Circle of Competence Investing: Why I Passed on a Fast-Growing Stock
I almost bought a fast-growing stock at 52-week lows. Here’s what passing taught me about circle of competence investing, conviction, and investing discipline.
I Missed Intel at $20 — What the Stock Market Taught Me
I keep watching Intel stock climb and thinking about the money I could have made. But this post isn’t really about regret. It’s about investing psychology, national security, AI, and learning how to handle missed opportunities without abandoning your process.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I Missed Intel at $20 — And It Keeps Going Up
I was watching Intel at $20.
I passed.
Now it’s over $100.
And days like today don’t help.
Another double-digit move higher, and suddenly your brain starts doing the math:
If I had put $20,000 into Intel at $20… it would be worth over $100,000 now.
That’s the trap.
Because after enough green candles, the missed money starts to feel emotionally real.
Why Intel Stock Kept Going Up
It’s easy to build a clean narrative after the fact.
Chips are national security.
The U.S. needed a domestic foundry.
Of course Intel was going to matter.
Now there are even talks about Apple working more closely with them and potentially reducing reliance on TSMC.
And honestly, I should have seen part of it.
These foundries take years to build. Sometimes close to a decade. The United States was never going to want complete dependence on overseas manufacturing once AI became a geopolitical arms race.
It all feels obvious now.
Why I Passed on Intel Stock at $20
At $20, the story looked very different.
- Intel was behind
- NVIDIA was dominating AI
- TSMC was the clear manufacturing leader
- The turnaround looked uncertain and expensive
- Debt was a real concern
It didn’t feel like a screaming buy.
It felt messy.
That’s what makes these opportunities so difficult in real time.
Why Missing Intel Stock Bothers Me
It’s not just missing the stock.
It’s that the money I did invest hasn’t done much.
- Novo Nordisk has been a loss so far
- Crocs has mostly gone sideways
- Intuit has been dead money too
Meanwhile Intel just keeps climbing.
That combination will mess with your head if you let it.
The Investing Pattern That Has Worked for Me
What’s interesting is that my two biggest winners last year came from a completely different pattern.
- Alphabet Inc. at $155
- Anheuser-Busch InBev at $25
Both came from what I believed were false or exaggerated narratives.
People acted like Google was suddenly dead because of AI. I wrote more about that in my post on why I bought Google stock at $155.
Budweiser became politically radioactive for a period of time, even though the underlying business still had massive scale and global reach. I talked about that more in teaching kids investing through the Budweiser buying opportunity.
That’s actually the investing setup I understand best:
- Strong business
- Temporary narrative panic
- Market overreaction
Intel was different.
Intel wasn’t a narrative recovery.
It was a structural repricing tied to national security and AI infrastructure.
Different game entirely.
Why I Still Believe in Intuit and Crocs
This is also why I haven’t abandoned my thesis on Intuit or Crocs.
I still think Intuit looks much more like a “narrative disconnect” situation than a broken business. I wrote about that in my Intuit stock AI panic post.
Same thing with Crocs. The stock market may hate the story right now, but the business continues to generate real cash flow. I explained that thinking more in why I added to my CROX position.
That doesn’t mean I’ll ultimately be right.
But it does mean I need to separate:
- A missed structural shift
from
- Abandoning a process that has worked before
What to Do When You Miss a Huge Stock Opportunity
Here’s the only framework I’ve found useful when a stock you passed on keeps running without you:
1. Don’t rewrite history
You didn’t pass on a guaranteed 5x return.
You passed on uncertainty.
2. Don’t count money you never had
That imaginary $100,000 starts to feel emotionally real after enough headlines and green candles.
It isn’t.
3. Don’t chase it emotionally
The worst trades often come right after a painful miss.
4. Learn the actual lesson
For me, the lesson wasn’t:
“Buy every struggling tech company.”
It was:
“Pay more attention when an industry becomes strategically important to governments.”
That’s a very different insight.
Final Thought
The hardest part of investing isn’t always losing money.
Sometimes it’s watching money you could have made keep running without you.
Especially while your current positions sit still.
But the goal isn’t to become perfect at predicting the future.
It’s to refine your lens without destroying your process every time the market humbles you.
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Intuit Stock and the AI Panic: The Small Business Reality
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