Long Term Stocks I'm Buying & Holding (As A Business Owner)

All right. So today we're going to talk about the long-term stocks that I'm picking. We're talking 10, 20, 30-plus year outlook. And I'm going to talk about this from the lens of an actual business owner. And, you know, what I will say is that when I used to think about stocks, I used to think about them as lottery tickets and I used to not really understand much. So I would think about, okay, when's the right time to come in and when should I be selling so I can get that gain? And The more experienced I get, the more I realize that it's really important that you A, hit the like button, and B, understand that ultimately stocks are about time in market, right? And actually, I was reading something on Twitter yesterday where one investor was like, I don't understand why there are stop-loss options. There shouldn't be the ability to have stop-loss. It should just be called stop-compounding, right? Because if you think about it, Warren Buffett didn't start to earn all his wealth until after he was 50 because the machine just kept compounding. And their take on things, him and Charlie Munger, is they just like to buy great businesses and hold them. And every once in a while, there might be a really good business opportunity and you might take the profits from like a See's Candies and reinvest into one of these higher growth or just faster horse type businesses, right? And so the way I've looked at it is I've always looked up to tech and as of this recording right now, you know, we are, we're in a period of where you have the companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, even Microsoft's kind of coming back into the fold as well, facing these antitrust issues, right? Because the US thinks these companies are just too big and they need to be regulated a little more. Same thing with Twitter as well. And so when I think about, and maybe I'll make another video, leave in the comments if you guys want me to make a video on how I go about thinking about even deeper. So there's like some templates that I use to evaluate what the true value is of a stock, right? And there's a bunch of things that you can do. But by the way, this is not financial expert. This is just me having fun. And, you know, kind of my day job is still, you know, having the businesses and focusing on the businesses that I have and helping those businesses succeed. That's what I do, right? And in addition to creating content like this. And so I'll just kind of go down the list over here and then I'll give a quick reason as to why I chose, you know, these stocks. And I actually hold these right now. And so first one would be, you know, no surprise here, everyone's holding Tesla. And, you know, it depends on who you talk to, but I remember talking to my parents yesterday and they were like, oh, you know, the car's better, but it's not that much better. And I said, okay, you know, that's fair. And then obviously you have a lot of people that are retail investors or people that are, you know, taking their stimulus money right now and investing, right? And you have a lot of these Robinhood traders right now. But I do think the stock has a lot of potential because you have a very visionary leader. You have— he's got a great track record. And not only is it the best car that I've driven, I've ever driven, but if you look at their product roadmap, you want to look at what they have set up for the long term. Elon Musk is not gonna just try to hit singles. He's going for home runs, right? So it's all or nothing for him. And for him to bring Tesla to where it's at right now, you know, over the years, you know, people were trying to kill his company while he was trying to do SpaceX at the same time. Just amazing, right? And he didn't have to do these companies. He was already well off from his, uh, the proceeds from the PayPal sale. So it's just amazing story. And that's how I look at it, right? I really studied the company. I really studied the entrepreneur as well. And then, you know, sure, you can look at the financials of the company. Um, you know, only recently they've gotten better and better, but still it's not like they're, they're completely crushing it with sales. You kind of have to look at the intangibles and look at where the company is going. So Tesla is one, and I think of them more as a technology company, right? So people might say, oh, they're a battery company, there's this, there's that, but they are far and away, right, way better than any other electric vehicle right now. And it's the underlying technology that they have going on too. So they've got a head start, they're a first mover, but when push comes to shove, they actually own SolarCity, which is founded from one of his cousins. So they got SolarCity, they got superior batteries, and they're gonna go way further than that. They've expanded out to China too. I just think there's, there's still room for more growth. So that's why I'll continue to hold Tesla, right? So again, my goal here when I think about buying stocks is I'm investing in stocks, right? I'm not trying to just, you know, make a quick buck. And I just want to buy and hold. It's just the same thing with business, right? You just want to buy it, leave it, let it compound over time. And, you know, usually a great CEO is not gonna screw it up, especially when it's the founder CEO. So I think that part's very important as well. I'm gonna give you one more and I'm gonna go down the list fairly quickly. But Peloton, I actually have one right next to me over here. But when you look at their numbers and you look at their, their annual reports, their churn— so kind of my background is in software as a service. So when you think about churn, that's the percentage of people that are leaving each month, right? Their monthly churn