I am currently 47 years old. Unfortunately in that time frame I have lost a lot of family members. Some (most) were accidents, some to age, some to cancer, and one to suicide. That’s 11 deaths total. Only 1 person out of 11 had a will. When you are grieving the last thing you want to do is close an estate up. It’s even harder if nothing has been prepared in advance. After the initial shock of the death settles (the phase where everyone is usually nice), greed comes through in a most alarming manner. I’ve watched people turn into monsters. Make sure you have a will!!!! or people will fight.  I know most people hate thinking about their death or their spouses death but honestly it’s just a fact of life. I’ve personally been the executor of 2 estates now. This is my advice: 1. If your young get life insurance. If you’re retired it’s not worth it. 2. Make sure you have a will. 3. Make sure you have a personal directive. 4. Make sure you have a power of attorney set up. 5. If your married make your spouse the beneficiary of your TFSA and RRSP(has to be done through the account not the will), they will roll into the spouses account without taxation. 6. If you’re married, and you own a house, make sure both names are on the title, joint tenant, NOT tenant in common. This activates right of survivorship on property and doesn’t have to go through the estate. 7. If you’re married, both people should have their name on all the vehicles, joint, otherwise it’s a headache after death. 8. Buy a file folding system. I have a plastic one that has a clasp and handle. 9. Put EVERYTHING in this file folder that would be needed if you died tomorrow. a) all land titles B) information on house insurance so it can either be eventually canceled or name changed over. C) your will (or the location of your will),  power of attorney, and personal directive D) the information for your car, car insurance, and registration on vehicles. E) information on life insurance. F) all current year papers needed for filing your taxes. Because the survivor will have to do it and will need that information. G) where your household bills are. ALL OF THEM, electricity, gas, Netflix, magazine, subscriptions everything you can think of that is in their name. Because you are going to have to cancel them. H) their credit card information where to contact to cancel the cards I) birth certificate, SIN numbers, marriage, license, etc. J) information on all your investments accounts, bank accounts, etc. K) anything else you can think of for your situation If you’re married, I’d have one box per person. When you die, the funeral home will issue many death certificates. And your lawyer will give you copies of the will. These will be needed to change over any accounts. Everything else goes through the estate which is taxed and the lawyers take their fees so I’d avoid this as much as possible especially if you’re married. This is why having property in both people‘s names is so important because it doesn’t have to go through probate. I am widowed now and I have my black file folder and my two remaining children know if something happens to me, all they have to do is grab the folder. Everything they need to take care of my estate will be located in this folder. At the beginning of every year, I open this file up and go through everything to make sure it’s up-to-date. If you are young and do not own much or can’t afford a will, you can draft one up but it must be handwritten to be classified as a legal document. You cannot type it out!! If you’re not worth much, everything will most likely be sold to pay your bills and cover your funeral expenses. But you can state who your executor will be in your handwritten will.  Disclaimer I’m not a lawyer or an accountant and this is not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer and talk to an accountant. Make sure everything is set up for you and your situation. These are situations that I personally ran into. Good luck Also I’ll add in. IF you have a lot of assets make an appointment with your accountant first. They will tell you how to properly set things up. Then take that information to your lawyer. read more
After reaching the critical level of 10,000 followers (KTS #21 😉), we decided it was TIME to share the knowledge and our daily actions with incredible detail and insight on an adaptive platform that could handle stocks and options while sharing the specific tools that we use to monitor. A platform that would allow us more proximity with our community in a fun, interactive learning environment that can simplify the complex - all while allowing us to share even more content with more depth and latitude. Since launching this website in February, our most dedicated and invested followers have had the chance to enjoy: 📖 Weekly, relevant KTS posts - so 24 new KTS posts (without length restriction! 