Software as a Service (SAAS) has been a favorite investment in the stock market.  Francis and I discuss how to choose a great SAAS investment.  Francis further talks about Crowdstrike (CRWD) which to date ticks all the boxes of a great SAAS investment.  We further talk what is the competitive advantage of Snowflake (Snow) and some comparisons between  Snowflake (Snow) and Palantir (PLTR)   

 Joe goes by StockNovice at Twitter (@StockNovice). He has been investing in US markets for the last 25 years. He was always beating markets marginally. However, in the last three years, he saw maximum success as he moved to a concentrated portfolio and came in touch with Saul who influenced his investing. Saul is another hugely successful investor with over 30 % annualized returns. You can participate in a discussion with Saul at https://boards.fool.com/sauls-investing-discussions-120980.aspx.    Coming back to StockNovice philosophy:   StockNovice is choosing companies and not stocks.  For him, it is about buying businesses that resonate with you.  and once we select companies, we have clear and high expectations from them. Some of the KPIs could be Revenue growth, Customer growth, net retention rates.. if  its software business. The key strategy is to buy the dominant businesses. If a company is a dominant business …it a good chance that it could be a dominant stock. The top holding for StockNovice is Datadog.  It is very innovative, disrupted industry, growing revenue, and free cash flow positive.  Datadog grew to 26% of its portfolio as the company has been a great performer in stock markets.  StockNovice understands that dominant players will be expensive and he doesn’t mind buying higher prices.  The price of stocks is something he looks at last.  Most of the valuation models are very linear and are unable to capture exponential growth.  He believes that one doesn’t have to be right all the time. One has to be more right than wrong.   StockNovice doesn’t run a screen to select the companies. He crowdsources the company from sources that he trusts and researches. He trims companies when the company’s stock prices look a bit too disconnected from fundamentals. He trimmed Cloudflare (NETS) as stock looked a bit too extended. Also, he sold a large part of Upstart (Upst) after it didn’t have such a good Q3 2021. StockNovice sold Affirm (Afrm) at an 8-10% loss and sold in a short time as he wasn’t fully convinced about the company’s revenue model and durability.  Portfolio construction for StockNovice is a very personal choice.  It is about what resonates with one person and what are his or her financial circumstances. He doesn’t invest in real estate and crypto as he is not very comfortable with him or doesn’t know a huge deal about them. Since StockNovice runs a concentrated portfolio of hypergrowth companies,  volatility is common and he accepts it as a price for higher returns. StockNovice doesn’t use any technical analysis for entry and exit. He lets fundamentals do the talk. Business signals are more important to him than price signals.   The key thing is to invest behind your best ideas.. follow and trust your process. Returns will take care of themselves.   

 what are the MEGA crypto trends for 2022? Investment in Metaverse, NFT, and Web 3.0  will give you an investing advantage. But how to find great projects to invest in. How to value crypto projects and how long to hold them. Should Defi and Metaverse projects be seen in the same way? Conversation with Rohas Nagpal who is a known blockchain developer in India clarifies the basics. Listening to the chat will give you an investing edge  

 what are the MEGA crypto trends for 2022? Investment in Metaverse, NFT, and Web 3.0  will give you an investing advantage. But how to find great projects to invest in. How to value crypto projects and how long to hold them. Should Defi and Metaverse projects be seen in the same way? Conversation with Rohas Nagpal who is a known blockchain developer in India clarifies the basics. Listening to the chat will give you an investing edge  

 what are the MEGA crypto trends for 2022? Investment in Metaverse, NFT, and Web 3.0  will give you an investing advantage. But how to find great projects to invest in. How to value crypto projects and how long to hold them. Should Defi and Metaverse projects be seen in the same way? Conversation with Rohas Nagpal who is a known blockchain developer in India clarifies the basics. Listening to the chat will give you an investing edge  

 hat are the MEGA crypto trends for 2022? Investment in Metaverse, NFT, and Web 3.0  will give you an investing advantage. But how to find great projects to invest in. How to value crypto projects and how long to hold them. Should Defi and Metaverse projects be seen in the same way? Conversation with Rohas Nagpal who is a known blockchain developer in India clarifies the basics. Listening to the chat will give you an investing edge  

What crypto will make a good blue-chip investment? How should one create a Crypto portfolio? Could it be Polygon Matic? here I explore more on this promising cryptocurrency. Matic has significantly gained in last one year and the price is consolidating now. But is the bull run over? The mission of Polygon is to create a decentralized world. It solves a big problem by helping Ethereum in scalability. With Ethereum use increasing, transaction costs for increasing. So polygon becomes a good side chain which helps users with much lower transaction costs on the Ethereum chain. Polygon is making the right partnerships with other projects like Sushi, Aave, Quickswap, etc. Polygon is also trying to develop an enterprise solution with Ernst and Young. It's partnering with google, Draft kings. Polygon is getting active in Metaverse e.g. MANA (decentraland). Fund management houses are interested in creating funds, especially for Polygon. However, Polygon's biggest strength of being an Ethereum ally maybe its disadvantage as well. Ethereum is looking to upgrade itself by 2022 ETH 2.0. So, one can think about Polygon losing some relevance. However, the Polygon management team has a vision and they are looking to transform the company into service as Infrastructure management which can work with other big chains too. Competition is from Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos. However, Polygon is confident that they are better than the competition. The average price target for Polygon Matic in the next five years is around 7 USD. Based on Polygon quality, usability, and end use …I find it as a promising investment that I am investing a small sum that I look to dollar cost average as I gain more confidence in Polygon's ability to survive and thrive in the post-ETH 2.0 world. It's not financial advice. Please do your own due diligence

Brian Stoffel pivoted from teaching to investing. His investing track record will beat many best professional fund managers in the world. His stock portfolio is 10 times in 10 years. In the discussion, Brian talks about 1) How he pivoted from teaching to investing 2) his investing framework and thinking 3) His lessons on the way 4) His advice for fellow investors Brian’s Portfolio details are also attached below. Brian is deeply influenced by David Gardner's investment philosophy and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's life’s philosophy. He believes that even if you lose 9 out of 10 times and win big in one…you could still have phenomenal returns. His best investment has been Shopify which he bought in 43 dollars and now it's 1600 USD plus. This is insane 40 times gain. Brian likes to invest in companies that are anti-fragile. You can find his anti-fragile framework here (gumroad.com/l/zWXye) His investments are likely to be in companies a) Mission drive i..e they are driven by larger objectives, more than money b) the businesses have wide moat c) it's driven by people who every morning think that what can they do better to further the mission. Brian doesn’t focus on the stock. He focuses on the business. He thinks like an owner. Moat of the company, optionality in the company, and mission are critical factors of an antifragile company. Holding such companies with patience can be hugely rewarding. One of the reasons for investing and remaining invested in Shopify was Tobias Lutke’s commitment to his mission. The company’s willingness to do something great created new projects and optionality which no wall street analyst could have imagined. If Brian starts investing fresh today again…he would start with investing in companies that he is aware of e.g. Apple, Axon. And as a seasoned investor, if he gets a fresh infusion of 1 million USD, he would look for smaller companies like Riskified, Semrush, Pubmatic, and AXON enterprises. These companies meet the criteria in the anti-fragile framework.

 Crypto is booming. The Crypto market is almost around 3 trillion USD.  Bitcoin is not dominant anymore as other altcoins are picking up. Solana is at an all-time high. Ethereum is also at an all-time high. Fantom is the relatively new kid on the block.  However, some are saying that Fantom could be Solana and Ethereum's killer.  Fantom token price (FTM) has become 10X in the last couple of months. In this deep dive, I look into   a) what are the positives of Fantom. b)  b) What is the risk associated with Fantom?   c) Whether Fantom merits any investment from me?  d) Is Fantom really that superior to Ethereum or Solana?    Some of the key things that come out are that Fantom has extremely strong technology, a good team, and helps with Scalability Trilemma.  Theoretically, it can process 20,000 transactions per second. Although it is yet to be tested. Total transactions on the platform are significant and have increased in the last couple of months.  Transactions on Fantom are also increasing.   Fantom (FTM) is compatible with the Ethereum network.  Fantom has a lot of strengths. At the same time, there are quite a few weaknesses e.g. its too much dependent on Andre Cronje, the current defi architect. Also its built using Solidity with Ethereum Virtual Machine.  So, it makes it dependent on Ethereum.   Overall. I am investing in Fantom with some caution and looking to scale up slowly if Fantom foundation executes well with time.  Fantom is a side -dish and NOT the main dish

 Metaverse is in full flow with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook rebranding the company.  This would mean that all things virtual will become central and hence investing in stocks and cryptocurrency-related to Metaverse will be a real thing for the future. Here I am exploring three investment choices that could help one build Wealth.  I reviewed Matterport and two other gaming cryptos “Sandbox” (SAND) and “decentraland” (mana).  Matterport digitizes the buildings, has huge markets, good financials, and good management from companies like google. With a Matterport subscription, you can view and immerse in the experience in 3d space sitting from the comfort of your homes. Matterport is a pioneer in this industry.  In Cryptos, Sandbox is a gaming ecosystem and has many celebrities like Snoop Dogg working with them.  Another one, Decentraland is in virtual real estate where you can buy and sell land.  After metaverse announcement from Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) Matterport, Sandbox and decentraland have shown significant growth in stock price. However, they may continue to grow with the right tailwind. You can buy Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA) at different crypto platforms  like Coinbase and Gemini.