I have green! Lots of it! After a washout of a summer in the capital growth department my portfolio finally seems to have got off the ground. So how did everyone do? Who was your star pupil and whoās in the naughty corner?
Burford continued its recovery and again was my top performer followed by Sports Direct. Both of these were badly wounded in the summer and while I back Burford to come back I am a bit surprised to see Sports Direct do so well. While Iām pretty much back on level pegging on Sports Direct the Burford fund is still 30% in the red, so hopefully faith will be restored in it soon. I think long term Burford will bounce back and Sports Direct will continue to hit the news for the wrong reasons.
Boohoo is one of the star performers for me this year at over 40% gain jumped 15%. Iām still not a fan of retail when it comes to investing, I feel brands and shops come and go so fast that long term investing is quite tricky. Boohoo being an online retailer escapes much of what sinks most UK high street shops - the cost of rent and rates and the ever growing cost of employing people. Even today Boohooās recent acquisition of Karen Millen & Coast chain shows it is still very much in the driving seat and is navigating the tricky area of retail from the backseat and out of sight.
Okta was the loser at 22%. However, I like this stock and think it really has a future. I was pleased to see that other investors who know a great deal more than me (see investorplace article if you google) also back it to move North. I plan on buying a bit more of this stock while it has dipped.
Disclaimer
As per Freetradeās policy always remember to do your own research.
Remember that past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
This is a discussion only thread and is not advice to invest in any particular stock.
Loser for me this month was Draper Esprit, down another 10%, currently at Ā£4.30/share. I have no idea why. Even if one of their investments went bust, it shouldnāt be a 10% drop.
Iāve been increasing my position every month. Will do so this month, and probably the next too.
Winner this month was Craneware, which is up 30+%. Itās not available on Freetrade. Itās an AIM listed health-tech company, based in Scotland, but aimed at the US market. They had an earnings miss earlier in the year, so Iām still down on my total investment - but Iām happy going long. They sell the type of enterprise software which clients find very hard to quit.
Thanks for the insight Ben on Okta and itās dip. I will look into it this month. Albemarle the winner for me up +17% and the loser Innovative Industrial Properties -10%
Edit: My winner/loserās are outside Freetrade but thought Iād share
Actually Slack (and not Draper) is my worst performer this month after disappointing earnings - down 17%. I generally stay away from IPOs, but got sucked into this one.
I know that Microsoft Teams is a good product and picking up a lot of users (Iām long MSFT), but believe that there is significant space for Slack to grow in non-MS environments.
Spotify is but itās for long-term holding. Focusing on dividend paying MOAT companies now.
It was that one shiny thing that looked so good since most of us probably use Slack (unlike Eventbrite). I had to dive into Microsoftās investor relationsā page and read conference call transcripts to get rid of the temptation.
First of all, Slack was an accidental startupāit was an internal developer tool at first. Also, itās effectively an āMSNā app and has low barriers of entry, so itās a low-hanging fruit for platforms like Amazon or Microsoft who have cheap access to capital:
Also, if Slack is using Azure, AWS or GCloud, those big players must be seeing the rise in traffic. Look at Amazon Prime Video and Netflix (Amazonās customer).
Itās not fair, but thatās life.
One of the best advices I heard when it comes to starting or looking at disruptor startups is from a Professor of Stanfordāif youāre startup, focus on the problem youāre trying to solve and the data you are using and how you snowball the data, then do what the Cloud companies wouldnāt be doing i.e. very domain-specific stuff. E.g. Finance, healthcare.
So when it comes to looking at new companies, itās a useful framework to use:
Thanks for sharing 
but itās for long-term holding. Focusing on dividend paying MOAT companies now.
All safely ISAāed I hope 
) closely followed by ITV up 8% 