WayWardCloud

I'm selling Universal Music to buy Tencent in my Roth IRA. I got lucky on timing and UMG worked out very well returning 33% in just a bit under two months. I see no reason to linger into it. I love the asset but it's pretty low growth and I despise management, meanwhile Tencent is at an all time valuation low.

I shed a tear laughing too hard, thank you. It reminds me of five years ago when the government sent everyone a check and people exchanged those dollars for imaginary dog money and monkey jpegs. I used to be enthusiastic about the idea of universal basic income until then.

Welcome back! Your risk tolerance sounds off the charts and I'm really looking forward to reading about your adventures. Thanks for sharing your current positions. Is shorting a short a way of capturing beta slippage? It sounds like a free lunch and I am wondering what I'm missing. I understand better your other post now. If I had a x40 in my past I would probably as well be a "degenerategambler" for life, trying to reproduce that high. It sounds like you've already had several other big successes since then, that's awesome. Do you follow a certain method to decide what percentage of your net worth to allocate to each idea?

That's obviously the holy grail with any trend : getting in on the upside and getting out (or turning short) right at the top. Kudos for trying and I wish you great success but how many people have been consistently able to do that in history? I worry you might be trying to be too smart for your own good. If you think there is a bubble of irrationality in a certain part of the market, just stay out of that part and find something else that you like at a price that you think is fair or cheap in another unrelated industry. Because the second you decide to "play" it, whether long or short, you make yourself dependent on that very crowd of irrational price setters that send shoe companies to the Moon. I don't personally think we're in an AI bubble but, for example, I've never believed in cryptocurrencies and I've always considered Tesla to be overvalued by a factor of at least 10x. Right or wrong, I still feel the same 10 years later, but boy has the market taken the other view! How could I possibly gauge when the tide will turn around since it's based on nothing but crowd mania? I don't have any control over those people and I have no idea what might make change their minds and when. And most importantly how do I avoid getting doubly smoked if I'm wrong? I remember some famous investor was short Tesla and long GM like a decade ago. He had a whole deck that made a lot of sense on paper. I became a better investor once I decided I should focus on making money and not on feeling smarter than others. I realized there was a lot of misplaced ego involved in my contrarianism.

Thank you. I'm curious to see what the rest of the brokers report in the next few days. The market seems to believe the issue is limited to BRO in particular since the others didn't go down too much in sympathy.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the earnings

Congrats

How is SpaceX commoditized?

The main change no one is talking about is how late IPOs now happen in the chain of funding. I think of the publicly traded stock market as a cornerstone of democracy because it's a way for the little guy to have a chance at getting rich as well and participate. But if exciting new companies only tap the public markets when they reach hundreds of billions in valuation you're never going to 50x or 100x the way it used to be possible. The returns inside indexes are achieved almost entirely by a tiny minority of massive outperformers. I worry the private investors in Silicon Valley / Wall Street are now sucking out all the growth and leaving us with "the rest", unloading the good stuff on the public very very late and at insane valuations as a final way for all of them to get out. I would have loved to invest in all three companies many years ago (and Waymo) and actually looked into doing just that at valuations that in hindsight would have made me rich, but I quickly learned it was not available because I'm not part of that little club. It's very frustrating.

Just de-zoom the chart to like 5-10 years Really puts things into perspective.

Bought a lot more CSU today. I'm now at 13.6% of net worth into VMS software via Constellation + a bit of Lumine and Topicus. The last six months have been very active and I hope I'm done tinkering with the portfolio for a while. God luck to all

I agree on management. They're old British dudes and I think they have some tax incentive to keep in European. CEO also bought a football club which is what rich people do when they're done grinding and want some trophy toy during retirement, so he's definitely checked out. Grainge's contract ends on May 1st 2028 and his likely successor John Janick is US born and won't have this conflict of interest so I think NYSE listing conversations could restart in a couple years. But regardless of exchanges, if you own something it's worth what it's worth it shouldn't matter too much where it trades. Most IPOs are overpriced. It listed at a fwd PE of 34 and now it's under 15 which makes it interesting to me for the first time. This is world class IP (hello Nintendo people, you should be all over this!) and once you subtract the value of their stakes in Spotify and Tencent Music you get the core business at around a 10% yield 2 years out. So I like it very much here and I wouldn't recommend throwing in the towel just yet. ~ insert here whatever Buffett said about ham sandwiches ~

