidia fanboy to be sure. The returns from them from the last 5 years, however, CRUSH anything I would have gotten from AMD in the same timeframe. I am much further ahead in my portfolio as a result of going Nvidia vs. AMD.

Having said that, since the AI scene is moving from LLM training into lightning fast inferencing, AMD is starting to look more appealing as a result. On the other hand, AMD is very much limited to their current market arena. Nvidia is in darn near everything. They will continue to dominate as long as Jensen is in charge. I just do not see that changing, and I am a huge Lisa Su fan.

If I am wrong, and AMD starts to eat Nvidia's lunch, you bet I will switch over. I am here to make money and not be a fanboy.

 

I agree with all of this. If Nvidia cannot compete on the efficiency front, they will have a problem, as it is true that AMD is becoming a viable alternative. I am not ready to write them off here though. Like I said though, if it is becoming clear that the smart money lies with AMD, then I will switch over without hesitation. We shall see.