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STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: March 10, 2026 Duration: 2:15:31Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. All right.
All right.
What is up, everybody?
If I can get a thumbs up to make sure that you guys can hear me loud and clear
we are in a different location than we have been i'm the one who's in the spaces here i see martin
i see the squad down below shout out to a legacy architect colin's been also engaging with a lot
of stuff here great people wonderful people i appreciate you guys for joining us here on this
stops on spaces all right we got a thumbs up from blizz i hope you guys are all
doing well now as you guys can see from maybe some of my posts i am actually at a conference
in person in miami florida it is a conference called future proof for any of you guys who are
part of it the target is more towards like financial advisors and stuff like that but
uh i'm sure a lot of you guys maybe have been a part of this. Hopefully, maybe I've even met one or two of you guys down here this week.
But yeah, I haven't gotten the chance to look too much at the market.
Green was more green this morning.
The individual stock portfolio, ETF portfolio is break-even pretty much.
I am up 0.03% as we head into this power hour.
QQQ is down by 0.1.
VOO is down by 0.2. My ETF, which is the
NASDAQ 30, so it's even just the larger names, is actually up 0.2%. So I guess MegaCapTech is
holding in there for us a little bit, saving the market a tiny bit. But obviously, it's been an
interesting day. The market reacting yesterday to the Trump comments around the war almost being over
led us to a 1-2% rally in the latter half of the day.
We had a really strong start, maybe given a little bit of a back, but still green.
I'd imagine this isn't maybe the number one thing you would have wanted,
but Options Mike, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this one.
I don't think it's the worst thing we've seen.
Yeah, how are you doing, sir? I appreciate you sticking with us.
I did post a tweet from the Stocks on Spaces account
that we're going to be 30 minutes late.
So if anything ever happens,
know that on Stocks on Spaces page,
I'm going to try and put something out before.
I'm going to do better with that in the future.
This was one of the examples of it.
You guys have allowed us to become a part of yearly routine.
And I think the least you guys can expect from us
is the respect to let you guys know
when we might be late,
when stuff is going to happen.
For example, next week, myself and Stock Talk
will be out at NVIDIA's GTC events in California.
We are going to be at the Jensen Pong keynote.
Stock Talk might be able to ask Jensen a question.
We're going to need some cool stuff there.
Hopefully some cool connections that we can end up bringing you back.
We have a couple interviews set up with some NVIDIA people.
So next week, expect less stocks on Spaces.
And then after that, we'll be back to normal.
But we'll be at that NVIDIA GTC conference.
Maybe expect a Jensen Huang question from Stock Talk.
Maybe expect some interviews.
We actually already have those set up.
I appreciate you all for sticking with us.
Mr. Options Mike, how are you doing today, sir?
Hey, Evan, I'm good.
Yourself, man?
Doing well.
I am doing well.
I am in the sun.
I am in the warm.
I hear it is warm in the Northeast, so I don't get to brag on that.
81 here.
There we go.
It is, for the record, on South Beach, Miami, 80 degrees.
Congrats on winning the team. We're warmer. Yeah. New Jersey is warmer. New Jersey is warmer than South Beach Miami 80 degrees congrats on what even the top warmer yeah New Jersey's warmer right
now but tell me tell me what's happening this market what do you think of the move today
obviously yesterday's move during power hour was good yeah markets liked it I'm sure everything's
going on there and then today I could see I could see the arguments on both sides.
To me, this doesn't seem like a full fade of what was happening yesterday.
Obviously, we were nicely green earlier and we're coming closer to break even.
There's still about 27 minutes left on the docket for the day.
We also have Oracle reporting earnings right after the close to be on the lookout for that.
But yeah, what's the thoughts on the market movement today?
What does it mean in this stuff?
How are you feeling? I think the market is getting conflicting information from the president himself
and the White House, and it's not quite sure what to make of all the news. And so I figured today
could be an inside day. It actually surprised me. We took off for about 45 minutes and pushed
really hard off the lows. And now we're drifting back on headlines that
sounds like things are not so crystal clear. I mean, there's a lot of stuff. The energy secretary
posted we have escorted a ship through the straits. That was bad information. I mean,
there's no way we're putting ships in the strait right now with what's going on. It's
too easy of targets. It's really that simple. So, you know, the market really wants the straits to open.
They want, you know, crude to start flowing.
You know, otherwise you're going to hear more and more talk about a global recession.
And those talks are very premature.
But they're already starting out there.
You see people talking about it and, you know, you take everything with a grain of salt.
You know, Iran can't do much unless they get as us close so they would love for us to put ships there um they they can't do much
except cause economic damage to everybody around them at this point in the world and they can do a
lot of that so you know the market here is just unsure of what the next play is it's unsure how
this ends and assuming that this ends which would be a great thing right and iran agrees to it then
we're back to the ai worries and inflation worries and, you know, all the other stuff
that's been bothering the market for the last couple of months comes right back into play.
So, you know, I would love to see this market just take off and go on a tear at all time
highs, but I just don't think that's going to easily happen.
That said, the semis are acting well.
You had another nice move today in Marvel and Avgo and Nvidia, right?
They're holding up well. Intel had a nice move today in Marvel and Avgo and NVIDIA, right?
They're holding up well.
Intel had a nice move earlier today, too.
They continue to be stronger.
You know, overall market breadth is fairly flat today.
It's just the market not quite sure what to make of everything.
And it's unsure.
And I thought today would be a day of digestion, try to figure this out.
But what it's worth, the SPY got up to the 21 day where we got rejected.
So, again, we were rejected there all last week as well so you know you you get the idea of where it is it's just lower this time and you know i don't have much to say here other than you know
i continue to watch look for little trades i did take some micro contracts on the es overnight and
sold them pre-market this morning for a nice little win and then traded marvel and that was it that's
all i did today and i'm not trying to do a lot here i did miss the nvidia bump on the market
i didn't buy i didn't believe that as we started to push it just happens and i kind of feel in a
market like this less is more until you have conviction right now i don't have conviction
either way i really don't know what this market wants to do here and until it does i'm going to
continue to be careful protect my gains for the year,
and just look to put cash flow in my pocket.
Keep it simple.
Yeah, that makes sense.
In general right now, have you been sizing down at all?
What has the last couple weeks been like for you?
In general, sizing, amount of contracts you're taking, trades.
Yeah, so for example, I would usually just trade the ES.
I trade the micros because I didn't want to beat as much risk, right?
Because they're much easier to control.
They trade slower.
I haven't been taking sometimes less size.
And I've been – or I've been much more picky about my trades, Evan.
So, you know, like NVIDIA, when it started to push this morning, I just said no.
It had already moved for 25 minutes into the high of the day where it retook the high of the day.
And I'm like, I'm not chasing that.
And it just kept going for another 30 minutes, 40 minutes.
So I'm being just, you know, I'm willing to let the trade get away from me and go without me rather than take something I'm really not sure about.
I think that's kind of how I've been approaching it.
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. really not sure about i think that's kind of how i've been approaching it
yeah that makes sense that makes sense what do you think you're watching for this market to be coming out of that type of phase i mean yesterday could have been uh the start of something who
knows we'll see i mean maybe today wasn't necessarily necessary follow through you'd
want to see uh and expect like hey we're going to the moon we're off to the races but i think it's
healthier than than last week looked a little bit. I think you need to see the rotate.
So right now we have no market leadership, right?
I talked about this earlier today.
We had, you know, the banks were leading for a while.
Energy was leading.
We had biotech and pharma leading.
We had silver and gold leading.
You had all sorts of different leadership in this market.
You had safety names leading.
Right now there's nothing leading.
And for me, if you're going to rotate, the easy rotation is is back to the mag 7 back to software like igb right and we'll see
what oracle says tonight or even back to the back to the banks but the market to go up it needs
leadership you'd like to have everything moving at the same time but you really are going to need
some leadership and right now we don't have it and that's the problem yeah no yeah that makes sense i'm sure there will be some sectors that
try and take the lead yeah and that's what we need that's working before we'll see you know
market likes a bargain so we'll see i do see mr stock talk joining us up here we got a fantastic spaces as always coming up here
um make sure you follow the speakers i appreciate you guys for hanging out with us like i said a
little earlier a little bit of an interesting week travel next week will be interesting as well
but um yeah we're always trying to bring you guys as great of content on here as possible
what is up mr stock talk what's going on What's going on? What's going on?
I see Larry down below. Would love to get you up here.
How are you feeling in general, Stock Talk? I'll prompt you on some
questions after, but what's up? How are we doing? Getting a headache from all the headlines.
Oh, okay.
Just kidding. No, but it is a wild market. Headline-driven
market, obviously. We got a rally this morning on the comments that Trump made last night
and really overnight the Wall Street Journal story that he was looking for an exit ramp.
And markets really liked that this morning for most of the session.
And in the back half of the session, we get the news that the Iranians are deploying mines in the strait of hormuz and that sent the markets all the way back down as did chris wright's
tweet and delete uh about uh the u.s escorting a tanker through
can you cut out for anyone else or is this me
yeah i can't hear him okay unfortunate spaces has been so glitchy i'm kind of scared to come
with that comment there um sometimes there's a glitch in close as well how are you doing, Larry? I'm good, man.
I'm good.
I'll wait.
We can – if Stock Hall pops back on, he can chat.
But I just – I mean, I don't want to get on here and be Mr. Annoying.
But, like, it's just a messy – I mean, it's just a messy market.
It's a chat.
I'm not doing a ton at the moment because of that. And I think, sure, you can say any of the cliches, pick your spots, be selective.
It's a stock picker's market.
But last week was just a really rough week overall.
The average stock was down.
If you look at something like everyone wanted to talk about breath for months.
And then last week, I haven't heard anyone talk about breath in two weeks why because breath is corrected heavily uh last week rsp equal weight so s&p 500 equal
had its worst week since march of last year so now we're getting bounces i wrote about this this
morning and i wrote about over the weekend the market people people seem too excited for these backfoot counterpunches. So in boxing,
offensive boxer tends to win the judge's scorecard, but you can be a good boxer off your
back feet. Like Floyd Mayweather was a backfoot boxer, but we are acting as if this backfoot
boxing is making progress in the market, and it's just not.
You're just not seeing it.
Look at something.
You can pull up RSP today.
It's just a doji candle.
Big correction.
Hammer candle yesterday.
Once again, a counter punch.
And then a doji today sitting below its 50-day moving average.
So you have these really well-defined choppy ranges.
Financials look like crap. Why am I going to be overly zealous here if financials are in a really well-defined downtrend? And I think the other thing, last week, because it's Tuesday here, so still price action from last week, software covered up a lot of the mess that occurred. And so if you were bullish last week,
from an index perspective,
you were essentially bullish because of the fact that
the shittiest area of the market rallied.
The most overbought,
over-talked about area of the market rallied.
The most expected rally in the history of markets
happened in the shittiest area in the market.
That to me is just
like not a reason to then be bullish. Oh, the market held up well. The market didn't hold up
well. It just so happens that software makes up a huge portion of QQQs and the S&P 500. But under
the hood, the market got wrecked. And so for me, I just, then you have futures open down Monday and then rally through the day.
That's still a counterpunch.
So there just seems to be a lot of optimism over counterpunching in the market, which I just, I don't understand.
Because it's just, it's choppy sideways action.
So sure, I'm trading some of these software type trades.
I was in coin for a little bit.
I closed that.
I was in Broadcom.
Everyone wanted to talk about Broadcom yesterday.
It's getting smacked in the face today.
It's almost down a percent.
It was up this morning and now it's getting hit.
I'm in that trade.
It's annoying.
So it's just annoying and messy market.
And there's a big distance between annoying and messy market and thinking the world's going to end.
And people who don't do pragmatic analysis are going to try to convince you that people who are saying the market's messy are saying the world's ending.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying this isn't like a fat pitch.
There's no fat pitches out there at the moment that I'm seeing.
And that's okay because there will be, that i'm i'm seeing and that's okay
because there will be and those will come back and we'll talk about them what does that it's just
messy i'm curious what that looks like for you larry is that like you were saying you're trading
less maybe it's uh sizing down maybe it's less like maybe it's changing up the rules and stuff
or white could simply be as hey set in your hands maybe you're going to hike or something
see the world what does this type of uh market look like for you in that direction? Is it just kind of sitting
or is it like sizing down? Good question. So a lot of it is once financials did what they did
the past two weeks and kind of really got below their 200 day, for me, I start to get rid of
leadership that was doing well. So materials, staples, I was defensive, but I was still long the market. Now that what happens is I'm like financial struggling this much. These other areas were probably going to pull back. And they ended up doing that. Not because I'm some forecaster. Like my returns are above average, but not anything to fucking write. Nothing crazy. So I'm not trying to get on here and be like I'm Mr. Profit.
But seeing that weakness, I then size that stuff down.
Then what happens is all of my trading becomes, ironically, it becomes like degenerate trading,
where it's shorter time frame, buying the bottom of a range, selling the top of a range,
very mean reversion, choppy-esque, shorter time frame-esque trades, while I wait for that bigger picture to get back
in motion. So I'm sitting on my hands less from the perspective of the amount of capital that's
long allocated to the market, but I'm slightly more active in those mean reversion trades because
they tend to be shorter term trades. So something
like I posted a chart of software a couple of days ago that you have yesterday where you kind
of have that hammer candle, but then today you have this, you have a little bit of a downside.
