October 2021 Performance

October turned out ok even though the market sold off Apple, Mastercard and Visa. Fortunately, the following holdings picked up the slack: Airbnb, Alibaba, Ginkgo Bioworks, Qiagen and Constellation Brands. I also went a bit overboard in selling naked Puts on Tesla as the premiums were too hard to ignore. I’ve significantly scaled back on the put selling in Tesla as I didn’t want to get too greedy and pay the price.

One of my more speculative position is Ginkgo Bioworks. There has been quite a bit of controversy as there was a recent short selling piece on this company. The company did the right thing in not responding to the report. The report was just a bunch of fluff. The things that this company is doing is quite remarkable especially the amount of data they are compiling. There’s really no other company doing it in the scale of Ginkgo Bioworks. This one will be a very long term hold.

The alternative stuff making of ~5% of the portfolio finally closed. I’ll review if a liquidity event ever occurs. If not, the value is essentially zero as it is very difficult to sell these things. I’m willing to take on this risk.

As I reflect on these monthly reports, I’m just wondering what’s the value. As an induvial investor, I really don’t care about month to month or even quarter to quarter scoreboard. Something to ponder…

 

2021 Performance = +5.2% with the running monthly returns as follows:

January -2.1%

February +0.6%

March +0.99%

April +5.77%

May -3.56%

June +4.0%

July +2.23%

August -2.8%

September -2.1%

October +2.8%