A bit late with this update as I was traveling over Easter weekend.
March saw two of my three larger holdings (MDB and TSLA) drop so it wasn’t a great performance month for my portfolio, but I’m continuing to see long term potential for the companies I own.
-9.7% YTD Jan
+11.0% YTD Feb
+3.7% YTD Mar
My portfolio is still very concentrated, although it is six positions (reduced to five now in early April), and three of those make up the majority.
This was my allocation at the end of last month 2/29/24
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
and this is what it looks like at the end of March 2024:
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
At the beginning of March, I sold my ELF shares at just above $210/share. My various purchases of ELF had increased between 23% to 40% in just a couple months. I put the proceeds into my first AXON shares, and I added to NU. Since then, ELF is down about -12% while both AXON and NU are up, so short-term, this has been a good reallocation.
When MongoDB (MDB) announced their earnings in March, it was a good quarter, but the guidance was less than what the market was hoping for. I sold a bit of my MDB the next morning. At the time, the stock was down less than 1%, so I actually was able to sell a pretty decent percentage of my Mongo shares in mid-February above $500/share (near the recent peak) and then some more the day after earnings, well above where they trade today. I used the proceeds to increase my AXON, NU, and TSLA holdings.
I still have a large 20% holding in MDB, which has drifted lower in the past couple of weeks. I’m not in any hurry to trim further right away. More on that below.
Today (April) I sold off my Remitly shares. They’re up more than 10% since I bought them in January and I just haven’t been following it closely enough and felt there are better places for my money. Today’s drop in Tesla shares on their production and deliveries announcement for Q1 presented a lower price that I couldn’t resist adding to what I consider a very long-term hold (largely for reasons unrealted to their auto sales), so I added further to TSLA and some more to NU.
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. Excluded are any companies I have already sold out of in 2024 (e.g. AEHR ELF, IOT, and CELH). Also note that the companies that I didn’t own at the beginning of the year (RELY, AXON, NU), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| Dec 31 2023^ | Mar 31 2024 | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 71.96 | 87.42 | +21.5% |
| MDB | 408.85 | 358.64 | -12.3% |
| TSLA | 248.48 | 175.79 | -29.3% |
| NU^ | 9.00^ | 11.93 | +32.6% |
| RELY^ | 18.18^ | 20.74 | +14.1% |
| AXON^ | 307.22^ | 312.88 | +1.8% |
^ Because I didn’t own RELY, AXON, 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.
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 +668%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +525% now.
The Trade Desk (TTD)
It’s been hard for me to resist adding to my very large TTD stake in recent weeks. But at more than 40% of my portfolio already, I can’t bring myself to add any more right now.
The shares moved a little bit higher this month. The most significant piece of news that I saw relating to The Trade Desk was Disney’s announcement on March 20th that it has new partnerships with Google and The Trade Desk, which provides the two of them with direct integration to Disney’s DRAX real time ad exchange.
Disney works with more than 30 DSP’s, but only Google/Alphabet and Trade Desk now have this direct access to Disney’s audience. I believe this deal with DRAX includes Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu and their 150+ million subscribers.
This should allow better targetting of TTD’s advertiser’s ads and gives TTD (along with Google) an advantage over any other DSP’s that advertisers use to buy ads on Disney.
Here is a good TMF article that summarizes things a bit better than i can:
I can definitely envision something similar with Netflix, HBO, Prime Video’s ad supported services with future partnerships with TTD down the line.
It still feels like early days for The Trade Desk and lots of positive trends in the future as the story plays out.
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)
Mongo’s earnings were a bit disappointing last month. Well the actual results for Q4 (ending 1/31/24) was topline growth of 27%, beating the 20% guidance pretty nicely. New guidance for Q1 is only for 19% (but consider that they beat by 8% last quarter)
The thing that stuck out for me is that they kept saying that consumption had “stabilized”. I suppose stabilized is good compared to the amount that it has fluxtuated over the past couple of years, but I was really hoping to hear something more postiive and encouraging about where consumption trends are today, especially with all of the AI talk everywhere.
On the call management essentially said that their customers are trying out lots of AI cases, but realistically it is going to be a year before they can have a meaningful effect on MDB’s results. That’s what I believe mostly scared the analysts a bit and has led to the stock price drifting lower.
Part of me thinks I should be less excited about MDB right now. But part of me also recalls this time last year when MDB was falling, in terms of my own conviction, and I sold a good amount of my shares only to see the stock price more than double over the next three months. There’s no reason to think that is going to happen again this year, but it does help me consider that a) I already sold a pretty large portion of my Mongo shares this year at much higher prices b) the shares I still hold have a very low cost basis c) I expect the long term story for the company to continue to be good and they have a good opportunity to benefit when more AI use cases expand even within the customers they already have…so I’m happy to hold tight now and see what we learn over the next couple of quarters and take it from there.
Maybe Mongo’s best days are behind it, or maybe it’s just getting started. At this point I just don’t know and I’m willing to hold and wait and see what happens in coming quarters.
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%(q4 guide)
Tesla (TSLA)
From the way they’re talking about Tesla on the financial networks today, you’d think this company has no future whatsoever. One of the commentators on one network kept saying he thought the stock would go down to $100 (but he did suggest that it would be a good time to buy if it falls that far)
I don’t own Tesla because I think their auto sales business is going to sustain or grow the stock price. I do think they may be in a lull between cycles for their products right now and it could persist for a while. But I also don’t think I’ll be able to predict when is the right time to get back in and I feel good about the long terms as a holder of their shares.
The newest version of their self driving is getting major kudos from most every review I’ve found. Tesla no longer calls it “beta” and is now calling it “supervised”. It’s still a long way from fully autonomous, but it feels like things are moving faster than ever right now.
Tesla also announed that they are giving all owners that have never used self driving before a free month to try it out, which I think is a good idea now that it has gotten as good as is it. Just like streaming services and other subscriptions that give you a free trial, I bet they are going to find some new converts after the trial. And the more cars that are using it, the faster it will learn making more people want to use it and so on (flywheel effect).
I’m confident that the company is likely to be worth a lot more in a few years that it is today and I’m willing to wait and see how things play out. If I felt really strongly about another company (besides TTD) in the short term, I would be more likely to reduce my TSLA shares and put more toward something else, but there just isn’t anything out there that makes me want to swap that allocation right now.
I also think the amount of negative sentiment that is coming from every financial story and broadcast about TSLA today just makes me feel stronger that this is a good time to be a contrarian. We’ll see how that goes…
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.
-mekong
