Bear, you write great reviews. Thanks!
Saul
5 Likes
Nicely done Bear.
Frank
*SHOP 16.0% Toronto, Canada*
*HDP 9.4% Santa Clara (SF Bay Area)*
*SQ 9.2% San Francisco*
*TWLO 9.2% San Francisco*
*SPLK 8.4% San Francisco*
_TLND 8.1% Suresnes, France **(Redwood City, CA)**_
*HUBS 7.8% Cambridge, MA*
*WIX 7.7% Tel Aviv, Israel*
*TTD 7.2% Ventura, CA*
*MULE 6.9% San Francisco*
*MELI 5.0% Buenos Aires, Argentina*
*NEWR 4.9% San Francisco*
BTW, I’ve been researching TLND and they are essentially headquartered in Redwood City, CA which is about 20 miles South of San Francisco. The management team is there. They are also partnered with Google which is based a few miles from Redwood City, CA. They have worked with Hortonworks on delivering joint solutions to customers; HDP is about 10 miles from TLND.
This brings Bear’s exposure to the San Francisco Bay Area to 56.1% of the total portfolio!
1 Like
OT: if you had to open a position / add to a position today, where would it be and why…
Just looking for ideas on what to buy next, current port is sweda, googl,cgnx,nda,fb,dis
All the best!
1 Like
Chris, Do you avoid investing in any companies in the San Francisco area? Just wondering. Do you live anywhere near San Francisco? I believe that there are also risks in the Seattle area (home to Amazon). You can’t avoid everything because of earthquake danger, but a big one would really be devastating, and probably with effects throughout the economy.
Saul
Do you avoid investing in any companies in the San Francisco area? Just wondering. Do you live anywhere near San Francisco? I believe that there are also risks in the Seattle area (home to Amazon). You can’t avoid everything because of earthquake danger, but a big one would really be devastating, and probably with effects throughout the economy.
I live on the 4th floor of a 4 story old building in San Francisco. I think it was built in the 1920s after the 1906 earthquake.
I don’t avoid investing in companies in San Francisco, in fact, I also have a heavy concentration of investments based in the SF area. I am aware of the risk and I thought I would post about it because I think most investors who don’t live in SF would not even consider this risk.
I agree that a Katrina-like disaster in the SF area would have an effect on the global markets. Some companies that are based in the area:
Google
Apple
Facebook
Uber
Twitter
Gilead
Arista
Nvidia
HP
Agilent
Genentech
Wells Fargo
Charles Schwab
Ebay
Paypal
Tesla
McKesson
Adobe
Salesforce.com
Oracle
Chevron
Clorox
Bio-Rad
Square
and many, many others including several thousand start-ups (BTW, a huge fraction of the world’s venture capital is based here; I heard recently that 50% of the global VC funding went to companies in the SF area)
The paralysis of a major earthquake due to infrastructure damage would certainly have global repercussions.
7 Likes
OT: if you had to open a position / add to a position today, where would it be and why…
As always, the first companies I’d recommend to anyone are the companies I own. And even in the order to which I’ve allocated my own money to them.
So…have you considered Shopify?
Bear
Wow, that’s a lot…I forgot Gilead and Square were out there when I mentally reviewed my own portfolio’s geography. Visa’s HQ is in San Francisco too, I believe.
Matt
Long GILD, SQ
Thanks Bear, assumed as much, shopify is now firmly on my radar!
have you considered Shopify?
I also like SHOP – I bought it a couple of months ago, mostly for the dividend.
OTT
I also like SHOP – I bought it a couple of months ago, mostly for the dividend.
As far as I know, SHOP does not pay a dividend…
I also like SHOP – I bought it a couple of months ago, mostly for the dividend.
As far as I know, SHOP does not pay a dividend…
Hence his name offtopictom 
Andy
2 Likes
So happy I could set you up for that punchline, OTT!
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how did you get SHOP only down by 5.4% in June? it was close to triple that- down 15%.
I may be missing something but in all those concentrated portfolios spoken about here, all seems to show a slight gain this month. Considering the composition, I cannot square they were all up slightly. What is the stock that pull the rest up? are trading and edging kept you up? in that case that is a lot of work and a lot of skillful work.
tj
5 Likes
SHOP:
May 31 close: $91.86
June 30 close: $86.90
Difference: $4.96
4.96 / 91.86 = 5.39%
TJ,
It seems like you post in quite a bit of a hurry. I for one would appreciate it if you would look a little more carefully before filling up the board with things you could easily look up.
Bear
11 Likes
The other thing that gets me is when people look at a stock, “see see, SHOP is down 15%, NVDA is down 12%…” yeah, but each are up more than 200% since we bought them in the last two years, 6 months, etc.
I hate cynics and nit pickers. I love honest and good faith critics. That is what this board is about. Not cynics and nit pickers.
People put themselves out there on this board. They get $0 in compensation for it. they don’t necessarily want cheerleaders. What they want, and what they are owed is honest and good-faith critics, and honest and good-faith supporters. That is what makes this board great.
Tinker
29 Likes
Hi Bear,
I was reading back through your post and noted this quote again:
I said to myself: “I own 12 of the most exciting, fastest growing, innovative companies I know of…and Yelp.” When I realized that, I sold it immediately.
I LOVE IT! You should frame it and hang it on your wall. And anyone who is still hanging on to some legacy holding which is going nowhere, and just tying up funds in his or her portfolio, ought to reread what you just said.
Thanks,
Saul
10 Likes
I said to myself: “I own 12 of the most exciting, fastest growing, innovative companies I know of…and Yelp.” When I realized that, I sold it immediately.
I LOVE IT! You should frame it and hang it on your wall. And anyone who is still hanging on to some legacy holding which is going nowhere, and just tying up funds in his or her portfolio, ought to reread what you just said.
Thanks, Saul. It really was a watershed moment for me. But just in case anybody isn’t really following our enthusiasm on this point, here’s another example:
My dad recently owned Chevron stock. He was starting to come around to the idea that the future is uncertain for the legacy energy companies, and that his money might be better placed with companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google/Alphabet – companies where the future looks bright. Even though he felt this way, it was hard for him to cut Chevron loose, partially because it was down (maybe 5%) since he had bought it. He said to me, “I just don’t want to sell now, because I know it will come back up.” I said, “It may very well come back up, but what if that happens in summer 2018? Or even this December? Look at all the time and opportunity you will have lost! Amazon could very well be up 10%, 20% or 30% by the time Chevron breaks even. So you avoid losing 5% on Chevron by losing several times that in potential gains on AMZN. That’s opportunity cost.”
Now of course I don’t know what will happen with Chevron and Amazon – I just feel the opportunity with one is better than the other. Same with Yelp, and the rest of my holdings. As I said before, Yelp will probably go up from here. But I’m more convinced - and actually excited about - the companies I continue to own.
Bear
8 Likes
SHOP: yes it is quite volatile. Two days later it was up 10% then down 15% from there. Still it is surprising when most components are down to be up in aggregate. Maybe it is just a wrong impression.
Sometimes you want it to go up and it just does not and then you don’t pay attention to it it is up by a large amount.
It was a simple question- quite neutral really. The interesting thing is the strong reaction.
tj
1 Like