mekong22 July 2020 Portfolio Update

It’s a strange feeling when you’re up almost +50% halfway through the year, in the midst of the worst pandemic of your lifetime, while the market averages have been flat, and I look at the amazing performance of Saul and others on this board and think “I should be doing even better”

But that’s where we are, tho I certainly am not complaining, as I came into this year with a +25% goal.

I picked up another 9% in July. Amazon’s earnings report last night contributed a bit to that today. Here’s where we stand:


End of Jan 	+15.5%
End of Feb	+ 7.0%
End of Mar      -20.0%
End of Apr       +0.6%
End of May      +27.0%
End of Jun      +40.0%
End of Jul      +48.7%

That -20% at the end of March (which was significantly worse in the middle of that month) feels like a lifetime ago.

and here is my latest allocation, with a comparison to last month:


      6/30/2020	 7/31/2020
AMZN	19.2%	   20.6%
AYX	19.8%	   19.4%
MDB	15.3%	   14.3%
TTD	11.3%	   11.9%
NTNX 	11.3%	   11.5%
DDOG	 5.9%	    6.0%
DOCU	 3.6%	    3.9%
OKTA	 3.5%	    3.6%
CRWD	 3.1%	    3.4%
KMI	 3.2%	    2.6%
ESTC	 1.6%	    1.6%
LVGO	 1.7%	    0.8%
GH 	 0.5%	    0.4%

Amazon and AYX have been trading places in the top spot throughout 2020, and AMZN is back on top this month. I was hoping for my first Amazon spiffy pop this quarter (most of my purchases were in the high $200’s and low $300’s per share), but alas, I ultimately didn’t even get half of one today. Amazon is up more than +71% so far this year. Every time I think I should sell some of it and pay the capital gains tax, the company keeps beating expectations and rewards me for holding tight.

I sold more than half of my LVGO late in the month as it got into the $110’s and $120’s. They had a great earnings report and I think it’s a great company, but they and GH are my lowest conviction holdings so when I wanted to move some funds, that is where I got them from (my small GH holding are a few options contracts which I want to hold). I sold the last of my DOCU call options (which was up more than 1,000% in just over 12 months!), so now all of the rest of my DOCU holdings are regular common shares, which have also done pretty great since I started buying last year. I also trimmed a sliver each of AYX and MDB. I’m a broken record, and most of you will continue to think I’m dumb/crazy, but all of the proceeds from my sales this month again went into NTNX, as Nutanix is still the holding that I believe will increase the most over the next year.

My long term favorites, AYX, MDB, and TTD are still in their rightful place at the top. I still expect them to grow into much bigger companies over the next 3-5 years. I acknowledge they might not bring the sudden big gains that some of the board favorites have been, but I feel confident that I can sit back and monitor them and let them do their thing and that the market will continue to reward them.

I won’t bore you with many thoughts on NTNX, which have not changed since my May’20 portfolio writeup (post 67675). They should be reporting at the end of August, unless they pre-announce earlier. I am optimistic that their subscription bookings growth from recent quarters will start to show up more in the reported gaap revenue number this quarter. It will be very interesting to see if they give guidance, and how those projections look. My expectations are high, we will see…

DDOG, DOCU, CRWD, OKTA, continue to be great companies that have treated me well, albeit with smaller holdings.

KMI has been my natural gas pipeline operator that simply got thrashed in this pandemic, magnified by most of my holdings being in calls. I would estimate my returns would be at least 15% higher this year, maybe 20%, if I hadn’t owned KMI at all in 2020. But without a pandemic, I still think KMI would have been one of my best performers, in retrospect, I should have sold my holdings here early on, rather than adding to them, chasing the proverbial falling knife. I still believe they will be a solid company for years to come, but my shorter term options bets were losers in this environment.

My small Livongo investment has performed well, but I suspect the odds are high I will sell more of it, before long.

And lastly ESTC and GH are both entirely in calls, small bets, that I feel are worth hanging onto.

Big Upcoming Week - lots of earnings all this week on Thursday for my portfolio. AYX, TTD, DDOG, LVGO, and GH all on that same day! Hopefully it will be worthy of a few celebratory drinks that night.

That’s all for this month as I’m in south florida and, although it looks like this storm is turning north and not going to be too bad, I was already planning to drive out to the west coast (of FL) tomorrow morning for a little one night vacation, where the storm’s track currently isn’t expected to impact much at all.

I look forward to reading through everyone else’s amazing performance

-mekong

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Nice write up. And it is nice to see someone on the board other than me to still have MDB and TTD.

eric

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