A lot of what I say below is off topic, so please don’t reply to anything related to cash, dividends, or Bitcoin. I’m just including it for completeness. Thanks.
Like Philiproth, I have limited time and therefore don’t do monthly updates. I shared my portfolio at the end of 2022, so I thought doing a mid-year snapshot would be good. I don’t keep good enough records of all my buys and sells across multiple accounts to be able to accurately state my returns, and I don’t want to take the time at this point to start tracking in the way I would need to. I estimate that I am roughly up 15% for the year, which I consider very good based on how much cash I have been holding.
I will also say at the start that there are few investments for which I do my own deep research and analysis. BTC and TMDX I feel like I can speak intelligently on based on my own work – most of the rest I am leaning heavily on input from various other people (like many of you, so thank you).
I’m not perfect, but over the last few years I feel like I have gained a much stronger ability to discern who is a trustworthy source of information/analysis/opinion. I spend most of the time I do have available listening to podcasts, reading tweets, reading Motley Fool recommendations, and reading this board. I assimilate all those various inputs and rely on those “recommendations”, coupled with following company news as much as I can, to make my decisions.
Like Saul, I keep a significant amount of cash uninvested and “off limits” – meaning it’s in a checking account in one of the “too big to fail” banks earning practically nothing. This money is not factored into the percentages listed below.
For my “investable” funds - at the end of 2022 I was 75% cash and 25% invested. As of 7/3/23 I am 51% invested and 49% cash. Personally, I think the market is going higher from here and that is why I have been steadily deploying cash over the last 6 months. However, I am probably not investing too much more. If I was younger, I would be more heavily invested. But I am in my mid-50’s and have worked my whole life to save up the amount I have and I’m more concerned about maintaining what I have than I am about maximizing returns. (Also, I don’t have enough confidence in myself to be as concentrated as most people on this board). My cash is split between SOFI bank (earning ~4.3%) and short-term CDs (earning ~ 5%). My wife and I both work, so I invest more as it becomes available.
The items on the left side of the graph below are all in taxable accounts (except the 401k obviously), and the stocks on the right are in an IRA. I do most of my growth investing in my IRA.
The chart below shows all of my non-cash investments.
BTC and MSTR – Bitcoin started the year at $16,600 and is now at $31k - up 86%. Microstrategy (which is for all practical purposes an unofficial Bitcoin ETF) started the year at $145 and is now $378 – up 161%. I sold most of my MSTR around $320 but kept a small amount - I was up 120% in 5 months on it and I decided I have enough spot BTC and wanted to lock in the gain and diversify a little. The MSTR is in an IRA, so there was no tax implication and it was an easy way to lock in some $. I have not sold any BTC – in fact, I continue to DCA more into BTC (very small adds – I do gig work on the side when I can and put all the proceeds into BTC.) BTC and MSTR together make up a little more than 11% of my total cash + stock investments. I won’t say much more because this is off topic, but as I did in my year end summary, I encourage you to research Bitcoin. In the last few weeks alone Blackrock, Fidelity, Wisdom Tree, VanEck, Ark, and Galaxy/Invesco have all submitted applications for Bitcoin ETFs. Last week Schwab, Fidelity and Citadel launched EDX which is an exchange for Bitcoin (and a few other tokens). Many of the US presidential candidates are talking about Bitcoin. In my opinion, BTC has the most upside of any of my investments. The next halving is in ~10 months (if you don’t know what that means, then start learning).
Ethereum ETH – I only have a small amount in this – a 1% holding. I don’t have high conviction on this, but high enough to keep a small allocation. It is up 60% this year.
TMDX – started the year at $57 and is now $82 – up 45%. Near the beginning of 2022 it was around $10. Up 8x in 1.5 years. My highest conviction stock. I have written many posts about this company, so I’m not going to regurgitate all of that here. Look at my past posts if interested. TMDX is 5.6% of my total portfolio.
The 401k is from my current job and I’m still contributing to it. Mixture of funds. Limited investment options. I contribute for the company match and to reduce my AGI.
