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STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: March 5, 2026 Duration: 1:57:31Space Recording
Full Transcription
all right mic check mic check Can you guys hear me?
We are having some technical difficulties on the spaces today,
but I guess we're going to give it another try.
Hey, Amin, can you hear me?
I can, yeah.
I just was live for the last 10 minutes fighting for my life,
and I decided, you know what?
We're just going to cancel that space, give a good old refresh and here we are you join me right back
at the start appreciate you um it's a little bit of a red debt here it's been a wish-washy week up
and then down and then up and then down uh this is we've had more fun weeks here um there is some
earnings after the close today looking Looking over at my earnings hub,
we do have Costco reporting earnings.
Earnings hub says 415.
You should expect that out.
Marvell, Samsara, IoT, Rumble as well reporting earnings.
So there is an earnings or two.
I just spent the last like five minutes,
I think on like mute going through
and just reading out the news.
So I'm not going to necessarily do that again.
Maybe we'll do that at a point in the future.
Space is, space is, spaces.
We already got 144 back of you guys back in here.
I appreciate that.
But I mean, what's going on in your world?
No, my portfolio is getting crushed today, down 2%.
My largest position, Rocket Lab down 4%, Hood down 3.5%,
Meta down over 1%, Micron down over 3%.
So yeah, it's been a rough day, but yesterday was an up day.
So it's kind of interesting.
We are having these sort of like pretty substantial up and down days.
But I feel pretty confident about the companies and their prospects for the future.
There doesn't seem to be any sort of like macro worries from an economic perspective,
maybe a little bit because of oil, but those things tend to not be long lasting.
So I'm not worried about it.
It just still doesn't feel like things are completely out of whack.
Are you still there?
Can you hear me?
I think we...
Either I can't hear you.
Yeah, no, no, Hamid.
It appears that I am still fighting for my life up here.
You got me again, though, right?
You got me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I got you.
I heard what you said, though.
I did hear what you said.
I just, it didn't let me unmute.
What a freaking day.
Okay.
Recompose.
Nice.
Are there any of the earnings?
It's pretty much all,
have all your companies reported earnings at this point?
Yeah, Micron is on a slightly different cycle,
but other than Micron, everybody else has reported.
I believe Micron's in two weeks.
What does earnings up say?
The 18th.
So Micron is two weeks away.
That is actually also the week of NVIDIA's GTC event,
if anyone cares.
Yeah, I think Micron is probably, it's set up to be able to crush it.
It feels like it should be able to crush it.
And I'm kind of excited for them. I mean, especially since NVIDIA had a pretty substantial beat and raised their guidance
for next quarter.
So yeah, it'll be interesting to watch Micron and see what it does.
Yeah, Micron, sorry if you heard that background noise.
Micron's been a really interesting one.
Did you get the chance to watch the Robinhood event yesterday?
No, but I saw your recap of the Robinhood Platinum card.
I made a mistake on it for the record.
Important caveat, it's not 5% cash back on everything.
It's 5% cash back on dining, which is a huge difference.
And I saw the mistake too late and it was viral.
I was so upset at myself.
But that is an important caveat.
So I hope you knew that.
But it's 5% back on dining.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Yeah, I saw the community note on it um but uh but yeah it did
seem extra good initially so what what is the cash back on the general purchases i think it's
just one percent i think the play here more was a higher credit limit or something they were going
for um it seems like a lot of scenarios the gold card
still might be the better one
I see
interesting
for people who travel a lot
I think this is way better
card than the Amex card
because one of the reasons people
own the Amex platinum card
is largely because of the
access
to the lounges so if this gives you access to
the same lounges and gives you 5% on travel, and I think it was like 10% on hotels that are booked
through Robinhood's travel services, that's a pretty big deal those things are big selling points and then
the annual fee is lower than amex's annual fee so still this is a pretty substantially good card
relative to amex the only thing that accepts me can you still hear me i'm sorry i keep getting
these notifications yeah um i hearing you have to select between the two cards you can't have both
and i feel like that's a little bit weird.
Like, I'd rather...
I don't know, maybe that's on purpose.
But for me, as someone who travels a lot,
the lounge access is a big deal.
And I really do utilize that and would want to.
So, yeah, I still think it's a compelling thing.
I do wonder how the uptake...
That's kind of weird.
...and how quickly they're able to get into people's hands.
So I got a question for both of you.
One of you guys might know the answer to this, Hamid or Evan.
Is the card actually platinum?
I know it was marketed as actual platinum.
Platinum plated.
Nice.
Plated.
I see.
We got to read between the prints.
So I was getting a bunch of people commenting
throughout the day saying, when you read the fine print on it, there's things that they're
not liking. I didn't take a look at what the interests are or transfer of balance interests.
Obviously, it makes the most sense to just make the payments on time. But I think that that might
be where they get you similar towards the other guys. But I mean, for $695, it does.
I got to agree with Hamid there.
I think it seems like a pretty good card.
I don't know per se exactly how well it stacks up against the Amex.
I want to investigate the 10% cash back on the hotels that they're offering.
It really depends on what hotels they're specifically giving you. I mean, if it's readily available,
I think that that would kind of point towards the actual platinum card's direction a little bit. But if it is just select ones where Robinhood
might have a partnership with and it might not have some of the major hotel providers,
I could see the Amex still being the dominant travel card. But I mean, it's definitely close.
Very interested to see where this goes. And I'm also going to, I'm very interested to see Robinhood's banking.
I feel like a lot of people are going to start putting their direct deposit into Robinhood now because of this gold and platinum card.
And I also saw, you know, there's 450,000 more people waiting for the gold card.
So, I mean, there's, it seems like it's just really getting started with the rollouts.
really getting started with the rollouts.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm curious to see how
quickly they'll be able to get this in the hands of people
if they're going to still
go through some similar problems.
Overall, I thought the event was pretty cool.
There's a lot of family account additions, Hamid.
Did you see some of the other stuff?
I did not see the event itself.
I did hear that they added the family, the custodial accounts, and that they're coming out with trust accounts as well.
All of those things are going to be super helpful for Robinhood growth because a lot of people have their money in various different family trusts or they want to set
up accounts for their kids. The big money is probably going to be in the trusts. So that
is pretty optimistic for Robinhood. I think just overall, they're executing brilliantly
and adding products left and right that I think is pretty fantastic. One thing that I think the platinum card is going to roll out faster than the gold card has,
or one indication of that from my perspective, is that the gold card with the 3% cash back
puts it in a category that is very, very risky because especially for wealthier customers
who pay off their credit card at the end of the month, they wouldn't have this ability to earn interest from them.
So giving Gold Card to everybody with the 3% cash back might be a loss leader.
Whereas this particular card is $700 annual membership.
a $700 annual membership, I think this might actually have a very good positive margin,
similar to how American Express has positive margins on their Platinum card as well.
And I think this could be one of those things where they'll be able to issue as many cards
as they can as they scale up the ability to be able to provide good service for those
customers, because service is another thing that these customers are going to be expecting. So
I'm more optimistic that this one's going to roll out faster than the gold card has,
which has taken way too long. It's been like almost two years since the original announcement
of the gold card. Yeah. One other thing that I thought
was interesting from there.
I don't know if you noticed this.
Vlad's
401k
was shown on that screen
during that thing, and it is not with Robin Hood.
Vlad's 401k
is at Fidelity.
And his wife's 401k is at Vanguard.
Which I just thought was interesting up there.
Obviously, I think there's just a lot of stuff,
other accounts that Robinhood still doesn't have.
And he kept making the same comments around him
not wanting to have to use those other accounts anymore.
And he wants to only have to use Robinhood
and not using other brokerages.
I thought that was interesting. To me, that says those accounts are also coming later this year.
We'll see. But I don't know if you noticed that. I was going to think the tweet, but I was like,
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, basically that's what they're doing is they're adding everything
one by one that all of the financial, large financial institutions have had traditionally.
But Robinhood's execution on it is like, how could we do it better? How could we do it cheaper?
How could we do it for the masses and not expect people to already be very wealthy to be able to
access these things? And I think that approach is going to,
it's a winning approach.
That's the only thing I can say about it.
I mean,
I love being a shareholder in this company and I love seeing Vlad's
execution on it.
It's,
it's just,
you know,
top notch as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vlad has been
It's been a good one to follow
He's uh
I was talking to one of the employees there
And he's a pretty new person
And he works on their social team
And he was like yeah at the office
And he was pretty new
He's like yeah Vlad flagged me down to say hello
It's like excited to have you and stuff like that
And um Whether it's for show or not, you never know with things, but he is.
He's a good person to be around also, because then there's a lot of those leadership there that have been kind of there for a while.
So I don't know. I think that when you're investing in these companies, it's also leadership.
So we'll see. I know a lot of people still hate them for 2021.
Whenever I post about them on Instagram, I get that comment all the time. So, yeah, I get it. We'll see. I know a lot of people still hate them for 2021. Whenever I post about them on Instagram, I get that comment all the time. So yeah, I get it. We'll see. It's just a brokerage at the end of the day.
Mean's portfolio, anyone doesn't know, he shares it publicly for free.
If you switch over to the total tab, there's one that stands out a little bit.
It is that Rocket Lab up 1,000%.
So a little pullback doesn't really matter that much.
But I can see this being a good environment for Rocket Lab.
World's at war.
Rocket technology kind of being at the advance of it.
I do see Mean end up dropping off.
What's your thought, Sniper?
Is this, you got any advances? The Steven guy has to go i can't when uh they do like the non-stop
emotes but yeah what's your hand up for are you hearing me all right yeah um yeah so uh
rocket lab ceo peter beck actually sold some shares and uh obviously uh people don't exactly
like uh seeing that but i believe he sold
some shares yesterday um they also i think he raised 1.3 million or something like that um
and also cfo adam spice sold some shares as well on rocket labs um and he got about 4.3 million
worth of shares there as well um i think personally and again this is just my view and my perspective of it. Obviously, we've seen throughout many successful companies, leadership and CEOs selling shares as it progresses. That's typically the book move. I don't think it's necessarily a massive jump. They obviously are. Adam Beck still absolutely does have a majority stake. And I'm sorry, Peter Beck and Adam Spice do still have a large stake in it.
So it was pretty much just a fraction of the shares
that they own of Rocket Labs.
The SHIELD program and the SHIELD contract
for $151 billion, I believe, is still up on the table.
And there still is a lot of positive sentiments
around that one.
Basically, I'm just taking a look
and I want to watch the SHIELD program.
The whole concept behind that is to pretty much create a missile defense system that is from space, Basically, I'm just taking a look and I want to watch the SHIELD program.
The whole concept behind that is to pretty much create a missile defense system that is from space,
where satellites are actually going to neutralize the threats that are in the air.
And I have a feeling that the Pentagon will be willing to spend a lot of money on that,
considering that it will be a first-of-the-world kind of defense and completely out of space, defending the aerospace.
So, yeah, I think that there's quite a lot of good news still going on around Rocket Labs,
but this move that you're seeing today
is definitely caused by insider sales.
And was that yesterday they sold?
Yesterday slash today.
That's a little rough.
Both of them, too?
You kidding me?
CEO and CFO, you're telling me?
