Trillion Dollar Club with Mostly Borrowed Ideas (MBI): Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Broadcom, and Tesla ππ°ππ€π
Episode Description
This is a massive one! Nearly two hours, but you know what they say: Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!
My friend MBI (π§π©πΊπΈ) and I sat down to do something that sounds simple but turned out to be a seminar. In 2018, Apple ο£Ώ became the first $1T company. Fast forward to now, and weβre living in the era of the Trillion Dollar Club, a small group of companies that collectively represent an almost comical amount of market cap (Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Broadcom, and Tesla).
We went through all of them one by one and shared our honest thoughts, bouncing between the big picture and small details that may turn out to be crucial.
If the market is a card game, we wanted to figure out which hands we like best. β₯οΈβ¦οΈβ£οΈβ οΈ
We touched on many interesting ideas that help better understand the forces at play for Big Tech these days. Early on, we dive into the βcompute theory of everything.β MBI found this 1998 Hans Moravec paper with a sentence so good he repeats it to himself like a mantra on his daily walks! πΆββοΈ(gotta get those 10k steps! π£)
Among many other things, we discuss:
* Jensenβs βcircular financingβ strategy, and why it might actually be brilliant π
* East Coast vs. West Coast investing philosophy.
* Why the job of the analyst is getting harder, not easier.
* How academic papers create trillions in value (cat paper, βAttention is All You Need,β Chinchilla).
* Apple as βSwitzerland,β and their risky bet that weβre at the hardware end-state π±
* Whether Google has the best hand but keeps getting in its own way, and DeepMind as Google's "reverse takeover" and saving grace
* Why Microsoft seemed to have everything and somehow ended up in the doghouse πΎ
* TSMC as the true choke point, the bottom of the inverted pyramid, and why MBI is Zen about geopolitical risk π§ββοΈ
* Metaβs confusing inability to reach the frontier despite checking every box, and what are the necessary ingredients for a frontier AI lab? π§βπ³π
* Tesla as the ultimate βWest Coast philosophyβ stock and Muskβs loss of interest in EVs.
* Broadcomβs IP blocks + custom ASIC enablement + networkingβ¦ with the risk of hyperscaler disintermediation.
* Amazon's retail business being underestimated and Walmart as a sneakily smart company π
* A tribute to Buffett and Munger, where our emotions come out a bit.
* Which CEOs are overrated and underrated? ππ
We close with the hardest question: if you could own only one of these companies for the next 20 years, which would it be? We both landed on the same answer. Listen to the end to find out why π§
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