What did you trade today and why?

[neal1313]

It was a nice bounce. I pocketed $5500 this morning.

Nice..

 

[PaulR888]

Kinda of a sad day today for me as this is the last weekly youtube webcast by Consuelo Mack on wealthtrack.com. I've been looking forward to her webcasts for about 15 years now. Very classy, informative, hard-working lady. She will continue with a podcast format and I imagine my viewing will continue but be more sporadic. Here is her final webcast with David Giroux. David is obviously a star PM but I am surprised by some aspects of his strategy like mostly floating rate bonds and heavy equity bets. I always assumed he used probably a core+ bond strategy and not really making big equity bets but that is why he is a star PM and I am not.

The Essence of Superstar Investor David Giroux’s Investment Success - WealthTrack

Superstar investor David Giroux explains his evolution as an investor, how he is adapting to new market conditions, and the most important thing he has to do to generate exceptional returns at the T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Fund.

wealthtrack.com

Hope you enjoy,
Paul

 

[C-man23]

I had covered calls for yesterday on UNH @ $420, so it will be called away. Up over 40% in one year on that stock, so I am happy with letting it go. Going to take the proceeds and buy more META over the next week.

 

[Montecfo]

Why Meta C-man?

Good work on UNH.

 

[joesxm3]

This week I continued my BPTRX selling and am down to about 55% of what I had on SpaceX IPO day. Combined with the 400 SPCX shares I got at IPO that reduced my total SPCX holdings by about 20%. The Fidelity anti-flip lockup releases next Monday. I can sell my SPCX shares in my ROTH without a tax hit, but my remaining BPTRX are in taxable and I have accumulated enough AGI to be in sight of my planned 2026 maximum.

I have also been trying to diversify and have increased my DCA activity, adding the XLP consumer staples ETF and continuing to layer into emerging markets X China and developed non-US ETF's and commodity ETF's. My position in this stuff is still only 5% or 6% of total portfolio. my top 5 or 6 tech/AI stocks still make up about 20% of total portfolio.

 

[Semi-Retyrd]

As with any stock there is a bull case and a bear case with Microsoft. I'll try to summarize both.

Bull case:

80% of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft 365 to power their daily operations. Microsoft is so embedded in their businesses that it is impossible for them to switch. By adding AI capabilities to Microsoft 365 and changing the business model to add usage charges to seat charges Microsoft targets growth of earnings and revenue from this business at double digits. Their Windows OS dominates the PC (62% share) and laptop (73% share) market.

Microsoft's Azure cloud business has 85-95% penetration of the Fortune 500. This is the fastest growing portion of MSFT's business and is the driver behind their massive AI infrastructure investment expected to be $190B this year. Penetration of all businesses large and small is 25% with MSFT dominating the high end and AWS the mid-size and smaller businesses.

MSFT's vision for AI is to be a multi-LLM vendor offering varying price/performance choices that the user can pick from depending on their need. Hence they have made deals with all major LLM vendors.

Their expected Capex is large, but their operating cash flow is is larger giving them the opportunity to fund their growth without having to go to the debt markets. They are unique in this respect.

The results so far have been consistent double digit growth and earnings beats while maintaining their AAA debt rating. MSFT and Johnson & Johnson are the only companies with AAA ratings.

Price to sales (8.27 vs 11.66) and price to book (6.33 vs 11.34) vs 5 year average suggest extreme undervaluation.

Bear case:

Microsoft was late to the LLM market and their own work with Copilot has not been successful outside of Microsoft 365 and Windows applications. Some bears like Stifel claim this is fatal and they will never catch up.

While they can fund their AI infrastructure investments with operating cash flow the bears claim this will reduce their ROIC and operating margins.

Finally the bears claim major customers will want to deal directly with the LLM vendors rather than buying through MSFT shrinking the share of business going to MSFT. MSFT claims they will capture this business through cloud services they provide to the LLM vendors.

Bottom line - Sufficient fear has been spread regarding MSFT's future due their lack of a compelling internally developed LLM and large Capex plans that many have given up on the company crushing the near term stock price.

Most analysts don't subscribe to this fear while a few do.

IMO it will require several quarters of revenue and earnings beats to overcome this fear and MSFT's stock price may languish for the rest of this year. Full transparency - I am a MSFT investor expecting 70% appreciation over the next three years.

In this interview Bill Ackman explains why he recently opened a $2.1B position in Microsoft.

He is a high conviction investor with MSFT currently around 15% of their 12 stock portfolio.

 

[C-man23]

Why Meta C-man?

Good work on UNH.

Thanks, always luck involved. When I saw UNH get hammered, it seemed oversold and it paid off.

META seems to be similar to me. It is a money printing machine, but they have increased their CapEx. This is why it is dipping down. To me, you cut back on some of that AI CapEx, and profits bounce right back. I am ok with holding for a long time and buying more to average down (if needed). We will see how I do in a year

 

[Montecfo]

Thanks, always luck involved. When I saw UNH get hammered, it seemed oversold and it paid off.

META seems to be similar to me. It is a money printing machine, but they have increased their CapEx. This is why it is dipping down. To me, you cut back on some of that AI CapEx, and profits bounce right back. I am ok with holding for a long time and buying more to average down (if needed). We will see how I do in a year

I own quite a bit and it is cheap. It has some questions and potential headwinds from a possible secondary offering and of course the AI investment and strategy. Also some legal risk. But hard to find something with this much potential that is inexpensive.

Good luck to us both!

 

[Montecfo]

I trimmed some positions. Exited COCO after about a 70% gain over a few weeks. I think I may get a lower entry point.

Bought some USO and I do when oil ticks down. Also added to EQT on the nat gas strategy.

 

[joesxm3]

I had a dream about MSFT last night. I was watching some well respected rich smart guy on TV (exactly who is vague) and he was saying "Microsoft is a hard company to understand." "When you are giving a gift, you should always put a couple shares of MSFT in the bottom of the box."

 

[Flieger]

I own quite a bit and it is cheap.

META is cheap?

Flieger

 

[Qs Laptop]

I had a dream about MSFT last night. I was watching some well respected rich smart guy on TV (exactly who is vague) and he was saying "Microsoft is a hard company to understand." "When you are giving a gift, you should always put a couple shares of MSFT in the bottom of the box."

What kind of gift? A parakeet or a canary?

 

[Semi-Retyrd]

What kind of gift? A parakeet or a canary?

A Norwegian Blue parrot.

 

[Montecfo]

META is cheap?

Flieger

based on forward PE

 

[YellowSubmarine]

-UTF sold half of position in Roth @27.85, sell limit reached.

 

[Flieger]

Made a few adds today - waiting for more Divs tomorrow and will re-deploy:

Flieger

 

[PaulR888]

Made a few adds today - waiting for more Divs tomorrow and will re-deploy:

View attachment 64561

Flieger

I like your style, Flieger. I see "Income Portfolio Only" which tells me you have other portfolio(s) working for you not designed to give you 13% yield. I like the diversification, optionality and flexibility you have created. Bravo dude.

But tell me you don't bird dog when you receive the distributions each month. lol

 

[Flieger]

I like your style, Flieger. I see "Income Portfolio Only" which tells me you have other portfolio(s) working for you not designed to give you 13% yield. I like the diversification, optionality and flexibility you have created. Bravo dude.

But tell me you don't bird dog when you receive the distributions each month. lol

Yes, I have a short term and growth element to my overall portfolio. They are about 11% and 28% respectively. Will probably move to 15% and 25% soon.

Distributions are shown in the Income Investing Results - June thread

Flieger

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

This week I continued my BPTRX selling and am down to about 55% of what I had on SpaceX IPO day. Combined with the 400 SPCX shares I got at IPO that reduced my total SPCX holdings by about 20%. The Fidelity anti-flip lockup releases next Monday. I can sell my SPCX shares in my ROTH without a tax hit, but my remaining BPTRX are in taxable and I have accumulated enough AGI to be in sight of my planned 2026 maximum.

I have also been trying to diversify and have increased my DCA activity, adding the XLP consumer staples ETF and continuing to layer into emerging markets X China and developed non-US ETF's and commodity ETF's. My position in this stuff is still only 5% or 6% of total portfolio. my top 5 or 6 tech/AI stocks still make up about 20% of total portfolio.

re: Bolded above.

Closed out my 2 @ 170 July 2nd puts on SPCX this morning. Bought at $6.22/share, sold @ $14.44/share. Sold 100 of the 200 Fido SPCX IPO shares. Bought at $135, sold at $156.88. Still hold 100 SPCX (IPO, Fido) plus 13 IPO shares at Schwab. Had previously written a 250 July 17th call on the fido shares, sold at $11.99/share, bought (to close) at $6.41.

I'm undecided on the remaining 100 Fido shares. If I do sell them, I will likely keep the 13 shares at Schwab just so it stays in my attention.

 

[joesxm3]

After doing the books this weekend it seems I have about $85,000 of SPCX or equivalent. Similar positions I have are GOOG, PLTR and MU. I like to keep these about $100,000 more or less.

At this point I am leaning toward sitting pat, pr maybe selling some BPTRX and adding a little SPCX, although I don't want to push my AGI much higher. I am targeting $134,000 AGI and I have about $95,000 already and six months left to go (i.e. $8000 to $10,000 T-Bill interest coming in).

I suppose I could simulate selling BPTRX by sitting pat and selling a little TSLA in my ROTH, but Lars from Tesla teased some sort of announcement coming om July 7th.

 

[junkanoo]

Sold half my IPO allocation of SPCX. 100 shares. I have ST losses to offset.

 

[Karner Blue]

Trimmed green lots in GOF and PDI.
Added small amount to YYY

Was that you trimming YYY around 2 PM ? : )

 

[joesxm3]

Sold half my IPO allocation of SPCX. 100 shares. I have ST losses to offset.

I guess the Fidelity no-flip lockup crash was not as large as expected since SPCX is up 7% today.

I decided to sit pat, having reduced my SPCX exposure by 20% over the past two weeks.

 

[NW-Bound]

I collected $4420 from selling 7 covered calls and 2 cash-secured puts, all OTM as usual.

 

[COcheesehead]

Was that you trimming YYY around 2 PM ? : )

I haven’t sold any of it yet.