💼 May/25 Interim Update: Annualized +819.06%
How We Bounced Back with a +47.12% Return From May 1st to May 21st
Welcome back dear fellow 🧙♂️ Hermits 👋
Want more context? Track the journey so far:
💼 The Hermit Portfolio: April (previous) Update
Briefing
Special Edition Alert
Consider this another extraordinary edition of 💼 The Hermit Portfolio (THP).
📰 During times of market turbulence, we’ll periodically drop these write-ups to help our 🧙♂️ Hermits 🧙♂️ digest the noise and deliver a few valuable insights on our companies and portfolio, all in a quick 9-minute read.
Please note that this portfolio faithfully reflects the author’s personal seven-figure investment portfolio.
This publication is confidential and intended solely for the use of the person or entity to whom it is given or sent. It may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without the author's prior written consent. By accepting to receive the full post as a 🧙♂️ Hermit Premium member, the recipient agrees to be bound by the foregoing limitations.
None of the following should be construed as investment advice. Please consult a financial advisor before making any investment decision. You will find a full disclaimer at the end of this post.
📌 Brief
We won’t say we’re clairvoyant… but damn, that April playbook aged like a fine (Rioja) wine 🍷.
Half luck, half scuttlebutt magic. Come see what unfolded…
This time, we're taking a look after the dust has settled, breaking down the surge in positive volatility we experienced and detailing the key moves that shaped it.
We'll walk you through:
🔍 Our major portfolio actions and the thinking behind them
🧭 A brief note on our evolving investment philosophy and the role diversification played
🧾 Light updates on a few individual holdings
There’s also a brief section on our ongoing portfolio transition, including notes on Equity Focus FIL’s structure and positioning.
On that note, our 40+ minute deep dives on SEAT and SDE are well underway… and you'll love them.
The SDE piece features a full-blown masterclass on oil & gas operations and accounting, drawing from both the PETEX manual and the classic textbook we're sharing below.
You’re welcome to dig into both yourself… or just wait for our signature Hermit-style summary 😉.
For SDE, we’re incorporating exclusive interview insights to enrich the analysis.
For SEAT, we’re still awaiting permission to publish certain materials before finalizing the piece.
Additionally, we’re preparing a deeper piece on our on-the-ground research into CNTY, our most prominent current position after yesterday’s +17.86% increase (May 20th).
That article will include:
🎤 Interviews with over a dozen stakeholders (employees, clients, suppliers, competitors, etc.)
🏨 Reviews of Century’s casinos and hotels
🎰 Benchmarking visits to rival properties
It’s Hermit-style scuttlebutt at its best.
We also want to take a moment to acknowledge something important: sometimes we go too hard, get a little too excited, and end up overpromising.
Guilty as charged.
That said, everything we share is happening (often in the background) with full integrity. Our enthusiasm can occasionally get ahead of our timelines, but we see that as a feature, not a bug.
In this business, agility is a superpower. You have to be willing to change your mind when the facts do… that includes your priorities.
Could we be writing another breakdown of the latest quarterly call?
Sure. But there are hundreds of people already doing that off the same transcript. (Don’t worry; we’ll touch on those briefly in the regular Portfolio Update)
Instead, we ask ourselves two core questions:
Where is our value add?
How do we get into the top 1% of public equity investors?
The answer is still… evolving.
But we’re pretty sure it’s not in dissecting earnings transcripts for the hundredth time. It’s in walking the floors of a casino, sitting across the table from an active user, testing a product ourselves, and looking a manager in the eye to gauge trustworthiness.
That’s where the real signal lives.