Portfolio Return: These are my returns after adopting most of Saul’s growth strategies.
25-year/lifetime average results = 23.3%.
Year to Date Return
I tend to follow economic news closely and follow a number of indicators. In 2025, I was at a loss so I hedged many of my investments with covered calls. To begin the year, many AI related stocks and many tech stocks fell out of favor. I think Microsoft’s AI investment vs. their ROIC has underwhelmed the marked and lead to the sell off. This is putting pressure on Microsoft to reduce investment. Will they? Because their comments indicate that demand is outstripping supply, I think they will stay the course and the stocks in the AI ship will eventually right themselves. Apparently much of the market disagrees with me. We’ll see.
Allocations
Comments on Companies
Mercadolibre: It has been a bedrock holding in my portfolio for the last 9 years. Credit cards and lending are now big drivers across Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, so credit risk bears watching when they report earnings on February 19. It’s also important to see if margins can be maintained without MELI subsidizing shipping. I remain optimistic, and I also think a big lever for US shareholders is a potentially weakening dollar.
Applovin: Although there are short seller and regulatory concerns, I plan to sit and wait until at least the earnings call. I don’t believe the short CapitalWatch claims on Asian gang money laundering. I’m more concerned about the SEC inquiry over data collection, but there haven’t been any enforcement actions. I won’t add any money, nor will I leave APP until I know my thesis is broken.
Cloudflare: There’s a lot of excitement of a Clawdbot 24/7 autonomous assistant that can act on local data files, calendars, email, and messaging apps is generating a lot of excitement. The most important thing to me is improvement in it margin and showing that it can be a scalable business. In this earnings report I’d like to see 30% revenue growth and improvement to -3% to a positive margin when they report on February 10. I would be doing cartwheel with positive 1%.
Nebius Consensus sees revenues jumping 500% and positive EBITDA. Growth is STRONG, but the key is whether unit economics will improve. I think they will, hence my large allocation. That said, I trimmed about a third of it to invest in RUBRIC, which I think is a tremendous opportunity.
Rubrik: Rubrik makes a rapid data recovery system for companies to fight ransomware. They also make Rubrik Agent Cloud in case AI agents make a mistake, which they can do, early in these agentic systems roll outs.
Axon Enterprise Inc.: Axon provides equipment that improves safety, accountability, and reduces cost for law enforcement, but its PS roughly 19, and it’s PEG is about 3.6 (below 1 is preferred), but it has a rock-solid customer base, and its Draft One, AI police report generator has a lot of sales opportunities. I am selling covered calls that expire before the next earnings report. Due to high valuation, I trimmed to 6.2%. The have a number of competitors, so I want to see continued market dominance.
Applovin They’ve sold off their gaming business and their apps to help with advertising and app growth. Their advertising margin is 81%, their advertising adjusted EBITA is growing at 92%, and their advertising revenue is growing at 71%. There’s been a lot of talk about money laundering by the short sellers which has been denied. I’m going to wait and see, though it’s costing me to do so.
Astera Labs: This is a key vendor for AI data centers, which I believe will be strong through 2026. After that, further AI investment could flag, but it could also be as strong as ever
Best,
bulwnkl