😂) 📝All of our trades & rationale (which have been transitioning in new areas and asset classes 😉) 🧙 Our views on this high period of volatility to be expected in the final stage of the meltup phase of the Real Estate/Banking crisis cycle ⚒️Access to our full tool suite (see our pinned post) These members have formed the first tranche of subscribers and have enjoyed incredible insights on the current state of the real estate/banking crisis cycle while observing the major accumulation in secular trend hidden gems 💎. These members have also been privy to how we are investing in a crosscurrent market where some equities are buys and some are sells. As we continue to transition the portfolio as inflection point peaks are set, we also share how to embrace the bear by demonstrating how to profit when markets head in the opposite direction. Ask yourself, why should the Wall Street Wolves be the only ones that earn outsized returns over a short period of TIME when markets fall? 😂 Our members have also been incredibly patient and resourceful with us while we were improving and fixing the usability of our website. And we are extremely grateful and thankful for their input. 🙏 Now we have a website loaded with content so it’s TIME for us to come back here, on Blossom - where this amazing journey started - as a genuine offer to further your financial acumen along the learning curve faster in this critical TIME. This was supposed to be the year of the most volatility, remember? 😉 So I intend to start posting content on Blossom again. 🤑🌊🏄 And I heard I won a Blossom award while away? So thank you to Max and for whomever is behind that! 🏆🙏 Our goal is, and will always be, to help you all learn and apply strategies to realize absolutely amazing, double-digit annualized returns. I want you to WIN 🏆 I will resume giving insights on our current view of the markets with our brand of proven unconventionalism (please tell me you finally discovered commodities by now? See our first post from March 9, 2024: “They are telling us so what are you waiting for?” post! Natural selection is alive and well! 😂🤣 Speaking of which, I see the conventionalists are still preaching their gospel in full force mode, right here on Blossom! 🤢🤣 As a gesture of the good TIMES of the past, I am sharing one of the KTS posts from the website - and in true Beskar fashion….. a true gem 💎 It’s also the very first KTS posted on the opening of our website. I find it particularly…..TIMEly! 😂 And it will give my conscience resolve. 😎👍 So here you go! https://www.beskarcapitalkts.com/featuredktspost The conventionalist script is everywhere - now more than ever as the institutions line up the retail bagholders. Regurgitated by the masses everywhere… investors are indoctrinated to think that the best investment strategy is to buy and hold a dilutive aggregate index fund to generate a meager average annualized real return of 9% - without any respect for the real estate/banking crisis cycle. We’ve proved it to ourselves countless TIMES over. With over 35+ years of investing experience, we know that an active investment approach can outperform with the right tool for the right market. Adapting is critical especially when markets are in a process of setting inflection points. 😉🏆😎 We have now reopened the membership window again: https://www.beskarcapitalkts.com/ I always give you my best! This is the way! 🌊🏄 Beskar read more
I thought i was done buying this month but then BlackRock goes and launches TSX-listed ETF that blends broad global equity exposure with a small allocation to Bitcoin, giving Canadian investors a one-ticket way to hold both stocks and crypto. The new iShares Equity + Bitcoin ETF Portfolio (ticker: IBQT) began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Aug. 10. IBQT targets a strategic split of 97% equities and 3% Bitcoin, with its equity sleeve spanning Canadian, U.S., international and emerging markets. A low-cost solution with a management fee of 0.22% inclusive of all underlying ETF fees. Based on the portfolio holdings if you put $100,000 in each you would have roughly XEQT $45,270 U.S. $25,520 Canada $24,430 developed international $4,640 emerging markets $0 Bitcoin IBQT $43,310 U.S. $24,630 Canada $24,210 developed international $4,750 emerging markets $2,960 Bitcoin Rebalancing is probably one of the strongest arguments for buying this instead of simply holding Bitcoin and XEQT separately, especially if your goal is to maintain a specific allocation to Bitcoin. Suppose Bitcoin takes off and that 3% allocation grows to 6% or 8% of the portfolio. IBQT's asset-allocation process should gradually bring it back toward its strategic allocation. Conversely, if Bitcoin crashes and falls below target, the fund would rebalance by increasing the Bitcoin exposure. I'm not sure I would replace XEQT with IBQT, but I did put in a $1,000 order to buy it tomorrow. So we'll start with a small position, monitor it, and see how it develops. Going forward, I could also split some of the money that would normally go into XEQT between XEQT and IBQT. If I did that, the effective Bitcoin allocation on those new contributions would be much lower than 3%. For example, if I split contributions 50/50 between XEQT and IBQT, only half the money would have the 3% Bitcoin allocation I'm not ready to fully pull the trigger but I like the concept and we will see where it goes read more
