New month, new thread. December is off to a good start with our mechanical swing trading portfolio gaining 1.1% today, thanks to gains in AMZN, META, APP and TTD (which closed at a new record high).
We’ve raised our stops to 10% below current prices with the goal of capturing as much of our overall gain of 28.3% as possible. We know that this kind of gain in only 3 months is not sustainable.
Good morning. It’s absolutely insane that APP is now up 180% since our purchase on October 1. We are continuing to hold 100% of this position, but have raised our stop to 10% below the current price to try to capture most of this gain if things go south. Suggest those of you who are skittish should trim your position by 20% to 33%. No one ever went broke taking profits on a gain this size.
This rise in APP is contributing to an overall gain of 30.5% in our portfolio in just 3 months. Wild.
We were up another 1.2% today thanks to rises in WGS, NVDA, AMZN and APP. And that’s despite a 12% decline in FOUR (Shift4 Payments) today. So why was Shift4 down so much? Well, it’s because Trump asked their CEO, Jared Isaacman, to be the head of NASA. And he accepted!
I certainly didn’t have this on my bingo card. We know Jared is a space enthusiast, because 3 months ago he became the first non-professional astronaut to be on board a SpaceX mission and do a space walk. And he’s also a billionaire. I guess he decided he’d rather run NASA than make more millions as head of a payments company.
After hearing this news, a lot of investors have decided to space-walk away from FOUR. I was going to do the same, but decided to hold because a) the valuation looks pretty cheap and b) Jared was distracted for months training for his space mission rather than running Shift4, and the company and stock both did fine. Does the company really depend on him to keep growing so well, or can an equally talented CEO replace him and do just as well? My bet is on the latter.
So we’ll hold on to FOUR a bit longer and see what happens.
I’m still trying to process the news I wrote about yesterday. Why would Jared Isaacman, Founder and CEO of Shift 4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR), want to get away from the excitement of leading a wildly successful tech firm and do a boring government job like running NASA? Seems like his heart just wasn’t in it. Especially when you consider that he spent months training to be an astronaut just to become a space tourist. And then risked his life to do a space walk as a total amateur. Crazy stuff, but I wish him well on his next adventure.
So the CEO role at Shift 4 will be vacant soon. What they need is someone with a tech, sales and management background, who has shares in the company, and whose heart would be in the job. Hey, that sounds like me! Should I call up the board at FOUR and apply for the job? I could say that I am passionate about the payments industry. Especially payments made toward me
Nah, it sounds like too much work. Much rather stay retired. But, what to do with the shares? It looks like analysts agree with me that Isaacman leaving is no reason to sell FOUR.
“WE BELIEVE TODAY’S NEWS INCREASES THE LIKELIHOOD THAT SHIFT4 IS EVENTUALLY SOLD” - RAYMOND JAMES
“We are maintaining our Outperform rating and $115 price-target on FOUR following the announcement that CEO Jared Isaacman has been nominated as NASA’s next administrator, a role he intends to accept. That said, Mr. Isaacman plans to remain as CEO until his confirmation and he will retain the majority of his equity interest, subject to ethics obligations.”
The stock has rebounded about 3% as I write this, so seems like a good decision so far,
Gains in the market this morning faded by the afternoon. Our portfolio declined about half a percent today, but we’re still up 31% since we started in early September.
Declines in TTD and META were offset by gains in APP, AMZN and FOUR.
Only noteworthy news for us is that analysts at Cowen raised their pt on ONON to $65.
And, yes, I know Bitcoin hit $100K yesterday. I had decided it was not a fad many years ago, but I also knew I would have trouble with the volatility. Congrats to all long time HODLers of BTC.
Jeepers. (Is that a word?) Both the S&P 500 and our portfolio ended at a record high today. Shareholders in AppLovin Corp. must be absolutely lovin’ how the stock has performed lately. APP is now up 205% (a triple) since our purchase on October 1 which we announced right here on this board on the day we bought. APP also happens to be up 405% (5x) since my purchase in my own portfolio in June.
Amazon was up 9.2% this week after it announced during its re:Invent conference that it would offer its own GenAI models, called Nova, to compete with OpenAI’s GPT4 models. Amazon is also seeing strong demand for its own GPU chips, called Trainium and Inferentia, which compete with Nvidia’s GPU chips. AMZN is now up 26.1% since we announced our purchase of the stock here on Sep. 11.