is 0.64%. It's extremely low. So that's a very durable business. And that's not to say they have all the subscribers in the world. They do have a good amount of subscribers, but They're very sticky. And what I've noticed is I'll look at my app, I can kind of eyeball it right now and I can look at my friends that are using it, how often are they logging on? And a good portion of my friends still log on at least once a month, if not once a week. So I know they're monthly active users or weekly active users, at least I have a sense of it, right? I don't need to— I don't have all the numbers and my sample size is very small, but I get an inkling of what's going on. And again, it's run by a founder CEO. So, what I mean by that is someone that actually started the company and is still there right now. So, he's still got the vision intact. You know, I think very much they're going to be competing with, you know, these other brands like Lululemon as well. And if you think about Lululemon, they bought Mirror, which is a workout, like an at-home training, we'll call it training equipment. Same thing with Peloton as well. Peloton is expanding into new product lines and they're doing these collaborations with people like Beyoncé as well. And so, to me, it's a magical product and I've experienced it. And, you know, without having Peloton throughout the pandemic, I would probably be a lot less sane than I am right now. And so, a lot of my friends that have it, you know, they love it. Here's the other thing, psychologically, when you have a big bike or a big treadmill in the middle of your house, you're gonna be using it, right? Or it's embarrassing if people keep coming over and they're like, okay, like, are you even using that thing? The other thing too is, if you think about it, It's a $39 a month subscription on top of the $2,500 or $3,500 piece of equipment that you bought. So, that's very sticky because if I think about it, you're paying for your health, you're paying for your fitness. And, you know, I don't know what Equinox's numbers are, probably should, but, you know, pre-pandemic. But, you know, when you think about it, usually you're not going to churn from your gym membership because it's a good thing for you unless you're completely kind of broke that habit, right? But the fact that you actually have the gym at home, That leaves it to be, you know, a little more sticky. So that's why their churn rate is so low and they're continuing to grow. And, you know, I can see them expanding into apparel. They added a treadmill a few years back. And so I just think it's great and they are superior to the other products that are out there right now. Do I think the moat is very defensible for them? I think right now it's, you know, you have a lot of people on their tail right now with Tonal, Tempo. These are the kind of the other at-home workout products. But I'm still very bullish on Peloton. And so, you know, for me, the long-term outlook, my long-term outlook for them is probably, you know, 5 years out. But when I'm thinking about Tesla, that's probably, I'm looking at 20+ years out, right? So, you know, I have different types of long-term outlook here. And so I'll go down the list here. Shopify, I think Shopify is great because you think about how Amazon has basically kind of taken over online, but Shopify is actually putting the power back into the hands of the business owner, right? If you're working with Amazon, you're kind of at their beck and whim. So, to think about, you know, being able to own your own store and then have all the tools to create that, I think that's very powerful and a lot more people are gonna be starting their own businesses. So, I think Shopify is very much on the just starting out right now. And so, my outlook for them is probably 10+ years out. I have gold. As well, so I just have a gold. I think it's some gold ETF here, and then I invested in. I have Amazon because I think Amazon is just they're just a behemoth, and again, you have another founder CEO. Same thing with Shopify too. Again, the trend here that I look for is founder CEOs, and there's actually a lot more that that I look for, but that that is a big thing to me. When you think about Amazon, Jeff Bezos, he's had since the very beginning started when he was thirty years old. Very long-term thinker. Didn't have any profits for the first ten years or so. Keeps reinvesting. Keeps building new product lines. Keeps expanding. And he keeps focusing on the customer. It doesn't make sense not to have Amazon. And he— there's a reason why he's at least kind of in the magazines, he's the number one person, number one richest person in the world right now. Zoom is another one. I'm probably looking at 5, 10 years out. Amazon, I'm like probably like 20+ years out in terms of long-term outlook. Zoom, probably 5+ years out, just because they have a product that works. And their founder, Eric Yuan, he's got one of the top-rated cultures on Glassdoor. So people love working for him and his company. And he is another founder CEO. And I use Zoom all the time. I pay for Zoom. I love it. I use it for a lot of different functions and it's made a big difference in my life. Teladoc is amazing as well. So to me, Teladoc, that's probably like a 5-year outlook. This product is basically— when I got sick, I just basically opened my phone. I used Teladoc. The doctor told me what I had, prescribed me something. I walked over to the local pharmacy over here, got my prescription drugs and that was it. And it was magical. And so the fact that I don't have to go wait in line, I can pull this up with a doctor, sounds great, right? So I went for that. And then Twilio, Twilio is more so internet infrastructure, right? So there's a lot of things I look at here that have recurring revenue. So SaaS revenue, right? So subscription, so software