Last year I co-founded Selva Ventures, a CPG-focused VC firm, as a solo GP

This week I’ve been reflecting on our first year in business and wanted to share some of the lessons learned in building a small investment firm
Thread 👇

1/ As a solo GP I wear 2 hats

Investor: Always challenging but familiar. Same thing I was doing before

Entrepreneur: Incredibly ambiguous and scary, but also the greatest source of fulfillment

2/ Early on, seemingly simple decisions took an eternity: naming the firm, designing a logo, choosing a fund admin partner to name a few

I was so scared of getting these things wrong, but it was so important to be excited about those decisions to build early momentum

3/ Fundraising could be its own thread, but in fund 1 narrow focus is everything

Build a narrative that can get people excited and DO NOT stray from it, even though it can be tempting

Anything that doesn’t fit? Use an SPV or let it go

4/ Starting out I knew nobody else doing this, but the content about this growing field of “Solo Capitalists” has been both educational and therapeutic

@nbt’s substack (below), @Samirkaji’s podcast (Venture Unlocked) and @oper8rio really stand out

As 2020 draws to a close, here's a few posts for my 2020 annual review! 👇

Focus is on the types of trade I made, the underlyings traded, & strategy outcomes, rather than just showing the overall % return

To kick it off, below is the 2020 equity curve of my main account 💰

So what did I trade? As you can see, Options have significantly contributed to 2020 Realized & Unrealized profits, with almost two thirds of gains coming from this asset class. Otherwise I have some net gains on short & longer term Stocks, and a loss in Futures 😊

I traded around 70 underlyings in 2020; here they are, ordered by % contribution to my annual Realized & Unrealized gains

$CRWD, $NET, $WYNN & $FSLY are my top winners! 🚀

I made a bit more than 200 opening trades in 2020. By far the most common are Long Stock and Short Put trades

Best performer = Short Puts, with an 84% win rate! Another 7% were rolled into new strikes, and only 1.43% were a loss 😮

Win rate on long stock is lowest. This is skewed as I’m only using Realized gains, and most of my profitable stock positions are still open

🇺🇸🎅PATRIOTSTORYTIME🎅🇺🇸

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the House,

2Not a swampcreature was working, not even a mouse;

3The stock market was flush with all of Trump's flare,

4In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

/1/

1 Introduction

Fascism: what is it and why does it get such a bad rap?

This thread is for information purposes only

2 Fascism itself is used as a pejorative and most, whether on the right or left, lack conception of Fascism’s origins. ‘Fascist’ is a curse word in much the same vain as Nazi.

3 Fascism is a much maligned ideology/philosophy which makes sense only when those origins are understood. Likewise, the zeitgeist which prevailed at the time must also be understood, stripped down and thoroughly analyzed.

4 Whilst Fascism bears some similarities to National Socialism, they are really only close cousins.

5 The style of Fascism prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s is different from the ‘Fascism’ prevailing in the 2020s, and then it must be distinguished from that which existed, or still exists, in most Third World countries.

Mkt view :
Only 290 companies trading above dec 2017 prices which was top of overall broader market. If one looks at nifty which is concentrated in 5 stocks, then it may scare them. Whereas individual stocks have yet lot of room to grow.

In history of markets, when interest rates can not grow and remain so low for another 1 year minimum then stock prices are bound to soar.

How to play in current markets :
1. Debt free and low working capital companies ( as% of sales) with less receivable days and small cash conversion cycles . This ensures company always has money to operate n stay afloat.

2. High growth companies with above 1st condition. Top line of 10% plus and bottom line of 25% plus consistently with increasing or stable operating margins make the company do better in robustness of share price.

In such pandemic corona conditions or earlier demonetization, nbfc liquidity crunch, ilfs, small & midcap dwnfall from 2018: if all of these situations can not stop these companies then What will?

THREAD: A lot of my students have been asking me about the current events involving GameStop, Bitcoin/Dogecoin, minimum wage, stimulus checks, so I thought I'd make a thread that carefully explains this stuff for people who feel out of the loop: (1/97)

On May 28, 2016, a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla. Fearing for the boy's life, a zoo worker shot and killed Harambe.

The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to use lethal force. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that

it highlighted the danger of zoo animals near humans and the need for better standards of care.

Harambe (/həˈrɑːmbeɪ/ hə-RAHM-bay) was born at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, on May 27, 1999. He was named by Dan Van Coppenolle, a local area counselor who won a naming contest sponsored by the zoo.[1] He came up with the name after listening to the song "Harambe

Friend: Suggest me a battery stock for long term.

Me: Why do you want to invest in battery stock?

Friend: Future is about EV so.

Me: Good :)

Me: Battery is going to be huge portion in EV price.

[1/n]

2/

Me: Since batteries is going to be major cost component I feel like big companies source raw materials like lithium, Nickel, Iron and setup their own plants for manufacturing those.

I would rather play passive on EV like embedded and IOT devices in EV, Charging stations etc.

3/

Companies like Tesla already have Gigawatt factories and planning to setup Terawatt factory within this decade.

Researching extensively on all life cycles of battery, from structure to packing.

Researching alternatives to lithium batteries, since lithium is scarce.

4/

Already Tesla found few potential replacements for Lithium, working on few challenges that are pised by potential elements and mentioned the same during this year investor meet.

