Episode 19: Investing Trench Warfare and Portfolio Updates
42m 29s
In this episode, the hosts explore the current struggles of growth stocks in a volatile market. They express frustration with investments like Rubrik, where growth uncertainty and lack of profitability make valuation difficult, despite a low price-to-sales ratio. Comparisons are drawn to companies such as Monday.com, which faces profit stagnation despite revenue growth, and Credo, which shows explosive growth but remains subject to market swings. The discussion highlights how AI developments and shifting narratives can rapidly affect stock prices, as seen with cybersecurity stocks like CrowdStrike. Investment tactics include cautious trimming and adding to positions based on risk-reward assessments, with a focus on high-growth companies like Credo when fundamentals align. The hosts also reflect on the psychological challenges of investing, emphasizing that market downturns test conviction and require adaptability. Overall, they underscore the difficulty of navigating a market where even strong fundamentals may not prevent sharp declines, advocating for balanced portfolios and strategic patience amid uncertainty.
Hey guys, and welcome to episode 19 of "Shootin' the Bull Pod" with Drowzi and Bear. As always, you can always hit us up at Shootin' the Bull Pod 2025 at gmail.com. You can hit us up on Twitter at Investing_Bair or at drowsyinvestor.com. We love talking with you guys. We love hearing what you're doing, even as I continue to continually underperform Bear and not triple his returns, which is devastating. Yeah, so what an intro to the show. Bear, how are you? I mean, as far as you know, we haven't talked about our returns year to date yet. But yeah, it's not great. It hasn't been the most fun market that I have ever invested in. Do you think at some point, Claude is going to replace our podcast? It's going to be an agentic AI of drowsy talking to agentic AI of Bear while you and I are I don't know, gardening or doing some research. Or all podcasts. Maybe there won't be podcasts or podcasts apps or, I don't know, microphones. At some point, Anthropics is going to come out with a new product and it's going to have the letters POD in it. And next thing you know, I'm going to try to log in to do an episode with you and it's just not going to let us. We're going to be locked out from Terminator, but all all our good is our password on our I don't know if it's good enough to beat this new Anthropic code, the new Anthropic model that they're neither releasing that allegedly found zero day exploits throughout the internet and sent all cybersecurity stocks, including my prized crowd strike down between 15 to 18% in the last two days, it's been quite painful. Yeah, so maybe we delve right into our first topic, which is fast growing stocks that are cheap and maybe even not as fast growing stocks that are just completely left for dead, but also like some stocks that are growing or compounding like a Mally or a sea limited trading it reasonably similar valuations to stocks that aren't growing and to stocks that are like CREDO growing it 200%. So CREDO catching a bit of a bid today, but still I've been sort of flabbergasted by how likely I could tell a story about valuation that kind of makes sense with the growth and all the other stuff. So like, let's just take rubric because that's still unfortunately my top position, even though I have not been adding to that. In fact, I've kind of trimmed off pretty much most of what I have added in this year through the year. I don't know if you remember in January, everything started to get crushed and rubric was down 25 or 30%. That whole period of time, I'm sure it ended in January at like $55. I was like 45 or less, but let's just say all in that valuation range of 45 to 55, I've been adding and trimming and adding and trimming and I think I'm about net neutral. I don't think I've made any money with all the adding and trimming, but the price is at the bottom of the range. So that makes sense. Typically, when the price is at the bottom of the range, I would be adding because if I believed in the company, if I believed in the story, if I believed in the fact that the valuation was going to at some point, be again what I happily paid last year, then this would be the perfect time to add. I mean, it's that old phrase of like if you bought it at this price, how about 25% left 95 or 100? What does that all say? Warren Buffett won, right? He's like, I like hamburgers, especially when they cost less or something. I'm probably blushing that. Yeah, exactly. I will say with rubric, I didn't really love it at $95 and $100. And actually, I got down to like a 2% position in it when I got over 100 because I just trimmed so much, but then I, you know, I was back up to, you know, I don't know what it was 7%, 8% at the beginning of the year. So it would be like a, anyway, I wouldn't have to get into portfolios, but I guess what I'm trying to say is if it was a sort of already profitable, I felt like the growth was locked in at 35% plus. It would be easy to sort of do the math and say this is undervalued. Unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of question marks about growth now all of a sudden and I don't know how legitimate they are. There's the fact that they're not yet profitable, at least not consistently. And so it's like, well, I can't just put a multiple on that. We have to say, well, we think because they're so similar to other companies with 25%, 