2025 YTD Monthly Closing
Jan +9.8%
Feb +1.6%
Mar -13.8%
April 30th: -6.7% YTD (down from a YTD peak of +19.5% mid February and up from April low of -25% and up from March close of -13.8%)
This has been one of the most volatile 4 months I can remember in my portfolio history with the swing on a par with the dotcom boom/bust around its apex.
Another painful month although a certain amount of recovery has taken place in recent weeks. I have to climb another ~80% to reach my portfolio ATH.
Thematically, I’m principally invested in:
eCommerce (20%) - Shopify, MercadoLibre, Global e-Online & SEA
AI & Cloud Infrastructure (20%) - Cloudflare, Pure Storage, Nvidia, Nebius, Astera Labs, Micron & SuperMicro
Software (SaaS/DevOp/Data analytics) (30%) - Palantir, Datadog, Snowflake, GitLab, Monday, Samsara & MongoDB
Cybersecurity (10%) - Crowdstrike, ZScaler, Rubrik & SentinelOne
Fintech/Payments (9%) - SOFI, Toast, Robinhood, Upstart & Bill
AdTech (10%) - The Trade Desk & Reddit (ad community)
No real trading activity to mention in March besides a top slice of ZS.
Considering trimming Palantir further and exiting Tesla. Would like to enter CRDO and at the right price get into AppLovin (rolling over from TTD - I don’t buy into the short thesis at this point) and Axon (perhaps from IOT if its share price recovers), perhaps even Transmedics.
Holdings in MDB, S, ZS, BILL and SMCI sit closest to the exit door along with NBIS which I am struggling to hold conviction in, (considering switching all NBIS into ALAB).
Missed the window to sell or top slice TTD and IOT further.
25+ holdings - bit of a long tail of 1-2% positions (made up of high conviction, scaling down and scaling up plays):
SHOP - 12%
PLTR - 10%
DDOG - 6%
MELI
MNDY - 5%
NET
PSTG
SNOW
CRWD
IOT - 4%
TTD
ZS
NVDA - 3%
UPST
TSLA
SOFI - 2%
GLBE
GTLB
MDB
HOOD
SE
RBRK
MU
S
TOST
SMCI - 1%
RDDT
ALAB
NBIS
BILL
The only bright spots in the portfolio are: Palantir which is almost back to an ATH, MercadoLibre and Crowdstrike which are also not far off and ZS which is at a 52 week high.
Watch list includes…
Lightspeed, Sezzle, ROOT, APP, AXON, FOUR, Arista, Transmedics, Fortinet, Palo Alto & CyberArk
As sectors, Cyber Security, AI and Cloud infra/DevOps and ex US eCommerce have been relatively strong - as well as profitable SaaS plays/software providers with rising consumption and ones with demonstrable AI use cases. Payments & Fintech had been holding up until the recent retracement whilst AdTech is showing signs of weakness in pricing and demand.
The potential for macro damage on a sector and company basis is clearly having an impact. With the prevailing politics and in particular economic and trade policies we are facing some hyper volatility with big winners and losers and not necessarily driven by innate company consideration.
I’m thinking seeking out growth companies with defensive qualities (cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and consumption based rather than seat based models), might do better in these volatile and uncertain times as well as ex US eCommerce and trading plays that benefit from US currency weakness but more importantly are removed from US import/export movements on an intra regional / local to local basis (e.g. MercadoLibre, SEA and Raspberry PI, Grab).
Ant