Author: danny
"What should I do? I haven't made any money in AI yet, and it'll be too late if I don't get on board now." This is probably what you were thinking when you opened this article.
NVIDIA's stock price has increased more than tenfold in three years. The leading optical module manufacturer's stock price increased 17 times in one year. Every news article is about AI. Colleagues are showing off their stock holdings. WeChat groups are sharing information about "the next ten-bagger stock."
You're out of the market. You're anxious. You open your account, your finger hovering over the "buy" button.
I'd like to ask you a question first— why do you want to buy it?
If your answer is "AI is the major trend" or "a KOL is recommending it"—that's someone else's judgment, not yours;
If your answer is "My friend made money, so I want to make money too"—that's jealousy, not investment.
If your answer is "It'll be too late if you don't buy now"—that's FOMO, not analysis.
Your real problem isn't that it's too late. Your problem is that you don't have your own worldview.
That sounds abstract. Let me put it in a concrete way—why this question is 100 times more important than "what stocks to buy".
I. Where do 99% of people lose?
Open any financial platform, and all discussions revolve around one question: What to buy ?
"Can NVIDIA's stock price continue to rise?" "Should we buy into optical module stocks?" "What's the outlook for the robotics sector?"
These questions are wrong in themselves.
They assume one thing—that you already know AI/robotics/optical communication is the right direction. And this is precisely the part that should be thought about independently, yet is skipped by 99% of people.
What are the costs of skipping it?
When your judgment is correct, you don't know why it's correct—so you don't know when to leave.
You bought NVIDIA at $80 based on a KOL's recommendation. When it rose to $140, you were reluctant to sell because you were "bullish in the long term." When it reached $200, you wanted to buy more because "the momentum is strong." When it fell to $150, you were confused, thinking, "The story is still going strong." When it dropped to $100, you panicked and sold, wondering, "Did I make a mistake?"
When your judgment is wrong, you don't know why you're wrong—so you keep losing money and losing even more.
You bought an AI concept stock at $50. It dropped to $30, but you didn't sell, thinking, "AI is the main theme for the next ten years." It dropped to $20, so you bought more, thinking, "It's cheap now." It dropped to $10, and you gave up. After that, the stock never returned to your cost basis.
What these two scenarios have in common is that you never have your own framework of judgment. You simply listen to different people and do different things at different times .
This is the price of a rented worldview.
II. What is meant by "one's own worldview"?
A worldview isn't about reading the news. A worldview is about answering several fundamental questions: (For example)
What will be the biggest changes in human society in the next 5-10 years? Will the energy structure be restructured? Will computing costs drop by another order of magnitude? Will the labor market be restructured?
What are the physical constraints on these changes? Is there enough electricity? Are there enough minerals? Are there enough people?
How will the money flow? Who will profit from it? Who will be disrupted? Who is the real bottleneck?
When you can answer these questions, stock selection becomes simple —because you already know where the money will flow, you just need to find the sluice gates on that river.
More importantly, when the market fluctuates, you won't panic or ask around for advice . Because your judgment doesn't rely on "whether it will go up or down tomorrow," but on "what the world will look like in 5 years."
The reason why people like Buffett, Munger, and Dalio can navigate bull and bear markets is not because they are smarter, but because their worldviews are self-constructed, not fed to them by the market .
III. Two Paths: Self-built vs. Following
Path A: Build your own worldview
It's difficult. It requires extensive interdisciplinary reading, tracking primary sources of information, long-term independent thinking, and accepting that 30% of your judgments will be wrong.
Most ordinary people don't have the time, energy, or knowledge to do that. That's okay —there's always path B.
Path B: Follow the person who sees the furthest.
The logic is simple: those who truly change the world see trends 5-10 years earlier than anyone else . Their words and actions reveal their worldview. Following their money is tantamount to inheriting their judgment .
But 99% of people get this wrong— you're following their money, not their words .
Let me repeat it, because it's important:
Talking is cheap. But Capex is expensive.
Elon Musk has been saying "FSD L5 next year" for eight years—that's just empty talk. SpaceX spends $5.6 billion to buy gas turbines—that's capex.
Capex doesn't lie . A person willing to bet $5 billion in a certain direction has a genuine belief in that direction that is 10 times stronger than any interview, speech, or tweet.
This is the most crucial yardstick for judging the worldview of a leading figure.
