Is It Time to Get Back In the Market Yet?
A Ticker A Day
Hello ATAD readers, did you think I’d forgotten about your or the stock market? How could I ever. XOXO.
On replay all week: The Color of Nothing — ford.
Quick Recap of Where We’re After 2 Years
At the start of 2022 I cashed in my entire public learning portfolio for ~$74K which I’ve built in public from the tweetstormed idea on Jan 4, 2020 to the first $10 investment. Since then I’ve enjoyed transitioning this space to embrace a broader audience, talking about a wider range of my interests while waiting for a re-entry point.
This newsletter has transformed a bit, and I hope you’re enjoying the direction it is headed. I’m having a lot of fun allowing this to be a creative outlet whenever I feel like I’ve got something to say. I’ve also uploaded the entire archives of my Wordpress at DanielleMorrill.com (it will start to redirect soon), and I am officially making Substack my singular content home. I also met with someone I am hoping to hire as my podcast producer, so watch this space!
What I’m Noticing as an Investor
TL;DR I’m starting to seriously consider re-entering the market and waffling back and forth on whether this is exactly the mindset that causes one to catch the falling knife — or a brilliant once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Liquidity
Something you may not know about me is that I am not a big fan of debt, so while we do have an LAL set up I’m not (well, I wasn’t) using that much debt relative to my assets. I like to keep my debt to equity ratio no higher than 0.2, which is a lot lower than the average bear, but that started to get difficult this week.
With $GTLB and $TWLO both at 52-week lows, the question how much lower our overall portfolio could go before we would need to pay a capital call on our liquidity access line was constantly on my mind. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also got an offer accepted to buy the house next door, that we’d planned to buy in cash — but we hadn’t liquidated for yet.
Volatility
The whiplash continues, with Gitlab ($GTLB) up 100% in the past 4 trading sessions from a low of $30.74 to $62.79 today at closing 3/18.
Fortunately, we were able to come up with a solution that works for us on the personal front. On the startup front, I’m very curious to hear how founders who have been fundraising over the past 3 weeks are doing. Firstparty continues to evolve and blow my mind, and I just love working closely with people I’ve known for more than a decade. We should have something to celebrate in early April :)
Striving for Calm Rationality
How does experiencing this volatility mess with my other decision-making? How can I remain thoughtful and intentional, and not rush in? How much should I be considering the precipice of World War 3 in my portfolio risk?
I’m not sure, but it’s times like these where I remind myself to go slow. Rather than just rebuying the most over-sold names from my previous learning portfolio, this weekend I’m planning to do some research into the positions and price points I’d be be interested in to create a universe of names to potential analyze more closely. As you can imagine, these could be some interesting blog posts…
Some angles I’m thinking of:
domestic travel within the United State (e.g. airlines, hotels, Airbnb)
remote work lifestyles (e.g. home improvement, fitness, cannabis)
world-school lifestyles (e.g. high net worth toys, private schools, luxury)
little exposure to rising interest rates (e.g. high growth, high margin)
reviewing all the companies I previously bought in past ATAD portfolios
Small Cap Growth index funds
What areas are you curious about these days? Feel free to drop me a note by replying to this email, or on Twitter tweet to @DanielleMorrill
What I’m Reading
Startup Learning Curriculum
Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
The Startup Owner’s Manual by Steve Blank
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin
Lighter Weekend Goodness
Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
Big Bad Wolf by Suleikha Snyder
House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
Looking for a gift idea? This beautiful chocolate box is my favorite to send to friends for birthdays, anniversaries, and just because. I also send them to myself!
Beautiful dark chocolate covered dried fruits from Compartes
Thank you so much for reading Everyday Dynamism. As always, your feedback means a lot to me and I appreciate all the emails I’ve received over the years. Whether you’re a long-time or newer reader, I always love to connect around these shared passions for investing, startups, travel, food, and books.