Farewell from Ticker Thoughts
This is the last post on Ticker Thoughts. Before I turn the lights off, every call gets reviewed, the winners, the losers, and the ones that never got their article.
Ticker Thoughts ran for about 3 months, with twenty deep-dives published and one method throughout. Find a business the market is punishing for a reason the filings do not support, read the primary sources until the disagreement is specific, state the bear case properly and disclose the position. I bought what I wrote about and wrote about what I bought.
The portfolio is up 33.02% during this period, here is where every position stands.
The Closed Positions
Fifteen positions in total, eight closed, seven still open, and every closed one green. I am aware of how that sounds, so to be clear about it, this is a bull-market and several of these exits were early, discipline took profits that patience could have grown. But like they say "green is green."
| Ticker | Entry | Exit | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| $NOW ServiceNow | $101.95 | $134.28 | +31.71% |
| $FLUT Flutter | $96.53 | $112.21 | +16.24% |
| $CCL Carnival | $23.84 | $27.34 | +14.68% |
| $MELI MercadoLibre | $1,639.57 | $1,841.70 | +11.61% |
| $SOFI SoFi | $16.84 | $17.92 | +6.41% |
| $SCHW Charles Schwab | $87.28 | $91.14 | +4.42% |
| $RACE Ferrari | $332.43 | $341.02 | +2.58% |
| $FIS Fidelity National | $38.16 | $38.98 | +2.15% |
The Open Positions
These positions are still open, the analysis behind each is linked on the positions page.
| Ticker | Shares | Average | Current Price | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $LDOS Leidos | 170 | $101.41 | $106.90 | +5.4% |
| $CTSH Cognizant | 250 | $42.58 | $44.72 | +5.0% |
| $CBOE Cboe | 250 | $266.41 | $278.21 | +4.4% |
| $INTU Intuit | 70 | $284.83 | $293.75 | +3.1% |
| $IBM IBM | 250 | $209.05 | $215.29 | +3.0% |
| $ACM AECOM | 110 | $68.07 | $68.32 | +0.4% |
| $SONY Sony | 1,320 | $21.81 | $21.25 | −2.6% |
Three of these have big dates in the next five weeks, Cognizant reports July 29th, Intuit on August 20th, and IBM gives full guidance on July 22nd.
About IBM, it is the one position that never got its article. The company pre-announced a miss on July 14th and lost a quarter of its value in a day, the worst single session in its history, over a revenue miss of less than 4% on a quarter that grew. I did the research, looked at the claims, and bought while the full article sat half-built. Consider this paragraph the disclosure, and the absence of the full piece a preview of the decision this post announces.
What I Got Wrong
An honest record includes this section. Sony is currently underwater, the physical-AI thesis has not yet outrun a chip-cycle repricing. Cboe was bought well, and then the entry was never improved when the market offered better prices. Ferrari and FIS were closed far too early. The biggest miss however was not a stock at all, it was the assumption that good work distributes itself. It does not. The articles piled up, the audience did not, and I have written enough honest bear cases to recognise my own.
Why This Is the Last Post
Not the market or the method, but the distribution. The writing part of this worked, it made the research more rigorous, it forced every thesis to survive a potential sceptical reader, and the returns above are partly a product of that discipline. The publishing part needed twelve to eighteen months of distribution work that I was never going to enjoy. The analysis continues privately, the same screens, filings, rules, just without the broadcast.
To the readers who subscribed, opened, and occasionally replied, thank you, you were not the void, you were the exception to it.
Ticker Thoughts was independent analysis and not financial advice.
Positions at close of publication: as tabled above.
By E.S. Solberg