My last update was thread 49861. This is the first year where I’ll be able to track year-to-date performance in a high growth style of investing. I started seriously managing my IRA 3 years ago (January 2016) and wish I had started so much sooner. I discovered high growth in August. I had an all-time high in mid-September. At that point my portfolio grew 25% higher than my S&P 500 benchmark portfolio, less than 3 years after January 2016. It then plunged 25% by mid-December, but was still 13% higher than my benchmark. By late January I was only 5% down from my high, and was now 27% above my benchmark. Fourteen weeks to lose 25%, and 6 weeks to claw back 20 of those points. Talk about fast turn-arounds!
Year to date, up 17.9%, roughly 8% higher than my benchmark.
Bought and Sold:
- Trimmed back on SQ at $53, bought partially back at $65.
- Sold half my NFLX at $264.03. Then all at $327.29.
- Bought 1/2 more ZS
- Bought NTNX again, at $42.02 and $51.89. Had sold before at $45.00.
- Bought 3% stake in ZUO at $18.60.
- Sold half of MDB at $81.08, bought back at $76.39
- Bought 3% stake in ESTC at 73.78
Square SQ - I struggled with Square. I bought two lots, neither of which were above water, and on average were near -30%. I almost sold when they got into consumer lending and when Sarah left. I trimmed my worst performer to a smaller allocation. Then followed the discussions here and agreed that it’s still a stronger grower, so bought some of it back, at a higher price. One of these days I will learn to sell less quickly and churn less often…
Netflix NFLX - Like Apple, I’ve been on the fence with holding Netflix for some time. Too much content spend, increased market competition, not as much moat as they think they have (Hulu and Amazon, as well as HBO and Disney, all have great original content). Sold half, then it climbed heavily, then sold the rest. I dunno, I think the growth story there is flattening but the content spend is not. The run YTD has been impressive, so this might be a mistake to have sold.
MongoDB MDB - sold half when Amazon announced DocumentDB. I had a big winner here, in a short period of time, and sold some shares while still at a good profit. Used the proceeds to buy shares of TEAM. I needed to get those funds from somewhere… My only real issue with them all along is the open source model, and this seems to be how Amazon has hurt them. After much reading here on the boards about the possible threat to AMZN I realized my sell-reaction was not warranted. Fortunately was able to repurchase still under my sell price. Lucky this time!
or similar reasons I’m looking into Tableau as well.
Amazon AMZN - I continue to hold AMZN because I think they are still growing and innovating. See what they are currently doing to MDB as an example. I do have concerns however, as they get bigger there seems to be more backlash. Not willing to sell yet but monitoring. This and CRM are my sole remaining big caps.
Iron Mountain IRM - my sole remaining REIT, with a high dividend and so far a great return on investment for me. I’ve come close multiple times to doubling my stake here. I’ve had these shares since mid October (over 3 months) and they have out-performed the S&P by 20% in that short time.
PSJ continues to be a strong performing software ETF for me. So far, according to my MF Scorecard is beating the S&P by nearly 10%, averaged over all my purchases. Cannot complain there, and honestly if it could do that on an annual basis I could meet my “goals” with only that one fund.
Current holdings, largest to smallest:
PSJ 11.0%
TWLO 9.0%
AYX 7.9%
AMZN 7.5%
ZS 7.3%
TTD 6.9%
OKTA 6.8%
MDB 6.5%
NTNX 6.2%
CRM 6.1%
PYPL 5.5%
SQ 4.5%
ESTC 3.4%
ZUO 3.3%
IRM 2.4%
Cash 5.6%
2019 Goals:
Trade less and be less emotional.
Beat the S&P 500 by at least 10% for the year.
Gain at least 30% this year.