Saul’s Portfolio at the end of Jan 2024.
MY RESULTS MONTH BY MONTH FOR 2024
Here’s a table of the monthly year-to-date progress of my portfolio for 2024. I’ll present them as starting from 100% of my starting value and figure from there. January was a passable month for my portfolio, up 1.7% (even after yesterday’s sell-off), but many other posters have higher results than I do, so don’t follow me!
End of Dec 100.0% starting point
End of Jan 101.7%
MY POSITIONS
Here’s what my postions looked like a month ago (end of Dec).
Samsara 21.9%
ELF 17.3%
Celsius 15.7%
Monday 14.4%
Axon 14.2%
Tesla 7.0%
Nvidia 6.8%
Zscaler 0.5%
And here’s what they look like now, at the end of January:
ELF 20.3%
Monday 19.6%
Samsara 19.5%
Axon 15.3%
Celsius 13.2%
Crowdstrike 4.5%
Nu Holdings 3.7%
Nvidia 1.7
As you can see, of my eight positions at the end of December, the five big ones are all still there, with Samsara, Elf, and Monday now close to a virtual three-way tie for first place, followed by Axon and Celsius in 4th and 5th places.
Crowd , Nvidia, and Nu were in another virtual tie at around 4% each, for 6th, 7th, and 8th places, until I sold part of my Nvidia position yesterday to add to Celsius (see Celsius discussion below).
My tiny half-percent position in Zscaler has been replaced by small 4.5% position in Crowdstrike. I’ve just always preferred being in Crowd.
I got out of Tesla again (at about $236, earlier in the month). I think that this time it was when Musk threatened to take a lot of products out of Tesla if he wasn’t given a larger stake in the company, and this was piled onto the slowdown in electric vehicles worldwide, and Tesla massively cutting their prices which wipes out competition but also killed the resale value of existing Teslas. Yes, I know, Tesla isn’t just cars but robots and all sorts of AI too… but still…
My confidence in Samsara, which had been my largest position near 22%, was somewhat shaken by learning that another company had been infiltrating them and then stealing information and trying to copy their platform and infringing on their patents. Samsara is suing them, and they aren’t alone as there are apparently three other companies suing the same company. I reduced my position by 3 percentage points in the past few days because of the possible risk of this affecting Samsara’s business, but it remains one of my largest positions, at 19.5%.
Nu is “new” this month. I initially took a somewhat larger position but then realized that no matter how much confidence I had in their CEO (quite a lot), I didn’t have the same confidence in banking in the Brazilian, and Central and South American, economies, nor in the economies themselves, so I cut my position down to its current size.
By coincidence, Bert Hochfeld’s weekly Ticker Target came out a couple of days ago, which was after I had written the above, and he had an extensive positive write-up about NU, and by coincidence this is what he said:
“… the story and the numbers make lots of sense-indeed, I might call them compelling. [But] Nu should never be a core holding for Ticker Target subscribers; I don’t know enough about either the company, its market or indeed the Brazilian economy.”
That’s, exactly how I saw it, and I had come to the same conclusion as far as having it as a major holding. The story, the CEO, and the numbers are compelling but it shouldn’t be a major or core holding for me because I don’t know enough about the complicated company, its subprime market, or the Brazilian economy. I’m comfortable with a 4% position though. By the way, if you don’t yet subscribe to Ticker Target I would certainly suggest you at least consider it. Bert is ranked in the top one tenth of one percent, that’s the top 0.1% (or the top one one thousanth) of the 20,000 or so analysts that Tip Ranks ranks, the last I looked.
By yesterday morning Celsius had dropped from a 15.7% position to an 11.0% position. That was partly because the stock price has gone nowhere while many of the rest were going up in price, but also partly because I trimmed it somewhat. Why? Well partly because I was worried that they were too dependent on Pepsi for expansion, and that expanding into Canada wasn’t much of a big deal population-wise.
But now I’ve learned that they weren’t restricted to Pepsi: Celsius elected Suntory Beverage & Food of Great Britain and Ireland as its exclusive sales and distribution partner in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Sales of Celsius products in those regions will begin this year. Not only is that good news but it foretells well for future expansion into other countries using more local distributors instead of being locked into Pepsi for everything.
I also think that the following news has held back their stock price:
“Carl DeSantis*— the billionaire who made a fortune founding and selling the Rexall Sundown vitamin company and, more lucratively, backing the Celsius energy drink brand—died last Thursday. He was 84 years old – Aug 18, 2023”*
I suspected that his estate and heirs have been selling off some of his holdings, so I took a look:
On Jan 23, 2024, Deborah DeSantis, Dean DeSantis, and William Milmore each sold 318,451 shares for $17.3 million each (roughly $52 million total).
On Jan 26, three days later, Deborah DeSantis, Dean DeSantis, and William Milmore each sold 384,594 shares for roughly $20.4 million each (roughly $61 million total).