30% profit margins that that's going to happen at some point. It certainly seems plausible to me, but that is something we have to say. And so when I look at these, when I look at rubric specifically, I have to go, well, I can see why it's down. I can see why it's still not classically cheap because there's nothing I can anchor to to it is say, I can say that the price of sales ratio is like below 8 now, which is pretty a story below. The growth stock is unbelievable. But you know, you want to say you guys are what Monday's is? I mean, I mean, we spend so much time on Monday over the years and to see its demise kind of right now is it's a weird feeling to be honest. This one was so in love and we've spent, I mean, five years, I said, five plus years exploring following, reading about and then just to see it kind of implode like this. And again, you know, I'm being too slow going through this. So I haven't gotten to like Mercado Libre and the differences there. But like with Monday, the question, I mean, it's still growing. It's still revenue is still growing. But profits aren't. And so this is where I was going to bring in Mercado Libre and see Lemme say we talked a little bit about this. But like, what do you do when the company's still growing revenue? But they say, oh, profits are going to be flat for a while. It's like the kiss of death there for it's some of these stocks. It's pretty painful because it's like, well, I mean, I'm more than willing to invest in companies that are not profitable yet. But then once you become profitable and growth starts to slow, like that's what investors want. And so for Monday, you know, just to answer my question from before their price is sales ratio is 2.5. And they've got like a billion dollars of cash, net cash. So it's just insane how cheap. So the question is, rubric at eight or 7.5, is it cheap? And I don't really, if I could tell you that the growth was going to be what I think it is and the profits were going to go in the direction that I think they are, then I'd be like, yes, it's at least fairly valued if not cheap. But. And this is what we face. I mean, to take just a macro step up, this is what we face throughout these growth stocks right now. Is their growth going to persist? And you could easily, it's one tweet away from anthropic saying they created a product, it's one tweet away from, you know what, our seat-based pay model is just not working out anymore. We need to adjust our, the way we intake money. I mean, I don't know, I mean, rubric, I don't know a year ago, that was a pretty safe bet. Growth is going to probably be about the same. It's pretty measurable. I mean, with all these SaaS companies, but rubric in particular, I felt pretty strongly it was going to maintain. And nothing really substantive has been said on conference calls or actual facts have erupted or emerged. Exactly. Nothing has changed. But as far as everything has changed. Correct. The growth, the growth reported for the Q4 was great and that ended in January. So there are two thirds of the way plus through this next quarter. As far as we know, the numbers are fine. Correct. And everything seems to have changed for, you know, with the narrative for sure. Correct. And going back to, before we go into Mercado, Librarian, C-Limitip, but going back to like Credo and some of those others, like Credo and Starlabs, both kind of AI infrastructure plays, micron at absurdly cheap by every metric, price earnings in the low single to mid-single digits, which for a company that's gone, hockey stick vertical is just incredible. And everything structurally in 10Ks and quarterlies in earnings, it all backs up the growth yet on any given week, any given day, it can fall 20%. And there's still a big question can they keep it up? So it's, I mean, you're shooting in the dark a bit, despite having all the same amount of information you would have had pretty much six years ago or 15 years ago. I mean, since the internet since having kind of dispersed
access to all this information and it just makes it so freaking hard. I mean, and to even one step and I said this last show as well with, um, with Tim of like the stocks that worked for so long aren't working anymore. Yet all their foundation, all their foundational information, all their report reporting generally is pretty good. It is literally hair pulling the dichotomy of what's going on to what has worked our entire best. I mean, you're, you're a lot older than I am. So you're 80 years investing my 15 or so. I mean, it's just, it's mind numbing. It is. And you know, it kind of is, it's, it's a reminder of what we are doing when we, you know, decide to pay a certain price for a company. And that, you know, that is we are paying for the future. We're paying for what we hope the future is going to be and what the market is willing to say the future is going to be. And we're hoping that we're right and it's going to be better. And when I look at everything right now that, you know, is being sold off, mainly software, even look at something like Palantir, you know, I was not willing to say that the market was right about how long that would grow or whatever that was, where were that multiple was coming from. And now that it's down, you know, 25% year today and then probably some in the last few months of 2025. I mean, the market's starting to agree with me. So it's like, we shouldn't be that surprised. It's just the fact is it's happening in conjunction with every other company. Some of which you have to think