Why An Old-School Value Investor Is Betting On Bitcoin Bitcoin’s breathtaking 2024 performance and its rise above $100,000, has captured the world’s attention. Here’s why one card-carrying value investor is bullish on the volatile digital asset. Why An Old-School Value Investor Is Betting On Bitcoin My first trip to Las Vegas is one I remember very fondly. I was only about a year out of college when my best friend offered me a free flight to go with him for a few days. We stayed at the Hard Rock Casino, which was off the Strip at the time and exactly the kind of place where someone my age would want to be at with its party-like atmosphere, smaller and more intimate table gaming pit than the bigger casinos on the Strip, and some of the most generous comps. Even 27 years later, this experience remains fresh in my mind. I can recall playing blackjack for hours. We started at $10 minimum bet tables. But a lucky streak early on had us quickly progressing to bigger bets per hand. I won about $1,700 my first two days there. On the third day, our fortunes turned. By the evening, my friend went from being up a few hundred to being down $750. Frustration set in and he decided to head to bed early. I fared even worse with my $1,700 gain whittled down to just $300. But unlike my friend, I wasn’t done. Losing that much money had left such a bad taste in my mouth that I took the $300 I was still up, saw a $100 minimum table with no one there and said, why not? With luck back on my side, I turned that $300 into $3,000 in less than 20 minutes. In all, I came home having won about $3,600. For a 23-year-old living in New York City in the late 90s, this was a lot of money. Sobering Foray Into Stock Investing I bring this up because it’s often the first experience that shapes your view. My first trip to Vegas was about as good as it gets for someone in my circumstance back then. I had no fear of betting way outside my means because of the incredible luck I was enjoying and because I didn’t know any better. When you’re young, you haven’t accumulated enough life lessons to realize how reckless it is to bet $100 a hand when you only have $700 in the bank. The same is true with investing in stocks. My first introduction to doing so came when I began working at Forbes, which just happened to be at the height of the Dot-com bubble in early 2000. Among the stocks recommended by my department in the six months prior to my arrival were eToys, VerticalNet and Healtheon, which took advantage of the insatiable demand for anything related to the Internet, whether a new website or a business that facilitated growth in its infrastructure. Those three gained 66%, 92% and 99%, respectively, in just two months, two-and-a-half months and three months. And the biggest beneficiary of this madness, Qualcomm, saw its stock soar something like 2,600% in the prior year. That’s not a typo. By then, I had some money saved and opened my first brokerage account. Timing-wise, it couldn’t have been worse as that was right around when the web/tech wreck began. Two of the first stocks I purchased were ones that were recommended by our department during my first three months here, Net Perceptions and Wind River Systems, neither of which exist anymore. I can’t even recall what they did. What remains crystal clear, however, is the fact that I rode them all the way down the market slump that followed, ultimately losing 75-80% on these holdings. That was my baptism by fire and a sobering reminder that I knew nothing about buying stocks and really had no business doing so at that point. Becoming A Value Investor This would change in the years that followed as I went through the CFA program, became a stock analyst, and gained experience hunting for bargains in virtually every sector and industry that exists. But the poor experience from my first foray buying stocks never left me. I lost a lot of money on the two losers noted above because I—like so many others at the time—bought into the hype. Shaped by this initial experience, as well as the value-oriented strategy associated with the stock recommending services I worked for, I avoided as much market hype as I could. Instead, I studied Warren Buffett, read Securities Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd (still considered the bible of fundamental analysis), and began primarily buying shares of companies selling at deep discounts to what I believed they were actually worth based on my research and analysis. In other words, I became a full-fledged value investor. This meant I sought out companies with strong future cash flow potential, but was disciplined enough to only buy them when they became too cheap to ignore. For example, when our department recommended Amazon at $7.48, right after the equity market tanked in the wake of the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, I bought some myself. But it also meant when we recommended that our subscribers take their profits at $12.20
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Why An Old-School Value Investor Is Betting On Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s breathtaking 2024 performance and its rise above $100,000, has captured the world’s attention. Here’s why one card-carrying value investor is bullish on the volatile digital asset.

