The Apple Bet He Never Sold (ft. Gary Vaughan, Daily Stock Picks)

I'll tell you the story of my Apple position, cuz I think you and I haven't had a long-form podcast. So, I don't think I've actually gone into the position. Apple is my It's my most famous one, because I took I I I I changed jobs in 2006, and I walked into the IT office, and I said, uh I said, "Hey, can I get an iPhone?" Cuz you when you start a new job, you get a new phone. So, I said, "Can I get an iPhone?" The IT guy said, "No. We're a I forget it was either BlackBerry or it was um Google, and I don't remember which one. But, he said, "No." And I literally said to him, I said, "Hey, um how many people come in here as new hires and ask for an Apple phone?" And he said, uh "We had 40 new hires today, and uh every All 40 asked for an iPhone." I took my $10,000 that day. It was a signing bonus for the job. I took the $10,000, and I just bought Apple stock. Today, I still hold that $10,000. It's worth a couple million dollars. So, that it didn't take investing. It didn't take understanding. It took, like Chris Camillo says, that social arbitrage of, "Hey, I found something in the market that's good." And today, you look at the devices for AI. Apple's has the devices. What just came out earlier this year? It was Claude. Everybody bought uh Mac minis. They couldn't keep them in stock. Now, you've got uh Grok bot coming on, where where it's kind of a cloud-based system. I still think you need a device. And with Apple having 2 million devices and a brand-new CEO, that was the only time when I thought about selling that Apple position was when Steve Jobs uh passed away or passed the torch to uh to to Tim Cook. Uh but, I tell you what, that company returns share the money to their shareholders. Now, I'm I'm here for for the money that they make. And I think Nvidia is forming into that same company, where they're just going to take a bunch of money. And And those two stocks, to me, safest place in the market is Nvidia going to double and I said this last August when they hit five trillion dollars, that company can't go to 10 trillion overnight. It's not going to do that in a year. So you need to take some of your position out of that Nvidia gain and put it into something that could double and I just chose AMD. And AMD has doubled since then and so my position in AMD has gone. So now I have a core position in AMD that's 100% profits and I just let it ride because I continue to think the only thing in this market that will stop AI the AI build out are the bond rates and we're seeing that start to happen. We started the build out of this AI race with um with with cash flow. Uh you know, it was they just basically cash flow that they were spending. Now it's borrowed money and when you get to borrowed money, smart managers and smart CEOs are like, you know, maybe we want to slow stuff down. Maybe we can't do this. That's why I say I think still think those mag sevens with their cash flow is just the best and and safest bet in the market. But again, if you're 20 like you guys are in your 20s and 30s, you should be taking more risk than me. That your portfolio shouldn't be 50% Apple and 20% Nvidia. It should be risk because you want to compound those huge winners. So I I don't I don't share my portfolio. I'm not one of those services that will give you the greatest stock picks of all time. But I have a solid foundation that should lead you to to independent wealth and and that's what's been successful for me and that's what I try and pass on to to my listeners. >> Great trade with Apple and I am curious to kind of take that and talk about more of the stocks you've seen in a similar mold today. AMD you mentioned as one. Are there others that are large percentages of your portfolio that you're deeply invested in and in there for the long haul despite, you know, some of the murmurs around them? >> Yeah, I think Google, Amazon, that it's it's mostly those Mag 7. And I'll tell you, after listening to um your robotics episode, uh I've always been kind of hot and cold with Tesla. And it's one of my missed positions. The the the Model 3 that I mentioned that I would have bought, if I had just bought $65,000 worth of Tesla stock instead of the car, >> Yeah. >> I think that's close to a million dollars today. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, I I I miss as many as I take, but I think if you find a and I say this constantly on my podcast, find a good company with good products, good earnings, and good management, and I think that's a recipe for compounding. Uh look at Intel. Look at how good Intel, the new management, has done with Intel. They just came out of a 20, you know, a 20-year drought, where they just came back to their uh 2000, 26 years it took them to get back to those highs. So, I think they've done a good job. Now, they don't have the earnings that I I I like, but you take some of those those Mag 7. And again, I I I I like to always say I'm a large-cap tech investor. So, if you're going to throw me into something, you know, uh Brinker International, EAT. If you look at EAT, Cake, those restaurants, 3 months they're up 80%. Those aren't core positions in my portfolio, but one of the things that I do is I partner with those great portfolios. So, like Seeking Alpha, which was a partner with you guys, they have a portfolio called Alpha Picks. It's returned 400% in like 4 years. For me, I got in early with that portfolio, and I tried to trade those stocks. I didn't beat that portfolio, because they had a strategy of buy and hold those winners. And so, I wound up trading it for 8 months and underperforming their performance. So, what did I do? Change strategy. I bought the entire portfolio and yeah, I said, "You know what? I'm going to take this entire portfolio. I'm going to hold it by their holding percentage that they have. And then I'm going to take my skills as a trader with my 4-hour algorithm in TrendSpider and I'm going to trade it." So, in July I called out EAT. I said, "Hey, it's got some momentum. It's up here." We're up 40% since that pick in July in a boring name. And it's not always exciting. But for me, the large portion of my portfolio, Gav, and I know this, when I'm a stock picker, I'm not going to pick a restaurant and say, "This is the one that you want to go into cuz it's going to make you a ton of money." I'm just not that great. But when I find a stock with an advantage like a tech stock, that's where I kind of go into it and that's where, you know, my portfolio goes into. Um, you know, Shy. Shy is one of the great I I first met Shy on one of your spaces. And he started a new podcast with uh Brad the Stock Market Nerd, which is great. And again, I listen to all these podcasts and all these guys. Shy called out Rocket Lab, I remember on a space that you you probably were hosting. And I was like, "What are you kidding me? Space? You I'm going to go into Rocket Lab?" I think it was $4 then. And and he's done great with it. Those are the guys where I get the stock picks from and then I put them into my risk tolerance. So, I use the tools that I have, which is Seeking Alpha for fundamentals and I I don't do a ton of research. I like to think that I I I'm good enough with my research and I have good enough tools to actually evaluate things within 10 to 15 minutes and then decide, "Does it deserve my money?" Because my portfolio is not going to be made Gav, I had a full-time job. I had a portfolio with 50 names in it. I could be I lost more money than I should have because I had 50 names. I like to have five to 15 names in my portfolio that I manage. Then I have the Alpha Picks portfolio which has like 40 names in it. That's a portfolio that's worked. That's a strategy that's worked. So again, I don't need to manage 40 or 50 names to find a new stock to actually get my money to put into it versus the Microns, versus the SanDisks that I I've invested in, versus those kinds of one. Do I think they have more room to run? I do. And it's just based on your risk tolerant. And I believe that those Microns and those memories I think they have more room to run. So we we saw it. Jensen in 2024 called out power as the the next big bottleneck. And what was the leading S&P stock in 2024? It was Vistra Energy. Vistra Energy has done crap since then, but it was the best stock in 2024. Then he called out memory last year in July. So in August I put in my in my my newsletter I said memory's it. Start going in. He told us last year to do energy, and we had huge gains. And even in December I was like you need to buy Micron. And I used the tools that I had. Buy Micron. It all said buy Micron. And so I didn't get one of the mistakes that I made was I traded SanDisk, but I bought Micron, which was a mistake. But am I unhappy with 400%? A little when SanDisk gets 4000%. But who knew? I mean honestly, you know, if if if I was trading momentum, I probably would have done it. And that leads me to a good strategy for you guys that I just kind of figured out today.