as a service. I look at, I look at Peloton, I look at Shopify, I look at Zoom, you know, these are, these all have recurring revenue. Twilio also has recurring revenue as well. So Twilio allows you to All the little text messages you get, let's say you buy something or you're getting a notification that you have a meeting coming out or whatever, Twilio is the underlying infrastructure for that. And I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Again, founder CEO. And then actually funny story, the coach that I work with actually used to coach the CEO of Twilio. So I'm, I'm not saying I'm comparing myself to the CEO of Twilio. I'm just saying that we had the same coach. All right, Square, founded by Jack Dorsey. And also, I believe it's Jim McKelvey, and I interviewed Jim McKelvey on the Leveling Up podcast. Go check that out. Square, I mean, it's— to me, it's more infrastructure. You have— they still work with a lot of small businesses, but also they have the Cash App now, and they have— you have the ability to trade crypto in there as well. So, I think they are poised for long-term growth. And again, you have another founder CEO running it. And even though he's running 2 companies as of right now, He's running Twitter and he's running Square. I still think it's got a lot of potential. And then Facebook, you still have a founder CEO running it, right? Facebook to me, you have a network effects business, which is one of the most difficult businesses to build. Meaning, it's a business where the more people you add to it, the stronger it gets, right? So they have Facebook, right? Billions of users. WhatsApp, billions of users. Instagram, same deal as well. And so they have a very hard moat to break. And they've got a great advertising business. And sure, they're dealing with some antitrust stuff right now, but just with that type of moat and that type of data that you have, I think it's very hard to just— oh, they have Oculus as well, right? So they are very much fulfilling that mission of connecting people around the world. And I think, you know, they still got room to grow. And the last 2 I got here is I got CRISPR. So CRISPR is— I kind of picked some biotechs or yeah, I guess it would be considered biotech. But CRISPR is the ability to do gene editing. So to be able to think about this in the future, you can edit cancer out of your genes. I think that's got potential. Basically, it's coding, right? To be able to code stuff in or out. I think the in stuff is dangerous, but the code stuff out, I think there's got a lot of potential there. That's probably like a 10+ year outlook on it. And then Vaidehi, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but this is— I heard about this first when I was doing Singularity University, the executive program. Peter Diamandis was talking about the ability to have his genetic information kind of pulled out. So, I guess it's called genomics. And so, to me, to be able to kind of early onset discover, hey, these are potential issues you have with cancer, etc. And I heard some other stories about it, looked into it more, you know. So, my outlook on that is 10+ years out because I think it's very much the future, right? I'm very much betting on them but who knows what's gonna happen, right? Yeah. I'm much more confident with my tech stocks than I am with the kind of these health bio stocks. But at the same time, you know, I've done my research here and I want to say I know as much, nearly as much as I do with the software as a service stuff, nor have I poured into reading every single page of their annual reports. I won't say I have very much. So I'm looking at, you know, and I'll report, I'll kind of show in another video how I look at these stocks, right? How I evaluate these stocks. And then how I end up picking them. But I think the key thing to understand too is that following Warren Buffett's rule, if you use a tool like gurufocus.com, you can see for Warren Buffett, for Berkshire Hathaway, they don't hold a ton of stocks at any given time. It used to be like probably 10 or so. Now it's around, I don't know, let's call it like 20 to 30 or so. Right now, this is, let's count this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. 13, not including my crypto. Okay, so crypto to me right now is very much buy and hold. To me, it's a kind of a version of gold. I'm not trying to make a lot of money off of it, even though I think it will appreciate. I think it's gonna fluctuate quite a bit, but that's how I look at things right now. It's from the eyes of business owner. Hey, what do I understand? What is my circle of competency? Okay, I understand SaaS really well. I understand tech really well. I also understand— I've also studied these companies quite a bit, and I know these CEOs well. And I follow a lot of them on Twitter. So when I say I know them, I understand how they think on Twitter. And very much I'm betting on the jockey, I'm betting on fundamentals of the company, and I'm betting on whether I believe in the company and kind of what their mission is as well, right? And some of these I've actually experienced the product as well. So again, Tesla, Peloton, Amazon, Zoom, Twilio, Square, Facebook. Yeah, Shopify too. I've actually bought stuff off of Shopify websites. So that's That's what I can say. Anyway, so let me know if you enjoyed content like this because I want to be doing more content like this. I want to see what you guys actually like. Hit the subscribe button or also leave a comment anywhere. It can be a review over podcast or a comment over YouTube, whatever it is exactly. And check out levelingup.com for a free chapter of the book. And also let me know if you'd like to see me do a video, more videos on stuff like this where I can share templates to help you grow as well. So that is it for today. See you later.