A late night gift for fellow investors on Blossom who might be starting out their journey… this is a post about all the wonderful tools I use to research and monitor stocks, ETFs, Market News, Sector rotations and Insider/institutional Trading activity. I call it my investment tech stack, and here is my list: 1. OpenInsider Every Form 4 filing in one clean searchable database. When a CEO buys $1M of their own stock on the open market this is where I see it. I actually go on every week and look at open market purchase activity especially when it’s a cluster and then research those companies further. openinsider.com 2. Whale Wisdom 13F institutional holdings tracker I use it to track the hedge funds I like so I know what Driehaus, Hood River or Renaissance are holding and what they just bought or sold. It’s how I found many amazing small caps early on like ONDS, BBOT, ATAI, etc. Updated every quarter after the 45-day filing deadline and I will use it to write up my post about “Going Behind Enemy Lines to Uncover What happened with Situational Awareness’s rise and fall” in about 10 days when they submit quarterly filings. whalewisdom.com 3. Unusual Whales Ok this one I have deep love for, it’s how I landed SO MANY successful options trades and I check it every day for UOAs. I subscribe to the premium version for full access. Options flow and congressional trading tracker. When unusually large options activity hits a ticker before a catalyst Unusual Whales catches it. Also tracks what your elected officials are trading, make of that what you will. 😏 unusualwhales.com 4. Quartr Beautiful App that delivers Earnings calls, investor presentations and transcripts in one place. I use this to listen to management on quarterly earnings calls, I can search through transcripts for specific keywords and it pulls press releases for companies you track faster than any other source. I used it to write my post on banks exposure to private credit. quartr.com 5 .Portfolio Visualizer This one is Amazing for backtesting to see if logic held up historically, correlation analysis, factor exposure. When I want to understand how two assets move relative to each other this is where I go. My posts on ETF correlation were built using this tool. portfoliovisualizer.com 6. Seeking Alpha I love this platform and I subscribe to the premium version for full access. The best Sector dashboards, earnings calendars, and analyst reviews. The Seeking Alpha screener is where the sector ETF performance data in my rotation posts comes from and it does it through a great user experience. seekingalpha.com 7. FinViz My morning ritual, covers futures, sector heatmaps, screeners, and technical data. If you’ve seen any of my Before the Open posts a lot of that data is sourced from Finviz. It’s simple, to the point and free. Finviz.com Now for my favorite sources of market updates and news: 1. Barron’s I think it’s on of the most thoughtful long-form financial journalism sources available to retail investors. barrons.com 2. Bloomberg Breaking market news and macro analysis. This one is the only news app where I have notifications on 😅 bloomberg.com 3. WSJ The paper of record for business and economics. Primary source journalism on Fed policy, corporate earnings and geopolitics. wsj.com 4. Motley Fool Good for accessible company-level analysis. I read it for perspective not a primary source. A tip on here is how I got interested to look into INTC again in March and went in at $49 which turned into a Multibagger by May. Fool.com 5. Substack It’s an amazing jungle of great writers and if you can find the ones that have real substance you’re in for some great insights. I’d recommend “The Dark Side of The Boom” exceptional financial analysis. The Holy Grail of Platforms for me though is SEC EDGAR. Nothing for me replaces reading through official filings, pulling data out of balance sheets, reading about business segments, company risks, and understanding how a company is progressing YoY/QoQ. The bulk of my posts as you guys might already know are sourced from data points I traced back to a primary source filings like 10-Q, 8-K, 13F. The tools help me find the signal and I usually confirm everything from filings. So, there you have it my full stack of tools in one posts, if you found this useful I invite you to follow my account for more. Have a great weekend!read more
Ok, so I'm not trying to pump this stock. I only own 50 shares, so I would have to be the most delusional human, if I thought it would amount to anything. I actually bought this by accident, but then I took a look at the company and thought, "What the hell? Why not let $80 ride? I won't lose any sleep over that." But, there's definitely been a shift. The most recent numbers show clear improvement on many fronts and the insider buying has gone from just the CEO gobbling up shares, to four other insiders. Any thoughts, my Blossom compatriots?
