29 Comments
User's avatar
Chandler S's avatar

Oh man—I owned so many of these via investing groups and lost money on all of them. PTON, UPST, TDOC, BMBL, MTCH, ETSY, ROKU, ZOOM, FVRR was probably half my portfolio in 2020/21. 2022 was a brutal year! Lol. The lessons were painful but I learned a ton. Great post.

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

I think most people reading this will have touched at least one company in this list, so appreciate you sharing that and being candid!

Expand full comment
Alex Sweet's avatar

I love this selection. I had somehow managed to completely miss the Playboy IPO at the time, and didn’t know it was listed!

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Trust me, you are glad you missed it, haha.

Expand full comment
Wolf of Harcourt Street's avatar

Some minor PTSD reading that, owned 4 of those 20 at one point or another. Thankfully position sizing saved the day.

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Similar story for me. Did well in a couple (luck mostly) and badly in a couple others.

Expand full comment
Wolf of Harcourt Street's avatar

It was almost impossible not to have had some exposure to it. Good lessons learned, thats for sure.

Expand full comment
Sam White's avatar

Lost £1k on Teladoc when I finally gave up and sold it 2 years ago, a relatively expensive lesson at the time but the portfolio has grown since.

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Hopefully it looks like an inexpensive lesson years down the line!

Expand full comment
T LI's avatar

a blast from the past, a trip down memory lane.

if you spend more time on this topic Conor, would love to also see the charts of those which suffered deep drawdowns but then bounced back or somewhat bounced back.

for starters i guess SPX and NDX. but curious about names that bounced back for idiosyncratic fundamental reasons...

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

While I think there are certainly less of them, and they are less obvious, I think this would be an interesting article as well. Can think of a few names already.

Expand full comment
T LI's avatar

would love to read it.

Expand full comment
Ken Trails's avatar

Bumble is severely undervalued according to Alpha Spread.

Expand full comment
Julien Pervillé's avatar

I have been tempted to buy many of those to "diversify" from my beloved REITs.

I had some FOMO but in the end I didn't buy any unprofitable tech stocks because those companies were not profitable and did not pay a dividend. To me they were empire building using the shareholders money (eg' when Teladoc bought growth darling Livongo in 2020). Look where they are today.

Profitable tech is another matter.

Expand full comment
Jason Leonard's avatar

Each one of them a Netflix series ready to be commissioned.

Great post, thanks!

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Haha, i'd watch them all. Thanks Jason

Expand full comment
Nipples Ultra's avatar

Novavax.

Nikola!

And now the obligatory confession: I worked for Enron.

Expand full comment
SomeUserName's avatar

Excellent article. I was lucky enough not to own any of them, but I def remember seeing all these tickers scrolling by constantly during the go go years

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Thank you!

Expand full comment
David M Gordon's avatar

You are on the cusp of a major recognition, Conor. Either you know it already but held back from divulging here for whatever reason (I can think of several excellent reasons) or you do not know it yet but, at your cadence, will soon enough. Either way, congratulations!

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Thank you David, kind words 🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Maverick Equity Research's avatar

quite a hall of fame ...

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

You said it!

Expand full comment
Christos V (Simply Finance)'s avatar

Amazing that Zoom has fell off as much as it has even though we all probably still use it weekly if not daily!

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

I know right.

Expand full comment
AlphaPicks's avatar

Good article (and the cleanest visuals we’ve seen all year?)

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Thanks for noticing :)

Expand full comment
David J. Waldron's avatar

Great post, Conor. The common denominator, besides the pandemic boost, is each company seems to have been a speculative play based on anticipated future mega sales growth from innovative products more so than company fundamentals and share price values?

Expand full comment
Conor Mac's avatar

Thanks David.

I think that is certainly one commonality. Some of these businesses did see a big uplift in demand without changing their value prop. Etsy, for example, didn't really bring anything new to the table, they were just an e-commerce marketplace that saw a big increase in demand as people were bored and in doors. Speculative market activity no less, but nothing innovative there I don't think.

Expand full comment