$SE (-0,3 %) - Are there still people here who are also still invested and can be happy about the development? 😁

It's crazy how little you hear about it after the big crash.

Fortunately, I topped up big at around €40 and it was, is and remains a very promising story for me, which is still only just beginning.

No added value, but congratulations to everyone who didn't start to doubt and panic sell when the share was at the bottom 🙌🏼

$SZG (+0,79 %)
$HYQ (+0,82 %)
$ABX (-0,34 %)
$BBAI (+1,3 %)
$PLUG (+0,19 %)
$GPRO (-0,79 %)
$TEG (+0,17 %)
$1SXP (-0,12 %)
$SE (-0,3 %)
$ETOR (+0 %)
$NCH2 (+0,2 %)
$TUI1 (+0,92 %)
$VWS (+0,1 %)
$R3NK (+0,28 %)
$EOAN (+0,29 %)
$CSCO (+0,24 %)
$SLI (+0,8 %)
$HFG (+0,24 %)
$HTG (-0,84 %)
$HLAG (-0,29 %)
$TKA (+0,36 %)
$DOU (-0,25 %)
$RWE (+0,06 %)
$BIRK (+0,79 %)
$9618 (+0,64 %)
$DE (-0,04 %)
$FR (+0,46 %)
$NU (+0,59 %)

$SE (-0,3 %) after my initial purchase at around €280, I then made a bold additional purchase at a low of around €40. Over -80% has now become +145% and it seems to be going on unstoppably 😅

$MSFT (+0,45 %) and $GOOGL (+0,97 %) are actually my biggest anchor positions, but $SE (-0,3 %) is about to overtake.

I feel very comfortable with the investment, but I'm still worried about how big I should let the position get 🤔

Doesn't really make sense from a return perspective if you're still convinced, does it?

What would you do and on what grounds?

MercadoLibre ($MELI (+0,17 %) ) is the undisputed market leader for e-commerce and FinTech in Latin America. Often referred to as the "Amazon of South America", the company dominates with its marketplace, digital payment services and its own logistics infrastructure. But after years of growth and a correction, the question arises: Can MercadoLibre take off again in 2025?

🚀 The MercadoLibre business model

✅ MercadoLibre (e-commerce): The largest online marketplace in Latin America with strong growth. In 2024, sales increased by 20%which shows the continuing demand.

✅ Mercado Pago (FinTech): One of the leading digital payment platforms in the region, used both online and in brick-and-mortar retail.

✅ Mercado Envios (logistics): Own logistics network for faster and more efficient delivery - a major advantage over Amazon.

✅ Mercado Credito (Lending): Enables buyers and sellers to access credit and expands the business model in the direction of FinTech.

Thanks to this broad diversification MercadoLibre is not only an e-commerce company, but also a FinTech and logistics player with strong growth potential.

🏆 Competition - Who can be a threat to MercadoLibre?

🔸 Amazon $AMZN (+0,5 %)
: Global giant, but with lower market penetration in Latin America.

🔸 Sea Limited (Shopee) $SE: (-0,3 %) An emerging threat in e-commerce, especially in Brazil.

🔸 Nubank & StoneCo $NU (+0,59 %)
: Strong FinTech competitors entering the payments market.

🔸 Alibaba (AliExpress) $9988 (+1,74 %)
: Focuses on low-cost imported products - but without its own logistics in the region.

Despite tough competition, MercadoLibre remains the market leader - mainly due to its logistics network, which Amazon and Shopee do not yet offer at this level in Latin America.

📈 Growth potential: why MercadoLibre could take off in 2025

✅ E-commerce boom: Online retail in Latin America continues to grow. Annual growth of 15% is expected until 2026 (Statista).

✅ Digitalization:
In 2024, internet usage in Latin America increased by 8%which creates the basis for further growth in online retail and digital financial services.

✅ Logistics advantage: MercadoLibre has acquired Mercado Envios an infrastructure that dominates the market.

✅ FinTech growth: With Mercado Pago and Mercado Credito the company is developing into a kind of "PayPal $PYPL (+0,17 %)
& Klarna of Latin America".

