When I got into crypto, I didn’t trust it at all; that healthy skepticism has protected me from catastrophic losses as that industry has went to shit recently. I spread my speculative investments over close to a dozen wallets and exchanges, between $100-$300 on each platform. I did this not only to test the platform, software, customer service, ease of use & adoption, ease with which money flows; but also to protect myself from any bankruptcies. Voyager went bankrupt, Luna went to zero. This is why I feel so comfortable holding $COIN, I have a lot of experience in the space and they’re unique & safe for a number of reasons.

But this post is about an individual crypto coin and the opportunity I believe it presents. Of all the crypto out there, I have complete faith in 2; those that follow me know I’ve raved about Crypto.com’s $CRO.X & $AXS.X; nothing has changed, except they’re even cheaper now. The game, Axie Infinity, still has millions of dollars transacting across their platform and they’re one of the few crypto projects generating revenues like that, not just a pipe dream of some future revenues. I understand I am not entitled to those earnings, but if I’m going to invest in crypto projects, I need to see legitimate business behind my investment. This was a coin that got as high as $155 during the highs of the past year and is under $20 now. Because crypto investors have no idea what they’re doing, they have little idea of fundamental analysis; see Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, so coins like Axie (the baby), get thrown out with the bath water. I didn’t feel it was overvalued at $120; relative to all the worthless crypto’s trading for hundreds of dollars. But now it’s trading around $15 and I can’t pass up adding more to my holdings. There’s no science or fundamental analysis behind valuation of crypto yet, but I like my chances with this crypto. Their leaders in the biggest space in blockchain, generate more revenue than probably any project that’s not an exchange, or Ethereum, and has a very attractive yield. I won’t ever have more than 5% of my portfolio in crypto, but this is one I am happily adding to.

Plenty of projects have crashed and burned and that is a real possibility with Nexo, my high yield wallet holding Axie at 36% APY. So I have most of my Axie with Gemini, a much more transparent American exchange, that pays a more realistic 6.83% APY.

I will happily add at $15 while yielding almost 7%, to one of the two crypto projects I truly believe in.

Don’t ask me how Nexo yields 36%, but it’s been going strong for months. I’m from the hood, I don’t ask questions, I just have a realistic understanding of the speculative nature of the investment and limit my position accordingly.

Source: Gemini

Source: Gemini

Source: Nexo

I just noticed this new tool that gives a quick overview and rating of portfolios/watchlists. I have about 30 watchlists on Seeking Alpha and it’s one of my top 3-5 sources of data. Their quant industry ranks are on point with all my other analysis so I know when I see a good quant rating, it’s quality data and I am looking at a strong company. I don’t read articles much anymore, mostly use it for the data & comparative analysis Bs industry peers and prior 5 years of performance.

This is just one more bit of data I can add to my pie. I like simplification. As I’ve developed my strategy over the last decade, I have moved to the Graham & Greenblatt approach. I analyze performance & valuation, buy list of excellent businesses at wonderful prices, and sell when they get back to fair value. (I’ll be sharing that performance soon to show how exceptionally it outperforms) So I love the simple overview 5 points scales & A-F grades, especially knowing there are dozens of data points going into each final ratio, rating, etc.

Here’s a shot of the overview of one of my watchlists:

Source: Seeking Alpha

I personally ignore momentum & EPS revisions. Mostly irrelevant to my style. If I see negatives in the financials or questions at all, an investment goes straight to the “no thank you” pile, earnings shenanigans are culled out early in my analysis.

Sorry I couldn’t get a write up done for the Buy the Dip competition, better late than never, so that we have the article to check next July😉. These are some of the buys from my last 30 days or so. $SCVL was my candidate for the Buy the Dip entry; just couldn’t get the time to put my data together.

Not usually someone who buys small niche companies like Shoe Carnival, but at pre-pandemic prices and excellent execution, I love this stock at this price.

Some companies I own like Google, Microsoft, and Berkshire Hathaway, I intend to hold forever, unless there is some catastrophic shake up. Plenty of other companies, like Shoe Carnival, I buy with short term expectations for capital appreciation. This is not a long term buy, same with most of my retail, but a short term trade to take advantage of what I believe is an irrational price.

And I heard all the noise about mall shopping centers dying; as I was yielding a dividend near 10% and seeing capital appreciation of +140% on my $SPG buy the dip during the Covid crash (that’s why I ignore the noise).

Since the competition is over, I’m not going to drop all the analysis. But valuation is insane. EV/EBIT <5, P/E <5, PEG <1, P/S <1. ROE 34%, ROA 14%, ROTC 18%. Growth looks great too but is skewed due to the drop during Covid and accelerated growth post-pandemic. Makes it tricky even when comparing 3 & 5 year CAGR. Margin of safety estimates I use range from 44%-74% below fair value. Those are some of the details driving my decision. Dividends have increased 9 consecutive years, with a small payout ratio of ~6%, and double digit 3 & 5 year CAGR. One last bonus? Only 2 Wall Street analysts cover the stock and insiders hold nearly 40% of shares.

In pictures:

Source: Kappa (the one share in this pic is just a virtual share added to track the stock on a watchlist within the app. Actual purchase was on July 14 @ $20.45/share)

Source: Jitta

Source: Simply Wall Street

Source: Bloom

Source: Seeking Alpha

These are some of the sources I use to look for cracks in my thesis, second & third opinions, etc.