Correct.
What are we doing? Who did this?
Who thought...
Again, but hear me out, right?
It is tax season,
and there's a very great chance that this is for tax-reaching purposes.
No, dude. Actually, you can
classify stuff
as being withheld for tax reasons.
Let's see.
Sell the cover transactions...
Yeah, it's for taxes
well the first one is for taxes let's see the rest
yeah looks like adam's buy sold for tax all right this is uh then it's a non-story honestly ceo
yeah i don't see it as like a...
Honestly, if that's the actual reason it's down to buy the debt.
So this actually really is common.
They probably got gifted shares.
And when you get gifted shares at a certain valuation, you do actually have to pay taxes on that.
So a lot of the times they will have to sell share.
And you're allowed to sell some of the shares that you were gifted.
Well, received, earned.
Gifted is a strong word sometimes to cover that.
So interesting.
I'd imagine the market's smarter than that, though.
Rocket Lab, I guess, is only down 3% today.
That's not so bad.
They have a launch today.
They have a launch today, right?
Interesting.
What's up, Stock Talk?
What is up, ladies and gentlemen?
I have been fighting for my life on this basis with technical difficulties.
It might just be my fault. The first 10 minutes, no one could hear me.
Then this whole time, I'm connecting in and out from Wi-Fi or 5G to 4G. I have no idea. I just told me I've disconnected 75 times.
Fighting for my life, though.
So, you know, space is going well, though.
We talked a little Robin Hood event yesterday.
Did you get the chance to watch it at all?
Are we posting it at all?
No, I did not.
I did not.
What happened there?
Okay, so new, like, accounts for families.
So that was kind of part of it.
You can do joints with, like, combined accounts. So that was kind of part of it. You can do joints with like combined accounts.
You can set up trust account.
Well,
you'll be able to set up trust accounts later for,
for whatever you can set up accounts for your kids.
Now you can get other people can give stocks to the kids.
They released a new platinum card,
credit card,
$695 annual fee.
it's like lounge access.
It gives you 5% cash back on dining. I made a mistake. $695 annual fee. It's like lounge access.
It gives you 5% cash back on dining.
I made a mistake.
It's 1% cash back on everything else.
That's the general gist around it.
There's other benefits.
They try to put a bunch of benefits into,
but they launched a premium credit card. What else did they put say custodial accounts trust accounts coming later this year
robin hood for families they announced something with dividends that basically when when now
they're gonna have a feature where they'll give you your dividend early so like after that like
the record the record date they'll pay you as dividend early. So after the record date, they'll pay you
as opposed to waiting through the whole process.
It looks like they're going to take on some sort of risk
or something there that they'll be able to give it to you.
But they're trying to get to your dividends
up to a month early.
Yeah, that was most of the new features.
Platinum credit card was the one
that most people started to track towards.
On that one, it was $6.95 fee You get 5% cash back on dining and travel
There's a bunch of credits
You get 5%
10% cash back on hotels
Didn't really see what hotels they had on there
Unlimited lounge access, health memberships
Bunch of credits and stuff But they're trying to get into the more premium credit card space hotels didn't really see what hotels they had on their unlimited lounge access health memberships
a bunch of credits and stuff but they're trying to get into the more premium credit card space
as i'm saying it i don't think he's going to be be that interested
no it's cool it's cool i mean it's not anything like mind-boggling but yeah it's cool
sorry i thought i could slip next sock talk's not known for short to sing dancers.
So I thought I could slip in a bite of what I was eating there.
I mean, I'm known for short to sing that.
When you don't care.
I don't have an opinion on.
That's fair. I was saying this yesterday. We were talking like technicals versus fundamentals. And like I was saying, if anyone wants to understand stock talk a little bit when he doesn't actually care about what i'm asking and doesn't really want to say
anything and wants to like appease me he'll just say yeah the chart looks interesting
so you'll do your tech your tech goals are always second or third that chart that chart does not
look interesting so i mean well actually actually it might be attempting to bottom here so who knows
not i don't know about i don't know about calling that with this market environment
but the daily does look like it's trying to
I didn't mean Tesla specifically there anyway so fair, my bad
Trade Desk was one that absolutely flew today
for me that's not a name that I would really get into
I feel like $140 million
that was a lot
yep and then you got the rumor that they were talking to $140 million. That was a lot. Yep.
And then you got the rumor that they were talking to OpenAI about their ads.
So that probably helps too.
Apparently there's an AMD NVIDIA headline going on right now,
which I'm getting, I didn't see what it was.
But yeah.
Sorry, it's based on what you said.
But yeah, I feel like I've noticed a lot more CEOs buying over the last little bit.
Anthony Noto, um, it feels like there's been a couple hours.
And again, maybe I'm just saying empirical stuff, which I know you're not a fan of, but also CEOs are not market timers.
They don't tend to be great at buying at the right times.
It was also Greg Abel today.
He bought like $15 million worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock.
How much of BRKA, how many shares of BRKA do you think is $20 million stock talk?
Just quickly.
Don't I try and do the math?
I don't know.
You tell me.
It's 20. It's just a weird number to see 20 shares being 15't let me try and do the math. I don't know. You tell me 20.
I was just a weird number to see 20 shares being 15 million.
Sorry.
It's the dust.
But,
but yeah,
I don't know.
CEOs have been buying a little bit.
It's interesting.
Yeah.
I mean,
CEOs trying,
obviously trying to just put some confidence back into their stocks in an
environment like this,
but I don't think it's
traditionally too much of a needle mover obviously in the case of the trade desk that's a huge amount
of money and so you're seeing a market reaction to it and you also had a pr that basically came
out with that buy about the ads for um open ai open ai yeah Yeah. So that's probably the reason you're seeing that relative strength
there today in that name. And also in general, the ad tech names are getting a little bit of a
bump off of that, broadly speaking. So yeah, that did inject some enthusiasm into those names for
the day, but it might be interested in this headline what pentagon to order 30 000
one-way drones in the next few days reportedly are the drone names just too expensive to really
be catalyzed by something like that no not really i mean they're the there's a couple drone names
today they're strong empress for the batteries paladine uh for drone software that's up 33 today so there's a
couple names that are that are strong and i'm actually watching looking at the watch list right
now it looks like a couple of them are catching a late bid on that headline i'm guessing that just
came out yeah within the last five minutes yeah you're seeing some catching a bit here um late
off of that so um yeah i don't think it's they're too expensive to be catalyzed. Being catalyzed doesn't
have anything to do with how expensive the stock is really. It's more so about market sentiment.
The question is whether those moves can hold in a market environment like this. That's the
more important question. There have been names on days like this where we're seeing very, very broad
index-related selling. There have been
names that have been able to buck the trend, but many of them have just faded those moves over the
course of weeks or days after that. So yeah, it's just a very, very choppy market environment right
now. And it's going to be hard to get clear momentum in one direction or other, even if
you're looking at individual names. My theory about the market being up when I'm here is sure not looking good today.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's not looking good today.
I don't know.
The indexes are still a major issue.
We were talking about this a couple days ago about how the index structure is far from
being fixed.
I obviously still feel that way,
especially after these daily candles.
We're just unable to reclaim the major moving averages on either index.
The Qs continue to be rejected there.
That 100-day now, if you look at QQQ over the past three months,
that 100-day since the beginning of Februarybruary really so it's been a month
now has been a pretty clearly defined point of resistance for the nasdaq um action has been
unable to get above it we've had a couple blips february 11th february 25th where we poked above
it and then we're just immediately rejected and then on spy the action has been a little bit more promising over the course of February and March.
But I would say over the last four or five sessions, it started to develop a very similar structure to what the Q's developed in early February, where you have a declining 9 and 21 EMA sloping above price.
9 and 21 EMA sloping above price.
The 50-day is sort of starting to act as resistance now.
And you're now poking back below the 100-day on today's candle.
So that'll be the second 100-day forfeit back-to-back.
That is very reminiscent of the action that happened in April.
In April, we saw exactly this.
100-day forfeit, then a rebound the next day,
and then another 100-day forfeit.
And so that's exactly what we're seeing.
Now, I caution people to just say
it's not always going to be the exact same action
just because it looks similar.
I'm not saying that we're headed for another April crash,
but being below the 100-day moving average on the S&P 500 is not a good sign.
That's not like a positive sign.
So you have to be honest about that as well.
So, yeah, I mean, markets conditions are not great.
There's some stuff I thought about adding to today that I just decided not to add to because of how bad the market conditions are broadly and how unpredictable the geopolitical climate is.
of how bad the market conditions are broadly and how unpredictable the geopolitical climate is.
We don't know if the situation, the oil and gas situation is going to exacerbate.
We don't know if strikes are going to exacerbate in the region and if there's second order effects to that.
So I'm just sitting on my hands right now in this market environment, just observing price, being patient,
enduring some pain, but that's part of the game.
I've been sat through corrections before and endured drawdowns.
That's literally part of the game.
I'm not just saying that as a cliche statement.
Happened last year, happened the year before,
happened many times the year before.
There were several 10% corrections.
So yeah, I'm used to it.
I'm used to stocks going up, stocks going down, being volatile. But yeah, we're not there yet with the indexes. We're not
in the all clear. I said that when we had yesterday's green party that we weren't in
the clear yet. And clearly today's action is reinforcing that. To get out of the woods,
you need to get above all the moving averages on both indexes.
And ideally, if you really want to be ideal, take out the highs on both indexes.
This is not the environment where that seems plausible, right?
Because there's just too much uncertainty.
We don't have a clean macro and geopolitical backdrop in which to do that.
You need a pretty clean backdrop to do that.
You could have like one or two wrenches in the mix. The market finds a way to price in, but you can't
have blips of weakness in the U S economy, compression in the AI trade, which likely
means compression in the data center spend, which has been a huge tailwind for real economic growth and employment.
And then on top of all that, you have three wars going on globally that are contributing
to higher commodity prices, disrupting shipping.
There was a lot of news today about the disruption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
And, you know, I forgot what that organization is called, but the Tankers Association saying that they consider the region a region of war and not to transit through it.
And then you have on both sides, the U.S. side and the Iranian side, for the sake of economics, they're both telling ships, no, you're good to come through.
Like, at first, the IRGC was calling the strait closed.
And then you had Iranian officials this morning saying, no, the strait is not closed.
We still respect international law.
We still want the free flow of oil.
And, you know, the U.S. government saying, oh, no, we control the region.
And we're going to allow your ships to pass.
Don't worry about it.
And all the meanwhile, you know, transit through the strait is down like 80 to 90 percent.
That's a problem. It's just a problem, flat out. it and all the meanwhile you know transit through the straight is down like 80 to 90 percent um
that's a problem it's just a problem flat out because if oil goes up inputs go up prices go up
rate story changes and the market's reacting to that not only today but the last couple of days reacting to the possibility of that i don't think the market is awfully surprised that we struck iran i mean this that was pretty forecasted i was saying that for
weeks before it happened that that was going to happen but it was definitely for a while there
a when not if for the last least huge buildup of troops in the region we had two aircraft carriers
in the region people knew we were going to hit them. I think the question was, how hard? And the second layer to that question was, is there going to be major disruptions to
the oil markets? Are we going to see free flow of energy through the region? And the answer to that
has been so far, we have not seen that. And so maybe that's an element of the story that hasn't
been fully priced in. And that's where you're seeing the market reaction on a day like today.
