"The scenery here is quite nice."
Across the sofa, Ms. Cathy looked out the window at the pier and the vast ocean.
"Yes, I used to have a dream of opening a cafe by the sea in Miami, facing the ocean and white sandy beach every day, welcoming all kinds of guests, listening to their stories. What do you think?"
"It would probably be very boring. Knowing you as I do, you don't seem like the type to be content with solitude."
Ms. Cathy said bluntly.
Link smiled lightly, not refuting.
Ms. Cathie Wood was a very professional asset manager. After sitting down, she didn't exchange pleasantries and directly handed over a stack of financial statements, which were the accumulated asset investment reports for the fourth quarter of last year, saying that he needed to take a look.
Because he was too busy at the end of last year, he didn't have time until now to get them.
Seeing the pile of materials in front of him, thicker than the "Complete Works of Shakespeare," Link couldn't help but feel a headache. He was a boxer who liked money but hated dealing with numbers. Looking at them too much would make him dizzy, but he couldn't avoid it.
As a self-made billionaire, every penny was hard-earned. He needed to know how his money came and went so that he wouldn't fall into the hands of those number players on Wall Street.
"Cathie, I'll look at these materials when I get back. First, tell me about the investment situation in the last quarter."
Link stirred his coffee cup with a silver spoon.
"Alright!"
Ms. Cathie Wood took out a tablet from her bag and explained the investment and income situation in the fourth quarter in fluent and easy-to-understand language.
Starting from September 2008, Link's first investment was in Amazon's stock, and he later added several more investments. Now, Amazon stock was his most valuable asset.
Cathie also first explained the income and dividend situation of Amazon's stock.
In September 2008, Amazon was affected by the financial crisis, and its total market value fell from 33.7 billion US dollars in June 2007 to 23.8 billion US dollars, a drop of 37%.
Amazon's stock also fell from 241 US dollars per share to 119 US dollars.
That was a good opportunity to buy.
He, through Cathie, invested more than 1.2 million US dollars and bought about 100,000 shares of Amazon.
Later, he won the WBA gold belt and defeated Tyson, earning more than 2 million US dollars through boxing matches and advertising, all of which he invested in Amazon stock.
He had invested nearly 65 million US dollars in Amazon stock.
In May 2009, the impact of the financial crisis gradually weakened, and the US stock market slowly recovered from the slump.
The S&P 500 index rose 211%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 313.2% over the same period, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose even more, by 370%.
With the US stock market soaring, Amazon's stock also rose from its lowest point of 108 US dollars to 332 US dollars. At the end of 2009, it reached a high of 346 US dollars and was currently stable around 336 US dollars.
Amazon's market value had also soared from over 20 billion US dollars in 2008 to 66.2 billion US dollars, almost tripling, and was still growing.
The 420,000 shares of Amazon stock in Link's hands were currently worth about 1.41 billion US dollars.
The second key investment project was Twitter, a social networking service company.
Founded in July 2006, similar to a blog, it gradually became a well-known microblogging publishing platform from 2008.
Since Twitter had not yet gone public, to obtain Twitter stock, it was necessary to operate through financing.
In 2008, Facebook offered 500 million US dollars to acquire Twitter, but due to issues such as whether to merge Twitter into Facebook, the management of both sides did not reach an agreement, and the acquisition failed. At that time, Twitter's stock value was 350 million to 400 million US dollars.
By February 2009, Twitter conducted its first round of financing. Affected by the financial crisis, its market value dropped to between 200 million and 250 million US dollars.
At that time, Link did not notice Twitter and did not invest.
In August last year, the number of Twitter registered users exceeded 60 million, and its market value and stock price were between 500 million and 600 million US dollars, starting the second round of financing.
Link, through Vanguard's channels, invested 65 million US dollars and obtained about 10.4% of Twitter's stock, becoming Twitter's fifth-largest shareholder.
In November last year, mutual fund company T. Rowe Price and private equity firm Insight Venture Partners invested 100 million US dollars in Twitter, obtaining 10% of Twitter's stock.
Twitter's valuation reached 1 billion US dollars.
Link's stock was diluted a bit, leaving 8.7%, but the market value rose to around 80 million US dollars.