Okay. Maybe I take, I take 50% position off in something like that because you're starting to
see it roll over. So that's kind of how I do it because I do like, I still like trading,
but those longer term accounts are a little bit more cash now when they were just positioned see it roll over. So that's kind of how I do it because I do like, I still like trading,
but those longer term accounts are a little bit more cash now when they were just positioned in things like materials and staples, which Ray kind of got hit. So that's kind of how I do it. So
overall my net portfolio is less long, but I'm still trading some of these kind of bottomy type
patterns that I'm seeing in that software space. Cause I hope it bottoms, but we just don't know yet.
Yeah, that definitely does make sense.
That's an interesting take there.
What are you kind of watching to see that,
like, hey, the market has changed?
Is there some indicators you're looking at?
Maybe it's just like two, three days of price movement.
You can look back and be like, hey, this feels different.
Maybe it's recapturing certain levels.
What do you think you're watching for to know that like, hey,
maybe it's time to dip the feet in a little deeper? Yeah. So there's a few. I'll just give
you like three or four. But one would be looking at volatility. So looking at the VIX and seeing
if the VIX can calm back down and get back below 20. That would be great to see, right? Because
then you have a lot of times you can buy reversion in the VIX. So that's something I'm looking at.
The other thing is, so that's volatility, a volatility metric. The other thing I'm looking
at is just breadth overall. So if you pull up a chart of RSP, we've had a correction. We've had
a correction in equal weight in general for the market. So something like RSP is kind of red here again.
So if you look, RSP getting back above 200 would be something that would get me a little
more interested, which within equal weight breadth is financials.
But financials look like shit, man.
So it's hard for me to be like, oh, the market bottoms.
Oh, people were overreacting to the fear.
Look at financials.
They look terrible.
And it's just, as a technician and someone that looks at charts, it's had a 13% drawdown this year.
And we're just ignoring it because software, which was shitty, rallied.
So financials is another thing I want to see turn around.
And then one other thing, and this is a little bit nuanced and hard to just kind of talk through,
but if you look at the S&P 500 and then you look at breadth, so percent above a 20-day moving
average or something, which I'll post this chart later today, but percent above a 20-day moving
average is shorter term,
more tactical, okay? So right now we're sitting at, let me pull that chart up,
percent above a 20-day moving average in the S&P 500 is at 30%. So two out of every three
stocks are below their 20-day moving average. That's typically a bad spot to short because
typically that's a spot where, okay, we see some mean reversion. So I'd love here to see some of that mean reversion in something like the percent above
a 20-day. Not that that's a perfect metric because moving averages when the market is kind of choppy
aren't as useful, but you would typically see a reversion here and then follow through. So I want
to see two positive days in a row. That's another thing. So volatility
come in, financials slash breadth kind of rebound, and then follow through of those things. So that's
kind of the order of operations that I'm looking for. And then because you can pull up a chart,
how do you take the trade? Okay, so what put me in the trade of coin, right? If you pull up a coin
chart, you can see this 150 leveling coin, right? That was kind of that double bottom. And then we had a double up day in a row
and then the pullback made a higher low and then you can get longer. So I'm looking for something
like that because I would like to be tactical, but the market is just ugly. Like if someone
could come on here and tell me what's beautiful in the intermediate term about this market structure, I'd love to hear it.
But I just don't see it.
I mean, you talk to anyone in the world, stuck below a 50-day, above the 200-day.
That's no man's land.
So just hard for people to say that because a lot of people sell trades.
And I don't, so I can.
So it's kind of nice.
It is one of the advantages of also being a retail investor.
There is no one kind of breathing down your neck telling you got to hit these quarterly goals and
stuff. There's plenty of negatives, plenty of drawbacks and stuff. And sometimes structure is
good. But yeah, I think that was a really good run through there. And I appreciate you running
through some of the stuff that you were actually watching. Hopefully we start to see some of those over the next couple of weeks.
I mean, I'd love to see it.
I'll be the biggest cheerleader when the market turns around.
I mean, I'm not one of these people that's going to tell you, because a lot of technicians
try to do this like, they try to do this like stoic thing where they're like, I just follow
price and I don't care if the market goes to zero because I'll be out of it.
It's like, dude, shut up.
If the market goes to zero, you won't have trades to sell to these people.
Like if that's what your business is.
Like if the market goes to zero, you won't have a house to live in.
So I'm a perma optimist and I want the market to go up.
This just isn't the shape in which the market goes up.
It doesn't mean short it, right?
Because like I said, it's kind of extended to the downside when you look at breath.
But it's just it's also not beautiful.
There's not...
Just do nothing. Yeah, there's no fat
pitches at the moment. Yeah, that's
what I've been doing, just sitting on my hands.
Yeah. It's nice. The weather's getting nice.
I'm in South Carolina, so our
pool is at 67 degrees.
My wife got this, one of our
family members got us a Cheez-It floaty,
which is kind of funny. So I blew that up yesterday and jumped in the pool.
So just enjoy life.
The smart thing you got to do.
I hear so many people talking about the over-trading and the stuff, especially, it's hard to be a content creator sometimes.
Listen, most of the life is good.
Most of the life is easy.
But doing all this stuff in front of you with people, I do imagine it kind of pressures a lot of people to take that extra trade when they maybe shouldn't um yeah i'll just say one thing to that you can take
the extra trade just realize that it might lose or make it very short term and don't think that
you're that's the thing i i'm okay with someone trying to play bottoms. I'm cool with trying to play bottoms. I've done it
multiple times. But guess what? Three of those trades lost. So say I've won one out of the last
three. Okay. Well, three of those were 2% losses and the one was an 18% gain. Right? So I made
money net, but are you okay with being wrong a decent amount? And that's where trend following,
in trend following, you're wrong a decent amount. And so I'm okay being wrong a decent amount? And that's where trend following, in trend following, you're wrong a decent amount.
And so I'm okay being wrong a decent amount
because I don't have an ego.
So if you do and you need an easy market to trade
or you're gonna blow yourself up and go on tilt,
yeah, stay away.
But if you can manage risks, go ahead and swing the bat.
It's just, there's not,
I think everyone wants this software chart to just bottom and
then rip 100% like it did in the past might be more messy than that. It's a totally different
market dynamic.
It's a very different market. And, you know, we're spending markets here where we're talking
downside. This doesn't feel like that one either. This is a weird chop market. Sure,
this is gonna come up a bunch of different different times it was an interesting market uh one thing i will request of all the speakers up here as we
continue the conversation please feel free to jump back in no better conversations with smart people
talk with other smart people so please feel free to jump in on whatever part stock talk you did get
cut off earlier and it was it was on the first half of it maybe you want to run through the whole
thing again you were the last thing we heard was just a straight number is a straight horror moves as
we were talking about the the back and forth that we got from the i forget who tweeted it that a
ship went through the straight of her moves yeah we had carolyn levitt saying it didn't yeah i don't
know how that miscommunication happened that's pretty embarrassing and not a good look um
somebody told him that a ship was escorted and he tweeted
it and then deleted it. That's like a crazy thing to do if you're an energy secretary. Um,
and then the white house press secretary just said in the speech she just gave that there was
no ship escorted. So I don't know. Somebody told the energy secretary that and he took it as,
you know, a fact and then made a video and tweeted it. So I don't know what's going on
with that, but that was ridiculous and silly. Markets reacted to that when he deleted the tweet.
And then about an hour later, the stuff about the Iranian mines came out and Trump actually
just tweeted a response to that,
too, and said that they have no evidence that the Iranians are doing that. But if they are,
he wants them removed immediately or else they're going to be hit harder than ever before. Yada,
yada, yada. Same stuff he says all the time. So the market is the straighter for moves right now.
That is the whole market. Equities will not catch a consistent bid if there is a bid underneath oil.
That's a pretty straightforward thing at this point in the cycle.
You can go back and look at historical precedents for this.
When you're in late stage cycles where you're on the precipice of rate cuts, the real economy matters a lot.
And oil prices matter a lot to the real economy.
They also matter a lot to the inflation narrative, which means they also matter a lot to the rate cut narrative.
It's all one big trade.
And it's all linked.
So the Strait of Hormuz is where everything starts and stops right now with this market.
If you can't clear the Strait, you aren't going to be able to put a cascade down on oil prices.
And if you can't do that, then there's going to be fears about a ramp up in inflation into the summer.
And if you have fears of ramp up in inflation this summer, then rate cut odds are going to remain suppressed.
And that's a headwind for markets.
So you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. But the Strait of Hormuz is the market for all intents and purposes for the foreseeable future until this conflict is over or resolved.
Or, I mean, unless the U.S. pulls out of the war and allows Israel to continue airstrike operations.
I mean, there's a number of ways it could resolve.
But bottom line is the strait has to be cleared.
There's no alternative for that 18 to 22 percent of the
global oil supply to pass through. And so if the Iranians are deploying mines in the strait, like
pretty much all the major news media is reporting now, New York Times, ABC, CNN, CBS are all
reporting that as of the back half of today. So if that's true, that's a serious problem, because
you know, no one's going to insure a ship if there's mines in the strait.
And even if they are going to insure the ships, or even if we're going to go through this military
insurance program that the energy secretary and President Trump are talking about, even if we
offer that, people aren't going to risk their shipping assets if there actually are mines in the straight.
So, yeah, it's just a fucked up scenario.
And it's going to be very difficult to resolve, I think, if the conflict stays active.
But that's what markets care about.
care about. I mean, if you look at the reaction in the indexes today, it was all around the straight.
I mean, if you look at the reaction in the indexes today, it was all around the straight.
And even the positive reaction this morning was around the idea that this would be a short
duration conflict. You know, the president said four to six weeks, and he said we're ahead of
schedule. I mean, I find it hard to imagine that that's all it's going to take. But, I mean, who knows?
I don't have a crystal ball.
But the straight is what matters.
The straight of Hormuz is effectively the market where we stand right now.
So pay attention to what's happening in the straight.
I mean, the market does not care.
I said this yesterday.
The market does not care that we are dropping bombs.
That's not what the market cares about.
The market doesn't go down on war.
You know, there's a lot of people that I've seen tweeting over the last few days saying
like, oh, people say the market doesn't care about war, but look at the market right now.
Those people are missing the point entirely. The market is not concerned with the idea that
we're bombing Iran. The market is concerned with the idea that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer
having ships pass through, oil tankers namely.
So that's what the market cares about, not about the war. And so the war could continue if there
is some sort of operational backup plan to open up the Strait. I just don't know what that could
be. I can't wrap my mind around what that solution would be. So I don't know what we're going to do, but maybe there's a plan.
I hope there's a plan, obviously.
If not, markets are not going to catch a consistent bid with that being blocked, because you're
going to see, you know, we had an EIA forecast come up this morning that they expect Brent
Crude to stay above 95 a barrel for at least the next two months.
Markets are not going to catch a bid in that environment.
I don't think so.
I mean, there's going to be trades that are working.
I'm sure you could pick up some oil names, and that'll probably work in this environment.
Maybe you'll get a handful of individual stocks that have been holding up well, showing some
relative strength that you can trade or that you could be holding.
But for the most part, for most stocks and most indexes, they're not going to respond
well to this because oil is an input for practically every single industry. And keep in mind,
a lot of industries have already had to adjust pricing in the last 8 to 12 months in reaction
to tariffs. Right. I mean, there's a lot of, for people who are
observative of earnings reports, like, I mean, you've heard a lot of commentary about this in
the last, you know, three to four quarters, about people raising prices to compensate for tariffs,
or, you know, shifting parts of their supply chain to compensate for tariffs. And now you have another factor
in the input equation that is becoming volatile, and that's energy. And energy is an input in every industry. And so companies will have to accommodate for that as well in their upcoming forecasts.
And it'll impact margins to a degree.
So there's a lot of legitimate concern around what's going on right now.
I'm usually dismissive about like fear mongering or about, you know, a lot of times markets sell on narrative fear.
And I'm always somebody that sort of scoffs at that.
But this isn't narrative fear.
This is like real economic concern for the first time probably in a year and a half.
I even think I would hesitate to characterize the Liberation Day sell-off in April of last year as anything more than fear.
Even the DeepSeek sell-off prior to that, that was largely fear and narrative driven.
There weren't actual implications that were showing up yet in the economy. The thing with oil prices is, you know, oil price shocks
are a very real thing. And they do have an economic impact. They do have an impact to
margins for companies and businesses. They do have an impact on inflation. And so that's a
legitimate concern. I would say we're selling or chopping, if you will,
for the first time this cycle on a legitimate economic concern. And that's not ideal. So that's
kind of where we are right now. But, you know, things can change quickly. And we saw that this
morning, too, with the kind of bid we saw under equities, if there is resolution to this conflict, then I would expect markets to see a monstrous bid to the upside and perhaps some short squeezing as well.
But until that happens, I think markets are legitimate in their concerns here.
Interesting. Interesting, interesting. Larry?
Interesting. Interesting, interesting. Larry?
Yeah, I'd also just say, if you think about price action and the rotation that's taking place, it was already late stage pre, and Stocktalk can talk to this too, but it was already late stage pre us going to war, and then the straight or whore moves is a different subject.
But we were already having inflationary underbid in the market. We were already having late-stage underbid in the
market. We were already having defensive posturing in the market, hence the underperformance from
technology for a long period of time, discretionary consumer services. And so that's the other piece
is like, we didn't go into this. We went into it, sure, near all-time highs.
But the rotation under the surface was already kind of dragging on the market.
And then you kind of saw that follow through.
The market even gave you a hint that we weren't coming into this battle or whatever, into this position, from a position of superior market strength.
So that's just another piece that
makes it just a little bit more eerie. And like I said, it can resolve quickly. And we'll see that.