✅ Latin America as a growth market: While markets such as the USA and Europe are more mature, Latin America still offers still offers enormous potential for increasing online purchases.

⚠️ Risks: What are the challenges?

⚠️ Currency risks: The High inflation and currency fluctuations in countries such as Brazil or Argentina could depress profits.

⚠️ Fierce competition: Shopee in Brazil in particular is putting MercadoLibre under pressure.

⚠️ Regulations: Political uncertainties and possible new regulations for digital financial services could slow down growth.

⚠️ Rising financing costs:
Mercado Credito is growing, but higher interest rates could weigh on the lending business.

📊 Conclusion: turnaround candidate for 2025?

MercadoLibre remains the dominant player in Latin America and is benefiting from growing digitalization and rising e-commerce sales. Despite currency risks and competition the company has strong growth driversthat make it interesting in the long term.

🔥 Turnaround candidate or long-term winner? What do you think - will MercadoLibre remain number 1 or will the competition catch up?

Sea Limited ($SE (-0,3 %) ) is a versatile company from Singapore that has developed a super app has built a strong ecosystem of e-commerce, gaming and FinTech. After explosive growth in recent years and a subsequent fall in the share price, many investors are asking themselves: Does Sea Ltd still have potential for a turnaround?

Overview: What does Sea Limited do?

Sea Limited is active in three core areas:

✅ Shopee (e-commerce): One of the largest e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Brazil. Competition for Alibaba (Lazada), Tokopedia and MercadoLibre.

✅ Garena (Gaming): Developer of the globally successful mobile game Free Fire. Formerly the engine of growth, now weakening.

✅ SeaMoney (FinTech): Digital financial services, including lending and payment processing, strongly integrated into Shopee.

Sea Limited pursues a vertical business model where the different divisions reinforce each other - Shopee drives SeaMoney, while Garena used to deliver high profits to fund expansions.

Competition: Who are the competitors?

🔸 Alibaba $BABA (+2,5 %)
(Lazada.) & Tokopedia - Strong e-commerce competition in Southeast Asia.

🔸 Amazon
$AMZN (+0,5 %) - A growing threat, especially in markets such as Brazil

🔸 MercadoLibre $MELI (+0,17 %) - The market leader in Latin America and a direct opponent in Brazil.

🔸 Tencent $TCEHY (-0,36 %)
& NetEase
$NTES (+0,58 %) - Strong competition in the gaming segment, especially in China.

🔸 Revolut, Grab $GRAB (+2,16 %)
& Ant Group - FinTech competitors that offer similar services.

Opportunities: Why could Sea Limited be a comeback story?

✅ E-commerce remains strong: Shopee remains the market leader in several Asian countries. Despite economic uncertainties, online retail is growing in the long term.

✅ SeaMoney as a silent winner: The FinTech segment is growing steadily and can become a new source of income for Sea Ltd through digital payment services and loans.

✅ Profitability focus: After years of aggressive growth with high losses, the company is now focusing more on cost reductions and profitability - a sign that Sea Ltd wants to operate more sustainably.

✅ Expansion in Latin America: Shopee has grown particularly strongly in Brazil. If the company can establish itself there permanently, that would be a big plus.

✅ Gaming as untapped potential: If Free Fire stabilizes or Sea Ltd develops new successful games, Garena could become a growth driver again.

Risks: What could continue to weigh on Sea Limited?

⚠️ Declining gaming sales:
Free Fire was once the biggest profit generator, but user numbers are falling. Without a new hit, Garena could continue to weaken.

⚠️ Competitive pressure in e-commerce: Alibaba, Tokopedia and Amazon are putting massive pressure on Sea Ltd in Asia and Latin America. Defending market share will be expensive.

⚠️ Regulatory risks: In Asia in particular, there are always new regulations for FinTechs and online retailers that could slow down Sea Ltd's growth.

⚠️ Macroeconomic uncertainties: Rising interest rates and weak consumer behavior could have a negative impact on business - both in e-commerce and in the lending business.

⚠️ Cost cutting vs. growth: Sea Ltd is trying to become more profitable while expanding into new markets. The balancing act between growth and cost control is not easy.

