People have become wealthy on hand registering the right domains in the early days of an industry.
You have to understand the thrust of the article. As I mentioned in the OP that the title is somewhat sensationalized purposely to get people to think and analyze their domaining strategy especially if they are losing more money than making.
It is not a blanket statement to condemn all hand reg's. But hand reg'ing alone does not make it domain investing. As someone noted, if I register rewqrweqrqerw.com and similar domains (extreme example), it does not make me a domain investor by the virtue of hand reg'ing those domains.
It becomes an investment when you see an obvious value in the domain to the point you are willing to renew it year after year and/or dedicate sufficient resources to develop it into a marketable web property.
Of course there will be hits and misses. So you can still be in the domain investing business and have reg'd duds.
Rick Schwartz, Mike Mann, Frank Schilling, Thunayan K. Al-Ghanim, and others who have gotten in the game early hand reg'd many investment grade domains. They knew they had good investments. They hung on to them for many many years. Some they developed others they sold for significant amounts, still others they hang on to this day. Spending thousands in order to keep all their domains registered each month.
Hope this clarifies the point of this OP and the article.
I assumed that
www.dnplaybook was hand reg in 2017. And you developed it into website? why?
Playbook is a very common word in both the sports and business worlds, as well as elsewhere. It refers to specifically defined strategies. I wasn't sure what I would use it for when I registered it. But liked the name and thought it would be a good name for a domain blog to outline strategies, ideas, recommendations, news, general thoughts, etc. It is designed both for domainers and end-users. You can learn more about it here:
About DN Playbook - DN Playbook