The bookworm vs the troublemaker, who will be the winner in the future?

My prediction below about AI requires a rough generalization of two different personalities, bookworms and troublemakers.

One area that all bookworms have always been able to rely on to excel in is education and later careers. Their incredible dedication and sacrifice of parties, alcohol, and love for the sake of their studies has always paid off.

I predict that future bookworms' time in the limelight may be over. New technological gadgets like glasses with built-in AI that translate, calculate, give real-time answers, etc. on school tests and job interviews will give all the troublemakers everything the bookworms have worked for for free. To top it all off, troublemakers often have significantly better social skills, which will outcompete any bookworm.

The more we learn to use AI, the more our lives will change, for better or worse.

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New year, new beginnings

Over the past 6 months, we have reduced our risk taking and started buying more "safe" stocks with lower dividends. We have also decided to take a small portion of the money we invest and exclude dividend companies in favor of a couple of growth companies. We are well aware that you should not deviate from your plan, but we have come so far in our investment plan that we are prepared to make this small change.

Today we made our first investment in a growth company, we purchased a small number of shares in Ondas Holdings Inc (ONDS). ONDS is our first holding that does not pay dividends.

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Tax money NOT a work

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

Our tenant-owners' association (HOA or as it's named in Sweden BRF) has an agreement with Stockholm Vatten och Avfall, which is the municipal company responsible for drinking water, sewage and waste management in the city of Stockholm. Stockholm Vatten och Avfall has outsourced waste management to Verdis AB, which is responsible for the part of the area in Stockholm's inner city where we live.

The Stockholm Transport Office is one of the City of Stockholm's trade unions and is governed by politicians on the traffic committee, which consists of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. The Stockholm City Traffic Office is responsible for, among other things, snow removal on local streets, sidewalks and cycle paths.

In Stockholm, you don't pay directly for the general snow removal of streets, sidewalks and cycle paths, as well as waste management – ​​it is financed through taxes, where the municipality hires contractors such as Verdis AB and the Stockholm Transport Office, who then invoice the city.

Today I received a call from the private contracting company Verdis AB because they were unable to collect BRF's waste due to lack of snow removal. The result of this is that I, as a private individual, must perform a service, snow removal, which both I and the BRF pay municipal tax to have performed in order to have our waste removed.

I can only guess how Verdis AB got my mobile number because I have never been in contact with the company. But since Sweden is a far too open society with all our information, I'm just a Googling away.

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I hate to fail

Although it is sad reading, I really like this chart. Unfortunately, I don't think January 2026 will surpass January 2025, so I will have to be patient before I see an improvement. Even though I get angry when I fail, I love my statistics.

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No excuses

That 2025 was a failure is clearly visible in all the diagrams.😞 Even when I include special and supplemental dividends, we did not reach the forecast for 2025.

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Every cloud has a silver lining

Last March I was so sure that 2025 would be our best dividend year ever. Unfortunately the Swedish krona had other plans, which in itself is not bad when I think about what is best for Sweden.

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The result for 2025

Today we received the last 7 dividends for 2025. For the first time ever, we missed the forecast by 7.03% due to the Swedish krona strengthening by approximately 18% between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Which makes SEK one of the world's best performing currencies in 2025. For the first time since I created my Google Sheet in 2017, I have adjusted the exchange rate between SEK and USD for 2026 to an exchange rate that is closer to today's value.

Even though the Swedish krona has punished and continues to punish us, we have no plans whatsoever to move the money from North America to Sweden; on the contrary, we continue to invest on Nasdaq. Despite everything, I am grateful but not satisfied with our dividends for 2025.

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A different kind of pension system

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

Like pre-industrial and early industrialized Sweden (as in most agricultural societies), the Swedish population relied on a high birth rate, primarily to support their parents in their old age, there are still countries where people secure their pensions by having many children.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a change took place in Sweden and people largely stopped relying on having many children primarily as a way of securing their old age, with the decisive turning point around 1913–1935.

