I haven’t posted my portfolio on this board before. I have no stunning insights, just some of what I believe to be common sense. Very little detail, partly because you’re all familiar with most of my companies. Before comments, let me share the composition of the portfolio (100% shares except as noted):
Company %Allocation
TTD 26.1%
AYX 20.4 (quite a few call options)
DDOG 7.7
CRWD 7.4 (mostly call options)
STNE 6.6
MDB 6.1
**Cash 4.1**
OKTA 3.8 (half call options)
PING 3.3
LVGO 2.7
ADBE 2.5 (100% call options)
TLRA 2.1
ROKU 1.9
ZS 1.2 (100% call options)
PAGS 0.9
MELI 0.9
SQ 0.7 (100% call options, currently a big loss)
SMAR 0.5
AMZN 0.5
ESTC 0.4
TWLO 0.3 (100% call options)
Year to date: “+21.2%”
You’ll note the quotes around the return. An accurate accounting would show a bit larger, but I use a crude method instead because it’s easier and precision is not all that important for my purposes. What’s the crude method? Well, I take my current portfolio value and add back in all my IRA withdrawals for the year, then divide by the beginning balance. Accurate accounting would consider the timing of those withdrawals. Are the withdrawals significant? Well, they are for me. So far this year, I’ve withdrawn an amount equal to 5.6% of the January 1st balance. Why? Bought another time share condo and bought a motorhome. Plus our usual “excessive” disbursements (2019 withdrawals were equal to 12.8% of our 2019 starting balance). We have a lot more “excessive” spending coming this year too. It seems we have no end of useful places to disburse money. 
Regarding the “correction”, I was down 15% from our peak value from… late last month. And that’s all due to getting nicked by the market, not from withdrawals. Friday’s “rally” moved me to being about 12% down from our peak. I’d welcome a return to a carefree market but who knows how long it’ll take to shake off the concerns about pandemics and politics. (I’m not worried about the pandemic itself, but I can see that some companies will be adversely affected by supply chain interruptions).
Overall Thoughts:
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Briefly, I use options to juice returns. Mostly to cover “excessive” spending.
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TTD and TLRA: Two sides of the advertising purchasing coin. Not a balanced allocation, certainly, but I think TTD has the more certain outstanding future. Those of you who follow this board have read the accolades for TTD. I see little point in covering that ground again, saving you valuable reading time.
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AYX: I see more upside, more quickly with AYX than TTD for the next couple years although TTD is not likely to be a slouch. AYX has accelerating growth accompanied by crazily strong margins. It has a forward P/S of 15 ($9B market cap, $600mm revenue…conservatively). I see reason, outside of market jitters, for this company to be worth 50% more by year end 2020. That’s why I’ve leveraged the position.
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Everybody here is familiar with DDOB, CRWD and MDB. I won’t discuss further. My remaining high allocation company is STNE. It’s been discussed on the board a bit. Why do I have a lot invested there? Briefly: Triple digit growth in revenues and profits, exposure to rapidly growing Brazilian banking, reassurance knowing Berkshire is a major investor, P/S around 4.4 (not a typo). STNE hasn’t returned much to me yet. Given company performance, I’m willing to give it a bit more time.
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Second Tier stocks:
- OKTA is familiar to everyone. Whether I continue to hold depends on this week’s quarterly report.
- PING, previously identified as a cheap OKTA. Might get sold after this week’s report because performance is not mind blowing compared to share price.
- LVGO has been discussed here. Rapid growth, a combined hardware/software/group affiliation play in the medical monitoring/coaching field. Continue to monitor.
- ADBE. I’ve found that buying calls on a solidly performing company with modest share price can pay a lot of bills. Something for me to continue, but I’m itching to sell this one soon to jump on some other (yet unidentified) train ready to leave the station.
- ROKU. Letting it ride.
- TLRA, briefly mentioned above. They are merging with another company and I figure on holding until I get a better idea of how they’re performing. So far, can’t complain… I’m up quite a bit on it already.
- Third Tier stocks:
- ZS has been bad news for me so far. Dinged big time on calls but at this point I’m holding figuring they have a decent opportunity from here given decent company performance. I’ve sold all the shares I had because the opportunity for an unleveraged position from here doesn’t look so bright.
- PAGS. Similar to STNE but I think the latter company has a stronger future. Hasn’t returned much yet.
- SQ. Another call option disaster, down 50% or so.
- SMAR, ETSC: Good companies, but I can’t load up with every single shiny company. Gotta pick and choose. So far, I’m glad I’m in TTD and AYX mostly and not SMAR and ETSC.
- TWLO company performance has been “OK”. Stock is up a bit. Not a barn burner for me.
- AMZN. I’ve sold nearly 90% of my position even though my returns are over 500%. Why? Because other companies offer bigger future returns, faster. Amazon is a great company, great future, decent future returns… sold because those returns are not likely to keep up with my faster growing companies. I have zero sentimentality for any position and won’t hold because of the past. Yep, I think Amazon will double from here… but I’ll have multibaggers on my other positions… sooner. That, my friends, is common sense. Although I imagine most of my colleagues at the Fool will to think I’ve lost my marbles.
Overall, I need to look at what to sell more to fund our activities. I’ve sold a fair amount of TTD over the last year but the balance doesn’t go down. Portfolio allocation has dropped from ~30% to a bit over 26%. Future 2020 sales will probably be in that third tier of stocks because I’m comfortable with a bit more sane allocation with TTD and their performance continues to shine.
Rob
Rule Breaker / Market Pass / Supernova Starshot Home Fool & STMP/MTH Maintenance Coverage Fool
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.