Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, were all the rage in 2017. Bitcoin went from around $1k to a peak of around $20k during 2017 before the bottom fell out and it proceeded to lose around 80% of its value in 2018. Entering 2019 it was above its 2018 lows but still hanging out below $4k and the past few months have seen another resurgence as bitcoin is currently sitting around $11k.
Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Shopify (SHOP), a company I scored late last year. At the time it was an Enterprise level holding in the Freedom Portfolio. That was before the stock price went absolutely bonkers in 2019.
I recently turned 38. That isn’t particularly remarkable in itself, but for some reason this number and the approach to it, have left me having more of a midlife crisis than I would ever have thought possible for myself. Now, this is still far from a “Homer Simpson-style” midlife panic, but it has led to some serious introspection. And given that I am already prone to serious introspection on the…
One of my hopes when I created Paul vs The Market was that I could use it as a teaching tool. This article is part of that goal. My intention is to write a three part series where I do my best to explain the basics of investing in the stock market and why I think it’s so important.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The theme for 2019 builds on the 4Mind4Body theme from 2018, and includes an emphasis on spirituality and religion. One of the previous themes was “Live Your Life Well” which encouraged people to take responsibility for the prevention of mental health issues and informed the public that many mental health problems can be avoided by making positive lifestyle choices in the ways we act…
Two Freedom Portfolio holdings made news last night and this morning: Twitter (TWTR) and Tesla (TSLA). Here are some quick thoughts on each.
Netflix (NFLX) announced their Q1 numbers yesterday, and there was a lot to like. It’s especially nice to see them continue to beat expectations on subscriber growth despite a price increase in the United States. Similarly, the revenue increase was impressive considering the strong dollar has been pressuring their international revenue (reported in dollars). Nearly 60% of Netflix’s paid subscribers are international now, and as you can see above, that’s also where most of their growth is coming from. As time goes on, the strength of the dollar will play a bigger and bigger role in Netflix’s revenue.
Disney (DIS) is up huge today (and nearing an all-time high) the morning after holding their investor day, where they unveiled not only a ton of information about their upcoming streaming services, but also new content that they are producing for those services. There had already been a plethora of rumors surrounding much of the new content, so there weren’t a ton of surprises there, but Disney still had a number of notable announcements.
The S&P 500 was up 14% this past quarter. The Freedom Portfolio? It was up 25%. Since inception (October 1st, 2018), the Freedom Portfolio is down 2% compared to the S&P 500 being down 3%. In other words, the Freedom Portfolio has won the Q1 2019 battle and is currently winning the war.
I chose to pre-order my latest video game fascination, Kingdom Hearts III, from Amazon. Like most games these days, there were competing pre-order bonuses from various retailers, and the Amazon bonus wasn’t that impressive, but I had no real desire for any of the others, either. So I chose the convenience of direct shipping to my house on release day, price match guarantee, and free shipping thanks to my Prime…