Oftentimes the conversation of finance comes up when I'm just chatting with people cause I'm passionate about finance...however most of the time when I talk to people and talk about investing more often than not the people I talk to dont invest or are scared of the stock market or have "a guy" at the bank. I had a friend flat out told me he doesnt believe in the stock market...The stock market has probably created more millionaires than any other investment vehicle in history. Yet 38% of Americans/ 37% of Canaidans own zero stocks...ZERO I honestly find that crazy. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to pick the next big stock. You don’t even need a lot of money to start. Just consistently invest and give it time. But the reality is, a lot of people just don’t care about investing. And that’s okay. However those are the same people that are surprised when they look back 20 years from now and wish you had started. read more
🎉 $100,000 Portfolio Milestone! 🎉 I finally reached $100K in my investment portfolio! 🥹📈 My journey started in April 2022, when I was still studying. I didn’t have a huge income or a perfect investment strategy. I simply started by saving money, cutting unnecessary expenses, and investing whatever I could. I still remember my first-ever monthly dividend: $19.52. At the time, it felt like such a small amount, but it was the beginning of something much bigger. Fast forward to today… my portfolio generates around $1,100/month in dividends. 💰 My goal isn’t just to build wealth for the sake of having a big number. I’m building this portfolio with a purpose — financial freedom and eventually helping fund a future home purchase. 🏡 I’ve definitely made a few mistakes along the way. Some investments worked out, some didn’t, and I’ve changed my strategy many times as I learned more. But I’m actually grateful for those mistakes because they taught me lessons that no book could. Looking back at where I started in 2022, I’m really happy with the progress. ❤️ $19.52/month → ~$1,100/month $0 → $100,000 portfolio The next goal? $250K. Then $500K. Then $1M. 🚀 Still a long way to go, but I’m enjoying the journey. One dollar, one dividend, and one investment at a time. Here’s to the next chapter! 🥂📈 #Investing #DividendInvesting #100KPortfolio #FinancialFreedom #PersonalFinance #WealthBuilding #InvestingJourneyread more
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Almost every time $AMSC touches the 200 weekly ema, it has a significant bounce back. we are in the same instance again, will history repeat itself? Some fundamental support First-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $94.1 million, up 30% from $72.4 million a year earlier, as growth in its Grid and Wind business units pushed quarterly sales above $90 million for the first time. Other notable things - - Grid and Wind Revenue Both Increased - Mining Project Order Expands Scope - The company ended the quarter with more than $150 million in cash - As part of the Comtrafo acquisition agreement, AMSC acquired a third Brazilian factory Would you be tempted? read more
🔥 On Saturday over 2,000 Blossomers came out from all across Canada for an incredible day of learning and connection! I was shocked to see close to 1/3 of folks travelled from outside of Toronto to join us, huge thanks to everyone who made the trip! ⚡️ The energy during the day was absolutely buzzing and it was so awesome to meet so many members of the Blossom community! Special shout out to Blossom's Creator of the Year @jacobb and Blossom's Rising Star @nettspend who won our community-nominated Blossom awards 👏 🌱 Blossom has grown from an idea, to an app, to a movement and BlossomCon is the biggest testament to that. To see 2,000 folks from all different walks of life take time out of their weekend to connect, learn, and build financial literacy together is exactly what Blossom is all about and I am so fired up to keep building for this amazing community 💕 😍 Can't wait for BlossomCon Vancouver and New York!!! (https://www.blossomsocial.com/blossomcon2026) 👏 Special shout out to the Harvest ETFs team for being our Headline sponsor for the 3rd year in a row and to all our amazing sponsors for making this event possible 🙏
One of the best parts about the Blossom community is how open everyone is sharing knowledge and experiences. To make things easier for anyone just starting their investing journey, here’s a simple glossary to help understand and simplify various terms. Common Terms: Dividend: A share of a company’s profits paid to shareholders, usually quarterly. Ex-Dividend Date: The cutoff date by which you must own a stock to receive its next dividend. ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund): A fund that holds multiple stocks or bonds, traded like a single stock. Covered Call ETF: An ETF that owns stocks and sells call options to generate extra income (higher yield, limited / capped upside). Earnings Report: A company’s quarterly financial performance summary. EPS (Earnings Per Share): A company’s profit divided by its number of shares. Market Cap: A company’s total value (share price × number of shares). ACB: The total amount you’ve paid for an investment, including the purchase price plus any fees or commissions. Book Value: The value of a company according to its financial statements (assets minus liabilities). Yield: Annual dividend as a percentage of the stock/ETF price. Liquidity: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without impacting its price. Volatility: The degree of price fluctuations in a stock or market. Index: A benchmark of stocks (e.g., S&P 500, Nasdaq, TSX). Bull Market: A period of rising stock prices and optimism. Bear Market: A period of declining stock prices and pessimism. False Breakout: When a stock’s price moves above (or below) a key level, making it look like a new trend is starting, but then quickly reverses back. P/E Ratio: Price-to-earnings ratio (stock price ÷ EPS), used to assess valuation. Blue Chip: Well-established, financially strong companies with a track record of stability. Diversification: Spreading investments across assets to reduce risk. Broker: A platform or firm that facilitates buying and selling investments. Limit Order: An order to buy/sell a stock at a specific price or better. Market Order: An order to buy/sell a stock immediately at the current market price. Bid/Ask Spread: The difference between the highest price buyers offer and the lowest price sellers accept. Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA): Investing a fixed amount regularly to reduce the impact of market swings. Capital Gain/Loss: Profit or loss from selling an investment for more/less than its purchase price. IPO: When a company first sells shares to the public. Index Fund: A fund designed to mirror the performance of a market index. Short Selling: Selling borrowed shares, hoping to buy them back cheaper. Margin: Borrowing money from a broker to buy investments, which amplifies gains and losses. Margin Requirement: The minimum amount of your own money (equity) you must maintain in a margin account to open or keep a leveraged investment position. Margin Call: A demand from your broker to deposit more funds or sell assets because your account equity has fallen below the required margin level. Time Horizon: The length of time you plan to hold an investment before needing the money. Short horizons = more risk-sensitive, long horizons = more room to ride out volatility. Stock Split / Reverse Split: A split increases the number of shares (e.g., 2-for-1) while lowering the price per share. A reverse split reduces the number of shares (e.g., 1-for-10) while raising the price per share. Your overall value doesn’t change just the math. Long (Being Long): Buying a stock or asset because you expect the price to go up. Short (Being Short): Selling a stock you don’t own because you expect the price to go down, so you can buy it back cheaper later. TER: The total yearly cost of owning a fund, including the management fee plus other costs like administration, audits, and legal fees. MER: The annual cost that a fund charges for management (includes any leverage costs if used). Management Fee: A portion of the MER that goes directly to the fund managers for running the fund. Withholding Tax: A tax deducted on dividends/distributions from foreign investments (e.g., U.S. dividends to Canadian investors face a 15% withholding in TFSA/Non-Registered accounts). Total Returns: The full picture of an investment’s performance, including both price gains and dividends/distributions. CAGR: The average yearly growth of an investment over time. NAV: The price of one share of a fund (stock or etf) NAV Depreciation: When the fund’s share price goes down over time. Mutual Fund: A pool of money from many investors used to buy a mix of stocks, bonds, or other assets. Bond: A loan you give to a company or government, and they pay you back with interest. Asset: Anything valuable you own that can generate money. Portfolio: Your collection of investments. Option: A contract that gives you the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a stock at a set price. Future: A contract to buy or sell something at a set price on a future date. REIT: A company that owns real estate and pays investors income from rent. Alpha: A measure of how much better (or worse) an investment did compared to the market. Beta: A measure of how much an investment moves compared to the market. Sharpe Ratio: A way to see if returns are worth the risk taken. Hedging: Protecting your investments from risk. Rebalancing: Adjusting your portfolio back to your target mix of assets. FCF: Free Cash Flow Understanding these terms makes investing far less intimidating. If anyone feels other terms should be included, please share in the comments. I’ll update this post so we can build a complete beginner-friendly resource together! *Sorry tagged a few etfs for reach 🫣read more
TIME! 😄 Are you still a $LULU lunatic? 🤣 ...or a buy-the-dip $META$ZETA beta? 😂 I no longer have TIME to update my portfolio on Blossom and I'm not linking my life savings to a 3rd party app that isn't federally insured. So I add today's portfolio return here as an image. 🏆😎 If interested, you can find the portfolio and returns at the Beskar Capital KTS website or here: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/The-Beskar-Capital-Comeback__POST-1786198266000-Yno9TsB4_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML This is the Way! 🏄♀️🌊🏄♂️🌊🏄🌊read more
August Portfolio Update YTD = 20.42% vs 12.81% (S&P 500) My portfolio is split into two parts: core long-term holdings that I accumulate and rarely sell, and moonshot/high-beta stocks where I’m more active with tactical trades. My moonshot strategy is much more dependent on macro conditions, market momentum, and hot themes, so positioning can change quickly. I like to keep this 10% of my total portfolio. My core portfolio also includes ETFs like $VFV$QQC , $VCN , $VDY and $ZGLD . I like ETFs to make up around 10-20% of my total portfolio, acting as the foundation and helping lower overall risk. As a stock picker, I still want a healthy balance in case my individual stocks don’t perform as well as the broader market. Over time, I plan to gradually increase my ETF exposure toward 50% of my portfolio due to increased volatility in the market. Top 3: $AMD — AI is increasing demand for powerful server CPUs. As AI agents handle more tasks, data centers need more processing power. AMD benefits from growing EPYC server demand and continued market-share gains against Intel. $GOOG — Gemini is becoming a bigger part of Google’s products and revenue. Google Cloud keeps growing, more companies are using its AI chips, and YouTube remains