August was good to my portfolio, largely driven by a couple of my biggest holdings, TTD and MDB, although AXON, MELI, and ZS all did well this month too.
The Trade Desk and MongoDB both reported earnings this month and were both up more than +15% during August. Those gains were partially offset by Tesla being down by about -8% this month.
I had a nice little swing trade buying and selling Nvidia for a more than +25% gain over about ten days.
Zscaler’s stock was up more than +10% this month too.
ELF and SNOW dropped a bit, and I have a small <1% stake in Super Micro that I bought after their earnings release and is currently down -22%.
Here’s how things look cumulatively in 2024:
-9.7% YTD Jan
+11.0% YTD Feb
+3.7% YTD Mar
+2.3% YTD Apr
+1.2% YTD May
+9.7% YTD Jun
+11.8% YTD Jul
+18.8% YTD Aug
My portfolio is still very concentrated, nine positions, same number as last month although a few of those names have changed, and three of the companies I own make up the majority.
4 of my 5 biggest holdings from the beginning of August (TTD, MDB, MELI, and AXON) all actually had good earnings reports and appreciated nicely. If not for Tesla being down, largely on no news, my August returns would have been quite a bit better.
This was my allocation at the end of last month 7/31/24
35.3% (TSLA) Tesla
33.4% (TTD) The Trade Desk
12.9% (MDB) MongoDB
4.2% (AXON) Axon Enterprise
3.7% (MELI) MercadoLibre
2.9% (ZS) Zscaler
2.9% (MELI) Crispr Theraputics
2.6% (SNOW) Snowflake
2.0% (ELF) elf Beauty
and here it is at the end of August, 2024 now:
38.1% (TTD) The Trade Desk
35.1% (TSLA) Tesla
10.3% (MDB) MongoDB
3.9% (AMZN) Amazon *NEW
3.8% (MELI) MercadoLibre
3.5% (MSFT) Microsoft *NEW
2.6% (MELI) Crispr Theraputics
1.8% (ZS) Zscaler
0.9% (SMCI) Super Micro *NEW
Note that a portion of my TTD and TSLA holdings includes some 2026 Leap call options.
Trade Desk TTD - I sold a very tiny sliver of TTD, but otherwise that position just grew from Trade Desk stock price increase this month.
I won’t let my Trade Desk position get much bigger and if the stock drifts up to $110 or $120, I’ll likely be trimming some. But not much at least until November, as I’m optimistic that Q3 could be better than expectations and I would be suprised if Q4 guidance for the peak holiday quarter + election cycle advertising bump this year isn’t good.
I also think, with the way things are going for them, it’s only a matter of time before Trade Desk gets added to the S&P500 index, although that’s totally unpredictable and could happen soon, or could be another two years or more before it happens (if it does). If it does, I bet it will get a pretty nice bump to the share price when announced. Obviously, betting on this is by no means reason alone to own a stock, but it’s just another plus that I see to holding my shares, even at my outsized position allocation, along with the other trends and great management.
Tesla TSLA is still almost the same percentage of my portfolio from Aug 1st despite its stock price falling this month while other big holdings went up. That’s because I reallocated some funds from my other sales into more TSLA. Despite it already being a very large percentage, I couldn’t resist buying more with the stock in the low $190’s this month.
I don’t expect any major news from TSLA in September, although in October we’re going to get a Q3 deliveries number at the beginning of the month, and then the Oct 10th robotaxi event, and then Q3 earnings release, so I won’t be suprised if the stock starts to drift up in anticipation of possible good things to come. I anticipate holding most of my Tesla shares for several years assuming their long term initiatives keep moving in the same direction so I view the stock price discount this past month as a non-event and I didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to add a bit more.
MongoDB MDB, I actually sold about one-fifth (20% of my MDB or about 2.5% of the total portfolio) of my shares on Friday when the stock popped +18% on the earnings. Those funds I permanently pulled out of the portfolio for other needs.