they're not all going to, you know, die. Right. So it's just, well, yeah, that's the bet. It's sort of like, is this one company going to die? I'm not sure, but our 15 leaders going to die. I don't know. And then to timestamp where we are and just maybe this is a great timestamp in our society here, modern history, the president just tweeted about Palantir calling it an amazing company and a integral to the US military. And that's all fine and good. I have a list of about 15 other stocks. He needs to do that. I'm sorry. Did he get a price target? He didn't, but essentially, he was saying it was undervalued. But I've, I have a list of these overweighed stocks that he needs to write about. He's, well, I mean, so is the military, but I need to say to him. I'm afraid of the failure. Yeah, exactly. And Vidya, how about in Vitt and Crowd Strike? I really could use some help here. Axon, the foundation of our law enforcement, you think he could tweet about that. It's just incredible. So again, we're, we're taping this Friday afternoon just so people don't think we're insane talking about a tweet from 24 hours ago, which might as well be six weeks ago. And, and going back, you just don't know how long some of this is going to last. And it's really tough. There's no other way around it. And even, even narratives like the AI trade is back on today and Friday. We're seeing a star labs up 10%. We're seeing credo. We're seeing all the AI infrastructure plays the sterling infrastructures, the John Ratanti ETF of infrastructure plays up big today. And it's great to see it wasn't that way earlier this week. And SaaS is just in the dumps. And we're starting earning seasons. And I'm not sure what exactly is going to get us out of this funk because at any moment and through it comes in with the grim reaper. And it's just that mean going door to door of next industry. And how we're playing it. And I'm curious how you've thought about this. I, I've added to credo. We're getting a little bit into portfolio. That's fine. Well, we'll meander for a sec. I've added to credo. I think if I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather be wrong with the numbers I have now, which are video game numbers growth and evaluation that I don't know if it makes total sense, but I feel the risk reward of this company is in my favor, even if there's this big question mark of what happens with the AI play. Again, I'm relying kind of that context, the context of in video and TSCM, where TSM and all these other companies are crushing it, telling us the AI trade is on, the AI infrastructure build out is on credo's main part of that. Stereolabs is the main part of that. So I feel kind of confident in that. And their numbers are pretty insane. Credo a little bit more so than the stair labs, but I've actually added to my credo position while just holding the stair labs and all these other high growth as if I'm going to be wrong. I'd rather be wrong in this than trying to pick the next winner or trying to do something that's not us, you know, find like a slow grower that maybe is a little safer, but then again, no one is safe in this environment. And I think just embracing that. Yeah. No, I really like that. I like what you put it to. It's like, if I'm going to be wrong, I'll be wrong betting on the one that's just grew, you know, 200% year over year. And it is also like this was kind of what I was trying to say earlier and I'll keep it short because I was getting a little long wind in, but I mean, credo's forward price to earnings is like somewhere in the 20s. I mean, price to earnings. So like credo is not expensive. Credo, I mean, based on like a reasonable P credo is like about like the rest of the S&P 500, maybe a little higher, but it just grew at 200%. And so, you know, you don't have to say everything I was saying about rubric where it's like, okay, we think that the E can get there. We think that they can have earnings and be profitable. And then we think that the growth is going to be great for longer, you know, they're going to grow 30% for the next several years. So all these things happen to have to happen for credo to be even nearly as good a bet as, I'm sorry, for rubric to be nearly as good a bet as credo just plainly is, you know, so yeah, credo is now just about tied with rubric as is my top position. Hinge health is still up there too. Hinge health, the number that I just threw out for credo, Hinge health is there forward P is below 20. So unless that business takes a turn that's unexpected, it's cheaper than most in the S&P 500. Claude, Claude plus robot equal physical therapist is the only is the only way anthropocryon just rough. Of course, I mean, you can kind of say that like we were joking about that, you know, they're just going to replace our podcast and all podcasts. And I mean, there's nothing that you can't really say that about. And the question is, what are you going to do about it? And so in addition to not like, how could you have much conviction in this time about about anything? So in addition to not adding to my top positions, like, you know, or not adding to rubric, which was my top position, I haven't really added to Hinge health either. But in turn, adding to credo and the things that are growing way faster and are just as cheaper cheaper. I think just sort of a flatness overall strikes me as reasonable. You know, like I got read it back. It's back up to, you know, three percent or so. I trimmed it when it went up to $150 and I added back, you know, it