very strong. Google owns many pieces of the AI ecosystem. $MU — AI data centers need huge amounts of memory, keeping demand strong and supply tight. Micron is spending heavily to increase production, while future growth could also come from robots, vehicles and other AI-powered machines. Bottom 3: (new buys) $KLAC — Makes the inspection equipment chipmakers use to find tiny defects during manufacturing. As AI chips, HBM memory and advanced packaging become more complex, manufacturers need more inspection steps, creating higher demand for KLA’s tools. $MRVL — Builds custom AI chips and the networking technology that moves data between GPUs, CPUs and memory. Growth is being driven by hyperscaler custom silicon, faster AI networking, optical connectivity and its expanding NVIDIA partnership. $CRDO — Makes high-speed connectivity chips and active electrical cables that connect servers, GPUs and switches inside AI data centers. As AI clusters get larger, Credo benefits from the need for faster, lower-power and more reliable connections. Moonshots: $NBIS — AI companies need more computing power, and Nebius is rapidly building data centers to meet that demand. Its partnership with Nvidia, growing customer base and plans for much more capacity give it a long runway for growth. $RKLB — Rocket Lab is growing beyond simply launching rockets. Electron launches bring steady business, its space systems division keeps expanding, and Neutron could unlock much larger missions, government contracts and satellite launches if execution goes well. $AAOI — AI data centers need faster connections between their chips and servers. AAOI makes the optical equipment that moves this data. Demand for its faster 800G and 1.6T products is rising, while the company is expanding production. Not financial advice; always do your own research. read more
STATS STATS STATS. In the world of professional sports there are stats for nearly every metric of the game, and people love to study them. Investing is really no different. There is no shortage of statistics and ways to measure performance. Some are more useful than others, but if you have ever looked at the same investment and wondered how people can come up with completely different return numbers, this is why. There isn't just one way to measure return. Let’s look at a few of the more common ones, what each one is actually measuring, and a simple way to understand the difference. Price Return: What happened to the price? This is the simplest one. If you bought an investment at $100 and it is now worth $120, your price return is 20%. The problem is that price return ignores any dividends, distributions or other cash paid along the way. That can make it a pretty incomplete measure for income-producing investments. Total Return: What happened to the investment including income? Total return combines the change in price with the income generated by the investment. If you invested $10,000 and the investment is now worth $12,000 while also paying you $1,000 in cash distributions, your total return is 30%. You have $12,000 worth of investments plus the $1,000 in cash you received, for a total value of $13,000. If you used a DRIP and reinvested those distributions, you wouldn’t add the distributions again when calculating your return. They were used to buy additional shares, so their value is already reflected in the current value of your investment. This is generally a much better way to compare investments that pay different levels of income because it looks at the whole return instead of just the price chart. CAGR: What was the equivalent annual compound growth rate? A 30% total return sounds great, but there is a pretty big difference between making 30% in one year and making 30% over five years. CAGR, or Compound Annual Growth Rate, converts that total growth into an annualized compound return. For example, turning $10,000 into $13,000 over five years is a 30% total return, but works out to only about a 5.4% annualized return. This makes it much easier to compare investments held for different lengths of time. Now we start getting into the finance-nerd stuff. IRR: What rate of return makes my cash flows add up? Internal Rate of Return looks at the cash going into and coming out of an investment and calculates the rate of return that makes those cash flows balance out. It is useful when there are multiple cash flows over time, especially when they happen at regular intervals, such as monthly or annually. Real-life investing usually isn’t that neat which brings us to XIRR. XIRR: What annualized return did my actual money earn? XIRR takes the same basic idea as IRR but uses the actual dates of your cash flows. Maybe you invested $10,000 five years ago, added $500 every month, dumped another $10,000 into the market during a crash and occasionally withdrew money. Those dollars were not all invested for the same amount of time. XIRR uses the amount and exact date of every cash flow and calculates the annualized return actually experienced by your money. So while IRR works with regularly spaced periods, XIRR uses the actual calendar dates. Both are forms of money-weighted return, but for an individual investor who is constantly adding and removing money, XIRR is often much more useful. It answers a very simple question: What annualized return did my actual dollars earn? TWR: How did the portfolio itself perform? Time-Weighted Return takes almost the opposite approach. Instead of allowing your deposits and withdrawals to influence the result, TWR removes their impact. That makes it useful for evaluating how the investments or portfolio manager performed regardless of when you personally decided to add or remove money. A simple way to think about it is: XIRR asks: How did my money perform? TWR asks: How did the portfolio perform? Two investors can own the exact same investments and have the same time-weighted