So, yeah, it's not a market environment where it's clean and you can throw arrows confidently.
You know, there's a lot of stocks I want to add to.
There's some additional stocks that I want to buy that I have not bought.
But I'm just not going to do it in this market environment I'd rather wait till market
stabilize and buy those names eight or nine percent higher on a market recovery
then I would buy them here and just cross my fingers and hope so I'm keeping
it pretty relaxed cadence for now just sitting on my hands and waiting for the opportunity to present
itself um you know maybe a bottoming opportunity but this is sort of more annoying action than just
a straight sell because the market keeps faking you out right the market keeps taking you out like
oh maybe your recovery is here you're tempting you to put exposure back on and then dumping again
that's why chop is in my opinion much worse than just a drop you know i tempting you to put exposure back on and then dumping again. That's why chop is, in my opinion, much worse than just a drop.
You know, I'd rather have the markets just flush out and then find a bottom and then
recover as opposed to, you know, this kind of action we're seeing where you get days
like yesterday and then a day like today back to back.
So my expectation is pretty low right now um in this market environment
i'm just hanging on to stocks that i like trying to manage risk where necessary i've
reduced a lot of options options exposure over the last couple of weeks if tomorrow's action
isn't any better i'll probably reduce more option exposure um and potentially put on some more
hedges so it just depends.
Just depends on what happens over the next couple of days and weeks.
But yeah, it's not an overly reassuring market.
And from a technical structure standpoint, as I've been saying that for weeks, it's not pretty.
So you can't really lean on the technicals.
You can't really lean on the macro backdrop.
You certainly can't lean on the geopolitical backdrop.
All of those things are pretty unpredictable
where we are right now.
And so that complicates your ability to buy stuff, just does.
You know, unless you want to take that risk,
which some people are willing to,
some people are gonna be willing to call bottom,
whether it's today on names or, you know,
tomorrow we have a capitulative cell.
I'm sure there's
going to be people looking to call bottom.
But the indexes don't look good.
The indexes are in effectively a short-term downtrend here.
And the moving average structure says that they have overhead downsloping resistance,
which is not something that you want to play with.
So yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on where we are right now.
I think.
Have you started a hedge?
I have a couple hedges on, but very small size, SQQQ calls.
Do you find that also like a little bit of your portfolio,
like you've tried to switch very different sectors in here.
So I know even that mindset, like what was it, October, November,
maybe it was even a little earlier last year,
you switched from like these growthheavy names to more, like…
Reasonably priced names.
Yeah, that was a shift.
I mean, to be fair, I asked this question of…
I said, look left.
You said, how left?
And that was about the point we agreed upon.
So, fair enough.
How far left?
Yeah.
I wonder if your portfolio even being positioned
that way a little bit already in that direction maybe stops you from i mean i had great portfolio
performance on most of my names for the first month of this year second month i had some names
that did well some names that did badly performance was relatively flat for most of um february but
even after today which today was not a good day for the portfolio,
even after today, I'm still up 44% on the year.
So I have defended performance well enough
considering the chop, right?
Like I'm very, very pleased
with how I've defended the overall performance.
But I do recognize the weakness
in the market environment.
And I do know that even reasonably priced names
in some areas are being sold indiscriminately in this environment. And I do know that even reasonably priced names in some areas are being
sold indiscriminately in this environment. And so the conditions of February to now
are different than the conditions of November and December of last year. In November of December of
last year, it was clearly targeted selling, very targeted selling on just the momentum, high flying, high beta
expensive names.
And in the last month and a half or so, the selling has been more indiscriminate in my
view.
It's been less easy to pinpoint where the selling is.
And so that makes the environment more difficult.
You know, it's not It's certainly not an easy trading
environment. But I think the good stock pickers put enough of a cushion between them and the
market in January that you now have room to play with, you have some flexibility to play with,
which is nice. But it's not an environment where you're going to pick up tons of performance, you know, in a short period of time.
So, yeah, I'm just staying patient.
I kind of know what I'm looking at.
I know the stocks I'm looking at.
I'm monitoring my names.
There's a couple I want to buy that I'm looking at.
But I'm not getting ahead of myself and I'm not, you know, throwing a bunch of darts here.
There's stuff I could have bought in the last couple weeks that I didn't,
and I'm glad I chose not to because now I look at those charts
and they're quite a bit lower.
So I saved myself some money by doing that.
But, yeah, I'm just staying patient in this environment.
Bottom line, I'm being inactive.
I'm sitting on my hands, waiting for the opportunities.
And I think they will present themselves,
but it may be on the other side of a much bigger correction at this point. Because this is more than just fears, right? If you go
back last year and look at the flash crash in April last year, that was really fear-based,
right? More than anything. It was like, we got deep seek and then we got the tariff announcement,
the big board that Trump had and those two events
back to back induced fear in the markets and then you saw selling and i would say in november and
december of last year it was more fear around the air ai narrative and now i i think it's less fear
based and more reality based like you're seeing a real disruption now to the real economy and that's a problem
right that's not something that just goes away so that is concerning to me that for the first time
in probably two and a half years the selling does have an attributable rational reason right like a
real reason that people are not just selling because they're like, ooh, you know,
something might happen to the AI trade or the data center spend is too high or this
might happen in five years.
That's what a lot of the selling has been over the last couple of years.
It's been these shifts in narrative, right?
Just narrative, nothing actually happening.
And then people dump stocks or crypto or whatever in reaction to that.
But now you have a conflict taking place in a region of the world that happens to be incredibly important to the world's oil supply, incredibly important.
And that is creating real economic risks that will actually materialize immediately.
risks that will actually materialize immediately. Not like, oh, what might happen to the oil
markets? Like, no, oil is going to squeeze if this disruption remains in place. And it might
even be a sustainable squeeze if there is, you know, an extended conflict here. Like,
if the United States is at war with Iran for the next year, year and a half, two years,
that could create an environment where you see sustained higher oil prices.
And that means sustained higher input prices.
And that means probably slower rate cuts than the market expected.
That's a problem, right?
Because that's going to force a repricing. So that's my view on how
this correction, or not correction, how this chop, I should say, because we haven't even entered a
correction or anything close to it. That's how this chop, in my view, is different from the chop
in November and December, and different from the flash crash in April of last year, because those
were fear-based. this is reality-based.
That makes it different.
That makes it more important in my view
to actually pay attention to
because no one can sit there right now.
A lot of times when you're having equity sell-offs,
you can sit there and be like, this is dumb.
You know, people are selling stocks for no reason.
I'm gonna take advantage of this opportunity.
A lot of people did that in April of last opportunity. A lot of people did that in April of last year.
A lot of people did that in November and December of last year.
Doing that here has a little bit of a different tune because you're literally having to say to people, yeah, higher energy prices, slower rate cuts is not a reason to sell.
That's a pretty hard argument to make.
Right. cuts is not a reason to sell. That's a pretty hard argument to make. The seller in that situation sounds more rational than the buyer. So that's the issue. People need to be cognizant of that.
Whether or not you think that this war is going to last or create medium term or longer term disruptions
in the oil market, whether or not you personally believe that, you can at the same time say
it's rational for an onlooker or for another participant to believe that.
It's not an irrational thing to believe that, right?
So that's where sell-offs start getting sticky
right where sell-offs start gaining momentum is when there's a real cause to sell and not just
speculation so that's kind of my little rant on how things are different i think today than they
were a year ago um because it's funny we're getting this chop literally at the exact same
time of the year that we got the selling
last year around deep seeking tariffs it's like two days apart right the selling last year the
hundred day forfeit on spy last year was on february 27th this time it was on like march 1st
it's like a couple days apart um so you know, it's the action technically is rhyming, but in the backdrop,
it's a fundamentally different scenario. And, you know, we'll have to see how the Fed
reacts to it, how inflation data reacts to it. That's what we haven't seen yet.
Right now, there are some assumptions in place which is that
whatever's happening is going to contribute both to inflation um and thereby contribute
or affect fed policy now we don't know for sure if that's going to happen but it's a pretty simple equation right oil prices Oil prices up, inputs up, prices up.
You don't need to be genius to figure that out. You don't even need to take an economics course to figure that out. Oil is the number one input across every major industry on earth.
Energy is the input. You need it to make everything from plastics to driving cars,
to shipping, to moving trucks and planes and tanks around everything aerospace and
defense it's literally an input for every single industry on planet earth and so
that is not a good thing it's not a good thing um and so that's kind of the environment we're
dealing with right now and so it needs to be resolved i think the conflict needs to be resolved um either either
iran needs to just like roll over which doesn't seem like that that's going to happen um or
the u.s needs to finish the fight because if not then you're going to see continued oil disruptions
and by the way,
there was a little headline in that
direction. Apparently, initial reports
are coming in that a fighter jet,
a US fighter jet was shot down over Iraq
or is missing or something. I don't know if
it was shot down. I don't know what the correct terminology would be,
but there are a lot of people talking about that.
There was also another headline I saw,
different direction. Amazon reportedly
to announce first AI-produced TV show on a mass scale.
TV show what?
AI produced.
TV show.
Is the real headline.
Yeah.
That's what the Amazon one was.
I'm still trying to find that one in deeper.
It's just a headline right now.
But yeah, Amazon making an AI TV show concept.
Didn't Netflix buy Ben Affleck's
AI movie? They did.
They did. I had no idea he had that.
It was an interesting headline. Smart on
Ben Affleck. I mean, guy was ahead
a couple years, but
they did. He's actually a smart guy. I don't know
if you've heard him talk about AI before, but he's a pretty smart guy.
I mean, I believe it now.
The fact that he did that four years ago, he founded it, is what the headlines were saying.
This guy saw ChatGBT.
Yeah, I watched an interview of him talking about it, and he said he saw video generation tools for the first time,
and he kind of made the leap in his mind that, like, oh, they're going to get better,
and then they're going to be producing content.
So, yeah, good on him.
It's pretty freaking smart.
Well, yeah, good on him. It's pretty freaking smart. Well, yeah, I didn't know that until today,
but I could see the full cross, full thing coming.
Unconfirmed videos to show aftermath
by a reported downing of an aircraft pilot,
possibly the one in question,
parachuting to the ground.
There is video showing the actual shootout,
but footage cannot be independently confirmed.
OSINT Defender.
Sorry, we'll see.
There's a lot of news happening
at this moment in time.
Market close. We do have Costco
earnings. You a Costco membership
holder, Stock Talk?
Yeah, I am. I don't go enough
anymore, though. I just get Whole Foods
delivery since it's free now
from Amazon.
So I don't even go to the grocery store anymore, really.
Wait, how is Whole Foods delivery free?
It's free for over a certain minimum.
I have...
Wait, you're telling me I'm still paying $10 a month?
Yeah, California, buddy.
Logical, maybe I do pay that.
Maybe I pay that $10 a month.
Yeah, I think I pay that.
