Portfolio Update: April 2025

The following is my portfolio as of 4/28/2025:

And the following is my performance against the S&P 500:

The portfolio has bounced between minor outperformance and minor underperformance throughout the month, finishing just behind the S&P 500. The tariff news on April 2nd hit Deckers particularly hard, but it has since recovered on news that Vietnam's tariffs would be lessened and beliefs in overall de-escalation. The real hit to performance was Consolidated Water Company. CWCO is the only position I haven't initiated in the portfolio. It's a relatively boring microcap water infrastructure name that operates in the Cayman Islands and the Southwest United States. I really liked the management team and feel that they have some real headwinds behind them over the coming years. However, they announced full year earnings for 2025 in late March and delayed their Hawai'i desalination plant project about 6 months. This was disappointing to me and other investors and led to a sell-off in the stock to levels similar to 6 months prior.

The month-to-month moves of the companies in my portfolio are not what I care about. I'm much more concerned with having an intact thesis and continuously filling the rest of the portfolio out with high conviction names. I've been disappointed with performance this month because I feel I was unprepared to act when markets became very uncertain and sold off. Early April represented an incredible learning opportunity for myself. At first I was thrilled with the sell off because I felt I was witnessing true market turmoil for the first time in my young investing career. It was as if I was a part of equity market history. This quickly wore off as I began fixating on where alpha might be in the market. In a massive trade unwind like we saw in early April there are certainly good companies being sold off that have no business becoming cheaper. There are also second and third order trades that should become more attractive with the reality of less certain markets in the United States. I spent much of my energy talking to mentors and investors that have helped guide me as I gain experience. The theme that bound their advice together was opportunity being created during times of uncertainty. The best investors use crisis to buy stock in companies which they felt were previously overpriced and have now become unreasonably underpriced.

April was an incredibly busy month with finals and preparation for a trip with the BYU Investment Banking club to New York. I have begun researching more companies as of late and will have ample time to do so now that summer has really started. I want to build out the list of companies I have diligenced so that I am ready for further sell offs and downturns. I also want to make a concerted effort to add more non-U.S. equities into the portfolio. I have built a belief in non-U.S. assets delivering outperformance over the foreseeable future because the theoretical risk premium on U.S. assets has risen under the Trump Administration. Pair this with already large differences in valuation between U.S. and non-U.S. assets and I think there is real alpha to be had in foreign markets. I am modeling Vicat S.A., a French concrete and cement producer, and will likely take a sizable position shortly.