QAV Light Weekly Update #152

First Mon­day of 2025!

Let’s see where things are at today.

All the best,
Cameron

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CY24 PORTFOLIO UPDATE

It’s a good time to report on the per­for­mance of the four Light port­fo­lios for CY24.

LIGHT GROUP

All com­bined, the four Light port­fo­lios were up 9.35% for the year. 

The bench­mark SPDR200 was up 11.09%.

Let’s have a look at the break­down for each port­fo­lio, because there was a pret­ty large spread. 

PORTFOLIO 22.1

CY24: ‑1.65%

ALL TIME: ‑1.64% pa

This port­fo­lio, which we start­ed ear­ly 2022, just before inter­est rate ris­es and the Ukraine war crashed the mar­ket, con­tin­ues to strug­gle to get wind in its sails. Over the course of the year, it had more losers (eg stocks who price declined) than win­ners. And the best of those win­ners — JYC, MLX, NWH — had good years, but were not enough to off­set the loss­es. Since incep­tion, it’s under­per­form­ing the index by a lot (index +9% pa).

Portfolio 222

CY24: ‑1.7%

ALL TIME: 9.3% pa

This port­fo­lio is beat­ing the index since incep­tion (9.3% pa v 7.7% pa) but did­n’t have a good year. Like 221, it had more losers than win­ners. And the best of those win­ners were not enough to off­set the loss­es. The size of the port­fo­lio is also an issue. Ide­al­ly we’d like 15–20 stocks, but this one had a peri­od of con­sol­i­da­tion when there weren’t a lot of stocks to buy on the check­list. Con­se­quent­ly it cur­rent­ly only holds 11 stocks. The small­er the port­fo­lio, the low­er the chances of get­ting a cou­ple of big win­ners. 

PORTFOLIO 223

CY24: 20.61%

ALL TIME: 11.43% pa

This port­fo­lio had a much bet­ter year. More win­ners than losers and some of those win­ners had excep­tion­al years. Since incep­tion, it’s a tie with the index. 

PORTFOLIO 231

CY24: 19.8%

ALL TIME: 13.65% pa

A good year for this port­fo­lio, too. How­ev­er, this one also had more losers than win­ners, and it’s a lit­tle con­sol­i­dat­ed, but it still man­aged to have a good year. Since incep­tion, it’s beat­ing the index (10.8% pa). 

CY24 CONCLUSION

TK and I will talk about it on the show tomor­row, but it seems to me that what makes any par­tic­u­lar year great, good, bad or aver­age has a lot to do with the luck of the stocks you hold. All of these port­fo­lios are well estab­lished now and they all fol­low exact­ly the same rules. For ref­er­ence, my per­son­al port­fo­lio was up 10.27% and the QAV Dum­my Port­fo­lio was up 11.86%, so they both fell in between the range of the Light port­fo­lios. Of course, the Dum­my Port­fo­lio has been going near­ly six years at this point and is doing near­ly dou­ble mar­ket (16% pa vs 9% pa), which is also what Tony’s port­fo­lios have acheived over 30 years, so over time we expect the Light port­fo­lios do per­form at the same lev­el. It’s a long-term strat­e­gy, and there will be a mix­ture of good years, aver­age years, bad years and great years. QAV isn’t mag­ic, it’s just a strat­e­gy for buy­ing shares in healthy com­pa­nies when they are trad­ing at a dis­count to their intrin­sic val­u­a­tion, and the belief that those shares will, on aver­age, out-per­form the rest of the mar­ket, over the long run. 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR YEAR

We are eager to hear about how your port­fo­lios per­formed dur­ing CY24, so please drop me an email and let me know how you went and how you’re feel­ing about CY25. If there’s any­thing we can do dif­fer­ent­ly to help you in your invest­ing jour­ney, we would love to hear about it. 

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SELLS

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BUYS

CURRENT HOLDINGS & HISTORICAL TRADES

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** Please remem­ber to review our Buy­ing Guide­lines to under­stand which cap bands you should be look­ing at and oth­er impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions. 

DISCLOSURE 

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

FOR NEW MEMBERS

If you’re new to QAV Light, here’s a quick reminder on how it works. 

1. We send you an email every Mon­day advis­ing which stocks we are adding to our Light port­fo­lio.
2. You can copy our trades, but please remem­ber to review our Trad­ing Guide­lines to under­stand which cap you should be look­ing at and oth­er impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions. And con­sult a finan­cial plan­ner before mak­ing any deci­sions.
3. We don’t rec­om­mend that you add stocks which are already in our port­fo­lio. Their posi­tion on our buy list might have changed since we rec­om­mend­ed them. Just start with the stocks rec­om­mend­ed after you become a mem­ber.
4. If one of the stocks we add breach­es one of our sell con­di­tions, we will sell it from our port­fo­lio and you’ll get an email advis­ing of the trade. Again, you can copy our trades, but seek finan­cial advice before mak­ing any deci­sions. And please check your Rule #1 price (see Trad­ing Guide­lines).
5. If you come across any QAV ter­mi­nol­o­gy that you don’t under­stand (eg Rule 1, 3PTL, Pos­si­bles, etc), please review our ter­mi­nol­o­gy guide or just email us for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s it for today! 

If we decide to buy or sell some­thing, we’ll let you know. 

Got a ques­tion? 
[email protected]

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And here’s my video of the week.

I’ve been on a deep dive of Shostakovich recent­ly. Here’s his friend, Evge­ny Mravin­sky, con­duct­ing the Leningrad Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra play­ing Shostakovich’s Sym­pho­ny No. 5, op. 47, in 1973. I know there’s tech­ni­cal­ly no “cor­rect” inter­pre­ta­tion of the score, but as he lived through those times with Dmitri, I have to think Mravin­sky’s inter­pre­ta­tion must be worth pay­ing atten­tion to. 

I’ve lis­tened to this (in var­i­ous record­ings) so many times in the last week it’s infil­trat­ed my dreams.