Okay, I'm'm like what the fuck
I forgot that there's a subscription attached to it. Yeah, you're right. There is there's a subscription attached to it
But yeah, I mean I for grocery delivery. I think that that's pretty chill
You know, it's not like overtly expensive or anything. No brainer dude. 11 a month. Are you kidding me?
But it's better than like going like dude The main thing for me was like i was realizing every time i went to the grocery
store like i was just spending way more time than i needed to spend there you know like walking
around the aisles and shit it's like and the and the way they package the the groceries like
are really good they package them in those little i don't know what those containers are called but
like the little reflective aluminum, whatever, insulated.
The only issue with grocery delivery is the produce.
They're never going to get the right ones.
Yeah, exactly.
They just pick whatever produce is there.
That's so true, too.
They're not picking the nice looking produce.
They're like, oh, three avocados.
Here's some rock hard shit for you, bro.
Here's like green bananas.
Here's the worst avocado you have. Yeah, exactly exactly that is true actually yeah but it's super convenient man
it's just like nice like be like oh i need this this and this to make dinner or make whatever i
want to make and then just shows up at your door just super convenient you're preaching to the
glare it's me all day i'm sure the next conversation naturally has to be Costco Walmart PE
No logical logical made some good points about that yesterday about
The spend that Amazon's making and the differences in in actual free cash flow. I think
You know, I still think they're expensive. Don't get me wrong
Yeah, it was not a bull case for Walmart. It was just that investors are being more rational. Yeah, exactly yeah you're justifying the difference in valuation which is a fair justification I think I just I don't know
I'm not buying Amazon or Costco or Walmart here you know I think the concern about free cash flow
for the megatech giants is a real concern um you know the iterations of these gpus are
coming out so fast you know now nvidia is talking about these one nanometer chips um
the iterations are coming so fast and they're they're they're they're innovating so fast that
like it is a question to ask.
And I know this sounds awfully Michael Burry of me,
but, you know, Michael Burry brought this up, whatever,
on his first Substack post ever, whenever he started it,
about the idea of GPU depreciation schedules
and like how many hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent
on the current and previous generation
and how quickly those will become
obsolete or relatively low valued. For now, usage is high enough from an inference standpoint that
hasn't been an issue. Second order prices in secondary markets are still pretty high for
GPU rentals. And so the economics are sustainable for now but yeah i don't know how
that's going to pan out and i think the concerns around mag 7 spend on these things is is legitimate
i don't think it's like a crazy thing for people to be talking about um you know everyone wants to
just dismiss it right away because it just sounds like too bearish but that's a concern too um i
think yesterday i was talking about, or not yesterday,
last week, I think about my concern about the business models of these frontier models
and how I don't really understand how they're ever going to make money. So there's a lot of
concerns right now in this market, both from an AI trade standpoint, from a geopolitical standpoint,
from a commodity standpoint, from a rate cut path
standpoint there's a lot to juggle um can i ask you something um one thing that i'm not sure about
because i feel like it's pretty opaque at this point is like these bdc's these private equity
private credit like that is something that lurks on my mind of like the no, it's like an unknown kind of situation.
Like,
I don't know if there's like too much stress there.
That is like,
there's potentially blowups on the horizon.
I know that's too speculative,
but just wondering if that ever P side.
Yeah.
Just cause you know,
you seeing what's happening with blue owl and like there's redemptions and
you know,
they're not necessarily getting full value.
And I don't know.
I just wonder if that's something to be on the lookout for i don't know if that's going to
be the catalyst like i think there probably will be pe blow-ups um i think some of these private
market valuations are at insane valuations and maybe they tend to lag the market right like
private market valuations tend to lag the the public market so maybe they tend to lag the market, right? Like private market valuations tend to lag the public market.
So maybe they have a little bit more wiggle room,
but at a certain point,
people are going to start asking questions
about the private market valuations
and saying, look,
there's been huge multiple compression
in the public market valuations
for the comps and the peers.
Where is the compression in the public market valuations for the comps and the peers, where is the compression in the private markets? And, you know, what happened with Blue Owl, I think, was an interesting
situation because they painted themselves as being in a very, very strong liquidity position
just three months prior to that. And, you know, things can move quickly. So, yeah, I think that
is a risk. I don't think it's the biggest risk. I think the biggest risk right now to the economy is energy prices.
I agree with that. Yeah, for sure. Because the energy prices are also tied to the AI trade.
It's not just about the real, it's not just about like the traditional legacy economy, right? Like
normally we'd be worrying about like, oh, how our energy price is going to affect cost of goods for consumers and businesses. Now we're thinking about how is it going to affect
the data center trade? How is it going to affect data center spend, build out of these power
centers, power generation centers? We had the meeting yesterday with Trump and all the CEOs
and CFOs of these companies saying, yeah, we're going to build our own power supply.
With energy prices being as high as they are, what happens to the behind the grid power
that these guys are using?
You know, the Nat gas turbines that these guys are using currently to power data center
infrastructure, that gets called into question too.
And then the overall profitability gets called into question.
Some of these frontier model deployers and developers are going to have to face higher
energy prices as well. And then the question becomes, does that bleed into their ability
to float this economy? Because I think by all measures, data center spend has floated the US
economy this year and for a lot of last year. And so, yeah, I think energy prices are the single biggest risk to this economy. I think there's probably PE issues on the horizon that could develop and could exacerbate things. I think multiple compression in general is an issue. People already have an excuse to fire people and are already doing it.
if multiples compress and stocks fall,
they're going to have even more of a reason to do so
for the sake of trying to save margins.
So, yeah.
Just real quick, market just closed.
Dude, I was watching for the last four minutes,
the spy candle.
It was fighting for its freaking life.
This shit's so crazy, dude.
It closed 25 cents below the hunter day like it rallied all the way
up it even was almost trying to close above it i mean for like a crazy you know red day across the
board for it to end like that i don't know man it it's putting up a fight from the downside just
it doesn't want to just die at this point. I know you have some software names, Logical.
Did those all do good today?
Yeah, my top one, Braze, is up like 7% or 8% today.
So it definitely had a really good day.
Yeah, it was up 8% today.
So I saw a bunch of calls come in today.
So, yeah, man, I think some of the software,
look, you had those days of long SMH, you know, short IGV had like this 99th percentile kind of outperformance days.
And then that basically, I felt like marked the top of that trade.
And then, you know, following up with that, you had basically the exact inverse recently in the last week where you had a day where IGV was up a lot and then SMH was down a lot. And it's just that level of
volatility does feel like maybe the long, semi-short software trade got a little bit too
long in the tooth. For me, what I've been noticing, and the only two software names I own
are Braze and Amplitude. I know these softwares very well. I've been using them at my jobs for
the last five, seven years. So I know what these businesses are. They're
consumption-based models. You don't want to be in a seat-based situation. They've actually,
these two have been holding up a lot better than a lot of other software names. And the only thing
that occurs to me is that if I compare them to other consumption-based model names, like let's
say Snowflake, for example, which is a great business. The difference that stands out to me is that Braze and Amplitude are very cheap. They trade
at like two, three times sales or something like that. And so if the whole point of this AI kills
software narrative is that, you know, software is becoming commoditized, the moat is degrading,
that means that they no longer deserve premium
multiples well then that means to me moving forward these don't have a valuation headwind
like many software names like snowflake have like snowflake could still get um still continue to do
well consumption model growing but if you continue to see multiple compression then that's going to
be a headwind for that but if you already have a compressed multiple,
then that headwind essentially doesn't exist.
And if you're still riding a consumption model,
then that makes sense for a long.
and dude,
I thought,
you know,
these stocks like amplitude and stuff were,
were cheap at 12,
14 bucks.
You know,
it came down to seven and,
you know,
the,
what I thought was cheaper amen yeah
yeah i mean dude you gotta i think people are gonna like their heads are gonna break because
the last two years you did not have to look at valuation at all and now if you take i think if
you make valuations great again it's gonna be a great market for stock breakers um I saw a post, I think maybe a week ago or two weeks ago from the founder of
Amplitude on Twitter. And he posted that 25% of the volume that's taking place on Amplitude
is now driven by AI agent queries. That's pretty nuts. So, you know, they're not being displaced.
It's a consumption-based model. And now the AI agents are probably accelerating the use of their product.
So I thought that was pretty interesting.
I think you need, you can't just be like, when you're dealing with such a narrative headwind,
you can't, you can't just like throw darts.
Like, I don't believe in Adobe.
I don't believe in Salesforce.
I, you know, I don't like, you can't just have, you got to have like the three pillars, right? You can't just be cheap. You have to be
cheap and have a consumption model. You can't just be those two things. You also have to have
less commodity risk. Monday.com, everybody loves to quote that it's eight times free cash flow.
It's a project management software. You could vibe code that today if you want this afternoon. So I don't see how new entrants don't come into that. I think something
like Braze is a little bit more mission critical. Um, you're not going to play around with some
vibe coded product. If you're reaching out to millions of your customers every single day
and you want to do it in a customized way, like, I don't know. You know, I'm not going to say never.
I'm not going to say these things are.
MRVL.
MRVL.
Initial move is up by 4%.
They did just report earnings.
2.2 billion dollars on a revenue.
I'm sure Snipe is going to hear in front of him on what was expected.
2.16.
That looks like it was a small beat.
EPS, 80 cents is what they're going to say.
71 cents expected.
Next quarter, they expect revenue, 2.4 billion.
Gap, gross margins around 51%, 52%.
But the initial move is up 6% now, MRVL.
I think that makes sense.
We saw the people that were in that space reporting,
and they all had good results.
I think even ALAP had really, really good results,
but it fell.
And why did it fall?
Because it's like a hardware name trading at like 30 times sales.
So we knew that fundamentally these stocks were, these businesses are doing very well right now.
But if you're priced for it, again, that's that multiple compression headwind that I'm talking
about. I mean, if you're a long-term bull on these things, it wouldn't surprise me to see
these stocks basically go nowhere for three years and people's brains will break because, you know,
the companies are going to continue to put up extremely good numbers
But they're just gonna be growing into their valuation and that's not a bad outcome realistically
Markets also starting to call bullshit on some of these
Shorter-term growth explosions. Are you familiar with the name PSIX logical? Oh, yeah, dude. Fuck that name. I'll never trade it again
Yeah I actually have never never owned it but i was thinking about getting into it earlier
this year and i decided not to i'm glad i didn't because it's been brutalized but that's a name
where it's like on face value right it looks really cheap right like they're growing so fast
it's trading at like a 10 p like 1.5. You know, it's a China name,
right?
Yep.
It is a China name,
but it has it.
One of the main reasons is they have a 42% stake from a Chinese company that
has a controlling interest in it.
That's one of the reasons the stock is traded so weak,
but there've been so many of these stories where it's like,
you know,
it looks like obviously cheap,
like a super high growth stock.
And then there's some red flag embedded into it.
In the case, you just brought it up with the the china ownership but there's a bunch of other names
like this that i've seen where it's like on face value superficial research they look super cheap
then you look at them they're down 40 year to date and you're like what's going on and then
you figure it out and you're like oh there's some other factor there's been so much of that in this
market so and can you you know the thing about p, because I did try to trade it and I got absolutely
bagged real quick on a trade.
Did you try to trade it this year or last year?
