Zero's (First) Portfolio Review May 2026

[mdmzero0]

Hi all,

I’ve been a reader for several years now on Saul’s forum, but never really felt like I have the skills/ knowledge to actively participate. Over that time I’ve been trying to develop an investing strategy of my own, and while it’s still very much a work in progress, I’m going to dip my toes in the monthly portfolio reviews. Hopefully I can continue to learn and grow through this.

About me:

I’ve been investing for about 7 years now, getting interested just before covid. I consider myself a young investor, as my timeline for retirement is at least another 20-30 years. The majority of my money is sitting in your typical 401k / a few ETFs, but I have a chunk of money that I actively manage in a growth portfolio.

My approach:

I’m not ashamed to say that for the first several years I started out, I simply leveraged Saul’s forum. I invested in companies that members brought forward to the forum, and admittedly didn’t do much of my own research, rather just following along. I am trying to branch out into my own way, but I admit as a newlywed and working full time I often don’t have much time to do as much research as I should. What I am trying to develop is my own way of evaluating companies based on financials.

How it works is I rank the companies in my portfolio by a handful of different characteristics: QoQ revenue growth, quarterly guidance, the rate of QoQ revenue growth change, P/S, EV/EBITDA, market cap / FCF, and market cap / revenue. Each company in my portfolio receives a weighted score for these characteristics. The sum total of the scores is normalized and used for weighting my portfolio allocation. That being said, I’ve developed some perhaps less rational views of various companies, so I assign a position size that I desire as well, which let’s me grow or shrink my allocations in conjunction with their relative weighting. As I discover new companies, I put them in as a “hypothetical” position and see how they stack up against my current portfolio to determine if I want to start a position. Since my approach is a ranking system, I also don’t have a set exit criteria in this method. This is more of a gut-feel approach for me at the moment.

I’m constantly tweaking this formula, and I use the resulting allocations more as a recommendation than a firm requirement, but hopefully as I learn more and get more comfortable I’ll find what works best for me. Lastly, as I’m starting this now here at the end of May, my record keeping is not the greatest on a month by month basis. I hope to add more information as I continue this exercise, but for now I’m just listing current allocations and YTD performance. I hope to show the prior month allocations in the future so I can discuss adjustments I’ve made.

My portfolio as of 5/29/2026:

A few points of note:

• SanDisk (SNDK) and Silicon Motion (SIMO) are new positions. They are very highly ranked in my system, but I’m slowly working on building them up as I don’t like to make large buys in my portfolio at once.

• Applovin (APP) is my most over-extended position (a larger allocation currently than what my system calls for) at the moment. Similarly, I am slowly trimming it as it is still a company I have interest in holding.

Lastly, I want to give a big thank you to the members of this subreddit and Saul’s forum for being the ones to get me into investing. I have not been an active member, but many of you have taught me a great deal, so thank you all.

[brittlerock]

Welcome -

I’m a long time member of this board, I’ve been here nearly since its inception. In fact, I became aware of Saul’s incisive analytical approach before he created this board due to a scathing review that he wrote in a Motley Fool forum about a company named Westport. Due to strong MF recommendations this was a favorite of many members and Saul was roundly ridiculed. Saul was right. The MF and Westport boosters were wrong.

At the time, I was much like you. I relied on MF recommendations. It was reading Saul’s Westport post that made me realize that investing needn’t be a mysterious domain that only experts were able to understand. There were analytical investing methods that most anyone with reasonable mathematical skill and a dose of common sense could master - or at least become proficient in there application.

You’re in a good place. There are members here who have refined Saul’s methods to almost an art form. But, there’s no perfect method. Despite what appears to be a great analysis, some businesses never catch fire. Even after many years, my biggest problem is not picking winners, there are lots of great companies that over time will produce significant alpha. My biggest problem has always been timely selling. I tend to hold too long or sell too soon and I’ve still managed to do pretty well in the market.

Saul retired from all board activity, and investing in general last year, or maybe it’s been two years now. He’s now in his 80s. I turned 79 a week ago. I wonder how much longer I will an remain active investor. Not yet throwing in the towel, but I’ve moved about 1/3 of my portfolio to income producing equities. At my age it’s a reasonable question to consider how much I want to put into the potential of future growth versus the production of current income.

You’re young. You have many years in order to experience the joys and the pains of investing. You will undoubtedly experience some very trying times. Buffet once said if you can’t tolerate a 50% decline in the value of your portfolio you shouldn’t be an investor. He was right. This is when confidence in your selection of businesses becomes paramount. Never forget, you are investing in businesses, not stocks. Momentum as a dangerous thing - it can provide significant gains, but they can evaporate faster than you can imagine. Sound businesses with top notch management will survive most downturns and prevail in the end.

I read about your technique so far as you’ve described it. Let me suggest an addition to the factors you take into consideration. Do your best to get to know the CEO and other members of C-suite. This subjective, qualitative analysis. You won’t have numbers that you can plug into a spreadsheet. But the management is the business. All the numbers stem from management decisions. It’s worth your while trying to get to know how they think and operate.