Ok I will have a look at that option. Trip is a very interesting...

Ok I will have a look at that option.

Trip is a very interesting story- out of all travel related apps it has by far the highest engagement (on all metrics by far) and is still growing. There is a fast growing non-hotel business (Viator) that if it was spun out would actually pretty close to justify the current valuation. There is loads of cash on the balance sheet but there have been definite problems with monetisation of their user base.

In terms of really top tier global brands - there is absolutely nothing that comes close to this as an investment opportunity (I mean who hasn't heard of TripAdvisor!!!), and there isn't much downside risk. My personal risk is that buying US shares is tricky and I am overweight on non-dividend paying growth companies as well as the fact it is really hard to buy/sell out of international positions.

Once you have a huge bank of unrealized gains it becomes really quite hard to trade/make any decisions without some serious thought given the large deferred tax liability...but if they are all in growth stocks there is no nice stream of increasing cashflows in the form of dividends! I guess it's a nice problem to have- but makes the KMEs of the world all the better (there are very few stocks with increasing dividends over time with a yield of 6% for a reason, although I hold two). And for growth stocks you need a runway (ideally 5+ years) as otherwise when you sell out even a 50% gain is quickly dwindled down making outsized returns and an alpha even harder...it is much much easier to sell losers and incur the tax asset in this setting.