Author: Paul Essen

There were two interesting pieces of news for Disney (DIS) this week. The first was that Disney is supposedly in talks with AT&T (T) to buy out the latter’s 10% stake in Hulu. Disney currently owns 30% of Hulu, and once the Fox acquisition goes through, will own another 30%, giving them 60% total. Comcast (CMCSA) owns the remaining 30% of Hulu. Getting another 10% of Hulu when they are already on track to own a majority might not seem like a huge deal, but I believe it shows that Disney is serious about building up Hulu as a contender in the streaming video wars.

Redfin (RDFN) is a Serenity level holding in the Freedom Portfolio, and it holds a special place in my heart. About a year and a half ago I decided I wanted to get more serious about investing and to start really digging into companies, reading their earnings reports, listening to the earnings calls, and reading up on what other analysts were looking at. Redfin (named for “Real Estate Redefined”) was the first company that I decided to try it with and so even though it’s only a Serenity level holding, I still find myself rooting for it harder than I do for some of my larger positions.

Netflix (NFLX) is one of the most polarizing positions in the Freedom Portfolio for me. As I’ve mentioned before, despite being an early believer in the company and despite it being my biggest winner by almost any metric, it’s also indisputably my biggest investing mistake. Those 610 shares that I owned in 2004 would be worth (after splits) nearly $1.5 million dollars had I held onto them until now. In other words, I might’ve been able to retire by now had I simply not touched those shares for 15 years.

Twitter (TWTR) is a Serenity level holding in the Freedom Portfolio. They released fourth quarter earnings Thursday morning and the market’s reaction is a great example of why I prefer buying and holding for the long term and not worrying about short term fluctuations. Like Amazon (AMZN) recently, Twitter reported what looked to be a great quarter which beat expectations, yet dropped the next day for reasons I don’t fully understand.

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) is a Serenity level position in the Freedom Portfolio (one of the many). It’s a leading provider of robotic surgical systems, which help to increase the number of minimally invasive surgeries, which in turn “results in fewer complications, shorter length of hospital stay, a trend toward lower mortality and a trend toward more effective removal of cancer when compared with open surgery”.

It has been a rough 3-4 months for the market in general, but especially for Activision Blizzard. They’ve lost not just one, but two CFO’s. Their latest earnings report showed some troubling trends with their engagement numbers. The normally universally beloved and unassailable Blizzard encountered some pretty strong negative reaction to the announcement of Diablo: Immortal. Blizzard has also seem some talent leaving along with some formerly popular games nearing the end of their life. At the same time, there’s been precious little good news to offset all of the bad.