I have taken the scenic route to finding this board. I can’t tell you how much this board has helped me reset my investment philosophy and I am still a novice, soaking in everything that the great posters here does for the community.
My investing journey to present
This is my first post here, so I apologize for the lengthy post.
I first started investing in 2003 out of college and had success with stock picking (the wind blowing in my direction, aka the bull market). Then I thought this is too easy, did a whole bunch of options/commodities and ended up blowing up my brokerage account in the 2008 financial crisis. But I always loved investing. So it took another 8 years before I meaningfully got back in the game. This time I got the retirement stuff sorted but was looking for the quick buck. Small account, wanted to grow fast, ended up choosing futures trading with a lot of emphasis on Elliot wave stuff. Kept losing capital and blew up my account again in 2019. So 2020 I took a break for a year. Got some influx of capital in early 2021 by selling a property and got back into investing but this time with growth stocks. The first go around was as you would expect, knew little, had no evaluation model or framework, the only thing I was focussed on was growth.
In March 2021, my top 5 positions of a 40 stock portfolio were OPEN, FUBO, EXPI, DKNG, SQ. I am sure you all know how that played out. Kept learning and picking up more nuances and by the time Nov 2021 came, my portfolio composition of top 5 stocks looked like this - FUBO, DM, OPEN, RIOT, UPST. 2021 ended up being a -35% year.
Starting Nov 2021, as the growth stocks started to tumble, around the first leg down of the bear market, I found Saul’s board in March 2022 through twitter. I started following these stocks, the DDOG, MNDY, GTLB, CRWD, BILL, ZS, SNOW, so on and so forth. Took me another 2-3 months and when the May 2022 leg down hit, I got into these stocks for the first time. Stock count was down to 20 now. Continued to learn from this board and re-adjusted portfolio the rest of the year. But 2022 wasn’t kind, ended the year with -76% returns. This was terrible returns on top of a -35% prior year. Would have been easy for a lot of people to give up and go the index fund route but I was so happy that I finally got the right guidance and felt everything was coming together. I felt the turnaround is coming, I could sense it.
Start of 2023 and my portfolio looked like this - SWAV, BILL, DDOG, SNOW, ZS, ZI, CRWD, HIMS, MNDY, GTLB, YOU, S, NET. (13 stocks) At this point, I finally felt like things were staring to click in my head about this style of investing. Kept at it and finally pulled together a good year. Ended 2023 with +80% returns. (Note: These returns were partially helped with a position in TQQQ, which is kind of a leverage play on portfolio, but that is a total separate topic and for some other forum)
And now to bring things full circle, it’s almost 5 months into 2024 and my investing style has gotten a little more shifted towards micro/small cap. As of May 24th, my portfolio has returns of +40% ytd.
Current portfolio review
Current Holdings:
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HIMS (21%)
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MNDY (12%)
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ELF (11%)
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TMDX (10%)
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ECOR (6%)
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CSTL (6%)
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ADMA (5%)
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ZS (5%)
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MIRM (5%)
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CELH (4%)
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IOT (4%)
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LFMD (4%)
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DUOL (4%)
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FENC (3%)
I will be the first to admit, I have way too much learning ahead of me. I need to understand businesses better. I understand them mostly at a surface level. I do understand numbers better and I do listen to all earnings calls to get a feel from the management about the businesses I own.
Why I hold these positions
HIMS
I believe the management team continues to execute their strategy very well. The GLP-1 drug will have a significant impact on the numbers going forward. The company has great margins and just went FCF positive a few quarters ago. And it still growing +40% yoy. You will be hard pressed to find another company growing this fast with a price to sale of 3 handle on it.
MNDY
This is a well oiled machine now. The business keeps innovating with new products and continues to sell them to growing number of clients. Growth has gotten pretty steady in the low 30% with almost 90% margins and 30% fcf. These are elite numbers and the fcf numbers continues to climb showing the operating leverage the posses. Again, at this high level of execution, very few companies are either valued at this level or have +30% growth.
ELF
I feel ELF and CELH are similar in the fact that they are the “in thing” now. Both are gaining market share and operate in large markets, which means there is enough room to grow. The stock run up does scare me but the company keeps executing. I am a little worried about the fcf% shrinking, would love for it to stabilize next quarter. But at +70% growth, it allows for a some room to be wrong.
TMDX
Great execution quarter after quarter and proven now they can get ahead of the logistical challenges and operate new businesses to help their primary organ transplant operations. Again, insane growth with an average analyst beat of 21% per quarter over the last 4 quarters. This tells me the market is chasing this stock so that makes me bullish. The main thing is for this company to start going towards fcf positive as that will really solidify the bull case.
