Simply said LOW is a great company and a great retailer. First and foremost on a personal level I have always had a great experience shopping at LOW. There have been several occasions where someone went out of their way to help me and that keeps me coming back for all my home improvement needs.

The first reason I own LOW is it's moat against Amazon. It seems most brick and mortar retailers have been battling AMZN for market share. LOW is not immune to AMZN but they certainly do have more of a moat than others. Some of the scale of purchases make it necessary for home improvement retailers to exist. For example, a kitchen remodel simply cannot happen on AMZN....at least not in the foreseeable future.

There was a significant amount of discussion in 2020 around a shift from cities to suburbs and housing market growth due to COVID. There was also discussion around remodel trend during the pandemic either due to people spending more time in their homes or excess cash flow from not traveling or going out. This remodel trend helped LOW see some impressive price appreciation in 2020. While this trend may decline into 2021 and beyond I think there is some staying power to this trend for a few reasons.

From the latest quarterly reports, LOW has spent a significant amount of resources into improving e-commerce and shifting their target customer towards "pros". E-commerce growth will be a key growth driver (especially if AMZN does come knocking). The "pro" market is where LOW currently loses to it's main competitor Home Depot (HD). HD has done a great job in this market and have loyal customers that have higher $ tickets. If LOW can successfully attract pros I think they see continued growth.

I could be totally wrong about the stay at home trend continuing to benefit LOW in 2021 and beyond. And worse, the shift could be more dramatic than current expectations. This would certainly be a reason to reconsider as there likely would be increasingly tough quarter revenue and earning comparisons to 2020.

Stay tuned to see how LOW performs each Quarter.

For a very long time I refused to own Amazon. Admittedly, my reasons for not owning were more emotional than logical so I have recently decided to own it instead of grumbling every time I see it go up. I entered on a technical setup Dec. 28th after it broke out of a triangle pattern.

One of the reasons I was anti-AMZN is its large share price. It makes it more difficult for me to scale into and out of the position since I can't own as many shares. It also makes it a larger percentage of my portfolio than I am typically comfortable with. These are not great reasons to NOT own AMZN. The stock can still make me plenty of money despite these reasons.

AMZN has so many opportunities for growth it is difficult to not own. They also generate tons of cash with prime membership feels that can further fuel growth.

They dominate online retail. I believe the online shopping trend was always coming but was significantly accelerated with COVID.

Video streaming is another key growth area for AMZN and having Prime video and Twitch, AMZN is poised to dominate here as well. This is another trend that was only accelerated by COVID.

AWS can also provide tons of growth. The cloud market is still growing and AMAN is a major player here.

In one word, Legislation. For a number of years now it seems there is a growing concern with the size of the big tech companies. While these companies can argue their size is diversification, the pressure from DC may become a downside risk for AMZN. A big negative that comes to mind is legislative action that blocks AMZN from selling its own products on it's platform. Legislative action like that would be something that would make me strongly reconsider my investment.

I do not buy into the idea that AMZN will be hurt once COVID is finally behind us. There may be some rotation sure, but the strong hands will hold and it will continue to push higher IMO.

I have goals to spend more time trading, working for myself, instead of working for someone else. I don't expect to make this leap overnight. I spent 2020 soaking up as much information as possible. From books, to podcasts, to twitter follows. I plan on more actively trading in 2021. While I don't have a lot of capital, there are still valuable lessons in my trades so I'm planning on using this platform as a trade journal of sorts in 2021 to keep me accountable and to build my thesis for the trades I make.