Looking Back at 2024: What We Got Right

Looking back over the last 12 months for TheStreet Pro Portfolio, we made a number of buy-and-sell moves, which led the portfolio to overtake the S&P 500 in November. We attribute our performance to a combination of things, including doing the homework on companies to understand their value proposition, whether the shares are undervalued or not, and what the tailwinds and other catalysts are that could spark those shares higher. To that list, we can add timing, as in the timing for initiating new positions, accumulating more shares, as well as selling them.

One example that sticks out in that respect were the moves we made in early August following the near 10% drop in the S&P 500 that unfolded in the second half of July. That pullback allowed us to initiate positions in Meta Platforms META and Eaton Corp. plc. ETN as well as pick up shares of multiple holdings at better prices, all of which paid off nicely as the market rebounded.

Other well-timed additions included our multiple purchases of Marvell Technology MRVL shares, which are up 87% year-to-date, Nvidia NVDA, Dutch Bros BROS, The Trade Desk TTD, ServiceNow NOW, among others.

Helping us achieve our success this year were some of our key tenets, which include being disciplined, prudent investors that listen to the data, not ones that only look for the data to support what they want it to. That is a classic trap, and it remains one we aim to avoid.

Listening to the data is what helped us determine when it was prudent to pick up more shares of the portfolio holdings mentioned above as well as stay the course with other positions. For example, if we didn’t track monthly construction data, we might have sold out of United Rentals URI after the shares fell 13% between mid-May and mid-June. Had we sold, we wouldn’t have participated in URI's move to above $900 in early November. Currently, those shares are oversold, and we continue to see 2026 as a potential peak year for construction activity.

Being prudent also means recognizing when the time is right to lock in a position’s gains, as well as limit losses on the portfolio. In early August we threw in the towel on Coty COTY shares, exiting the position at $9.12. While the portfolio sustained a loss on the position, we exited before things became really ugly, with stock crossing the $7 mark. Other examples include our more recent exit of PepsiCo PEP shares, which have since moved below our exit price, as well as our timing with Elevance Health ELV, exiting at $406.48 vs. their current share price near $368.

One factor that keeps us on our toes is the simple fact that investing is an evolving landscape, which is another reason why we let the data talk to us, be it economic data, surveys, financial filings, management comments, and other signals. It was Mark Twain who said, “To stand still is to fall behind” and we subscribe to that thought about constantly improving and moving forward.

With that in mind, this year we introduced Portfolio Office Hours and incorporated a greater use of thematics. Indeed, our use of thematics led us to introduce a new weekend Alert that discusses data points and other nuggets ripped from the headlines in order to identify portfolio tailwinds.

More recently we added another weekend Alert, Sunday Soup, in which we let our hair down and share some other recent things that are catching our attention. We’ve also done deep dives on existing and new portfolio positions as well as names in the Bullpen. In addition, we now regularly publish updated consensus EPS expectations for the portfolio’s holdings and refreshed panic points for those positions when needed.

These initiatives, along with interacting with members in the Forum and Alert comment sections, are basic "blocking and tackling" for the portfolio. In addition to continuing these features in 2025, we’ll look to bring back the Poll of the Week and introduce a few new items in the coming weeks and months.

On Tuesday, we’ll talk about some things we could have done better in 2024 and how we aim to do that in 2025.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long META, ETN, MRVL, NVDA, BROS, TTD, NOW and URI.