AAPL, MSFT, And BRK-B -- First Day Of The New Quarter -- July 1, 2024

Locator: 48032MARKET.

At the close:

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Original Post

Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio: about 40% is made up of AAPL.

Today, AAPL: up a whopping $4.41; up 2.11%; trading at $215.13 trending toward its 52-week high.

Meanwhile, BRK: down 0.54%; down $2.18.

When 40% of your stock portfolio is "surging" and the value of your overall portfolio is decreasing, it suggests how huge the drag is caused by the other holdings, most of which are "legacy" or long-term holdings. 

In BRK's case, a huge portion of the equity portfolio is held in cash because of regulatory requirements (insurance and banking requirements).

This drop in the BRK-B ticker comes a couple of days after the headline story that BRK-B made a "gazillion" dollars on the sale of BYD. 

All (much?) of tech is up today -- biggest reason -- start of a new quarter? And, also:

• SCOTUS ruling today favors Trump; increases Trump's return to the White House which tech generally supports -- at least according to many pundits. I have no idea.

In addition to AAPL, MSFT is also up very nicely today.

Morgan Stanley "ups" its Nvidia target:

• raises target from $116 to $144
• $123 - $144: a 17% move from here.
• $116 - $144: a 24% move from previous target.

Nvidia: response to Chinese ban -- link here -- has already responded and it sounds like "China" is happy with the solution -- 

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Later, AAPL

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Half-Time Report

Stephen Weiss trims NVDA -- second time in as many days or at least two trims in past week. Defends his position. Again, calls "chips" commodities. Noted on CNBC "Half-Time Report" at ~ 11:20 a.m. CDT.

If "chips" are commodities, then "everything" is / are commodities. Weiss' argument: "everybody" will jump into manufacturing chips.

If "chips" are commodities, why are automobiles not commodities? Why are fast-food restaurants not commodities. "Everybody" can make automobiles. Everybody can open fast-food restaurants.

In fact,

• Nvidia makes GPUs, one kind of "chip";
• AMD makes CPUs another kind of "chip";
• Micron isn't even known for making processing units; it makes "memory" chips
• only one "chip-maker" is designing and already delivering hardware units with 3-nm chips
• Intel couldn't do it -- couldn't get to 7-nm much less 3-nm and ended up outsourcing newer, smaller chips
• this all needs to be fact-checked; things change quickly in the industry -- "everything everywhere is happening all at once"

By the way, Stephen Weiss' last trade today: AMSL -- noted that TSM will use the EUV's the AMSL is manufacturing. One of many posts on the blog regarding AMSL: https://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2024/06/big-big-big-tech-story-today-asml-and_5.html.