Heck - if you have spent any effort or time learning tech skills, you're already invested in tech. A penniless first-year comp sci student is heavily invested in tech.
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).
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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 :(
AMD: it had a year to profit from their release. The bet just recently paid off. Still HLD though. Bought at 11,xx
For some stocks I have notifications when they drop 5%. Mostly when I think they are too high right now
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
Directly, Amazon & Tesla + a bunch of cryptos (Do they count?)