In 1913, Sweden introduced the world's first universal public pension system, a basic old-age and disability pension available to all citizens. In 1935, the system was significantly reformed and strengthened with a more comprehensive universal basic pension (folkpension), which became a cornerstone of the emerging Swedish welfare state.

Even though I gave birth to the most perfect child in the world and therefore should have significantly more 😉, I'm grateful that I don't have to. But given how badly Swedish politicians, and I'm thinking mainly of the left-wing politicians, are eroding Swedish pension money through countless of reckless investments in both green energy and startups, maybe we have to return to the old system...

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Patience is a virtue

As a Swedish investor in the North American stock market, you must have the patience of a saint.

Even though it is January 6, 2026, we are still missing dividends from 7 holdings where the payout date was December 31, 2025. In addition to these holdings, we have another 20 holdings with the same payday where we received the money.

It doesn't appear that these payments are made automatically but are recorded manually by each bank, which should be extremely costly. The reason I believe this is so is that we have several of the same shares in several banks. One of the reasons for this is that we have decided to stop investing on Avanza's platform as they are by far the worst at refunding foreign withholding tax.

We need to let the move from Avanza to Montrose happen organically because we have holdings that were purchased before the EU changed the rules for ETFs and BDCs, we cannot sell and repurchase them, which means this transfer will take time. It is only when a holding is to be sold for some reason that we transfer the money from Avanza. We currently have holdings in Avanza, Montrose, Nordea and Nordnet.

Without my Google Sheet where I track every dividend, we wouldn't have been able to ensure that we get all the dividends we're supposed to. There have been several occasions when I have had to contact the bank concerned because the dividend has not been paid.

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A good result with fake news

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

A positive consequence of all fake news is that biased news has also begun to receive attention in recent years. Without fake and biased news, we might not have received Community Notes on X.

As an example of biased news, in a debate in the Parliament between the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and the Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson on November 15, 2023,  Magdalena Andersson gave an incendiary speech in defense of her party colleague Jamal El-Haj, who was accused of supporting the terrorist organization Hamas.

On February 9, 2024, barely 3 months after Magdalena Andersson's defense speech in the Parliament, the Social Democrats and Magdalena Andersson had lost confidence in Jamal El-Haj and he was asked to leave the party and his seat in Parliament. On February 12, 2024, Jamal El-Haj announced his resignation from the Social Democrats but retained his seat in parliament, thus becoming a so-called political savage (independent member of parliament).

Neither SVT nor SR has so far questioned Magdalena Andersson about her incendiary speech in defense on November 15, 2023. The Swedish public service broadcasters, SVT and SR, too often fail in their mission to be impartial in their news reports.

Without the debate and Jamal El-Haj's resignation, we might not have had the web-based TV channel and media platform named 100%, which launched on November 15, 2025. According to one of the founders, Henrik Joensson, the platform was a direct result of Magdalena Andersson's verbal attack on him on February 15, 2024 when she questioned who funded his YouTube channel and implied that his content could be part of foreign (e.g. Russian) influence or propaganda.

Without alternative media, I would never have understood exactly how often and to what extent the public service companies, SVT and SR like the BBC, fail in their missions.

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Down the rabbit hole

Recently, several voices, including Stefan Ingves, PhD in Economics, former head of the Monetary and Financial Systems Department at the IMF and former governor of the Sweden's central bank AKA the Riksbank, have been raised in Sweden to abandon the Swedish krona in favor of the euro. This makes the world's most perfect husband's prediction of a future transition feel increasingly more likely.

Before joining the euro area, one must meet the convergence criteria (Maastricht criteria). One of these criteria is to ensure exchange rate stability (ERM II): that is, the krona must have been stable within the exchange rate mechanism (ERM II) for at least two years prior to entry.

Additionally, in addition to several Maastricht criteria, Sweden needs a parliamentary decision to officially apply, which requires a majority in the government AKA the Riksdag. To defend such a decision, a stronger Swedish krona is needed, which may be one reason why the value of the Swedish krona has strengthened against the US dollar by approximately 15–16% over the past year for no apparent reason. Apart from the US's tariff negotiations with the rest of the world.

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