I hate to admit this, but a few years ago, before Trump was returned to office, at the end of the year my wife was forced to take a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from her IRA (I take a normal monthly draw from my IRA so I don't need to take an RMD at the end of the year). Anyway, this happens every year and sometimes she takes the money and spends it on something extra that she wanted but that year she didn't really need the extra cash so our wealth manager (they used to be called financial analysts, but wealth manager sounds more positive) suggested that she purchase some stocks instead. He made a recommendations at the time, Palantir Technologies. We agreed and he bought 97 shares. The following year, after Palantir had dropped, he took my wife's RMD and added more Palantir shares. The last purchase was in April 2023. This put our cost basis at around $16/share. By then we had 223 shares of Palantir.

As of the market's close yesterday, Palantir was trading at $137.30/share, a gain of just over $27,000, for an annualized return of over 85%.

That last time our wealth manager added to the shares of Palantir, he also bought some Home Depot, which has only given us an annualized return of just under 5%, not bad, but I sure wish he had used that money to buy more Palantir, but it had just dropped to about a third of what our initial shares had cost us and he wanted to diversify a bit. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do as he was sure that both Palantir and Home Depot were a good investment, and while he was correct, it could have been a lot better if he had only invested in Palantir.

Anyway, we're now thinking of having our wealth manager sell the Palantir and take the profits, but then we'd have to pay at least capital gains tax as this stock account is not tax-deferred as it's been funded from the RMD's from my wife's IRA.

OCU