Hey, CMF Aleeb here.
September was an important month for me as an investor and because of some important (and exciting) life decisions my wife and I made. The life decisions are OT for this board, but I’m bringing them up because investing, The Motley Fool, and this board have enabled our family to make those decisions.
First, the life decisions. At the beginning of the month, we decided at some point in the next 3 years, we’re going to buy a house. It won’t be some ridiculously priced, million dollar home, but it won’t be a starter home either. It is going to be exactly the home our family wants in a place we want to live and raise our children for many years.
What that means from a portfolio stand point is that I sold enough in my taxable brokerage account to cover a 20% down payment. I know there’s opportunity cost here, I get it. However, this is not an investing decision. It’s a life decision. It’s something that we want as a family and after an incredible year (and now last 3 years of investing), we are in a position to take that chunk out, and still have plenty in our retirement accounts and brokerage account to continue compounding for 30+ years.
This decision was based only on the rule of not having any money we might need over the next 3 years invested in stocks. By following this rule, I’m able to comfortably stay fully invested with the money we have in our investment portfolios. In hindsight (and by total luck), so far, it proved to be the optimal time to sell. I made these transactions on September 13th.
To have that down payment money, I sold:
Some AYX, MDB, and OKTA owned calls that we’re up anywhere from 100% - 300% and were going to expire in November anyways (ST capital gains tax was painful but unavoidable).
And some NTNX and NEWR shares that were either mildly down, or just not up very much to avoid capital gains tax.
I ended up adding more NTNX later in the month after the share price drops, but I’ll cover that later.
I’ve also decided to give becoming a writer for The Motley Fool a shot, and The Motley Fool has decided to give me a shot at becoming a writer. It looks like I’ll be able to focus primarily on founder-led SaaS and tech companies which is really exciting to me. I’ve learned and benefitted so much from this board. I want to help share those lessons for many years to come.
Now for the investing decisions.
This month I learned a lot about myself through the PVTL situation. They reported earnings and I felt some…confusion from management, but overall, I thought I liked what I heard. I even posted on NPI challenging Tinker about his flip-flopping buy/sells when he decided to sell so quickly (droops head, sorry Tinker).
What I realized is 1. I have a lot to learn, 2. I was in love with the idea of the stock, 3. I was price anchoring. It had done so well and been so high, surely it would climb back when Wall Street just figures it out.
Well, sometimes, if things are just too confusing, and no one can figure them out, there are better places to put money.
I sold all of my PVTL shares on Sep 18 @ $20.77 and closed the Calls I owned as well. Both for small gains that were much, much larger gains before PVTL reported.
That day, I put the PVTL proceeds into
More NTNX @ $48.84
Some NTNX calls (not giving details to respect the board)
More NEWR @ $101.6
Re-opened a position in NVDA @ $277.28
For the month of September I was down 2%
At the end of September I was up 96% YTD.
As of today my position sizes are:
TWLO - 22%
AYX - 12% - substantially decreased due to closing calls that we’re going to expire in Nov
PSTG - 12%
MDB - 11% - same as AYX
SQ - 9%
NTNX - 9%
TTD - 9%
OKTA - 7% - same as AYX and MDB
NVDA - 5%
ZS - 2%
NEWR - 2%
I am long Calls to compliment my common stock holdings in all of those with the exception of AYX, MDB, NEWR, and NVDA. Options can be very very dangerous so please don’t get involved with them unless you are aware of the risks. My portfolio will be much more volatile because of the Calls.
Tomorrow, I’m going to post thoughts on my specific holdings. Many people here provide really great overviews of what these stocks do. I want to do something a little different. Here’s my first attempt at how I envisioning these companies doubling over the next 2-3 years. I’ll keep trying to grow this and eventually come up with how I envision them losing 90-100% as well.
I apologize for breaking this up, but I’m trying to recover from a cold and need to get some sleep!