Investing In Yourself – Using Pillars to Build Your Core | |
Setting Budgets + Saving for Black Swans | |
How to Open My First Brokerage Account | |
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Good morning out there. I did not realize that I go through spurts of writing, and I feel like my time away has been one of my longest spells. Writing is therapeutic to me, so I'll need to go back and unpack all the events that have kept me away. My list is usually the usual: There is growth when I talk about my family, kids, and their activities. There the continued growth of being a small business owner with a thriving business that hires and mentors people looking to gain a foothold into the information technology and cybersecurity world. I continue to focus on my health and be aware of the health, and in particular the mental health of and others. More to come and more to unpack here.
My next post is about the need to embrace change. I will likely do a series of posts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how its slowly shaping and reshaping my life and perspective. It's a tool that my team and I are using daily at work now. A tool that quickly allowed me to graphically design what different colors would look like as I imagine repainting the exterior of my office. As an example, I used AI to show you today how to identify a basket of stocks I've been watching closely. Behind the magic of AI is a need for speed, what we call compute in the technology world to spit out the answer or response that you all are looking for when interacting with AI. The power of compute starts with semiconductor chips. This technology and the companies that make chips has been on fiya. You heard me not fire but fiyaaa! So I wanted to introduce you to a way that I've been thinking about investing in AI without having to place ALL my bests in one stock. I'm late to the party, but it shows I'm watching and open to change or in this case an exchange.
An exchange‑traded fund (ETF) is basically a big basket of stuff you can buy all at once, and that basket gets traded on the stock market just like a single share of a company.
An exchange‑traded fund (ETF) is basically a big basket of stuff you can buy all at once, and that basket gets traded on the stock market just like a single share of a company.
Imagine you want to collect basketball cards of all of the superstar players but buying their individual rookie or all-star cards one at a time would take forever and be more expensive. So instead, you buy one big pack that already has a mix of cards inside.
That big pack is similar to why investors buy an ETF.
Inside the ETF “pack,” instead of cards, you, the investor gets:
Lots of different companies
All grouped together into one thing you can buy
The pack can be broad and represent the entire stock market or narrow and focused on certain industries
I'm interested in owning memory and chips. Here's what AI spit out:
Memory ETFs:
ETF
DRAM - Exposure: Pure‑play memory (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron = ~75% of assets)
Semiconductors ETFs:
| ETF | Style | # Holdings | Concentration | Fee | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SMH | Cap‑weighted | 25 | High (NVDA ~17–20%) | 0.35% | AI‑heavy exposure |
| SOXX | Cap‑weighted w/ caps | ~30 | Moderate | 0.35% | Balanced semiconductor exposure |
| XSD | Equal‑weight | ~40 | Low | 0.35% | Mid‑cap & diversified exposure |
| SOXQ | Cap‑weighted | ~30 | Moderate | 0.19% | Low‑cost broad exposure |
| PSI | Smart‑beta | ~30 | Moderate | 0.56% | Factor‑tilted exposure |