IV. Five people worth following in the field of AI commercialization
Not all CEOs' opinions are worth listening to. This article lists the opinions of five individuals, each representing a different slice of the worldview in the AI era, which together form a complete signal network.
Jensen Huang (NVIDIA) – A Shovel Seller's Perspective
All AI companies have to buy chips from him. He has the most complete demand signals in the industry chain: the real curve of computing power demand, where the bottleneck is, and how production capacity will be allocated in the next 3 years.
Listen to the GTC keynote (every March and October), and watch the quarterly earnings calls. But most importantly, look at NVIDIA's balance sheet investments —CoreWeave, Lumentum, Coherent, Corning, Nokia—these are the real bottlenecks he identifies. He uses his company's cash reserves to show you where the money is .
Elon Musk (Tesla / SpaceX / xAI) – Capex's Perspective
The most radical implementer. He also has real decision-making power with substantial financial resources in five areas: autonomous driving, rockets, AI, energy storage, and robotics.
There's a key to understanding Musk: 70% of his statements are just talk, but 100% of his actions are signals . His eight-year-long promise of "FSD L5 next year" was all talk, but the $5.6 billion gas turbine purchase, the $697 million Megapack acquisition, and the merger of SpaceX and xAI—these capital-exploiting decisions reveal his true worldview.
The right approach: Ignore his Twitter noise and keep an eye on his invoices .
Sam Altman (OpenAI) – A commercial perspective, with bias
He represents the forefront of AI application and commercialization. He interacts daily with the largest enterprise clients, knowing which use cases can truly generate revenue and where the real bottlenecks in model iteration lie.
But be wary of one thing when listening to Altman— he's raising funds. His descriptions of everything have an element of "talking his book ." How far is AGI from its goal? Stargate's $500 billion investment—these are all narrative crafting to price the next round of funding.
The correct approach: Listen to the direction he points, but discount his schedule by at least 50% .
Dario Amodei (Anthropic) – A Technical Perspective
Anthropic is the most serious "technologist + security advocate" in the AI industry. It can compete head-on with OpenAI on cutting-edge models, but its influence is far less than its valuation—meaning that Dario's statements are meaningful but not controversial .
His several long articles ("Machines of Loving Grace," "On DeepSeek") are among the few serious reflections in the AI era. He doesn't sell stories; he explains what he believes. Listening to Dario brings you closer to the truth than listening to Sam —because he doesn't need to hype himself.
Follow him through his official blog, his long articles, and his occasional podcasts. The fact that he doesn't use Twitter is itself a signal.
Liang Wenfeng (DeepSeek) – An Anti-Consensus Perspective
Representing the true technological depth of Chinese AI, DeepSeek-V3 and R1 proved one thing: under limited computing power, engineering optimization can approach the performance of closed-source models . This fact has changed the cost curve of the entire AI industry chain (especially the cost!!!).
Liang Wenfeng basically doesn't give interviews, doesn't use Twitter, and doesn't do marketing. His worldview is hidden in DeepSeek's papers and model release notes —you have to read them yourself, you can't wait for the media to feed them to you.
Why continue following this story? He represents a counterintuitive yet crucial perspective— "AI doesn't necessarily need infinite computing power." If his directional argument proves true, the entire narrative of "AI = infinite capex" needs to be reassessed.
Its very existence is a hedge in your portfolio —a contrarian indicator that reminds you that "perhaps NVIDIA's growth curve isn't that steep."
Remember the DeepSeek-R1 release in early 2025? NVIDIA's stock price plummeted 17% in a single day, wiping out $600 billion in market value. If you only listened to Jensen and not Liang Wenfeng, you wouldn't understand why that drop happened. If you listened to both, you would understand: it was the market reassessing the training cost curve; it was a correction, not a breakdown —and you wouldn't panic and sell.
The diversity of your worldview determines whether you can remain calm when unexpected events occur.
V. Practice: A training method that allows you to take immediate action
I've been talking a lot of abstract stuff. Let me give you a concrete exercise you can do tonight —it will change your understanding of investing. (Note: This is just one example using NVIDIA.)
Exercise: Using NVIDIA as an example, list all of NVIDIA's investments over the past 12 months.
List it out:
CoreWeave ($2B up bet)
Lumentum ($2B)
Coherent ($2B)
Corning ($500M warrants)
Nokia ($1B)
Applied Digital (holding shares)
Then ask yourself – can I explain why NVIDIA invests in these companies?
