Wow, how things have turned around. I might have fixed issues on the website in regards to speed and the site showing up but I certainly didn’t fix the trading returns. I will be closing 2 very bad tech long & short trades this morning, they have turned out to both return around -40% as of my writing this.
Long Apple (AAPL) & Short eBay (EBAY): -41,47%: My sentiment on Apple has been changing over the past few months and while I Remain bullish, I would probably not place it at the top of my list as I have done a few times. And no, that is not due to the fact that this particular trade crashed. In fact, the cause here is Ebay which has been performing incredibly well. When eBay spun off its Paypal (PYPL) position I believed I had a clear view on what it was. Yes, eBay has quite a few different divisions and websites but it does remain a big Amazon (AMZN) competitor which I don’t think will end well. In the meantime though, ebay has been showing strong growth and expanding its horizons. It doesn’t yet reach into broader areas such as SMS loans in Norway but it does remain a broad ecommerce play and for that reason ebay has been a bad short to have on the books this year.
Long Facebook (FB) & Short Travelzoo (TZOO): -46.75%
Without a doubt, this is the one position that completely taken me by surprise. I didn’t see much risk in shorting Travelzoo and that has obviously been a very bad position to hold with the stock jumping by 45% in the last 5 months. I continue to have reading to do on this one (I’m behind on my Q2 earnings and earnings call readings) and will certainly report my findings but safe to say I didn’t see this one coming.
With all of this, the YTD return of the portfolio now stands at -12.90% which would be a second straight negative year if things don’t turn around. I will have some things to reflect on and write about if this keeps up:) Thankfully, it does remain a small part of my portfolio and despite the temptation to increase it given the long term solid history of returns, I did keep it around the same levels. As is always the case, you can see all of my current and past tech long & short trades here:
http://www.intelligentspeculator.net/livetrades
