November was a very good month for my portfolio. My three largest positions, Tesla, The Trade Desk, and MongoDB did well this month.
Although I trimmed all three of those during November to reallocate some of the growth, they (especially TSLA and TTD) remain very large allocations.
As with all of my TMF posts, nothing that I post here is intended to be, or should be considered, investment advice. I post summaries of my investments and performance to help me think through and review how I manage my own portfolio and to participate in the great discussions on this board.
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
+33.6% YTD Sep
+36.0% YTD Oct
+70.6% YtD Nov
My portfolio is still very concentrated, the same seven positions as last month, and two of the companies I own make up the majority.
Tesla, my largest holding, drove this month’s gains, as it was up +38% during November. The Trade Desk was up +8% and MongoDB gained +19%. Amazon and Crispr were both up +11%, Microsoft gained +4%, and Mercadolibre was my only holding that dropped a little bit last month. The LEAP call options I hold, particularly in TSLA positively impacted the outsized gains recently too.
This was my allocation at the end of last month 10/31/24
39.7% (TSLA) Tesla
33.1% (TTD) The Trade Desk
8.7% (MDB) MongoDB
6.0% (AMZN) Amazon
5.2% (MSFT) Microsoft
4.6% (MELI) MercadoLibre
2.7% (CRSP) Crispr Theraputics
and here it is at the end of November, 2024 now:
44.2% (TSLA) Tesla
25.7% (TTD) The Trade Desk
7.6% (MDB) MongoDB
7.0% (AMZN) Amazon
6.3% (MELI) MercadoLibre
6.1% (MSFT) Microsoft
3.0% (CRSP) Crispr Theraputics
Note that a portion of my TTD and TSLA holdings includes some 2026 Leap call options.
With Tesla’s sharp sudden rise in the days immediately after the presidential election, I sold about 10% of my TSLA stake. I’m not really sure why. Part of me thought it had moved so much so fast that it was bound for a pullback.
I nearly repurchased those TSLA shares when it dropped down about $310 a couple days later, but held out for a further drop below $300 which never came.
I continue to believe that, if Tesla can perform well and succeed with their newer business segments, that the company could be worth much more in the future than it is today. So I am comfortable allowing it to be an outsized large portion of my portfolio. I doubt that I would lose sleep even if it grew to even a significantly larger percentage than it already is now.
On the other hand, as I had done the past couple of months, I continued to trim my large Trade Desk position, selling another 15% (about 4% of the total portfolio) or so as TTD rose to new highs. Although the shares didn’t have a sharp spike after announcing earnings this month, the stock has held up pretty well and their business continues to be strong.
While I do think, if TTD performs and makes good decisions, their business and the company’s value could grow significantly too (as evidenced by the fact that I do continue to hold a quarter of my port in TTD), I’m just not as comfortable having too oversized a stake in them right now, at these prices.
Over the past few months, I’ve sold off about one-third of my TTD holdings, yet it is still about 25% of the portfolio due to the strong stock performance, as the stock price has increased about +50% over the past four months.
MongoDB’s stock also had a strong month, possibly related to the results reported by Snowflake and Elastic this month, both of which saw positive spikes in their shares after announcing. I sold about 15% of my MDB shares this month for no specific reason except that the shares had moved up quite a bit over a few days. I may regret that when Mongo reports earnings on December 9th, in less than two weeks, if the results and stock reaction is positive.
With the proceeds from the shares that I sold in November, I added to my Amazon, Mercadolibre, Crispr, and Microsoft holdings, also removing a portion of the funds from my portfolio permanently for other uses.
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. TTD and MDB have been two of my top three holdings pretty consistently for the past five years.
Company News / Updates
Trade Desk TTD
The Trade Desk reported Q3 in November. The quarter was good, as they appeared to continue to take market share. They didn’t receive as big a revenue boost from election spending as some people (and I) thought they might.
The only other significiant news for TTD was the announcement of Ventura, a new streaming connected TV operating system. It sounds interesting, but I don’t really know how well it might catch on or how successful it will ultimately be in helping TTD’s business. Will be worth paying attention to management’s commentary on future earnings calls to see how this progresses.
I posted my summary of TTD’s quarter in this post:
Tesla TSLA
Tesla shares moved up significantly after the presidential election, likely as the market believes that policies under the new administration could be favorable to Tesla’s business.
Regardless of the election result, I continue to believe that Tesla’s business is positioned with so many areas to potentially grow revenue and profit in coming years that I think, as a shareholder, I will be rewarded in the future as they execute on those areas.
In addition to the core auto business, which is expected to have multiple new vehicles, including lower cost vehicles, announced in the first half of 2025, Tesla is positioned well in their energy business, Semi trucks, full self drive, ride share, and humanoid robotics and could be a leader in several of these areas as their markets grow.
MongoDB MDB - reports earnings on December 9th
Mongo’s shared jumped about +15% in one day last month, the day after Snowflake announced a strong quarter and SNOW’s shares rose more than +30% that day.
I initially thought MDB’s gains were entirely due to the SNOW reaction, and maybe it was, but I almost didn’t notice that, on the same day, MDB announced a new partnership with Microsoft/Azure
It sounds exciting, and there were some positive articles written about it afterwards online, but I’m not techie enough to understand what this deal might ultimately mean. MDB has always emphasized that they are agnostic and impartial to whether their clients use Azure, or AWS or something else, and I doubt that is going to change.
Elastic N.V. also reported a strong quarter and ESTC’s shares rose about +15% that day, which also may bode well for Mongo if they are seeing postive momentum in their business in line with SNOW and ESTC.
Another week and a half and we’ll know
Crispr Theraputics CRSP
Crispr announced Q3 earnings in November but didnt’ have much of a stock reaction afterwards.
Crispr Theraputics seeks to find therapies using gene editing. They already have one approved therapy, a cure for sickle cell disease called Casgevy which is just in the early stages of being brought to market via CRSP’s partnership with Vertex.
One item of note, which caught my attention this month was during a podcast with Joe Rogan and vice president elect JP Vance (before the election, so JP was still a candidate at the time), Vance actually spoke for a minute or two about CRSP’s approved therapy Casgevy. He didn’t refer to it by name, but based on what he said, it sounded like he is surprisingly familiar with it.
It could mean nothing, but definitely caught my attention that someone so high in the new administration has even heard about this and views it so positively.
Stock Performance
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, AMZN, MSFT), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| Dec 31 2023^ | Nov 30 2024 | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 71.96 | 128.55 | +78.6% |
| MDB | 408.85 | 322.49 | -21.1% |
| TSLA | 248.48 | 345.16 | +38.9% |
| MELI^ | 1,409.42^ | 1,985.17 | +40.9% |
| MSFT^ | 402.50^ | 423.46 | +5.2% |
| AMZN^ | 177.88^ | 207.89 | +16.9% |
| CRSP^ | 55.06^ | 51.17 | -7.1% |
^ Because I didn’t own MELI, 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, 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, so my actual percentage performance from Tesla investments this year is higher than what the simple table above indicates. I also sold a good chunk of my MDB early in the year when the stock was over $400 and even over $500, so my total MongoDB investment hasn’t taken the full negative 2024 hit shown above (although my remaining shares that I still hold, have).
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 +1,029%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +462% now.
That’s it for another month.
Thanks as always to Saul and everyone else that makes this board so great!
-mekong