When Should the Game Change?

By GauchoRico

Since their peaks in Oct/Nov 2021, high growth stock prices have been hammered much more than the major indices. It’s typical for growth to outperform in bull markets and underperform during bear markets. As I’ve said many times, with a concentrated, high growth portfolio, one should expect at least a 50% drop at some point. It really…

2022-07-01 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

We continue to be in the midst of one of the most challenging periods for investors, particularly for growth investors. It’s not just growth stocks that are down. One of last week’s headlines stated that the first half of 2022 is the worst start to stocks (S&P 500) in the past 50 years. Crypto currencies,…

2022-05-31 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

We are in the midst of another earnings cycle. We got our first clues after the three cloud titans (AMZN, MSFT, and GOOG) reported their results at the end of April. MicroSoft’s Azure grew 49%, Google’s GCP grew 44%, and AWS grew 37%. AWS and GCP decelerated slightly while Azure accelerated a little, but these…

2022-03-18 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

All the portfolio companies have now reported their results. I’ll go over some of the highlights and my thoughts below. Well, 27Jan was not the bottom of this huge drop that began after 18Oct 2021. I was wrong about that. The volatility in the portfolio and the markets in general have continued, and I continue…

2022-01-31 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

These are the times when it can be difficult and stressful to be an investor in hyper growth stocks. I’m certainly not immune to feeling stress when the portfolio drops this far. Let’s look at what’s happened since the prior bottom which was on 13 May 2021. Since then, the portfolio rallied for five months…

2021-12-31 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

The past year was a wild one with a lot of movement. The portfolio rallied in February to reach several ATHs and a local peak of +18.3%. Next, we started one of those big drops that we periodically experience. This drop included a drop and a recovery three times, finally settling at a YTD low…

2021-Q4 Options Trading Results

By GauchoRico

This is my fifth options trading update. As a reminder, I categorize options trading to include only trades that have a short duration (i.e. less than three months). I also trade longer dated options (i.e. usually LEAPS), but I count profits and losses from these longer-term options as part of my investment returns and not…

2021-12-03 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

Earnings season for the portfolio companies is now in the rearview mirror, and I reviewed (below) the companies that reported their most recent quarter’s results. The results since the previous portfolio update are going to appear to be ugly as the portfolio is experiencing one of those big drops. Pretty or not, as always, I’ll…

“Other People’s Money”: Is Yours?

By GauchoRico

Today, I heard a story that’s repeated regularly: very few professional money managers outperform their benchmark index. The study was conducted by Morningstar, and it reported that 47% of active managers outperformed their passive counterparts over the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2021. This is bad because people are actuallypaying these guys to underperform.…

2021-10-31 Portfolio Update

By GauchoRico

The big banks and the giant tech companies (AMZN, MSFT, GOOG, AAPL, FB) have already reported their September quarters. Starting with DDOG and LSPD next week, we are about to get results from the portfolio companies with 30Sep ending quarters. PRIOR PORTFOLIO UPDATES 2021-09-30 Portfolio Update 2021-09-03 Portfolio Update 2021-08-13 Portfolio Update 2021-07-31 Portfolio Update…