Conclusion: turnaround opportunity or value trap?

Sea Limited is still one of the most exciting technology companies in Asia. The focus on profitability is positive, but success depends heavily on whether the company can stabilize its gaming division and defend Shopee against the competition.

Those who believe in the long-term potential of the Southeast Asian market and are prepared to accept short-term volatility could find a promising turnaround in Sea Ltd could be a promising turnaround opportunity.

What do you think? Is Sea Limited on its way to a comeback or is it still a risky bet?🚀

After traveling on the Asian continent for over half a year, including with $GRAB (+2,16 %) and there was something from $SE (-0,3 %) on every corner, I'm bringing a little Asian flair into my depot.

In Part 1 I described my start as an investor from 2010 to 2016. Despite loss-making investments and bad decisions (buying AT&T instead of Amazon), I was able to achieve a portfolio value of €35,000. These experiences were to lay the first foundation stone for my future successful investment strategy (https://app.getquin.com/de/activity/PElWrODsmV)

In part 2 I talk about further setbacks in 2017 and 2018 and how the purchase of MasterCard shares marked the turning point in my investment career. Despite initial losses and professional dissatisfaction, I realized that my original strategy wasn't working and discovered the "dividend growth" for me. With a new professional position and a solid salary, I was finally able to really hit the ground running in 2019 (https://app.getquin.com/de/activity/LUkWiLtZKX)

In part 3 it will now be about the years 2019 to 2021 will be discussed. In these 3 years, my portfolio has increased fivefold. From €40,000, it went up to €199,000 in the meantime. But not everything was positive here either. During this time, I also made the two worst trades of my investment career. In addition to Wirecard, there were two other equity investments that resulted in losses of over 80%.

The year 2019 & the first share savings plans:

The year 2019 started with a portfolio balance of ~€40,000 and after my MasterCard purchase in December 2018, my major portfolio reorganization was to continue directly at the beginning of 2019. So in the first four months with Tencent $700 (-0,12 %)
Intel $INTC (+0,4 %)
Salesforce $CRM (+0,39 %)
Alphabet $GOOG (+0,94 %) and Meta $META (+0,4 %) (then still Facebook), five more tech stocks were added to my portfolio. In return I have BHP Billiton $BHP (+0,01 %)
Macy's $M (-1,64 %)
and Hugo Boss $BOSS (+0,06 %) sold.

Later in the year, the shares of Mercedes $MBG (+0,26 %)
and AT&T $T (-0,13 %) were also removed from the portfolio.

In addition to further acquisitions such as Pepsi $PEP (+0,21 %)
Nextera Energy $NEE (+0,15 %)
or Xylem $XYL (+0,25 %) I also recognized the benefits of share savings plans in 2019 and started to set up a pure "savings plan custody account". At that time, this was still done via comdirect or Consorsbank and each savings plan execution cost a fee of 0.75%.

Another sale in 2019 was the Gamestop-share $GME (+0,31 %) . Bought in 2016 to have something to do with gaming in the portfolio, but not taking into account that stationary sales are becoming less and less relevant. In the end, the share price fell by 85% - unfortunately, this was long before the memestock hype emerged.

My portfolio rose to ~€67,000 in 2019 and achieved a return of 23%. However, this was still well below the MSCI World and the S&P 500.

The year 2020 - Corona, Wirecard bankruptcy & 100k before 30 in the portfolio

2020 - a year that few of us will probably forget. While everything was still going reasonably smoothly in January and February 2020, chaos was set to break out from mid-February/March.

The first few weeks of 2020 had given rise to hopes of a very positive development in my portfolio. From the beginning of January to mid-February, my portfolio rose by almost €10,000 to €77,000.

Panic then slowly set in from mid-February. I still remember exactly how trading on the US stock markets was repeatedly suspended for short periods and daily losses of 10% were normal. At 0 o'clock sharp, I looked at the US futures and in seconds the futures went down by -5%. A cap for the futures, the futures loss must not be higher and you knew the next morning it would end badly for the DAX.