return while having very different XIRRs because they contributed money at different times. One investor might have added a huge amount right before a market crash. Another might have added that same amount near the bottom. Same portfolio, same investment performance, but very different personal experiences. Real Return: How much purchasing power did I actually gain? Then there is inflation. If your portfolio returned 7% but inflation was 3%, you did not really increase your purchasing power by 7%. Your real return was closer to 4%. And you can keep going from here. You can look at: After-tax return. Risk-adjusted return. Sharpe ratio. Sortino ratio. There are dozens of ways to slice investment performance depending on what question you are trying to answer. The important part isn’t finding the one “correct” return number. It is understanding what question each return number is answering. So when someone says: “My portfolio returned 20%.” The finance-nerd response is: 20% measured how? Price return? Total return? CAGR? IRR? XIRR? TWR? Real return? They are not necessarily competing answers. They are different statistics answering different questions about the exact same investment. And sometimes the difference between looking like an investing genius and looking completely average is simply which return statistic you decided to quote. read more
This $SOFI stat caught my attention: SoFi Plus already has over 200,000 PAID subscribers. But here’s the part I really like… 25% of existing members who signed up for SoFi Plus went on to add another SoFi product. SoFi isn’t just making money from the subscription itself. Plus is helping pull members deeper into the ecosystem. I think this could quietly become a very important product for $SOFI.read more
$CRWV CoreWeave reported earnings and the numbers and print were solid. BUT, I just finished listening to the earnings call, and I don’t think I’ve been BULLISH enough on the AI buildout. Here’s why: First off the companies and backlog have started to branch out beyond hyperscalers and AI Labs. Caterpillar $CAT(heavy equipment), Bentley Systems $BSY(infrastucture engineering), Sunday Robotics(well robotics lol), Grammarly(yes, writing), and Isomorphic Labs(drug discovery). There isn’t an industry or sector that won’t be influenced or using AI. This is just a start. Next, they crushed Burry and his “GPU depreciation schedule”. The A100 GPUs are STILL being used and still holding and increasing pricing per GPU. The longer these chips stay in use the higher margins are going to be. The demand for chips is through the roof and customers are the evidence. Companies need inference. The GW pipeline has been on time and they added 500 MW in a single quarter. They now have 1.5 GW of active power (this is more than SpaceX $SPCX currently has). ARR is scaling and margins is expected to expand sequentially. And expecting 8GW of active power by 2030. While this is extremely bullish, there will still be extreme volatility in this sector as there is no consensus and many varying takes on how to value the buildout. Final take: CoreWeave has delivered. The AI buildout is scaling. Nebius tomorrow. $NBISread more
Here are 2 stocks to watch: $MP is the rare earth one. Rare earths make the magnets that go into missiles, fighter jets, EV motors, and now humanoid robots, and China controls almost the entire supply, around 90% of the processing and 94% of the magnet manufacturing. MP runs Mountain Pass in California, the only scaled rare earth mine in the country, and it's the one company doing the whole chain here at home, from mining to finished magnets. What changed the story is the Pentagon stepping in directly. The Department of Defense is now MP's largest shareholder and set a price floor of $110/kg on NdPr. That matters because for years China would just drop prices to undercut any American producer until they went under. The floor takes that risk off the table. On top of that, MP has offtake deals with both Apple and GM and is building a "10X" plant in Texas targeting around 10,000 tons of magnet capacity. Revenue is up 72% and NdPr production is doubling. The stock is at $51, down from about $100 last year, but now with the US government backing the downside. $LPTH is the smaller one, and this is where it gets interesting. Germanium is the key material in infrared and thermal lenses, which is what night vision, drone cameras, and missile seekers all rely on, and China controls the supply. LightPath built a glass called BlackDiamond that does the same job without any germanium, so it sidesteps China entirely. And China keeps tightening the screws on exactly the optics defense needs. Germanium prices keep climbing, and just last month an executive at a Chinese germanium supplier was detained for trying to dodge export controls, which shows how serious the enforcement has gotten. Every move like that makes BlackDiamond more valuable. The orders are already rolling in: an $18.2M infrared camera contract, an $11M counter-drone order, and $13M in optical assemblies. They're also selling off their China operations to become a fully Western supplier. Revenue is up 87% and the stock is up over 400% this year. $MP$LPTH
Every time someone holds both $VOO and $QQQ$QQQM, someone in the comments has to point out the overlap. But real question… If you’re intentionally putting more money into companies you already believe in, is the overlap actually a problem? Or is it only a problem when you don’t realize it’s happening? I personally like the overlap. Especially when it means I’m adding even more to names like $AAPL that I already want heavier exposure to. Curious though — do most people see overlap as a real issue, or is that just one type of investor talking? Not financial advice — just a 23 yr old Canadian thinking out loud read more
Do you see overlap between $VOO and $QQQ as a real issue?
