Portfolio Update: May 2025

The following is my portfolio as of 5/30/2025:

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

Not a good month for the portfolio but it's not something I'm overly concerned with. I haven't captured much of the S&P 500's post-Liberation Day recovery because I have foreign exposure and names that moved for idiosyncratic reasons. In May I added Abacus Global Management, Central Automotive Products, and Vicat S.A. I'll continue adding names at a higher rate as the summer progresses because the majority of my waking time is spent looking at stocks and conducting research at Grandeur. While I'm doing a great deal of learning and financial modeling, I can't publish it here for compliance reasons. My goal is to continue filling out the portfolio.

I can't help but feel I'm overexposed to the American consumer. Deckers and Denny's have been my worst idiosyncratic underperformers. Deckers posted earnings and missed their already lackluster guide. I was right about the downside risk though, as the stock is only down about 10% despite the bad print. I'll likely continue owning Deckers, and a 3% weight is pretty nominal compared to the size of other weights that I own. Denny's continues to be really crappy. I'm holding through the next earnings, but should take a hard look at it after that point if I'm not directionally correct. At a macro level, I'm concerned for the American consumer and still feel a recession is more likely than not. Yield curve inversion, weakening consumer sentiment, volatile government actions, and the fact that we're probably due for a correction has me concerned. I can't help but feel like a lot of the market activity I see is driven by greed. The fact that legitimate U.S. businesses are buying crypto for their balance sheets is insane in my eyes, and makes me feel as though we are potentially late in the cycle.

I'll likely be a little less active in the blog over the summer as I'm full time with Grandeur and want to dedicate all my energy to the work I'm doing here. Candidly, I don't get any feedback on the blog, while the work I do here at Grandeur allows me to get feedback daily. I've been given a great deal of responsibility, for which I'm incredibly grateful. I'll continue to do a monthly update at a minimum and then some abbreviated quarterly updates for names I'm initiated on. Otherwise, I look forward to getting more research posted in the Fall.