I heard about this gentleman on the same podcast. Can’t wait to read more of what he has to say. Yen Liow, sounds like quite a thinker.

I was going to wait util I was finished to mention the book; but I am reading the chapter on philosophy and love this bit so much I had to share. As an avid reader who preaches the benefits of reading, I absolutely love this:

“We start with this irrefutable point: The mental skill of critical analysis is fundamental to success in investing. Perfecting that skill—developing the mind set of thoughtful, careful analysis—is intimately connected to the skill of thoughtful, careful reading. Each one reinforces the other, in a kind of double feedback loop. Good readers are good thinkers; good thinkers tend to be great readers and in the process learn to be even better thinkers.”

That last sentence is going on my grave. But I want a green burial under a tree; so maybe on a plaque, in front of my tree🤣

Most of you know I’m 100% value but have started venturing into more growth, if I feel I still get a good value. $SHOP was one of the more talked about growth stocks on CS when I arrived. At the time I remember being she coed people had paid such asinine prices for a company not yet or just barely profitable. But the more I looked at Shopify, the more I saw that I liked.

Reading a couple articles after seeing plenty of positive metrics, people seem to be knocking Shopify for slowing growth; literally one paragraph after mentioning the irrational boosts in revenue Covid helped create for many companies🤦‍♂️. How can one give credit for extraordinary revenue growth to Covid, then knock the company when that revenue growth slows as the world returns to normal. No one should have suspected Shopify would maintain those growth rates. Obviously when people can return to stores that’s going to have an impact. However, I still se plenty I like; so let ya of other metrics are improving.

I haven’t used Shopify personally, but I had assumed that the individual (Amazon, E-Bay, Etsy, & Marketplace sellers) not the brick & mortar businesses, would be the primary adopter/driver of the platform.

I can’t wait to dig in & learn a little more. E-commerce is outside my circle of competence and if it isn’t an easy 100% choice, I require more research.

Any opinions on Shopify are encouraged😉

I’ve been investing for about a decade and Buffet had my mouth watering waiting for the next economic meltdown & the opportunities that would provide. I watched with hindsight the 2007-08 crash and noticed how many great companies traded at “once in a lifetime prices” and seemed like obvious choices.

With the Covid crash I was finally able to put it into practice. It was easy to buy great companies as they continued to get cheaper and cheaper. I waited until the initial drop was 15-20% to ensure I wasn’t buying 2-5% dips. Added throughout the bloodshed and sold into the recovery. That recovery quickly turned into exuberance and for 1-2 years, it seemed everything was crazy over priced. Then can another “recession/bear” that we’re currently living in. But I have also heard many experts in the last couple weeks say the economic numbers don’t match every other recession; many numbers look to good to be going into a recession. My initial theory was that we were just giving back obscene gains bid up after the Covid recovery.

I noticed last night that I am holding a few companies currently trading at or below February, 2020 prices and thought I’d share that list. Regardless of how one chooses to value a company, seeing their price back to 2020 levels is refreshing to someone still accumulating.

Remember these are just taken from my current holdings. I did not do a screen looking through the universe.

Ticker / Todays Price / February 2020 Price

$ADBE / $384 / $378

$THO / $80 / $81

$TSN / $81 / $84

$SPG / $97 / $140

$PHM / $44 / $45

$OHI / $29 / $44

$MPW / $15 / $23

$VZ / $50 / $60

$MU / $57 / $57

$PYPL / $70 / $116

$NFLX / $177 / $386

$INTC / $37 / $66

$MDC / $35 / $42

$VICI / $31 / $28

$BABA / $109 / $208

$TCEHY / $43 / $52

$TROW / $113 / $135

$META / $162 / $217

Just an interesting observation I thought I’d share.

Was shocked at some of the price differences with companies like $BABA , $PYPL, $TROW , & $META. Always thought Netflix was insanely overvalued; no surprise there.

Just curious why mine isn’t tracking anymore. I disconnected a couple retirement accounts and my 401-k since I only want to track my individual stock selections, but that was after a couple weeks on CS. It has never been right since🤷‍♂️.

Here’s pics from Common Stock & Tip Ranks to show the differences in talking about.

It’s a straight line regardless of time frame

Best trade and performance are different here. The DQ trade is correct; position is up around 80% since May.

Just curious if I can fix it somehow.

In an article titled “10 Stocks to Last the Decade”, they mentioned Broadcom, Charles Schwab, Enron, Genentech, Morgan Stanley, Nokia, Norte Networks, Oracle, Univision, and Viacom. Described as a buy and forget portfolio.

I’d love to see a backtest for an even $1,000 into each stock. Maybe $AVGO , $ORCL , $SCHW , $MS , and $VIAC made up for the losers🤷‍♂️

I ignore the financial noise. Will read headlines and stock lists but do not put much effort or faith on what they say. Just use it as a source of new stocks to analyze if anything.

Just came across these memo/podcasts of Howard Marks. I can’t believe I only recently discovered him. He sounds like a perfect hybrid of all the mentors I already credit for my success. Graham, Buffet, Lynch, Greenblatt, Dreman, Fisher, etc. His focus on psychology as the driver of inefficiency in the market is spot on. There’s some real gold in a few of these I’ve heard so far. Can’t wait to read his books. Definitely more like Graham and Fisher from a speaking standpoint. Like listening to a robot. He’s not slowing down for one to keep up🤣maybe not best for newbies but still priceless.

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