Redfin – Revolutionizing the Home Buying Process

February 21, 2019

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.

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Is Netflix Must See TV?

February 14, 2019

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.

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Twitter’s Impact Doesn’t Match its Market Cap

February 8, 2019

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.

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What do Razors and Blades have to do with Investing?

January 29, 2019

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”.

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Fantasy Investing – My 2019 Portfolio

January 13, 2019

The 2019 Fantasy Investing season is underway and we’ve already had a fast start out of the gate with a few portfolios already seeing double digit gains. If only I had decided to start the Freedom Portfolio now instead of 3 months ago…

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Activision Loses its Destiny

January 11, 2019

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.

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The Freedom Portfolio – January 2019

January 2, 2019

Ouch. It’s hard to think of any other way of describing the start to the Freedom Portfolio. It’s also hard to think of a better way of describing the performance of the stock market over the past month. As of the time of this writing, the all-time high for the S&P 500 was September 20th, 2018. That was about a week and a half before the official start of me tracking the performance of the Freedom Portfolio. I couldn’t have picked a worse starting time if I tried.

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Recklessly Bold Predictions for 2019

December 20, 2018

I enjoy investing and think it’s a lot of fun, but sometimes responsibly buying and holding a diversified portfolio of companies can admittedly get a little dull. Fantasy Investing can help with that a little bit, but sometimes I just want to make utterly irresponsible and recklessly bold predictions without having to actually risk any money on them because, well, they’re most likely going to end up being wrong.

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Where do you put your emergency fund?

December 13, 2018

Have you heard the doomsday stories about how unprepared Americans are for unexpected expenses? The numbers vary: 40% can’t cover a $400 expense, most would go into debt over a $500 expense, only 39% can cover a $1,000 emergency. They all tell a similar story, though: many Americans don’t have any significant source of savings that they can draw upon.

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Fantasy Investing – 2019

December 6, 2018

The year is coming to an end. For many people that means it’s time to come up with new year’s resolutions. Some might be thinking of tax loss harvesting, using up the remainder of their FSA balance, or maxing out an IRA contribution. Those are all very noble endeavors. I’m looking forward to (and simultaneously dreading) the first quarterly check-in for the Freedom Portfolio. One other thing I am looking forward to? Starting the first annual Paul vs the Market Fantasy Investing season.

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