• Howie Town
  • Posts
  • Letters to Howie...Catching Up on AI As 2025 Begins and We Are All Meme Investors ....Sunday Reads And Listens

Letters to Howie...Catching Up on AI As 2025 Begins and We Are All Meme Investors ....Sunday Reads And Listens

Turning Shit Posters Into Fans...

Author

Howard Lindzon
January 05, 2025

Stocktwits content to explore:

Follow me on Stocktwits

Watch The Weekend Rip with Ben and Emil - Degenerate Economy is hysterical

Read The Daily Rip Newsletter - Stocktwits daily recap of markets

Read The Litepaper Newsletter - Stocktwits daily Crypto recap

Good Sunday morning everyone…

Welcome to all the new readers here over the last few weeks.

The best thing about the community of readers on my email, Stocktwits and Twitter is the age range of the readership from 15-90 years of age. I rarely share reader comments here but I am going to start to because many are just thoughtful, smart and interesting …and some of the trolling is very funny. I quickly block and/or send to spam 99 percent of trolls, but once in a while I engage because the shit posting makes me laugh and or get mad. There is something extra special about beating down a shit poster and/or turning them into a fan.

This one below is from Joe who is 80 years old and how he related to my Britannica sales job:

Howard, 

I was thrilled to learn of your experience with Britannica. 

Just a note on coincidences.

A long time ago, I , too , sold sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. It was in 1967-1968 in Washington , DC. During the day, I attended Georgetown Law. If I had successfully set up an appointment in the evening, I worked my territory, the Maryland suburbs of the District. 

Like you, we learned to close the sale...no matter what. 

We learned how to overcome every possible objection.  We sold to folks with infants by including a free set of Britannica Junior.  We sold to non-English speakers  by telling them they would learn the language by studying the volumes.  

The leads came from folks who entered a free raffle drawing for a Ford station wagon at kiosks in local shopping malls.  

I still remember the office on Connecticut Avenue near the Washington Hilton and our General Manager, Jerry Grant.The lessons remain with me to this day.  

Certain experiences imprint themselves no matter the passage of years.  I will turn 80 this month. Still working. Still remembering the Britannica lessons. 

Happy New Year to you and yours.  May 2025 bring you only good things starting with much good health.

Joe

This one from ‘Dragos’ on Twitter really cuts through to the essence of what have termed the ‘degenerate economy’ and the index I created.

My favorite shit poster of the week was of course on Twitter and it ended with a rare win for me.  BUT, turning the one percent into a fan is a game that I will always play. That is my form of ‘gambling/ degeneracy’…

Here is the Tweet that started it - click through to read full thread which is awesome because Sam Lessin worked in as well:

Here is how it ended…

When it comes to markets, nobody really knows anything…

There are GREAT explorers/speculators and those that crash and burn and in case of true exploration…die.

As we start 2025 Sam explains the truth…WE ARE ALL MEME INVESTORS NOW.

Onward quickly to AI and a great way to catch up is of course Michael Parekh. Here are four of his pieces over the holidays that are must reads for investors:

I think it’s great that Microsoft is spending $80 billion to grow. It is my hope that we are getting closer to the era where our biggest and best companies can figure out how to profitable create and build $80 billion of affordable housing. Costco is trying something interesting.

AI - From ‘Mag 7’ to Baatmaan’ - spotlight on the eight big tech trillion dollar+ market caps leading the AI Tech Wave into 2025

The Key Role of $ASML in the AI Tech Wave - and broadly across the tech semiconductor space, with China moving fast to compete

Enough for today.

Headed for a ride and the driving range.

Reply

or to participate.