I'll share a bunch of it when it does happen. If it does happen, you'll see breath thrust.
You'll see RSP rebound real quickly. You'll see rate of change thrust, which is another version
of just momentum thrust. And then you'll be able
to get long. You're not just going to miss it. Because everyone's conditioned for a V recovery
at this point. So it's like, even if we do get that, and say you aren't long the market, it's
not like you're going to be underperformed the market by 20% this year, because you waited an
extra 3%, or you waited for two to three days of upside follow through. So there's just like the asymmetric risk of like trying to call the bottom when you could
just wait.
It just seems like it's a no brainer.
Yeah.
And it was the same thing last year too.
Like, I mean, I put a note to our members reminding them of this yesterday but even last year with the like
with the tariff tantrum crash in April flash crash or whatever you want to call it I mean it was a
crash but um when you look at that like I didn't buy anything in April I didn't start buying stuff
until like Larry said there were real signs of bottoming.
Most major indexes had made their way back above all their moving averages.
I waited like a month, a month and a half, and I did very well last year.
You don't need to be a hero in moments like this and try to guess when the markets are going to bottom.
Also, as Larry just said, you'll know.
It'll be obvious.
You'll see when markets are giving you those signals.
But a lot of people want to be right in scenarios like this.
Like, look, I called bottom or, you know, maybe they have a big Twitter account and
they want to get credit for calling it out.
So they're like, you know, every time we get a little bit of enthusiasm off the lows,
people are like, yeah, this is the bottom, guys.
This is the bottom.
I'm going long and everything. And then if they're right, they're like, look, I told you so all these people are idiots who told you to be cautious, yada, yada, yada, but that you don't
need to operate that way in markets to make money ever. Like, I don't remember the last time I've
ever nailed a local bottom in the indexes. Uh, but I do very well, you know, and I do it without having to guess and play games
or play hero.
In moments like this, you can wait for stabilization.
You can wait for the indexes to start showing you some signs of momentum, you know, multiple
follow through days.
Right now we're getting gap up, gap down, gap up, gap down, move up into the 21 EMA,
reject it back down, move up into the 50, reject it back down.
And that kind of action is not telling you that the market is particularly strong and it's not telling you that you should expect follow through.
So you can wait for these things to be resolved and still do fine for the duration of the year if that's what you're worried about.
I think some people and I even have people in my community today that were like, that saw the market green this morning and started chasing
everything. You know, you don't want to do that either. You're going to have these days where
there's some sort of headline that resolves some fear and then stocks move up, but they will set
themselves up again for entry. You know, they're not just going to move up and then stocks move up, but they will set themselves up again for entry.
You know, they're not just going to move up and then every stock you've ever looked at
is up 12 days in a row.
That's not how it works.
You're going to miss probably the initial gap and that's okay.
You can still do very well in the markets even if you miss that.
So just be patient, I think, in an environment like this.
You know, sometimes I'll say that and people will be like, you're an idiot.
You missed, you know, a 2% up day in the queues.
I always have long exposure of some sort.
So I'm never ever missing a move entirely.
You know, I have stocks I've owned for years that I'm not going to sell.
So I always have that exposure.
But in terms of picking up additional exposure or getting levered long, I'm particularly
patient about that, especially in environments like this. And I think it's probably a smart
thing to be for most of you who are finding yourselves running around like chickens with
your heads cut off every gap up you're chasing, every gap down you're selling or shorting.
In a market environment like this, you're going to get killed doing that
because you're in CHOP. And the definition of CHOP is to kill chasers and to kill people who
are just looking for momentum. So yeah, be careful in an environment like this and understand that
it is headline driven and you can absolutely get a brutal fade like we saw today or a gap up on any
sort of headline. I mean, if Trump comes out tomorrow and says,
you know what, we've recalibrated our expectations and we feel like we've destroyed the Iranians
capacity, we're moving our carrier strike groups out of the region. I'm just speculating. But let's
say he says that markets would rip on that. Okay. But that doesn't mean that you should be buying
everything today just because that's a possibility because you don't know if that's going to happen.
Right?
Maybe unless you're a White House insider or something.
But you don't know if that's going to happen.
So because you don't know.
Unless you're the energy secretary and you still may not know.
Yeah, I mean he clearly doesn't know what the fuck's going on.
So I don't know what he was doing.
But yeah, you're not going to know.
And so if you're not going to know, I mean it's kind of a fool's errand to sit around and try to guess when're not going to know. And so if you're not going to know, I mean, it's kind of a fool's errand to sit around
and try to guess when that's going to happen.
So yeah, I'm sitting on my hands in this market environment.
It's, it's honestly saving me because my performance on the year is still pretty good.
I'm still sitting at about 45% year to day performance.
So on a year like this and during chop like this, I'll take that.
And the only reason I'm able to defend my performance during this CHOP is because I'm
not throwing a bunch of darts in this environment. You know, what I have done over the last
several weeks is reduce my options exposure meaningfully. It's down to about 8% of the
portfolio. That saved me a ton of headache and it saved me a ton of, you know, beta in the
portfolio. So yeah, I'm comfortable with where I am, but that's largely because I'm not doing much.
And I think in an environment like this, the people who are doing a lot are often just operating on ego or operating on wanting to be right more than they're concerned about making money.
And I'm usually much more concerned about the latter.
I don't really care about having a tweet to show off.
I want to just have good returns.
And I'd rather show those returns off than some sort of random tweet that I called.
So, yeah, I'm just chilling, sitting on my hands until we know where this conflict is headed and where oil prices are headed.
We do have Oracle that just reported earnings.
They did come in a beat on EPS, beat on revenue.
They said they have remaining performance obligations of $553 billion.
I believe that's their AI backlog.
They raised their full year 2027 revenue guidance.
Stock is up 6% in after hours right now
or CL is moving higher looks like software stocks catching a bit off of
that one because their products and services actually grew pretty decent
yeah we'll take a little second to dig in a little deeper here.
Cloud growth expected to accelerate.
80 billion remaining.
I don't know what those numbers are.
Operating margin 43%, slightly above expectations.
Operating income slightly above expectations.
Cloud revenue also slightly above expectations.
Most of these segments are looking pretty good.
Obviously, forward guidance is what we're watching on here.
Last time, the market didn't necessarily believe these remaining performance obligations.
$553 billion versus $130 billion
in the same quarter of this year.
Raises the total revenue guidance up to $90 billion.
Again, Stocktop is talking about this.
This is a straight-of-Harmouz market. I don't think this is this is a straight of hormuz market i don't think
this is enough to impact the market as a whole but oracle stock has been able to get some movement
off of it sam let me know if there's anything else you see within these numbers which are
interesting you obviously know a lot more about the space than i do yeah just looking through their
ir page uh india grew a pretty decent amount.
But definitely,
people got to remember,
Oracle is also a software company too.
They do have OCI, Oracle infrastructure,
which is basically
where we're getting
most of the RPO from.
But they also do have PeopleSoft
and a few competitive products to
Adobe and other ERPs as well. And I mean, the market's obviously reacting positively from that
one because you are seeing the IGV ETF up. And a few software stocks are up after ours as well.
But I don't think this is the stock people were waiting for.
I mean, the thing is like more than 50% down from its all-time highs.
Like I feel like with Oracle, the worst has been baked into the market.
Like when you're trading at this compressed valuation,
because market is a believe unit,
it's been basing out here around 130 to 150 bucks.
So being up 7% because it's quote unquote,
not as bad as expected is probably the
default move on here. I mean, I didn't try to play this earnings or anything because the premiums
are too high, but also I just would prefer not to as well. I mean, I agree with what Stock Talk
and Larry are saying, like, dude, this is like the time when you don't want to be as active
because you're literally trying to guess the direction over and over and over again, where the market's going.
And even if you look at the queues, like just massive rejection off the 50 EMA on the daily,
and then it couldn't even close.
It did close above the 20 SMA, closed right between the 9 EMA and the 21 EMA in the daily. On the weekly chart,
it looks a little bit better because it closed above the 21 EMA in the weekly,
but it still needs a lot of work to do. I mean, it bounced off the 200-day moving average
overnight. Actually, it was below the 200-day moving average overnight, but more meaningfully,
the SPY bounced right off the 200-day moving average overnight on Sunday.
And considering how strong that bounce is, we still do need more follow-through.
This was still a nasty rejection from the top of the day on probably the only catalyst that's actually holding the market down, which is more escalation in the war.
And we're getting conflicting headlines from this, like Iran saying that they're going to
be more aggressive, Trump saying that the war is going to be ending soon, and then we're starting
to see more attacks happening. And it's just like, there's no wonder the market is choppy
as hell right now because of this reason. But I'll tell you something, semiconductors are
leading this market back up and they have been ever since it bottomed out on Sunday evening.
So we saw that correlation with the IGV SOX ETF, basically seeing software outperform
semiconductors for like eight trading days, nine trading days or 10 trading days straight.
And then you had a little bit of a pullback the last couple days and yeah maybe software probably is not leading the market
as much as we hoped because you look at a day like today and it's like holy cow a freaking
semiconductors is just like ripping to the upside even though you're getting negative
catalysts across the headlines so the ai trade photonics trade, and what appears to be the subsea marine trade seems to be the new trade on deck.
Memory companies are still accelerating to the upside over here, even though you have a
bearish backdrop in the market. You have Micron back above 400 bucks. You have Sandisk. I think
Sandisk is above $400, $600 again. Let's see here.
SanDisk.
Yeah, it's back above $600.
You have all these companies increasing their prices because of the memory bottleneck.
And then you have Photonics.
And it's actually pretty interesting.
The stock that's been in this one for a while, Fiave.
And that's one of the companies that are included in the Optex stack.
But anything that's related to Optex, just countless bid upwards. So I've been trying to land myself more in this, in this stack,
more than anything, because it is the, the outperforming sector in the rolling 15, 10 days
in the market right now, actually 30 days now, because AOI just continues to push into all-time
highs. Like, I mean, if I'm going to be in a sector right now, I want it to be somewhat related in the
optics trade.
And Marvell was just introduced into the sector.
I mean, they did do an acquisition of Celestia.
They announced it in December, but then they had more details on it saying this can contribute
about $2 billion total revenue by fiscal year 2029. And that's in just a couple of years from now. And Marvell just printed a top
line for TTM around $8.5 billion. So in two years, basically 25% of their revenue growth is going to
be attributed to just the recent acquisition that they did for about, I think it was like $5 billion.
So it's possible that this might've been a really good buy-in
because Celestia is actually contributing
very strongly toward optics
and gonna be helping them
with the top line of the company.
So because of that,
because of the market is basically sniffed out
that Marvell is part of the optics trade.
My guess is that trading at about seven times EVNTM sales
and then looking at its nearby competitors
like Broadcom trading pretty richly
and other competitors in its sector
trading pretty richly.
Marvell around 10% to 15% free cash flow margins
and continues to expand the next couple of years
if they do increase that top line.
$500 million in costs.
I mean, I feel like this is probably something
the market's going to be looking at now,
and we've seen it with its relative appperformance in the last couple of days or in
last few days since its earnings on Thursday. And I mean, these are the kind of companies where I'd
rather be in, you know, the things that are outperforming right now. And of course, the high
conviction companies as well. Like I was actually a little bit worried about the semiconductor trade
in the last couple of days. But then you had a lot of them bounced off significant moving averages.
And you have like, especially on semiconductors at 60 bucks again, when it was just trading
like $55 the other day, all the time from 72.
Like, you know, that doesn't mean that it's not going to stick, but it's just like the
bid is clearly in semiconductors and the picks and shovel still.
It hasn't fully rotated the software.
And even if you look at the IGV chart,
it still looks terrible.
So it still has some work to do,
but we do have more software companies reporting.
And we did see a lot of CEOs and directors
did do a lot of buying in software recently,
which is good to see
because they were basically
in a blackout period for a while.
So you're starting to see that happen.
You're starting to see some money flow back in from the top level. And you just
need the market to follow through on that one. But yeah, this war is literally the overhang in
the market. And it's a lot more impactful than people expect when it comes to oil. It's literally
in everything. But when you're talking about supply chain risk, that's going to definitely impact even the picks and shovels. But as it stands today, the relative outperformance of semiconductors
is just outlandish compared to the rest of the market. So there is still a bidding in the market.
And that's what's making me still bullish because you have the leading theme in the stock markets
in 2023 continuing to be the leading
theme and it has not stopped while everyone is waiting for that moment where you're going to get
the final cease or deceleration of spending and these guys are not stopping and really the biggest
beneficiaries of all that spending are semiconductors so it's no reason why they're
staying afloat so they're continuing to wait this, you know, not making any crazy moves or anything. Same here. Like I don't usually
go like heavy in cash or anything like that. I usually stay invested, but I haven't really had
any hedges on for a while. Uh, probably like three, four weeks now having a hedges on.
And even into yesterday, Sunday night, I was like, oh damn, I should have had hedges coming.
But like, look at that. Look at that freaking move yesterday, that massive bullish engulfing channel on the daily,
right? Like VIX is seriously compressence then. So you'd have to have a very surprise
headline to bring VIX back up above where it was yesterday, above 35 bucks.
But it doesn't mean that the market can't go down lower because VIX is the 30-day
option volatility for S&P 500 index, right? So just because S&P 500 makes a lower low doesn't
mean VIX needs to be higher. It just means people had less protection coming into it.