Take a look at the weekly heat map below, and you can see how dominant the big tech names were this week.
Our portfolio was up 5% for the week, and is now up 33% in just 3 short months since we began this swing trading journey.
This rate of ascent obviously cannot continue. We have therefore again raised our stop prices to 10% below current prices on all our holdings. Good luck to all of you, and have a good weekend.
Good morning. Alert - We are trimming our position in APP by selling 30% of the shares we currently hold. It’s been a great run. Time to take some profits.
Good afternoon. The Nasdaq set a new record high and closed above 20,000 for the first time in history. Investors liked this morning’s CPI report - nothing stopping the Fed from a rate cut next week. The Naz gained 1.8% and is now up 29% YTD.
Our own portfolio was up 2% today, thanks to
APP rebounding 5.3% after an analyst at Oppenheimer reiterated his $480 price target, and called Monday’s drop a buying opportunity. As I mentioned in my previous message, we trimmed our APP position on Monday morning, but are still holding on to 70% of our shares.
NVDA up 3.1% - Mizuho Securities says the stock could hit $170 next quarter because of what they’ll announce at CES in January. All the major cloud provider CEOs have said that their growth is constrained only by the availability of Nvidia GPUs. The demand is outstripping supply.
AMZN up 2.3% hit a record high of $230. Investors liked the reInvent announcements. This price is equivalent to $4,600/share before the 20:1 stock split a couple of years ago. AMZN is up 51% YTD.
ONON up 5.5% on no news that I could find.
Overall, we’re now up 27% since we started this public swing trading journey a little over 3 months ago. The S&P 500 is up 10% in the same short period.
Good morning. Trade alert - we are selling our entire position in FTAI this morning, since the price has now declined below the 50 dma and below our stop loss.
Good action in WGS today. May or may not be the start of another leg higher. We’ll see.
Wasn’t good to see NVDA fall today while another behemoth chip name, Broadcom (AVGO) rose 21% and exceeded $1T in market cap for the first time. Their CEO said revenues will expand 5x in 3 years on the back of strong AI-driven demand. Will watch NVDA next week to see if it further breaches its 50dma.
At today’s close, we gave up the gains from last week and are now down about 1% for December so far, after a very strong November. We’re still up 25.5% since we started in September.
I have to make a wish list for Secret Santa at our annual family Christmas gathering. So far, I like this item:
WGS climbed 6.7% today following the 5% move higher that I noted in my Friday recap. Which means WGS is now up 12% in two days, and back near its all time high of $80. Will it break out and go for another leg higher now? Or is $80 resistance? We’ll see.
APP also rose 6% today. As of now, I’m glad that we held on to 70% of our shares after trimming and taking profits a week ago.
And AMZN was up 2.4%. They announced they’ll spend another $10B expanding their AWS data centers in Ohio.
Our portfolio overall was up 2.3% today and up 27.8% since early September.
Good morning. Trade alert - We are buying CRDO (Credo Technology Holding.) The stock is in a Stage 2 uptrend, has pulled back a bit from its high, and has YoY revenue growth of 70%. This company is a beneficiary of data center buildouts due to the demand for AI infrastructure.
Despite the market taking a 3% hit yesterday, the holdings in our portfolio all continue to trade above their 50-day moving averages. That’s pretty good, considering that SPY itself is now below its 50dma.
After getting stopped out of NVDA on Tuesday, and buying CRDO yesterday, we have a fairly defensive 19% cash position. AMZN, META, APP and FOUR are all behaving as well as can be expected.
After the close today, we’re still up 22.4% since we started in early September. I’ll have a full end of week recap tomorrow.
Despite all the recent volatility, we lost less than 1% this week, thanks to a strong market rebound today following a favorable report on inflation. We’re still up 24.7% since we started this mechanical swing trading journey a little less than 4 months ago. The market is up 7.3% in the same period.
We now have a 18% cash position, and will continue to monitor our holdings to see if they keep on respecting their 50 day moving averages. Here’s where we stand now. Have a good weekend, and Happy Holidays!
Seems like his heart just wasn’t in it. Especially when you consider that he spent months training to be an astronaut just to become a space tourist. And then risked his life to do a space walk as a total amateur. Crazy stuff, but I wish him well on his next adventure.