came back down. And to me, it's just like, I just, I don't want to have any outsized positions. I want to give anything a chance. Like credo was up 13% today. I, Sarah Labs was up like 16 or something. We're recording. I haven't looked at the end of the day here on, on Friday. But I mean, you know, like, what is that? Should that be the case, you know, like I said, Sarah Labs looks a little bit. Expensive. Credo still looks cheap, but it got crazy cheap. It was down to like $90 a year. So it's, you know, which, which is, I guess I just, I'm, you know, did I even trimmed credo a little bit today because I'm just like, well, I just bought some at 90. I'm going to, I'm going to take a little. I mean, and this is, I mean, and maybe this is the title of our episode, but this is just trench warfare, basically. You should, I mean, this kind of marker, you should take it pop 13%. You should take some off the tape. It's not guaranteed. It's going up anytime soon. And the AI trade can come on and off as quickly as possible. Well, that's, that's exactly what I was saying is like, why was it down to 90? Why is it now up on a random seemingly random day where, okay, I stuff is catching a bit. I saw that Nebius was up a bunch to and iron is up. Celestica's up pretty big too. But what, you know, who's to say what's going to happen to the next day and why, why shouldn't this reverse itself every other day? So, you know, for the day or twenty today, Crito finished at 120 today. So there's a 30% pop basically. Yeah. I mean, I, this is the case for adding and trimming for sure. So let's, let's, let's change gears just slightly. So moving away from kind of the high growth bear. So we both like sea limited. We both like Mercado Libre, Mellie, both are in the e-commerce world. Both are experiencing some pretty strong growth and some pretty strong hatred from investors at the same time. So how are you approaching it and what are you doing with your whole things? So these two, um, I kind of was trying to plump them in with Monday, which probably isn't fair because, you know, we have real reasons to worry about Monday, which is essentially sea limited and Mercado Libre they have to have modes. I don't know much about modes. I'm not a mode expert. I don't like to use the term because I don't know to your mode expert with like buoyancy and like, should we include alligators or other trench. Yeah, I'm a huge bridge or something. Yeah, I'm not a mode expert. Maybe.
That's the title of the episode. I mean, weren't. Yeah, I'm not a much more fair and mode X and yeah, not non mode experts. This is great. Oh, man. Um, well, I kind of lost my train. I thought they're not a mode. Is it they have modes? But I would say those two, if anything has a mode, it's those in Amazon. Right? I mean, that's just like, they, there's so much that they did to build their business. They, they, and still are doing and spending and, but that's the reason that profits have never been amazing. And so it's like, you know, nobody's really coming for your business for your 5% margins. You know, it's like you can, you can stop building the mode even even better. But, but no, I mean, that, that's just kind of where these companies tend to live in the single digit profit margins. And so, especially when they're saying, we're not even going to eke out a little bit more next year. We're going to keep it completely flat. It's a little hard for me to get super excited about adding to these. So I'm kind of holding and I've even, I had added to McHenryl Libre and I kind of pulled that back off at no gain, maybe even, you know, maybe even a loss. But basically just why did I add so much? I just kind of rethought it and said, you know, these are, these are great holds. I wouldn't argue with anybody for having a larger position in either of them. It's just what's going to change over the course of the next year. And, you know, they are priced for a small margin. You know, they both have price to sales ratios close to where Monday's is, you know, 2.5, you know, something like that. So that's, that's pretty attractive. You know, if you have a company that's like not only growing revenue is amazingly as they have been, but like also growing profit. But like, you know, I don't know all the dynamics there, but you'd really like to see them just be consistent about growing profit at this, at this point in their, their lifecycle. Yeah, totally. And I mean, a lot of, a lot of investors are cutting them slack and you'd like to see them investing for the long term and, and maintaining that mode again. We're not mode experts. So I mean, I like that I, I would like to think that they could flip on a switch at some point and start heading down a profitability route. I also, and it's weird to kind of think about, but just the fact that they have factories and maybe not warehouses and infrastructure is a physical moat. And I'm not even talking about the network effect or the snap test in Latin America or something like that. And just like you can't really replace big factories that easier, big warehouses that easy. And I'm not even talking automation. I'm just talking buildings compared to cloud snaps is finger right now or anthropic Daria, I'm a day snaps is finger and instantly a trillion dollars of market cap and one sector is gone. I don't think that that works with these guys, but also I think you're right. It doesn't make them necessarily the most attractive short term option out there. I'm still holding both mine. See limited in