But you do have a lot of relative outperformance and high-risk assets. Bitcoin basically bottomed
at 60K for now, basing out here around the 70k region and you're having a theorem come back
you're seeing relative strength in terms of Bitcoin and crypto versus the markets which is
the complete opposite we've seen leading into the last couple of months you know so there is some
money moving into the markets like people aren't like all cash or at least a lot of money flows in
all cash and you're to get every headline telling you
to get out. And it's hard for the market to go down when a lot of people are already out.
You know, like people are so prepared for it. It takes out the likelihood that it's going to happen,
if anything. And if we already saw the highest escalation of this war, not saying we did, but
I mean, does it look like it's getting any worse? You know, I would say just like wait and see.
Like I, instead of guessing where we're going to be next week, because we literally have
gone nowhere since October.
We have not gone anywhere in the stock market since October.
And it's continuing to be that way.
If you look at futures, though, we did make a lower low since October, which is surprising
to see because I didn't think we were going to do that.
Actually, since November, November was lower than October and we did make a lower low,
but they bought that sucker right back up.
So they're not prepared.
They're not ready to bring it down.
And neither should you, in my opinion.
I don't think it's a good idea to be like all cash waiting for the big crash to happen
because you never know one tweet
all-time highs you're gonna be coming rushing back to the market so just wait
yeah that was a good run through there started with some oracle talk into the general market
semiconductors.
All of that good stuff there is definitely a wait and see market. I know there's been
a little bit of healthy behavior in the software stocks as well. We went from getting destroyed
to possible bottom question mark, you know, so yeah, there's been a little bit of improvements
under the cover. It's been an interesting market. Larry, who's awesome. The stock talk
a lot of conversations were around like this is not the weird market it's a chop market it's you know if
you're playing downside here you're not having a great time for the most part if you're playing
upside you're probably not having a great time it's been whipsaw you back and forth and we're
kind of waiting for that thing the one thing i will say stock talk did kind of bring up a point
here the thing that has changed over the last week or two is a straight up from moose conversation
i think was going from thoughts.
I think we're in the fear phase
of it, and we'll see what happens next.
The whole conversation
is going on here. If I was
a betting man, tinfoil hat, I would bet you that
they are not minding those straight-up
Rameau's, but I know
nothing. The market thinks that the market
doesn't care, right? You saw
Trump basically say that there's no reports of it.
And then these sub C stocks are still up on the day.
So like it was literally an excuse to bid these things up, right?
And we've seen it leading this way.
Actually, you know, Michael Seekin, you know him, Evan.
He, I interviewed him today on the solid Report. And he's been in Kraken Robotics since $3.
And the thing hit an all-time high today.
At $7.56, it closed.
And if you look at other subsea mining stocks,
Mine Mystic is talking about that one.
There's also other ones that Serenity is talking about.
And Huntington Angle is something Stock Talk's been in for a while,
even though that's not technically a pure price. they blew up 10 mine ships word all right so talk about conflicting
headlines there you go well that would tell you that they are probably mining it yeah i please
report that within the last few hours we have hit and completely destroyed 10 inactive he said they
were inactive yeah yeah so again that is not really confirmation that
they're doing anything no it's not i mean also though like it's in their best interest to say
that right yeah yeah for sure he's not gonna be like yeah we just destroyed 10 and they already
dropped 50 mines by the way so don't come through the straight like they're not gonna say that so
yeah inactive or not i mean i guess that's a good sign. Did Futures respond to that?
I'm outside.
There's still a lot of power in the Oracle stuff.
They didn't really respond.
I'm not seeing any response.
I think it's really good just to look at this relative outperformance.
I mean, this is probably something that I've looked a lot more closely at
and we should have been looking at closely for years,
but didn't start, like, really looking closely at the stuff until
like later last year and this is literally what's providing the alpha on the market I
mean it's just relentlessly buying the dip on software stocks that continue to go down
is just provided no benefit in the near term I maybe maybe they bought them but then you're
guessing that they bought them. And who knows?
Yeah, I did add a little bit to it,
but at the same time,
those are just high conviction software names that I've had for,
that I already had positions in.
But still,
the majority of their portfolio
is literally in just the semiconductor stuff.
And it is the theme of the market right now.
And I don't see a reason to fight that trend.
And the Qs are trading lower,
but Sox are trading higher.
I don't know about this. Yeah, i was just gonna say the queues are up 0.2 percent in
after hours so little tick higher but not an aggressive move and then sby is up 0.2 percent
in after hours as well so i wouldn't classify that as a huge uh futures reaction off of that no
probably more from the or Oracle earnings than anything.
Yeah, that's probably true.
That is probably true.
I see a Wall Street, I think he put out a quote.
Oracle, this is a quote from Oracle.
The demand for cloud computing for AI training and inference continues to grow faster in supply.
Furthermore, some of the largest consumers of AI cloud capacity have recently strengthened their financial positions quite substantially.
These market dynamics enable Oracle to comfortably meet and likely exceed our revenue growth rate forecast for FY 2027 and beyond.
Honestly, that was some pretty bullish talk there from Oracle.
My guess is that is in the report somewhere.
Eight and a half percent.
Yeah, Oracle up eight and a
half percent now we don't look at year to dates here we only look at the time frame which makes
stuff look better oracle is still down 18 year to date so there is that but uh a little bit of
a reprieve for the oracle bulls being able to uh at least have a good day today here and you mean uh
At least have a good day today here.
Oh, go ahead.
Yeah, no, where's your name?
Oh, okay.
I thought Stockdog was saying something.
Oh, I didn't hear him.
No, no, he's outside, so you'll hear the background.
Leo's getting a prime walk right now.
Leo's in a fully new neighborhood, too, maybe.
I don't know.
But the dog has experienced some cool new stuff.
Yeah, no, I'm sure he's got that gold chain on, just rocking it.
Does your dog have a gold chain?
I would believe that, honestly.
No, no.
He has like a blue leather collar.
Okay, just double checking.
If you would have told me, Leo has a freaking like...
Like a Cuban link?
The spinning rims on the Goldstein 2.
Yeah, I mean, just look for where the market's telling you to be in as far as moves to doing here.
It's probably not software right now.
It's crypto, which surprisingly, it's just back at 70K. You would think that this thing's going to leave the market lower, and it's crypto which surprisingly it's just back at 70k like you know
you would think that this thing's gonna leave the market lower and it's certainly not you know but
the the picks and shovels are still there man dude how is wall street engine hosting all this stuff
and he's killing the freaking trades like I don't it's crazy what's up stock sniper how you doing sir
my check not successful as the future proof future proof is great I got to we
got a little interview clip with Tom Lee.
I had some problems with our microphone on me.
Actually, on Sam.
I'll blame him.
We got some cool clips.
I got some dead-eye stuff.
It's really nice to be on the beach.
Yeah, it's been a good time.
We got to talk to a lot of people.
I saw a robot.
Some fun stuff.
I am a fan of Future Proof.
It's a very well put together conference.
And transparently, also, the food is pretty great.
And as a chubby guy myself, I love myself some food.
So, yeah.
I've been enjoying it.
It's been a good time.
You get some good connections.
If anyone is in the financial professional world, I'm sure a lot of you guys already know Future Proof.
Some of you might be here.
Let me know. I'd love to say hello and meet some of you guys. But it sure a lot of you guys already know Future Proof. Some of you might be here. Let me know.
I'd love to say hello and meet some of you guys,
but it's a pretty solid conference.
So yeah, it's a good time out here.
I am excited next week.
Like I was saying this earlier,
Stocks on Spaces is going to be a little hit or miss next week
on when we're going to do it.
And there's a reason for it.
Myself and Stock Talk are actually going out to NVID's gtc events next week so jensen huang
is a keynote we're going to be there watching it live tweeting it covering all that stuff we might
even come back here and do like a truncated like 30 minute version of something and just talk to
it i have no idea uh stock talk might get to ask jensen huang another question or a question uh
we're going to get that filmed if it does we also have some interviews that we have planned so
a couple really interesting ones
I don't want to go too deep into who we will be interviewing
from NVIDIA, it is not Jensen Huang
I can tell you that much
but there should be some really cool conversations
we might not ask a question in the Q&A
I think we will
every single time
that I have been there, I've been there two times
the people around me have been able to get the question,
and I've been able to film it.
So, yeah, you, Amit, probably will be able to get asked a question there.
So that will be cool.
And then we have a couple interviews planned.
So although stocks on Spaces might be a little weird next week,
especially Monday,
I do think you guys will be getting some great content out of it.
And the chance to
go in and cover these nvidia events is always a really cool time really great insights i know
they're gonna have a lot of like physical ai stuff which i really wanted i really want to be able to
kind of get my hands on and see more i'm sure there'll be a lot of robots um stock talk i know
that's an area area you're really interested in as well the physical ai side of it so i'm excited
to see more there and specifically i'm also kind of in as well, the physical AI side of it. So I'm excited to see more there.
And specifically, I'm also kind of excited for, obviously, the data center side of it.
Getting to see all these huge data center racks.
I'm sure we'll be able to get closer to the Verirubin chips and stuff like that.
Getting to see these absolute behemoths.
And then, yes, sorry, GTC is actually their event, whereas some of the other ones weren't. So I have some high expectations here.
NVIDIA knows how to put on a good event.
So yeah, that should be good.
But like I was saying earlier,
we really do appreciate each and every single one of you guys
for allowing us to be a part of your daily routine.
And we want to show you guys the respect of letting you know,
hey, don't expect a show today.
Or like today, I tweeted out on the timeline.
I might be 30 minutes late.
So we do take that very seriously,
Monday through Thursday, 3 to 5 p.m eastern at least if we are not going
to be able to stick to that for whatever reason we want to make sure that you guys know plenty
of time maybe i don't know we're not going to do this too often so don't don't leave us but
um we do appreciate each and every single one of you snappy you got your hand up yeah can you hear
me all right this time i got you this time time. Nice. How are you doing? Anything standing out to you?
Anything in Oracle earnings that we didn't talk about?
I think we covered Oracle earnings pretty well.
Did we talk about Andas at all today?
No, we did not.
Okay, so we saw a headline come out this morning.
Andas got a $15.8 million contract from Israel.
They're focused now, just like I was saying,
on yesterday's stocks on
Spaces episode, Andas is going to have a huge bag to come into eventually, or, you know,
let's just say the total addressable market for Andas is expanding by the day as conflicts
continue. But they're going to be definitely a big contender for the post-conflict cleanup side of things. We saw today they got a
$15.8 million contract for mine sweeping. Basically, what they're doing is they're
using these flying drones along with some that are on the ground, these autonomous robots,
to completely remove landmines along the Syrian border now. We already know that they're working
in the East Israel side of things as is. Now, they're going to be working in North Israel as
well. They're going to be covering a 740 acre area and the contract is willing to pay them up
to $60 million. Again, it's just fractions, you know, but eventually this is more of a trial and
kind of more of a opportunity for Andas to really showcase how good they are at the post-clinic
conflict side of things.
And again, just like we say frequently on the spaces, there's a bunch of different conflicts happening on alternate continents, all over different kinds of reasons.
But we don't really talk about who's going to be there to clean it up after everybody
leaves.
And one of the main contenders for this, at least the way that I'm seeing it, is going
to be Andos.
And, you know, we pretty much covered that pretty well yesterday,
talking about their post-conflict cleanup side of things and their aspects and their capabilities.
Because, again, if one of these drones hits a landmine and it blows up, oh well.
I'm sure they have replacement drones.
I'm sure that they anticipated it, they planned for it.
And, you know, I mean, obviously it's better to not do that, but it's not the end of the world it's not like a human dying way better than a human dying so um
i'm sure that there's going to be many countries that would like to send these drones into clean
up these areas that are you know highly hazardous as opposed to sending humans in there and um i
think again as andas proves it if they can uh successfully clean up Israel, I think there's going to be plenty of opportunity for them in the European continent and along with other Asian, Middle Eastern and Asian countries that could be looking for some of this post-cleanup conflict help as well.
But that's just like my little spiel.
I think that a lot of the other stories today were covered pretty well.
stories today were covered pretty well. And again, we saw Oracle earnings, but I just wanted to talk
And again, we saw Oracle earnings.
about the on-dust contract because I thought that was one of the bigger headlines of the day, or at
least for me. Also, I didn't speak about it too, but we saw a bunch of HIMSS analyst changes today.
Everybody's starting to raise their price targets or upgrade them. Nobody's really necessarily
saying bye. Everybody's remaining extremely cautious.
I'm going to pull up the post right now. Douche Bank, hold and raise to $28. Bank of America,
$23 price target. Citigroup, $24 neutral. Yeah, everybody's being pretty cautious on this. Nobody's
necessarily jumping in front of it. It seems like, the nbo partnership we're not exactly sure where to price them we know that
they're going to be selling their flagship product again and it's gonna probably be better than what
it was like before but we don't necessarily know how many customers they actually lost from stopping
that we don't know what the actual damage is looking like from that but the lawsuit is off
the table there's going to be a bunch of different ones so uh we'll see what's going on um and there's gonna be some interesting names to watch especially
in the telehealth space i'm not necessarily saying hymns is back uh i'm saying hymns is interesting
again doc talk i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the telehealth businesses we've
heard thoughts on glp ones um I don't want to put words in
your mouth, but I think the consensus was like, there are some big dogs in this space. There
aren't as many of those mid cap names that you're really kind of where your bread and butter is.
But I know it was, I remember it being a theme that you were interested in. So I'm curious if,
if the telehealth side of it has any interest in you. I don't think him's and hers is the
I don't think hims and hers is the one specifically there,
one specifically there, but maybe there are some other parts of this.
but maybe there are some other parts of this.
