Taking Stock
Hi Everyone 👋,
Welcome to the +1,216 subscribers who have joined this week. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, join our community of +48K smart, fun & edgy investors 👇
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I’m a big believer in taking stock of where you have come from in order to create and build habits to evaluate where you are going.
I started this newsletter one year ago with 3 goals:
Make you laugh
Make you learn
Make you money
Finance is a concept that a lot of people overcomplicate in their heads. They put it in the “too hard” bucket and let their uncle or aunt manage their money, charging them egregious management fees just to put them in market ETFs.
On top of this, you have fancy suits that use overcomplicated language to keep the general public from participating in one of the greatest wealth creation machines of all time: the stock market.
As a tried and true stock junky, I have made it my personal responsibility to pull a full-on Khaleesi and break the wheel.
I’ve covered everything from personal finance to deep dives on companies all while trying to make it fun and readable so that it’s not just another unread newsletter that you flag for later.
I thank each and everyone of you for your support along the way.
It is the intention of this week’s version is to be short and sweet. I’ll recap how far the newsletter has come, and put some of the ideas and stock pitches under a microscope to see how I did.
This week, in <5 minutes, we’ll take a look at the evolution of this newsletter:
Reader Growth 👉 Ever-Expanding Army of Diamond-Handed HODL-ers
Mega Theme Focus 👉 Getting the Big Picture Right
Good Company Calls 👉 When Was I Right?
Bad Company Calls 👉 When Was I Wrong
Where we’re going from here 👉 Once More Unto the Breach Dear Friends
Let’s get started!
1. Reader Growth 👉 Ever-Expanding Army of Diamond-Handed HODL-ers
I’ve owned the GRIT brand for quite a while, but it’s only until recently that I have focused the mission of the company to expand in the financial media square, and what a ride the last year has been.
This newsletter alone has grown from 5k readers to nearly 50k (10x growth) in the span of a year.
It is also now the #1 FREE Finance newsletter and the #5 PAID finance newsletter on all of Substack globally.
I come from a background of traditional money management in Canada, running +$100MM in capital and specifically a small-cap fund for 7 years where I returned a 13% CAGR and was ranked #1 in my category for 3 of those years.
In GRIT’s previous iteration, alongside my partners, I was responsible for Investor Relations for junior Canadian companies looking to go public.
I focused specifically on high-growth areas with exciting founders and was able to grow my business alongside very successful public companies.
But there was still an itch that I needed to scratch.
I saw the vast disconnect between the general public’s knowledge of finance and what the “insiders” possessed and believed this gap needed to be narrowed.
This is why I have set out on the media mission to bring financial knowledge to the masses, and I’m excited that so many of you are on the same journey.
Under the Radar
CHANGING THE WORLD ONE BITE AT A TIME: Very Good Food is eco-conscious, socially aware, and purpose-led. They’ve also got the secret sauce in their innovative R&D pipeline that is delivering delicious new plant-based products like the Butcher’s Select Spicy Meatballs and The Very Good Steak! It’s no wonder revenue grew 280% YTD in Q2 vs last year*.
RENEWABLE ENERGY IS THE 2ND MOST USED ENERGY SOURCE IN THE US. It accounts for 21% of all electricity. Greenbriar Capital has a 400MW solar project in Alberta which has the best solar radiation in Canada plus another in Puerto Rico where prices are 400% higher than the mainland! I smell MARGINS*!
CRYPTO FOR EVERYONE. If BIGG Digital had their way, everybody would have crypto. But since they can’t give it away they decided to create the most easily accessible platform for Canadians to safely buy & sell cryptocurrencies instead. Why Netcoins? Rapid transaction times, fast verification, excellent support, safety focused and government regulated*!
INVEST IN THE CLEAN MEAT REVOLUTION. CULT Food Science gives investors access to the next generation of food: cultivated meat & cultured dairy. Their approach diversifies exposure to an exciting and disruptive industry by investing in the most innovative startups! You can check out their current portfolio here*.
GREATER ACCESS, MORE PATIENTS. Novamind is working hard to make life-changing psychedelic medicine more accessible with initial progress towards insurance coverage for IV ketamine treatments. This bodes well for the future of psychiatry and mental health. Read more here*.
SERVING THE ENTIRE HEALTH ECOSYSTEM: By connecting and empowering patients, doctors, providers and enterprises, CloudMD has leveraged their revolutionary proprietary healthcare tech platform into a growth machine with multiple revenue streams. With an annualized run rate of $155M, and projected profitability this year CloudMD is taking its digital health platform to SCALE and expanding rapidly*!
BUILDING THE NEXT TECH GIANTS: The tech giants of the next decade are being incubated as we speak (or in this case, read & write). This obviously means +25x growth opportunities for investors, but with so many companies out there in so many nuanced segments, it also means these opportunities are risky and difficult to find. So how can you bet on tomorrow’s giants today? How do you even identify them? Enter: Victory Square. Think of them as human growth hormone (HGH), but for disruptive tech startups. They have had incredible success with giving out 2 dividends in 2021 with another planned before year end, and Victory Square has recorded 6th consecutive quarter with positive net income*!
