A quick update on the week. I try to be a long term buy hold investor. If a stock is older than 3 quarters, my goal is to hold it for another 5-10 years. I'm only 7-8 years into investing so we will see if this plays out that way but only time (and Commonstock) will tell. If my thesis on the stock changes, that will change the timeline, but ideally, I'll be buying a stock with a 5-30 year thesis, so if it starts to play out it will hopefully play out over time.

$PTON @ 1.52% of port

$TTD @ 1.21% of port

I added two new stocks to my portfolio this week. I've had these two stocks on my watch list semi-seriously from October of last year.

I chose to enter $PTON post earnings after a semi-sell down. I ultimately bought the weekly high by buying on the open on Monday at $155, I increased the position size by 30% on Thursday at $136.

Why do I buy the open? I'm currently in Australia so I set up my trades the night before, and they execute while I sleep.

I should probably trade less on Mondays based on the feeling that they have the biggest swings depending on how Friday closes. I might look this up to see if this is true. Anyway, sometimes buying the open works in your favor, sometimes it doesn't. In the grand scheme of things I'm buying stocks to hold for 5+ years so these minor percentage changes are more

As a thesis driven investor, I'm incredibly excited about a digital, connected, data driven health and fitness future. I believe that Peleton's wedge into the home with their initial bike series is an excellent go to market strategy for a much larger and broader health technology platform.

What this company might look like, I can only guess. But I believe it will start in the connected home.

In order to continue with moderate TAM expansion required for Peleton to continue to grow into a health superpower, it will require a solid M&A strategy. Peleton has begun to lean into this with its recent acquisition of Precor for $420m in December. While this may ultimately be an (international) distribution and domestic manufacturing play in the short term, a successful fold-in should give shareholders confidence of future acquisitions, more digitally based.

How will they fund their ongoing operations and M&A deals?

Peleton just announced the closing of $1b 0% convertible note due in 2026, giving them a robust war chest in addition to their Q2 endings of $2.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable securities and a $250

million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn to-date.

So essentially a $3.35b war chest, all for a company with FY21 estimates of:

I see the biggest risk to PTON share price as short term, market fluctuations which don't reflect the underlying fundamentals of the business itself. I'm not overly concerned with multiples and valuations as a LT investor, especially when revenue growth is in the 100%+ range and the balance sheet and FCF of 20%+ is this strong.

Finally, I believe that the stock trading at 17% below its ATH, is enough of a contrarian price to warrant a small entry here considering all that I've mentioned above.

In regards to $TTD, as a thesis driven investor, I'm incredibly excited about a digital, connected, data driven advertising future I believe that The Trade Desk is well positioned to capture given its counter-positioning against the first wave of media and advertising platforms which heavily rely on cookie collecting and tracking systems not inline with the movement towards open internet standards.

"We’re building on the work of leading industry partners and collaborating across the ecosystem to develop an open source ID framework. Built from hashed and encrypted email addresses, this ID will remain open and ubiquitous while introducing significant upgrades to consumer privacy and transparency."

Given the power of counter-positioning; the lead they are beginning to establish itself as the leader in programmatic ad buying could also quickly become a flywheel of profits given their network effects.

While traditional multiples and valuations may seem high on the stock, trading at 13x 2025 revenue estimates, I'm happy to take a small position here to see how this plays out over the next couple of quarters. 30% growth estimates I think are relatively inline with how I see some technology companies moving forward in this post-COVID environment, anything better could have reasonably positive share price movements....but again, I'm buying this essentially as a call option on $TTD being the #1 "non-platform" media marketplace in the next 3-10 years...if it isn't already.

I increased my position in $CRWD by about 9%.

This has been my 7th buy of the stock since entering it in early December.

Buy History:

12/7/20 - Entry: $168

12/15 - $175, +33% position

12/28 - $225, +14% position

12/30 - $207, +11% position

1/6/21 - $200, +9% position

1/27 - $200, +17% position

2/19 - $241, +9% position

To come to an average cost of $186, and a current unrealized gain of about 28% (including the most recent purchase).

It is currently my 5th largest position, 8.14% of port.

The stock isn't set to report earnings until March 16th, at the tail end of this reporting period.

I've seen enough positive news amongst $DDOG and $NET to feel comfortable continuing to leg into this stock prior to earnings, even if both those cybersecurity companies fell 5% or so after their release.

This is largely part of their continued M&A strategy which just saw them acquire a data log provider Humio for $400m. Like with $PTON, I see M&A as a necessary part of TAM expansion and a positive signal that things are going well for the company.

No sells/trims this month.

I have had both $FSLY and $V on my watchlist to potentially trim. Ultimately I think I will continue to hold $V for the next 3-6months unless I face a liquidity issue where I see an opportunity worth of reallocating capital rather than adding new capital to my portfolio.

This is equally the case of $FSLY , which even prior to their earnings release and subsequent drop, I've been cautious of managements ability to execute in a high growth environment. For a smaller company, marked by the market as a highgrowth play like $FSLY, a 30% growth rate simply won't be rewarded by the market (I feel with $TTD on a larger base 30% is more reasonable).

Plan:

96% invested now --> 100% by September

Its amazing how even at being so close to 100% fully invested, I don't feel "fully invested". Last year in March I was caught being fully invested and slightly higher levered than I wanted to be. This was not bad, but certainly not an optimal position to be in for pure "returns".

I think the big thing for me this week, is what my deployment rate for the next 5-7 months is. It may be front loaded, it may be even. This is what I will be ruminating on.

The rough plan for that deployment is:

Top up $CRWD to >10% of Portfolio (potentially an increase of 50%)

Evaluate entries (Might be smallest positions, 0.5-0.75% of port)):

At this point my goals beyond September include some more risk off moves. This means potentially more $MSFT and a couple of more pushes into ETFs. I still think $CRWD presents a great balance between risk and growth for me, so maybe more is there. Will see.

I'm just a boat in the sea of the market. My "arbitrary" goals based on the construction of my portfolio is to be outperforming $SPY/$QQQ and ideally, pushing towards a great Tech ETF like $ARKW ,

I would be very happy to return around 30-50% this year. This is potentially a bad reason or way to think about the market, and I might have to reframe my thinking about why I'm investing.

Anyway, 6 weeks is probably too small of a window to look at, I think 3-12months are probably the real checks, but here is the 6 week/YTD anyway.

YTD Portfolio: 5.46%

vs

$SPY: 4.32%

$ARKW: 26.43%

My portfolio had a great close on 2020 but always interesting to check in like this to gauge risk and alpha

Since 8/1/20 when I "joined" Fintwit: 47%

$SPY: 19%

$ARKW: 84%

Thanks for reading if you got this far, would love it if you smashed the like button and let me know what you thought of this memo,

Best,

Stuart

January was a good month for me; for my actual portfolio and my mindset around it.

Last year I remember that my portfolio hit an all time high and was a great month for me in terms of dollar returns at that time.

That said, I had no plan.

By March when the pandemic started to really hit and we saw what would be the March lows, I had some quick and swift adjustments to make. Ultimately, this helped me reshape my portfolio, but having no plan was a mistake.

Not only did I not have a plan but I wasn't really paying attention to my portfolio. I had built it up since the end of 2013, and largely left it untouched in 2018 and 2019 other than a few top ups to my core FAANG holdings.

You can't manage what you don't measure.

Since June of 2020, I've been much more diligent in assessing my portfolio at the end of the month. While I look at monthly returns, I'm tempted to do this even less.

My investing horizon and style lends itself to these stocks hopefully being in the 3-5 year range at minimum, but ultimately decades. My novel goal of trying to outperform the $SPY on a monthly basis might prove to be the biggest flaw in my game.

While through 2020 I re-organized my portfolio, it wasn't until December of 2020 that I really started to map out a plan.

And while that plan may and I'm sure will change, the mental energy around my stocks and portfolio that I unnecessarily expended dramatically decreased.

This is part of how I break up, and review my portfolio to spend less overall mental energy on it.

Essentially, I'm trying to be more intentional with everything I do around (most of) my investing.

<< --------------------- Returns ----------------------- >>

Since this is a monthly review, I do look at monthly returns.

January 2021: 4.42%

vs

$SPY 0.35%

$QQQ 1.7%

$ARKK 10.23%

Like I said above, given my portfolio and the risk of it, I am looking to not only outperform $SPY , but realistically $QQQ as well. I note $ARKK in there as well as I am constantly evaluating ETFs. If I didn't enjoy picking stocks, I'd definitely be looking more seriously at $ARKK

Some people I have seen have $SPY at a lower number for January than I do around -1.35% .

I'm not too concerned with 1-2% either way, given my general performance goals, but just an FYI.

<< ------------------- Weighting --------------------- >>

Individually, my portfolio is weighted as follows. I track weights primarily for buying purposes rather than selling.

Currently, when I enter a position, I think about entering around 3-7% of my portfolio. Happy to keep buying up till around 10%, but unlikely beyond that.

Even now, compared to a year ago, this is going to be harder and harder to do given my portfolio size. 3% entry is most likely.