I am not hearing Sock Talk, but I do see you're unmuted.
So maybe we want to read you in.
Sad times. Space is being weird.
Space is being weird. Sock Talk will be back.
My guess is the answer we're going to get
is he is not super into telehealth.
I got you now.
Okay, yeah. the answer we're going to get is he is not super into telehealth i got you now okay yeah um you know i was like four or five years ago i was actually um
and a couple things changed first of all the industry penetration didn't happen as rapidly
as i thought it would which some people would be like, okay,
well, that means there's a ton of runway. I do think there's a ton of runway, but I think the
moat has been depleted. A lot of times when you're offering a, like an intermediary service,
which is really what telehealth is, right? like you're connecting a doctor to a patient through a platform or a medicine to a patient through
a platform both are intermediary roles when you're in an intermediary disruptive industry
the best way to build a moat is to capture just a shit ton of market share really early.
And then your brand becomes synonymous with the action.
Some examples of this are like Google and Uber.
Those are obvious examples where, I mean, building a ride share app is not overtly complicated.
I mean, building a rideshare app is not overtly complicated.
Lifted it shortly after.
Lyft did it shortly after.
But Uber was able to capture so much market share so quickly that now everyone just says, like, get an Uber.
A lot of times, even when you're calling a Lyft.
And the same way that to search something is just to Google it because Google captured so much market share so quickly.
And there were search engines that followed it just shortly after.
But the moat became the distribution and the network effect.
And I don't think anyone did that in telehealth.
That's why I'm not interested in telehealth anymore.
I think Teladoc had an opportunity to do it.
And then Amazon acquired One Medical,
which used to, I think think before that be called something else
but they were publicly traded too um and like nowadays if you ask like 50 americans on the
street like what's your favorite telehealth provider they might name subsidiaries of these
companies you know they might name like a virtual therapy service or a virtual medicine service or whatever.
But there's not going to be a uniform answer.
And I think that's an issue competitively in the industry.
I think it makes it easier for players like Amazon to just stomp the industry.
And additionally, I think there's a high likelihood that more and more extremely popular medicines will just be sold direct by the manufacturers, which is partially the problem that Hems originally had with Eli Lilly.
And then Novo Nordisk has now left them and come back to them twice, which is what the recent catalyst was for Hems, which is why the stock's up so much.
Because Novo Nordisk came back to them for distributive partnership.
So that's in a nutshell why I'm not interested in telehealth anymore.
Five years ago I was because I thought that somebody,
either One Medical or Teladoc, would run away with the market share
and then become an obvious long for like 10 years.
But that didn't happen.
And so now I think it's just too much of a competitive mess it's also the same
reason why even though i was in the sports media data trade last year which i'm glad i didn't stay
in because that stock's gone a lot lower since i had it's also the same reason why i haven't been
in um the sports book trade which was also a business like digital sports books was also a
business that i really liked five years ago six years ago
but i'm not interested in investing in that theme anymore either because
of the same exact problem which i think is too fragmented and i think there's too much
incumbent advantage if like any of the legacy casinos want to to move online um so yeah i don't know and i must think i'll be right like i'm not saying
like it's a bad investment or you're an idiot if you're messing with me i i just don't see the
prospects as like as compelling anymore i like there to be like a really clear
five to ten year path that i can like see in my head. And you need a moat of some kind for that.
I think at least for the businesses that I like either technology moat or some kind of really,
really big distribution advantage or just pure market share ownership. Sometimes that works
depending on the type of product. It doesn't always work. If it's a, if it's a really easily
commoditizable product or
service that doesn't work well because then you can just undercut on price um but there are i mean
there are exceptions to that too so i don't know it's just neither of those industries are
are not interesting anymore for the same reason
very interesting i appreciate that take i i can't lie i was saying before when you were uh
disconnecting i didn't think this was one that you would have been too interested in did you find
yourself being more of like a health care telehealth medical type investor earlier on
for anyone who doesn't know stock StockTalk did go to medical school
for a couple of years there.
And we don't really talk about it much
through those sides of it.
Yeah, I mean, I did.
Like when I first came out of ed school,
I did like look more at healthcare
and biotech stocks,
maybe because it was fresher in my mind or whatever.
But it was really never my like winningest sector.
I mean, I did well,
and there's been some years that I've done very well
in a handful of biotech or a handful of healthcare stocks
where I really believed in the story,
but I've done much better in technology stocks.
And that's also by virtue of like,
I'm not going to pretend that that's like,
because I'm some sort of tech genius,
technology has been the place to be for the last 25 years.
So that's, you know, I owe that to the market, not to some phenomenal insight that I have built up.
But I do, like over the course of doing this for, I mean, the better part of 14 years now,
considering how young I am, that's like basically for half my life I've been in the market.
considering how young I am, that's like basically for half my life I've been in the market. And
I feel like at this point, I'm pretty good at just like knowing when a business is good or
promising. But that's really a product of like a bunch of these smaller conclusions
that I taught myself to make over like many years. And a lot of that just involves mistakes. Like,
you know, I buy a stock because I liked it for X, Y, and Z reason. And then,
you know, 10 quarters later, something happens that really is thesis breaking for me. And then
I go back and I'm like, how did I miss that? Like, what was the executional error or the
operational error? And then realizing like, oh, next time I should be more careful
about the liquidity situation or I should be more careful about how serviceable the
debt load is in the face of rising rates.
And so all of these little things over time, usually through mistakes and judgment, became
parts of how I look at a company.
And now I have like a hundred things I look at when I look at a company, like a hundred different
points of information that I look at, maybe more depending on how high conviction it is.
And I check the answer to all those questions. And usually by the end of looking at any company,
there's never a company that meets all 130 points of consideration.
I've never, ever found a stock like that. But the more points of consideration their stock meets,
the higher conviction it is for me. If I can check off 85 of those boxes out of 130,
that's probably going to be a good trade or a good good investment or both and that's kind of how i think
of it i mean i've had stocks that checked off 90 or 95 of those boxes before and then i put a ton
of size in you know and that's really transformed my performance is like the understanding of
having a really sophisticated multi-dimensional way to look at companies, being objective about the results once you've done that research.
Because a lot of times people are so consumed by confirmation bias,
they'll go through a checklist like that, you know, 50, 60 points maybe,
or even 100 plus points through a checklist about information in the company,
and they will fight for the information to agree with them.
You know, or they'll manipulate their perspective on the information to agree with them, you know, or they'll manipulate their perspective on
the information to be like, oh, you know, I really like this stock. Like, okay, I get that the debt
to liquidity is like an issue, but you know, I'm going to just pretend it won't be an issue because
I like the stock or I like the management team or whatever. And so I've tried to build a process
that prevents me from doing that. And that's just objectively looking at the checklist, looking at the answers to the questions that I ask.
And if the answers are unsatisfactory, I notate that.
And by the end of it, I have some level of conviction.
I usually rank a stock like one through five mentally on conviction level.
And then I go from there in terms of how I size it and so on and so forth.
And there have been stocks that I bought that, you know, are on that conviction scale a one.
But that doesn't mean it's a bad trade or an investment because to even get to that point of doing the checklist, I have to clear a bunch of basic factors.
Like I did a 15 point basic research checklist
workshop with the discord, like 15 things I look at. And if you don't cross those 15 things,
you're not even going to make it to the hundred plus point checklist where I do deeper research.
Then you're just off the list. So you have to meet some level of conviction to even get to
that point. And then when I'm at that point, then I decide the sizing based on that. I decide the duration of hold also based on the conviction
level, right? Like the higher conviction stuff, I hold for longer. And I'm much more tolerant of
volatility. Like I'm like, okay, fine. Stocks, price moving against me, breaking below 21 EMA.
But then I flipped to the higher timeframe on those names. You know, generally on my higher
conviction names, I don't even look at the daily chart because I know that I'm going to shake myself out by doing that.
And so, you know, it affects the process of research and building conviction affects the whole thing, A to Z, the management of the positions, the sizing of the positions, the duration of the
holds. Like it's, it's the whole game. That's why I preach. That's why I say the word. I sound like
a broken record saying the word conviction on every space, every workshop that I do, because
that is the whole game, like the whole game, A to Z. How much am I going to put into the stock?
What percentage of the portfolio? When am I going to start selling? What am I going to be willing to sit through? What sort of technical breakdowns am I going to
be willing to sit through? How many other stocks are going to be in this basket? What risk factors
are there? All of those things are answered by the research, which is what builds the conviction
in the first place. So if you do the work and have like a really, really thoughtful
process, I think your life becomes easier in markets and you also don't get stressed. Like
this market has been a choppy mess. My performance has held up through it and I've been unstressed.
Like, yeah, I'm not, my portfolio is not leapfrogging to the highs that I want it to,
but I'm okay with that. Like, I understand that these, there are these
kinds of periods and markets I've sat through chop before I've sat through periods of like
four or five months of chop many times over the years. And so, um, I know what to do in those
environments is just sit on my hands and, you know, take Leo on a couple extra walks a day and,
you know, go do stuff. That's not the market don't don't train
leo to love chop in the market we need to reward for the fun times he does whenever i like whenever
i like stand up for my desk during the day he's like what's going on it must be boring uh he gets
very excited but um yeah i mean you have to know when it's time to push, push the gas. Like all of my performance in all of my best years has come from just really
going after the ball.
When I know the market conditions are favorable,
not like during environments like this.
And when you do that,
when you push the gas,
when the market's giving you an open field,
you can really,
really significantly outperform the market's giving you an open field, you can really, really significantly
outperform the market during those periods when all the green lights are there.
And when the market's weak or choppy or there's lack of follow through like there has been
for, I think, the better part of the last six months, frankly, even though we have visited
all time highs and done this and done that really since October, I think there's been an enormous amount of chop in individual stocks and even
in the indexes.
And so when you when you recognize you're in that environment, I think you just stick
to your high conviction stocks, which again, goes back to the whole conviction speech I
gave.
And you just ride through the storm, you know, and you do what you need to do to reduce
volatility. Like, um, I took my options exposure in the last six weeks down from, I don't know, 16 or 17%. I
don't know what it was. Um, but it's something like that. And now it's down to like six to 8%
or whatever it is. I can't remember. I haven't sat down and done the math, but I think the last
portfolio update I posted, I think it was down to 8%. So, yeah, I mean,
there's different ways to protect your portfolio.
You can hedge, you can reduce long options exposure,
you can reduce long exposure entirely.
If you have margin, you can take it off the table.
There's ways you can reduce the pain you're going to feel during periods of chop, even if you're not a short term trader.
Like if you're a short term trader, you just go all cash and just wait it out.
You know, but if you're not, you're somebody like me who's managing a portfolio of positions.
You can't do that or you should not do that, I should say.
And so you figure out how to manage your portfolio otherwise. Maybe you look for some
shorter-term opportunities to get some short-term gains to supplement it in the meantime. But if
you're not willing to do that, which I'm really not willing to do that in the middle of shop,
then you just batten the hatches. And that's kind of what I've done. And that's why my performance
has held up pretty well. Now, I'm not sitting at the highs
of the year, but my performance is held up pretty well, all things considered. And I think that
that's a product of just not being stressed and not being like feeling the need to chase every
1% up day or sell on every 1% down day. Just understanding what you own, watching the levels
on the stocks that you own, managing them intelligently, managing sizing properly.
That's another big thing.
You know, people are putting 40, 50% of their portfolios in one position during the chop.
That's going to be tough because when that stock catches a minus 7, minus 8% day,
you're going to really feel the pain.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
yeah i mean i don't know at this point i'm just ranting but i think all that stuff's pretty relevant
At this point, I'm just ranting, but I think all that stuff's pretty relevant.
yeah that makes a lot of sense that makes a lot of sense
yeah i was gonna ask a question because people are probably wondering um for me i'm still holding so
it doesn't matter uh but what are your thoughts on um the middle
eastern exposure of uh sina i know some people might have gotten shaken out of that one um
obviously you're still in it uh but what are your thoughts around that one as far as uh
putting some top line i really like that name man i kept revisiting it with the bad price action
and like you know when it got passed like i was down like 10 or 12 percent on it like a couple weeks ago.
I'm down more on it now.
But when I was only 10 or 12 percent, I looked at it and I was like, what am I missing here?
But I revisited the thesis and I was very, very comfortable with it.
So that's why I held it.
I know people got shaken out of it.
gotten shaken out of it. Not everything, unfortunately, that I learned goes up in a
Not everything, unfortunately, that I learned goes up in a straight line.
straight line. But yeah, that's just a position that I'm comfortable holding. And I'm mostly,
not mostly, pretty much all in shares now. The options I did have pretty much bled out.
But the majority of the position was always in shares, but 90% of the position was always in
shares. So for me, sometimes in these kind of environments, you're not going to be able to catch the initial momentum that you want off a position, which was a huge benefit to a lot of my starts last year was the stocks I would buy were just would rip for two weeks straight and give me a huge cushion.
Uh, this environment, you're not going to get that.
So I'm understanding of the change in the environment and what, how that might change, you know, the development of position. But, um, I like the story there. I like the CEO a lot. I think that
they have a good shot to dramatically increase us-based revenue. Um, and I think they have a
good shot to be a meaningful part of humanoid robotics programs around the world, not just
the one that they're working with right now. And so that keeps me interested, not to mention, obviously, the main part of the thesis, which
is on-device inference, which I'm becoming a bigger and bigger believer in the more we
run into issues with data center spend, because models are just going to get smaller.
