Magical thinking or a complete fool?

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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A fellow board member kindly alerted me to a post on another board which, believe it or not, accused me of manipulating the stocks when I gave you a second update yesterday telling you that I had reduced my Alteryx to a 12.5% position, that I had taken a 4.8% in Livingo. He said that was why Alteryx was down 5% at the time he was writing, and that was why Livingo was way up at the time, and that I had manipulated the market to cause that. (He actually used the term “market manipulation”).

That poster, who knows who he is, was either affected by Magical Thinking, or is a total and complete fool.

First of all, he wasn’t thinking. Why the hell would I be manipulating my remaining large 12.5% position in Alteryx to go down? Does that make any sense at all? (Did he think it was in order to have my little 4.8% position in Livingo to go up?) Absolutely no thought on his part, just accusation.

Second, Alteryx has an $8,000,000,000 market cap. That’s 8 billion dollars! Does he really think that anything I say can manipulate an $8 billion stock to drop 5%, even if I had wanted to, which was ridiculous in itself, considering that it was a large position of mine?

Third, Alteryx traded a volume today of 2,340,000 shares at a closing price of $122.28 per share. That comes to $286 million dollars traded!!! And this was pretty normal volume for the company. Can he really have believed that my little comments of having reduced my position could really have moved $286 million dollars of trading?

Fourth. And Livingo, which he could perhaps have thought was small enough to be manipulated, ended up DOWN fifty cents today, after he accused me of pushing it up by saying I took a position. What total nonsense!!!

That’s why I usually don’t post updates of what I am doing during the week, because I don’t want people following my trades, but this time I thought I really should tell you all what I did because several times recently I had been vociferous in pointing out that there was no way Alteryx’s revenue growth would only be up 10% in this quarter (as someone was presenting as a given). In light of that I thought it would then be dishonest to not tell the board I had reduced my position. The reason being that while I saw their revenue being up 25%, not 10%, I was shifting part of my funds into companies whose revenue would be up two or three times that (at least). I made that perfectly clear in my second update.

Best to you all,

Saul

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I agree he was a fool (whoever he was, and I don’t want to know). But it sort of is a back-handed compliment. He (or she) is implying your advice can move the market to your whim, like Warren Buffett.

So don’t let one silly person stop you from posting whatever you like on your forum.

1poorguy

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Hi Saul,

I know that I really appreciate you sharing your trades during mid-week rather than waiting till end of the month. You don’t have to share your transactions mid-month or even at the end of month, lot of us are learning from you and more information you share, more helpful it is for us.

We don’t have to copy your moves but it does help us understand your thinking and if we do decide to follow similar path as you, it is our choice.

Thanks again for sharing. Please continue to share often.

Cheers,
FoolFan

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First time commenter here. Appreciate what you do with with board and am learning, which is why I haven’t commented. I saw your post on LVGO this morning and it helped me to understand better why you do things. I want to be a good investor, not a follower, which I think is what most of us want. Keep up what you’re doing and don’t feel the need to defend yourself–and that goes for the rest of you who are teaching people like me how to fish.
Dave

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I vote for you not changing anything about how you do things.

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In addition to the market cap, 71 exchange traded funds hold shares in AYX. I cannot imagine that whatever this board does, much less any individual, could make a ripple in the market.

https://www.etf.com/stock/AYX

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Saul,

It is clear why you don’t post your moves by the action of this individual. Key word here is “individual” even though i’m sure there are others. The gracious impact you have on a bigger audience far exceeds the foolish actions/comments of the nonsense responses from them.

You make it clear in your monthly updates as well as in the knowledge base to make your own decisions and research, investments, etc. With that being said these mid week or current move updates at the time you do them is some of the most valuable information in my opinion. Not to follow your moves but to see how you take action. I just wanted to follow up to what FoolFan added.

I am a daily sponge to this board and is the best educational source of all my readings over time. Gives me chance to say thank you Saul and to all the great members and hope to give back. Stay Well!

