I have SOLD all of our Nvidia position. As I have bragged mentioned a number of times, we created our position in July 2014 at a net cost of $16.99, meaning that I have just created a helluva tax problem for 2018. Poor me.
Reasons:
1. The motivating factor was the series of steps recently out of the White House. Of all the phantasmagorical events that have occurred in the past fifteen or so months, right up there is the realization that my position as a champion of free trade now is contrary to that of a U.S. administration. I still reel...the mind boggles. Now, I DO NOT admit that a trade war is inevitable - I still believe there is perhaps a 1 in 20 chance such can be avoided. But.....
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2. That means that I needed to raise my cash position from about 0.5% to some comfortable amount. NVDA had grown to approximately 12% of our equity portfolios. And....
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3. The company's position as a high-profile exporter of somewhat sophisticated processing units could make it vulnerable to a lop-off-the-tall-stalks school of tit-for-tatting;
4. Cryptocurrency exposure. I admit that I am uncomfortable in my ignorance; the most cogent way to express this is that I absolutely do not see the justification for these in any legitimate economic transaction. This, I once again admit, is a position of ignorance - but I adamantly believe that one should avoid investments one does not intimately understand. Moreover, I maintain that other countries, China and Korea among them, appear to share the same belief, and that in itself is a reason for extreme caution with cryptocurrency exposure.
5. Energy. Regardless of what one's views are toward Bitcoin, etc., I view with alarm and something akin to disgust at the increasingly important bite out of total electric production that is being diverted to crypto-mining. Any argument that such is prominently making use of clean energy sources, or idle capacity, does not hold up to any economic scrutiny. Further, under the present paradigm, both as more cryptos are invented and the limited # of them remain to be mined, the use of electricity to extract them will of needs rise at almost - and perhaps truly - an exponential rate. This crowding-out effect of of a necessary commodity (electrons) by something that, as I wrote above, I view as societally non-beneficial, is a potent rationalization to stay far away.
Overall, I admire Nvidia greatly (everybody loves a winner, after all) and would like to have maintained our position. Were the crypto problem either not to exist or somehow to be separated from the rest of the company's business, then I could tackle the trade war risk with time and further clarification from Washington. If that were to happen, or if the stock price were to retract by a very handsome amount, I might re-invest. But getting back on a horse that's run away is very, very difficult indeed.
Good luck to all -