ECOR
ECOR treats patients with pain and chronic conditions by developing treatments around the vegas nerve and nVNS. It’s a tiny company and I believe it can grow into a small cap business , maybe mid-cap. The operational process for this company are set now and it is hitting it’s strides. The growth is around 95% with +83% margins. And it is successfully working towards getting to fcf+ territory. It will need to continue to execute but has a lot of upside if it can pull it off. Average beat has been around 8%, which to me means the market is catching up to the story.
CSTL
CSTL is a molecular diagnostic company which develops tests for patients to help with tumor identification and make better disease management decisions. This business is growing at 73%, with 77% margins and about to go fcf positive. The average 4 quarter beat is 12% and management just raised guidance by almost 10%.
ADMA
ADMA treats infectious diseases with proprietary plasma derived products. This company is growing at +40% rate and margins improved to 47% from 29% a year ago. It is fcf+ and has been rapidly improving the operational numbers. The qoq numbers are consistent as a SaaS company and the average beat is +5%. I only talk about the beat because it tells me the market is playing catch up. Not because I care what the analysts think of it.
ZS
Nothing to add here than what has been said by so many of the posters, way more eloquently than I can. It’s a workhorse in my portfolio. The only thing is I would like the revenue growth numbers to stabilize here a little bit in the low 30%.
MIRM
This is a speculative play for me. This business treat rare liver diseases. Their pipeline is strong and they are in the middle of commercial rollout. It’s a +100% revenue grower with 74% margins that is about to go fcf positive. Let’s see if the execution continues. The current quarter was a bit disappointing but not too bad, I thought.
CELH
Nothing to say here, so much already written about this amazing company. This is one of those companies I identified early but got off the train too quickly. Now back in it and hoping it continues to execute and get more business from outside of US.
IOT
A lot of members here own this company and it is another workhorse SaaS company for me. I am more of a recent owner of this business but the execution is great with good numbers.
LFMD
Another play on GLP-1 drug here. I believe there is opportunity for more than one company to play in this space. Since LFMD is a smaller company, the opportunity ahead of it seems larger. The fact this is a +33% grower with 85% margins and +10% fcf. And it’s still 45 mil. in quarterly revenue, so the runway exists if it can execute.
DUOL
I have really enjoyed the bull and bear case discussions this forum has had on this company. But for me, at the end of the day, the numbers are too good to not own a small piece of the company. The recent pullback in the stock price helped me get onboard and I am looking forward to seeing how DOUL expands it’s user base beyond the traditional language learning business.
FENC
FENC is the first and only FDA approved therapy that treats patients with the risk of hearing loss from chemotherapy. I am sorry if this is not 100% accurate, I am still learning the business. This is about to hit commercial stage S curve. This business has a 95% margin, with a very high growth rate. The company had a logistical issue that made them miss their guidance for the quarter and the stock took a beating. The company is trending towards fcf+ but it is still a couple of years out. It got a great deal with Norgine to commercialize the product in Europe. So the next couple of quarters will provide a great deal of insight in what the revenue numbers might look like. Again a speculative play but looks promising.
A word on portfolio management and position sizing
I would like to hold about 8-12 positions but since I have a few really small companies, (I mean some of these makes 5 mil. a quarter), so I am giving myself a little more room for error and have about 11-15 stocks now.
I have three tiers of conviction and they range between, 5%, 10%, and 15% allocation. So I try to keep my positions around those sizes based on the Tier of my stock conviction. I let positions run up to as high as 25% and intent to trim them to 20% as soon as it hits that. I have no idea if it will continue to run or crash over the next months. This helps me draw a line in the sand and stick to it. No company has reached 25% of my portfolio yet so we will see if HIMS gets there and forces my hand.
A word on valuation
I am absolutely clueless about this topic. I sold CRWD at 200, which I thought was rich valuation, only to see it run up to 351 and just chilling there. I have this same dilemma with IOT and MNDY coming up. So from here on, I am only trimming the stocks I believe in, never selling out.
Wrapping Up
As I started this post by saying THANK YOU to all who post here and share their incredible knowledge. I am so glad I found this board and what an incredible group Saul has got together. I truly feel I have turned the corner but I also know the wind is behind my back now. So I will let the next 20% market drawdown set the bar for self evaluation.
If you are still here, thank you for reading. I promise from next time, it will be all about the current holdings and incremental thought changes.
Cheers and best to all.