Why An Old-School Value Investor Is Betting On Bitcoin
My first trip to Las Vegas is one I remember very fondly. I was only about a year out of college when my best friend offered me a free flight to go with him for a few days. We stayed at the Hard Rock Casino, which was off the Strip at the time and exactly the kind of place where someone my age would want to be at with its party-like atmosphere, smaller and more intimate table gaming pit than the bigger casinos on the Strip, and some of the most generous comps.

Even 27 years later, this experience remains fresh in my mind. I can recall playing blackjack for hours. We started at $10 minimum bet tables. But a lucky streak early on had us quickly progressing to bigger bets per hand. I won about $1,700 my first two days there. On the third day, our fortunes turned. By the evening, my friend went from being up a few hundred to being down $750. Frustration set in and he decided to head to bed early.

I fared even worse with my $1,700 gain whittled down to just $300. But unlike my friend, I wasn’t done. Losing that much money had left such a bad taste in my mouth that I took the $300 I was still up, saw a $100 minimum table with no one there and said, why not? With luck back on my side, I turned that $300 into $3,000 in less than 20 minutes. In all, I came home having won about $3,600. For a 23-year-old living in New York City in the late 90s, this was a lot of money.

Sobering Foray Into Stock Investing

I bring this up because it’s often the first experience that shapes your view. My first trip to Vegas was about as good as it gets for someone in my circumstance back then. I had no fear of betting way outside my means because of the incredible luck I was enjoying and because I didn’t know any better. When you’re young, you haven’t accumulated enough life lessons to realize how reckless it is to bet $100 a hand when you only have $700 in the bank.

The same is true with investing in stocks. My first introduction to doing so came when I began working at Forbes, which just happened to be at the height of the Dot-com bubble in early 2000. Among the stocks recommended by my department in the six months prior to my arrival were eToys, VerticalNet and Healtheon, which took advantage of the insatiable demand for anything related to the Internet, whether a new website or a business that facilitated growth in its infrastructure. Those three gained 66%, 92% and 99%, respectively, in just two months, two-and-a-half months and three months. And the biggest beneficiary of this madness, Qualcomm, saw its stock soar something like 2,600% in the prior year. That’s not a typo.

By then, I had some money saved and opened my first brokerage account. Timing-wise, it couldn’t have been worse as that was right around when the web/tech wreck began. Two of the first stocks I purchased were ones that were recommended by our department during my first three months here, Net Perceptions and Wind River Systems, neither of which exist anymore. I can’t even recall what they did. What remains crystal clear, however, is the fact that I rode them all the way down the market slump that followed, ultimately losing 75-80% on these holdings. That was my baptism by fire and a sobering reminder that I knew nothing about buying stocks and really had no business doing so at that point.

Becoming A Value Investor

This would change in the years that followed as I went through the CFA program, became a stock analyst, and gained experience hunting for bargains in virtually every sector and industry that exists. But the poor experience from my first foray buying stocks never left me. I lost a lot of money on the two losers noted above because I—like so many others at the time—bought into the hype.

Shaped by this initial experience, as well as the value-oriented strategy associated with the stock recommending services I worked for, I avoided as much market hype as I could. Instead, I studied Warren Buffett, read Securities Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd (still considered the bible of fundamental analysis), and began primarily buying shares of companies selling at deep discounts to what I believed they were actually worth based on my research and analysis. In other words, I became a full-fledged value investor.

This meant I sought out companies with strong future cash flow potential, but was disciplined enough to only buy them when they became too cheap to ignore. For example, when our department recommended Amazon at $7.48, right after the equity market tanked in the wake of the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, I bought some myself. But it also meant when we recommended that our subscribers take their profits at $12.20