So over a three day span they sold, combined, over 2.1 million shares for 113 million dollars. With that kind of large, but basically irrelevant, selling supressing the stock price I had to feel that this might be an excellent time to accumulate stock and increase my position, which I did yesterday, raising my position size by 2 percentage points. I sold shares in Nvidia, which had advanced magically since I bought it, to cover the purchases.
IF YOU ARE WONDERING HOW MY STYLE OF INVESTING DOES LONG TERM
If you are wondering how my style of investing does long term, here are the last seven years starting withrice 2017, when we started investing in SaaS companies.
**2017 84.2%
**2018 71.4%
**2019 28.4%
**2020 233.3%
**2021 39.6%
**2022 -68.4%
**2023 26.7%
That compounds to 750% of what I started with in seven years, seven and a half times what I started with, even including the horrible 2022. (It would have been 23.73 times, 2373% of what I started with in just seven years, if 2022 hadn’t come along 
).
Okay, let’s look at a longer time frame. How about the last 31 years, going back to 1993 when I started seriously keeping track every week. If there is no sign on the yearly results it means that the total portfolio was up that much percent for the year. In other words, 21.4% means up 21.4% and 115.5% means up 115% (more than doubling, not up 15.5%).
**1993: 21.4%
**1994: 15.4%
**1995: 43.4%
**1996: 29.4%
**1997: 17.4%
**1998: 4.9%
**1999: 115.5%
**2000: 19.4%
**2001: 46.9%
**2002: 19.7%
**2003: 124.5%
**2004: 16.7%
**2005: 15.6%
**2006: 8.6%
**2007: 22.5%
**2008: –62.5%
**2009: 110.7%
**2010: 0.3%
**2011: –14.5%
**2012: 23.0%
**2013: 51.0%
**2014: –9.8%
**2015: 16.0%
**2016: 2.5%
**2017 84.2%
**2018 71.4%
**2019 28.4%
**2020 233.3%
**2021 39.6%
**2022 -68.4%
**2023 26.7%
I’ll let you compound it for yourself. Please understand though that I don’t have all that money. I’ve been retired since June of 1996 (for twenty-seven and a half years) and my family has been living off my investing for all that time. That means renting and buying houses, all the family food, eating at restaurants, buying cars, taking airplane trips, and there was clothing, furniture, vacations, sending my daughter to college and other schools, medical bills, electricity bills, computers, home repairs, the whole works, for twenty-seven and a half years.
What those numbers compound to is what I would have had if I could have left it all in to compound, but I took out money for our full expenses every year, as well as for emergency money set aside. Just for example, if that compounds currently to 100 times what I started with in 1996 when I retired, every single ten dollars that I took out for our family to live on in 1996 would mean a thousand dollars less I’d have now (100 times), and so on each year.
I have kept a permanent safety fund out of the market that I could live off for several years if necessary, and I feel everyone who does not have a secure regular source of income should do the same. I have gradually added to it over the last year or so, moving some funds gradually from my investing pool to my out-of-the-market pool. Given our advanced ages, my wife and I probably have enough to live for the rest of our lives so making a lot more is not important.
I have learned long ago that sticking with great companies wins out in the end, and beats market timing, but living through the 2021/2022 decline was very difficult.
FINISHING UP
Let me remind you first, that I have NO IDEA what our stocks will do next month. I’m terrible on predictions. But I know that the businesses of our companies will do just fine for the most part.
When I take a regular position in a stock, it’s always with the idea of holding it indefinitely, or as long as circumstances seem appropriate, and never with a price goal or with the idea of trying to make a few points and selling. I do, of course, eventually exit. Sometimes it’s after months, and sometimes after years, but I’m talking about what my intention is when I buy.
I do sometimes take a tiny position in a company to put it on my radar and get me to learn more about it. I’m not trying to trade it and make money on it, I’m just trying to decide if I want to keep it long term. If I later do decide that it’s not what I want, I sell it without hesitation, and I really don’t care whether I gain a dollar or lose one. I just sell out to put the money somewhere better. If I decide to keep it, I add to my position and build it into a regular position.
You should never try to just follow what I’m doing without making up your own mind about a stock . First of all, you may have a completely different financial picture than I have. Different age, different income, different assets, different debts, different expenses, different financial and family responsibilities, etc.
Besides, in these monthly summaries I’m giving you a static picture of where I am currently, but I may change my mind about a position during the month. In fact, I not infrequently do, and I make changes in the position. I usually don’t announce these changes until the end of the month, and if I’m busy or have some personal emergency I might not announce them even then. And besides, I sometimes make mistakes, even big ones! Don’t just follow me blindly! I’m an old guy and won’t be around forever. The key is to learn how to do this for yourself.
THE KNOWLEDGEBASE
Since I began in 1989, my entire portfolio has grown enormously. If you are new to the board and want to find out how I did it, and how you can try to do it yourself, I’d suggest you read the Knowledgebase , which is a compilation of my “words of wisdom”, and definitely worth reading, (a couple of times), if you haven’t yet. It’s on the panel to your right.
I hope this has been helpful.
Saul
