Thirteenth pin stuck in the newspaper

The Monkey and Crayon stock portfolios project continues with the 13th stock pick for both.

As always, the monkey portfolio picks a new stock randomly and the crayon portfolio follows.

Just to be clear these are paper portfolios, but Holland Park Capital London Ltd will have or start equity positions in both stock picks.

These two stock portfolios are buy-and-hold.

Wheel of Fortune

It is remarkable, how little, what is widely seen as the most successful stock investing strategy, is practiced by people.

Investing for the long-term seems hard for most people.

Just look on the Substack platform and you can see for yourself there are not many writers on long-term investing.

Which is a shame.

This is not financial advice. My investment journey is described for educational, informational and entertainment purposes.

In the long run your fiat money will lose purchasing value.

In August 1971 Nixon announced the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at fixed value.

No more gold standard.

The world went to a petrodollar standard after that for a while.

The $ has lost a cool 98% of its purchasing value since 1971.

Gold, meanwhile, maintained its purchasing value.

In 2022 the petrodollar standard finished.

If anything, we are now in a “take precious metal commodities over fiat currencies standard”.

Gold performed better than the S&P 500 index since 2000 which is telling.

One can easily put up to 25% of a long-term investing portfolio in gold and other precious metals including what I see as digital gold Bitcoin depending on your personal situation and views.

The rumour is even the UK will allow retail investors to finally buy Bitcoin ETFs for their investment portfolios by the end of the year.

Please don’t tell me the UK is open for business as again they are the last ones to join the party.

The Crayon portfolio isn’t even close to having 25% of its value invested in gold like investments.

And in London retail investors are not allowed to buy ETFs listed in the US.

Neither are normal folks allowed to purchase Bitcoin ETFs in the UK.

So, Bitcoin Treasury companies are the way forward until the Bank of England allows competition for the £ fiat currency in the form of Bitcoin ETFs listed in London.

The future of so-called Bitcoin Treasury Companies or listed companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet is likely to look like that of closed end funds.

Closed end funds or investment trusts can trade on the exchange at a big premium and a big discount to their net asset value (NAV).

As the Bitcoin Treasury field gets more crowded more discounts to NAV become likely.

Loads of dodgy companies are initiating a Bitcoin treasury strategy now.

The website Barchart said yesterday that VLCN was the fifty-eleventh MicroStrategy copy-paster.

This time the Monkey portfolio gets to choose a stock listed in the US.

At the same time the Crayon portfolio can also add a US listing.

All according to the investment plan described in the book Beat the Stock Market Casino.

Semler Scientific Inc (SMLR) is a stock that tries to copy the Bitcoin strategy of Strategy (MSTR).

Guess what stock the Crayon portfolio will add?

People invest to increase purchasing power.

Since December 1999 shiny yellow gold has managed to outperform both stocks and bonds.

Perhaps Bitcoin is another tulip bubble, and it goes down 100%.

If, however, it becomes a new asset class like gold or silver the upside is more than 100%.

Retail investors had already embraced Bitcoin as a valid asset class, but institutions and corporations are fast played catch-up now.

Central banks have been buying gold in the last couple of years.

Holland Park Capital London Ltd firmly believes central bank investments can be used as a contra-indicator.

After all Gordon Brown believed selling the UK's gold around the millennium was a winner.

If that holds true Bitcoin should outpace gold.

After all these were the same central bankers that loaded up on bonds for tiny yields five years ago.

The Bank of England is actively selling those bonds in the market now at rock bottom prices and shovelling the massive losses on the books of the taxpayers.

The Germans have sold their holding of seized Bitcoins last summer. Good call. Schade Deutschland.

Saving all your assets in cash long-term is the riskiest there is as your purchasing power gets robbed by inflation year in year out.

As always, the choice is yours dear reader, but keep in mind that asset allocation matters.

Gold has historically protected but not increased your purchasing power.

This project started in May 2019 and the investments in stocks have been heavily impacted by inflation.

