Portfolio Update — July 2025

YTD: +16.38%, 1Y: +27.6%

“The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.” — Charlie Munger

The market apparently decided that June was the month to ignore literally everything and just go up.

A 12-day war between Israel and Iran that nearly started WW3? Priced in. Ongoing trade tension deadlines looming? Who cares. The S&P 500 kept hitting fresh record highs while oil prices that briefly spiked during the Middle East conflict quickly retreated. It’s been one of those stretches where you remember that sometimes the market just does its own thing, regardless of what we think should matter.

Not that I’m complaining. When your portfolio is full of quality businesses that were already undervalued, a rising tide tends to lift all boats—even the ones the market forgot it owned.

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Portfolio Performance

YTD: +16.38% vs +7.34% for the S&P 500

1-Year: +27.60% vs +14.61% for the index

Not bad for a portfolio built around a mix of quality businesses and undervalued stocks—some compounders, some just too cheap to ignore.

A big part of the outperformance this year has come not just from staying put, but from where I stayed put. My exposure to non-U.S. equities helped cushion the drawdowns others felt more sharply. Patience, as always, pays.

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Portfolio Positioning

The portfolio remains concentrated in businesses I’d be happy to own for years—some, potentially, forever.

Alibaba (14.5%) — Still our largest position at 7.5x EBITDA. The market acts like Chinese e-commerce and Cloud peaked in 2019, which seems... optimistic for pessimism.

Nelnet (10.9%) — The most boring stock that keeps making money. Student loans, payment processing, and random tech investments hidden in plain sight.

Markel (10.4%) — Mini-Berkshire doing mini-Berkshire things. Solid underwriting plus smart capital allocation equals slow but steady wealth creation.

Brookfield (10.1%) — Real assets managed by people who actually know how to manage real assets. Revolutionary concept, apparently.

Coupang (9.5%) — Korean Amazon trading like it's Korean Sears. The disconnect between business quality and stock price remains... substantial.