In addition, he also had 22,000 shares of Apple stock, 11,000 shares of Google stock, and some Netflix and YouTube stock, with a total value of over 48 million US dollars.
The total market value of these stocks was about 270 million US dollars. Counting his bank deposits, Dynasty Promotion stock, and Link Music company, his net worth was about 360 million US dollars, 40 million US dollars higher than the data calculated by "BusinessWeek."
Today, he and Cathie needed to discuss this year's investment arrangements.
He planned to sell his Apple, Google, Netflix, and other stocks, plus the deposits in his account, and buy some Tesla shares before it went public, striving to become a major shareholder eligible to enter the board of directors.
In the future, his stock holdings would mainly be Amazon, Twitter, and Tesla.
As for Facebook, its current market value was 18 billion US dollars, and it was a hot commodity on Wall Street. He was not qualified to get involved.
"Tesla? The electric car project led by Elon Musk?"
Ms. Cathie Wood blinked her pine green eyes and looked at him in surprise when she heard he wanted to invest in Tesla.
"Yes, Elon is my neighbor. His villa is not far from here. I talked to him last time, and he told me that the future of the automobile transportation industry will be dominated by electric cars. Electric cars are more advanced, environmentally friendly, and intelligent than gasoline cars. I agree with his statement."
Link shrugged and explained the advantages of electric cars.
From the perspective of technological development, electric cars replacing gasoline cars was an inevitable product of social development.
According to futurist Alvin Toffler's description in "The Third Wave," the third wave was the stage of the information technology revolution. In this stage, social development was mainly marked by the invention and application of electronic computers, that is, the internet era.
The closer an industry was to internet intelligence, the faster it would develop. For example, electric cars, artificial intelligence, GPT, OpenAI, etc., were all products of the third wave, and their development was unstoppable.
"Link, what you said is all speculation and does not conform to the market development situation. Also, you probably don't know Elon Musk. He is an idealist who has repeatedly gone to Chinatown to promote his Mars immigration plan, space shuttle plan, and electric car plan. Everyone regarded him as a madman, and no investment company was willing to invest in him.
In addition, Elon Musk's SpaceX company has not yet been able to build a rocket, and the electric cars produced by Tesla Motors also have many problems. I don't think this is a suitable investment project."
Cathie Wood opened her computer and brought up Tesla's revenue status last year. The financial deficit was as high as 520 million US dollars, while its market value was only 800 million US dollars, almost on the verge of bankruptcy.
Therefore, Tesla was not a good investment project.
Link looked through the data and found that Tesla's situation was worse than reported in the media.
"Cathie, I know that Elon Musk's ideals are a bit too advanced, and I also know that Tesla's situation is not good, but I admire Musk's philosophy and direction.
He is leading the times instead of simply copying other people's ideas. He is an adventurer and explorer. Even if he fails, it is a useful attempt.
If I were a poor person, all I could do is applaud him. Now that I have a large amount of money, I am willing to take it out and do something meaningful.
But if he succeeds, Cathie, do you know what that means?"
Link stared into Cathie's beautiful eyes and smiled, "I will become richer, and you will become richer
But it was too late.
Clink!
Link tapped the rim of the cup with his coffee spoon, noticing the changing expression on Cathie's face.
"It's just selling a popular stock and replacing it with a less popular one. Is this task difficult?"
Cathie looked up at him and blinked her pine green eyes.
"Buying Tesla stock is easy, it can be done in two or three days. But Tesla's business situation is very bad. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on battery research projects, and they haven't succeeded for three or four years in a row, causing the original shareholders to withdraw their shares. If we invest, it's very likely that we'll lose everything. Do you still want to invest?"
"Yes!"
Link said affirmatively.
Cathie frowned, her lower lip slightly upturned, looking at him with a helpless expression.
Link smiled lightly, "Cathie, there's one thing you need to understand. I'm a boxer, making money is very easy. The 48 million used to invest in Tesla can be earned in just a few minutes, so you don't have to worry about losing money. Be bold and invest, I'll take care of everything."
"Alright, don't blame me if you lose money. I'm your asset manager, I can only make suggestions, not decisions for you."
Cathie said with a serious expression.
"Of course!"
Link smiled lightly and clinked his coffee cup with hers.
(End of chapter)