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Even incomplete fools deserve to be ignored. Totally.

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I know that I really appreciate you sharing your trades during mid-week rather than waiting till end of the month. You don’t have to share your transactions mid-month or even at the end of month, lot of us are learning from you and more information you share, more helpful it is for us.

While I too appreciate the sharing of trade information, I wish to add that IMHO the most valuable feature of these generously shared comments is to illustrate in under real conditions , how one might go about implementing an investing philosophy by employing a particular tactic. I think this reinforces one’s understanding (at least it does mine) of the principals involved.

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I am always amazed at the success you have as investor. These two updates gave me a hypothesis of why. You are able to get in and out very quickly when the fundamentals change, so you can catch the rising star, and avoid the falling knife.

These are not penny stocks with a market cap of 25 million. These are companies with more than 5 billion in market cap. I doubt you can move the market.

Please continue the mid monthly updates if you have the time to do so.

You have created a fantastic board.

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Saul, it is hard for me to understand why someone would care about your exact trades when you are very open about your positive and negative feelings about the companies we discuss here. Is someone really going to add 1.5% to their position in XYZ because that is what you did? It seems to me that you give us all the information we need about what you think about things to form our own opinion about our own context. Plus, we have lots of other people weighing in for balance.

Which said, I can be amused about taking a position in LVGO monday before I saw that you had done the same! :slight_smile:

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Hi Saul,

I’m agree with you that you have to make a new update, like you said You just celebrated your thought right with AYX after ER, but in this case the growth rate obviously decelerate this year. Long time competition didn’t changed, but no need hold as lot like 15%~20% with your portfolio. This is a good moved after weekend thinking and you do got a good price(that’s bonus XD). And no worry, as your consistency behavior nobody can question your integrity .

I like your update, it’s really helped.

Rick

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Saul,

Some people just don’t get it.

I had planned to add a small bit to my AYX position last week during the dip, but got busy with other matters and didn’t. This week, I read Bert Hochfeld’s recent analysis when I saw a link to a free SA article posted on another board and noticed the price had dipped again from the most recent high, so I did add. It’s still less than 2% of my portfolio, partly b/c other positions have done so well recently.

Later, I read that you had trimmed your position and added to Livingo, but I noted that you still have a much greater stake in AYX than I do so I didn’t interpret that as any loss of faith in AYX, nor should anyone who pays attention and understands what this board is about.

In fact, your April 10 post about Bert’s take on AYX’s earnings report was one reason I had planned to add more even after having added some in late March in the $89 range.

https://discussion.fool.com/bert39s-take-on-alteryx39s-last-q-re…

I had discussed some of my more compelling reasons to own AYX in a late April post, so I decided to act on those reasons. Nothing in your recent decision to trim your position size changed my view because I am an adult who takes responsibility for my decisions while also appreciating the insights you and others on this board have provided.

https://discussion.fool.com/welcome-saul-recently-posted-his-par…

The most recent article by Bert reminded me to review my AYX position, and since I had funds to increase my position size, I did. That small part of my position is now down a bit, but it doesn’t matter if we’re right about AYX’s future growth and value.

Anyone who thinks that the members of this board, including those who are the most visible have the power to significantly influence stock prices really doesn’t understand the market. A 5 – 10% price increase or drop in a fairly new high growth company such as AYX is nothing unusual.

Here are a couple major ideas from Bert’s free article that stood out for me:

But given the use cases depicted on Wednesday’s call, and simply intuition, it would be hard to dispute the notion that in this environment, the impetus for digital transformation - and in this case that means using analytics broadly-has never been stronger.

I come away with the feeling that the opportunity now is stronger than ever and that the attainment in Q1 has been significantly underappreciated and under reported. The probability of a substantial beat in Q2 has to be rated as considerable, if not more than that.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4346105-alteryx-weathering-…

All the best,

Raymond

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