January 2021 Portfolio Update by Weight:

$AMZN - 16%

$LMND - 16%

$TSLA - 12%

$FB - 10%

$AAPL - 8%

$CRWD - 7%

$GOOGL - 7%

$NVDA - 7%

$TWLO - 6%

$ESTC - 5%

$MSFT - 3%

$FSLY - 3%

$V - 2%

$ESPO - 1%

$AONE - 1%

While individual position sizing is important. what's potentially even more important to me is the weight of the basket of my stocks.

For these "weight baskets" I break them down into 3 categories: Core Growth, Core Value, 10x.

My current weights for these are: 30%, 36% and 34% respectively. For me, and the timing of the positions, I'm quite comfortable and enjoy this split.

Over time depending on income/expenses and market conditions determine which bucket I'll add to, let alone how much.

Core Growth:

$FB

Core Value:

10x:

I hope that my 10x stocks will turn into Core Growth, and Core Growth into Core Value over time.

<< ----------------- Conviction ------------------- >>

I believe that simply being bullish on a stock and using returns, is not sufficient enough to determine the quality of your investing prowess.

Conviction is part of how I mitigate that and track whether or not I'm making good long term investing decisions which warrant my choice to continue to pick individual stocks rather than a more passive index investing strategy.

Conviction for me, is a measure of a combination of bullishness + returns + risk. Some people use much more sophisticated models and price targets. I am not one of them.

For me, conviction is a much better proxy for my belief in the stock than simply the size of my positions. For example, at this time my 16% weight of $LMND and it being my 2nd largest position, does not mean it is the stock which I believe in the 2nd most.

That said, stocks at the bottom of my conviction list, may be more likely to appear at the bottom of my portfolio weight.

Conviction ranking:

$FB

<< ----------------- Size Changes/Individual Returns ------------------- >>

This month, given my low amount of trading, most of the changes were driven by market returns, $CRWD being the only exception.

Again, I don't think its too important to look at monthly returns of stocks. Personally, I think about 9 months/1year is really the right time period to look at returns.

$LMND is a classic example of that for me where despite it being one of my larger positions, and having some decent conviction on the stock, the trend is just so early. My initiation of that position back in early October was essentially an early option on what I thought their 2020 Q4, and 2021 Q1 earnings were going to be.

January Monthly Position size changes (mostly returns):

$CRWD 28%*

$FSLY 25%

$LMND 18%

$TSLA 12%

$TWLO 6%

$MSFT 4%

$ESPO 4%

$GOOGL 4%

$ESTC 4%

$NVDA 0%

$AAPL -1%

$AMZN -2%

$AONE -4%

$FB -6%

$V -12%

<< ----------------- Buys ------------------- >>

This month my only two buys were of $CRWD , while they both ended up around the $200 mark, this was not necessarily intentional.

$CRWD 1/6 @ $200, increase size of 9.6%

$CRWD 1/27 @ $200, increase size of 17.5%

Part of my 2021 plan includes continuing to dollar cost average/leg in to this position through the year. Most likely, 1-2x a months when the opportunity seems to present.

I'm not doing any deep Technical Analysis on these entry points but am starting to look at this more and more.

Depending on both market and personal scenario I may continue to add to $CRWD over the next few months, adding in 30-100% more capital into the position this year. Like I said, its in my plan but may change.

<< ----------------- Sells ------------------- >>

I made no sells, whether trims or exits this month.

If I wanted to be more aggressive in trying to beat the market in the short term, then this would change. I would be taking a much harder look at the stocks at the bottom of my conviction list.

For example, $V capital could be allocated "better". After the Plaid acquisition block, I'm expecting big things of Visa in terms of innovation if they can't grow by M&A, staying ahead of companies like $SQ . Do I really need to make this switch? No. Not yet, anway.

But, given my investing profile and plan, and what each stock is in my portfolio for I believe I will hold most of these stocks for years. The 3 stocks which are most at risk of an exit for me are:

$V - Are they innovating enough?

$FSLY - Have high expectations to meet and may struggle to grow into these expecations

$LMND - Balance between growth and profitability. Defensibility of AI claims.

<< ----------------- Lending ------------------- >>

I do utilize margin lending, that is, I borrow money and use stocks as the collateral for those loans.

I'm currently geared to 18.65% with a maximum allowable gearing of 48.13%

That means, if my loan goes beyond 50% of my portfolio, I'm in threat of being asked to pay down some of that loan. If you don't have the cash to do this, you'll have to sell stocks. At the time of a margin call, your stocks are probably more likely to be down...which is exactly when you may want to be buying.

