Ask HN: What tech companies do you invest in? - bvod
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hamstercat
My boring answer: none directly, though an index fund I invest in has a small
share of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook. I already work in
tech, both at my main and side jobs, so not being too invested in tech seems
wise even if I don't see it blowing up again.

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SomewhatLikely
I've felt the same way over the years, though my belief in that maxim is
fading for at least two reasons. One, is that if you're going to extend beyond
index funds, it's probably best to invest in companies/industries you know
best. And secondly, "tech" is a very broad industry, and there's no reason to
think it couldn't come to be a larger and larger share of the whole economy.
"Tech" is set to continue disrupting industrial, transportation, agricultural,
and energy sectors. I think when you look at it that way, it's almost foolish
to avoid tech. Oh, and I'll add a third: would you rather invest in something
that is growing, or something that is stagnant/dying?

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adventured
Editas (EDIT), Crispr Therapeautics (CRSP), occasionally Intellia (NTLA). I
liked Shopify (SHOP) when they were cheaper and owned them from their IPO, now
it's very expensive.

Most of the public traditional tech companies are extremely boring and not
doing anything interesting. Whether Netflix, Facebook or Salesforce.com, it's
15-20 year old technology, that has been pushed & evolved to hyper scale
(which is impressive of course). The only thing interesting about most public
tech companies of consequence now, is the scaling that they do. Apple & the
iPhone? A 10 year old leap, pushed to hyper scale to go with regular
improvement - about as exciting as the desktop computer circa 2003.

Want to get at blockchain? AI? Robotics? Quantum computing? There aren't very
many good, pure-play public companies for that. (I'm not buying Google at $670
billion to get at their quantum tech, which won't dent that market cap in the
next decade).

Amazon is one of the few tech companies making bold moves. I'm not paying 200x
earnings for 20% sales growth, so that one day 15-20 years out they'll finally
justify their present valuation. nVidia is another that is interesting and
very expensive accordingly (at a 600%+ valuation increase in two years on the
back of ~170% earnings growth, dangerous is an ideal word for their stock).

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payne92
NVDA was a GREAT bet on AI/deep learning, but it's gotten very expensive now.

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scurvy
It's still very early in the GPU ML and AR/VR story line. You say expensive
now... You'll kick yourself for not going whole hog on these. Buy every dip of
NVDA.

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kbos87
I previously had a modest amount of stock in a handful of midsized and larger
tech companies, but I'm in the process of selling it off.

Something that was an eye opening experience for me was watching my own
employer go public. All of the sudden the rest of the world is trying to
understand and make sense of your business.

From the individual investors talking about our business on twitter or seeking
alpha to the analyst reports from the massive investment houses, other
people's conjecture about our market and our strategy is often just way, way
off base.

This experience made it painfully clear that most investors, even
"professionals", are operating in an extreme vacuum of information. They know
almost nothing about our future prospects relative to what the employees
living in the space every day know.

It's half because they are spreading themselves too thin, and half because
they aren't living in our space, talking to our customers every day.

Long story short, I'm realistic that as an individual investor who isn't an
insider, I'm at a huge disadvantage. So I hold a lot of employee stock, and
I'm moving more and more toward boring old index funds.

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pcprincipal
Biggest tech holdings:

\- TSLA - same reasons mentioned below \- NVDA - GPUs could eventually replace
CPUs, machine learning / autonomous vehicles, data storage, great core
business (gaming) \- AMD - similar reasons to NVDA, Epyc is making waves and
taking market share from INTC \- AMZN - $1 of every $2 on the internet is
spent here, AWS alone is probably a $100 BN+ business, they have their hands
in every imaginable cookie jar \- GOOGL - diversified play on ML, internet of
things and more, search business is cash cow

Surprised at the index fund answers here. If you had invested in FAANG
(Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stocks last 5 years, would have
made a killing, and for people who regularly post on HN, all of these
companies are regularly mentioned / cited as examples of superior engineering.

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spoonie
> _IF_ you had invested in FAANG

Sounds like a big if, and sounds like you missed that boat yourself. Not to
mention over the last 5 years you'd have to avoid investing in Microsoft,
Oracle, Adobe, VMWare, Intuit, etc.

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jkchu
MSFT? It has gone from ~$30 per share to ~$70 per share over the past 5 years.

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gwintrob
Amazon. E-commerce is still < 10% of retail in the US, so the core business
has tons of potential. Then start thinking about opportunities like AWS,
etc...

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pen2l
How many shares did you buy, if you don't mind me asking?

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buzzdenver
How is that relevant ?

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nodesocket
Agree, I'm ok listing companies I own (see above), but how many shares and how
much value is nobody's business.

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sketchthat
It might not be anyones business, but it also shows the faith or future you
see in the company.

Higher the amount of shares then the more you see their upside. The lower the
number, the more they have downside.