NVCR and TDOC – have been slammed the last 2+ years. I held larger positions several years ago and sold most of them at much higher levels. I still think both have long-term potential, so I kept a small amount of my shares. I plan to hold these forever and I don’t honestly follow them very closely. I view these as a free lottery ticket – I got way more than my cost basis out of them and I’m just planning to hold the remaining shares. I know this is opportunity cost, but that is what I have decided to do.
The gray colored bars are dividend stocks and all are new this year. MSFT, ASML and INTC are the largest holdings. I had good timing on those entries (so far), and they are up 40%, 10%, and 22%. The rest are a mixture of various dividend stocks. I buy more when I think I see a dividend king or aristocrat at what I think is a good price. In total they make up 9% of my total portfolio. My intention is to slowly add more cash to dividend stocks over several years, and to try to diversify across sectors.
Growth Stocks – these add up to ~ 20% of my total portfolio. The chart below shows how much each has gone up this year. All of these were held at the start of this year – except SQ. I decided to sell DDOG, SNOW and SWAV for various reasons, so they are no longer in the list. UPST seems to stand out, doesn’t it? SOFI also. Like Denny mentioned in a recent post, if you can find “good” turnaround companies they offer huge potential. I don’t know what either of these will do longer term, but I’m planning to hold. I have mixed feelings about SQ. I think the CEO is a good person, but not as much of a capitalist as you want leading a company strictly for an investment. They are doing a lot of work with BTC and related tech, so I’m mostly betting on that aspect of the company. TWLO is another turn-around play – I’m betting on the CEO. My highest conviction growth companies are NET, TTD, and CRWD and that is why they are the largest individual stock holdings (besides TMDX). I have added a good amount to TTD recently. If I had to pick just one growth stock to invest in, I think it would be TTD. Conversion to streaming video, election year coming up, incredible management with a lot of skin in the game, and they seem to have a pretty strong moat. It is strongly recommended by multiple sources and the stock has been a beast this year.
The bar labeled “starters” is all smaller positions that have mostly been added this year. It includes ZS, LMND, MQ, RBLX, SHOP, ABNB, RDFN. These are all recommendations from a service I subscribe to. I consider all of these long-term holds. Just starting small and will add to them over time. I just added RDFN a couple weeks ago after re-joining the stock recommendation service and seeing it listed. Good timing. So far it has paid for my subscription (and then some) with the sharp rise in the last week.
The bar labeled “Disc Gr” I’m not going to try to explain. It contains 7 stocks, the largest of which are TREX, GNRC and PRLB. I bought all of the stocks in this group last year when I thought they were at good values. In aggregate, it is up ~ 20%, which is ok but not great when the Nasdaq is up 30%. I’m not sure how long I will keep all of these. If I want funds to invest in other growth companies, I would likely sell some of these. TREX I might keep long term, but not sure yet.
Quest for a “hundred bagger”. One of my personal goals is to hold on to shares in a company until it goes up 100x. I believe that out of this recent major drawdown there will be some companies that eventually go on to do that. Below are the ones I am betting on, along with my cheapest shares purchased. It might take 20+ years, but I’m planning to keep all these shares forever and see what happens (and hoping God blesses me with another 20+ years to see the end goal). They were all relatively small allocations at the lows, so none of these are going to make me a fortune even if they do 100x, but I’m doing it for fun. All of these were down 80% - 90% from their highs, and all were fairly small market cap at the time I bought them. The only one I have not mentioned before is TELL – it’s not a good company so don’t bother looking into it. It is the smallest of all allocations. It might not even survive as a company. TMDX has the early lead – I “only” need it to double 4 more times to be 100x. Seems doable over 20 years.
That’s it. That’s where I stand as of mid-year.
Biggest regret - not buying TSLA around $110. I was watching it. Read someone saying they were waiting for $80’s. I was influenced by him and did not buy. Stupid me. Still learning.
Peace
Final thought - below is part of the reason I got into SQ recently. This is a bullish chart setup if it can break above that white line. So maybe watch SQ and see what happens over the next few months.
