The last few months I struggled somewhat to keep up the posting, I clocked only one post in November and two in December. This is partly due to me moving back to Asia, but to be totally honest also a bit of writing fatigue from my side. Especially writing these performance/portfolio updates and the time it takes to update my Excel spreadsheets with the new NAV. It is fairly cumbersome to log all portfolio movements including corporate actions etc to replicate a full portfolio NAV.
I started this post writing a year end update, but then I changed my mind. I did update my portfolio, so you can find all details under the Portfolio page, but I’m not going to spend more time reflecting on my past performance, it was good, but not great. So screw it, writing should be fun, not an obligation. Let’s talk about investment ideas and what I have been looking at the past few months, I will on focus on a new emerging theme in this post and will move on to more specific stuff in the coming posts.
Finding a new theme
For those of you who have followed me for a while, know that I like to find themes with obvious tailwinds, winds that more or less prevail even though the general cycle turns south. Within that theme it then usually takes a considerable amount of time finding the right companies to invest in, and in most cases there are no ideal/perfect candidates.
Sequencing the genome
Something that I started to hear and read about a few years ago is how quickly the cost of sequencing a human beings full genome has come down. People knowledge on the topic takjed about that in a few years time, anybody would be able to afford sequencing their own genome. I thought it sounded cool but did not spend so much time looking into it. Then about a year ago I listened to a very inspirational speech about this, and realized this is going to be real in all of our lives very soon, just as we go to the dentist or any other routine check-up needed.
There is another fairly recent finding and technological breakthrough, which a good friend of mine educated me about. It is called CRISPR and a very nice educational video is available on YouTube:
This ties in very nicely with this new understanding of our DNA. First understanding our defects through sequencing, and then being able to edit out those defects. Also it should be mentioned that the possibility to analyze all of this genetic data becomes possible thanks to new big data technology and cloud storage. So 3 big technological fields together opens up a world of possibilities. All of this is fantastically interesting to me. Most likely this will affect all of our lives one way or another in the future. Could this also be a new investment theme for my portfolio? Just as with electric vehicles I will spend time during 2017 to educate myself on the topic and let’s see what emerges.
Can we get a discussion going?
I have not managed to get a discussion going here on the blog with those of you who read my posts, but if you have something to contribute on this topic, please do so.
I leave you with some stock leads to look into in these two fields, all listed in the US:
Genome sequencing field: Illumina (ILMN), Thermo Fisher (TMO), Qiagen (QGEN) and Myriad (MYGN).
CRISPR Technology: Editas Medicine (EDIT), Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA) and CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP)