February 2023 Performance

February was uneventful as the portfolio declined after a nice run in January. The portfolio has not changed with holdings in Apple, Airbnb, Ginkgo Bioworks, Mastercard, Qiagen, Constellation Brands and Visa. The big loser so far has been Ginkgo Bioworks, but I entered this position knowing that this is going to be a long term play. I will be patient with Ginkgo Bioworks to see how their cell  programs evolve. Ginkgo Bioworks is a small position and currently makes up 0.33% of my portfolio.

I’m still selling short, dated options for tiny gains. I did finally get clobbered on a short put play. I was in Pioneer Natural Resources, and everything was going as expected until news hit that the company was looking to acquire Range Resources. The stock instantly sold off on the news and my out of the money short put was now in the money. A took a nice loss on that one. What stunk was that this news was subsequently denied by Pioneer Natural Resources and the stock recovered. This was a good lesson for me!

Still hunting for good risk reward merger arb plays…
 
2023 Performance = +6.31% with the running monthly returns as follows:

January +8.04%
February -1.60%