And really capable models will be really small within like three years.
And even before that, people will start, I think, seeing the tea leaves.
And that's why I think there's a huge opportunity for on-device inference.
I think there'll be a point probably in the next three to five years
where Qualcomm becomes an excellent long as well.
I'm not quite there yet.
I don't like how their current on-device business is going
over the last two quarters,
so I'm not jumping on that gun yet,
but that'll likely be a large cap that I buy at some point
in the next couple of years
if I'm right about the thesis that I have around on-device inference,
and I think I will be.
But it only makes sense for...
If models are going to be approaching AGI in five years,
then really, really, really capable models will be able to fit on your phone and be run locally.
And, you know, that's a huge opportunity.
And so that's what keeps me interested,
not only in synaptics but that theme in
general it's part of the reason why i mean oss is is a core position for me uh even though it's a
small cap like i don't care if that's you cut off for anyone Unfortunately, it seems to be happening to Sock Talk a little bit today.
Give him a second.
Let me also just text him to make sure that he knows that.
Okay, can you hear me?
What's that ticker he was just talking about?
It's the last one.
SYNA was before it.
There's a – Frank, I have a thesis on it too.
If you want to search on my tweets, you can – if you go to my page,
you can just go to the search bar and type in s y and and read the thesis if you want um but yeah i'm a big believer in the idea that
you know if you're gonna have
pretty much everything the everyday person needs done by a small model, why would you run it non-locally?
You know, and with OSS, and Frank, I don't know which ticker you were asking about, OSS
or Cinaway.
OSS is the other one.
OSS is my core position in that basket, even though it's a small cap.
It's one of three small caps in my portfolio.
And the reason OSS is such a high conviction stock for me,
even if that goes down, they have earnings coming up next week. If that goes down 20%
on earnings, I will just buy more. Because my thesis around on-device inference is the same
thesis for edge compute. You're not going to have military vessels
and planes and tanks running off a data center in Ohio. It's not, that's not going to happen.
You need to put compute on the battlefield. It has to be done. And so ruggedized edge compute
is a category I'm a huge believer in too. I bought that stock at $471.
That stock is whatever, $9, whatever today.
I don't know what it traded at.
It traded like 7% or 8% higher today.
I haven't sold a single share, not one.
The stock has doubled from where I bought it.
Even when it hit $12, I didn't sell any.
So I'm a high conviction guy.
That's how I operate.
I have things that I research deeply and then I buy them.
And yeah, the price can be volatile.
OSS has been hella volatile, but I don't care.
If it goes down 25% on earnings, I'll buy more.
So that's just how I am with the stocks that I buy and the themes that I look at and it's served
me very well over the years that I've done this so I don't plan on changing that but um it's a
subjective process which is what's my favorite about it you know a lot of times in markets
people say like oh when something's working for you be careful because your edge will get arbed
away yeah if you're using an objective process, yes. If you're using a
process that has X, Y, and Z rules, and you're playing undercuts of the 21 EMA or whatever,
yeah, that'll get arbed away from you at some point. And you'll have to switch it up. But if
your process is entirely subjective, that doesn't really happen. If your process is entirely based on your personal conclusion of something
based on 100 different factors,
I'm not saying my process has not changed at all over the years.
It has.
I've added layers to it and I've added complexity to it.
But it's not something where I've ever been in a market condition,
chop or otherwise, where I've been like, oh, it's my process's fault.
You know, it's usually the market conditions. process more consistently over a long period of time in the markets than you can if you're just
using some purely technical process or some purely fundamental process, right? Because both of those
can get arbed away because if it can just be seen on a balance sheet or a chart, other people can
see it. If it's more complex than that, then the likelihood that it can be seen by the masses is much lower.
And the likelihood that those conclusions are going to be made in number by a huge number of people is much lower.
And so that's why I kind of think about stocks that way.
And that's also why I put so much effort into the initial research.
Because, you know, once I've bought a stock stock I rarely ever am a scale-in guy like I buy a stock in size when I've done my
research and you know yeah I'll add to it sometimes if there are sell-offs that
I think are unjustified or if you know a new PR comes out that makes me higher
conviction on the name or whatever nothing I don't add the positions I do
but I'm not one of those guys. It's like DCA in,
you know,
I do a ton of research and I just go in with size and I'm like,
okay,
if it works,
it works.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Now I usually have some kind of maximum risk parameters as well.
but those tend to be pretty generous.
You know,
I'll sit through quite a bit of volatility if I really like a name.
So yeah. Anyway, as we're seeing with really like a name. So, yeah, anyway.
As we're seeing with this one.
Yeah.
We're seeing with this one.
Yeah, exactly.
And honestly, the one thing about you, Stock Talk,
is you talk a lot about that kind of cost-based advantage at the start
and that kind of being a help to keep the conviction.
And this is a different scenario in there.
And I'm excited to see it play out.
No one is allowed to come in here and talk shit if this ends up working out because they had plenty of time to go and buy it and get
a bit of a space i ever have works out so you know it's funny because like the one out of every 30
that doesn't go up right away people will be like oh look at you you're an idiot you know like well
i don't and i'm fine with that like i i don't expect every pick I ever have to go up 300% and in six months,
like a lot of mine have, but what, what I do though,
is I just share the research, share my conviction is. And you know,
if you want to follow me, they can follow me. If they don't, they don't.
But yeah, I, I tell people when I'm in, tell people when I'm out,
that's one that I'm still in, you know, there,
if there's a point at which I'm out, I'll let people know that too.
But I like that name. And, you know, there, if there's a point at which I'm out, I'll let people know that too. But, um, I, I like that name and, you know, do I think that there are risks to the
market? Yes, of course. But I think that applies to all names, not just to that name in particular.
So, um, yeah, it's just something I like and there's a lot of stocks I like, and there's a
lot of stocks I've sat through a hell of a lot of volatility on over the last several months.
You know, another one that I really like that I've owned since 96 is Centris, which has been crazy.
That's that's off, you know, dramatically from the highs.
It was trading in the 400s.
It's now 200 bucks.
I haven't sold it, you know.
So I don't know. I have extremely high conviction and like
a handful of names and I keep those names. And, you know, sometimes after four or five months,
if it's really not working, sure, I'll let them go. But I don't have just a couple of weeks of
patience on the stuff that I buy. I'm not like a guy who's like, oh, I bought it.
Two weeks later, it's down a bunch.
I should get out because that doesn't really impact my thesis.
If it was purely a technical trade, which some of my trades are purely technical trades, then yeah.
If the chart breaks down, I'm out.
But the majority of my positions aren't that.
The majority of my positions, I'm not just looking at the chart and then buying the stock. Not even close to that. I'm doing a lot of research
and then saying, okay, I'm going to buy the stock. It's never just glancing at a chart.
If it was, yeah, I would not let it break down in front of me and just ignore the signs.
So yeah, the thesis behind the position breaking is what makes me sell a stock.
That's the sell point, not any particular technical cue or fundamental cue.
Yeah, that makes sense, Stock Talk.
I do appreciate the in-depth run-through there.
Everyone should make sure they are following all of the amazing speakers on this conversation.
We're going to switch off the topic a little bit, go back to talking some of the defense topic that we've been talking about a bunch today.
Maybe some other topics will end up slipping in here. We got our friend Paul up here. How
are you doing, Paul? Hey, what's going on, guys?
Oh, he just got robbed. He came up here, started speaking, and they said, no, no, no.
Someone was like, didn't want the defense conversation to continue. I actually got to
meet Paul in person today.
It was a very, very cool guy.
It was a great conversation there.
And I'm excited to talk through this next conversation a little bit.
Obviously, Paul is from the Leverage Shares team, friends of the show, allowing us to
do these spaces every single Monday through Thursday, 3 to 5 p.m. Eastern at least.
We've been doing it for years.
And we actually put on so much more content than this.
And we're going to keep it for free forever. We love working with really reputable firms like LeverageShares, Paul
representing them on here. He'll be joining us back up here in a second. I do want to read out
a quick disclaimer before we do jump into that. Investors should carefully consider a fund's
investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses before investing. A fund's prospectus
and summary prospectus contain this and other information about the Themes ETFs from LeverageShares.
To obtain a fund's prospectus and key information documents,
please visit their website at themesetfs.com.
A fund's prospectus and key information should be read carefully before investing.
We are excited to be working with the Themes ETFs team.
Paul, I think we got you back up here.
Yeah, I'm back up
sorry guys I got as soon as I said that I got popped off it's a listen we were
talking defense and I don't someone doesn't want us talking defense maybe
they're they're hacking the line they're doing something but obviously this has
been a huge conversation going on there there's a lot of focus around the
straight of her moves and kinetic action going on in Iran and so many conflicts going on around the world right now.
And obviously one of the products that you guys have over at Themes ETFs is the NATO ticker, N-A-T-O.
It is a defense ETF kind of focused in on those NATO allies, the U.S. and the other NATO allies in there, which obviously has become quite the theme.
obviously has become quite the theme not that it wasn't over before we've always lived in a in a
tense world but it does feel like it is it's picked up in tenseness over the last couple years
we have this is a stock talk was saying this is the straight of hormuz market right now which
i don't think everyone loves but we're it's it's where we're at paul so i i said a lot there i'd
love to just hear your thoughts how we're doing here sir and if you have any thoughts on uh the defense side of this the nato the straight of her moves all that stuff
yeah so there's there's a ton happening in the space and a lot of momentum and you know again
i'll go back to for the last year and a half i keep people telling me like have we missed the
move have we missed the move my answer is always no this is a long-term move and so you don't have
to worry about trying to time this.
This is something that's going on for a long period of time.
And geopolitical conflict and unrest is happening in the world.
You've got to be prepared for it.
And nations are arming themselves as precaution, as security.
And in the case of the United States, in you know in an aggressive way because we're
going to reassert ourselves in certain strategic places in the world in order to
make sure that we are positioned properly for the United States best
interest and again whether you agree with that or not politically it doesn't
really matter because the move is on the investment is on and that that said this
is a great place to be.
In regards to NATO specifically,
we are seeing more volume in NATO
and more creations in our ETF
than we've seen in a long time.
And we've had really steady progress in it moving forward.
So people are starting to get it.
They understand it.
When you go back to the meeting
that was had at the White House
with major defense companies and talking about how we have to rearm.
Because, again, we're expending all these munitions. We're expending all these missiles. We're using drones.
We're doing all this stuff in the Middle East, and we have the capabilities that we need, not just for today,
but for the foreseeable future, they've quadrupled many of the contracts.
When you look at the companies that were at the White House, every single one of those
companies is included in our portfolio.
And those are the major strategic partners, what I call prime contractors, because they
have prime contracts with the U.S. government and with nations abroad, like in order to, you know, get the best munitions, the best aerospace
and defense, the best naval ships, all of that stuff, including drones and AI launched attacks,
like that's where it all starts from. So we are incredibly bullish on the theme. We see it as a long-term opportunity, and we're really excited about it.
That said, that leads into some other areas of opportunity.
We talk about growth at value prices.
And when you think about what happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which you mentioned,
right, it got shut down for a little bit, oil prices spiked. What does that mean for humanoid robotics and investment
in South Korea, in Asia in general, China, and then Chinese AI? Well, it took a little bit of a hit.
Why? Because it's major energy needs for both of those segments, whether it's humanoid robotics and
AI or Chinese AI. So you saw a little bit of a dip there.
But the good news is the United States government and Donald Trump himself has said that he's
going to put reinsurance in place for the cargo that goes through the Straits of Hormuz,
all those vessels that are bringing in the oil.
And he's going to have the U.S.
Navy sort of guide them through that and protect them as they go through.
So what you've seen is the Strait of Hormuz start to pick up activity.
As that activity picks up, energy costs will go down in South Korea and in China.
So we view this, if we're correct in our thesis and our analysis,
as an opportunity to buy at a discount,
growth at a value price, and we think that once this gets fully settled, you could see
a rebound, both our human robotics ETF bought because of all the exposure to South Korea
and to Hong Kong and China, and then also in our Chinese AI fund, Dragon, DRGN.
And so we're pretty bullish on both of those sectors still.
Unless something major were to happen
where the Strait of Hormuz would be completely shut down,
you know, we see this as a really interesting time
to think about adding to those positions.
And then one other piece that I would add to that is, and we're not quite there yet, is Venezuela.
So, like, you know, there's been conversations around, you know, what we're doing in Venezuela,
reasserting ourselves in the Western Hemisphere, getting their oil up and running so that they can, you know,
produce more and ship more.
We think that's going to be a really solid option for Asia moving forward.
And that will only help with energy costs and growth, so on and so forth.
So short-term disruption, lots of noise.
But at the end of the day, we don't view it as a long-term problem
unless the United States is not successful
and everybody has to make that determination for themselves. but we think this is just a short-term disruption that allows for
people to maybe get in um into some growth names at a valley yeah it has been a really interesting
market over the last couple weeks or so obviously igv and the whole text elsewhere side of this was
doing its whole thing there and obviously you guys have a very different perspective with all of your ETFs.
There's two tweets pinned up in the nest above.
One has some of the largest holdings in the native ETF.
And if you scroll to the right, there is a bunch more of the ETFs that they have in a tweet.
And obviously, like we're saying, go to the website, look at the perspectives.
The goal is informed investors.
If you guys have any questions, we would love to answer them.
When we look in the defense side of it, it just feels like there's more going on than there has been.
You were talking about the primes and those main defense contractors.
There was obviously the Trump quote that we're going to 4X the missile supply and all the stuff coming out of those ones.
