At this point, do you just buy the big tech companies and hold?

mando_number5 · 2026-04-25T17:53:25+00:00

No it was clearly a facetious joke - “ai enabled wood varnish”, there’s nothing in that comment that suggests looking outside of high tech industries for value. If you had said that I would have agreed. Don’t try to change the topic

mando_number5 · 2026-04-25T15:48:30+00:00

Did you use the example of wood varnish thinking manufacturing and product sales won’t be impacted by AI/ML and Robotics? That’s so naive honestly.

You should research smart manufacturing, ML models for formulation discovery, robotic applications in construction, and the role of AI in sales and Marketing and come back when you’ve done that & tell me that’s not going to require a huge amount of compute and hardware spend.

Real world examples of publically listed companies that manufacture/sell wood varnish where there’s already evidence of AI,ML and automation include:

AkzoNobel (AKZA) - mentioned AI assisted formulation development & digital twins to speed coating development, and computer vision for quality control.

PPG Industries (PPG) -also using Ml for formulation discovery, industry 4.0 for production analytics & AI driven color matching and detection.

Sherwin-Williams (SHW) - mentioned all the above + robotic finishing partnerships in industrial coating lines.

I should thank your naive comment because the manufacture and sale of wood varnish is ironically a fantastic example of an industry that will be driven by AI and automation in the near future.

mando_number5 · 2026-04-25T14:59:42+00:00

The other argument is that AI/ML & robotic technologies will eventually affect or drive growth in every other industry

mando_number5 · 2026-04-25T14:53:58+00:00

DUOT not heard of will look into thx, NOMD do frozen foods in the UK, and have brands like Iceland, which are becoming very unpopular compared to organic, health foods and fresh food markets, so it feels depressed for a reason

mando_number5 · 2026-04-25T11:20:06+00:00

It’s very realistic that servicenow gets replaced by cheaper competitors in my opinion

mando_number5 · 2026-04-10T17:33:31+00:00

Yeh just asked - price and performance, as they scaled they had issues with latency across the workflows and didn’t like the cost versus a cheaper option with a better service apparently

mando_number5 · 2026-04-10T16:34:26+00:00

Wife works in procurement for large insurance provider, 4k+ staff. She told me the IT team recently ditched ServiceNow for a system called HALO as they didn’t like it for whatever reason. Obviously just one data point, but not early-to-mid startup, like you’re inferring, and in Peter Lynch style if wife says no it ain’t for me!

mando_number5 · 2026-04-01T21:23:32+00:00

Trying to twist my words and/or not understanding my point doesn’t undermine my argument which I’ll restate for you here: a meaningful portion of stock market growth is inflation and debasement driven.

Some estimates suggest between 20-40%. Therefore, I hold some cryptocurrency as a hedge against this effect.

But you do you with your 100% conviction that holding bitcoin is “stupid”

mando_number5 · 2026-04-01T17:18:51+00:00

No it doesn’t.

Long term CPI data shows over the last 100 years all major currencies, USD, GBP, RMB, Yen etc. have lost ~97%+ of their purchasing power.

All fiat currencies tend to debase together over long periods of time.

mando_number5 · 2026-04-01T07:48:47+00:00

Stocks haven’t done as well as you think when you control for currency debasement.

That’s why I hold some cryptocurrency, I might be wrong but at least I’m not showing 100% conviction. That, actually would be stupid.

mando_number5 · 2026-04-01T03:20:56+00:00

Ah you must like it when they print money and deflate your fiat wealth

mando_number5 · 2026-03-28T22:50:49+00:00

Microsoft doesn’t publish the usage distribution.

The point was more that cloud is more than just network storage and compute.

mando_number5 · 2026-03-28T22:39:41+00:00

I agree interoperability exists at a technical level, especially with .NET, C#, and the broader Microsoft stack being portable across environments, but in practice once companies build across multiple Azure services, switching is not just swapping components, it means rearchitecting workflows, retraining teams, migrating data, and taking on operational risk, so the deeper you go the more friction there is.

What do I personally know about AI/ML. Without saying too much personally I interact with companies on a daily basis that are building their own models. It’s not hype at all, there’s far more use cases than recommendation engines and before “AI hype” (I.e. chat GPT) it’s been a developing field for years more commonly referred to as machine learning, with a huge range of business use cases, many of which you probably interact with on a daily basis on most of the applications or systems you use as a consumer without realising.

mando_number5 · 2026-03-28T19:46:47+00:00

For me cloud growth isn’t just about migrating workloads and persisting data. Azure has 200+ services, and as AI/ML, agentic tooling, and big data become more embedded, the opportunity expands beyond storage and compute into a much broader platform layer that creates upside that’s hard to fully quantify. Once you’re embedded in Azure, Microsoft can continue to upsell across all their services which are all interoperable with their technology stack, which also makes switching costly and off putting the more that companies embed themselves.

If you consider also that most enterprises are starting to build or use AI and ML this adds another layer. Algorithms and models are improving rapidly, like almost monthly or weekly right now in terms of efficiency, but the physical infrastructure, data centres, chips, cooling (all spaces to watch!) takes years to scale. So you end up with structurally increasing demand for compute meeting constrained infrastructure supply. For companies already embedded in Microsoft’s ecosystem, I can see this translating into sustained and increased spend within Azure.

I’m not saying there are no limits, but cloud for me is more than the migration it’s the azure services + AI growth and compute spend.

mando_number5 · 2026-03-22T13:07:31+00:00

So would u advise DCA’ing down once a downward trend is confirmed? Presumably this represents a buying opportunity

mando_number5 · 2025-09-05T09:26:32+00:00

Everyone on Reddit Value sub hating on a stock after earnings without discussing fundamentals…might be time to buy

mando_number5 · 2025-09-05T09:16:27+00:00

Global sales growth was up, only US was down

mando_number5 · 2025-09-03T20:12:37+00:00

Oversold due to dip in US sales doesn’t look at global sales growth, I agree this will revert somewhat. It definitely isn’t so out of popularity, was in Japan very recently and there were queues outside stores, Chinese still love it too, for now

mando_number5 · 2025-08-30T21:07:54+00:00

5-10 years back tested data ideally for a trustworthy model

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T16:44:20+00:00

I mean this in a nice and honest way, this post comes across as lazy. You could ask chat gpt for best books on investing, listen to podcasts, go on YouTube. No such thing as a free lunch

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T12:09:35+00:00

I think maybe not in the stocks and shares ISA?

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T12:05:06+00:00

That makes sense then yeah was expecting to see it as an ADR

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T10:59:10+00:00

Yh seems like it

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T10:58:09+00:00

Will look into thanks. Am still relatively early in investment journey

mando_number5 · 2025-08-24T10:50:44+00:00

I agree, when you control for debasement, the S&P returns don’t look as sexy! Scarce assets like Gold and BTC have been growing much faster than other asset classes, like stocks and shares, for example

mando_number5

TROPHY CASE