📊 Long-Term Investing: The Power of Thorough Analysis When it comes to long-term investing, understanding the fundamentals of a stock is crucial. It’s not just about jumping on trends; it’s about making informed decisions based on solid data. This chart breaks down the essential financial statements—Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement—that every investor should analyze before committing to a stock. 🔍 Balance Sheet: This tells you about the company’s financial health, specifically its assets, liabilities, and equity. A healthy balance sheet is a sign of stability and resilience. 💸 Income Statement: This shows the company’s profitability by detailing revenue, expenses, and profits. A strong income statement indicates a company that’s generating profits, a key factor for long-term growth. 💰 Cash Flow Statement: This reveals how the company manages its cash, from operations to investments and financing. Positive cash flow is essential for sustaining operations and fueling future growth. By mastering these fundamentals, you can make smarter investment choices that stand the test of time. Remember, successful long-term investing isn’t about timing the market; it’s about time in the market, supported by thorough analysis. $VGT$TXN$QQQ$AAPL$META #InvestSmart #LongTermInvesting #FinancialLiteracy #StockMarketAnalysisread more
Do You Feel Urged to Act? I was listening to episode 421 of the Rational Reminder podcast, and one part of their conversation with Barry Ritholtz really stood out to me. The idea was pretty simple. Financial media, news and social media create an environment of action. There always seems to be something we should be doing. Someone called a stock correctly. Someone found the next great ETF. Someone changed strategies and is outperforming. Markets are falling. Markets are climbing. Interest rates are changing. And then the algorithm keeps feeding us more of it. It creates FOMO. It makes us wonder what everyone else knows that we don’t. Eventually, doing nothing can start to feel like we’re making a mistake. I’m definitely guilty of this. I’m constantly trying to learn more, and I’ve changed my investing style over time as I’ve learned. I see investments doing well and wonder if I’m missing something. I look for that next piece of information that might give me an edge. I’m human. I feel that same pull toward action. But this conversation made me ask myself a really simple question: Does my portfolio actually need me to do anything? Because sometimes that action can actually be detrimental to our long-term results. That’s also why I try to consume information from a wide range of sources. I don’t think the answer is to stop learning or ignore good financial advice. Even as a DIY investor, having a financial plan and understanding why I’m investing the way I am matters to me. There’s even some irony in posting this on Blossom. Blossom is an amazing place to learn. But every day we’re also exposed to other people’s portfolios, returns, stock picks and strategies. Someone is always doing better somewhere. Seeing that doesn’t mean we need to change what we’re doing. When I started investing, I really wasn’t sure where to begin. My investing has certainly evolved since then, and I’ve made mistakes along the way. But the more I learn, the more I keep coming back to some pretty basic things. Starting matters. How much I contribute matters. Having a plan matters. Time matters. And compounding needs time to actually compound. Maybe constantly searching for the next edge can sometimes get in the way of the very thing we’re trying to accomplish. So I’m curious: Do you think the financial information you consume creates FOMO or makes you feel like you need to take action with your portfolio? https://open.spotify.com/episode/4toYGV6MW1hGz8Wn18CkjG?si=rMEHhQo1SQe77smoLw-c9A&utm_source=copy-linkread more
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