The drone theme has only continued to heat up as the U.S. used their first one-way attack drones.
We also have some, like on this or whatever,
doing cleanup and things.
I feel like the defense tech side of this has been, I mean, listen,
in the grand scheme of things,
maybe we want the peace tech side of this
to be really going on it,
but we live in a realistic world
and a lot of these conversations are happening
and I imagine they're only going to continue to happen.
I know there was another Trump comment again.
He did make the comments in the past about wanting to increase the defense budget up to $1.5 trillion.
Now, that has to go through Congress.
There's a lot of steps that have to get taken for it.
But he did end up re-saying that over the last couple days.
So, yeah, I find it to be a very interesting theme right now.
now and my guess would be is this is not going to be a theme that is slowing down at all um
And my guess would be is this is not going to be a theme that is slowing down at all.
a lot of people yeah and politically what i would what i would what i would say to that is like get
through the political noise because politicians speak everybody's got a side they're worried
about midterm elections so but the one thing that is is clear is that if you look underneath the
noise right and you get to the baseline there's not a single politician that is uh against this you know
sort of toppling of komeini and this new sort of paradigm that's about to happen in iran like
everybody knows he was a bad guy everybody knows he was a bad actor everybody knows that a lot of
the threats to the us abroad and to a lot of our allies in the Middle East were because of his leadership.
Now, I'm not trying to make a political statement. I'm just telling you what the understanding is
and how people view it. Now, they come out and they make comments based on their politics,
and that happens regardless. But you've got to get through the political rhetoric,
and you have to get to what the baseline is. Everybody wants peace in the Middle East.
get to like what the baseline is like everybody wants peace in the middle east everybody wants
to build and grow that part of the world uh in a different format in a capitalist format now
will it be you know 100 exactly the way the united states is maybe not doesn't matter like if you
have agreements you know with middle eastern nations and israel working together to try to rebuild and grow i mean
i think that's a positive thing overall so it all ties into what i'm what i'm saying is this is the
train is off the track right now like it's going it's it's running hard and there is no going back
to what was we're going to get to some other final conclusion.
And you have to make a decision.
Do you think we're going to go back to what was?
Or do you think we're going to have something different?
And in my opinion, based on what I read, what I see, and what I hear, and the discussions that I have,
the Middle East is ready now to work in a different manner.
And they are no longer under the shackles
of Iranian terrorism. And again, when I say this, I'm not talking about Iranian people
in general. Like, they're good people. Like, the people of Iran are amazing people, educated,
smart, good, like, cultural. Like, they have such a rich history, and they want to return to that.
They had bad leadership for many years that was sort of suppressing them and causing terror and havoc
around the region. And if that does go away, and I'm of the belief that it will go away,
it might not be perfect, but it will be better. And I think that those countries in the Middle
East, including Israel, will be able to work more closely together, get to a better
result. And I think there's going to be a lot of growth. And so that's going to take time,
effort, energy, and patience. That's going to take a lot of defense and security. And the United
States is going to be a big part of that. And I think what you're going to get is a better result
in the end that's good for investment. And we really, really, really are bullish on what the final result is going to be.
So skip the politics, skip the political opinions, skip what people are preaching for midterm elections.
Get down to what the world wants.
And the world wants a more peaceful Middle East.
They want to get rid of their issues and their problems.
And I think we're halfway there, if not three quarters of the way there.
And now the devil is in the details.
But I think no matter how you end up and what the result is, it's way better than it was two weeks ago.
And I think you're going to see a resurgence of growth in that area.
And then you're going to get a better result
when it comes to energy and oil
in that region and around, like in Asia.
And I think that's going to help lead to more growth.
Yeah, for sure.
Again, tweets pinned up in the nest above.
Please dig in deeper.
As one of the things that you guys will notice
as you are looking into, uh, the products
that themes ETFs has available, uh, you will look at the expense ratios and they are across
the board lower than you would expect.
Um, for a similar type products, I'd say industry average is around a 0.75% expense fee.
maybe once you're getting more towards the passive indexes it's getting lower um but the the for the
Maybe once you're getting more towards the passive indexes, it's getting lower.
type of products that these are and that would be going behind them the i would expect expense fees
to be around 0.75 maybe when we're talking about the 2x single stock etfs i'd expect them to be
around 1.25 that's generally what i've seen across the industry. And you guys are playing a lot different game there with the expense ratios across the board on the thematic ETFs. It's 0.29 to 0.35
on the expense ratio, which is more than half of what I think the industry average would go
and be here. And obviously with the daily leverage ones, it's a good bit lower. Those
ones are hanging around 0.75. And like I said, if you look across the industry, there is a lot
higher numbers on the expense ratios there. So can you guys tell me a little bit more about
that in this in the ethos in the in the how you guys are able to do that and have lower expense
ratios yeah i don't like to talk about competitors i mean they're going to do what they're going to
do and a lot of people are niche players they're looking to build something that they could generate
you know significant amount of revenues and get a high valuation for and then get out of
the business like that's not what we do so we're building the next scalable etf shop and we have
the experience so like our management team all comes from prior places we want to build and we
want to grow something that is scalable and something that you know lives on long after
we're done with this industry.
And so that's our approach, and that's in our ethos.
So when you look at the expense ratios, we're building something for tomorrow.
We're not building something for today.
On the single stock leverage side, it's very simple.
We do very well at 0.75 basis points.
Most of our competitors are nearly double that expense ratio for the same products. And we're managing them as good or better than they are when it comes to our leverage positions.
So again, it's about a lot of these guys were first to market before we were even launched.
And so they have an incumbent advantage. But as people start to see what we do on a regular basis,
the names that we have, the fact that we're sticking around, that we're fully capitalized, that we're committed to the business, we're starting to see
that money flow to us. And so for us, it's the long game. It's not the short game. Same thing
on the thematic side. Like, yeah, could we jack up our expense ratios and a lot of people wouldn't
know? Sure, we could, but that's not the kind of firm that we're looking to build. Part of our
ethos is low cost investments. And why do we think that low-cost investments are important?
It's because we know that markets are volatile, right?
So, you know, you might get into a specific theme today,
and then you have a little bit of volatility, so on and so forth.
The last thing that we want to do is penalize you with an expense ratio
that's more than it needs to be.
And so we're very, very prudent when we're creating these funds,
thinking about the indexes, launching these funds, so on and so forth, to make sure that we're very very prudent when we're creating these funds thinking about the
indexes launching these funds so on and so forth to make sure that we have our embedded costs aligned
and in in and in line with where they need to be and so we do that uh we make sure that we can then
offer them to our investors at a relatively low cost and i'm just telling you like we're playing
the long game we. We want clients that
appreciate what we do, trust us, and know that we're not just here for us, we're here for you.
We're building a business, so don't get me wrong. Like, I don't want to come off like some,
you know, Pollyannish person. But I'm just telling you that we could do this at this expense ratio,
still build a really solid business, and bring value to our investors. And we'd rather do it
that way than, you know, raise our expense ratios because there's nowhere else for them to go
and then punish them over the course of their like long-term returns. So that's how we,
how we think about the business. Yeah, that makes sense. I honestly found this on X as well in a
completely different world than the financial influencer. I put air quotes up there for anyone curious.
But like a lot of people were playing that short game in there,
really trying to bum rush it at the start.
And there is some success in that,
but all those people are pretty much gone now.
And you look at the people who are here and successful,
and they were the people who were thinking the long term.
They were the people who were trying to help people,
trying to connect with people and that type of thing.
So even in a very different world, in this financial influencer world, I've seen the
long-term thinkers are thriving now.
And the short-term thinkers, I have no idea what they're doing.
Hey, maybe they're on a wonderful beach in Cancun living life, but they're not here
continuously helping the people and giving them more insights.
Yeah, if you look at our shop
and you go to our website uh you're gonna see that we put a lot of time and effort into our
content into our thought process how we think about the world how we think about our themes
how we think about our sectors um you know we do that because we think it's important for people
to make informed decisions we're not just trying to sell them product. Like we want partners in life. Like we want people to come to us and invest in us because they, A, understand what we do. They
appreciate what we do. They believe that there's value in it. And then they understand that we're
partnering along with them, not to try to just make money off of them, but to, you know, give
them an investment approach that works for them. And, you know, there is culture everywhere you go,
no matter where you work, culture is important. Our culture is to build something over the long
term, over time, that meets the needs of our clients, whether that's on the retail side
or the advisor side. And, you know, we never, you know, performance is performance, themes are
themes, sectors are sectors, there's volatility in the marketplace. And, you know, you know, performance is performance, themes are themes, sectors are sectors,
there's volatility in the marketplace, and, you know, securities go up and they go down,
and a lot of that stuff we can't control. The number one thing that we can control is making
sure that we're in what we believe to be high growth, long-term investment spaces and themes
and sectors that we think are positioned for long-term growth the second thing is that we're a pure play you're getting what you say for what we
say you're getting uh and there's no style drift just to try to juice returns and then last thing
is the expense uh ratios and again if that's the kind of player that you want to be with like we're
your partner um if you're trying to make you know you know quick hit here or there because style drift
or whatever that's not us like we're and in order to build a firm that's going to be around for a
long period of time you've got to do all the things not just some of them and you can't just be a great
marketer like it's you need to be a good marketer but that's not what makes an investment something
that you should like you know put your money in like what makes an investment something that you should like, you know, put your money in.
Like what makes it is the entire package.
So, you know, we work really hard on a day-to-day basis, just like you guys at Wolf.
I know you guys work hard every day.
We are trying to be great to our investors and give them the things that they want at a value they could appreciate.
value they could appreciate. And we think over time, over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 and beyond,
that's going to be meaningful, not only to our investors, but to the industry.
For sure. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Too many people are thinking here in
the short term and an ETF business that creates many, many millionaires is probably going to be
a very successful one.
So sometimes it is about the short-time stuff.
Sometimes it's really about kind of allowing yourselves to help people in the long term.
And if you're that person who can go in and do that, that's an extremely valuable thing.
I feel like a lot of people don't always go and see that.
I just want to add one thing.
When I say what I'm saying, that's on the thematic side.
On the single stock leverage side, I do want to make the difference.
Like, these are not long-term holding strategies.
Like, these are trading instruments.
And so in that vein, yes, we still want to be low cost.
We still want to give investors what they want exposure to.
And we want to be able to provide them leverage so they can even the playing field of institutional
investors and add to performance when they want to add to performance.
But I do want to clarify, I don't say long-term hold on the leveraged products because they are daily trading instruments.
So those specifically are for traders.
We think we're doing better than anybody else.
better than anybody else. Of course we do. That's the reason why we built the firm the way that we
Of course, we do.
That's the reason why we built the firm the way that we built them.
built them. But I want to make that clear that these are not products that you'd like buy today
and then just don't look at your computer screen anymore and forget about them and then
come back in a year or two because so many different things can happen with individual
securities. So you got to make sure that you have a process in place that you know how much you want
to make and when you want to trade out of it, how much you don't want to lose and put, you know, things in place to
make sure that you got stop losses and things like that in place.
And then at the end of the day, you know, know how you want to allocate and when that's
the most important thing in that side of the business.
100% and you guys actually had a new launch on the leverage side of this one uh it came out today
and started trading the ticker is wldu this is a little bit different than some of the other ones
that they have and again our purpose here is to put interesting stuff on your radar we want you
guys to go in dig deeper it's super important that you guys know what you guys are getting into
everything like yeah we want you guys to be informed investors this is a really interesting one wldu it is a 2x long world stock
daily so it's basically the you know the whole 10 000 stock market go in leverage 2x uh in there
which i find to be really interesting when i believe this is the first leveraged one that
isn't just a single stock and it's like kind of a basket or a very big basket in this one um imagine i maybe i just haven't seen i don't
think i've seen one in this area i imagine this is going to be one that will probably become popular
um congrats on that launch today i hope you guys are i hope it went well but um that was one that
i saw today which i thought was really interesting. Yeah, so we launched that, and that's been really successful.
We're seeing some great volume already.
So we're really, really happy about that.
It's a play on the Vanguard Total Stock World Index.
So, yeah, very excited about that.
And it is one of the ones that we essentially – the first leverage in the United States that's not a single stock. We also launched
GLWG, which is the two times long GLW, Corning Inc. So that's another one that we launched today.
And I can tell you that we've seen really, really great volumes in that one as well on its first
day of trading. And we've seen some money coming in the door.
So we're super happy about that.
As you know, when you launch these things, you have a great idea.
You get indications of interest, but you don't know how they're going to trade.
So far, so good.
We're really happy with the performance today on the first day of trading.
Thank you for that, Paul.
Is there anything else that I didn't ask you on the space so that you
maybe wanted to talk about one that i know whenever i ask this question and actually i have one thing
before it two tweets pinned up in the nest above someone might have roasted paul a little bit but
in a really really nice way beal uh beal said below why doesn't paul have an uh have any post
or followers now first of all everyone go in and
follow paul i'm gonna tell you why i'll tell you why can i answer that immediately in real time
so like i'm not generally personally like a social media guy i'm not looking for like to build up my
own personal account like everything i do is for themes ets and the companies that i work for
and even though you know like i'm part of the executive team, ownership, all that stuff,
like I, it's not about me.
Like I don't need to be the guy.
Like I talk for my firm and I'm committed to that.
