A very small insight into the tech portion of our investment portfolio.
The keystone position is our holdings in TSLA. After coming down to the lesser-48 late winter 2013 and visiting one of the TM galleries, I spent the next two months learning all I could of the company, and I took an outsized position at the end of April at $53. Other than using some unexpectedly early profits in it and in SCTY that I used to purchase our P85, I then have consistently added to the position during times of weakness, notably the GS debacle in early Sept at $109, after the f*res at $159, and early this July at $218. Between this accretion and the stock price's spectacular performance, we now are in a situation where TSLA represents what is for me a lifelong high fraction of 28% of our investment portfolio.
Second in importance - if not in size - is our holdings in AAPL (sorry to bore you...). We have had a small holding from in the (split-adjusted) teens. We then made it a core holding in the rarefied days of early 2012 and adde to the position at the end of that year, for an average (split-adjusted) cost of $72.
Third was our position in GT Advanced Tech. I have had more than one eye out on the crystal business for many years, as for decades my father had been overly involved in a crystal fab company. This one was and remains poorly funded, replete with management problems, and to my now a bit more experienced eye lacking in a portfolio of cutting-edge tech. Most of its sales these years come from DoD contracts. Dad was brought in as COB to address all these issues; he did what he could but passed on before the company was able to capitalize on the assets it did have.
At any rate, my exposure to that firm led me to look around to see if there wasn't anything out there that
did possess what I thought might have what it takes, and last summer that search led me to Tom Gutierrez and his GTAT. As I mentioned early in the life of this thread (post #191), last September we took an initial position, coming in at $7.12. At the time, the combination of it acquiring FSLR's shuttered Mesa fab plant (reminiscent of TM and NUMMI - monstrous size plant for pennies), the rumor of a hook-up with AAPL, and its position in sapphire production, all were key supercilious points (figger that out, word mavens....
).
Now, partly as a result of my irritation at the actions of one of our key brokers - UBS - and its rather blatant and likely SEC-defying moves this past July, we took advantage of mid-month price weakness to add to the holding, picking up a good chunk more at $15.
We now know that GTAT not only is well on its way to becoming the world's overwhelmingly dominant sapphire producer, but that their whole tech lineup is far broader and deeper. Their process to replace diamond cutting of crystal boules with ion bombardment is close to earth-shattering (And, very literally, boule-shattering
); their "screen" technology for the PV module industry is set to provide panels with a several percentage-point increase in PV efficiency, which leads to all sorts of magnificent ramifications; their branching out into
very interesting other boule growths could and, based on work brought to light by Sleepy's & Norse's tech forum (thanks, all of you) very, very likely do represent an entirely new billion-dollar development. A development that is or should be of utter absolute interest to any company that is looking to develop ultra-massive battery production factories, for example.
Fourth is our position in Mobileye. As we no longer will do any business with Goldman or Morgan Stanley, and my decades in the wilderness have frayed just about all my other, uh,
useful contacts in Wall St, I couldn't come close to getting in on its IPO. So I bit the bullet and picked up a position during the first day of trade, as I reported here earlier. We got only half as many shares as I had hoped for, as that opening price just below $38 was too bitter and rich for me, inasmuch as Ihad looking to get in closer to the low $20s. And then I got chicken and didn't add up when it subsequently stumbled to the low $30s as many of the IPOers took their profits. But the reporting bandwagon has begun, and MBLY as of today is in the low 40s on good volume.
NVIDIA and QCOM are two holdings that I use as a foil to MBLY. Different strengths, but both also may play prominent roles in the reasonably near term in the automated driving field.
Lastly, we hold a modest position in good ol' Blue - IBM. I'm not the only one stumbling about in the wilderness; years ago the Armonk giant lost its way, but IBM has dedicated itself to improving on battery technology and their research labs do remain some of the world's finest.
In precentages, then, the investments line up as follows, together with the other names in our largest holdings:
#1. TSLA - 28.9%
#2.
SCTY - 6.8%
#3. MBLY - 6.5%
#4. GTAT - 6.0%
#5.
SPWR - 4.9%
IBM, NVDA & QCOM together add up to 2.9%. Our holdings in PV makers other than those listed aggregate to another 9.0%.
There is a strong tie amongst all these names. ALL play a dominant or supporting role in the transition to a sustainable electrical production industry, or to a an electromotive vehicular industry, or both.