If you guys know Elon then you'll be already knowing that he just doesn't give up.

5/

Indian companies like Tata Chemicals investing 4k Crores for plant and another 500-1000 crores for Battery recycling plant.

Big companies like Maruti already acquired land in Gujarath for this EV purposes.

Hitachi ABB power has fast charging technology.

What does the Trade and Cooperation Agreement mean for the UKs #extradition arrangements with the EU27?

Lets take a quick look

Thread

A reminder of the respective positions of the UK and the EU in their negotiations that the UK Government considered a 'UK WIN'

As rightly said by @StevePeers, the reality is that the Agreement appears to be closer aligned to the EUs objectives, particularly given the EU wins in relation to dual criminality, ability to determine applicability for political offences and surrender for own nationals. EU WIN?

To begin with, as per previous arrangements, #extradition is referred to throughout as a 'mechanism of surrender'. Unlike the Council Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant, the surrender arrangement does not appear to be based on mutual trust and recognition

Despite the UK Governments negotiating position of not seeking participation in the EAW scheme, the Agreement provisions on surrender closely follows the wording of the Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant

Support MSME

The Australia China trade war has resulted in China seeking support for import of of iron ore from Africa. Africa is building its iron or system which will take nearly the next five years to develop completely till then China is looking at India for its import.

This is a very crucial time for the Indian market to understand its own local and domestic needs and fulfill it before exporting the much-needed iron and steel raw materials to China.

This will in turn result in increasing prices of iron and iron materials in China and therefore India can capitalise this opportunity to export and products made of these important commodities at much higher prices.

The Indian Steel market has been under great pressure due to skyrocketing prices as the after effects of the covid-19 lockdown still persist increasing the ever growing gap between the huge demand and the shortening supply.

The manufacturers have not been receiving their pending payments due to which they are not able to procure enough raw material to make the products.

#Global #ETF Weekly & Month-end (thread): 29 Jan 2021

- 2020 worst perf #sector making comeback in 2021 $IXC

- This is helping #oil producing countries with #Nigeria & #UAE in top5 #Country ETF YTD performers in USD $NGE $UAE

- #SouthAfrica $EZA moved into top15 YTD performers

2/12

#EmergingMarkets #ETF still storming ahead against #DevelopedMarkets ETF, still not relatively "overbought" yet, but getting close.

#SouthAfrica might need a lot of catch up, but $EZA YTD performance in USD (+0.2%) continued 2nd half on 2020 recovery against $URTH (-0.8%)

3/12

#Global #Value #stocks still making short-term recovery, with $IWVL #ETF still looking strong relatively over the short-term. Over 3yr period it is however still lagging quite substantially.

4/12

This one is worrying, but then again, it's been for some time. #Global #Tech #stocks relative to #MSCI All Country World Index is definitely creating some concern. Be very careful.

$IXN vs $ACWI

5/12

#Internet companies still big driver on performance, with US Internet Co's #ETF growing 1.8% in January (YTD) in USD versus #MSCI World $URTH losing 0.8% over same period

#Chinese Internet Co's $KWEB however grew 13% in Jan. Wow! That helped #Naspers/#Prosus & also SA $EZA

A lot has been written today about the $GME pump on /r/WallStreetBets from a financial angle.

But I think there's another angle - this it also works as a *multiplayer game* and one with an interesting design.

Don't believe me? Let's look at it structurally!

1/

WSB pump of $GME exhibits a number of gamelike elements:
1. resource mechanics
2. multiplayer social mechanics
3. progression mechanics
4. multi-system interactions
5. prediction complexity, and
6. a powerful player fantasy to tie them together

2/

1. Just by itself, the stock market is an engrossing game (for those who can afford the time and money). It's got a variety of simple resource mechanics (buy / sell stocks), more complex mechanics (buy / sell options), super complex mechanics (would you like some futures?) ... 3/

... and a very high analytic complexity (which mechanic should I apply to maximize return, short term or long term?).

Like in chess, this analysis is very hard but therefore interesting.

And the system gives somewhat clear feedback about how well you're playing ($$$). 4/

2. Now WSB specifically adds social mechanics. Being a lone wolf timing the market is one thing - but banding together to see what you can do together, now that's something else!

Specifically WSB allows not just socializing/meta, but also for coordination. 5/

1) As the miserable year of 2020 reaches its end, it's time to return to the offices of Hindsight Capital LLC.

For those unfamiliar, this great, albeit imaginary, hedge fund invests with the benefit of a style guaranteed to beat all others: hindsight

2) As such perfect vision would allow infinite returns, certain limits are imposed on Hindsight Capital’s managers:

🚫It can't trade during the year
🚫It can't use leverage
🚫It can't invest in individual stocks
✅It must make broader or sectoral

3) Hindsight can, however, make “long-short” trades.

But the hedge fund must be able to explain how someone might have made such a trade based on only what they knew at the time. Foreknowledge of earthquakes and hurricanes, for instance, is not allowed

4) As for the pandemic, Hindsight Capital’s managers were aware of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan and had little difficulty in predicting how the world would react and what its effects would be.

That was crucial, as will be seen in this thread

5) Hindsight Capital always bases itself in the country with the year’s weakest currency.

In 2020, that was Brazil, giving its managers a great excuse to live out the pandemic from an office overlooking Ipanema Beach