I’m late with this update, finally catching up after traveling last weekend. Not too much significant news on the companies I own, except for MDB’s earnings at the very beginning of Sept, so I’ll keep it fairly short.
For the second consecutive month, all five of my holdings dropped. September did start with pretty good earnings from MongoDB, but the small positive stock move after earnings was given back and then some over the next few weeks.
So here is the latest YTD performance summary:
+11.3% YTD Jan
+16.2% YTD Feb
+23.5% YTD Mar
+29.1% YTD Apr
+61.4% YTD May
+87.4% YTD Jun
+118.9% YTD Jul
+94.6% YTD Aug
+80.0% YTD Sep
My portfolio is very concentrated, still only five positions currently, and all five moved lower during September.
Here is my allocation at 9/30/23
40.3% (TTD) The Trade Desk
29.3% (MDB) MongoDB
13.0% (TSLA) Tesla
11.7% (AEHR) Aehr Test Sys
5.7% (TDOC) Teladoc
Similar to August, I really didn’t have any transactions in September at all, so everything crept down a bit, keeping the overall allocations pretty similar to last month.
Despite those top two positions (TTD and MDB) being quite large, they are combined less than 70% now. Back in April, they combined for more than 87% of the total and have gradually come down, mostly due to my selling off pieces of them as I bought into the other companes and pulled some some funds permanently out of the portfolio.
Here is the year to date performance of each of my current holdings. Note that the companies that I didn’t own at the beginning of the year (TSLA, AEHR, TDOC), this only shows the performance since I purchased them:
| December 31st^ | September 30th | YTD Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTD | 44.83 | 78.15 | 74.3% |
| MDB | 196.84 | 345.86 | 75.7% |
| TSLA^ | 161.3^ | 250.22 | 55.1% |
| AEHR^ | 32.04^ | 45.70 | 42.6% |
| TDOC^ | 24.33^ | 18.59 | -23.6% |
My overall portfolio performance was driven by having so much concentrated in two stocks (which, again, I generally wouldn’t recommend) which have increased +74% and +75% so far this year.
I also had some compounding of different stock holdings that contributed to my overall gains this year. For example, I owned Cloudflare (NET) at the beginning of the year, which increased about 50% YTD when I sold a few months ago to buy into TSLA, which then gained 55%. So those funds have returned about +132% so far this year, even better than the shares of TTD and MDB that I own.
^ Because I didn’t own TSLA, AEHR, or TDOC until this year, the “December 31st” numbers above for Tesla, Aehr, and Teladoc are not their 12/31/22 prices, but the stock price of my initial, most significant purchases. For Tesla it was on May 4th. They had already reported their quarterly results in April, and I certainly didn’t expect they would rise 55%+ over the next few months, but I’m glad I bought as much as I did early on as I probably wouldn’t be as inclined to buy as much all at once right after its run.
And also note that 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 +586%, while most of my MongoDB shares were purchased in July 2018 for $57.39 and are up +503% now.
Here’s a look at the trend with the most recent guides for next quarter penciled in for my two largest holdngs (with q3 guidance penciled in):
The Trade Desk (TTD)
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% 23%(q3 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% 4%(q3 guide)
MongoDB (MDB)
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% 29%(q3 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% -5%(q3 guide)
Hopefully things will start moving in the right direction again soon. Until then, I look forward to all the great discussion here. Thanks, as always, to Saul, and everyone else that contributes to his board.
-mekong