Predictions and speculations about US stocks

1. Lao Ma also bought a laser radar and started to study it. The pure vision-based autonomous driving solution does not feel as stable as Hongmeng Zhixing's laser radar and visual intelligent driving solution.

Tesla's solution does include laser radar, but overall it is still a visual intelligence solution. There is a big difference between the way this solution uses laser radar and the way the laser radar solution uses laser radar.

The more important difference between the two is the different processing of data.

My understanding is that the visual intelligence solution uses artificial intelligence to imitate the human brain's judgment of the environment and driving to deal with problems encountered during driving; but the laser radar solution is more similar to the traditional rule-based processing method.

It happened that during this period, I read several books on artificial intelligence and ChatGPT.

As I understand it, before ChatGPT, a series of other artificial intelligence (especially "natural language processing") solutions did not achieve the current success because people have been using a long-standing view to conduct research, namely:

To make machine learning, we need to feed the machine with the laws and rules summarized by humans, so that the machine will compare the thousands of rules stored in it every time it processes a piece of data to select a solution.

The rules in the real world are endless, especially a lot of "unspoken rules" that often only exist in our brains. We can only understand them but not express them in words-----they are difficult to describe in words, let alone input them into the machine.

The GPT solution is completely different. It does not tell the robot the rules summarized by humans, but only feeds the real data and results to the machine, allowing the machine to compare and adjust the parameters by itself, so as to train its own "understanding" of the world.

The result of this is: why the machine can understand the world, what laws it has discovered, we don't know. But we know that by training machines in this way, we can indeed be very close to the human brain or even surpass the human brain in terms of neural computing.

Therefore, I am more inclined to believe that the visual intelligence solution is a more suitable solution for autonomous driving, because it achieves the same effect as human driving, and will do better than humans.

2. Buffett has recently reduced his holdings in US stocks. What do you think of his reduction of holdings? Did he see any risks?

I have shared my understanding of similar questions in previous articles.

I think many people are over-interpreting the old man's behavior.

The old man has said something similar to the following at the shareholder Q&A meeting more than once:

I said I can't predict the market, and I can't predict macro risks, but people always don't believe it.

I have listed the reasons why the old man sold his stocks before. Those reasons are what the old man said himself. I can list them again:

- Because the insurance company under his control needs cash to guard against risks

- He thinks the price of a stock is too high, which may far exceed its intrinsic value

- He found other stocks that are more worth buying than the stocks he sold, or he needs cash to acquire a company that is worth buying in full

These are the reasons above.

After reading some of the old man’s books, I think he often talks about very basic principles, but most people don’t care about these principles, let alone believe in them. They care more about taking shortcuts, speculation and taking shortcuts.

3. The overall level of the US stock market is at a historical high, and the Dow Jones Index continues to set new highs. Once the US stock market adjusts, will it be affected by the mud and sand, and will individual stocks generally pull back?

I used to be very concerned about some financial risks that may occur in the financial market in the future, and then actively predict and guess, so as to try to avoid such a big drop.

But after reading the old man's book this year, my heart has calmed down a lot, and I am less afraid of these possible risks, and I have less impulse to predict and guess.

Sometimes, even if I make some predictions and guesses, I have already regarded it as a casual behavior without being so persistent and serious.

This is probably the most and most priceless treasure I have gained in my heart over the years.

Back to the question.

The US stock market will definitely adjust and even crash, but when and how much it will fall is difficult to predict. It may be tomorrow, or next year, or even several years further away.

But I think this is not important. What is important is:

If you invest in individual US stocks, then see whether the current value of the stock will be overdrawn too much by the stock price.

If this is difficult to judge, then it might be more abstract and think about whether this company is likely to continue to lead the pack and be glorious again in the future?

If this is also difficult to judge, then see if the leader of this company is a genius who only appears once in decades, centuries, or even millennia?

If you invest in the US stock index, then think about whether the current index performance will greatly exceed the actual situation of the US economy?

If this is difficult to judge, then think about the long-term future of the US economy?

Whether it is a US stock or a US stock index, the ultimate judgment standard I think is what Mr. Buffett said, and I also shared it in the article, and now I share it again:

As long as the United States adheres to the market economy and the rule of law, American companies can continue to create miracles and continue to create wealth.

Therefore, if we judge that the United States can do these two points, then even if the US stock market encounters risks, it is temporary and will be glorious again one day. Now we only need to consider whether we can bear this short-term risk; if we judge that the United States cannot do these two points, then leave the US stock market without hesitation.

The several senior masters I read only measured whether they could bear the possible risks, but basically ignored when the risks would come and how serious the risks would be.