What is CoreWeave? Why is NVIDIA targeting a GPU leasing company?
Lumentum and Coherent are both laser companies, so why do they need dual sources?
Corning is a glass company, so what does it have to do with AI?
Nokia is a telecommunications company, so why did it invest in the company?
You can't explain it clearly —you don't have a worldview yet. You're just chasing news headlines.
To put it clearly —you've already started following the flow of capital to see the world.
This list is more important than any stock recommendation. It doesn't tell you "what to buy," it trains you "how to read."
NVIDIA is showing you with its own cash: "These are the real bottlenecks"—by studying the supply chain according to this list, you can improve your efficiency tenfold.
VI. Several Directions Your Worldview Tells You
When you start following the flow of capex funds, you'll find that money is flowing in several clear directions:
AI chips —the marginal cost of intelligence is decreasing, but total demand is growing even faster, so the total number of chips continues to expand. But NVIDIA isn't the only winner. Broadcom snatched hyperscaler self-developed orders through ASICs, and TSMC is the fab for all players.
Storage – The larger the AI model, the greater the demand for HBM. A GPU without HBM is essentially crippled. HBM is in structural shortage, with SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron forming a three-way oligopoly, and expansion cycles of 18-24 months.
Optical interconnects – when the number of GPUs exceeds 1 million, the physical limits of copper interconnects are broken, and light must be used. Corning is the relatively safest target – a large-cap stock + a true beneficiary.
Robots are rewriting the cost structure of manual labor. But the market is far from mature ; the Tesla Optimus has already been delayed twice. It's too early to say anything now; let's wait until 2027 to see production data.
Energy —this is the most underestimated area. AI is not a software revolution, but an energy consumption revolution . A large data center consumes the equivalent of a medium-sized city's electricity. The US power grid cannot handle the anticipated demand for AI; transformers are in a 5-year queue, and gas turbines are in a 7-year queue. So what is happening now is that hyperscalers are bypassing the power grid, building their own gas turbines + energy storage + future small-scale nuclear power plants.
Each of these five directions is derived from the flow of capex data, not from news reports . This is a judgment based on a worldview.
VII. From Worldview to Action
Okay—you've established your worldview. Now the question is: how do you put it into practice?
A counterintuitive answer: The clearer one's worldview, the slower one's actions actually become . (If you don't believe me, just look at Warren Buffett.)
Why? Because you're no longer driven by FOMO. You know AI is a 10-year story—entering 3 months, 6 months, or even 12 months later doesn't matter on a 10-year scale. You don't need to win this wave; you need to win the next 30 years .
Step 1: First, resolve the basic financial structure.
Before deciding "what to buy," answer three questions:
Does the emergency fund cover six months of living expenses?
Have you paid off your high-interest debts (credit cards, consumer loans)?
Have you bought insurance?
Investing in stocks without addressing these three issues is simply waiting to suffer losses .
Step 2: Determine the proportion of investment strategy
Conservative version 10%, balanced version 15%, radical version 25%.
Don't exceed 25% . Even if you 100% believe AI is the future—risk management doesn't allow a single theme to exceed a quarter of your portfolio. This isn't pessimism, it's discipline.
Step 3: Choose your participation method
For 80% of ordinary people, the correct answer is broad-based index ETFs (QQQ, SPY, VOO). (Data also proves this).
In the Nasdaq 100, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple together account for over 40%—they are all core beneficiaries of the AI theme . Buying QQ is equivalent to automatically overweighting AI, while diversifying the risk of a single stock.
For the 15% – thematic ETFs (AIQ, SOXX). Volatility is 2-3 times that of broad-based ETFs, but more diversified than single-stock ETFs.
For 5% of people—individual stocks. The list is extremely short : NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, Meta, TSLA, Broadcom, and TSMC. Just these 7 companies . (This is just an example; of course, there are some alpha stocks among them, which is a matter of opinion.)
Don't extend this to "high odds on small-cap stocks". That's for professionals, not for you.
Step 4: Entering the site in batches
If you decide to invest 100,000 yuan in AI— don't buy it all at once today .
Purchase in installments over 6-12 months, with a fixed amount each month.
You don't know if today is a high or a low . If you buy over 12 months, and continue buying even when the market drops 20%, your average cost will be significantly lower than if you bought all at once.
