d1cooperr
Silver
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2026
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Not a financial advisor. Personal experience only, not advice — do your own research.
START HERE
Not every sector deserves the same amount of attention. I lean tech/AI because it's where I actually understand the product, the competitive landscape, and what makes one company different from the next. That matters more than people think — you can't hold a position through a 30% drawdown on conviction if you don't actually understand why you own it.
Sectors I don't understand as well, I size smaller or skip entirely. That's not a "tech/AI is always right" take. It's a "trade what you can actually evaluate" take.
Tech/AI is exactly the kind of sector where FOMO wrecks people. Every few months there's a "this is the next big thing" ticker getting passed around, and by the time it's being passed around, a lot of the move has usually already happened.
Pick a stock you already hold or are considering. Write down, in one sentence, what actually makes that company different from its competitors. If you can't, that's a sign you're holding a story, not a company.
Long Term Investing 1.2 [How I choose stocks]
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Why I Lean This Direction
Not every sector deserves the same amount of attention. I lean tech/AI because it's where I actually understand the product, the competitive landscape, and what makes one company different from the next. That matters more than people think — you can't hold a position through a 30% drawdown on conviction if you don't actually understand why you own it.
Sectors I don't understand as well, I size smaller or skip entirely. That's not a "tech/AI is always right" take. It's a "trade what you can actually evaluate" take.
What I'm Actually Looking At
- Revenue growth that's real, not just narrative. A lot of hype cycles run on story instead of numbers — the story eventually has to be backed by actual earnings or the stock corrects hard.
- Whether the company has a moat, or if it's easily replicated. AI especially has a lot of thin wrappers around someone else's model with no real differentiation. Those don't hold up long-term.
- Cash position and burn rate. A company can have the best product story in the world and still get wrecked if it runs out of runway before profitability.
- Who's actually adopting the tech — enterprises, consumers, or just other startups. Enterprise adoption tends to be stickier and more predictable than consumer hype cycles.
The Trap Inside This Sector
Tech/AI is exactly the kind of sector where FOMO wrecks people. Every few months there's a "this is the next big thing" ticker getting passed around, and by the time it's being passed around, a lot of the move has usually already happened.
Liking a sector doesn't mean liking every stock in it. I've passed on plenty of AI names that were pure hype with no fundamentals behind them.
SYSTEM CHECK
Pick a stock you already hold or are considering. Write down, in one sentence, what actually makes that company different from its competitors. If you can't, that's a sign you're holding a story, not a company.