Holland Park Capital London is happy to be a very small co-owner of those businesses for the long term.

The company doesn’t own the same number of shares as the portfolios. Also, the positions were not bought at the same time and were bought at different prices.

 The thirteenth position will have a new position value of about $5000 according to the “no capital gain taxes growth investment plan” in the book ‘Beat the Stock Market Casino’.

Have you bought the book “Beat the Stock Market Casino” yet on Amazon?

The crayon portfolio follows where the monkey portfolio leads to keep things simple and comparable. 

It is a simple diversify as much as possible buy-and-hold strategy.

Diversification, buy-and-hope with a very long time horizon and asset allocation is the name of our game.

The green marker landed closest to Analog Devices Inc (ADI).

Remember the monkey doesn’t need any brains and picks the next holding randomly.

Green marker selected US stock Analog Devices in the FT newspaper

The day range on Thursday the 17th of July 2025 for this ADI listing was 239.07-241.88 in USD.

For the monkey portfolio a transaction was added to the paper portfolio of 20 shares at $ 241.88 the day’s high price.

That transaction had a value of about $4838.

So, for the crayon portfolio a paper transaction was added as well.

The crayon paper portfolio chose the stock Semler Scientific Inc (SMLR).

This is a US small cap company that started copying Strategy around one year ago and Rogier's Substack blog has written about them before.

The day range on Thursday the 17th of July 2025 for this SMLR listing was 41.81-44.71 in USD.

For the crayon paper portfolio 108 shares of Semler at $44.71 were added to the portfolio tracking websites.

That transaction value on paper was about $4829.

SMLR owns about 4846 Bitcoins at the time of writing.

The value of this small company is most likely to go to zero.

If however this company somehow survives and manages to hold onto their Bitcoins and Bitcoin keeps on outperforming as a digital version of gold, this holding could add some diversification to the crayon portfolio.

Semler Scientific could turn out to be a Bitcoin proxy for people that are not allowed to buy Bitcoin ETFs by their lovely regulators.

Time will tell.

Prices are sometimes set by crazy buyers and crazy sellers so who knows what will happen...

SMLR is very volatile.

This is not financial advice. Do your own research please.

This article is for information purposes and entertainment purposes only.

Both paper portfolios have 13 holdings now.

Slowly but surely the portfolios start looking a little like diversified portfolios.

May the force be with both paper portfolios. Thanks for reading this blog.

Holland Park Capital London hopes you enjoyed the information in the blog.

This is not a financial promotion.

Holland Park Capital London Ltd is not receiving any compensation from anyone to write this blog.

Holland Park Capital London is long the stocks in the crayon portfolio and the monkey portfolio. Holland Park Capital London Ltd just doesn’t have the same number of shares per holding as the paper crayon and monkey portfolios. The purchase prices are also completely different. Holland Park Capital London Ltd is also long the S&P 500 index.

Holland Park Capital London has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this blog. Holland Park Capital London expressed its own opinions.

This is not financial advice. This blog is for information purposes only. Make your own decisions please. Do your own research. Please go and see an authorized financial advisor before making any investment decisions. What works for Holland Park Capital London may well not work for you and your personal situation is unknown to Holland Park Capital London.

Stocks go up as well as down and you may get back less than you invest. Your capital is at risk when you invest in stocks. In other words, you can lose all your money by investing in stocks.

Any information in this blog should be considered general information and not relied on as a formal investment recommendation.

This blog is for information purposes only and helps Holland Park Capital London expand on the books “Beat the Stock Market Casino” and “Stock Market Blah Blah” (both available on Amazon). This brings extra discipline in the investment process. Holland Park Capital London Ltd is not liable for any mistakes in this blog. This blog cannot be a substitute for comprehensive investment analysis. Any analysis presented in this blog is illustrative in nature, limited in scope, based on an incomplete set of information and has limitations to its accuracy. The information upon which this blog is based was obtained from sources believed to be reliable but has not been independently verified. Therefore, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Any opinions are as of the date of publication and are subject to change without notice.