Not asking to see how many shares OP owns, but can see it's relevance.

~~~
nodesocket
The amount of shares and value is all relative and has no bearing on "the
faith or future you see in the company". Somebody investing $1,000 in Apple
who only has $1,000 to invest is the same as somebody investing 10M who has
10M to invest.

I believe the real question you're looking for, is what percent of your
portfolio is each of your companies.

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philsnow
> Somebody investing $1,000 in Apple who only has $1,000 to invest is the same
> as somebody investing 10M who has 10M to invest.

It's really not. You can't really meaningfully diversify with a portfolio of
$1k, but you sure can with $10M.

It makes more sense for the $1k investor to pick one stock they feel good
about it and hope to get 10-20% or more return on that, rather than for that
$1k investor to try to find ten funds / stocks that balance his exposure.

For the $10M investor, it's financially irresponsible to allocate your entire
portfolio to tech. _It very probably will pay off very well_, but there's a
significant chance you'll lose several million.

~~~
pen2l
> It makes more sense for the $1k investor to pick one stock they feel good
> about it and hope to get 10-20% or more return on that

If you're going to invest $1k, does it even make sense to do it at all even
for that 10-20%? I recently for the first time bought some stocks (about 5k),
and I don't like that I'm refreshing my etrade account all the time. In the
end it would have been better I feel to spend it on something else. If you're
gonna invest, I say invest in the liberal 5-digits, if you don't have means to
do that, don't invest in stocks. (that's the reason why I asked the original
question... I'm curious if others who are earning "engineering salaries" are
investing in stocks only by small amounts or going all in)

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skylark
It doesn't have to be so black and white - you don't need to invest small or
go all in. I setup an automatic transfer which happens the day after I get my
paycheck. Over time it's added up to be quite a lot of money.

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pg_bot
AAPL, they earn all of the profits for the most important device of the 21st
century. I will own them until that is no longer the case.

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asdf33323
what do you mean by all the profits?

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adventurer
He is making a generalization. Apple makes about 80% of the market's profits
with their phones. They sell a ton and bank on it. The other companies either
don't sell a lot, or like Samsung, they sell a ton but barely make a profit.

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yeldarb
Depends on the quarter. Last year there was a quarter where Apple ended up
with over 100% profit share because, in aggregate, everyone else lost money.

[http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/apple-smartphone-
profits/](http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/apple-smartphone-profits/)

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geori
I used to not pick tech stocks because of the diversification argument.
However, I stopped that and now invest a good bit. Why? People in tech are
going to be better at predicting the future than the equity research analysts
at investment banks. Have confidence in yourself and make some picks.

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dsacco
I'd actually suggest that the typical software engineer and typical equity
analyst are equally bad at forecasting the market. I wouldn't expect either of
them to be more than one standard deviation from the broader population (and
probably not even that much).

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harigov
Tesla. It is clear that world is going towards renewables. It is also clear
that electric vehicle is here to stay. Even if there is an alternative out
there that meets the renewable energy needs, it will take more than a decade
for it to fully commercialize so Tesla has its place. I think that the giga
factories and solar city can be huge businesses. Tesla's truck with its auto-
pilot (even if it is good enough to drive on freeways) can be a huge cost
saver for transportation companies.

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scurvy
Datacenter REITs have been a great moneymaker for me: EQIX, DLR, DFT (being
acquired by DLR), and a few others like COR, INXN, and CONE.

Buy it, hold it, wait for it to double, sell half, then let the rest ride for
free and reinvest the original stake. Great way to never worry about timing
when to take gains in high flying stocks.

REITs also throw off a lot of income and dividends which makes them nice to
hold long term.

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haney
FB, They have access to great consumer information that will continue to make
them a valuable advertising company for a long time AND they've continued to
expand into other markets (VR) while making smart defensive acquisitions to
protect their core.

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deepnotderp
AMD, lots of juicy server market share available.

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Kepler-295c
How? They got bought by SoftBank?

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boulos
That's ARM. AMD still publicly traded (and massively volatile).

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grondilu
Those are tech companies I have more than one share of: NVIDIA, AMD, IBM,
Intel.

And those are companies I just have one share of (because why not?): Tesla,
Google (Alphabet A & C), Amazon, Texas Instruments

I wish I had bought more of Amazon :(

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nodesocket
Well publically in the market... Apple, AMD, Google, index fund. I like me
some tech. Yes I am well aware I not diversified, but I am somewhat young, and
looking for growth.

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thebiglebrewski
Tesla, of course! But it might be too late now...

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adventurer
I think there is still time. They haven't released the Model 3 yet.

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greenyoda
Everyone knows the Model 3 is coming, so the price of the stock already
incorporates whatever the expectations for the Model 3's sales currently are.
If Model 3 sales fall short of those expectations, the stock price will drop.

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uptown
Looking for some good names in the anti-malware / anti-ransomware / firewall /
intrusion prevention industry. Anybody have any good ideas?

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rrrx3
FAANG -> needs no explanation

NVDA -> same

RHT -> solid financials, great growth q over q and y over y

MSFT -> Nadella has made some massive improvements that reap great benefits

MU -> great value for money and great returns

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sketchthat
Indirectly through my super all the main players like Apple, Google, FB.

Directly, Amazon & Tesla + a bunch of cryptos (Do they count?)

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reilly3000
I am short on investment money, but if I was buying equities I would go long
on ARM. I think they are Qualcomm of 2006 with IoT and massive parallelism
driving big growth.

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acomjean
Armh was the stock. They were bought by SoftBank though it was a good ride....

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wayn3
I invest in real estate.

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Temasik
www.iota.org as it is trying to solve internet of things problem using mesh
network

