value and opportunity

A few weeks ago, fellow blogger Govro from the Wintergems Substack casually mentioned on Twitter/X that he has now realised his first 100 bagger with Google/Alphabet.

I found this fascinating for several reasons. First, he is the only guy I know who has been holding Google/Alphabet for 20 years. Secondly, I had often pondered investing into Google/Alphabet but always found it too expensive. And thirdly, I never managed to hold a well performing stock for so long.

In addition, I also think that there are a lot of private investors out there, who are not famous, but from which one can learn maybe more than from “Super Stars” like Warren Buffett or Bill Ackman.

Therefore I was highly interested to learn better how he managed to do so and maybe this is kind of interesting for other investors as well.  

I sent him a list of questions and he answered them in detail. Below you’ll find the Q&A. The first questions are about his general investment approach, the second half on the Google position.

In any case, I highly recommend to follow his Substack (it’s 100% free).

My summary and learnings follows:

1. Govro is an experienced, self-taught investor who identified Google early as a stock that was showing great growth at a reasonable valuation.
2. He invested also in not so great tech stocks like Ebay and Yahoo, but managed to get out of them and keep the compounder
3. As a “quality growth”  investor, he seems to be able to invest based on a pretty long time horizon (3-5 years at any time).
4. His approach of diversifying between Fast and Slow compounders is quite unique. The slow compounders provide some stability and allow him to create liquidity in general market drawdowns/panics in order to increase his best performing positions
5. He does deep research and concentrates on certain industries only, but on a global level
6. He is able to hold a quite concentrated portfolio, allowing a single position to go up to 20% of the portfolio, or in the case of GOOG even 33%.
7. His deep research and conviction also allow him to double down in a general market panic like 2008
8. Besides Google, he owns another stock that is already up 50x. So Google/alphabet might not be just a “one hit wonder” for him

Compared to my approach, I think the main difference is clearly the strong focus on mid term growth, allowing for higher starting PE’s and the nerves to let a position run to 20% (or more) of the portfolio.

So far, I only “copied” two stocks from his portfolio, Bombardier and Logistec, which were great successes. I will clearly pay very high attention to what he is doing in the future. 

Here is the detailed Q&A with Govro: