Ryan's 1 Month Portfolio Update
Why I own my stocks
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As of December 10th, 2019 here is my individual portfolio.
Made a few tweaks this month. I figure I will likely make less changes over time, but as a 20 year old investor I’m just finding my footing. I realized this month that there were a few positions I was holding that I had bought when I first started out. Two in particular were the Schwab US REIT ETF and the Schwab International Equity ETF. I sold both of those positions and used most of the money to add a new company to my portfolio. MatchGroup.
For the rest of this update, I’m going to describe why I own each individual company in my portfolio. They won’t be deep dives, but a short bull thesis. I’m writing this for the readers as well as myself. If I can’t articulate why I own a company then I don’t have any business owning it at all.
Square: Square is certainly my highest conviction stock that I own. I believe Square is well positioned in many ways to benefit from the ongoing “war on cash”. Their hardware and point of sales solutions are helping businesses all over the world grow and adapt to an increasingly digital world. Aside from hardware, the Cash App is growing revenues at 115% Year over year, and beginning to make up a substantial portion of the overall top line. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Cash App is Square’s peer to peer payments processing app, that also possesses a suite of other offerings.
Spotify: The audio streaming platform is competing in what has turned out to be a pretty clear duopoly between them and Apple Music. Spotify has been able to show sustainable growth and adaptability through their evolution in the podcasting space. The current CEO Daniel Ek appears to be quite innovative, while demonstrating poised growth in all aspects of the business. As of Q3 2019, total platform revenue is growing 28% YoY, premium subscribers 31%, and free cash flow 45%. If you’re interested in Spotify, I urge you to listen to Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s interview with CEO, Daniel Ek.
Match Group: Match Group monetizes something humans have always longed for. Hookups. Just kidding… kind of. They are able to charge their users, so that the users can find out who is interested in them. According to Michael Rosenfeld, a Stanford sociologist, found that in 2017, 39% of heterosexual couples met online, vs. 22% in 2009. The growth of online dating is astounding, and Match Group appears to be most apt to profit from it.
Alteryx: I’m really only knee deep in my understanding of Alteryx, since I have no first-hand experience with the actual product. The business to business data analytics platform has made the crucial task of collecting and organizing data a simple process for many companies. While the concept behind the company and the tech jargon/yogababble sound exciting, I can seriously see myself selling shares if it proves to be outside my circle of competence.
Yext: Yext seems to be the sole player in their space. They operate as a data management tool for businesses of all sizes. With Yext, a company can select which ever product or solution they desire and input their business data. With that data Yext can power the businesses websites and services, and also sync them to search engines, maps, apps, voice assistants, chatbots, etc. Yext has created a sort of reversed marketing cycle for businesses. Instead of the businesses attempting to find customers, Yext allows the customers to more easily find the businesses.
Since inception my portfolio is up 9.19%. The performance is skewed due to the recent merger of my Robinhood account. Including my returns from Robinhood, my all-time performance is likely far higher.
Thanks for checking in, see you next month.