What’s happening with our stocks instead of our companies? Yes I know it’s off topic but, since it’s my board, I take liberties now and then. If you don’t like me occasionally taking liberties, no one is keeping you on this board.
Since this post is off-topic, if you have comments or questions please contact me off board. This post is just for fun and to be interesting with no wonderful hidden meaning at all
First, we’ll talk about what happened this week, a week which got headlines like:
Stocks Tumble in Worst Week Since Beginning of Pandemic
The S&P 500 dropped 5.8 percent as fears of runaway inflation persisted.
Those were from the New York Times by the way, not a scandal sheet, and the results of our stocks showed just how irrational the market can be. You have to keep in mind that one week’s results may just reflect a large hedge fund being forced to liquidate a position, or another taking one on. Our companies don’t have trillion dollar values and can be moved by circumstances like that.
Well this week, while the S&P dropped 5.8%, Datadog, which is the largest position in most of our portfolios, including mine, dropped from $96.20 to $85.63, down 11.0%. No there was no bad news of any kind. Who knows why!
And while the S&P and DataDog were dropping like rocks, guess which companies were up on the week. A lot of people have talked about exiting Sentinel, and just about everyone has exited Monday. Well, Sentinel was up 3.2% and Monday was up a quarter of a percent, and they were the only stocks I’m holding which were positive on the week. (I’ve been building positions in these over a number of weeks, by the way, very slowly, and Sentinel is up to 16.9%, and Monday to 4.2%, of my portfolio). There’s no message there, just the impossibility of guessing the market.
How about how they have done the last four weeks? Here they are in order of results.
**CRWD, from $148.7 to $163.9 UP 10.2% !!!**
**MDB, from $248.1 to $249.75 UP 0.7%**
**S, from $24.77 to $23.27 down 6.1%**
**BILL, from $ 118.6 to $109.5 down 7.7%**
**DDOG, from $94.8 to $85.6 down 9.7%**
**MNDY, from $114.3 to $97.6 down 14.6%**
**SNOW from $141.5 to $119.4 down 15.6%**
**NET, from $55.7 to $41.2 down 26.0%**
They average down 8.6%. So how did my portfolio do? It was down 8.4% in those same four weeks. Makes sense.
Well, what the heck happened to Cloudflare, down 26%! And isn’t it nice that Crowd and Mongo are actually up for the four weeks
By the way, CRWD is up to a 15.3% position in my portfolio. Partly through adding to it but probably mostly by it rising while everything else was dropping. And no, I have no idea why Cloudflare dropped 26% in a week. I did add some late this week at $39.60.
Next, how much each is off its low since this decline started. Here they are in order of results.
**CRWD, from $130.0 to $163.9 up 26.1% !!!**
**S, from $18.64 to $23.27 up 24.8%**
**BILL, from $89.9 to $109.5 up 21.8%**
**MDB, from $213.4 to $249.75 up 17.0%**
**MNDY, from $87.05 to $97.60 up 12.1%**
**SNOW from $110.3 to $119.4 up 8.3%**
**NET, from $38.96 to $41.21, up 5.8%**
**DDOG, from $81.1 to $85.6 up 5.6%**
Well, Crowdstrike topped both lists, and Sentinel came in 3rd and 2nd, and how about Crowd, Sentinel, and Bill each up over 20% from their lows, and Mongo and Monday up over 12%.
Shows how statistics can be impressive but also how statistics can lie. Datadog, for instance has nothing at all wrong with their business. They are not up much from their lows because they held up well for a long while and are just down recently, like this week, and haven’t had a chance to bounce back yet.
I hope that you did find this to be interesting for your weekend.
Saul