Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining on this video. We're going to be talking about this, incredible day. We had today in the market. If you weren't paying attention, we had a hugely positive Green Day. The NASDAQ is up 3.4 one percent, the S&P 500 closed. One point eight, nine percent in the Grain and even the Dow Jones is up one point, one seven
percent. But you notice that the gains were tilted towards the NASDAQ, which has been beaten up the most, and this is pretty incredible. This is like a relief rally a reversal of trend. We've been Trending down and recent history in the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones, but especially the QQQ and these type of companies. But now we see a huge reversal and Trend 3.41 percent green. And one day is a pretty big
green day and it's even more. So with the type of companies that I hold in my portfolio, the story fund. If you're new to the channel, I follow this growth portfolio, week by week and give complete transparency. And how it's doing today was a special day for the story fund. It is up Point three five percent. This is a huge Green Day, one of the most green days in the history of this entire portfolio. Overall, we're still struggling because this type of portfolio,
got beat down pretty bad. Over the past three months, it has a lot of these tech companies. Netflix got beat up companies like Spotify and Salesforce and Adobe atlassian, twilio, these type of companies, all got beat up pretty hard over the past three months. But then, we have this crazy day today. Five point three, five percent in the green. Netflix was up ten point four six percent Spotify was up 13 percent. These are crazy numbers that happen. Today's.
So anytime this type of thing happens where we have one big green day after a lot of selling. This is where we have a lot of speculation, a lot of opinions on what this means for the overall market and I want to discuss it and give my thoughts on it. So we're going to be going over that. I'll be giving an update on a lot of different Holdings in the story fund. What I think is going on with them right now and we also have one other news item that I want
to mention. Remember that Apple analysts that came on CNBC June of last year and he said, while wearing are pods. The Apple was grossly. Overvalued. It was overvalued by over 30%. Apple was at the time trading at 125 and he said it was worth ninety dollars a share. He said, Apple had too good of a year in 2021. They are just having too good of a year and they had too good of a year in 2020 and they pulled
for demand. And he said that, you know, this this next year is going to be really tough for Apple. Well, I disagreed with him. I posted a reaction video to this and I said, hey, I think this guy's dead wrong. I think his thesis is wrong. Here's the reasons why. And it turns out that he just appeared back on CNBC just today. So I want to take a look at his new price target of apple and his thoughts on the company
going forward. So we have a lot to jump into in this episode as always and just a reminder, if you haven't already, you should check out the patreon associated with this channel. Most patreons are just like the community Discord and maybe some exclusive content. We offer that as well on this channel. I do hour-long amas weekly as well as exclusive episodes. We have a community Discord. That's for patreon members. It has over 2,000 active members, but in addition to
that, I want to remind you. You also get access to Quality from this website at no additional charge. There's no add-ons. There's no bait and switch. It's not something separate. It is totally included with the base patreon level and call term is a suite of investing tools to help you become a better investor. One of them is called from inside. It's which gives you at a glance all the fundamentals of any
company. I can type in apple and see their revenue and ibadah and free cash flow net income, their balance sheet, their debt, their dividends their cash, their shares outstanding, their earnings per share. Going way back to 1996, I can see a ton of information at a glance as well as the valuation metrics. The margins, the growth, you know, the dividend summary all of this stuff very easily on one page. It works for any of the publicly traded companies, any of them on
us exchanges. So this tool Is included as part of the patreon. You also get access to Quality from track. This is a different part of this tool. This gives you information about your portfolio, your dividend growth over time, and this actually does projections on your upcoming dividends over the next year. We're building all of this out. So again, qual term track called from Insight, everything they do at this website, including the mobile app, that's on IOS.
And Android are included as part of the patreon, no additional charges, no upselling, no ads, nothing like that. And we are working on something right now that I think is going to be awesome. Going to be released probably within a couple weeks called the dip finder. And that's gonna be another big segment on this website. Another big tab with. I think a really cool tool. So, I'll explain that more in the future. But, if you haven't already, try out the patreon.
