Timboteo's end of April portfolio review

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
1

In my previous postings, I reported on my large amount of trading. For example, I had made 567 trades in 2018 and 213 trades YTD through March. One of my goals I mentioned was to significantly reduce the number of trades I make. In April I only made 19 trades (so far). Still a lot but I’m getting there. Note all trades are in regular and Roth IRAs. Given the number of trades I was making, a few of you sent me a message recommending I negotiate a reduced rate or obtain free trades with my broker.

I did follow up on that advice and talked to Fidelity. The best they would give me (I’m not a good negotiator) was 100 free trades. I’ll ask them again in a year. I know some of you have obtained much better deals. This board has made me a lot of money and now more so through this advice. I’m going to shoot for a limit of around 10 trades in May; we’ll see.

The reduced number of trades probably helped me obtain a YTD return of 40.34%; the closest I’ve come to meeting Saul’s return. Of course, this is due to following his recommendations, those of Bert’s, Tinker, Dreamer, and others I’ve mentioned and appreciated in the past.

I was a Motley Fool Pro subscriber when they disbanded unexpectedly and because they discontinued that subscription they gave us access to many, if not all, their other newsletters for the period we had signed up with ‘Pro’ for.
Through those newsletter recommendations, I’ve received a lot of recs for most of the stocks we are in giving me further confidence in each. There are two exceptions as far as I can tell (i.e. I haven’t seen a rec for two of those I’m still in listed below). To respect their concern, I won’t mention which ones have the most recs (that I have seen anyway) and which ones I have not seen recs on.
I will say that ‘Pro’ got me into PAYC sometime in 2017. Unbeknownst to me, it was the beginning of my cloud subscription experience and PAYC has treated me well since.
This month, my trades focused on selling my GH stake (over time) at a loss and ESTC at break even. Also, I added to my ZS holdings multiple times. I ‘took profits’ on 1/5th of my TTD shares to buy some ZS. After all that, my current allocations are:


Twilio	19.88%
The Trade Desk	13.47%
Alteryx	16.74%
Zscaler	15.82%
Okta	11.74%
MongoDB	6.79%
Paycom	4.75%
Square	2.48%
SMAR	2.04%
Elastic	0.00%
GH	0.00%
CASH	6.29%

I’m not sure if my postings add much value except maybe to add additional circumstantial evidence that Saul’s system (which includes so many board contributors) works. I’ve been retired for awhile now and used to watch my budget closely. I still watch it but much more loosely. I buy whatever I want to buy (without going too crazy) and am attempting to pay for 3 grandchildren’s (ages 5 month’s to 11 years old) college accounts through contributions to 529 plans that I’ve created for each.

I have all of you to thank for this and I sincerely do.

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2

Hi Timboteo,

It’s nice to get some confirmatory evidence that what we are doing here works, and I want to thank you for your kind words, but your review would add more value to the board if you told us WHAT you liked about your companies, WHY you sold your Guardant, WHY you sold your Elastic, WHAT made you decide to add to your Zscaler, and WHAT made you decide to sell part of your TTD to buy Zscaler (why you liked Zscaler better), etc. A simple list of positions and “I sold some of this and bought some of that” unfortunately doesn’t give us much to sink our teeth into. Try it next time.

Thanks,

Saul

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3

Timboteo,

There are lots of options out there for accounts with minimal trading costs. For example, I pay $290 per year, with more available included trades than I’ll use. I could make up to 2000 trades per month at the same total cost. I don’t trade that much, but the point is that if I calculate $290/year as a flat rate, I don’t really have to worry about per-trade fees. I can let my investing strategy dictate the trades, rather than having high enough frictional costs pushing me into decisions I otherwise wouldn’t make.

In following the kinds of stocks on this board, I don’t jump right in with full allocations. When something grabs my interest, I buy a little bit. Based on both my own research and that of others on the board, when I see more positive news, I buy more. And then more, etc. As my confidence grows, the positions do too. It doesn’t matter if it takes me 20 buys of a company to get to the maximum allocation I’m comfortable with, over a span of time. My purchase pace and purchase size is dictated by comfort level with the COMPANY, rather than the costs of doing x number of transactions.