Atlas revenue is still growing at a solid +27% clip, which gets a bit overshadowed in their total consolidated revenue growth with the EA business falling off (expectedly). I’m not expecting any crazy acceleration for a few more quarters, but could potentially see their customers AI products going live in late 2025 or 2026 with the consumption/usage picking up and either helping maintain, or maybe even accelerating the Atlas growth. I trust their CEO (a feeling I have strongly for the heads of all three of my biggest holdings)
AXON (sold) I sold the day after earnings. I did well with that investment, but I’m just not excited about holding the shares for a long term, so I took my quick gains and moved on.
elf Beauty ELF (sold) - After two good profitable elf swing trades earlier in 2024, I got greedy and bought a third time not long before earnings and it didn’t work out so well this time, and I sold
Snowflake SNOW (sold) - Another one that didn’t work out. Topline revenue has been pretty good but it’s not translating into profits and I feel like it’s going to be more than a few more quarters before it does. Long term, they, and shareholders, might do well, but it’s a ride I’m ready to get off of. Even Berkshire Hathaway didn’t do so well with their SNOW investment (I believe they sold too) and it wasn’t long ago that I was very jealous of their IPO price purchase.
MongoDB is positioned (somewhat) similarly to benefit from AI trends in the future and it may be a few quarters before things get going for MDB too but I just have more trust in MDB’s CEO and management.
Nvidia NVDA (bought and sold) - I finally took a plunge and put a few percent into Nvidia when it dropped below $100 this month. Exactly one week later, it was up +20% and I sold one-third of my new NVDA shares. A few days later, it was nearly a +30% gain and I sold the other two-thirds, pocketing a cool +26% or so in about 10 days.
Super Micro SMCI (New) - After the earnings release and the stock dropped, I put a small amount into Super Micro. Fortunately, I didn’t invest much (about 1%) and got in at a relatively low price so I’m only down -22%. If I had somewhere that I’m itching to reinvest it, I wouldn’t hesitate to sell the small amount, but I’m also open to hanging on for a few weeks more now and seeing if it recovers a bit more *IF they get the 10-K filed during the extension period and there’s nothing major in their internal controls or a need for a restatement
Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT (New) - I bought into these two mostly just because they are both down a bit off their highs, I expect them both to continue to be among the most valuable companies in the market for the next several years, and I bet that, a few years from now, the biggest companies will be valued more like $5-10 Trillion rather than $2-3 Trillion. I could be totally wrong, but that’s my gut feeling. A recession next year could change that calculus quite a bit for the worse (or it could cause the strongest companies to get even stonger?)
I also like the idea of having some dividend income (albeit small) in my portfolio now too. I just don’t feel as positively about Meta or Alphabet, and I see their advertising businesses more susceptible to competition (hello TTD!). If Apple pulled back 20%-25% (I doubt it will) then I’d consider buying a bit into that as well if the business remains strong.
Zscaler ZS reports tomorrow. I don’t see myself holding them for an extended time, so I might hedge a bit and sell half of my shares during the trading day tomorrow and let the rest ride through earnings. Or I may not, will see how it’s trading on Tuesday.
Mercadolibre MELI I sold a little of my MELI this month, not sure why, probably just locking in some gains on a company that I don’t follow too closely, tho I probably shouldn’t have sold any.
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 (MELI, CRSP, ZS, SMCI, AMZN, MSFT), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| Dec 31 2023^ | Aug 31 2024 | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 71.96 | 104.53 | +45.3% |
| MDB | 408.85 | 290.79 | -28.9% |
| TSLA | 248.48 | 214.11 | -13.8% |
| SMCI^ | 560.98^ | 437.70 | -22.0% |
| MELI^ | 1,409.42^ | 2,061.66 | +46.3% |
| MSFT^ | 402.50^ | 417.14 | +3.6% |
| AMZN^ | 177.88^ | 178.50 | +0.3% |
| ZS^ | 177.00^ | 199.98 | +13.0% |
| CRSP^ | 55.06^ | 47.72 | -13.3% |
^ Because I didn’t own MELI, SMCI, ZS, CRSP, AMZN, MSFT 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.
The TSLA Jan 1st number above is somewhat misleading as it relates to my holdings as, although the stock was $248 at the start of 2024 and I still own those shares, I added a decent amount in the $170-200 range during 2024 this year.
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 +818%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +407% now.
That covers it for another month.
Everyone have a safe and happy Labor Day. Thanks as always to Saul and everyone else that makes this board so great!
-mekong