But when there is blood in the streets, you can make very good deals! So in March 2020 I bought the Allianz
$ALV (+0,52 %) for €118. This gives me a personal dividend yield of almost 12% based on the current dividend of €13.80. Unfortunately, I only bought for €1,000 in total.

Also Starbucks
$SBUX (+0,19 %) I was able to buy for less than €50.

The stock market crash continued until the Fed made short work of it and ended the crash single-handedly. The crash was ended with interest rate cuts and massive money printing and once again the saying "Never bet against the FED" proved to be true.

The stock markets then went through the roof and within a very short space of time were already back to a positive level compared to the end of 2019. Every share that somehow falls under the term "stay at home" was suddenly the hot tip on the stock market. Whether the Peloton $PTON (-0,05 %)

or Teladoc $TDOC (-0,29 %) everything went through the roof.

I let myself get carried away and did about 10 "Stay at Home" hype stocks into a growth savings plan portfolio. Of these, at the end of 2024 with Sea $SE (-0,3 %) and MercadoLibre $MELI (+0,17 %) only two shares remained. It goes without saying that most of them left the portfolio at a loss.

But 2020 was also the Wirecard year $WDI BaFin's ban on short selling, a year-long audit by EY, political backing and massive investments by German fund managers from DWS, UnionInvest and Deka vs. a journalist from the Financial Times.

Wirecard's claims that the journalist was in cahoots with short sellers and the backing from various institutions were unfortunately too credible for me.

When Wirecard faced the press and announced that EUR 2 billion could no longer be found, things went downhill and it became clear to everyone that the company was heading for insolvency. Before trading was suspended, I was able to sell my shares at a 50% loss and got off lightly.

Later in the year, I was able to conclude an extremely favorable leasing offer and sell my private car. The proceeds went straight into my securities account and I broke the €100,000 barrier in November 2020.

My portfolio then ended the year with a value of ~€120,000. At +5%, my performance was pretty much in line with the MSCI World.

The year 2021 - HYPE! Wall Street bets, crypto and almost 200k in the portfolio

The year 2021 was characterized above all by hypes. Cryptocurrencies, memestocks and memecoins were in the headlines everywhere. Gamestop, Dogecoin, SPACs and NFTs everyone had to have.

Traditional shares became almost boring.

One of the reasons was certainly the checks that the US government issued to its citizens. It was still Corona, many were locked down and suddenly people started gambling on the stock market.

The hype can be illustrated very well using the example of NFTs. In 2021, NFTs worth $17 billion were traded, in 2023 it was only 80 million - a decline of 97%. According to one study, ~95% of all NFTs are now completely worthless.

The madness in one example: Procter & Gamble launched a Charmin toilet paper NFT. This was sold for over $4,000. All proceeds were donated, but a symbol of the madness of 2021.

From a portfolio perspective, 2021 was great! In the end, there was a +32% return and a portfolio value of over €190,000, which at times in November 2021 was €199,000.

My top performers were NVIDIA
$NVDA (+0,24 %) with over 100% price gains and Pfizer $PFE (+0,31 %)
, which was driven by the vaccine hype and at €50 was twice as high as in 2024.

My worst performer was another 80% loss with TAL Education $TAL (+0 %) . An education company from China. Unfortunately, this was the first time I was able to experience the political arbitrariness in countries like China. Overnight, it was decided that education/tutoring could only be run as a non-profit. Of course, this was almost a death sentence for the company and the share price plummeted by 80%.

Asset development & return:

After the years 2013 to 2018 were forgettable in terms of returns, the years 2019 to 2021 finally delivered:

Year
Deposit value
Yield

2019 67.000€ +19%

2020 121.000€ +5%

2021 193.000€ +34%

Vermögensentwicklung 2019-2021:

Vermögensentwicklung 2013-2021:

Outlook:

Looking back on the hype year 2021, it is almost obvious that 2022 had to be clearly negative.

After the party, however, came the hangover in the form of inflation and the war in Ukraine. Sharply rising interest rates and global economic concerns did the rest.

In the next part, I would therefore like to look at the years 2022 & 2023. I will then combine 2024 with my review of the year in the last part.

#strategy

#personalstrategy

#etfs

#dividends