There's a link in the description. All right. Now, having said that, let's go ahead and jump into the portfolio and do an update. For those of you new to the channel, this is called the story fund. It is my growth portfolio. I track it with total transparency week by week, and I Benchmark it against the S&P 500. So, if you're interested in seeing an Irving the outcome of a real portfolio with real money. Over a long period of time to see if this can work a stock
picking can work. And I can invest in long-term compounding companies like Netflix and Amazon, and Google and Spotify and Salesforce, and Adobe these type of subscription-based. I think, incredibly good, compound and companies, then you can subscribe to the channel and follow along for free. I'll be doing updates every single week. The portfolio, overall, I think it's had a tough time. I'm right the past three months, there's been this crazy sell-off in these high-growth names every
type of tech company. And Cloud company has basically been re-rated and the market has not like them. The market has been stuffing money into energy companies and, and financials and commodities and different places outside of these tech companies that had a big run up. So over the past three months, I've given up all of my games. I went from being in the green by 25,000 dollars to now just
being in the green by $1300. And that's painful, that's something that's mentally difficult to deal with. But not really, if you have the right perspective, if you have the long-term perspective, I own just as many shares in the companies that I initially bought as I did before and the sell-off, gave me the opportunity to buy more heavily into a lot of these companies that I already love. I love Netflix as a company and an investment after the
sell-off. I bought more of this company, the same thing with Spotify, the same thing with, with all these companies, with igv, all these cloud, Knees. I increase my position sizing that as well. The sell-off was an opportunity for me so even though I'm in the green by $1300, I look at this as an opportunity to gain, way more share count. So that when we do have another run up, I have a lot more starting off. So I think it's a good thing in the end.
Now the portfolio is actually pretty bad like a week ago. A week ago, it was even further in the red by seven thousand dollars. I was in the red, so being $1300 in the green today is pretty remarkable. The past day. This Just today we're up five point three percent so we outperform even the QQQ by a large degree. These type of companies really pop when the market is back in pull mode, right?
When when things are going good in the markets going up, I think these companies will make a lot of ground. Now, let's go ahead and look at the performance of it. Overall, against the S&P 500. I tracked this on this chart here and you can see the, the story fund is in blue. So my portfolio is the Blue Line.
The S&P 500 is in red, and I show this Us again, every single week you can see the performance of this, and I plan on doing so, until the end of 2025. Now, you can see that the past two months, the performance suffered in my portfolio, we had Netflix trending downwards. And then we had the huge sell-off after the bad quarter. We have Ali Baba, having a tough time. We have controversies with Spotify that company selling off and it traded down to negative
seven percent. So, I was actually pretty well in the red and then in just the past couple days, this rally put me back in the green Plus Percent against the S&P 500 at plus Seventeen percent. So the S&P 500 is still in the lead right now but the Gap was closed. Quite a bit over, just the past couple of days and I think this gives you an idea of how quickly things can change this much area covered in just a few days. If the market decides look, we
sold off too much. These type of growth companies have just been oversold. We're not really worried about the whole inflation thing or that, you know, the raising interest rates that's really not as big of a deal. Deal, which the market could, they could shrug it off at some
point. These are the type of companies that I think investors will want to pile money back into the market swings from one narrative to the other, the pendulum sways from one side to the other and in many cases it goes to extreme. It'll go too far to the side of fear and that's where we're headed. The market has been extremely fearful selling out of every tech company, nothing story-driven, nothing's narrative-driven, nothing about the future.
Once the Kimberley Clark's the Procter & Gamble's that most defensive companies you can get right now that have cash flows right now. Today that's what people want right now because there's a Fed there's interest rates going up. There might be inflation but the pendulum will eventually swing back to Greed mode. That will happen over time. When that happens investors will pull money out of there.
