2025 YTD Monthly Closing
Jan +9.8%
Feb +1.6%
Mar -13.8%
Apr -6.7%
May 30th: +8.5% YTD (down from a YTD peak of +19.5% mid February and up from April low of -25% and up from April’s close of -6.7%)
This has been one of the most volatile 5 months I can remember in my portfolio history with the swing on a par with the dotcom boom/bust around its apex.
This was a strong month building on the recovery starting in the last few weeks of April. I have to climb another ~45% to reach my portfolio ATH.
Thematically, I’m principally invested in:
eCommerce (20%) - Shopify, MercadoLibre, Global e-Online & SEA
AI & Cloud Infrastructure (25%) - Cloudflare, Pure Storage, Nvidia, Nebius, Astera Labs, Credo, Micron & SuperMicro
Software (SaaS/DevOp/Data analytics) (25%) - Palantir, Datadog, Snowflake, GitLab, Monday, Samsara & MongoDB
Cybersecurity (10%) - Crowdstrike, ZScaler, Rubrik & SentinelOne
Fintech/Payments (10%) - SOFI, Toast, Robinhood, Upstart & Bill
AdTech (10%) - The Trade Desk & Reddit (ad community)
Recent Activity -
Not much trading activity in May besides a top slice of Palantir to purchase some initial positions in Credo and Tempus AI.
Considering trimming Palantir further and exiting Tesla. Would like to enter AppLovin at the right price (rolling over from TTD perhaps) and Axon (perhaps from IOT if its share price recovers), perhaps even Transmedics or Coreweave.
Holdings in MDB, S, 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.
Portfolio holdings -
25+ positions with a long tail of 1-2% positions (made up of high conviction, scaling down and scaling up plays):
SHOP - 12%
PLTR - 7%
DDOG - 6%
NET
MELI
SNOW - 5%
PSTG
TTD
MNDY
CRWD
IOT - 4%
ZS
NVDA - 3%
TSLA
UPST
HOOD - 2%
SOFI
RBRK
SE
MU
MDB
GTLB
GLBE
NBIS
S
ALAB
TOST
CRDO
SMCI - 1%
RDDT
TEM
BILL
Bright spots in the portfolio are: Palantir, Rubrik & Robinhood which are at an ATH, MercadoLibre and Crowdstrike which are also not far off and Cloudflare, Snowflake, SEA and ZScaler which are at a 52 week high.
Watch list includes…
Lightspeed, Sezzle, ROOT, APP, AXON, FOUR, Arista, Transmedics, Fortinet, Palo Alto, Pagaya & CyberArk
Bigger Picture -
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