✳️ Together with the bull market, our free cashflow + activist portfolio has been doing well.
🍾 We believe this is very commendable because we only have Google and none of the other Mag 7.
🤣 Yes, we are patting ourselves on our backs a little here.
📈 For the calendar year to date, the portfolio beat the S&P and the Nikkei. Not since inception though. Not yet, but we shall prevail too! Details below.
1. Portfolio Commentary
Since Jan 2025, the S&P500 is up 11% using Google’s no.s below. I would say, we are well into the bull market with A.I. stocks, gold, bitcoin and global markets (like Singapore, Europe and Japan) all doing well. Even China too!
Nikkei is closing in on 50,000. It surpassed its all-time high in 1989 last year and Topix did the same this summer.
The activist trend that this newsletter focused on has a big part to play, pushing up the stock prices of the thousands of Japanese names trading below book.
But macro-wise, Japan is also supported by a very dovish BOJ and the positive risk of inflation taking hold after 30 years of deflation.
Stocks thrive in an inflationary environment.
It seemed we are not at the last innings of this bull market. Although the market was traumatised slightly by Trump’s random tweets last week about additional tariffs.
It quickly rebounded. Well, TACO* Tuesday right?
But as valuations are not cheap, it probably makes sense to switch out of expensive, overhyped names to cheaper names.
Activist names are the cheaper names. We believe our portfolio will be pretty resilient should the day of reckoning comes.
Meanwhile, we are exploring more diversification (more on this below) and also using options to hedge the portfolio.