Late last year when it was down 40% on earnings and I tried to buy the dip at the 200 day
and then it opened like 10% below it.
So pre-market at 200, I was like, oh, let me take a swing.
Immediately got bagged 10%.
And I wish I held it because it ended up dude it doubled
by the next three months and now obviously it's been imploding again i think the issue you have
with a name like that too is not even just the china exposure which i have trouble with some of
those things is they don't even host earnings calls so you get zero clarity on any of what's
going on in the business that's one of the issues I have with one of my grid names, PLPC.
They don't host earnings calls because it's like a family-owned business.
It's like 99% institutionally owned and family-owned.
So they don't host earnings calls.
And, like, that is annoying to me.
I hate that.
Can I ask your opinion?
Because, obviously, lately we've been having a lot of weakness in the synaptics for no good reason, in my view.
I know, dude. It's been pissing me offaptics for no good reason in my view i know
dude it's been pissing me off that's the only stock in my fucking portfolio that i'm like down
on i keep adding to it i'm not gonna lie uh i like this story several times too brother yeah
yeah it's it's a i don't want to give up on the story it's a beautiful story you know do you have
any thoughts on a lot of their revenue coming from x us like, like Asia? Any thoughts, sir? We're thinking the exact same thing, yes.
I think, I'm sure what you're about to say is that the fact that they have a large amount
of Taiwan revenue is probably what's contributing to the weakness.
I think people, because of the geopolitical environment, I think people are scared about
China invading Taiwan.
And if you look at the other Taiwan-exposed names other Taiwan exposed mid-caps that have, like,
a lot of business in Taiwan, they've been super weak, too,
and so I think that's where the weaknesses come for synaptics,
but trust me, I'm in the same boat as you.
The action has been terrible.
I've bought more, too, on the dips, but it keeps dipping.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't know what to do with it.
I mean, I like this story, but it's just like, what do you do in this situation where this thing?
Yeah, where the queues are weak and tech is weak and semi. Yeah, I know. I know. It's tough. It's tough. I'm biting the bullet and holding it. Obviously, if conditions get even worse than they are now, then maybe that'll change. But I'm biting the bullet and holding it for now. I mean, you know, the fear of this whole Taiwan thing has been on the table for a long time.
Obviously, the U.S. is de-risking with, you know, building foundries here and stuff like that.
Although that won't be relevant for a synaptic scenario.
But I don't know, man.
You got to just think, are we really going to go there?
Or is this fear that, you know, constantly looms and never really escalates that?
I don't know.
I think it's especially front and center right now just because of the fact the U.S. striked Iran.
And then four days later, the Chinese government came out and said that they're raising strategic military spending.
Literally four days after we struck Iran.
And so I think people are connecting the dots.
Like China's probably sitting there thinking, well, Russia's making their move on Ukraine or did make their move years ago on Ukraine.
Now America's making their move on Venezuela and Iran. China's probably sitting there thinking, well, we should, you know, take a bite out of the apple of our own geopolitical ambitions.
political ambitions. And so that's I if I had to put a reason on it and like pinpoint the reason
for weakness in synaptics and in other Taiwan adjacent mid caps, that's what I would say.
I would say that's probably what the market is thinking, that
China is going to invade Taiwan or blockade Taiwan or strike Taiwan or something.
Arcade Taiwan or strike Taiwan or something.
This is the difficult thing about U.S. geopolitical decisions is like sometimes it seems like there's an obvious thing for the American government to do.
And I'm not disputing whether or not like I'm not having a debate about whether people think think the Iran strike was justified or not.
You can have whatever opinion you want on that.
on that. That's not the point. The point is, is that when the U.S. makes geopolitical decisions,
That's not the point.
China and Russia and our other counterparties have to think of their own counterplay. You know,
they can't just let America be who America wants to be, you know, without taking their own
geopolitical strength into account. So I think this probably increases the likelihood
that China does something with Taiwan. Is it imminent? I mean, I don't think so. We haven't
seen any like military buildup around the island. That's particularly notable. If that starts
happening, you know, if in the next couple of months we see Chinese ships building up around Taiwan in numbers we haven't seen before, that would be something I would take note of.
But we're not there yet.
So I do understand people's concerns and why people are concerned about the idea of China and Taiwan.
the idea of China and Taiwan,
but I'm not going to make that leap yet
and say that it's an issue yet
because that would be too much speculation for me.
Either way,
Samsara,
IOT reported earnings up 8% to 9%.
EPS,
$0.18,
BDA expectations of $0.13,
revenue of $4.44, Bet expectations of 13, revenue of 444, bidet
expectations of 422.
Forward guidance was also
slightly above expectations for the next
quarter for the full year as
well was above expectations. So
bidet EPS revenue, forward guidance
above expectations, ticker IoT
is up 10% in after hours.
Costco reports earnings in two
minutes, 4.15 p.m. Eastern for anyone who cares.
You can go.
Yeah, I'm just thinking at this point,
what would be even,
I don't know, this is probably
past the scope of our conversation,
but what would even be the purpose
of China taking
Taiwan at this point?
Just to roll it up like Hong Kong, is that the idea?
Because, I mean, obviously we have Taiwan Semi still coming out of there,
so that would be a big hit to the U.S. tech industry.
I mean, I'm curious what Stock Talk thinks,
and we'll get these costume numbers on a second so
maybe interrupted but i don't know if it's that much deeper than they they think it's theirs
so they want it or it is maybe it is i don't know but i mean that feels like the that what is the
conversation that's just kind of it's not really that much deeper in it maybe it is strategic the
island chain and they want to be able to break out of that maybe it is more strategic than that but i don't know sometimes i think stuff is just simple as it's you take something that they think
is theirs and uh people don't like that yeah i mean if they take taiwan then taiwan semis makes
50 of the chips on earth So our cars would stop working.
So would our refrigerator.
So I don't know.
That would be pretty bad.
Hold on.
I'm in the elevator.
Give me a sec.
When I get down, I'll...
No, you're good.
He texted me as well.
It's not a bad timing, as we should be having Costco, which did just report earnings.
Oh, dude, I'm having some glitches.
Okay. Let's get Costco stock in front of me initial move not really moving too much down like by 0.1 net sales 68.2
billion wait i don't think that's what i want i think i'm seeing revenue at $69.59 billion. Okay, net sales and revenue are going to be too different.
So $69.1?
Sorry, long day.
Revenue came in at $69.59 billion, expected was $69.32 billion.
EPS came in at $4.58 when we were expecting $4.55.
It's a double beat for Costco.
No changes to the hot dog combo in here?
Haven't seen any new.
There you go. It would be breaking the first thing there.
Unless Stock Talk is on the 200th floor now, big balling.
Stock picks have been going well. I do think he's down.
Yeah, we got you.
So yeah, what I was going to say is it's about advantage stealing.
Like, China was unprepared for AI.
They didn't know.
Like, modern AI, LLMs, is an American thing, right?
Like, Google invented the modern LLM,
ChatGPT modernized it and presented it to the public.
China was unprepared for that.
And the U.S. developed very early on a chip advantage, right?
A chip design advantage, obviously led by NVIDIA.
And that allowed them to build a lead
right and china knows that they're not going to get full access to nvidia's cutting-edge chips
ever okay even though we've we've come around and and allowed them to buy more chips there's still
limitations on the quantity and limitations on everything else
associated with that. But one way for China to just void our advantage in chips is to take Taiwan.
That would level the playing field in AI instantly. Right. And so that, I think, is the issue.
And that's where the incentive is for Taiwan. It's not just that we are, you know, making our geopolitical ambitions more clear, but we're also in the lead in the AI race.
China is behind on the hardware side. And if they had to pull one magic lever to throw the U.S. wrench in terms of our lead it would be to disrupt the
chip supply chain and i think danny tagged me uh in the comments and asked well why is taiwan
semi only down one percent in that case with other taiwan related stocks down more well because it's
lower beta than the other stocks the the mid-cap stocks that are associated are much much higher
beta and so they're going to be down more.
It's that simple.
But Taiwan Semi isn't going to crash on fears of that happening because there is an attempt from Taiwan Semi to pivot to the United States.
It's not nearly complete yet.
You need about another year of time.
But in this scenario where the United States government feels like this is going to happen imminently, they'll probably push the button on Taiwan to make that happen more quickly.
I don't know how much more quickly they can make it happen.
But the reshoring of TSM to Arizona is a hugely critical thing for the United States.
It is probably the most important thing that we could do in the next year is to reshor chip supply to the United States to Arizona.
It's like the single most important or it should be the single most important US national
security priority in my opinion.
Yeah, agreed.
I mean, I keep seeing them sell puts on TSM.
So I mean, clearly they're not really, everyone's going to be a dip buyer.
And so maybe that actually gives you a little bit of confidence to think that
if people are selling puts,
they don't expect any imminent volatility in that name,
not enough so to risk that level of capital,
which makes me think that Synaptics is probably going to be okay,
which means that Taiwan's probably going to be okay.
Because if people were thinking that there was true geopolitical risk right
now,
I don't think they'd be selling those kinds of puts in size, especially near in the money. Because if people were thinking that there was true geopolitical risk right now,
I don't think they'd be selling those kinds of puts in size,
especially near in the money. Which makes me think synaptics easily could be a mispriced opportunity here.
But it's hard to make one better than other for sure
Costco stock is pretty much unchanged so not much move in there
But I guess it doesn't really move that much of off of earnings they get to a 70p.
Take it to a 90. What is it at right now? 60? Is that what it's at?
Or is it 40?
U.S. officials
deny claims that fighter jet was shot down.
There you go. Alright. Interesting
times.
Although, you know.
War of propaganda, as always.
Remember this with the Ukraine and Russia war?
I don't know if anyone remembers this at the beginning of that.
Every claim that Ukraine made, Russia was like, no, that's not true.
And then every claim that Russia made, Ukraine was like, no, that's not true.
The wars, modern wars are fought in the media as much as they're fought on the battlefield.
You know, so.
Stop, stop. You're going to see a lot of bullshit like that.
Could you send me that?
Send you what?
Where you're seeing the claims.
Where the claims are denied?
Yes.
Go to Financial Juice.
U.S. official to Al Jazeera.
We deny reports that a U.S. fighter jet was shot down.
Yep.
Fog of War. Fog of War.
It is interesting to see the talk around the Strait of Hormuz
and both sides, well, saying it's clear and you can go through it,
but clearly there is stuff going.
The numbers around traffic is all the way down.
I feel like the numbers I'm seeing
is what a closure of the straight-up from Moos looks like.
I mean, we could have attacked anyone else on Earth
and this wouldn't be an issue, right?
Like, for the people, there's people, I think,
like new traders and investors who think,
oh, the market is reacting negatively
because bombs are going off.
No, the market does not give a shit about
bombs going off sorry it's loud here the market doesn't give a shit about bombs
going off in fact markets go up on bombs going off historically it's not about
the bombs it's about the straight that's what it's about any market reaction or economic
expectation from this is about the straighter for moose and not about people dying I'm not
minimizing casualties or like taking an immoral approach here I'm just being realistic that's
what the market cares about Liz oil prices not bombs
it is fair because um you know when you you look at every other time in the past
it has definitely moved upwards off of the the bombs starting to move and this one is a lot more
uncertainty and the trickiest thing about playing this kind of conflict is that the conflict can
end at any time for any reason.
