November portfolios summary

A while ago I posted a summary of all the portfolio allocations posted in this forum. Several people seem to have found it useful, so I’ve updated the portfolios summary for November’s end in this link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15WYEG7cX2mdErck42Im4…
I’ve also added some additional financial information on each company (revenue growth, gross margins, stock price growth), and a filter on the columns (so if you download the sheet as an excel file you can now sort it by any column). I personally find it useful to look at companies’ financial data side-by-side in order to learn which companies I should investigate more in depth, while focusing on the companies handpicked by the experienced investors here. It also helps me to know in which person’s portfolio update to look if I want to read opinions on a specific company. I hope this will prove useful to other people as well.

In addition, to understand a bit more on what drives companies’ success, I summarized (in other tabs of the same sheet) the boards’ portfolios at the end of 2018 and 2019, and how these companies’ stocks have done during the following year. Several insights from doing this:

  • Unsurprisingly, the stocks held by members of the board have done quite well – in fact, if you just bought the top 6-10 stocks held by people here at the end of 2018 and made no changes, you would finish 2019 with gains of 40-60%; if you did the same in 2019, you would have 140-180% gains in 2020 (ytd).

  • Despite this, some stocks that were held in high percentages by people here at the end of 2018 (e.g. TWLO, ZS, SQ, NTNX, NEWR) or at the end of 2019 (AYX) did relatively poorly in the following year, and sometimes even had negative growth. I think that this emphasizes two of Saul’s principles – 1) do your own research on each company, and 2) constantly look for signs that the story is intact and get out if the story has changed.

  • YoY revenue growth seems to be a great predictor of future stock price rise (at least for the companies held by people here) – almost all of the companies that had >50% yoy revenue growth in 2018 did extremely well in 2019, and similarly for 2019 to 2020. This seems to be even more true for companies that had successive high growth for the prior two years. For example, ZM and CRWD had >100% yoy growth in both 2018 and 2019, even before covid.

  • Gross margins seem to be a less reliable predictor – while most of the “consensus” companies here have high gross margins (and obviously perform well), other companies with high gross margins perform poorly (e.g. NTNX).

  • As noted by GauchoRico in his monthly portfolio review, the price and valuation of the stocks discussed here has gradually increased – by the end of 2018, only one company held by many members here had a stock price above 100 (TTD); by the end of 2019, there were four with a price above 100 (AYX, MDB, TTD, OKTA), with one of them (TTD) above 200; and now all of the top companies held by people here, except for NET, have a stock price above 100. However, stocks’ prices do not seem to be related to their success (so far) – in fact, when sorting by stock price, it’s evident that the cheapest stocks each year kept doing poorly, while many of the most expensive stocks did well. Which again seems to strengthen Saul’s principle of looking at companies’ performance and not their valuation.

I will try to keep the summary sheet updated month-by-month (at the same link), and possibly add more financial information (if anyone knows of ways to automatically extract financial information for a list of tickers, please send me a message). As always, many thanks to the incredible people here, and most prominently Saul, for their generosity in providing access to their portfolio allocations and to their investing thought process – this is an invaluable resource that is greatly affecting people’s lives, including mine. Thank you.

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Thank you for taking the time to collate and post this information, I found it quite revealing to compare the past couple of years worth of YoY revenue growth. I am glad you are planning to update it. Will the link stay the same for future updates?

I will also add a big thank you to the generous folks who post their portfolio updates here, and most of all to Saul. Two thumbs up.

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Excel in it’s online (O365) version has a capability to do this.

In the “Data” tab, you can select “Stocks” to set up the table. Within the table (any formula referencing the cell with the “Stocks” data type, a number of current metrics are available and updated on a 15 minute delay.

Unfortunately, several stocks followed by the board are not providing current data. To name a few:

MDB
CRWD
MELI

More information here:

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To insert a stock price into Excel, you first convert text into the Stocks data type. Then you can use another column to extract certain details relative to that data type, like the stock price, change in price, and so on.

Note: The Stocks data type is only available to Worldwide Multi-Tenant clients (standard Microsoft 365 accounts).

1.Type some text in cells. For example, type a ticker symbol, company name, or fund name into each cell.

2.Then select the cells.

3.Although it’s not required, we recommend creating an Excel table. Later on, this will make extracting online information easier. To create a table, go to Insert > Table.

4.With the cells still selected, go to the Data tab, and then click Stocks.

5.If Excel finds a match between the text in the cells, and our online sources, it will convert your text to the Stocks data type. You’ll know they’re converted if they have this icon for stocks: Linked record icon for Stock .

6.Select one or more cells with the data type, and the Add Column button Add Column button will appear. Click that button, and then click a field name to extract more information. For example, for stocks you might pick Price.

7.Click the Add Column button again to add more fields. If you’re using a table, here’s a tip: Type a field name in the header row. For example, type Change in the header row for stocks, and the change in price column will appear. Or type other field names like Last Trade Time, Previous Close, and Exchange.

Tips:

?To see all of the fields available for a company or fund, click the stock icon ( Linked record icon for Stock ) or select the cell and press Ctrl+Shift+F5.

?If you see Question mark icon instead of an icon, then Excel is having a hard time matching your text with data in our online sources. Correct any spelling mistakes and when you press Enter, Excel will do its best to find matching information. Or, click Question mark icon and a selector pane will appear. Search for data using a keyword or two, choose the data you want, and then click Select.

?You can also write formulas that reference data types.

?Stock information is delayed, provided “as-is”, and is not for trading purposes or advice. See About our data sources for more information.

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thanks… this Excel is superhelpfull… does this link get updated as you update it monthly ?

Hi MotleyPeer

This is an interesting resource.

Given that folks are indicating that they find this useful, I plan to share my portfolio review in December as this seems a critical monthly data point for your google docs, allowing a YoY comparison with prior years. I hope to resume my portfolio reviews in the new year going forwards as it has been rather intermittent in the last year or two but will at least provide a download for you to use for December.

Thanks again.

Ant

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Thanks Ant - that would be very useful. I appreciate your thoughts and posts in this forum, and looking forward to see your December portfolio.
Also thanks to GDavenport for the Excel tips.

And yes, for now I am planning to keep updating the list in the same link, with a new sheet for each month.

Cheers

Peer

9 Likes

Hi Motley and others,

This is interesting but obviously way off-topic as our board is for analyzing individual companies rather than listing people’s portfolios. I won’t delete it but let’s not make a long thread of it, and please make subsequent comments off board to Motley.

Thanks for your cooperation,

Saul

20 Likes

Hi Motley,

That was really a nice post and must have involved a lot of work on your part. It’s just that being so OT that I didn’t want to start a long thread, and I asked people to address you off board with further questions. I do want people to learn how to evaluate companies for themselves, rather than just pick a company because it is in x number of people’s portfolios.

Best,

Saul

28 Likes