I started investing in 2014 and took the risk to start investing with leverage out of the gate.

Why leverage? Primarily, I wanted to compound a bigger base. When starting, I was quite lucky to never have a margin call despite being geared around 50% easily.

Additionally, the interest payment is tax deductible so not even concerned with the actual interest rate.

I plan to not raise cash by selling stocks if possible, which is why I utilize margin lending.

I left my FT job in Nov 2019. When/if my "job" situation changes, will determine if I lever up or down.

I'm continue to hold stocks like $V as if they do grow, they help increase my maximum allowable gearing. Increases in my geared stocks mean I can be less concerned with reducing debt.

Obviously, this can go wrong, very quickly in volatile down markets.

What's equally important to the % levels, is my absolute dollar debt level which I am trying to keep within the realm of being able to pay down with cash over time (but a margin call today would force me to sell stocks which is not what I want to do, at all)

I also have no dependents, low cash burn/monthly expenses and other debt in my life.

<< ----------------- What Next? ------------------- >>

February will be an exciting month in terms of another earnings seasons.

We've already seen some great results come out from companies like $AAPL , $MSFT and $FB (and I haven't looked too deeply into $TSLA just yet).

The 2-3 that I'm going to be watching most closely are $FSLY and $LMND given what I've said above. $CRWD would be the next most interesting for me given my plans to continue to add to this position.

All the rest aren't that likely to materially affect my thoughts, that said, I will be reviewing them all to stay up to date...but I'm not going to really trade around them in the short term.

Q1/Q2 2021 Earnings will be much more interesting and meaningful than Q4 2020.

Why?

I'll be watching to see how the cloud expansion and accelerated growth of companies in my portfolio in 2020 are continued, maintained or reduced in 2021. Any maintenance or further increases of growth rates amongst Growth stocks will be very impressive and likely lead me to stay fully invested for the majority of this year.

If the growth companies fail to live up to their growth status, I'll likely maintain my current level of exposure to the market, rather than increasing it.

Stocks that I don't own but will be watching over the next couple of months include:

Other stock watch list:

Again, depending on how the next 2 quarters go will determine whether or not I add these companies to my portfolio, and how much I do. I'm willing to pay a higher price for this.

Depending on risk, income and my returns over the next couple of months, I may move towards a more ETF dominant strategy, in which case something like $XBI may see an addition to my portfolio, as I'd like to increase my exposure to health/biotech

<< ----------------- Thanks ------------------- >>

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you found this useful, please leave a comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'm looking forward to doing this again at the end of February.

Best,

Stuart

MTD Returns so far: 6.66%

$TSLA 20%

$LMND 18%

$TWLO 16%

$ESTC 15%

$FSLY 11%

$CRWD 8%*

$ESPO 7%

$NVDA 2%

$MSFT 1%

$AMZN 0%

$GOOGL 0%

$AAPL -1%

$FB -2%

$AONE -5%

$V -6%

*$CRWD position has grown 16% this month with a small add. Only trade of the month.

$LMND has recently become one of my largest positions.It comes with a lot of risks as a young company trying to disrupt the insurance industry.Today, short seller Citron Research published an interesting 7min "critique" of the company

I'm not a professional investor but I found the video interesting.

As a shareholder, I'm happy to hear short cases, and review facts that I might have missed.

But it was quite hard to pinpoint the exact actions taken by $LMND which could constitute anything really close to fraud and deceit painted by Citron.

Overvalued with a co-founder who complained about negative traders? Yes.

Outright fraudulent? Very tough to tell.

Normally, I don't care about this kind of stuff. But given $LMNDS recent stock run and their earnings coming in February, it was worth me doing some DD on this to brush up on the company.

Compare this 7min video to this short report from Hindenburg Research on $NKLAHTTPS://t.co/8EhWmF9jrtAdditionally,

Hindenburg actually disclosed that they had a short position on the stock.

It is unclear if Citron is actually short $LMND to start, which would be hilarious if they didn't. There is no indication of a position on their website.

While I agree with Andrew that the current valuation may cause many to raise an eyebrow. But lofty, hard to make sense of valuations do not automatically mean fraud and "lying" worthy of an investigation from the SEC or FTC is taking place.

Andrew's main (and really only allegation) comes to not living up to to sufficient social impact standards that the company claims, "This particular company is not doing it at all." and should be investigated as a result.

$LMND is a certified b-corporation

"Our directors have a fiduciary duty to consider not only our stockholders’ interests, but also our specific public benefit and the interests of other stakeholders affected by our actions."