And so if you're somebody that's trying to trade a conflict like this by saying, okay,
I'm going to buy, you know, Nat gas stocks or oil stocks, like if you're in them going into the
conflict, okay. But if you're buying them post, post, you know, start of the the war and then you're trying to like gauge how
long the run can last that's a really difficult game to play because if you wake up one day and
we effectively have agreed to regime change or the Iranian government surrenders or the U.S.
and Israel say operation complete and walk away any Any of those scenarios, oil is going to shoot back
down. And so it's a difficult trade to make. If you're if you were in it going into this conflict,
great, bravo. We'd have the composure to hold it until the strike happened.
But if you're a trader now and you're looking at this and going, well, I want to get long oil in
that gas. I think that's a tricky trade, you know, and I felt the same way about disruptions in the Russia-Ukraine trade.
Like in the Russia-Ukraine trade, I was long agricultural names going into that war.
So I did very well on those. But it was a really, really difficult trade to time post start of the war.
There were a lot of whipsaws. You know, there were
a lot of moments where it felt like, oh, the war is going to have a negotiated settlement.
And then you see those names come back down and then it would continue to go on. You see those
names rip back up. And then on top of that, even if the fight does get extended longer than you
expect, a lot of times there are adjustments made very quickly by the international
economy to fill those gaps in supply. That's what happened with agricultural goods. That's
what happened with fertilizers, you know, in a matter of months post Russia, Ukraine. So
is it as easy to plug that hole with oil as it is with wheat and fertilizers? No, no,
certainly not. But that hole still can be plucked. And the international economy adapts quickly. So it's a tricky trade at this point. You know, if you're somebody that's sitting around going like, I want to benefit off of that trade specifically, I think you just have a better time hunting for catalysts and hunting for relative outperformance because there still are a handful of names that are posting that if cybersecurity had two very strong sessions in a row you could still find those trades rather than
you know looking for a way to play the iran war i think that's it's that's going to be tough to time
again if you're not already in the trade with a cushion you know some people are long oil with a
cushion now because they were long it as soon as U.S. forces started building up.
In hindsight, I think I probably should have put on some oil exposure.
I just hate trading oil and gas because of the volatility.
But if people who are already long and have a cushion,
that's a decent position to be in.
Now you have flexibility to manage it based on how the war goes.
But who knows when
this will end? You know, the thing is, Iran is not a small country. Iran has whatever, 90 million,
92 million, I don't know if that population is, something like that people. It's not a small
country. And it's not like Venezuela, where Venezuela is not a small country either. But
it's not like Venezuela in terms of military sophistication,
where the Venezuelans were literally hiring Cubans to defend their own president
or bringing in Cuban soldiers to defend their own president.
They have a robust military and a very large missile arsenal.
So this war can last longer than we expect it to.
And if it does, then the disruption will last longer,
and that'll have a more real impact on the economy. You're not going to see any real
changes in prices of goods if oil is up for two weeks. But you will see real changes in
prices of goods if oil is up for months. That's the thing that matters here, is how long does
the disruption last? And that's what the markets
care about right now I think more than anything I think you would see a face ripping rally in my
opinion in everything if there was some sort of clarity around the straight of hormones and
some sort of opening up if you will of the-work, I think you'd see a face-ripping rally, but I don't know how likely that is.
Sorry, I thought I was on mute there.
You guys might have heard me eating. That is gross.
No, you're good. We didn't hear anything.
I think on your point there,
agree, and it's pretty funny because we get into these
situations where he creates
a situation, and then he can
just talk of the situation. It's like this infinite
money glitch where he can just take us back
higher.
We're going to end this time higher.
I mean,
it's all about time frame and stuff, but
this guy has two years.
Can we be real?
I think you've got to appreciate
how resilient the stock market has been.
It's insane.
Like $80 oil.
We're down 3% from the highs.
Like,
you know,
we're invading other countries.
No big deal.
Like,
you know,
Q mags are down 20% from their highs.
Barely can hold the 200 day spies still to 3% from the highs.
Like,
you know,
XLF is breaking down below the 200 day spies still below's still 2-3% from the highs. XLF is breaking down below the 200-day,
SPY's still below 2% off the highs.
It's pretty insane how strong this market is.
You can throw a lot at this market.
I mean, yeah, listen,
not for traders and not for us on here,
the chop sideways is not super fun.
But, I mean,
for a long-term investor for probably a market health,
maybe is the way to put it.
Chop sideways is better than just dumping.
So yeah,
definitely has been a result.
I'm not having a fun time either.
I'm getting,
you know, I'm getting cooked in this chop too.
you know,
I totally get it.
It's not easy at all.
So I'm not trying to say that, but the fact that we've held up and not absolutely just
broken down is it's pretty remarkable I think it's rough for traders but I think
overall it's good for the market is kind of what I was trying to say there which
makes sense and you know at that point when the market starts to turn and it
will be good for the traders again and I think we'll have seen some healthier
but yeah definitely a strong market here even Even as StockTalk was saying there,
this is a little bit of a different theme
because we're touching the golden boy on this one with AI
and energy prices and that being a huge input there.
Who knows what the long-term kind of impacts of this are.
You know, if this lasts for a while
and you kind of got to start to ration this off thing,
I bet you this starts to change the way people think.
And maybe stuff like nuclear and other things, which have become popular, just continue to
accelerate coming off of it.
But also, maybe it's just a one, two-week thing, a blip, no one remembers, fears don't
actually materialize, and whatever.
I don't know.
We'll see.
It doesn't really seem like that.
President Trump has said this is an operation that could go on for weeks.
For some reason, the four-week number isn't in my head right now
and I don't know how
incentivized he would be to
overestimate that at the start going into
this. So, my guess
is this is not something that's going to be over today
or tomorrow or next thing.
But, again, what do I know?
Just a news guy.
Costco stock didn't really move that much for the record.
It just started to move down like half a percent,
something like that, but it's still just hanging out.
Actually, 0.2%, not even half a percent.
Which stock?
Costco, COST.
Yeah, there's just no point.
It feels so juicy to short that one,
but it never works out.
It's always packed.
Every store.
It's honestly too packed.
That's why I don't love it as much.
It's just too much.
But if they're always packed,
how much more packed can they be?
You just get more stores.
I mean...
Wait, who's always packed?
Costco.
Yeah, it is always packed.
It is too packed. It is too packed.
It is stressful for me to go there.
Maybe I do go on weekends because we're busy on this stuff,
so it's partially my fault.
I guess it's the extremes, but it's just too much.
Yeah.
There was a logical.
Were there any news stories you thought were interesting today?
I've actually been spending a lot less time focused on what's been going on.
I think this is a complete waste of time and I think you'd be a lot more
productive doing other things in the near term.
That does make sense.
Yeah.
I mean,
dude,
this week has been rough.
I'm just coming on these spaces and I'll come right back to you.
I apologize.
But like Monday, um, we're green Tuesday. we're super red wednesday we're super green today
we're in red it's ugly maybe there's been some second half of the day comebacks here on the
red days i'm i'm kind of remembering so it is that still strength in the market but boy is it
the chop not not a uh a fun time well what i can say though is like a couple things like on monday
it was you know the open was pretty bad especially over the weekend everyone's expecting you know
from the bad iran like news around the invasion and the market was down over a percent and it
rallied to green like that's interesting and then the next day we fell even lower and then we rallied to green. Like, that's interesting. And then the next day, we fell even lower
and then we rallied basically to green.
And then, you know, you had follow through.
And to me, it just feels like we were going from a market
which was sell the rip, constant distribution.
And now it sort of feels like there's a little bit
of a character change
which is that some buyers are now back in the market so to me it feels somewhat constructive
like i'm not going to sit here and pretend that it's easy or we're in a good spot here or anything
like that but it doesn't feel that bad anymore um I mean, I could easily see us,
I could see the S&P bottoming at the 200-day.
I mean, assuming that things don't escalate further,
I could see, you know, another 3%, 4% down.
I'm, you know, I'm not going to rule that out.
But then, you know, if you did have that
and then you found support at the 200-day,
then this would have just been a 6% correction.
And historically you have three 5% pullbacks in a bull market three,
three times a year.
So it, you know,
imagine all this fuss and the S and P ends up with a 6% pullback in totality.
And then we just rip higher like. And then it's like, everyone
is concerned about the end of the world, but it turned out to be a 5% pullback. I mean,
that would be pretty comical. So I have been trying to think a little bit more medium term
because the short term is just like, okay, it's chop. You have to accept that there's
volatility here, but I don't think there's much to gain from that. And the market has been
fairly resilient. So trying to short the market hasn't been a very fruitful exercise either
because your shorts are getting chopped up just like your longs are. So unless you're perfectly
timing some of these hedges right at like resistance and like you know what
i mean like you have to watch it like a hawk and then in the best case scenarios you're catching
like a two percent move to the downside which then ends up correcting back half of its losses
and then it's like you did all that work to hedge you know one percent of down exposure and like
it's just like all right i don't know what i'm doing anymore at this point
so i should just not bother i i think like the the best thing you could probably do is probably
have like i don't know not fully invested have cash i'm fully invested um i am now i i went super
long on that tuesday morning bottom i just, after seeing Monday recover Tuesday,
it felt like, okay, this is, I feel like we're going to recover again. And we did,
you know, looking at us roll back over again, makes me think maybe that was a little too hasty,
but the market's resilient, man. And I don't want to trade this chop. I just want to be long,
a good portfolio of stocks that I like and not overthink it. I could probably optimize and reduce volatility by having, you know, 70% of the exposure
I have today. Um, and then just having some cash, the cash would help with the volatility and then
just like go to the beach and not think about it. So that's probably the best thing to do here. Um,
and then that way you're exposed to the market and you're, you know, whatever.
But I don't know.
At the same time, we've had this market show us that individual stocks, individual sectors have been able to buck the trend for the last few months.
Like we had five in, you know, different sectors of the S&P hit new all-time highs, just rally straight up.
And, you know, so were foreign markets until the U.S. dollar started catching a bit again.
That just feels like, you know, we're having money rotate from here to there and there to here,
but it doesn't necessarily feel like it's a big deal. Like those, some of those sectors that ran
15% year to date,
having them consolidate, maybe portfolio managers are rebalancing. Like that feels like pretty healthy consolidating action. Some of that money rotates back into tech. So you sell your staples
that are up 20% to buy tech that's down 20. Like that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, I don't
think it's a big deal as long as you don't necessarily
just see like complete distribution from the entire market. And I think
one, one somewhat concerning thing is that you have seen correlation go to one,
which means that, you know, these last couple of days, everything's been selling. So something to
look out for, but is that actionable? I i don't know i don't know if it's
that actionable so i don't know just be patient i guess yep that is fair that is fair i appreciate
it uh stock talk in this type of market do you ever like just go to the beach i mean guy can't
do that anymore he signed up for this, but I mean,
there is some days where it is just cash is a position.
I know we say that and sometimes it's harder to do that always,
but like also getting away from the screens is a,
is a,
can be an active thing.
