Bear's Portfolio through Jan 2020

My 2020 Portfolio Performance YTD as of


Jan +23.79%

Previous Month Summaries
Dec 2016 (contains links to all 2016 monthly posts): http://discussion.fool.com/bear39s-portfolio-at-the-end-of-2016-…
Dec 2017 (contains links to all 2017 monthly posts): http://discussion.fool.com/bear39s-portfolio-through-dec-2017-32…
Dec 2018 (contains links to all 2018 monthly posts): https://discussion.fool.com/bear39s-portfolio-through-dec-2018-3…
Dec 2019 (contains links to all 2018 monthly posts): https://discussion.fool.com/bear39s-portfolio-through-dec-2019-3…

New 2020
January - PINS

Sold 2020
January - none

My Current Allocations


Ticker	Curr%	Buy/S	Mo Ch	YTD Ch
AYX	20.6%	9%	39.4%	39.4%
CRWD	18.1%	-8%	22.5%	22.5%
ESTC	14.4%	13%	0.9%	0.9%
DDOG	10.8%	31%	22.3%	22.3%
SMAR	7.8%	8%	7.9%	7.9%
MDB	6.1%	0%	24.5%	24.5%
SQ	5.5%	20%	19.4%	19.4%
ZM	2.8%	0%	12.1%	12.1%
HUBS	2.2%	0%	14.2%	14.2%
LVGO	2.1%	0%	-3.6%	-3.6%
PINS	1.4%	NEW	18.2%	18.2%
options	1.2%			
cash	7.1%			

WHY I DID WHAT I DID THIS MONTH

Bought

PINS - I was reading on another board and someone pointed out what a bargain PINS looked like. I took another look and agreed. Growth slowed last quarter, but they are still early in the monetization process, so I’d be surprised to see it slow much more. We’ll see. At its present valuation, it seems like a low risk, high reward type play. Either way, it’s a tiny “try-out” position for now.

Sold

None.

Added to or Trimmed

Mostly added to SQ and DDOG. Just building the positions a bit. DDOG is now my #4 position, but I don’t think I’ll add any more at these levels.

Trimmed CRWD ever so slightly after it rose 20%.

Added to AYX and ESTC ever so slightly. With AYX it was just buying a few shares when I sold my call options. With ESTC, I just couldn’t resist at $65 or so. It hasn’t participated in the January bump, and so it seemed like a good time to buy. That said, I need to figure out what the market is telling us about ESTC, so I’ll be watching that one very closely.

WRAPPING UP

Sorry for the very brief review this month, but other than fantastic appreciation in our companies’ share prices, not much has happened. I still feel exactly the same about the companies as I did in December. So I wasn’t very active in January because for the most part, buyers of our companies did the work for me. I did sell almost all of my call options, and some of that went into cash and some into purchasing shares. But more than anything, the silly December selloffs in our companies reversed.

It never fails to amaze me how the market can be so strange. In this case it was strangely predictable, with even the stocks we collectively liked most in the downturn bouncing back the most in January:

AYX was up almost 40% this month! Glad a lot of us loaded up in December!
Crowdstrike, MongoDB, and Datadog were all up more than 20% as well.

We expected December to just be a “weird” swoon, and in January we got the bounceback we expected. But I caution against thinking it will be a pattern every year. If I were to ever decide “I’m not playing this game! I’m selling out in July and buying back in December,” I’m sure our stocks would just cruise up 50% or more in the second half of the year and we wouldn’t see the December dip that year.

Anyway, I’m thrilled with January and I hope February treats us as well! Can’t imagine how that would happen, but as I just said, even when you think you know, you never know.

Bear

“I guarantee nothing but hard work.” - Bear Bryant, Alabama Football Coach, 1958 - 1982
“A man’s gotta know his limitations.” - Dirty Harry
“If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.” attributed to Goethe (but not sourced)
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” - Attributed to Albert Einstein
“exponential compounded growth does not fit the analytical backward looking skill sets of most Wall street analysts” - mauser96
“I presume the thing is to ride the momentum for the short squeeze and exit fast with enough money for a few months supply of whisky before everyone realises it’s a value trap.” - Strelna

74 Likes

Nice write up Bear… and even better results! Congrats.

I started position in PINs and SQ this month for same reasons.
Although, I heard / read a couple of caution points for these are below.

PINS: I believe it was Akram’s Razor on SeekingAlpha podcast really arguing for PINS as great buy, one point he emphasized was that PINS organization is less aggressive and less focused (presumably compared to other social media / ad companies) on monetization / making money… his point was that PINS opened offices in international markets just in 2019, though the company is more than a decade old… so there is a great runway ahead…

the reason I say its a point of caution is that such organization cultures are tough to change, and even if the opportunity is large with long runway, they may not accelerate as we are used on this board with many strong focus companies…

I am planning to keep this small position for a quarter or two to see how it evolves.

SQ: I think lots of positives for SQ but one clear challenge will be that having sold Caviar business recently, for next four quarters, their headline revenue growth metrics will look less attractive… although the profitability will see strong uptick.