2020 has been a remarkably odd time to be an investor. Granted, it has been an incredibly strange time to be alive in general. It is now October and Covid continues to rage on, a seemingly never ending storm without respite. Our President just tested positive for the virus and has entered the hospital. He has the best medical care and will therefore almost assuredly be fine, but you never know. The word has been used over and over, but that is because it rings true, these are unprecedented times. I think we would all like to just get this chapter over and move on with our lives. With an election right around the corner however, I expect more volatility to be on the horizon. I’m not one to make market forecasts, but I would not be surprised to see some pretty big swings in the near future.

Q3 Performance

As of 10/1/2020, my 10K portfolio stood at $13,047.01. When I started on 8/19/18, the SPY had a price of $285.06 and my account started with $10,000. As of 10/1/2020 the SPY had a price of $334.89. In reality, the SPY has done even better due to dividends given out, so I have accounted for dividend reinvestment in the return calculations.

	10K Return(1)	SPY Return(2)	Difference(1-2)
2018(8/19-12/31)	(13.95)	(13.71)	(.24)
2019	37.33	32.6	4.73
2020(1/1-9/30)	10.41	5.32	5.09
Since Inception(8/19/18)	30.47	21.85	8.62

As we can see, I have done reasonably well in both 2020 and overall. I am by no means crushing the index, but a steady outperformance compounded over years can grow into a massive delta. If I can keep beating the S&P by 4-5% a year, I will be thrilled. So far, my GARP strategy has worked. I hope my portfolio keeps up the momentum, but don’t be surprised to see some reversion to the mean.

My stocks are now worth $12,778.29 and I am sitting on an additional $268.72 of cash, meaning I am almost fully invested. The market does appear to be frothy in my opinion, but in general I like to have my money invested rather than sitting on the sidelines. Should the market fall, I expect my companies to make intelligent capital allocation decisions, coming in the form of share buybacks or acquisitions of target companies at lower prices.

BUYS

INTC– I saw someone on Twitter(I would give credit, but I don’t remember who) mention that Intel shares looked attractive given current prices. I decided to take a look and based on numbers alone I liked what I saw. Problem was, the semiconductor industry was well outside of my circle of competence. I then went on to do a mini deep dive and educate myself. Admittedly, I will never be a semiconductor expert, far from it. But I think I have learned enough to be able to assess the competitive dynamics, time will tell if I am right or wrong.

So why the Intel discount, what’s the rub? Intel has been perceived to be in a losing CPU race against smaller faster competitors, AMD and Nvidia. They have the advantage of being fabless, in other words they do not manufacture chips themselves. Rather they design the chips and outsource manufacturing, mostly to TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor giant. TSMC brings fantastic technology to the table, enabling the smaller competitors to leapfrog over Intel in ultra high performance technology. This perception very well may be correct, but I feel it fails to paint the full picture. Intel is now so diversified that they are no longer completely reliant on the microprocessor. The second quarter of 2020 marked the first time that the data center portion of the business overtook the CPU portion, accounting for 52% of overall revenue. Data centric revenue was up 34% YoY. Certainly doesn’t look like a company on the brink of death to me.

Intel likely did take their eye off the ball and let competitors catch up in areas they previously held complete dominance. While Intel used to be a microprocessor company, they now are involved in so many different lines of business. Their focus has shifted to data, which they estimate to have a total TAM of $230 billion by 2030 according to this past quarter’s earnings transcript. This is significantly higher than the PC market TAM and Intel has therefore made it into the priority.

At the end of the day, Intel is still an incredible business that spins off loads of cash that can then be reinvested back into the business. In 2019, they spent 16.2B on CapEx and an additional 13.3B on R&D. That is 29.9B being spent on innovation and improvement, almost 3x what Nvidia and 5x what AMD did in total 2019 revenue. Intel trades at around 13x expected 2020 FCF, a deep discount to the rest of the market. I expect the company to continue to make use of their vast resources to invest in the future. Simultaneously, they will continue to pay out increasing dividends, make accretive acquisitions and opportunistically buyback shares.

CBOE- This one is a little less controversial and much less discussed on the Twitter-sphere. CBOE, which started as the Chicago Board Options Exchange but now goes by CBOE Global Markets, operates as a market maker, creating a marketplace for options and futures as well as a global stock exchange. It is a brilliant business model, they take none of the risk, but rather create the rails for others to work on. They exhibit classic GARP characteristics that I like to see, high return on invested capital and a capital light business. The business requires very little reinvestment, which allows the company to use their cash flow elsewhere. In 2019, they generated operating cash flow of $632 million. CapEx for the year was a mere $35 million. This left just under $600 million to be used in value creating activities. For instance in 2017, CBOE made a $3.2 billion acquisition of BATS Global Markets that has really bolstered the company. Since then, top line, bottom line and FCF have all grown considerably. I expect more large acquisitions in the future.

There is actually a whole group of companies working within this greater marketplace industry that exhibit superior economics. Just some examples are CME, Intercontinental Exchange and Market Axess. I happen to like CBOE the most at the moment given current prices, but they are all great companies. Should an opportunity come available, I could see myself owning one or more of these companies in the future. I’m actually surprised I have never seen Warren Buffett play in this sandbox. Seems to be right up his alley, but he has his reasons.

As always, I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your day to give this a read! Feel free to leave some comments or questions. Follow me on Twitter @TheGarpInvestor.