Sorry All, I had the original post removed, and edited out the commentary from previous review posts to avoid any confusion. Hope this helps. I’ve added links to the previous reviews at the bottom of the post
Hi All,
Welcome to the March Portfolio Review. Now that all of our companies have reported their Q4 and a few Year end results, we have a lull for 1-2 months depending on what you own. Although IMO, that just means our stocks are more subject and susceptible to external events (economic news, interest rates, employment in Asia, manufacturing in Germany, and to infinity and beyond). I can’t control any of these things, and spend little time or thought trying to make sense of it all. I’d rather focus 95% of my energies on what’s happening directly at each company to the best of my ability.
Let’s move on to the review and holdings:
Jan 2019 YTD return: **20%**
Feb 2019 YTD return: **32%**
Mar 2019 YTD return: **41%**
No complaints here, our companies are executing very well and of course are overvalued and so forth. But you always pay up for the best and not the other way around.
Buys in January:
a very small try out position in Docusign.
Sells: none.
Buys in February:
1 - After digesting another quarter of Pluralsight’s earnings, my confidence has grown and I have added to my position. More below.
2 - Added a trivial amount of TWLO after the company reported earnings around $110.
Sells:
Two sales this month - however both were sold in order to cover some higher tax expense. Ugh. I sold AbioMed, which I believe is a very fine company and will continue to well. It had to be the odd man out since they are the slowest growing out of all my holdings. I had half in a taxable account, and half in my IRA. I deemed it pointless to hold a tiny position, so I used those funds to add to PS. I also sold my remaining stake in NKTR as I needed the cash. It may also be several years away from an eventual approval in 214. I figure 181 will get approval, but I am thinking that is already factored into the current market cap and price.
Buys in March:
March 11 - added to Guardant Health at $67 and Elastic at $85.80
March 12 - added again to both Guardant at $70.16 and Elastic at $82.90
Sells in March:
No sales.
Fear and Greed Index: 49 (Neutral) at the close on 3/29/19. I started keeping track for fun at the end of each week beginning 1/18/19, in addition to the weekly close of the S&P 500. Since I started keeping track, the previous low was 51 (neutral) on 1/18 and high of 72 (greed) on 2/28.
My holdings and position sizes:
Holdings %
twlo 16.70%
zs 14.20%
ayx 13.88%
mdb 11.41%
ttd 10.10%
okta 6.85%
estc 4.90%
gh 4.40%
ps 3.64%
sq 3.49%
arna 0.93%
docu 0.80%
Presently, I am at 12 holdings. My top 5 positions represent 66% of my portfolio. You’ll notice that I still have my tiny Docusign position. I’ll probably end up selling it sometime this month, as I anticipate that I will be an owner of both Zoom and Pagerduty which will most likely go public sometime in April or early May.
Twilio
March update:
Nothing new or noteworthy this month, except for the price reaching new highs. With the position as large as it already is, I doubt I would be adding more, probably in trivial amounts or if one our companies was unexpectedly acquired and I had a large cash cushion that I needed to deploy.
Alteryx.
March update:
Nothing new or noteworthy happening this month with AYX, other than the price reaching new highs. AYX is another stock I am happy to hold on and watch the company continue to grow, and like TWLO only perhaps adding in tiny amounts or if a sudden windfall occurred and I needed to deploy a large amount of cash.
Trade Desk
March update:
No news this month of note as the price has leapt above $210 a few times and then retreated below $200. My position is fairly big already, but I would look to add if somehow the price gets to $175 or below.
Zscaler
March update:
Another holding I would most likely add in small amounts to on any extended price weakness. I’ve had and continue to have high hopes for ZS ever since I first discovered them around June of 2018.
MongoDB
March update:
Well, Mongo reported mid March and they certainly did not disappoint! My cheapest shares are up over 355% in less than one year, and most my expensive shares are up over 210% so I am quite content to let the position grow.
