Update on my US portfolio.
Since the last update, the US portfolio has recovered a beat to the tune of overall market recovery. Portfolio is still down 23% from Nov, 2021 high. I am now experiencing the most devastating and painful bear market in my investing journey. Last two US bear markets (>20% fall) were sudden (2018 and 2020) and eventually recovered quickly. But this one is testing my nerves and sanity as days go by:) Till now I am able to keep my behavior rational and refrain from being my own enemy by not doing foolish activities with my portfolio stocks. Overall portfolio is still in green even after this carnage. I take it as a little consolation reward being invested in the market across cycles (good and bad time). Unlike in the 2020 bear market, in the present bear market portfolio dividend yield went up slightly (as companies are being pressured to reward shareholders with more dividends in absence of growth).
We casually vow to remain in the market even if portfolio value falls 50%. I had to fill up such a survey before opening my brokerage account. Now I am in such a real life situation where my portfolio fell 40% during peak bear market. No doubt it hurts, Then I realized the importance of asset allocation especially for novice retail investors like me. I have absolutely no idea on how long this bear market will last. But at the same time history suggests that the market will eventually recover. Now to remain in the market and gain solid staying power one must keep emergency/other conservstive liquid assets handy. Imagine a scenario where one’s equity portfolio is down 40%, is living life paycheck to paycheck and need a large chunk of money for some unforeseen emergency. It definitely invites trouble in the not too distant future and investors will be forced to sell shares at loss. I believe this is more painful than taking 50% paper loss. Sound but not so perfect asset allocation helps me to sleep in peace at night and this is the single most important reason behind keeping my cool even while remaining invested in this brutal market. Having said that, I still need to work on it and shore up my debt investment while the good time in the Indian market lasts.
Now coming to the company specific update, most of my cloud SaaS growth stocks have recovered and are in green.
The Trade Desk/Crowdstrike/Zscaler/Snowflake/MongoDB/Confluent have reported a blowout quarter. The Cyber Security sector is turning out to be recession proof business as customers are willing to invest in new cloud based zero trust products without hesitation. Crowdstrike/Zscaler unique products are actually saving money for customers as their solutions don’t require expensive firewall hardware to be installed and managed by customers on-premise. I am most bullish on the Snowflake and Trade Desk business. Snowflake is trying to create a platform to build apps which deal with data. History suggests that outsized return can be achieved by investing in such platform companies. I may be wrong here. Since my last update, renewable energy solution company Stem has already doubled my money. It got the much needed tailwind after the passage of the inflation reduction act in the US.
On the flip side, Zoom, Shopify, Nvidia and Upstart keep on reporting disappointing results. As I am a firm believer of AI/ML tech so I am willing to hold (adding more) these businesses for the long term. Upstart’s AI model is still performing superior to FICO’s model. This is enough for me to remain invested in this business.
US 5 year portfolio return : 9.7% vs 12.59% S&P
That’s all for now. Long bear market stinks. It could start any time and without giving notice. But retail investors can deal with such a market with proper asset allocation.
Happy investing!!!
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