February was much better to my portfolio than January, largely driven by The Trade Desk’s post-earnings reaction.
MongoDB was also up about +20% early in the month on no news, but it has given back a good chunk of that the last couple of weeks.
-9.7% YTD Jan
+11.0% YTD Feb
Two weeks ago, right after TTD’s earnings release, the portfolio was up close to 20% YTD, but drifted back down over the last couple of weeks.
That amounts to right around +23% higher on February 29th compared to the end of January.
My March performance may be closely tied to MDB’s earnings release next thursday, given the size of my Mongo holdings.
My portfolio is still very concentrated, although it is seven positions, three of those make up the majority.
This was my allocation at the end of last month 1/31/24
38.0% (MDB) MongoDB
36.9% (TTD) The Trade Desk
20.1% (TSLA) Tesla
1.6% (RELY) Remitly Global
1.5% (IOT) Samsara
1.2% (ELF) elf Beauty
0.8% (NU) Nu Holdings
and this is what it looks like at the end of February 2024:
39.9% (TTD) The Trade Desk
31.7% (MDB) MongoDB
19.0% (TSLA) Tesla
2.9% (RELY) Remitly Global
2.4% (IOT) Samsara
2.2% (ELF) elf Beauty
1.8% (NU) Nu Holdings
In the first week and a half of February, MongoDB shot up from $400/share to more than $500/share on no signficant company specific news. It was already a large position for me and I decided to sell a portion given the big +25% spike in the stock price, so I sold about 5% of my portfolio worth of MDB and reallocated it across my newer, four small positions.
As of today, it looks like a good decision to sell some, as MDB has come back down to $433 today. Next thursday will be interesting to see what they report in this quarter’s release and more importantly what the guidance looks like.
The Trade Desk rose from $68/share to more than $90+ when the released earnings two weeks ago. I also trimmed some TTD when it spiked the day after earnings, selling the equivalent of about 4% of the portfolio. These funds I withdrew from the portfolio permanently and designated for other needs.
That was all I did during February, but one early March update, today, 3/1/24, I sold all of my small ELF position. I might have done so prematurely and regret it (like I do with my decision to sell Celsius too soon!) but I’ve never felt that I have a great handle on the long term potential. they’re executing incredibly right now. With a nearly +40% rise in my first purchase less than two months ago and another +23% rise in the addiitonal shares I bought with some of the MDB proceeds three weeks ago, I felt like it was the right time to exit the position with the shares over $212 this morning. Of course, it proceeded to rise afterwards (but the new positions I purchased today also rose a bit too).
I used the ELF proceeds to take a new starter position in AXON, and I added a little bit to my NU holdings. Time will tell if it was a good move, but I go with my gut and that is what it was telling me to do today.
My two top holdings 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 recommend, 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. Excluded are any companies I have already sold out of in 2023 (e.g. AEHR and CELH). Also note that the companies that I didn’t own at the beginning of the year (RELY, IOT, ELF, NU), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| Dec 31 2023^ | Feb 29 2024 | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 71.96 | 85.43 | +18.7% |
| MDB | 408.85 | 447.58 | +9.5% |
| TSLA | 248.48 | 201.88 | -18.8% |
| RELY^ | 18.18^ | 20.62 | +13.4% |
| IOT^ | 33.06^ | 34.55 | +4.5% |
| ELF^ | 154.82^ | 208.53 | +34.7% |
| NU^ | 9.00^ | 11.08 | +23.1% |
^ Because I didn’t own RELY, IOT, ELF, NU 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.
That chart looks much prettier this month than it did at the end of January when most everything was in the red.
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 +650%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +680% now.
The Trade Desk (TTD)
although confident in the long term, I said last month that I was nervous about the short term. I guess I shoudn’t have been!
Their quarterly release was right about where I expected it to be, beating the 18% guide and raising revenue +23%…however their new guidance for the first quarter of +25% was surprisingly strong. This was a higher growth rate than they had in any quarter of 2023 and, assuming they beat it by a few percent, they could be close to +30% to start the new year and we are also expecting the third and fourth quarters to be very strong with the boost of extra election advertising spending in the presidential cycle this year.
I continue to see a long runway of growth of multiple years. That’s why I sold such a small amount of my TTD despite it already being a large portion of the portfolio and spiking up strongly after earnings.
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)
There hasn’t been much news on Mongo recently, four more days until earnings on Thursday
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% 20%(q4 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% 4%(q4 guide)
That’s it for this month. Thanks so much as always to Saul especially, and to everyone else that posts and contributes to making this board so special.