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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
Many decisions in life are based on risk versus reward. That’s certainly true for investing, or at least I think it should be true. How much can you gain and how much can you lose. Then you can layer on your assessment of the probabilities of the outcomes. Sure, you can be wrong in your…
We are currently in the lull between earnings cycles so this update will be relatively short. PRIOR PORTFOLIO UPDATES 2021-09-03 Portfolio Update 2021-08-13 Portfolio Update 2021-07-31 Portfolio Update 2021-06-30 Portfolio Update 2021-06-04 Portfolio Update 2021-05-07 Portfolio Update 2021-03-31 Portfolio Update 2021-02-12 Portfolio Update 2021-01-31 Portfolio Update 2020-12-31 Portfolio Update All Portfolio Updates PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE DATE…
This is my fourth 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. LEAPS), but I count profits and losses from these longer-term options as part of my investment returns and not part…
WHY BENCHMARK In investing, a benchmark is something against which an investor can measure returns. It provides a yardstick, often to determine whether an active investment strategy is outperforming a passive strategy. Clearly, if a passive approach can’t beat an active one, then why bother with the active one? The same logic extends to hiring…
WHAT You may have heard the term CAGR. It’s an acronym for Compound Annual Growth Rate. Said another way, it provides investors or borrowers a way to compare returns of various time periods by converting them to an annualized rate that takes into account the compounding of interest or returns. WHY Practically, CAGR allows for…