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:
- Govro is an experienced, self-taught investor who identified Google early as a stock that was showing great growth at a reasonable valuation.
- He invested also in not so great tech stocks like Ebay and Yahoo, but managed to get out of them and keep the compounder
- 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).
- 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
- He does deep research and concentrates on certain industries only, but on a global level
- 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%.
- His deep research and conviction also allow him to double down in a general market panic like 2008
- 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:
value and opportunity 