particular is really painful for me. I bought way too high way too much and I'm just sitting in a big kind of red L right now with that one. But I think they're going in the right direction and I don't see a short term catalyst and I'm also scared for what other industry to try to find right now. There's just no shelter. The the trench is pretty shallow right now. I think I think Mercado Libre if I had to pick one I think would be that one over sea limited and I think or Amazon well Amazon is the next Amazon with what they were talking about chip sales saying it's a $50 billion untapped to run rate, which is incredible. So Amazon Mercado Libre sea limited would be my order I suppose. Why don't why don't we switch gears to portfolios. I think I went first last time and when I find out I'm not tripling you on the cry so to avoid crying on prime time I'd rather you go first this time. Okay, well I won't bury the lead. I'm down 9.5% on the year. So I could see by your reaction that you're not tripling me. I don't even know what it would mean for you to be tripling me at this point. If you're down 3% would you be that would be it. Yeah, well, okay, we're not math experts. What are we? Yeah, except we don't know modes. We don't know math. Yeah, those are podcasts have a mode. Yeah, there's we got lots we need to find that out. Maybe we get sponsored by an option. Yeah, episode name. So I kind of already alluded to well, first of all, I just have to say largest position by a landslide is just S&P 500 and you know it's it's my best performing. It's one of my best performing positions this month for sure it's you know actually up and most or certainly a lot of things are down or not up much. I think I've got rubric credo and hench health are all between six and seven percent. So a little bit down from the you know having rubric, you know flirt with double digits. And but you know very, very much leading the way I've got app love and just under 5% figure tech is still at 4%. So far is actually up to 3.4%. Melly and tell me about so far. What are you seeing in so far? That's a that's a new name. Yeah, so far we haven't talked about that much. So I'm glad you asked, but it's forward price to earnings, which is based on earnings number of like 61 cents or something that I think they can beat handily is also mid 20s. So I think that's just this just like credo or just like app love and is right there too. So I see all those companies is like pretty long term attractive. That's sort of where I start looking because it's like 25 let's just say is a price to earnings not much higher than the S&P 500. So it's like to what I prefer if do I prefer this company to Amazon when it comes to growth and what I think you know like yeah they're going to grow faster than Amazon you know I think you know unless they go away completely. But I mean it certainly seems like so far you know like what I don't think I don't think I'm a thropic is coming for like banks yet. Yeah, maybe yeah. Maybe that's the next thing I over lords. Yeah. So it's just one of those where I feel like it's attractively priced and it's one of those in the range that to me seems reasonable and right behind it. I didn't realize it had passed these but I have maca libra and see limits it. They're both also about 3% and reddit is about 3%. So like I said it's just kind of the the smoothing out of the portfolio because I don't really want to have a higher conviction than I actually have in any of my favorites and I see a case for all of these that's the thing it's like and maybe this was a point that I did or didn't make earlier in the podcast but like because everything is kind of coming down or you know a lot of companies that were interested in are coming down in tandem. And I think the ones that we think or used to think at least we're going to grow for longer even if the growth rate is not super high those are looking more attractive you know. Palantir is looking more attractive is still not I'm not ready to go there. We're one tweet away from 200 again so. Actually I did this won't this is one of my like sub one percent positions but actually bought a little slug of cloud flare just because it had been come down 20 or like 15% yesterday another 10 or 15% down 20 plus and two days yeah. So I just thought hey it's a company I like and you know what's a half a percent position hopefully it falls another 50% and I can actually have build a real position but like yes it's crazy expensive right now but yeah that and Monday and oh I'm sorry I didn't finish so after reddit and the other 3% positions you want to guess what's next it's going to be axon yes it's got to be axon yes it's up it's up to be 4% okay and and honestly I'm looking I'm looking at it. I'm looking at if it keeps falling I think it's it's at least back to reasonably price and I want to ask you this question and I mean there and I aren't going to broadcast our cards quite yet but the stock based compensation question every time axon drops every time over the last 10 years that I've been following it the first thing everyone tweets is stock based compensation how can you. Invest in a company that is handing out stock options like candy so I'm curious from your more qualitative not qualitative quantitative background what do you think on that. I mean you know I look back and from the end of 20 to 22 to now there I just take a number you know three years ago there share count has gone from like those 70s to 70 million 73 million something like that to now it's.
at like 83 million. So you know, what I, is that my preference? No, I mean, that's not like they're, they're giving away, you know, a slug of the company, but is it, does it change anything? Like, what about, what about the fact that he was, it was $850 a share and now it's 350, you know, like I think that does more for me. So I'm, I don't worry about the things that I can't control. If I think measurements being stupid, I'll say it, but I honestly just feel like they're doing what companies do. I haven't compared those numbers exactly to what others do, but I know that they're not completely dissimilar and trajectory. They're directionally the same as every other tech company or every other company, really, that, that, that isn't in the generating cash, not growing much and, you know, giving it back to shareholders phase. So growth companies, a lot of times do that and it's not something that I am hung up on. And I mean, same, same for me and as long as they match their over the next three years, 30% growth and their trajectory of 20% growth for years to come, they're, to me, they're spending that money pretty wisely to invest in the best people, to have the right people there to take them to the next level. Now, if that peters off quickly, I think you can really start to question and that just is gasoline on a fire, but until then I'm not too worried. I think there's other flags, other red flags that we want to look for rather than this. So you were saying axons at 2% or so, which again allows us to still be friends, which is nice. I like you. So that's good. Only the real position is stair labs at 2.1. And then, you know, all the other old ones plus cloud flare and a couple other new ones are 1%-ish or below. So no reason to go through any of those. I've already been long-winded enough, but hey, down less than 10% in this crazy year, I'll take it. I mean, most of my positions are down 40. So the S&P 500 has been a boon. You know, trading has been very good to me because it's like, you know, the good opportunities where something's, you know, goes from 90 to 120 in a week's time, like CREDO did. But still not a great year. Still a tough environment, especially with the stocks that we like. And S&P, as we're taping today, is down less than 1%. So if you're listening to us, both of us are underperforming the market pretty, pretty handly right now. But I actually, a good buddy of mine tweeted me earlier to check in. And basically, you don't capture the crazy upsides that you've seen without some crazy volatility too. And I think it's always good to remember. And sure as we get older, and you weigh older than me, we start to kind of even out no chocolate. That's fine. We start to even out the volatility and maybe pull some from the market and try to manage it a little bit better than we did in 2022 when we were down, I was down 40%. And some friends of ours were down 60 and 70 and 80%. So this is all part of the game. So in true game fashion, so you are down 9 plus I'm down about 15. So you are beating me by some amount of math that will never know the final answer to, which doesn't feel great. And I was certainly down closer to 20 until more recently when Nvidia spiked the last few days. It's like quite a week. That's it's finally getting some love it deserves. And I still think we go a lot higher. So Microsoft and Tesla now dragging down the mags. Yeah. And Microsoft, like it's kind of crazy. You could put Microsoft in the same category as credo as like kind of makes sense. The numbers are really good. And it's fallen 40%. If you told me Azure was going to reaccelerate to like 40% growth. And then Microsoft was going to drop 150 points. Yeah. I'd be like, I mean, it's a pretty, I mean, I have a Microsoft position that haven't touched. But risk reward seems you could do a lot worse than betting on Microsoft right now. Well, I've got a lot of all those things to the S&P 500. Okay. You're vegetables. Yeah. So Nvidia right now is 95% of your portfolio. It's currently about 44%. It's probably yeah. Maybe one day we'll do cameras on. But right now, bear has run out of the screen. He's probably run to the bathroom in shock and off what he just heard. 44%. I haven't touched it. That's high. An upset about that one moving. I was just saying about not wanting to like, yeah, so you're going 3% 3% I'm like, hold my breath. Is going to a little up there for me. 44%. Yeah. Yeah. Golly. That's the only thing that you own that's up. So yeah. And I haven't really touched it. So it's really just riding the market. My next one is Axon, which is down from about 17% starting this year to about 11%. This one hurts. Yeah. We'll do some more exploration to Axon at some point. But the fundamentals still look good. I still think, you know, Claude and all these other things can disrupt the SaaS market. Certainly they have a SaaS part of their business that's growing really fast. I think regulations and law enforcement and all sorts of other stuff given an extra mode on top of its already great product and customer service and reputation and all this other stuff in ecosystem and pricing power. So I still feel fine about Axon even as it kind of hangs out in the wind right now. Ready for this? I mean, oh, yeah. It's clearly at least in the last several days, gotten extra lumped in with software, which is kind of crazy. But 40% it's down 40% here today. And that's that's a good software company these days. So like just for the record, I looked at this this morning, Atlassian, you know, what kind of one of the older great one of the original. They were like, Viva and like those that have been around for a long time. Service now even I would lump it in with it's down 65% you're like, God 65. It's down more than Monday. And I just I feel like years ago, are you even on it? Probably no, definitely not. In fact, five years ago is probably near. It's all it's it's down like, I don't know, I didn't look, but I would guess 90% from it's all time. I mean, it was over 400 dollars of shares, something like that. It's 57 right now. Holy I wasn't following any of this. If you've owned Atlassian for five years from today, you're down 75%. Oh my God. Yeah, it's disaster. But I don't know, just just I guess the the point is here, you know, it's never about getting the safe company because very I mean, unless you're talking mag seven, there are not that many out there that you can just say, we've won the game game over. We're just going to cruise from here on out and do what Apple did since they hit a trillion, you know, like, which is which is fine, but it's just like, you know, at some point you reach that end stage. And if you're if you're not rock solid with your numbers, you know, you there's so much risk built in when that growth dies. Totally. My number three right now is Amazon after the surge. Amazon's up to 11% position. So it passed crowd strike. Wow. Past crowd star like and it's striking distance of ax on now, which is kind of crazy. I've owned I've owned Amazon since 2013. It did nothing. Obviously from 2015. Okay, maybe I'm being a little facetious. Twenty twenty twenty. Yeah, to 2025. Pretty much. It's done nothing. And we've had lots of chances to add in the last year or so. True. I added a little bit over the years, but this one's just been hanging out. Crowd strikes at 10% Mercado Libre is at 7% and then just a drop off of others. The only big moves I made this month were I sold out of Zscaler for the first time since buying in 2018. A little painful. Honestly, I still think the company is a key part of the cyber ecosystem. I kind of two part are I wanted to use the money for life stuff. So that's always a good I mean, it's winning. That's why we're doing this. The other part was I'm already pretty exposed to the cyber security. Claude Apocalypse going on right now with crowd strike. And if I had to pick one, I'd rather be crowd strike hanging out and being part of the AI cyber security ecosystem. Then Zscaler a little bit. It's a smaller position. They're not profitable. There's some hiccups in the story, although it's still pretty good. So I thought that was a good candidate to sell. And then the other one I had was Credo. Credo was a possibly have sold any of your Nvidia, right? Had to sell Zscaler instead. Sorry. So I couldn't resist. Yeah, I didn't didn't cross my mind much. I guess I golly gee, I guess I could. And then I added to Credo in the 90s. I just thought that was not a doubled my position.
position overall, but if I'm gonna go down, I'd rather go down swinging with the hottest growth stock down that much. Um, 24% in a video. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, I'm done. I'm done. Well, you're just, it's just a fact. You're not even picking up the 95 earlier was. Um, uh, I love that you're like, I sold my 1.5% Z-skiller position to raise cash in the court. Correct. Um, so, uh, yeah, so that, that is it for me. So I'm down 15 to 9, um, with enough support out there. Maybe I'll come back and beat bear, but right now it's not good. Um, I think any, any other kind of parting words, uh, for today, for folks to hang on. Well, uh, I said I wouldn't say anything else about Nvidia, but, uh, that's, that's probably what's gonna drive the answer to that question. I don't know, I don't know that I have any further comment. Uh, I do, you know, my whatever percent of Nvidia I own through the S&P 500 is not gonna keep me up with you. If it goes in the direction you want it to please. Jensen, use your magic 200 250, please. Um, I, yeah, uh, very, very true. Um, why don't, uh, we'll just tease out a little bit. Bear and I have some pretty cool stuff coming up for the pod. Um, got some crossover episodes. We've got some new guests. We've got some returning guests. Um, lots of good stuff ahead for shooting the bull pod. So we hope everyone can continue to kind of hang with us. Let us know if you have ideas for future episodes or topics you want us to hit. We always love talking to you. We've had some really good emails and really good suggestions from folks. We're always up to kind of return emails and chat about different stocks. Um, so with that, I think we're good. I'm almost beating you, but not quite there yet. The fans want it. We'll get there. And, um, I think that's it for me. You want to do sign off? Uh, you're much better. I'll just say thanks. Thanks for listening and, uh, this, yeah, I like doing these sort of portfolio check-ins even when we don't actually do them at the end of the month. So this is, this, this works well. It's just going to hope everybody enjoyed it. Um, so again, thanks for listening. Uh, drowsy and bare out.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The hosts discuss the challenging market environment for growth stocks, highlighting volatility and uncertainty despite strong fundamentals in some companies.
They analyze specific stocks like Rubrik, Credo, and Monday.com, noting discrepancies between growth metrics, profitability, and current valuations.
Concerns are raised about the impact of AI advancements and market narratives on stock performance, with examples like Palantir and cybersecurity stocks.
Investment strategies are debated, including trimming or adding to positions based on valuation ranges and growth prospects, emphasizing risk management in a turbulent market.
The conversation touches on broader themes like the difficulty of predicting future performance and the psychological aspects of investing during downturns.
Summary:
In this episode, the hosts explore the current struggles of growth stocks in a volatile market. They express frustration with investments like Rubrik, where growth uncertainty and lack of profitability make valuation difficult, despite a low price-to-sales ratio. com, which faces profit stagnation despite revenue growth, and Credo, which shows explosive growth but remains subject to market swings.
The discussion highlights how AI developments and shifting narratives can rapidly affect stock prices, as seen with cybersecurity stocks like CrowdStrike. Investment tactics include cautious trimming and adding to positions based on risk-reward assessments, with a focus on high-growth companies like Credo when fundamentals align. The hosts also reflect on the psychological challenges of investing, emphasizing that market downturns test conviction and require adaptability.
Overall, they underscore the difficulty of navigating a market where even strong fundamentals may not prevent sharp declines, advocating for balanced portfolios and strategic patience amid uncertainty.
FAQs
Listeners can email the hosts at Shootin' the Bull Pod 2025 at gmail.com, reach out on Twitter at Investing_Bair or drowsyinvestor.com.
The hosts humorously speculate that AI could replace podcasts, with agentic AIs of themselves hosting while they pursue other activities, but they view it as an uncertain future development.
They discuss adding and trimming positions based on price ranges and valuation, but note challenges when growth is uncertain and profitability isn't consistent, making it hard to anchor to classic metrics.
Credo is highlighted for its high growth (e.g., 200% year-over-year) and reasonable valuations, with the hosts favoring its risk-reward profile as part of the AI infrastructure trend.
They note that while these companies show revenue growth, flat or declining profits can be a concern, leading to cheap valuations (e.g., low price-to-sales ratios) but requiring careful assessment of future profit trajectories.
They advocate for a balanced approach, adding to faster-growing, cheaper stocks like Credo while trimming or holding positions in others, avoiding outsized bets and embracing flexibility in volatile conditions.
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