They're big mature, slow growing energy companies and consumer defensive companies and they want to get back into growth all 7lb. Talking about Spotify, dominating the world with audio and Netflix dominating. The world was streaming this type of thing sways from one direction to the other. So even though right now the narrative is heavily suede towards the more defensive companies in the S&P 500, I think the pendulum will eventually swing backwards. I don't know when that will
happen. Whenever we have a big relief rally, a trend reversal day like today, where we've been selling off for a while. And all of a sudden we have a reverse of that Trend and a big update, this is when the speculation happens. People go on TV and say, this is the bottom prepare for this huge rally. Yet, people saying the selling is not over, it's going to be another 10%. The truth is, we don't know. We don't know if this is the bottom.
If it's going to reverse Trend now we have no clue what I do know is that these type of companies are way sold off compared to what they were three months ago. They're way better value than where they were three months ago and there's way more upside with them. Now if you're looking to buy in the tech companies and cloud cover, Companies and these type of scalable high growth companies now is a much better time than three months ago.
So that's all we know. And I'm very personally optimistic about the future with this portfolio, I feel very confident in my chances of still having good gains over these next couple, couple years because in reality, this has been a pretty short time. One year is not a significant amount of time and I don't think we're out of the running yet. Now, let's go ahead and jump in to this apple analysts that June of last year gave a cell rate For apple and said that it was
worth ninety dollars. A share when it was currently trading at 125 hair, is my response video. My reaction video to this analyst, his name's Pierre and he covers companies like apple and Tesla and he called it in with his bearish call on Apple wearing his are pods. This is kind of what he said in my reaction at the time. This was June of 2021, he's a demon polyethylene. 12 is actually exceptionally strong. So what does that mean? That means a phone in producing 5G.
Return of the metal frame, on the case has introduced a lot of changes in, who can feel and a lot of innovation and has driven a lot, a lot of interest. And that's bringing forward replacement. So a lot of people who normally would have replaced their for next year actually, going to replace it this year. This is always always the beer case for Apple, for the past 10 years.
This has been the bear case for Apple while they're doing so good right now, they have so much Demand right now that they can't, they Can't sustain this level of demand and to the next year or the year after that's always the same thing. He says that the problem with apple if this is the bear case for Apple is they're doing too. Well, they're doing too well
right now. They selling too many phones and they're definitely not gonna be able to keep this up in the future because people like their products so much that they're buying all of them now they won't, they won't need them next year. They call this polling demand forward so you have demand in the future and you're pulling it forward to now. I think this is one of the
weakest arguments. For almost any company, the polling demand for it. It can happen a little bit in some very unique cases, but most of the time a company that did well, one year should continue to do well in two years into the future. And even if it has some times where it goes through a little bit, less demand it evens out over time. So, this polling for demand argument is very common with apple.
It's common with a lot of other companies, but in Apple's case, I don't buy it. I think the Apple have plenty of demand next year and the After. But let's go ahead and listen, that's the clip from June of last year and I must say that guy sounds pretty smart. They're pretty accurate if you ask me. Now let's go ahead and look at this updated clip. We have Pure Hair and he's giving us his new take on Apple, his updated.
Take this is eight months later when finding consensus today and what we think is what actually we're reflected in the stock price. So I 165 dollars, you know, that's 25 times what we would expect for. Or earnings next year. And that's, that's about what instance is expecting for earnings next year sink that are 60. And so we feel this turkeys, probably reasonably valued, so we don't have a strong view on the name. And that's, that's the rationale
behind our mutual rating. So if you didn't catch that, he just gave a price Target current day for 165 for apple, and it's currently trading at 173. So we as a neutral rating saying, it's trading about fair value, but it's still little bit over valued when just eight months ago, His thesis on Apple, his research was well, they pulled for too much demand.