And so while I go back and forth from my own personal Twitter account to get on here sometimes,
and sometimes I go on the Leverage Shares account or the Deems account,
like I am the chief revenue officer of themes etfs
when i talk on this i do bring up my own personal accounts and things like that because i want
people to know like it's not just my business but it's also me and what i think and what i
where i invest but um the followers i want them at leverage shares i want them at themes etfs
so that's the reason why i don't have a ton of followers like i'm not jake paul i'm not you know one of these guys that's like trying to get a ton of attention
for myself i really just uh want to grow uh themes and get the message out and stuff like that so
that's the reason why i'm not in this for me i'm in this for the company i love it and it fits with
the ethos of the the company and everything we've been talking about as well I feel like I did tweet pin two extra tweets up in the nest above the leverage shares team puts out some
Fire posts a really great content. Honestly, it's like amazing charts amazing stuff like that
Even if you're not like I don't know
I'm sure you guys are a lot of you guys are interested in themes and leverage shares and all this stuff if you're still in here
But even if you were just like, hey, I just
want to follow a good X account, they're
posting some really great graphics. I pinned two up in the
nest above. Did you know that
for every $100 that
was invested alongside
Warren Buffett when he first took over
Berkshire Hathaway, for every $100
at that point is worth $6 million
today.
$6 million.
Pretty impressive.
And that's the type of tweets content you're going to get by following that page.
So definitely...
And over the same time period,
over the same time period,
if you put your money in the S&P like he recommends,
it was like $47,000.
So think about that.
Do you want to listen to what he says
or do you want to listen to what he does?
There we go. Yeah.
It's a lot different of a return over that time.
That's the type of thing you're going to see
by following all of those accounts.
A couple of them are pinned up in the nest above.
So definitely go in and check that out.
Is there anything that,
any of the topics that we didn't talk about on this one?
I know one that is a little interesting.
I apologize, it's very interesting and might be an interesting theme going forward as
the global financial system. Maybe there's been some breaks in it, some other people trying to
do it, but I have this GSIB one, GSIB, Globally Systemically Important Banks. So this is the ETF,
which you guys are holding basically the largest financial institutions in the world. GSIB is a term that was coined at, was it Basel III or
something? So this isn't, these are the big of the bigs. These are the companies that are going
to have to be regulated in a different way. These are the too big to fail banks. And that is all
in the GSIB ETF that you guys have. I know it's an interesting one for you.
Yeah. So we love GSIBs. It's the only ETF that is listed as an active ETF because you don't really
need an index to sort of model after. And the reason why you don't need it is because the
Financial Stability Board and Basel III Committee, they designate 20, right now it's 29 companies
that are globally systemically important. And why is that important for everybody?
Well, first, in good times, these are the interconnected banks.
They're making all the investments in all these big themes and sectors that we're talking about.
They have the most deposits, so less interest rate sensitive.
They are the banks that are set to thrive.
They have scalability, and they are positioned for this next financial technology boom that's going to take over
all the tokenization. They're investing in it today. They're going to become more efficient.
They're going to have higher valuations. So I love it. The second piece of that is on the downside.
And, you know, right now we're pretty bullish on the markets, you know, at least over the next two
to three years and even beyond because we think things are positioned for growth.
But, you know, you never know when the shock is going to come.
But if you're going to invest in financials and you want to make sure that you're doing so with a margin of safety, you want to be in the institutions that are deemed too big to fail.
Why? Because those are the ones that are going to be protected by central banks around the globe
should things get down because they're too systemically important to the overall system. And so what we've seen from GSIB since we launched, and again,
day-to-day basis, but every time I check, it's been consistent. It is the number one performing
financial ETF in its category of 44. And it is poised for growth. We think the growth not only
will continue, but we think the growth will kind of escalate a little bit as they become more efficient with financial technology and tokenization and blockchain.
And so we're really, really bullish on this sector.
And sometimes you just have to think, like, do I want to go in and pick the regional winner, pick the small winner, do stuff like that?
You know, every once in a while you can win in that regard.
But these large financial institutions have proven over time that, you know, they win.
And they win because of their scalability and their ability to pivot and invest.
And because of the large deposits that they have and because of the way the world sees them as too big to fail.
So that said, I mean, we're super bullish on that.
We're getting a lot of interest in it from advisors from the retail community.
And it's something that we think is a really great long term investment opportunity across
the board.
I am curious in general, a little bit more of a general question.
I'm curious how you end up taking it here.
You deal with us,
a lot of retail investors,
a lot of retail conversations,
and I'm sure you're dealing with a lot of RIAs,
institutional investors.
I'm curious in how different the questions are
that you get in here.
Is it similar underlying the questions
maybe being asked in different ways?
I'm just curious.
I'll tell you, it's very different. And I have a very simple answer to that because we do
business globally and we're starting to get a lot of interest globally. I have a trip planned
to Bangkok at the end of March because we've got a lot of asset managers that are really
interested in what we're doing. And so I think the biggest difference is retail investors look
for the underlying investments. They look for the investment theme, they look for the holdings,
and they're interested in the index methodology. From an institutional perspective and advisor
perspective, when they're recommending our funds, they've been so caught up in the traditional
mutual fund due diligence aspect of things. And so they asked us questions about individual securities
without ever looking at the index methodology. And I'm the first person to tell them, it's like,
look, we're a passive shop. We put all the work into the index. And that's crucial because
for one reason, we stick to the process and the rules of the index. The second reason why that's
crucial is as things change, we get to change the index and we get to change the process and the rules of the index. The second reason why that's crucial is as things
change, we get to change the index and we get to change the methodology and we get to change the
process for where the world is going. Specifically, I'll talk to you a little bit about technology.
Like technology changes all the time. So what was industrial robotics is now humanoid robotics.
Two totally different segments, two totally different investment thesis but they're critically important that you adapt your index and you adapt your investments
as that moves forward uh so that's number one same thing with like ai we're currently looking
at our ai portfolio wise because like it's gone from generative AI to now inference AI. And, you know, there's a lot of different, like, things that go into that, right?
And so we get to, like, be very intuitive and very thoughtful about what the process is, what the index methodology is.
And we get to change that at times where we think the industry is changing.
And especially in technology, that happens very happens very very frequently and so that's
one of the reasons why we like it the second reason um that you know so investors will say
like why are you so inexpensive it's because of that passive approach and so they're used to
paying more fees and we're like you don't have to like there's ways to be selective and to have a process of, you know, picking securities for ETFs
without having to put in, you know, high costs to that. And so I think that's like another
thing that comes up a lot of times on that side. And so, you know, like, I think that's probably
the biggest difference between institutional investors and it's a due diligence process and how they go about it.
You know, if you're a do-it-yourself guy, right, you're doing all your own homework on, you know, like, so let's say you got a project at the house.
You want to build a pool house, right?
Like, you're going to do your due diligence on, you know, what the materials are going to be, where you can get them from, what the lowest cost is, you know, what the highest quality is for that cost. And then,
you know, you're going to put together a plan for how you construct it. And then once it's
constructed, how you're going to maintain it, so on and so forth. If you're an institution,
you've been sort of indoctrinated into all of these like old fashioned norms that went along
with the mutual fund industry that just don't exist anymore
because everything's being converted to ETFs. And so I think that's one of the biggest issues
or differences, I should say, that we deal with. And all we do is just have conversations.
We're honest. We talk about what we do, how we do it, and why it may be an advantage on the institutional side.
And I think that, you know, it's resonating more and more every single day. But on the retail side,
these guys are doing it yourself. They're literally doing their own homework, which I
appreciate. And they understand the game. And I think that's why, you know, you've seen a shift
I think that's why, you know, you've seen a shift and, you know, especially with, you know, the likes of, you know, how retail platforms have changed over time.
The institution of platforms like Robinhood, Coinbase, Webull, like people are digging in for themselves.
They're getting the information and then they're making their own decisions.
On the advisor side, it's a little bit different.
They've got, you know, fiduciary responsibility, so they have to have a process. And a lot of times, what they have to do is sort of think about the process
and maybe make some adjustments to that because the world has changed. And they're generally a
little bit slower to do that than the retail community. That does make a lot of sense. It
feels like there is some space in the middle there which is the
optimal thing and there's a few people who can go in and kind of combine the both sides of it being
able to be nimble being able to have that team and really do research i imagine a world filled
with ai is only going to make it easier for that that retail investor as they're able to
to do more research into it and you Stock Talks talked about this a lot.
The amount of research and information that he's able to ingest
and actually get meaningful data out of it is only increasing.
So it is a very impressive world we're going into here.
And for the retail investor, which right now historically has been 10%, 15%,
who knows what it's at right now.
Numbers are being quoted closer to 30.
I imagine it's going to continuously go up as these tools democratize more.
Yeah, so think about what you mentioned before about Warren Buffett, right?
And even go back a little bit beforehand to Graham and Dot.
The work was in gathering all the information.
You had to go through journals and reports and speak to the companies one-on-one.
And there was no internet, right?
So how did you get all this information? How did gather it how did you collect it how did you like
analyze it and then how did you come to a reasonable assumption right you had to do that
all manually you don't have to do that anymore right like the the information is readily accessible
but you still have these like legacy firms that talk about their desk talk about their analysts
talk about you know how great their team is versus another team,
and yet they're all coming out with the same reports,
the same forecasts, so on and so forth, right?
And you're kind of like, well, where's the value?
And I would agree with you, like, where's the value?
And so I have a son who's a business major
at Miami of Ohio at Farmers Business School.
He is going through classes, and sometimes he comes home to me and he's like,. He is, you know, going through classes
and sometimes he comes home to me and he's like, dad, I talk to you. And then I go to my classes
and I don't know where the value is in these classes because they're not telling me about
things that you're telling me about. And I don't know what I'm learning. I'm like, number one,
do your best, get good grades, get the degree because it's critically important in life.
I'm like, secondly, everything that they tell you not to read read like don't just read what they're reading like read everything
else like read all the things if somebody tells you it's a conspiracy read it and then make your
own uh assumptions and do your research if somebody tells you that this is like way out of
line and and uh you know if somebody tells you uh bitcoin's going to zero uh and uh you know, if somebody tells you Bitcoin's going to zero and, you know, like just read about it, like figure out for yourself what it is.
Dig in deeper and go against the grain a little bit because the herd mentality, you know, they all go up at the same time and they all get crushed at the same time.
And I had a guy very early in my career when i was out he was talking
about he was a great technician he talked about the crashes and he would overlay charts on top
of other charts and somebody said to him well like why is it different this time he said it's not he
said the only difference is these are the grandchildren of those people in 1929 that got
crushed then it's the same mentality same emotion the same like psychological
behavior and if you don't do things differently if you don't look at the world differently
you'll suffer the same fate so my my my thought process there is like do things differently do
your research differently because everybody's got the information now. So it's easy to come to the same conclusion,
but you'll never, never, never make money coming to the same conclusion and following the herd.
You'll just make money when they're making it, and you'll lose money when they're making it,
and you'll just stay level.
So think differently, read everything that everybody else isn't reading along with what they're reading,
and then come to your own conclusions.
And I think that's kind of where we are today.
I think it makes a lot of sense.
I also think it makes a lot of sense that you're here having these conversations and
sharing these thoughts as well, that that's your mindset.
And here we are on the Spaces talk about this stuff.
I do really appreciate everyone for joining us in here.
If you guys are not following the speakers, you are completely missing out.
This last 30, 45 minutes, we've been lucky to be joined from paul from the leverage share
seems obviously a partner of us we uh you know really appreciate them all the work that they go
in and do and you know allowing us to keep our content for free forever so shout out to them
obviously as you guys can hear from those last 30 to 40 minutes we're only trying to work with
really reputable people like these guys clearly are.
And they have some really awesome stuff going on.
This is also a really interesting opportunity where you guys actually get the chance to ask questions.
So whether you guys are in here investing in the products or not,
you guys have the opportunity to come in and share some thoughts, ask questions, anything like that.
And we would love to get them answered.
So, yeah, I do appreciate everyone for joining
in cob i am saving your question for next time i am just seeing that now i bookmarked it um so
yeah but one more time a couple tweets pinned up in the nest above you guys should make sure that
as you guys are doing this as paul was saying there do your research into other stuff and never
just take people's word for it don't follow the herd go and do your own research make the stuff
yours uh website prospectus all that stuff is a great place to start and then come here and ask
some questions we would love to get them answered from the crew if there's anything that you guys
are see seeing going into this follow the speakers check out that website paul is anything you want
to leave the people with no i love this crew uh love the followers. Love all the people that, you know, interact. So we just really are appreciative of working with Wolf Financial, but even more appreciative of the audience that you built and the ability to sort of get in front of them and have great conversations. So thank you guys very much. We appreciate it and look forward to being on again soon.
And look forward to being on again soon.
I am excited for it.
If you guys want to know how much Paul enjoys us,
we're in person here in Miami.
Guy is on the beach talking to all of us for the last 45 minutes.
And we went 15 minutes over as well.
And that might have been the best 15 minutes part of the conversation.
So, yeah, he is.
There could be other stuff going on right now,
but this is where Paul wants to be talking to all of you guys.
And we really do appreciate you for that.
So, Paul said earlier,
he's not in it for the followers on that account.
Go check out the tweets pinned up in the nest above.
Follow that Leverage Shares account.
Follow that Themes ETFs account
and obviously do your research into it.
Thank you, Mr. Paul.
Thank you, Mr. Stock Talk.
And yeah, we will catch each and every single one
of you guys tomorrow again
for our next day of stocks on spaces please please
please message me if you guys have any questions thoughts you want me to share with them we would
be happy to do that and we will catch you all later have a great one team thank you paul take
care guys take care
thanks doc Thanks, DarkTalk.
