I was canine
must have been the damn spell-checker.
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Saul’s not saying …
Saul is capable of speaking for himself should he choose. Surely you are not privy to his mind.
🆁🅶🅱
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Saul’s not saying The Market is different, he’s saying that there are new business models. And Saul’s right.
Saul is capable of speaking for himself should he choose. Surely you are not privy to his mind.
Hi RGB, I thought I did say exactly what he said in my article on why my investment criteria have changed. He WAS privy to my mind because he was repeating exactly what I had said.:
After some reflection, I think I’d say that it isn’t so much that I have changed, but that the world has changed, and that the business models of the companies I invest in have changed. Companies like the ones I am currently investing in simply didn’t exist before. They have only emerged in the past few years.
Best,
Saul
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Users of old Photoshop versions - if you couldn’s use it any more, and needed to have something to edit photos, would you consider free software like GIMP?
Some SaaS will face competition from free software, and some will find growing competition from new companies entering because the profits are so good. That will take a while, though we need to keep an eye on the situation in each case. Shopify, for instance, looks like it’s fairly safe now, so it’s more a matter of figuring out how much growth expectation is built into the current price.
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“Users of old Photoshop versions - if you couldn’t use it any more…” - just to clarify, I meant that you couldn’t keep using your old version.
I haven’t looked at GIMP in quite awhile. I imagine it’s improved since my last trial… but because I’m much more familiar with, fully trained in, and FASTER with Photoshop, I’d probably bite the bullet for inertia purposes, unless the cost was just too painful to absorb.
There is definitely a break point where productivity wins over price, and if Adobe did some kind of “amnesty” type program to catch the stray users like me still using PS3 or PS5 with a special offer (2 years at half price would do it), I’d do it in a heartbeat.
hi guys, while interesting this discussion of gimp vs photoshop should be had elsewhere. Please take it off the board or to email. No need to reply to this post.
thanks,
Ethan
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I dunno… I think there IS some value in asking and answering the larger “what is the total addressable market”-type questions, which this was. Granted, I’m one user and probably not going to draw any mass conclusions, so perhaps you could call that “noise,” but I wouldn’t want to shut down valid questions like TAM discussions.
Just catching up to this post now. Great write up, Saul.
In addition to what you wrote, I’d like to add that new technologies are riding on the coat tails of these companies. Some time ago I wrote here about why artificial inteligence and machine learning are on the rise:
http://discussion.fool.com/a-great-article-thanks-for-sharing-i-…
Somebody asked me there what AI-related companies I could recommend. To this day I have not found one that I would trust to invest in - even with my technical expertise I can’t tell which ones will be profitable and which ones not. However, what I can tell is that every single one of them is going to use cloud.
So investing in cloud providers and enablers is a “safe bet” on more risky new technologies like AI!
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Saul, this post is indicative of the kinds of info, perspective, new thinking, teaching moments, and persuasive expression that make this discussion board in general and your contributions in particular so valuable to relatively unsophisticated investors like myself, so we keep coming back and, even if “lurkers,” benefiting greatly thereby, though often with little of our own to contribute, because as yet not knowledgeable enough to pass along wisdom ourselves. Anyway, just wanted to convey a lot of appreciation for this board and the great help it is giving not just to savvy investors looking for a better way but to ordinary folks who happen to stumble into this “place” and are just smart enough to know they’ve found quality investing advice here.
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Saul,
This post of yours belongs in the investment hall of fame!
You are a brilliant investor!
GM
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Saul, This post of yours belongs in the investment hall of fame! You are a brilliant investor!
Wow, Growth Monkey, that is so nice of you to say! I really appreciate it.
Also I know that you started out very critical of what we were doing here, so I feel that it’s really admirable that you kept an open mind, and were willing to admit to yourself that you had been wrong, and were willing to change your way of seeing things. That’s what investing (and life) is all about!
Best wishes for a successful 2019 and a successful career in investing.
Saul
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Thanks for the kind words and wishes Saul.
To clarify, I was never critical of the companies you were selecting, rather my reservation was about the rich valuations.
To be honest, I still don’t know how these growth names will hold up during a prolonged stock market downtrend; this is why I use a trend following system to hedge my book (via NQ shorts).
Like you, my own portfolio is comprised of high growth businesses (fintech, e commerce, cloud, SaaS, China etc) and collectively, my holdings are projected to grow earnings by 30-32% pa over next 5 years - so we are playing the same game.
Your posts have shown me the value of these SaaS businesses (recurring revenue and land/expand) and for this I am grateful to you.
By the way, I am a retired money manager (42 years old) and after selling my firm to a listed asset management firm in 2016, I now manage my own capital.
All the best to you!
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It is a lot more fun, and a lot easier, to manage your own money than other people’s, which I discovered some years ago when two friends asked me to invest for them. Never again!
Saul
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