A COMMUNITY OF ETHICALLY-ALIGNED CONSUMERS: Did you know that plant-based food sales grew 2x faster than overall food sales last year? Vejii is an online marketplace for plant-based and sustainable products. With thousands of products from over 500 independent brands, Vejii is set to become the amazon of sustainability*.
*This is sponsored advertising content.
2. Mega Theme Focus 👉 Getting the Big Picture Right
In investing, the old adage goes “a rising tide lifts all ships” so getting the big picture right is the most important component.
Sure you can go into the weeds by analyzing every minute detail, but if you can spot secular trends that will have the most growth over the medium term, that is more than 80% of the battle.
Once you have the big picture down, then you can either buy a basket of names to benefit in the overall growth of the segment, or grind down into individual companies to strip out more alpha.
By no means is this an “I told you so” because a lot of these are just getting started and not yet developed. Here are a couple of the “Big Ideas” we’ve talked about that I believe were right calls:
Gaming/Metaverse
I first wrote in-depth about gaming in April this year, during this newsletter titled “Revenge of the Nerds”
In this issue, I covered the new business model that focused on the freemium aspect of upgrading skins in Fortnite vs. the $60/copy business model of old gaming. I then introduced concepts of the metaverse and convergence, where IP and other media properties are all bleeding across many different media forms (TV, Movies, Gaming, etc..) as well as platforms.
The concept of the metaverse has gained massive traction over the last month, as Facebook intends on pivoting the entire company to focus on this.
Carbon Credits
I wrote this piece back in June that went diving into the world of Carbon Credits. This has been at the forefront of so many investment funds that are now focusing on ESG factors.
It’s not enough to tier your board seats or have only a single share class anymore. You NEED to be carbon neutral. Consumers and investors alike are watching the increases of these prices as the world takes notice. If we look at ICE EUA Futures contracts (MO1 Commodity) on Bloomberg, recent pricing action agrees.
Enterprise Software
I came out with this table-pounder back in April that sang the praises of software companies. The software bill is the last thing to get cut at any business. It has become engrained and vital to all operations. These are companies that have recurring revenue streams with strong gross margins and bulletproof balance sheets.
Since the release of that report, if you bought IGV (the largest software index - White), you would have drastically outperformed both the S&P (yellow) and NASDAQ (green).
But first, let’s check in with our Outrageous Chartered FinMEME Analyst Dr. Patel!
3. Good Company Calls 👉 When Was I Right?
In this section, I will say “I told you so” and quickly highlight some individual-company calls. The link to each piece is in the date stamp.
Nov 2020: Bitcoin at $12k. Price now = $64K. Gain of +433%
Jan 2021: Roblox pre-IPO – put it on the radar (ended up buying in July at $87.22). Price now = $107.32. Gain of 23%
Jan 2021: Descartes (DSG-T) at $74. Price now = $107. Gain of 44%
April 2021: ServiceNow at $530. Price now = $688. Gain of 30%
Sept 2021: Bought the Ethereum Dip (PAID SUBS) at $3,415. Price now = $4,666. Gain of 37%.
Sept 2021: Like Gamification of Fitness BUT not buying Peloton (Down ~60% since then)
Oct 2021: Private Newsletter: Up 75-250% (not liquid yet) on a private carbon deal I invested in as well as a gaming deal.
4. Bad Company Calls 👉 When Was I Wrong
And, since everyone is not perfect, I also have a losers list since publishing on them, these include:
SHRI (high flying copper small cap), Draftkings, EGLX & Crispr
I’d like to put these names into the buckets of not only “lesson learned”, but maybe poor timing.
But timing wrong is the same as being wrong, so these ones I own up to.
I am still holding the last three BUT re-analyzing and may or may not make a change here to the portfolio.
Make sure to upgrade to the PAID VERSION of this newsletter to get my BUYS & SELLS.
5. Where we’re going from here 👉 Once More Unto the Breach Dear Friends
In my weekly letter, I always try to pick a topic that is timely over the short term, but more importantly, a theme that I believe will persist into the future.
The more traditional themes that I’m looking at are ones free-cash flowing “boring” businesses like commodities, storage facilities, mobile home parks, and residential real estate.
The new age themes that I am laser-focused on are software, carbon credits, the metaverse, the creator economy, crypto, and NFTs. I also believe we are at an inflection point in terms of the evolution of Web 3.0, which I wrote about at length last week.
Either way, I promise to be infinitely curious and to learn about these new themes with you going forward. I’m glad we’re on this journey together.
Until next time. Always Yours. Incessantly Chasing ROI,
-Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA
P.S Miami will hand out free Bitcoin to residents from profits on city coin. Probably nothing ; )
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