Actually.
Sometimes it is the move.
I thought there's no ocean in New Mexico.
I heard that the ocean in Texas isn't that great either.
That was funny. That was a good one, though.
I've never even heard of anyone talking about
the ocean in Texas, if I'm going to be honest.
Well, what is this? Like the
Corpus Christi or something's on the water?
Our resident Texan isn't here, so I'm just going to say San something's on the water. Our resident Texan isn't here,
so I'm just going to say,
I'm going to say San Antonio's on the water
and let him dwell with that.
Tomorrow morning,
we do have NFP incoming,
so that should be something to watch.
This has been jobs week.
Initial jobless claims came in pretty close
to what was expected.
NFP though, unemployment rate, all that type of thing will be coming out tomorrow morning,
8.30 a.m. Eastern.
Markets expecting that unemployment rate to be right around 4.3%.
Last time it was 4.4.
Now, I know, as we've talked about on this one, markets are moving off of a little bit
more geopolitical stuff here. Obviously, we're talking oil and data centers being the kind of poster boy of this trade,
AI, everything like that.
And they take up a lot of energy.
We'll see.
I even saw a headline from earlier in the week that energy prices were up, gas prices
were up 11 cents overnight.
But we do have NFP coming out tomorrow morning.
4.3% is what's expected for the unemployment rate.
$50,000 for the NFP data.
And for anyone who doesn't know what NFP actually even means,
NFP is...
How many jobs? The U.S.s economy it's not farm payroll uh but so it's how many jobs the
u.s economy added during the last month so expected to add in 50 000 the month before it
was 130 000 jobs being added you want to see this number be higher so it's uh probably not the best
thing i don't know we shall see though but expectations being low maybe it's probably not the best thing. I don't know. We shall see, though. But expectations being low, maybe it's something they can beat.
These numbers can be revised a lot as well.
So what you get on the one month, maybe necessarily isn't what the actual number will end up being.
And we do see revisions for previous months on the new reports.
So there could be one or two things that move the markets.
Expect a little market move, 8.30 a.m. Eastern tomorrow morning.
We are also past the thick of earnings seasons. There's no
real earnings reporting tomorrow morning
for anyone who was curious.
Trump just said we're taking further action to reduce pressure
on oil.
There was a headline about
30, 40, maybe like an hour ago
this came out.
Iran is calling me asking how to make a deal.
I'm sure they are.
Can we make a deal?
Now, here's the question.
Who is calling him?
There's no governmental structure in place.
The Ayatollah is dead.
They haven't appointed a new Ayatollah.
The IRGC is a loose command.
Who's calling him?
I just understand. The IRGCc there's no one calling who's no that's literally what i said there is
like who and and honestly aren't they just going to backtrack that phone or something i don't know
how this works but like that's literally the next i would not call right after it says trump said
they called me the next headline is iran's irC statement. We are launching a new wave of attacks called Promise 4
operation to attack Tel Aviv with missiles and drones.
So, I don't know.
This is the same shit that happened during the Russia-Ukraine
war where every headline is contradictory.
You're not going to know what the hell is going
on unless you're on the ground over there.
Which none of us are.
There's a lot of people
on Twitter that are pretending that they are, but
they're not. A lot of those OSINT
pages are just complete bullshit.
So, yeah, I don't know.
It's very hard to track what's going
on unless you get an official statement from either
side, which there have been a lot of them that are contradictory to.
So I think the OSNT technical page,
the 1.3 million followers,
that guy's for sure legit because he works with the Hunterbrook guys.
I talk to them often.
They're very legit.
Wolf defense is legit too.
Wolf defense is legit,
by the way,
this guy's been going in,
he's been grinding
and uh it's a tough time out there to see what's real and not and uh he's been doing a good job
getting through it follow that wolf defense account set up here i've been grok has no idea
what's happening i've been asking grok if stuff is real or not and it is getting things that are
clearly not real that we've been proven not real and it's saying it's real uh that's pretty good
though i guess but grok is still making real and it's saying it's real. That's pretty good, though, I guess.
But Grok is still making mistakes,
and it's only going to get continuously harder
what's real and what's not.
I watched this OSINT defender guy,
scent defender. That might have been what you said there.
Might have been someone different, but
yeah, it's tough.
Even these guys, it's going to be hard to get into it.
His name is OSINT Technical.
He has 1.3 million followers.
That guy's for sure legit.
So my advice, I would say whatever the White House is saying tends to be legit.
I haven't seen any false information off of there.
And then also CENTCOM is putting out pretty real-time updates there as well.
Does Canada and the European Union agree to an updated modern and modernization to their economic and trade agreement.
I don't have much more details than that, but.
Iran is calling, asking how we get a deal.
Further action to reduce pressure on oil is imminent.
We want to fight more than they do.
Iran is calling a little bit late.
I know you read off some of those, but that's a little bit more.
We want to finish Iran first, but Cuba is a question of time.
There you go. Another headline.
This guy is going. All right. House rejects resolution to halt strikes on Iran. Votes 219 to 212. Is that breaking as well?
Is this moving anything right now?
I don't think so.
But it definitely does feel like the markets are a little bit frozen here.
Stock Talk, are you watching NFP at all tomorrow?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Of course.
NFP, JobsData, I always watch, yes. stock talk are you watching nfp at all tomorrow yeah yeah of course of course nfp jobs did but
i always watch yes is it different in this market is kind of the reason i'm asking
in every market but yeah i mean it matters more right now because this market doesn't need more
weight on its shoulders um but do you think it's so here's the the thing. If we get a good NFP print... Yeah, you could see the release.
So they're expecting a 50,000...
Look, at any given time,
the market's worried about a few things.
And in my view, the most...
The trump card for sentiment
is always the real economy.
It's always like the finishing blow
or the starting blow
is fear about the real economy.
Even right now,
the fears about oil are, in reality, just
fears about the real economy and about a resurgence in inflation, right? That's what the
market cares about more than any of this sentiment-driven stuff, more than somebody's opinion
about the AI trade or whatever. that stuff is fleeting you know
opinions can change quickly narratives can change quickly but the real economy when it starts moving
in a direction tends to have a lot of inertia and you don't want to let it slip right because in in
all other instances like this is one reason why
this historical precedent that gets alluded to a lot, this idea that like rate cuts lead to stocks
going lower. Why do you think that that's a precedent? It's not a precedent because easier
monetary policy is bad for stocks. No, easier monetary policy is good for stocks. But in those instances, the majority of those instances,
historically, those cuts were in response to real economic downturn. And so that is proof,
in my view, that the market, it's historical proof, at least, that the market prioritizes
what's happening in the real economy when there is a concern. Now, if the real economy
is floating, it's not great, but it's not bad, the market can hum along in those scenarios.
The market is not the economy. That's not what I'm saying. The market can make new all-time
highs 10 years in a row in a relatively average economy. The issue is when there's an economic risk at hand that can bleed through the economy, like higher energy prices.
And that's when it becomes an issue.
And that's when monetary policy starts becoming about, okay, how do we combat both sides of the equation?
And that's when uncertainty increases and all that good stuff, not good stuff, all that bad stuff that causes
markets to panic.
that's what's important right now, is
the view on the real economy.
Jeff,
NFP does matter tomorrow.
And, but, it's gonna be tough.
Are we in the phase where you don't want
to be long into the weekend, you think? I mean, I hate that stuff is happening, because it's going to be tough. Are we in the phase where you don't want to be long into the weekend?
You think?
I mean, I hate that stuff is happening.
Cause it's like, okay.
That's only relevant to like traders who shorter, but come on.
Like, here's what I will say is like the last couple of weeks we,
we were just talking about this.
You knew something was going to happen.
Maybe I'd want to be like, okay,
something's going to happen could happen over this weekend, blah, blah,
blah.
Is that still the general think or is just, it's happen over this weekend, blah, blah, blah. Is that still the general thought here, or it's just happening?
I mean, if you're a trader who's all cast at the end of a given week,
and then all lined up after, and then all cast at the end of the next week,
and then, yeah, I mean, then, next week and then yeah i mean then yeah you
probably don't want to be riddled with new positions going into a weekend in an environment
like this but if you're not a trader who operates like that and you're somebody who like builds
positions and navigates through markets like i am then that's not an option i can't just go all
cash at the end of a week like no i've stocked them on for years, you know? So, um, no, I don't think about it like that.
Um, but yes, traders should think about it like that in an environment like this and
chop.
If you're a trader, you want to be high cash.
Um, you know, that's a pretty sensible thing to do.
Even from my perspective, I probably should have a higher amount of cash.
I probably should raise cash at some point.
Maybe tomorrow I will,
but,
yeah.
What about,
what happens?
What were you saying?
Where does cash,
when,
when building cash means,
you know,
life's been going well,
you can add some into it or you sell one or two things.
Do we,
we were talking about synaptics a little bit earlier and that's the name you like but you're down on you're very big on that
i've already upsized it i just upsized it a little early i mean i would have upsized it here today
but i upsized it a little early i just don't want to throw more long capital into this market
that is a name that i would buy more of though if i was if the market conditions like if the
market conditions were more um calm the broader market conditions, like if the market conditions were more calm,
the broader market conditions,
and that was just pulling back in a vacuum,
I would be buying more of it.
But yeah, that's my thought.
I'm not buying more of anything right here.
But the question more is,
where does that line in your stuff of
to sell to sell and like it just depends on position to position depending on my conviction
level there's no real like generally there is a line in the sand for like trades or lower conviction
positions but it there's depending on but i really like the thing i'm trying to get at here is you
talk my radar with that one one of the things you talk a lot about conviction,
and I think that it's not as hard as people think to pick the right stock.
It's harder to have that conviction to stick with it in the rough times,
not take the 10% gain for something that you really thought was going on.
And one of the things that you talk a lot about mainly is that cost basis advantage.
So it's a little bit interesting in this scenario where like the conviction in the thesis is there um but it just like yeah i mean
everything else in the portfolio so it's okay for me like i've been doing this long enough where i
can break my rules occasionally right like yeah the stuff that i preach is principles that you
build experience and skill on over time i break my rules rules all the time on a case by case basis,
but that's because I have a lot of experience and doing well in all sorts of
markets.
And I lean on that experience and I lean on my instinct.
Like most of my decisions now versus seven or eight years ago or nine years ago are very different.
You know, I was entirely a rules-based trader probably for the first five or six years of my trading career.
And now I'm more on instinct.
You know, I operate more on instinct.
And sometimes it serves me well. I would say most of the time, the vast majority of the instinct and sometimes it serves me well.
I would say most of the time, the vast majority of the time, my instinct serves me well.
And there are times where I kind of go, okay, shrug my shoulders and say I should have followed my rules more closely.
But I trust my instinct, you know, and when my back gets put against the wall,
it isn't right now. I mean, I'm still up over 40% of the year. I'm not worried about it right now,
but if I was like wrestling to stay green on the year, or if I was down big on the year already,
I would be treating risk management very differently, but trusting my instinct has
worked so far to navigate this chop. And so I'm continuing to do that. And also a thing that gives me an
advantage is I don't have my portfolio in two or three stocks, right? I have my portfolio across
19 positions right now. If one of them is not working for me, that's okay. As long as I still
like the thesis. If I went and revisited thesis and go
i don't like it as much or whatever um then that'd be different but but i do with that name and with
a lot of my names i do and so that's why i'm holding through volatility what happens a lot
of times is to me poor price action is the catalyst for me to revisit the thesis, right? I'll see a stock, let's say,
breaking down below the 21 EMA on the daily.
