The first rule of money management is never to have to say you are sorry. That’s why money managers never tell you in real time what their holdings are. It’s why they don’t hold monthly meetings. It’s why they don’t take questions. To which I say this: We run a club. We are open about what we do. How can you learn if you can’t even admit your mistakes? With our “Monthly Meeting” for December now in the books, here’s a look at how we misstepped in 2022 — and what we learned along the way. What we learned 1. Market cap matters. Some of our best stocks got out of hand. At one point Nvidia (NVDA), a very good company, was worth more than $820 billion, or more than 29 times sales. It didn’t matter that Nvidia is one of the finest, most innovative companies around. Just like there is a buy price for pretty much everything there is a sell price, too. When you have a very high price-to-sales ratio, you must ask yourself if there’s too much enthusiasm and not enough that can still take it higher? You must scrutinize whether the company has something up its sleeve in the next 12 months, not the next 12 years, that backs up the premium. If you’re creating answers to justify a valuation that has become unjustifiable, then you have to exit the position — as we should have done with Nvidia. 2. It’s key that a company be communicative with shareholders. Or does it dodge you and treat you unfairly? That’s been our experience with Bausch Health (BHC). No matter what we do they will not talk to us. They will not call us back. They won’t validate the thesis they laid out on “Mad Money.” So we are frozen, we don’t know what to do. This belligerence is unacceptable and puts us in limbo, a terrible place to be. 3. Don’t fall for the grand tour, or the grand lunch for that matter. You have no idea how many executives I go out with each week. Of course, each has a good story. Same with the executives who come on “Mad Money.” It’s always sunny. That’s why meeting with an executive can be fatal. CEOs are salespeople for their institution. They are incredibly effective. You have to be skeptical and resist the sirens. 4. Beware of stories based on the total addressable market size. You can get all bulled up for nothing. So often a company says an opportunity is so huge you have to get in on it. I didn’t fall into this trap with SmileDirectClub (SDC), the braces company, which told us that the worldwide total demand for its products was $500 billion. That may have been true when the stock was at $15 a share two years ago. But it also may be true at 53 cents a share, where it is now. Remember these more pertinent words: show me the money. 5. Don’t fight the Federal Reserve. No matter how rock solid your story might be, no matter how much the earnings could ramp up, if the Fed is trying to knock down inflation, it will knock down your stock, too. A hawkish Fed is your enemy. When we forgot this, we lost a lot of money. In a bear market, capital preservation trumps all. And, now… What we got right 1. Make things and do stuff. Last November, we made a determination that we were going to buy stocks of companies that ‘make things and do stuff’ at a profit. This one phrase saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars because the world changed from being in love with companies that may, one day, make stuff, but certainly not at a profit. Those all turned out to be losers. 2. And don’t be expensive. As the Fed grew more vociferous we had to add a new corollary to our favorite statement: the company had to make things and do stuff profitably, and not be expensive. The Fed’s actions shrunk the multiples of stocks that grew sales and earnings but the price to earnings was just too high to own. The more we sold of these kinds of stocks the more money we saved. 3. We never fell for fads. The market went gaga for all sorts of themes this past year that we felt had little validity — everything from charging stations to green hydrogen and electric vehicles and car parts. We never took the bait. We never trusted the street. We knew not to buy what Wall Street was selling. 4. Boring is good. As the year went on, we found ourselves being drawn more and more to companies that simply weren’t interesting. They were just cheap relative to their peers in ways that made no real sense, so we held them and their values came out over time. They paid out dividends every quarter and reduced their share counts through steady repurchases, thereby increasing our ownership. They were consistent and dependable with their earnings. The job of a money manager is to make as much money as possible with the least amount of risk. Boring reduces risk and volatility, but also increases reward. 5. Don’t panic. If you’ve done your homework and are confident that the story of a company is a good one, don’t panic even if the market says you’re wrong. Some of the best buys we had this year — buys like that of Estee Lauder (EL), Devon (DVN) or Honeywell (HON) — were opportunities because we knew the story and would not let the market shake us out of them. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
A trader watches as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), November 2, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The first rule of money management is never to have to say you are sorry. That’s why money managers never tell you in real time what their holdings are. It’s why they don’t hold monthly meetings. It’s why they don’t take questions.
Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
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The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
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Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
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The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
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