2021…Wow, Another Crazy (Good) Year!

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Alphabet, annual review, balance sheet, bubble thesis, crypto, Donegal Investment Group, inflation, KR1, KR1 plc, multi-bagger, owner-operators, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, Record plc, Saga Furs, Tetragon Financial Group, VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund

At this point, maybe you’re done with 2021 – right?!

But face it, we gotta look back to figure out how we arrived…in this mess today! And hopefully recall & reinforce any lessons learned. ‘Cos sure, there’s plenty of good & bad luck involved, but outcomes for both nations & investors are ultimately a result of our (cumulative) decisions & actions, often stretching back years. And last year, as the pandemic dragged on, our drinking problem got a wee bit out of control & we enjoyed that punchbowl just a little too long. And now it feels like the inevitable hangover’s finally starting to kick in.

Well, except for those who started early…God love ’em, how many punters have been trapped in a savage bear market for almost a year now?!

But for the rest of us, last year’s market was the pandemic silver lining. As always, the US led the way with a 26.9% gain in the S&P 500. [The Nasdaq still clocked up a magnificent 21.4% gain, despite some sectors being deep in bear market territory]. Europe was nearly as magnificent, with the Bloomberg Euro 500 clocking a 19.7% gain. And Ireland & the UK brought up the rear, but still delivered higher than average returns, with a 14.5% gain for the ISEQ & a 14.3% gain for the FTSE 100. [On both sides of the Atlantic, the FTSE 250 & the Russell 2000 enjoyed similar 14% gains, whereas a risk-off/stonk bear market reduced the AIM All-Share to a mere 5.2% gain]. Notably, despite H2 price reversals & increasing volatility, all major indices – with the exception of the ISEQ – climbed steadily & closed out the year near annual/all-time highs.

My FY-2021 Benchmark Return remains* a simple average of the four main indices which best represent my portfolio…overall, they produced a benchmark 18.8% gain:

A Decade In The Making…a 10-Bagger & a 26.0% pa Investment Track Record

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Alphabet, annual review, benchmarking, buy and hold, COVID, crypto, Donegal Investment Group, GARP investing, growth vs. value, KR1, multi-bagger, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, track record, Universe Group, VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund

Looking back, I must admit I never imagined reaching this kind of anniversary…but yeah, the Wexboy blog turned 10 years-old earlier this month! A journey that kicked off with this Sirius Real Estate buy (at an astonishing 0.31 P/B!) in Nov-2011. Which was obviously a stock-picking tour de force – noting SRE‘s been a 7-BAGGER+ since. Well, except I somehow managed to distract/scare myself out of the position two years later…for a mere double-digit gain! And maybe that’s where this post should abruptly end, because:

The one BIG lesson most investors still need to learn is how to HODL!

But let me be clear up-front – this is not intended to be some lessons-learned victory-lap post. As investors, we never really know what’s coming down the road…next year could be a celebration, or a total humiliation. And we all make dumb mistakes, we repeat them, we live with them & we finally move on – great investors just make less mistakes. And we can’t afford to get disheartened, or to rest on our laurels – great investors (should) never stop learning & adapting ’til the day they finally exit this great game. To assume/pretend otherwise is to tempt the gods, which makes investing such a uniquely weird mix of confidence…and humility.

That said, this year & last year have been an accelerated learning experience for me – as is presumably true for all investors (& everyone we know). And yes, I know I’ve promised to write about this – and hopefully share some positive learnings & useful advice – particularly in light of my actual FY-2020 & YTD-2021 performance. But I gotta admit, I keep putting it off…because now I desperately want & need it to be a final epitaph for this (Zero-) COVID hell we’re still stuck in. [Despite most of the world getting vaxxed since!?] So yeah, that’s obviously something I gotta work on…

But meanwhile, I’m thrilled I’ve actually managed to deliver that unique & rarest of beasts…a public/auditable 10-year investment track record via the blog (& my Twitter account). I obviously don’t disclose the actual euros/cents of my portfolio, albeit my long-abandoned career & my family’s security/future clearly rely on it – which means return of principal is just as important to me as return on principal, in true family-office style – but readers & followers have always been able to assess my level of conviction/risk tolerance via my specific % allocation in (disclosed) stocks, and via (essentially real-time) tracking of my (rare) incremental buys/sells in those stocks.

And in return, I’m far more interested right now in seeing readers draw (& even share) their own conclusions – privately, or publicly – from my stock-picking & investment track record to date. To facilitate that, here’s my annual returns…complete with links to my annual performance review & actual stock-picks/investment write-ups for each year.

H1-2021 Wexboy Portfolio Performance…Yeah, It’s a Biggie!

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Alphabet, annual review, bubble thesis, crypto, financial repression, inflation, KR1, KR1 plc, multi-bagger, pandemic, portfolio performance, Record plc, Saga Furs, VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund

Time to celebrate – we made it through the #pandemic!

Well, almost…

Vaccine roll-outs continue, some fast some slow, but crossing the actual finish line remains maddeningly elusive here. Unfortunately, as so often proves the case, the loudest & craziest perspectives tend to control the narrative. On one side, we have the #antivaxx nutters & their ever-expanding conspiracy theory complex to debate – you may as well wrestle a pig (you both get dirty & the pig likes it!), so the sooner we abandon them to herd immunity & their Darwinian fate the better. And on the other side, we’ve got the #Delta nutters who apparently don’t believe in vaccines either – like them, they’d prefer we all stay masked up & locked down forever, despite being vaccinated. [Seriously, imagine being told two years ago most people would be walking ’round in masks in 2021…after being vaccinated!?] And since the latter are still imposing their will on all of us – to a greater or lesser degree – arguably, they win the crazy selfish stakes. As Upton Sinclair might have said:

‘It is difficult to get a man to understand vaccine efficacy, when his cushy new working-from-home white-collar career depends on his not understanding it.’

But hey, touch wood, we’re still almost home free! And while it may be hard to believe right now, history’s proven it time & again…we’re gonna move on just as quickly, with little reason to presume this specific pandemic leaves any radical permanent change in its wake. But clearly, as I’ve argued from the start, it has & will continue to accelerate certain existing trends – both positive & negative – including America’s heroic fiscal & monetary stimulus, and its disproportionate impact on the S&P 500. How many investors have forgotten (or never even noticed) its +16.3% gain last year was actually a total outlier – my 2020 index benchmark, for example, was still flat regardless:

2021 has been far more democratic though, with most indices chalking up at least a good year’s worth of gains (albeit led by the S&P, as always!) in H1 – no real surprise, as investors applaud successful vaccine roll-out programmes & the still breaking tsunami of #YOLO re-opening spending. [And maybe even a New Roaring Twenties to come?!] As usual, my H1-2021 Benchmark Return (a +11.7% gain) is a simple average of the four main indices which best represent my portfolio:

Soooo, 2020…What A Crazy Year!?

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Alphabet, annual review, Applegreen, COVID, CPL Resources, crypto, KR1, KR1 plc, owner-operators, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, Record plc, staking, VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.’

A Happy (& Safe) New Year to my readers & fellow investors!

This time last year – or even last April – we had little/no idea of the #COVID challenge still ahead, but we’ve made it this far…and doubtless, after surviving 2020, we can surely look forward (America willing) to a far better 2021! If not, perhaps, in terms of superlative returns…but hey, that’s a hedge I think we can all accept.

Let’s try skip the #pandemic itself – I leave that to countless articles (‘The Plague Year‘) & a library of books to come – but obviously its consequences will reverberate here (& for us all). I must say though: I’ve been awed & inspired by the incredible effort & sacrifice humanity’s made to save lives, help those directly & indirectly impacted by COVID & come up with multiple vaccines at such an accelerated pace. But equally saddened – by comparison – to reflect on the fraction of preparation, effort, ingenuity & most of all expense that was perhaps required to prevent the worst ravages of COVID, let alone reduce or even eliminate some of the major health & social issues we endure (or scarcely even notice) today. Above all, great investors will focus on the character of management…it’s time we realize we need to assess the character of countries & their leaders too. And in both cases:

‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’

Or not…

So let’s dive in – as a reminder, here’s a mid-year snapshot of my benchmark:

H1-2020 Wexboy Portfolio Performance

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Alphabet, Applegreen, Asia, bubble thesis, coronavirus, COVID, crypto, financial strength, floating world, KR1 plc, owner-operators, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, property, QEInfinity, Saga Furs

So yeah…quite the bloody year, eh?!

I hope you & yours have kept safe & well during this #COVIDcrisis – even if you’re not exactly sheltering-in-place anymore, I presume you’re still a conscientious mask-wearer (as needed) in public? All else being equal, it’s disappointing the weather (apparently) isn’t a sure-fire virus-killer – remember when we all assumed, at worst, the summer would offer a welcome & effective respite? You know, meeting people, I used to joke investing was simply the ‘job’ I invented to keep me off the mean streets…I never imagined it would literally turn out like this!?

Anyway, let’s survey the carnage…

As usual, my H1-2020 Benchmark Return is a simple average of the four main indices which best represent the majority of my portfolio:

A (13.2)% benchmark loss is grim…though apologies to my puzzled American readers, who are wondering what carnage? [Apparently 100% of US investors now practice 0% global diversification!?]. If you didn’t know better – i.e. had avoided the media’s water-boarding over the last six months – you’d surely think a (4.0)% loss in the S&P was nothing more than some random market oscillation. Nothing to see here…

But in reality, lots of (US) investors now lean into technology stocks…and the Nasdaq didn’t disappoint, delivering a spectacular COVID-driven +12.1% gain! [C’mon, I tweeted ‘Nasdaq 10,000’ enough in the last year!] Of course, there’s a flip-side, with travel & hospitality being the most obvious sectors to experience devastating (& sustained) share price declines. We see a far more realistic ex-technology US performance in the Russell 2000, which recorded a (13.6)% loss in H1.

FY-2019…Hella Surprise Of A Year!?

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absolute valuation, Alphabet, annual review, buy and hold, coronavirus, Cpl Resources plc, Donegal Investment Group, Ebola, GARP investing, growth stocks, isolationism, KR1 plc, populism, portfolio performance, Record plc, relative valuation

It’s still January…so by now, I’m sweating to wrap this up by month-end (at the very latest!), while you’re probably feeling besieged (& bamboozled) by the media’s parade of talking heads who seamlessly re-write their broken #2019 narratives & still pitch their #2020 market prognostications with undaunted confidence. Which is a tad discouraging when I’m busy trying to come up with my own unique version & perspective…albeit, in the wake of a fantastic year (talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!).

Seriously…name a market/asset class that actually declined!?

But rewind a year & check the gamut of their 2019 predictions, and (once again) you’ll remember/realise they’re full of highly paid shit! So before I even start – let alone, God forbid, pontificate – I’ll share the only piece of market wisdom you really need to know, above all else:

‘Nobody knows anything…’

And that quote’s about the movie business! Granted, for anyone who cares, Hollywood probably seems like the most impressive Rube Goldberg contraption in the world…but frankly, figuring it out is a total cake-walk compared to grappling with & predicting what might actually happen next in the markets & the global economy! But unfortunately, that’s how we all step up & play the game:

Like useless office work expanding to fill all available time…useless market forecasts expand to fill all available airtime & news holes!

Probably my greatest investing achievement in the last year was switching off the financial media – and yeah, I stopped paying attention to brokers years ago – is it any wonder I reported such negligible portfolio activity? [It’s a real travesty seeing #buyandhold investors re-classified as chumps over the years (& decades)]. And in reality, markets are primarily focused on trying to discount a 12-18 month time-horizon, which means a diet of narrative manufactured to simply explain yesterday & today’s market/stock zig-zags is just irrelevant & misleading anyway. And so, I recommend you do the same: Go on, just switch off that guy on the box, you know the one…he just happened to attend some ‘school in Boston’, and is now an instant expert on epidemiology and up & to the right #coronavirus charts! Again:

‘Nobody knows anything…’

H1-2019 Wexboy Portfolio Performance

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#GenerationWar, #WallofWorry, Alphabet, benchmarking, bubbles, crypto, Donegal Investment Group, floating world, KR1 plc, negative yields, portfolio performance, quantitative easing, Saga Furs

And once more…into battle!

Before the month is out, it’s time I look back & share a H1 portfolio update. Of course, in the wake of last year’s Q4 carnage, it wasn’t all that surprising to see markets chalking up a near-perfect YTD performance across the board. Equally unsurprising was the US market’s continued leadership…which seems like an inevitability these days, to the chagrin of long-suffering European & value investors. [Um, aren’t they synonymous?!] So here’s the scoreboard – as usual, my H1-2019 Benchmark Return is a simple average of the four main indices which represent the majority of my portfolio:

On average, a 13.4% benchmark gain…led by the S&P with a 17.3% gain (bested by the Nasdaq, which boasted a 20.7% gain). More surprising was the robust performance of the FTSE 100…despite a tsunami of Brexit nonsense, it still managed to deliver a 10.4% gain. [Not an index-related fluke – the more domestic FTSE 250 & the AIM All-Share (despite a glut of profit warnings) clocked up (on average) similar gains of 11.2% & 7.1%, respectively]. As for the ISEQ & Bloomberg Euro 500, they did themselves proud too, recording respective gains of 12.3% & 13.6%.

Overall, this is a reversal of the 13.5% benchmark loss I reported last year. Which, noting the S&P’s consistent out-performance, is an unwelcome reminder European markets are still actually lower/no better off than end-2017 levels! And really, I’m just cherry-picking here – my European benchmarks have pretty much gone nowhere for the last four years. And again, that’s another flattering perspective…believe it or not, Euro indices have mostly traded sideways for close to two decades now! [Read ’em & weep: FTSE 100, ISEQ, STOXX Europe 600]*. Sure, you still earned a dividend yield…but this savages the comforting notion that equities will always make you decent money/are the superior asset class in the medium & long-term. Though maybe, just maybe, there’s a silver lining to that bag you’re holding:

Wexboy Portfolio Prospects – Part II

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Alphabet, Applegreen, bubble thesis, Donegal Investment Group, GARP investing, Google, growth investing, KR1 plc, Kryptonite 1, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, QEInfinity, Record plc, stock picks, stock tips, value investing

Ugh, collywobbles!

Sure, we can all breathe easier now, but still feels a little bumpy out there, eh? Though maybe you should ignore the incipient nausea…just relax & embrace the ride! ‘Cos I’m perversely encouraged by these fresh mini-bouts of panic we’ve been seeing this year. They’re a useful reminder investors still have a real wall of worry to climb here. Which is probably the most important & necessary pre-condition underwriting the durability of today’s bull market. [And yes, it’s only a bull market…when investors (esp. the man in the street) go from hoping they’ll make money, to knowing they’ll make money, that’s when we enter bubble territory]. However, we still need to see whether my macro investment thesis eventually plays out here – a thesis I express via a question:

Globally, we’re still conducting a truly unprecedented monetary (& fiscal) experiment…could we end up ultimately inflating the most incredible bubble ever?

If you think that’s ridiculous, we really don’t need to debate it here. Or rehash a complete litany of facts & figures which prove history must repeat itself – the ever-flattening US yield curve being the latest bogeyman. But I have to ask, what’s so bloody alarming about entirely average market P/E ratios…when interest rates are still anything but average?! And despite their trajectory, we’ll obviously continue to enjoy ultra-low long & short-term rates in absolute terms, while central banks (in aggregate) also continue to print money:

Yep, there’s the real boiler-room of this market – in every sense of the word – as this chart nicely demonstrates:

H1-2017 Wexboy Portfolio Performance

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Alphabet, Applegreen, benchmarking, bull market, Fortress Investment Group, GARP investing, Newmark Security, portfolio performance, Rasmala, Record plc, value investing, Zamano

Benchmark Performance:

Let’s jump right in, here’s the H1-2017 performance for my usual benchmark indices:

Move along, nothing to report here…but that’s exactly what we should focus on! Of course, the financial media’s become more & more hysterical about the markets – de rigueur in an ADHD world – but cooler & more logical heads have also been sounding the alarm bells so often, I’m sure I’ve gone deaf. But sacrilegious as it may sound, a +8.2% YTD gain for the S&P 500 isn’t all that extraordinary… Sure, it’s within spitting distance of the market’s average annual return, but that doesn’t mean much – history confirms annual returns tend to rack up in just a few months, with the market faffing around for the rest of year.

And looking back, I’m hard-pressed to find this outrageous bull market everybody’s yammering about. In reality, the S&P soared a massive 6.6% pa over the last three calendar years (2014-2016). Seriously…that’s it!? [How many readers are reacting with disbelief right now?] Even my blind maiden aunt couldn’t get her knickers in a twist over that kind of return…

Of course, the nay-sayers will argue the S&P’s trajectory is irrelevant – we should really focus on how expensive it is today, in absolute terms. Hmmm…maybe if you cherry-pick the most damning P/E multiple comparison!? But taking a longer-term perspective, the Nifty Fifty actually peaked at 42x in 1972, while TMT stocks peaked at 60x in 2000 (with the S&P hitting 29x). Except isn’t that just a greater fool approach…shouldn’t we be evaluating the market vs. normal P/E multiples? Well, again I fail to understand the alarm: The S&P today actually sports an 18.8 forward P/E, a mere 9% premium to the average 17.2 forward P/E over the last 20 years (which included the dot-com bubble, but also the financial crisis).

And absurdly, the doubters choose to ignore gravity (i.e. interest rates)! Whereas I’m perfectly happy to defer to Buffett here – aside from secular earnings growth itself, interest rates are arguably the equity market’s greatest single driver (& valuation benchmark). This one 10 Year UST chart effectively tells you more than a dozen books could about the US equity market’s trajectory over the last 50+ years:

So Why Not Google It..?

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$GOOG, $GOOGL, advertising, Alphabet, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, Buffett, DeepMind, economic moat, Google, Larry Page, machine learning, mobile, network effects, search, Sergey Brin, YouTube

Last month, I posed a serious question:

‘So Why Not Buy Apple..?!’.

Just days later, we got our first hint that Buffett himself was buying Apple! Followed shortly after by that bombshell CNBC interview (here’s the transcript), where he revealed an $18 billion+ Apple investment*, the vast majority bought by him in Jan/recent months (& the rest by Todd/Ted in early-2016). What better confirmation of my assertion that value investors – even the greatest of them all, at 86 years of age – would be wise to pose such a question to themselves!?

[*Pretty sure Apple is Buffett’s largest common stock investment ever (on a cost basis). In fact, I wonder if it’s the largest stock investment ever made by a single investor (again, in terms of cost)? Sure, Todd/Ted/Charlie did provide some inspiration/feedback here, but we can be damn sure Buffett never buys anything ’til he makes his own mind up! So: Your thoughts/feedback?]

Granted, I got lucky…

Was I confident I’d see Buffett talking up an Apple position just weeks later? Um, no… [Don’t forget, Icahn announcing a multi-billion holding some years back was a huge surprise too!] And maybe I chose it specifically as the largest & most obvious/controversial value stock out there. Not to mention, the head fake I pulled: While I did summarise its attractive fundamentals/valuation, my post clearly wasn’t intended to be a detailed thesis. But hey, it was still the right question at the right time, so I’ll take the kudos!? And Buffett’s purchase now serves as great inspiration to present a genuinely compelling investment thesis here. Yeah but, just not Apple – I mean, who even needs a thesis right now when Buffett’s put so much money where his mouth is?! Instead, we’ll focus on a company which is arguably the antithesis of Apple – therefore, I ask:

So Why Not Google It..?