Boring strategies are often the ones that make money. Exciting strategies are often the ones that lose money.
Step 5: Write down the rules
Before entering, write down three rules, print them out and stick them on the wall, or set them as your phone's screen saver/cover:
I will begin a monthly investment plan with a fixed amount on [date], continuing for [number of months].
I will not change my plan due to short-term fluctuations—whether it rises or falls by 20%, I will continue with my dollar-cost averaging.
I will assess whether to make adjustments in [3 years / when it accounts for more than 30% of the portfolio / when I urgently need funds].
You need to understand: the rational judgments you can write down today will most likely be overwhelmed by emotions when the market experiences sharp fluctuations. This rule printed on the wall is a contract between you and your future, out-of-control self. (Refer to @0xPickleCati 's Rules of Discipline)
8. Mistakes you are bound to make in the next 12 months
Mistake 1: Stop investing during a market crash. Your instinctive reaction on a day with a 15% drop is "stop immediately." Wrong—this is precisely when you should continue buying.
Mistake 2: Doubling down on purchases during a market rally. Trying to "speed things up" after three consecutive months of gains—this is chasing the highs.
Mistake 3: Turning "investing" into "market watching". Checking your account ten times a day after starting a dollar-cost averaging plan—you've already slid from an investor into a gambler. Uninstall the app and only check your account once a month.
Mistake 4: Adding to your position based on rumors. Group recommendations promising "guaranteed tenfold gains" are 99% wrong, and you won't be able to tell the difference in the remaining 1%. Aside from your own list, nothing else matters.
Mistake 5: Calculating profits. Beginners love to calculate "how much I've earned." Profits on paper aren't yours until you sell. Don't calculate profits within the first 5 years .
These five mistakes all stem from the same root cause— your worldview is not stable enough .
If you truly believe that AI is the main theme for the next 10 years, you won't panic if it drops by 20% (you might even be happy to have cheap shares). If your judgment is based on hearsay, you'll start to doubt your life choices if it drops by 5%.
The stability of your worldview determines the stability of your execution.
9. Finally, why do you want to buy it?
Let's go back to the question at the beginning— why do you want to buy it?
If you can come up with your own answer after reading this, then you are closer to the truth than 95% of retail investors today.
It's not because you're smarter than them. It's because you're willing to slow down, think clearly about the "why" before doing the "what."
Remember, the smallest difference between ordinary people and large institutions, professional traders, and those with an IQ of 150 is time . You, like them, only have 24 hours in a day. Everyone needs the same amount of time to see the fruits ripen.
Institutions face daily pressure to meet quarterly performance targets, client redemptions, and outperform their peers. They must trade daily, time their trades perfectly, and follow market trends.
You don't have to.
Regularly investing in global indices over 30 years yields a compound return of approximately 8-10% —outperforming 80% of actively managed funds .
If you don't research or analyze anything, but simply execute mechanically, your long-term returns will surpass those of most professional investors.
Then why would you risk buying AI stocks?
Because we all want to feel like we're "participating in the times." Because we're all afraid of missing out on "obvious opportunities" like NVIDIA. Because our instincts tell us that "inaction is failure."
However, in investing, 'inaction' is often the strongest action.
First comes worldview, then comes stocks. Buying stocks without a worldview is essentially gambling.
Follow capex, not opinions. How much real money a person is willing to spend determines their true belief in the future.
Don't rush to invest your money. Opportunities will always come, but you only have one chance to invest your principal.
You need to understand that AI won't be led astray by you; AI won't stop caring about you just because you entered the market three months later—but if you go all in at the wrong time, it may take five years to break even.
Those five years were your most expensive price to pay.
postscript
In the past few days, many people have asked me what they want to buy and how to open an account.
I always say: Really, don't rush to open an account and buy stocks.
Do one thing tonight: find a piece of paper and write down "Why I believe AI will be the main theme of the next 10 years"—in your own words, at least 500 words .
If you can't write it—you don't have a worldview yet, don't submit it. If you can write it—your worldview can withstand this simple test, you can start implementing it.
Believe me, this piece of paper is more important than any stock you buy today.
Because it's the starting point for your independent investment thinking.
It will accompany you for the next 30 years—and 30 years of compound interest is what you can truly win from this era.
Take it slow. Make sure you get the first step right.