Thanks I just put them into buckets and that really helped. One other mental trick I'm using is I'm imagining line by line "what if that position was twice as big?" If I don't feel comfortable then it's not a strong conviction and I should probably not have it at all.

Universal Music (UMG), new position, 2% of net worth. It's never happened to me before but I have too many ideas and the portfolio is a mess. I struggle to size opportunities and I feel like I have too many lines. A lot of quality stuff I've followed for years is dropping into buying range so I now have 17 individual stocks besides my all world ETF and 6 more are really tempting me. I usually prefer to have 6-9 but I'm not sure how to pick my best ideas among the 17-23 I like. I guess it's a good problem to have! This market is so weird. Alphabet Amazon Microsoft Constellation Software Lumine Topicus AJ Gallagher Ryan Specialty Brown&Brown Nintendo Adyen Global-E Patria Mercado Libre Nubank Universal Music Coupang Salesforce Adobe Lifco Veeva Medpace

Well played

Thanks for sharing! How is transportation so low? Waymo is coming for Uber drivers and truck drivers. Later on AI can also replace the delivery guys who have to drive AND get out of the car with a combination of self driving car + humanoid bot and replace Amazon / Doordash people... That is if the type of world those bros describe really is coming, which is still a big IF.

Thank you! I absolutely love the asset but not the management. Blocking a US listing is clearly acting against their own shareholders interest. I think it's still a good opportunity at today's price for the first time since IPO and your thesis makes a lot of sense. I think you will do well. I would seriously consider it if I didn't have too many positions already. There have been so many exciting opportunities in the last ~4 months that I get to be very picky with who I do business with and those guys don't cut it. They're sitting on a golden goose though.

Thanks for putting UMG back on my radar. I've always liked the business but not the price. Now it seems cheap. Any particular reason they're down so much? Do you care to share your thesis?

Back into Nintendo at Y8700

I agree with all the issue you are seeing but just don't reach the same conclusion that it's all the same. I still have hope we can right the boat and that we have some power left to do so. I believe trying to be good and having huge flaws is better than no even pretending for a second. Maybe I'm just naive / optimistic.

I just bought Adyen. Lots of uncertainties these days which creates lots of opportunities

A bit of whataboutism in my opinion. The American model starts with the idea of justice and leveling the playing field so the little guy has equal rights... and then yes we are at a all time high for corruption and in the age of the grifters. I agree and I wish we would ban politicians for active trading and from taking lobbies money. It is still worlds better than a totalitarian country who does not even pretend to believe in any of those concepts such as the rule of law and instead very clearly let's you know that there is a hierarchy and that the guys at the top are to control literally everything while the guys at the bottom (let alone the foreigner) are to shut up and do what they're told. We don't realize how good we have it until we lose it. With all that say I used to own some Chinese equity and I'm currently looking at Tencent again. Would probably buy some at HKD460. So it's not all black and white !

It's Amazon for me. I hate hate hate malls and shopping (except Trader Joe's).

The market feels as stupid as when prices would bounce when companies would announce a stock split. Remember that?

Today: More Constellation Software (6.8%>8%) Starters in Lumine and Topicus (1.3% each) More Microsoft (3.3%>4.1%) Last week: 2028 LEAPS on Charter and Coupang (1.4% and 1.9% at cost, 1.8% and 2% now thanks to lucky timing) I want to like Nintendo but I just don't see the attractive valuation a lot of you guys see, even at 10,000Yens. I trim Alphabet little by little but it's still my biggest position and it keep going up so percentage wise it has been steady around 18% for a few months now.