And I'll ask myself like,
okay, why the relative weakness recently?
And if I can explain that away pretty quickly,
then it's a non-issue.
And if I can't, then I'll go and I'll be like,
okay, should I add more here?
Should I sell it?
Let me revisit the thesis
and let me retest my conviction,
basically, on how excited I am about the thesis. And what I try not to do in those moments,
and this is difficult to do, you need to have done this for a long time, I think,
to be able to do this off instinct. But what I try to do in those moments is try to remain
unbiased about the price action. Like when I'm revisiting the fundamental or
thematic part of the trade, I try to not think about the price action because that's going to
pollute your opinion, right? That's going to make you feel like, oh, well, I liked it,
but now that it's $10 lower, I don't like it as much. That to me is a dangerous thing because a lot of times you can justify it away or or you'll
have confirmation bias and just be like you know stick to something that you shouldn't stick to
but in some cases you'll go and revisit the fundamental and thematic thesis and you'll go
okay i think this is being indiscriminately sold i don't think it should be being sold
um and so i'm going to hold it and so you know that's how i feel about a lot of stocks
and sometimes i'm wrong stock talk sometimes i'm right and i would say most of the time i'm right
you know the vast majority of my picks do very well sometimes they don't work out and that's okay
that's part of the game but that's why i size things appropriately you know i don't i don't
ever go into a position with like 15 20 of my portfolio off rip and just go balls to the wall.
You know, I'm building into things, trickling into things.
Stocks go from 5% or 6% waiting in the portfolio to 9% or 10% waiting over time if they do well.
Like that's the kind of portfolio approach I take.
So I don't get killed by any individual position.
And that's a huge advantage to have if you're somebody who operates like I do.
Like, you know, Wall Street Engine is one of our analysts and our servers.
He's been doing great.
You know, he shares his trading account.
He's a little bit more willing to be, you know, 80% cash, 90% cash at a given time.
With my main portfolio, I don't have the liberty to do that.
And so, you know, I can raise 10, 20% cash at a given time. With my main portfolio, I don't have the liberty to do that. And so, you know, I can raise 10, 20 percent cash at a given time. But during moments like this,
I kind of just have to stick to my guns. You know, that's kind of part of the game of operating
as a medium term, long term swing trader where you want to build positions that you're going to
hold for months or years. You have to endure chop.
Like last year during the April flash crash, I just sat through it.
Like I had hedges on, which helped a lot.
But, you know, I had like four or five percent of the portfolio in hedges.
That's a large amount for hedges for me.
But, you know, those were just all in options.
So that helped considerably.
But I just sat through the drawdown on a lot of names I owned.
Right?
Like, I watched Robin Hood go to, I don't know what it was at the lows of the April flash crash.
I was like in the 30s or something.
And I just sat through.
I actually should have bought more there.
But I have to do that.
And I've done that for years.
That's a part of my strategy,
which is why I always come out on the other side of corrections with great performance because
I hold through corrections and I hold through flash crashes. In 2020, when the market crashed
and COVID, I held through it. I was just like, fuck it. I held through it. I bought a lot of
shit too. But everyone's style is different.
For me, the way I operate has served me well. I try to find thematic opportunities that I think
are secular, that are going to last a long time. And in that duration, in a, in a 10 year period,
you're going to have crashes. You're going to have flash crashes, 15% corrections, 20% corrections,
have crashes you're gonna have flash crashes 15% corrections 20% corrections individual stocks down
50 60% because of my experience in being through many of those moments um I'm cool with it like I
have a hell of a stomach like I have a hell of a stomach I've had days this year and last year where
I was down seven figures in a day and And I just held through it, you know?
So I have a hell of a stomach.
And I built that through trading and investing for basically my entire adult
life.
And if you don't have a stomach, you can't do it.
You can't adopt a strategy like I do.
You simply can't.
You're better off trading.
But if you do...
Stock talk, can I ask you a question?
When you...
Because you're a little bit longer-term
focused, when you do have
new information that maybe changes the thesis,
how quickly do you react to it?
Do you take a day or two?
If you're in a position and...
I'm just curious, do you take a day
to let the motions and the dust settle a little bit?
Are you talking about like PR?
Yeah, like if there's bad PR or some like, I mean, semi-major news comes out.
I mean, something takes a stock down, you know, 8% to 10%, 15% that you're in and you're reading into it.
Do you say, hey, let me – yeah, exactly.
And that's what I'm saying.
Do you take 48 hours to kind of digest the news and see how the market reacts?
Or just like in general, I know it's like probably case by case.
I'm just curious if you take kind of that like cool off period
because of your longer term approach.
Yeah, yeah.
So I never like really buy or sell during after hours.
Pre-market is different. Pre-market is different.
Pre-market is different.
I will buy during pre-market if there's a compelling opportunity that I think isn't
being noticed by the market, like a PR or an analyst upgrade or an earnings report and
a stock's flat in pre-market.
I'll do that.
After hours, I almost never buy or sell anything.
That rule has served me very well. pre-market i'll do that after hours i almost never buy or sell anything um
that's that rule has served me very well um i i can't count how many after hours reactions i've seen that the second the market opens the stock just mean reverts back to flat or or whatever
i can't count how many times i've seen that thousands and thousands of times in the names
that i've watched so i don't trade during, I don't react during after hours, whether the news is really bad or
really good or anything. Um, but when it comes to thesis changing news, I do generally take at least
a full session to digest it. Like, let's say something comes out in after hours, but when I positions,
I'm like I said, I'm not selling there. And so I'll take the night and the next session probably to both a monitor the price action in the regular session, which is hugely important to me because
regular session price action can be night and day from, from extended hours price action. So
I wait for the regular session, I observe the price action
and continue to sort of decipher what happened. And if it's truly thesis breaking, I will sell
that very next day. If it's something that I think can be fixed by management,
then it just depends on my conviction level on whether I'm going to allow that to be fixed over one or two or three quarters or however long I think it's going to take to fix that problem.
But I have had core positions that I've designated as a core position before and sold them two months later because there was an earnings report that came out and management was unable to deal with A, B,
and C or whatever. Or in some cases, I buy a position because I'm hoping or theorizing about
an immediate inflection and that inflection doesn't come. Sometimes I'll just be out right
away. Sometimes there doesn't even need to be bad news. Sometimes there's just not the good news
that I was looking for. And that's a cause to sell too.
So I am a medium and longer term focused guy in terms of the way that I swing trade.
But I am impatient to a degree as well about the thesis working for me.
Like if I'm early, I will make the concession that I'm early.
And that's also served me well.
Like, you know, just getting out of the way and being like you know what i bought at the wrong time i'll look back at this in a month or two months or a quarter
from now and revisit it even maybe at a higher price i've done that many times too so it just
depends on the position the conviction level the type of news it's it's a pretty case-by-case thing
but yeah if the news is bad enough and the change in thesis is bad enough, I'll sell it the very next day.
It is a very interesting market we have right now. It'll be interesting to see what we have coming up over the next little bit.
We are past that earnings season.
We are kind of into, it feels like, conference season a little bit.
But yeah, I'm looking at the earnings next week.
There is Adobe, Oracle.
That's really it.
So we're past the earnings season.
It's a different market than it was a couple last
couple weeks at least some of the catalysts that we'll be watching
the spaces will be going back
I messaged Josh Young to maybe
a couple others we'll get some good themes
different stuff going on
Stock Talk was there
anything that questions you've been getting
a lot in your group or anything like that
commonalities coming up of themes you think going on that you'd want to talk about?
No, not really.
We are past five o'clock here, but I am curious.
Yeah, I do need to run actually.
But the main thing I think people in these environments are worried about is just like stocks they bought recently.
You know, people who bought any kind of high beta stocks recently are probably underwater
or any kind of tech stocks are probably underwater. And so I think recent purchasers of equities
who have a lot of their portfolio in a stock they bought recently, I think that's the main
concern I've seen around not only the Discord, but on X in general. And so again, it leans back
into the idea that cost-based advantage is important is important i mean i have for the first time in like years positions multiple positions that i'm down
from my cost basis on um that has not happened in a long time for me because i'm usually very sharp
with my entries that's something i pride myself on but this market's been choppy it's been difficult
um you know even though i'm up pretty significantly for the first two months of the year, year to date, I still I'm not going to discount the fact that it's been difficult.
It hasn't been an easy 43 percent to grab. It's been very, very choppy. It's required a lot of attention.
And so it's a hard market. You know, if you're somebody that's struggling in this market, you shouldn't feel bad about that.
market. You know, if you're somebody that's struggling in this market, you shouldn't feel
bad about that. It's a very hard market. It's because CHOP is the worst type of market. If we
were just trending down, you could just hold your cash, wait for reasonable support levels to be hit
and play the dip buying game, you know, with tight stop losses. That's an easy approach in
a downtrending market. But in a market where you get these stick seeming stick saves of the weekly moving averages, and then the next session, you get a entices dip buyers to be looking for a bottom while also chops them up in the action.
It's a very, very difficult environment. Chop is the worst environment. Any trader will agree to
this, I think. Even if you're a long-biased or a short-biased trader, if you're a short-biased
trader, you want a downtrending market. If you're a long-biased trader, you want an uptrending market. Druckenmiller in that recent
interview that I was alluding to the other day that he did with Morgan Stanley, he said this.
He said, look, I always prefer a trending market. The best traders in the world can perform in any
market. And I perform pretty well during this chop. But all the traders in the world prefer a trending market. It's just easier.
It's just easier. And so right now we're not in one. You have to recognize that. You have to be
cognizant of the environment and you have to manage risk accordingly. That's really it.
And when you get back into a trending market, you'll know. It'll be obvious because the market
will be trending. And when you're there, you can be more aggressive again.
and when you're there
you can be more aggressive again
that is a good place to leave
this spaces
I do appreciate everyone for
joining us here I do appreciate everyone
for allowing us to be a part of your guys'
daily routine we definitely do not
take that for granted
make sure you are following the speakers up here
Stock Talk obviously if you guys are listening into granted. Make sure you are following the speakers up here.
Stock talk.
Obviously, if you guys are listening to this, I'm sure you are a fan.
Definitely check out the stuff that he is doing.
A lot of content going and being put out from his page.
Also the group.
Shout out to the other speakers we had hanging out with us here today.
Sniper is still up here.
Ryan and Sam Solid hanging out with that Wolf account doing a lot of spaces.
And if you enjoy this type of conversation, we've been doing this every single Monday through Thursday,
three to 5 PM Eastern,
at least for like three,
four years now,
when was this account created?
I always forget the times flying February,
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So we're at three years on this account and we were going live a little bit
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So we appreciate you all.
If you enjoy these conversations,
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All right.
Have a great one,
everyone.
We will catch you all next Monday.
Unless the markets like surprise clothes or something.
Peace. Thank you.
