I was all set. Shopify was my Netflix. My Google. My absolutely add some god damn avocado Chipotle. I missed out on all those stocks and blamed myself for it over and over again. But not Shopify. When the Motley Fool touted it as a can’t miss company, I was all in. I bought shares at $77 and again at $86 and watched it fly to the moon during the pandemic. It was the second stock I’d ever owned that became a 10 bagger and it did so in record time.
My retirement plan was set. I would hold onto my shares of Shopify – as it built out its e-commerce empire, delved into warehouse distribution and digital payments – and wait patiently as it slowly morphed into the next Amazon. If Tobi Lutke got bored, maybe he’d sell the company to the Evil Empire for a princely sum. Regardless, I would sit tight and wait patiently, like a fisherman after an oil leak or a Detroit Lions fan waiting for a championship. Then, little by little, I would unwind my position and buy vacation properties. A small house in Palm Springs. A tiny villa in Mexico. A condo in Arizona.
I can still vividly recall a brief conversation I had with a close friend last year who warned me about being too greedy.
“Maybe you should sell a few shares,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s way overvalued. And it’ll come back down to earth eventually.”
“And risk losing out on the next Amazon? Are you crazy? It’s not like the number of businesses that need to set up an online presence is going to suddenly stop over the next decade. Or the decade following that. There’s no reason it can’t go to $3000 in the next few years.”
“OK. If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
And then it all came crashing down. Shopify noted in its earnings call this week that its sales outlook looks weak, despite the fact that it had a blowout fourth quarter with sales rising 41% from a year earlier. The stock was trading for 14.5 times forward sales estimates compared to 2.6 for the S&P 500 and 2.9 for Amazon which, we should note, has a lot more sales than Shopify.
There’s something incredibly depressing about watching a stock go from $1750 to $660 in a few weeks. You start to questioning everything about your life.
Why did my parents send me to a public high school?
Why don’t I have good hair?
Why am I still driving a 10-year old Prius?
Why didn’t I pay more attention in math?
Why is it taking so dang long to recover from this back surgery?
Why is my dog so small?
Why do I feel like taking a shower is just too much trouble these days?
Why does Kanye West have a Netflix special? Does the world really need this?
Of course I realize that this is all a first world, white privileged, spilt-milk-even-if-I-don’t-drink-milk anymore problem. The stock is still up an astounding 766% from where I bought it. And if you asked me pre-purchase if I’d be happy with a 766% return, the answer would’ve been a resounding HELL YES. But like sitting through Licorice Pizza because it was the first movie you’d gone to see in an actual theatre in two years and wondering a good two hours into the movie what the fuck it’s even about, there are some things you just can’t unsee.
The question is, what now? I’m not selling. That would be like putting my baby up for adoption just because she got bad grades one semester. Not happening. So I guess I’m holding. And hoping that at some point in the next decade, Shopify will not only see $1750 again but surpass it. Think that’s possible? I sure hope so. My Prius won’t last another decade.
