Major Milestone
I finally achieved a major milestone in my investing career. Besides hitting ATHs nearly every day over the past few weeks… most important to me is that I finally bested Saul on the Top Recommended Fools leaderboard, after a year+ of silently trying. (To see it, hit Best Of tab, then Top Recommended Fools.)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/956r0s8h7cy83jj/fool_top_recs_2020…
Saul has been very very tough to unseat at the top of the leaderboard. And look at how many big contributors on this board are showing up there, too. We have a wealth of extremely valuable content here from some really great contributors. I really have a lot of gratitude for the folks here, as we all share and help each other achieve success in investing. As I said to close my Distilling Knowledge post, I am very long “Learning How to DIY” when it comes to investing. I feel I have learned more in the last 1.5 years alongside Saul and others here than I have in the last 20 years of being a Fool.
This momentous occasion is like me winning an Oscar… so it is time for some public shout outs to people who make my company research and note taking way easier. I’ll try to make it quick, before the music plays me out.
… To TMF for being an all around fantastic company with heart, and for making investing so accessible and understandable, and for providing this web platform and its many quality authors and analysts, like Danny Vena and Daniel Sparks, that are distilling earnings and news down into understandable bite-sized chunks.
… To Starrob for your really detailed CC and Q&A recaps. It’s clear a huge amount of work goes into them.
… To sjo, sarksnz and buynholdisdead for their great earnings summaries and CC recaps.
… To stocknovice for your in-depth portfolio reports and detailed view into the moves you make. I appreciated the kudos in your last writeup.
… To BroadwayDan for getting us to think about the back story more than we typically do here. And the Chicago deep-dish pizza.
… To Smorgasbord1 for all your detailed technical prowess and insider thoughts on the state of things in the SaaS industry.
… To Bear for your in-depth writeups on your portfolio and trading decisions, for distilling knowledge lessons, for being one to veer into new companies (many being profitable Tier 2 growth companies), with such in-depth explanations of your reasoning.
… To Gaucho for your in-dept portfolio reports and detailed view into moves you make, and for distilling the knowledge here.
… To David Gardner, a man who shares my birthday, for being a spark of light in investing and being WAY ahead of the curve in how to see the potential of technology, and, best of all, how to invest in it. You are a Rule Breaker, through and though. And I still haven’t topped our best round in the game Codenames when we were partners. I owe you so much, but most especially for you doggedly recommending Netflix and Apple and Amazon, investments which more than made up for all of my many many investing failures over the years.
… To Saul for … [waves hand sideways with open palm upward, to signal “all this”]. The detailed portfolio coverage you do once a month (or more). The explanations and thoughts and lessons in explaining your continual portfolio moves. But, most of all, the massive amount of DIY knowledge you have laid down here. You have to beat it into us sometimes, but … I think we’re getting it!
And to many many others. If you see your name in any of my earnings write-ups, please know your contribution to my knowledge was greatly appreciated.
We live in a very extraordinary time. We just witnessed multiple years of growth in a quarter and a half for Zoom. The economy is struggling, yet our companies continue to thrive. Major indexes are still down, yet we are boasting 70-120% gains YTD. Like stocknovice, I’m a bit lower YTD than Saul & others here, at about 84% to his 116%. In thinking on it, I’m still too slow to pivot at times. In this instance, holding a significant portion in Roku greatly dragged on my returns YTD, while Saul and others moved into Zoom way faster than I. So while I only barely dipped negative in March (like, -4% tops), Saul got 20pp ahead of me in May, then extended his lead into June, to now 32pp ahead. Bear and Gaucho and others are up there as well. Mad respect for those >100% YTD – take a bow! But I will not complain with my 84%. I’ve done extremely well with my Feb purchases in Coupa and Cloudflare, but stocks I bought in May and June have managed to outperform since prices were so depressed. The difference in the performance in Saul’s port over mine is solely due to how those companies weren’t the BEST picks that I could have made (dammit Fastly!) But I eventually caught on and shifted things the past few weeks. I think there is a lesson in there somewhere, but I’m probably too stubborn to find it. I like to really study things before making moves, like analyzing all the details in earnings. [I have this same issue in chess; this over-analyzing makes me a really really slow player.]
Anyhow, this is all OT, just wanted to say thanks to you all, for all the recent kudos each of you give when you hit “recommend this post”. I love this thriving community of ours, even as the wheat-to-chaff has waxed and waned a bit and I have to start muting threads. Hopefully folks can continue to maintain adherence to Saul’s rules, and continue to keep this space as the wonderful treasure trove it is.
Okay enough of this. It’s just a short lived glory. After my Distilling Knowledge post falls off the 30d limit to the leaderboard, Saul will regain the crown and keep it for a long long time. So, I’ll get back to work researching. Almost through all my holdings for this quarter – just got two more earnings reports to fully digest (in an industry that rhymes with “wedge petworks”). More to come.
THANK YOU, AND GOOD NIGHT. (mic drop)
-muji