The How: Companies, Research, and Strategy. (Part 2 of 3)
Obviously Fastly was a clear winner and doesn’t look to slow down anytime soon, but it’s about consistently finding new companies to hold for the long-term. As mentioned in the last post, I started off with Fastly, Crowdstrike, Livongo, Zoom, and Datadog, but these were not paying off despite my conviction for them. I focused on finding better ways and resources for companies.
I first went to Reddit, which was a clear vacuum for bad investing decisions, but it showed me that we were all looking for the same companies. I just was not focused on buying 3-million-dollar marijuana stocks. I checked out CNBC and YouTube and found at that these platforms were focused on only entertainment and not sound advice. My college days of economics have proven quite useful when it comes to the market and it’s easy to tell when Youtubers or CNBC people are using talking points from the previous decades. Finally, I focused on Twitter. Twitter has got to be the best social platform for stock tips. No one get’s paid for memberships like YouTube. Even with a shade of anonymity, it’s not like Reddit, because validation can be built around people who follow these certain people. Famous investors and economists won’t typically follow some random person when they have no obligation to.
So, I turned to Twitter and simply used their search function. I focused on finding like-minded investors. I simply searched by stock symbol of my current holdings, for example, I would search ‘$FSLY’ and I would see anyone who was talking about Fastly from an investors point of view. I found people who would break down these companies and examine their growth prospects and much more. I followed as many people as I could and just researched all their tweets on companies. I would take those companies stock symbols and do searches on those companies and I just gathered as much as I could. I finally relaxed and realized I had gathered 130+ companies worthy of investing in.
I took these companies and screened them by IPO date, revenue growth rates, market capitalization and narrowed it down to about 30 companies I thought fit my criteria. I just had to believe in a future where they were highly valued as a company. Just like Fastly, I had to watch hours upon hours of conferences and interviews and commercials on these companies. I eventually got to a gene company called Invitae (NVTA), which surprised me because I was sure that only e-commerce and SaaS tech companies would make my list.
I read and watched so many presentations on this company, but I didn’t feel the same passion for it as my original growth companies. I went to twitter to see if maybe I missed some great tweets about this company, but I only found the earlier mentions as before. No deep dives or hard selling points, but it seemed like everyone was aware of $NVTA.
February 6, 2020 – Invitae (NVTA) $22.39 a share
I finally purchased a few NVTA shares, but I still felt like I was just investing with a wave of people, instead of truly believing in this company. I needed to be convinced. I was already however convinced (as I am still today) that I needed no experience with technical stock analyst, chart reading, ratios, or headlines. I needed only a story. I vision of my companies being needed in the future. This is how I found Cathie Woods and Ark Invest.
I was watching CNBC one morning and Tesla was like a couple hundred bucks a share. They had this portfolio manager come on and she was marvelous. She was not a paid contributor to the network, and it was so obvious. She was talking about how Tesla was going to be the largest company in the world and worth trillions. She said essentially all the rating agencies and bankers were wrong and could not get out of the way of conventionally thinking. Tesla was not a car company. It was much more, and she laid out a plan so convincing I bought 4 shares of it at the time. I was blown away. The main thing for me was not what she was saying, but that the other analyst was laughing at her ideas, but you could see on her face that she knew she was right. So, I decided to research her fund and look at what other companies she invests in… Tesla was number one, but $1B Invitae was number two by miles. I knew I would find my convincing through Cathie and her team at Ark Invest.
I watched her conferences and read her thoughts on the future of this company and how it was so clear… Invitae was going to be big. Throughout the crash, the stock plummeting on concerns of people using their services. I too was concerned, but I still donated plasma which was not important… besides what I heard one day giving plasma. A few of the girls at the plasma center were raving about these tests they took prior to deciding on having kids and all sorts of things. I had a feeling. I just knew. I asked, “what company was that with. Sorry for intruding.”
Shares closed at $11 a share that day and I had increased my position.
NVTA is now $47 a share and a 8.32-Billion-dollar company. Still incredibly early.
In this three-part write-up, I am not focusing on what the companies truly do. There won’t be deep dives in these posts. It is simply a story of how you don’t need to know how to read charts and day trades to make money in the stock market. It may seem like you need to know about charts and price to earning ratios and so much other noise, but you don’t. Find companies that are growing. Learn about them inside and out. Follow their stories.
Also, Cathie Woods is a major believer in Bitcoin, Square, CRISPR, ROKU, and Zillow.