Since 2017, I invested in multiple Startups via Crowdinvesting platforms. Before that, I only invested in public traded companies.

I am currently thinking about investing in some new Startups (and I also operate my own Startup), so that is a good time to check if my previous investments are profitable.

I also invested, via loan, in three - not public - companies which already exist for a longer period and which I don’t classify as a Startup because of that. Of these 3 companies, only one could pay me back in time.

When the SolarWinds supply chain attack happened in 2020, I didn’t really get deep into what SolarWinds does because I had to focus on day-to-day business. But now, in 2022, I found out what SolarWinds does because I was searching for monitoring solutions myself.

In this article I want to cover the current valuation, a description of what SolarWinds does and my thoughts about the future.

Valuation

As of March 12, the company trades at 11.21 USD per share. That’s below book value. The company has an equity ratio of nearly 48% and the revenue for 2021 fell nearly 30% from 2020 and is now at 2017 levels.

The current events in Ukraine led to many economic sanctions against Russia. Despite this war is the result of leaders, not their citizens, the West decided to define many very hard sanctions which resulted into making it impossible to trade with Russian Stocks right now. (After the close of the Moscow Exchange, ADRs listed in the US and GDRs listed on the London Stock Exchange also can’t be bought anymore)

Because many Russian stocks can only be sold right now, the prices for these fell more and more. Speculators who bought some stocks in the beginning of this Week could get these shares very cheap on the few Exchanges and Brokers which still traded them, but now these Speculators also can’t trade Russian stocks anymore.

In 2008 Russia fought against Georgia in the Russo-Georgian War. This resulted into a catastrophic situation for the people which live in the areas occupied by Russia. Still today, Russia claims that parts of Georgia are “independent” Countries which do not belong to Georgia.

So why do I start with this story? It’s simply because yesterday Putin officially announced to marsh into Ukraine and basically has the same strategy: he says parts of Ukraine are “independent” Countries which need to be free from Ukraine. That is basically the same Strategy Putin uses for years.

Over the last days Evergrande China, the 2nd largest property developer in China after revenue, was in all financial news. More than 1.5 million homes are planned by Evergrande and it has $300 billion in liabilities.

There are fears that Evergrande China will cause another financial crisis like in 2008, comparable to the Lehman Brothers insolvency. I am watching this very carefully. Most of my personal Assets are stocks and a big decline in the stock market could mean damage comparable of loosing multiple yearly incomes to me.

Wirecard and Steinhoff are both companies of German origin which had accounting scandals. In this post I want to describe why these two accounting scandals are completely different and why I choose to take a long position in Steinhoff after the scandal, although I did make a profit with a short position in Wirecard.

I am writing this article because I want to describe that shorting a stock with an accounting scandal / fraud isn’t always the best option. Sometimes this can be a chance for a long position.

I am a very big DNS nerd and have always registered new domains for my projects before I even made the concept of my new ideas. We had tests about the Domain Name System at my professional school and I can’t remember I ever not scored the highest…

So as someone who currently pays for 33 domains a year of which all are for private projects and none generates money I had an idea for a new gTLD which I wanted to operate.

The Workhorse Group Incorporated is a EV company which primarily produces delivery vans and got lately popular with a rising share price because it was viewed as one of the possible winners of an 8 billion USPS contract to replace old delivery vans.

This contract busted, however I started writing this article before the deal busted - so don’t be surprised by the high numbers.

I owned this stock for several years and wanna display my view of the company in this blog post.

Yesterday Bumble had it’s initial public offering (IPO). The starting price was 43 USD, a valuation of more than 8 billion and it shot up to 76 USD, a valuation of over 13 billion.

Despite this high valuation, the company lastly made a net loss and only a few hundred million ($376.6 million) in revenue.

The Risk

The current market for Tech, EV and Cannabis stocks is in a hype bubble. I made profit with some overvalued stocks and currently sell these and rebalance my portfolio with more value stocks.

On the 4th February 2021 23andMe and VG Acquisition Corp announced that they will merge, bringing 23andMe into the public.

As VGAC is already tradable in the public market, the shares have skyrocketed to 19 USD. But this is crazy…

Why this is crazy?

First you should know that the initiators of a SPAC commonly have additional rights to e.g. buy additional shares. They also mostly pay 10 USD per share. I don’t go more into detail here, but I want to talk about the shareholders which buy VGAC at the current 19 USD price WITHOUT additional rights like the initiators.