Just as Saul sometimes adds “trial positions”, so do I. They can be tiny, as percentages of my portfolio. What might not be economical to jump in and out of with high transaction costs can be perfectly fine when you aren’t worried about cost per trade. At this point, with modern brokerages, the fees should be negligible. All our attention can be focused on our stock selection and having exactly the portfolios we all want. Don’t let the commission tail wag the portfolio dog.

Justin

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4

In my previous postings, I reported on my large amount of trading. For example, I had made 567 trades in 2018 and 213 trades YTD through March. One of my goals I mentioned was to significantly reduce the number of trades I make. In April I only made 19 trades (so far). Still a lot but I’m getting there. Note all trades are in regular and Roth IRAs. Given the number of trades I was making, a few of you sent me a message recommending I negotiate a reduced rate or obtain free trades with my broker.

I did follow up on that advice and talked to Fidelity. The best they would give me (I’m not a good negotiator) was 100 free trades. I’ll ask them again in a year. I know some of you have obtained much better deals. This board has made me a lot of money and now more so through this advice. I’m going to shoot for a limit of around 10 trades in May; we’ll see.

The reduced number of trades probably helped me obtain a YTD return of 40.34%; the closest I’ve come to meeting Saul’s return. Of course, this is due to following his recommendations, those of Bert’s, Tinker, Dreamer, and others I’ve mentioned and appreciated in the past.

I was a Motley Fool Pro subscriber when they disbanded unexpectedly and because they discontinued that subscription they gave us access to many, if not all, their other newsletters for the period we had signed up with ‘Pro’ for.
Through those newsletter recommendations, I’ve received a lot of recs for most of the stocks we are in giving me further confidence in each. There are two exceptions as far as I can tell (i.e. I haven’t seen a rec for two of those I’m still in listed below). To respect their concern, I won’t mention which ones have the most recs (that I have seen anyway) and which ones I have not seen recs on.
I will say that ‘Pro’ got me into PAYC sometime in 2017. Unbeknownst to me, it was the beginning of my cloud subscription experience and PAYC has treated me well since.
This month, my trades focused on selling my GH stake (over time) at a loss and ESTC at break even. Also, I added to my ZS holdings multiple times. I ‘took profits’ on 1/5th of my TTD shares to buy some ZS. After all that, my current allocations are:

Twilio 19.88%
The Trade Desk 13.47%
Alteryx 16.74%
Zscaler 15.82%
Okta 11.74%
MongoDB 6.79%
Paycom 4.75%
Square 2.48%
SMAR 2.04%
Elastic 0.00%
GH 0.00%
CASH 6.29%

I’m not sure if my postings add much value except maybe to add additional circumstantial evidence that Saul’s system (which includes so many board contributors) works. I’ve been retired for awhile now and used to watch my budget closely. I still watch it but much more loosely. I buy whatever I want to buy (without going too crazy) and am attempting to pay for 3 grandchildren’s (ages 5 month’s to 11 years old) college accounts through contributions to 529 plans that I’ve created for each.

I have all of you to thank for this and I sincerely do.

If you trade a lot, you should look at interactive brokers, which starts at as low as 1.00 a trade, or folio, which I understand is even less expensive, but I don’t know that much about it. I have an account with interactive brokers, and unless I am buying a huge amount of shares, the price is 1.00. If I am buying a huge amount of shares, I use my fidelity account.

5

The example I gave was for FolioInvesting. But there are a number of very economical choices out there, with various specific pros and cons, all priced low enough to let the fees fade into irrelevance. The next time I switch jobs, I’ll rollover my 401k into Interactive Brokers, so I’ll have one account at each, so I can use each for the particular strengths of that brokerage.

Justin

6

Hey Guys, we’ve been very patient, but this board is NOT for discussing where to get the best rates on commissions. It’s very Off-Topic and time to quit this thread. Answer off-board to Timboteo if you feel you just have to say something more.
Thanks for your cooperation,
Saul

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