You know what was not on my 2023 bingo card → that Los Angeles would get snow before New York City. Or that they would get snow at all. The world continues to experience “once in a generation” weather events, many of them catastrophic. For 30 years I worked in the clean energy industry fighting to use our natural resources more efficiently, saving consumers money, and reducing pollution. As we enter year 3 of the 2020’s decade, it has become clear that we need to move faster to decarbonize. Country and corporate promises for net zero by year 20xx (‘30, ‘40, ‘45 or ‘50) is a good start, but it is empty without an executable plan and real ACTION.
Is there a better way to invest your money to be part of the solution as opposed to contributing to the climate problem? In a study performed in the UK, it showed that “…making your pension green is 21x more powerful at cutting your carbon than giving up flying, going veggie and switching energy provider.” This is an interesting finding and worthy of a journey to research, educate, and take action.
The question for me is: How the hell does this newsletter contribute to the actions needed to save the world? (I know, saving the world is a big mission statement for a newsletter). Although the I don’t have the answers today, I need to step up my game this year to research and find the solutions, build the content to share with our community, and continue our journey to decarbonizing our investment portfolio.
Last month, the PORTFOLIOS newsletter had the highest readership and most subscribers ever. Don’t let your friends go without being part of the gang. Share this edition below.
Performance Results Table - February 2023
The stock market took off starting with the Santa rally (right before Christmas) and didn’t look back until February 3rd when the January jobs report showed 517,000 new jobs compared with the expected 187,000 and the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 at 3.4%. The S&P500 rocketed up 11.5% and NASDAQ up 20.8% during that stretch. However, good news is bad news for the market as the expectations for further interest rate hikes were back with a vengeance. After a great start to February, the remainder of the month was in a correction pattern with the S&P500 and NASDAQ both down for the month, 2.6% and 1.1% respectively.
The Top Picks clean energy SPAC portfolio was up slightly 0.7% this month and compares to a sizable loss of 10.9% in the equal-weighted portfolio. Our new clean energy ETF portfolio, composed of seven (7) ETFs, was also down 6.0%.
Cryptocurrency held its January gains through February with Bitcoin losing $1.52, or 0.0%, and Ethereum edging up 1.5%. The crypto portfolio, 65% invested in BTC and ETH and 5% each in 7 other alternative coins, moved down 1.7% for the month, meaning that the blue chips held up better than the smaller, riskier options.
In our Portfolio or Portfolios playoff, the more conservative 60/40 edged out the DT Mix -2.7% vs. -2.9%. Interesting enough, the Aggressive portfolio finished down only 0.8%.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, smash the <subscribe now> button below and get each edition in your in-box.
Earnings Season. Q4-2022 Quarterly Reports.
It is earnings season, so many of our companies are reporting on their 4th quarter, 2022 and whole year 2022 revenue, earnings, and forecasts. Here is the schedule for the companies in our Top Picks portfolio.
The results of the quarterly reports are being tracked and will be updated for you when all companies have reported, but here is a sneak peek at the first six and how results faired versus the expectations.
Stock price generally reacts to whether the company has beat (or missed) the expectations of the analysts, but also how they are painting the picture for the upcoming year. For instance, STEM not only missed on both revenue and EPS, but the forecasted revenue for 2023 came in at the low end of the expected range. The market took them down 15% the next day.
Notice of de-investment. I have thought that their needs to be a strong #2 in the EV manufacturer space next to Telsa. Lucid was taking a similar approach to Telsa, starting with the high end with a mission to introduce more affordable later on and produce products beyond vehicles. Lucid seemed like a good choice to make a run. However, after the latest quarterly report, it is apparent that building a world-class auto maker is not easy. I believe they need a few more years to prove and build out their capabilities. Therefore, I decided to sell the remaining 300 shares from the portfolio. We will continue to track them on our watchlist.
Here is the YTD returns of the Top Picks portfolio:
NEWS: Indie Semiconductor acquired two companies in February. First, $180 million acquisition of GEO Semiconductor, a market leader in video processors for automotive cameras. Then, it acquired Silicon Radar GmbH, a German-based specialist in advanced, highly integrated, high-frequency system-on-chips (SoCs) for automotive radar applications. One analyst firm upgraded INDI to a buy from neutral after positive comments on the acquisitions and increased its target price to $13 from $10. INDI stock is up almost 80% YTD closed the month at $10.46 per share.
I was going to take on one more topic for today’s edition, but got Covid this week so not feeling up to par. Will try to get a mid-month edition in for you all.
Thank you for subscribing and being part of our community.
Efficiency yours,
DT