With ~5 years of announcing every buy/sell transaction on the blog, I have now for a while shifted to only post changes under “Trade History”. Sacrificing some transparency but with the aim to focus blog posts on more interesting things than every trade done. I imagine this will be my new format, where I look back on the past months and comment on what I feel is most relevant to mention. This is the batch of trades I will discuss.
Let’s start from the bottom
It’s high time to review my holdings and if anything changed in their investment thesis. This will be a monster post, for me it’s a great way to review all my holdings and make sure I stay up to date. For you, if you hold or are interested in one of these stocks you will get a quick “what’s the latest” with some sprinkles of why this is a great company (or not anymore). As a bonus there is a short elevator pitch of my two new holdings.
I stopped posting updates for every portfolio change (instead found under Trade History tab), so I have some changes to comment on: MIX Telematics left the portfolio and Lvji entered and exited without comment from my side. MIX Telematics was a case of having too high exposure to the oil industry in the US, I don’t see that coming back at all in the same way as in the past. This was something I did not understand when I invested, properly hidden oil exposure and a mistake on my side. Lvji was a tech play on travel guides for Chinese, but soon after taking a position some twitter friends alerted me of doubtful accounting. I looked at it myself and couldn’t really feel comfortable, better safe than sorry I then sold at almost the same price I bought.
Now on to comments on all my current holdings from top to bottom in the table below.
Press “read more” and enjoy!
I introduced my three buckets of investing about 2 years ago it was a major step forward for refining my investment strategy. I have stuck to it since, focusing mainly on my long term holdings and from time to time jump into Opportunistic or Speculative holdings. Overall the Opportunistic investments have done very well, whereas the Speculative ones have not added any value. I will now make another stab at introducing a number of speculative holdings to the portfolio.
This goes for all my investments, do your own due diligence, do not see this as investment advice. But for these investments I want to be extra clear, these are high risk illiquid companies. As of Friday close I take the following positions
This was something I previously held as a sizable speculative position. My patients ended when the company didn’t deliver and I sold. Now G4S has signed an intention to roll out their product in multiple markets. Although no larger orders have been made, this is the breakthrough the company has been looking for. If things progress as Irisity hopes over the coming 5 years, this is stock is a 10 bagger.
See my previous post where I commented on Irisity: Link
Gold is almost touching on 2000 USD per ounce. This is a ugly duckling gold producer with insanely high production costs which is attempting a bit of a “turn around”. That is exactly what I’m looking for. The stock is a cheap call option if gold price continues higher or stays around these levels, as long as they don’t mess up production further. Bonus upside if they actually manage a turn around in their production. What I do like is the founder and large shareholder Rob McEwen who the company is named after. Most mining companies are filled with crooks, with the poor performance of McEwen’s operations I’m sure there a lot of rotten apples in it’s organisation as well. But I do believe my and McEwen’s interest are aligned.
If golds goes up another 20% from here this stock should at lest double, if not triple given it’s leverage to the gold price.
This is a company with a long history, recently reviewed by new management and with a new massive tailwind from Corona virus. They enable a touch technology which is used in several automotive applications. The big upside though is to expand into other areas like elevators, where the technology can be used in combination with holographic technology.
With Match Group stock flying high I do think this dating network competitor is also a very cheap competitor. As with most social platforms network effects are important in one sense, since more users means more dating matches. But many users also get bored with the same old platforms and often try something else, which might be more niche and suit them better.
For example Spark has a page called SilverSingles for 50+ dating. They also acquired Zoosk about a year ago which has a larger userbase. The stock has bottomed after a significant draw-down and momentum looks much better now to enter into a position.