Earnings season is just about over, with the majority of companies having reported through August 20. It was an overall pretty solid earnings season with 87% of S&P 500 companies beating analyst expectations. The market has been pretty volatile recently due to the market freaking out about July’s FED minutes that stated the FED may consider tapering their bond purchases sometime this year. It would seem the FED is trying to avoid a “Taper Tantrum” that the markets saw back in 2013 that resulted in a huge decline in the overall market when there was a reduction in QE.
Anyway, I’m still eagerly waiting on the quarterly earnings of CrowdStrike ($CRWD), DocuSign ($DOCU) and Zoom Video Communications ($ZM) which I’m sure each report will result in a material movement of the share price.
My portfolio continues to chug along with a gain of 26.8% YTD vs. the S&P 500’s 18.3% return despite a pretty lousy week for tech. The big callout is Upstart ($UPST), this stock has rallied 50%+ since earnings and has now become my biggest position.
I made a number of changes to my portfolio based on how I felt each earnings report went. Specifically, I fully exited Fiverr since their guidance was terrible and I don’t trust their management anymore after they totally messed up their guidance. I also trimmed the majority of my Peloton ($PTON) and Twilio ($TWLO) positions. Peloton largely because I have no idea how they will perform and guide in this upcoming report and I don’t like uncertainty when it comes to investing. I trimmed Twilio to mostly consolidate my holdings and I plan on fully exiting Twilio in mid-September when my remaining position changes from short-term capital gains to long-term capital gains.
I also trimmed Etsy but haven’t trimmed enough, since similar to Twilio, I’m waiting on some lots to change to long-term capital gains before trimming, which will again happen in September. Etsy had a lukewarm earnings report, but I still am bullish given their recent acquisitions and trust in their management.
Zoom Video Communications ($ZM) was another stock that I’ve been trimming, largely because I saw some other COVID beneficiaries get crushed in their Q2 earnings, i.e. On24 ($ONTF), Fiverr ($ETSY), Pinterest ($PINS), etc. It’s hard to say how much Zoom was impacted, but I’d rather not be too exposed going into Q2.
I added aggressively to ZoomInfo ($ZI) after their awesome earnings report and took advantage of the major dip they saw after they announced a non-dilutive offering. I also added aggressively to DataDog ($DDOG) and LightSpeed ($LSPD) after both of these companies announced some solid earnings reports. I also added a decent amount to Cloudflare ($NET) after their post-earnings hiccup which sent their stock down to $113 for a hot minute before analysts realized how awesome the report was which caused the stock to rally to another 52-week high.
Finally, I’ve been selling a lot of covered calls (CC’s) on Riot Blockchain ($RIOT) due to the huge IV it has. I don’t particularly care if my shares get called away or if the stock dips since $RIOT is more of a speculative position, and their options premiums are too high to not write CC’s.
Portfolio Update Summary
S&P 500 return YTD: 18.3%
NASDAQ return YTD: 14.2%
My portfolio YTD: 26.8%
Portfolio Breakdown
| Ticker | Mid-August | End of July |
| UPST | 14.2% | 5.2% |
| CRWD | 11.7% | 11.1% |
| DOCU | 11.0% | 11.6% |
| DDOG | 8.6% | 6.0% |
| ZM | 5.2% | 7.5% |
| SNAP | 4.9% | 5.2% |
| ZI | 4.8% | 1.9% |
| NET | 4.8% | 3.0% |
| MELI | 4.6% | 4.0% |
| ROKU | 4.4% | 8.1% |
| ETSY | 4.3% | 5.7% |
| NVDA | 3.2% | 3.0% |
| TEAM | 3.2% | 3.0% |
| ENPH | 3.1% | 3.8% |
| CROX | 3.0% | 2.7% |
| LSPD | 2.6% | 1.2% |
| SHOP | 1.3% | 1.3% |
| TWLO | 1.1% | 3.6% |
| RIOT | 1.0% | 0.0% |
| FVRR | 0.0% | 7.0% |
| PTON | 0.0% | 4.6% |
| < 1% Positions | 3.0% | 0.4% |