B-Corps certifications are "administered by Standards Analysts at the non-profit B Lab. Standards Analysts are located at B Lab's Pennsylvania, New York, and Amsterdam offices. The standards for B Corp Certification are overseen by B Lab's independent Standards Advisory Council"

Certifications seem to last 3 years before needing to be recertified and $LMND was first certified in 2016, meaning they have most likely been re-certified.And have a score of 83.2 compared to the all B-Corp of 50.9. An objectively strong result, in a cohort of ESG focused co's

While it may not live up to everyones standards, the B-Corp certification is one of, if not one of the leading bodies in this area.

If there are more bodies out there measuring ESG, I would love to hear it.

While in good standing with this certification, I find it hard to imagine how the SEC and FTC could look into $LMND on these allegations.

$LMND's largest claim around their giveback program is that "we give back that unclaimed money (up to 40!) to the nonprofit you chose)

Why do this?

They believe that if some % of unclaimed premiums go to charity, you (as a policy holder) are less likely to make fraudulent claims.

This giveback program has nothing to do with insiders selling shares and everything to do with unclaimed premium.

This is where I was hoping Citron would be able to show some facts, if not at the very least, figures...which wasn't really the case.

It's not obvious as to how to calculate this viewing their quarterly filings. Common share contribution to the Lemonade Foundation for 9 months ending Sept 2020 was $12.2m. Well above the $1.1m listed on their site.

It's shares not cash, so I'm assuming that the $1.1m was not directly from $LMND rather its foundation,

The $1.1m may have come as a cash contribution being classified as "Other insurance expense"

Is this up to 40% of unclaimed premiums? Hard to tell. Unclaimed premiums or claims are not a seperate line item in their financial reports.

But I doubt it considering annualized total revenue stands at $17.8m

Total Revenue does not equal gross written premiums, nor earned premiums so for this exercise, I accept its difficult to calculate.

Could it be purposely obfuscated? Yes.

Is it? That's a big allegation which Citron is somewhat making.

Some selected social posts on their site note up to 32% of their unclaimed premiums have been designated to charities.

I hope that if audited, $LMND could provide an (but ideally multiple) examples to meet their claim of 40%

Additionally, given that $LMND has crossed over the 1m customer mark, "only" 34 nonprofits received a donation. I'm assuming that users have a limited variety of nonprofits they can choose, or that most actually don't choose and $LMND chooses for them.

While you may disagree with the valuation, allegations of fraud should not be made lightly. I'm sure $LMND could make it clearer as to what % of unclaimed premiums are actually donated, without revealing claim rates.

That said, I think there are better battles to be fought with companies not engaging in ESG efforts at all. I understand how the ESG movement may be abused by marauding capitalist's, I just don't think $LMND is one of them.

Given the size of $V in my port (2%) and their recent anti-trust issues and ultimate termination of the Plaid acquisition, I'm considering trimming or selling this stock.

I don't have any issues with the company, other than how they will continue to innovate and compete in an ever increasingly difficult fintech landscape when M&A is going to continue to be difficult.

The biggest benefit to them being in my portfolio is the 70% gearing value that I can contribute to margin...which isn't a great reason but not a bad one.

Do I think I can allocate this capital better elsewhere? Yes.

Do I really need to do this. No.

My holdings based on % weight:

$LMND 20%

$AMZN 17%

$TSLA 14%

$FB 10%

$AAPL 9%

$GOOGL 7%

$CRWD 7%

$NVDA 7%

$TWLO 5%

$ESTC 3%

$MSFT 3%

$V 2%

$FSLY 2%

$ESPO 1%

$AONE 1%

After buying at $53, I felt like I should lock in some gains and sold 20% of my position at $653 as it seems quite overextended despite the ability to still 3-4x over the next 5-10years

Using 40% of cash payout of $WORK acquisition to increase $LMND by 18% on tomorrows open

No trades in November

Portfolio by weight:

$AMZN 19%

$TSLA 14%

$FB 13%

$AAPL 9%

$GOOGL 8%

$NVDA 7%

$LMND 7%

$TWLO 5%

$WORK 5%

$MSFT 3%

$ESTC 3%

$V 3%

$FSLY 2%

$ESPO 1%

$AONE E 1%

November Returns are looking like 17% with 1 day to go.

vs

$SPY 10%

$QQQ 11%

$ARKW 21%

Top Gains of the month:

$WORK 62%

$TSLA 46%

$LMND 42%

I'm still very fascinated by this market. Still evaluating whether I push harder into ETFs. Comparing my returns to ETFs monthly suggest that I should, but seeing longer term ETF performances has me against this.