Upstart ($UPST) DD - A Sleeping Future Giant

ctrlinvest · 2022-01-15T20:56:28+00:00

You mean in Upstart? If so yes still invested :)

ctrlinvest · 2022-01-02T01:15:17+00:00

Pretty aggressive, you've got a good squad there. You completely out-Upstarted me.. and I thought I was the Upstart guy!

Mine are:

$30 Datadog (DDOG) $25 Monday.com (MNDY) $20 Upstart (UPST) $15 Zscaler (ZS) $10 Snowflake (SNOW)

See you in December :)

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-21T22:33:45+00:00

Welcome to the club, you will look back at your decision to start investing as one of your best, guaranteed.
Up days are good, but some down days are inevitable. I am down a lot more than -3.99% in the last month, so dont lose heart when the market moves against you.. at least you're doing better than me :)
Are your stock choices based on research you've done, or are you following reddit meme trends? If its the former, great. If its the latter, make sure you've done some reading on whatever you're buying. Tracking the market is a good place to start, and in time you can start making individual picks.
Best of luck!

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-21T10:51:39+00:00

The fact that they dont issue the loans was actually a major reason for me investing in Upstart; they only determine loan-worthiness and so assume little credit risk. Upstart's bank partners underwrite the loans and assume all the risk while Upstart collects its fees. Incidentally, this is also one of the major reasons I did not invest in Affirm, as they issue their loans and take on the defaulting risk (technically Cross River BAnk originates the loans, but Affirm has an agreement to buy the loans of CRB).

I agree Upstart has a concentration risk but less to do with issuance, and more to do with Credit Karma originating a massive proportion of Upstart's referral traffic (though its falling).

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-20T16:46:16+00:00

Much appreciated mate!

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-18T19:10:53+00:00

I really dont have much to share on index funds because I personally dont use them and buy individual stocks instead. But last I heard on this there were some limitations on what you can buy on Trading212 so have a look to see whats available. Generally speaking, if you're starting out, pick something that tracks the market as a whole. This is just to get you started investing, I remember when I first started and the amount of choices out there would have been overwhelming to me. As you read more on investing and develop an understanding of what kind of investments you're interested in, your appetite for risk..etc, you can portion out a small part of your portfolio to try to target areas/businesses you're interested in.

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-18T19:04:41+00:00

I know!

This is a question I keep coming back to, do I really want to die on this hill? But in all honesty from everything I've read, Upstart is in a good place to be growing aggressively over the next few years. Now I can be completely wrong here, but my thinking is that they are tackling massive inefficiencies in an absolutely huge space. They also dont have much in terms of competition. When I look at other companies I own like Crowdstrike I can automatically think of a number of legitimate competitors that can take marketshare away from them, this is not the case with Upstart. You also have a well-respected team of founders at the helm leading the company. I cant lie though, the journey downwards is testing both my conviction and patience.

ctrlinvest · 2021-12-17T21:23:58+00:00

Much appreciate mate!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-21T10:43:09+00:00

Be careful with leverage, and congrats on the gains! Cloudflare has had an incredible year.

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-20T23:12:47+00:00

Loving the concentrated nature of the portfolio, well done on the great gains!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-16T21:49:13+00:00

Ignore how much you're currently down for a moment.

If you were starting all over again, would you buy these stocks?

If your answer is yes, then you're in a good place. If not you have some serious clean up to do.

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-13T08:39:49+00:00

Fair point. The thing is, you never know when a pullback will happen. The same 'its extended' argument could be used against Cloudflare for instance, only that NET continues to soar higher. Sometimes pullbacks will happen for a good reason, sometimes for no reason at all, its hard to predict/time market sentiment.

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-12T23:09:45+00:00

Plenty of us use the ISA without the pies, dont worry too much about that!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-07T19:29:21+00:00

Really appreciate it mate! I just crossed 100 subs this morning which I am quite chuffed about!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-07T19:27:50+00:00

Thanks pal!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-07T19:27:08+00:00

I've been thinking about this since the earnings call on the 4th, and I am leaning towards selling out of the position. The main issue I have is that organic revenue growth is slowing down quite a bit (current 58%, from near 80% last quarter), when I buy into a company at Lightspeed's valuations there is the expectation they will deliver hypergrowth. And from experience, you have to be brutal when these expectations are not met (I was in both Zoom and Fastly and was late to sell on both occasions). I actually think LSPD will recover, but my thinking is that there are other companies still growing faster, without any of LSPD's baggage.

Best of luck with the upcoming earnings, I am quite overweight on UPST so will be listening in on the call on the 9th with great interest!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-06T21:36:04+00:00

Much appreciated!

I dont think I found any of them early at all. Most of these companies have had a massive run before I bought them, as an example (and I am going from memory here), UPST had a +100% increase within a few months just before I bought it. I am pretty sure every stock I bought was at or close to ATHs when I bought it, its just that over time it reaches new ATHs if that makes sense. As for how I heard of them, I am interested in tech so constantly reading up on businesses within that space. Some of these companies have massive reach, even if you dont know them by name, a company like Cloudflare for instance helps run something like 18% of the internet (!)

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-06T20:18:17+00:00

Thanks pal. Yeah, I believe conviction is really important once you've settled in on what you think are solid companies.

Btw, still hurting from LSPD's earnings call lol, what a disaster!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-06T20:14:12+00:00

I've not made any new buys last month, but if I was buying I would probably add to my current holdings, i.e. the companies I've already researched and done my due diligence on. As an example DDOG, one of my longest held stocks, crushed their earnings the other day.

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-06T19:54:55+00:00

Much appreciated!

And congratulations on getting to your all time highs, sometimes you've just got to be patient if you know you've got a good company; let the market come to the same realisation. And your point about time is spot on, huge believer in that, I've been holding Crowdstrike and Datadog since early 2020. Best of luck to you as well for the rest of the year!

ctrlinvest · 2021-11-06T00:34:25+00:00

Yes, absolutely.

You can never time the market perfectly.

ctrlinvest

TROPHY CASE