They're not going to sell as many iPhones and so, you know, they're worth only ninety dollars, a share not 125 that they are currently trading at. So if investors followed him back then they would have lost money because I would have sold Apple hoping that it was going to go back down to 90 dollars a share. Really, it raced up to 170 175 and now he's saying it's worth 165, nearly double his price Target, just eight months ago. This is tough to follow analyst
like this. And I just want to highlight how they can change their their analysis on a company within eight months dramatically, change it from ninety dollars, a share to 165 dollars. A share an apple hasn't changed much in the past eight months, the company hasn't fundamentally changed. All they did was just keep doing the same thing they're doing but now they're magically worth from $90 to a 165. This is the problem with not relying on your own research on these type of things.
Even more confusing is how he so neutral on Apple. He doesn't see that, it's going to create any more value in the future. He doesn't apply any type of, you know, the Apple can do anything else. Other than just sell iPhones, his big thesis on Apple, is they're just going to sell more and more iPhones. That's the only way they really make money. Let's go ahead and listen to him.
Be asked about this, I mean, and what you're telling me is that you're acknowledging, that, you got it wrong in regards to Apples recent results. And of course, there's expectations for the current fiscal year. I'm cute. What would change your mind, though? I guess the fact that You are staying neutral right now. I mean, what are sort of, the key factors that you would expect to potentially accelerate, the gains in this stock that you would be looking for that? You don't think are there
currently? Yeah, that's a great question. I think if you look at the, you know, like the existing established business of Harper's, the iPhone iPad or Mac the variables as they exist today, we don't feel like there is significantly significant room for City upside against existing expectation. So if a bird is a business that can grow in single digit digit revenues and growth free cash flow and profitability along the same line.
It's just difficult to have more than a neutral perspective on this dog that we don't think that is anything Miss price. All that is not getting priced in yet. So mutual really. We need we need to locate investment but that's not an investment for which we would pound the table. So what would make Gus change our mind with that kind of expectation in background and valuation in background, would be really the next steps for Apple which is like the the VR of a our headset and the car of
course. And we've done a lot of work on this room and all of you today is that these opportunities, our mix of being extremely open ended. So there are very good reasons to believe a can do very well if they're, but how And how far is difficult to call? And then our second conviction is that this will be very slow baking opportunities. So we don't see a nurse, you know, in recommending investors to own a perfect for these opportunities today. So this guy seems like a pretty
just conservative investor. He looks at Apple as kind of a mature company with not too much upside, it's kind of saturated its Market, it might have incremental growth but the long shot Opportunities of an Apple car and virtual reality. He says not to really factor that in too much. It's kind of pie in the sky we would we don't want to include
that in our analysis. Now that seems kind of odd seeing that when I look at some more info on them and I did a little bit more research, he's heavily bullish on Tesla for all these different type of reasons of incredibly aggressive predictions of what Tesla's going to do. In fact, he has one of the highest price Targets on Tesla of any Wall Street analyst putting the Target at sixteen hundred dollars right now, so thinks it's going to be worth one point. Six trillion dollars apples, not
even worth what it is right now. It's worth 165 a share, not 175 or whatever, it's trading at, but Tesla's Worth 16 hundred dollars a share currently from this analyst and he even has tweets where he's done presentations, talking about what Tesla needs to do to get to 10 trillion dollars, where he goes on about Teslas, Insurance business and how it could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And be berated at multiples 25 times.
What a normal business is these are the type of things he's talking about but when it comes to Apple, not much upside there, not a whole lot going on with apple. Everything with the upside is what Tesla. I think that mr. Pierre respectfully. I think he's wrong again. He was wrong when he said that it was ninety dollars a share. Now he moved that to 160 and I think we're going to see a repeat. I think the Apple continue to absorb a lot of the money in the
economy. One thing that I think we can look With apples business right now, is this chart? This is Apple subscriptions over time. We talked about Apple becoming a software subscription business, but I think this chart is just straightforward. It really illustrates what's going on with apple in the background. People view it as a phone company. They view it as a iPad and Mac Book Company. This is the amount of subscriptions in millions that Apple currently has people on
last quarter. It went up another 40 million subscriptions to 785 million subscriptions. That's what this company is doing in the background. If you don't think that this is valuable incremental growth, High profit growth. Then I don't know what is apple.
Is growing, its service business, like crazy, the earnings of Apple R up, 22 percent year-over-year, that's much quicker earnings growth in the average company in the S&P 500. I think it has limited downside and it still has incredibly good upside. So I remain bullish on Apple. I don't think that mr. Pierre here is correct. I think that we're going to see
him. Wrong on this one again, but we'll wait and see, maybe we'll check back in a year and see where apples trading at. Now, the last thing that I wanted to address in my portfolio is we have a lot of controversy surrounding Spotify right now. Most people have heard about it regarding Joe Rogan and some of the things that he says on his podcast regarding health and and, you know, all the, the controversial topics that he
discusses, a lot of people. It's upsetting because he shares different thoughts, and different opinions, and random studies and stuff and that too. Is ongoing right now. Now, I don't want to insert myself in that debate. I think it's important. I think it should be had. I think that at that people should push back when they don't like something like this. I just want to discuss it from
an investment perspective. What I'll say about Spotify is when people look at controversies like this, and they think this can't be good for the company. They have Joe Rogan, he's causing problems. There's artists leaving right. A couple artists that are I don't think they're like the biggest ones, but Spotify has a couple artists that have jumped and they've jumped ship. Ripped and pulled their entire catalog off a Spotify, it can
become worrisome. What I will say is that when I look at Spotify as a platform and the fact that it has National debate going on about its platform. Now to me, I view that as a good thing. I think that it it's a bullish thing for Spotify. It's like they're growing up, think about this for a minute. Every single major platform that hosts other people's content has gone through these type of similar debates and these type
of similar content. Percy's apples had to deal with controversy from user-generated content. YouTube certainly has Google has with YouTube, many times in history, as some of it. That was pretty big regarding content with children and how to protect them from potential. Predators, you have issues with Netflix, they've had controversy in the past. You have issues with Facebook with Instagram and facebook.com. There's tons of information,
good, and bad. And everything in between getting shared on Instagram and Facebook. Every single day. Spotify is not the Only company that's ever dealt with these type of issues, they run rampant in every single type of massive. User-generated content platform, I think they'll take the steps to deal with it, to clarify information, linked to valid sources. Give proper disclaimers, but still try to balance that with
free speech and free discussion. I think it's good to have the debate and put pressure on Spotify, make change in all of that. I'm not arguing against that, but in my opinion, when I look at companies like this, and I look at the history of them and the huge majority of cases. If like the the crowd moves on the controversy moves from one thing to the next today, it's Spotify tomorrow will be something else. So I assume that that's going to
happen. In this case I could be wrong, maybe some major artists, you know, ones that really get millions of streams. Every single day will pull their catalogs but I don't see that happening right now. I think the Spotify is going to deal with it and it hasn't really changed my my thesis on Spotify. If I look at the company, this company is growing like a weed. They're growing their You by 20% year-over-year, they're growing
their user base. Both monthly active users and premium users by 20% year-over-year. Their free cash flow, positive and have been for years. So, they've been investing all of their cash back into growing their business. They've been doing a lot of things, like, improving their advertising on their platform. They now have call to actions on all their podcast ads. So this is much more effective. They, in fact, say that it's 50%, more effective for advertisers.
So Spotify is doing a lot of positive things in the background and It's just not enough for me right now to dump this investment, I think, fundamentally speaking. If you look at the actual company, it's moving in the right direction. So that's the update for now. Today was a really good day for the portfolio, up over 5%. But, we'll see how this week shakes out.
It's pretty crazy out there in the stock market, but I feel very good about each and every company that I own and I'll continue to track them week by week.