Fridays are for life advice, and to be honest, the intended target is often myself. So here's some: stay humble and recognize that you don't know everything.

If things are going well at home, at work, or with your investments, you might be inclined to believe that this is entirely due to your own brilliance, insight, and hard work.

Keep in mind that positive outcomes are helped by good luck. There are unknown unknowns out there that could trip you up. Stay positive but alert, and keep an open mind.

The wealthier you are, the longer you will live. That's not surprising. According to JAMA Internal Medicine, the top 10% wealthiest Americans had a median age of 86. That is about 14 years longer than the bottom 10% who have a median age of 72. Which, by the way, is still a lot higher than the wealthiest people on earth 100 years ago.

Rich people not only have the resources to access the best healthcare facilities, but they also have the time to look after themselves by exercising and cooking healthy meals. Healthy eating is more expensive and time-consuming than picking up some junk from a takeaway joint.

Money may not always buy you happiness but it will make you live longer. So keep on saving and adding to your Vestact accounts.

Since the start of this year, we've had many new client queries. Prospective clients want to know about our stock selection process. At Vestact, we use a top-down approach, as opposed to a bottom-up one. Bottom-up is better suited to short time frames, where investors seek out companies trading at a supposed discount, in the hope that the stock will re-rate soon.

With top-down methods, you choose the sector first and then the company. We are very long-term investors, so the sectors we choose to invest in are as important as the companies themselves. It is much easier to hold through market downturns when you know the sector has a very promising future.

Once we've selected the industry, we usually pick the biggest and most recognisable company. It is rare for us to invest in a company with a market capitalization of under $100 billion. Having a strong brand name, billions in the bank, and a global workforce means that the biggest company usually gets a disproportionate amount of the industry's growth.

The sectors that we like are technology, healthcare, and specialty retail. Things like mining and financials are too cyclical, and 'sin stocks' (tobacco, alcohol, and gambling) are in a steady decline as society's priorities change.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) just invested over $1 billion in Anthropic, a hot AI startup. This adds to their previous $2 billion investment, giving them a 10% stake. Anthropic's valuation could hit $60 billion with a new funding round.

Anthropic's best-known product is the chatbot Claude. The company's revenue is skyrocketing, with annualized sales reaching $1 billion in December 2024. That's a 10x increase from the previous year!

Anthropic is backed by big players like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which has invested $8 billion so far. The AI market is expected to balloon to over $1 trillion in the next decade.

In local company news, Super Group's profit took a hit due to supply-chain bottlenecks and declining coal exports. The company expects a 20 to 30% plunge in headline earnings per share.

US equity futures are slightly in the red pre-market. The Rand is trading at around R18.47 to the US Dollar.

On the 25th (tomorrow) around six of our planets in the solar system will line up in a row, something that only happens once every 396 billion years. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will be visible to the naked eye. Very cool!

Have a good weekend.

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