To The Moon

Special thanks to @TigerTradingNotes for the invitation. I'm excited to share my experiences from the past year with all of you, and I hope we can witness my growth and hard work together.

December 2024 marks two and a half years since I opened my account at Tiger Broken. As the year draws to a close, I would like to briefly look back on this year and share some of the gains I’ve made in trading:

• ROR (TYD): 47.01%

• ROR (2.4 years): 145.19%

• Sharpe Ratio: 1.07

• Max Drawdown: -19.78%

Self-Review

Overall, I’m “fairly satisfied” with this result. As stated in my investment goal—“Aiming to outperform the NASDAQ”—the 47.01% return this year surpassed the Nasdaq’s 35.66% for the same period. While the market did not present the dramatic opportunities seen in the second half of 2022 or throughout 2023, companies like Tesla and Palantir still offered several smaller yet meaningful profit points.

However, I believe there is room for improvement regarding the -19.78% maximum drawdown. The main issue was being overly optimistic during the downturn, averaging down too frequently. This not only incurred losses but also created a significant psychological burden. Even though the market recovered after a few weeks, a long-term trader must always prioritize risk over returns.

Some Thoughts on 2024

1. My Trading Approach

I continue to adhere to the basic principle of holding heavier positions in leading companies while taking lighter positions in non-leading companies within the U.S. stock market. Concretely, I focus on representative companies in the Nasdaq 100 and flexibly adjust the allocation of these core holdings to outperform the overall index. At the same time, I also selectively invest in lighter positions in certain non-leading companies to aim for higher returns.

I place great emphasis on the “long runway, heavy snow” investing philosophy: doing solid fundamental work, waiting for time to deliver rewards, avoiding predictions or deliberately evading small fluctuations, yet staying prepared to handle systemic risks like economic crises. Although this sounds straightforward, I’ve paid considerable “tuition” to truly understand its complexity.

2. The Global Landscape

• United States It remains uniquely in the top tier, with the U.S. dollar still the world’s largest settlement currency, and retains its role as a global tech hub. Meanwhile, I believe its influence in some regions—such as the Middle East and East Asia—has weakened compared to the past. The U.S. no longer seems to hold the decisive power in regional conflicts that it once did. Attempts in 2024 to “harvest” global capital via interest rate hikes and cuts may also be less successful than anticipated.

• Europe The Russia-Ukraine war has made Europe its biggest victim, and I foresee rising recession risk there.

• Middle East Low-intensity conflicts continue. To some extent, these are man-made disputes stemming from how interests were allocated after World War II.

• Eastern / Northern Europe The Russia-Ukraine war has dragged on far longer than most people expected, but I believe some form of conclusion may emerge in 2025.

• East Asia Overall stability remains, but imbalances still exist, warranting continued attention.

3. The Stock Market

Themes

In 2022 and 2023, the principal themes were the rebound following the pandemic crash and the liquidity “flooding.” By 2024, there was no single standout theme; if anything, internet companies, semiconductor companies, and AI-related firms continued to rotate in the spotlight.

Valuations

The data show that valuations in the U.S. market remain historically high, especially for AI-related companies, while traditional sectors appear relatively cheap. Still, valuation is only part of the story; the real question is identifying genuine future growth drivers.

Individual Stocks

• Apple: The smartphone market is largely saturated, and innovation seems to be losing steam.

• Meta: Already serving the vast majority of global users—where will the next big push come from? Possibly more precise advertising?

• Tesla: I’ll continue holding, hoping to see real-world deployment of its self-driving taxis and robots.

• Nvidia: Among these representative companies, it’s still comparatively stable.

4. Technology

1. Large language models, exemplified by ChatGPT, along with other AI tools, continue to boost productivity across society. However, we are still in a phase of incremental development, and genuinely transformative breakthroughs likely require more time.

2. CPU manufacturing processes continue to advance; 3nm chips have reached mass production, and 18A is expected around 2025. We can also expect GPUs to move to 3nm soon.

3. AR and VR were a few years ago a hot topic, mainly centered on headsets. More recently, we’ve seen products featuring a combination of smart glasses, AR, and voice recognition. Compared to Apple Vision, these new devices are more affordable and suitable for everyday use, but mainstream adoption is still some distance away.

4. Intelligent driving is progressing, with demonstration projects in specific cities and regions. An optimistic projection suggests L4-level widespread adoption in 5–10 years, while L5 may take 10–20 years.

5. Quantum computing has made a significant step forward in addressing error correction challenges.

Outlook for 2025

Regarding the U.S. stock market in 2025, I see the following points as key:

1. Prioritizing Risk

   I will continue to prioritize risk management and strive to remain unscathed when the next systemic risk emerges.

2. Overall Risk is Controllable

• In 2025, we are likely still in the early phase of a rate-cut cycle. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff policies might temporarily benefit certain U.S. industries during the initial implementation.

• It’s important to closely watch the Federal Reserve’s rate-cut pace, its communication strategies, and the underlying objectives behind monetary easing.

• Developments in the U.S. Treasury market also warrant close attention to avoid potential credit or liquidity risks.

Final Note

My heartfelt thanks go out to the 7975 followers who have supported me all along. As 2024 comes to an end, I hope everyone has enjoyed a fulfilling and fruitful year. Moving into 2025, I look forward to working together with all of you to keep striving—whether in the stock market, your career, daily life, personal health, relationships, or academics.

Let us greet the new year of 2025 with optimism and confidence!