Okta
March update:
OKTA reported another fantastic quarter, although guidance put a damper on the stock for a few weeks, but the shares have mostly recovered to pre earnings levels. OKTA announced an acquisition, which seemed to be more for technology reasons rather than revenue/customer acquisition. The company gave lower guidance for earnings and operating expenses as it continues to invest heavily. I’m probably not looking to add here unless the whole market sells off and takes everything with it, if not I will let the position size grow on its own.
Elastic
March update:
I added shares on March 11 and March 12. Elastic is now around 5% position. I’ll probably leave it as is for now, and again look to add opportunistically when the rest of the lockup restrictions are clear. There’s just no way for me to know if the stock sells off big leading up to the next round of lock up expiration’s. It could shoot up to $125 before that happens for all I know.
I have not sold any shares based on Amazons entry into the field using/copying Elastics technology.
Here is a quote from Shay Banon’s blog post (CEO and founder of Elastic):
Our commercial code has been an “inspiration” for others, it has been bluntly copied by various companies, and even found its way back to certain distributions or forks, like the freshly minted Amazon one, sadly, painfully, with critical bugs. We kept on being focused on building great products and communities, that users love. We did not let it distract us, and this focus has paid back tenfold
https://www.elastic.co/blog/on-open-distros-open-source-and-…
I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves with Elastic, and wait to see if Amazon has any impact at all. (highly unlikely IMO) I prefer to sell on news and not on the rumor.
Square
March update:
Square remains as is, and I remain puzzled as to why the company has not rallied with the rest of the fast growers. Sure, it has bounced back from the deep lows of December but still remains a good 25% below its highs. I’m not sure if it has to do with the biggish market cap ($30+ bln) or what, but as the company keeps introducing more and more products it will become increasingly tricky to follow, at least for me. I figure all of them have to do pretty well in order for the stock to keep growing.
Guardant Health
March update:
I added twice to Guardant on March 11th and 12th. And wow did the stock react, nearly going straight up to $100 before coming back down to the mid $70’s. It’s still priced dearly with a $6bln++ mkt cap on very lofty expectations. The market clearly expects FDA pan cancer approval based on the strong study results and all the other data the company has been accumulating. I love the company and what they are trying to do! And I hope that liquid biopsy becomes the standard of care! I think the current position size is about right - sort of medium-ish. It’s not a 100% lock that they obtain approvals for everything -yet. Despite my enthusiasm, I will remain patient before adding more, but I hope one day GH will be a top 3 holding.
Pluralsight
March update:
The stock has given up some gains after the company announced both a secondary offering as well as a convertible bond offering. These almost 0% interest debt raises don’t concern me much at all. If you ask any competent CFO when the best time is to raise nearly free money, the answer should be: “Anytime you can!!!”
Arena
March update:
Well, it’s kind of like watching paint dry with biotechs at times, followed by moments of sheer terror and euphoria. Lol. No news until the next trial results are published I would expect, as the company remains focused on it 2 candidates and giant pile of cash.
Docusign
March update:
In all likelihood, Docusign will not last until the end of the month. Boy are we living in spoiled times when a company growing in the 30% range does not make the cut!! Not even ten years ago, you would super excited to own a company growing this fast. How can I justify owning this small piece, when my others are growing just so much faster?
I’m excited to see the upcoming IPO’s of Zoom (ZM) and PagerDuty (PD), who are growing at 100% and 50% respectively. I’ve read the S-1 filings for both - I encourage you to spend the time when there is nothing going on in the market to go through them. They are always laid out in the same format, and they repeat info multiple times so you can skip right through those parts. Even though they won’t contain many years of historical info, they are still a treasure trove of information regarding their products, their market, customers, competition, business model, etc.
That’s all I’ve got for this month. I hope everyone still finds these useful! It’s easy to just list your holdings, and return info, but the really difficult part is trying to find something useful to say, without just copy/pasting the most recent quarterly results! Let me know if there is something you would like me to add/see. Not sure what else, returns on each holdings, etc?
Best,
Matt
Jan Review: https://discussion.fool.com/matt39s-january-portfolio-review-341…
Feb Review: https://discussion.fool.com/matt39s-february-portfolio-review-34…