April was a relatively (with one exception) uneventful month for my portfolio
That one exception was Tesla which dropped quite a bit early in the month and then rose back to above where it started April by the end of the month.
I did make a couple shifts in allocation among the smaller holdings, selling out of Nu and Remitly, adding more to Tesla and buying into MercadoLibre, and buying back into some ELF
Here is my YTD results so far for 2024, cumulatively by month:
-9.7% YTD Jan
+11.0% YTD Feb
+3.7% YTD Mar
+2.3% YTD Apr
My portfolio is still very concentrated, six positions, and three of those make up the majority.
This was my allocation at the end of last month 3/31/24
43.9% (TTD) The Trade Desk
21.8% (MDB) MongoDB
21.7% (TSLA) Tesla
6.0% (NU) Nu Holdings
3.5% (AXON) Axon Enterprise
3.1% (RELY) Remitly Global
and this is what it looks like at the end of April 2024:
41.1% (TTD) The Trade Desk
25.9% (TSLA) Tesla
22.5% (MDB) MongoDB
4.8% (AXON) Axon Enterprise
3.2% (ELF) e.l.f. Beauty
2.5% (MELI) MercadoLibre
After considering some of the great points and discussion on this board about Nu Holdings, I started to consider whether I understood the company very well. Also the political situation in Brazil sounded a bit more unstable than I realized. I could be very wrong, but I decided to move out of Nu entirely early in April (which is rare for me to make an, almost, 10% shift at once) but I’m more comfortable not being an owner in Nu right now. I also moved out of Remitly. Again, I just thought there were better opportunities.
I had put some of the funds into additional Tesla shares. I also added some to TSLA when it got down to the $140’s which really didn’t make sense to me and felt like too good a risk/reward even with my already relatively big Tesla stake.
I got back into ELF. I had originally bought in in the $150’s earlier in 2024 and then sold out when it got to $210. With ELF back down in the $160’s, I was happy to re-establish a small stake again.
I also bought into MercadoLibre for the first time in about 15 years (really wish I held onto those old shares!). I don’t have a whole lot to add to MELI except that some of the discussion on the board has been great and persuasive.
My two top holdings in 2024 (TTD and MDB) have been two of my top three holdings pretty consistently for the past five years.
It is a very concentrated portfolio which I don’t generally prefer, but as of right now I don’t have many other companies that I have a high level of confidence in to allocate investment funds towards.
Here is the year to date performance of each of my current holdings. Also note that the companies that I didn’t own at the beginning of the year (ELF, AXON, MELI), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| Dec 31 2023^ | Apr 30 2024 | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 71.96 | 82.85 | +15.1% |
| MDB | 408.85 | 365.18 | -10.7% |
| TSLA | 248.48 | 183.28 | -26.2% |
| ELF^ | 162.32^ | 162.53 | +0.1% |
| MELI^ | 1,409.42^ | 1,458.70 | +3.5% |
| AXON^ | 307.22^ | 313.66 | +2.1% |
^ Because I didn’t own ELF, AXON, MELI until this year, the “December 31st” numbers above are not their 12/31/23 prices, but the stock price of my initial, most significant purchases.
Most of the shares I hold in TTD and MDB were purchased in 2018 and 2019 at much lower costs. The largest portion of my Trade Desk shares were purchased in January 2019 for $11.39 and are up +627%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +536% now.
The Trade Desk (TTD)
There has not been much news this month for TTD, so I don’t have much to add beyond what I noted in last month’s write up.
TTD will be releasing earnings next week on May 8th so I’ll certainly be listening closely to see if the positive trends and momentum from last quarter have continued through Q1 and into the beginning of Q2.
Looking at the YoY growth rates by quarter over the last few years:
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2020 33% -13% 32% 48%
2021 37% 101% 39% 24%
2022 43% 35% 31% 24%
2023 21% 23% 24% 23%
2024 25%(q1 guide)
And sequential growth (note that Q1 is typically going to be negative sequential growth given the seasonally strong holiday quarter in Q4)
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2020 -26% -13% 55% 48%
2021 -31% 27% 8% 31%
2022 -20% 20% 5% 24%
2023 -22% 21% 6% 23%
2024 -21%(q1 guide)
MongoDB (MDB)
Same story with MDB, not much news or anything new to add here this month. Their stock price has moved a bit with some other tech and db companies lately. Expectations probably aren’t particularly high, but that doesn’t mean that MDB are exactly cheap right now either.
Mongo is not on a calendar year end, so it will still be another month until we hear about their Q1 results.
MDB YoY growth
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2020 46% 39% 38% 38%
2021 39% 44% 50% 56%
2022 57% 53% 47% 36%
2023 29% 40% 25% 27%
2024 19%(q1 guide)
And MDB sequential growth
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2020 6% 6% 9% 13%
2021 6% 9% 14% 17%
2022 7% 6% 10% 8%
2023 2% 15% -1% 9%
2024 -4%(q1 guide)
Tesla (TSLA)
As I mentioned last month, I couldn’t help myself but add some additional TSLA shares. Ultimately, I was a bit early as a story in Reuters in early April claimed that Tesla was not going to move ahead with a less expensive $25k model. Elon Musk immediatley said that the story was not true but didn’t provide any additional details right away.
During Tesla’s earnings call (they had a weak quarter which wasn’t a surprise given that their vehicle delivery numbers had previously been reported), the company said they were actually moving up the release of newer models (plural) from previous estimate in the second half of 2025, to the beginning of 2025. It sounds like the new models will be able to use the current production lines (previously they were planning to reinvent how their production lines worked for the new cars) which would expedite things. Some people think that this means that the new vehicles won’t be as much of a change from current models, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
That news about moving up the inexpensive new model timing caused the stock to move back up from the $140’s to the $160’s, and then this week, there was a surprise visit by Elon to China after which, it appears they cleared some hurdles to begin to offer FSD (full self driving) on Tesla automobiles in China. This was previously difficult because of the cameras used to operate self-driving and China’s reluctance to have millions of cameras by a company based in the U.S. filming ever stretch of road in their country continuously.
Note that FSD is not yet fully autonomous, but the current version that is available which requires a driver to be at the wheel and ready to take control as needed, but most likely, in the future, when the US moves to fully autonomous driving, with this new agreement, it should take place in China as well.
Also note that a large percentage of Tesla vehicles on the road already, are in China, so the additional learning from being able to enable FSD in China on all of those cars should add some jetfuel to the learning and progress of moving toward fully autonomous driving even faster than they were already on track for.
My write up with thoughts on the earnings call, particularly around some nuggets about robotaxi, or Cyber Cab, as it seems Tesla plans to call it, were in my two posts on this thread:
It seems that during the China trip, there were references to 8/8, which I believe the number 8 in some asian cultures is considered a very lucky number. So it appears that the planned robotaxi event that Tesla will be holding on August 8th (8/8/24) was not an accident.
Today there is a new story about Tesla cutting costs and staff in their supercharger division. I haven’t read into the detail too much yet, but I tend to think that people that doubt Elon knowing what he is doing and bet against him, have not fared well in the past, so I have not reason to automatically assume it is a bad decision.
That’s it again for another month. Thanks so much as always to Saul especially, and to everyone else that posts and contributes to making this board so special.
-mekong