I think a tricky thing is names like WMT, COST, TJX already have high p/e ratios.
You could usually try utilities or energy but those are also high due to AI buildout & Iran.
I think gold could make a come back since it's beating down a bit this year. Treasuries or just a reasonable hedge with puts against your holdings may be the best bet.
Of course none of this is financial advice & is just open discussion looking for thoughts.
Yeah, that all makes sense, great points. I agree utilities and energy are already high. As usual, the answer is probably that diversifying a bit to get exposure to all of the above is likely the right move, but that depends on one's appetite for risk and personal views on when the downdraft risk materializes
They have original thoughts! It's just that those employees get squashed by other divisions or having to meet short term quarterly profits it seems.
There's also the whole giant trillion dollar company doesn't want to invest and let small ideas grow. They only focus on things that move the needle, which isn't much at the size.
Had Microsoft executed and invested, they could have made a come back imo in both search, mobile & hardware. Unfortunately major lack of leadership or they just don't want those areas.
I've found less friction in my experience. I prefer pair programming remotely over in person.
Pair Programming in person - one computer & one person looking over another's shoulder usually.
Pair Programming remotely - two computers & you can easily swap control of either's device or change who's sharing their screen.
The only thing working in an office wins on imo is building very close relationships with co-workers. I think physical presence is a human thing that cannot be beat. You can still build great relationships remotely but they're not the same. From the point of view of a company, remote relationships might be good enough or even better as they can prevent people becoming "to close" and ending up on the news at a concert together.
If you can get people to sit down and think through topics, many of the right and left people are often very aligned.
Unfortunately to many people just take headlines and memes from terrible sources as to how they should think without putting any thought into it. Both sides are also vilified against each other.
I would expect this to become one of those things in the near future.
> Both sides are also vilified against each other.
The side that fraudulently claimed the other side stole an election, tried to overturn it, and then pardoned people found guilty of treason made themselves the villains. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
You need to apply it to staff as well and also the judicial branch and all of their staff. Then to all of their family as well.
The way I understand insider trading is usually prosecuted is you find out who made the bet & then you have to track down their communications to see if they got tipped off.
Google famously just did this with their Captcha service. Had lots of people signing up for a more complicated version on Google Cloud that they didn't need to do.
They had great devices before iOS/Android and then again after. That Lumia phone was awesome. They had one of the best cameras. Their live tiles they had on the phone & desktop OS were really good. Even Windows 8 had a cool CRM app in its infancy that tried to link all your social media & email accounts together.
They killed all of that even with multiple chances to win people over. It seemed they wanted to win the new markets in less than a year.
For as much flack as Google gets for short lived awesome products, Microsoft is right up there. Which is why when they've announced new things like Blazor, MAUI, etc., no one expects them to live long enough to trust their apps on.
I also strongly question their enterprise MOAT when most kids are growing up on Apple & Google devices the past decade. Microsoft seems to lack long term strategy.
Has it always been a case of incentives with Microsoft?
Builders - let's build awesome stuff with great experience.
Execs - need to meet next earnings reports goals. Let's sneak a few features to help M$FT stock price at expense to our users.
Product suffers... Execs then allow builders to make the products better. Then execs step in again because they need some quick wins. Visual Studio and .NET really seemed to exemplify this a few years ago as Code was eating into Visual Studio's user base.
I for one hope ending quarterly earnings reduces patterns like this in companies.
You could usually try utilities or energy but those are also high due to AI buildout & Iran.
I think gold could make a come back since it's beating down a bit this year. Treasuries or just a reasonable hedge with puts against your holdings may be the best bet.
Of course none of this is financial advice & is just open discussion looking for thoughts.
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