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STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: Dec. 8, 2025 Duration: 1:52:12Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, market participants analyzed the current trends and growth opportunities in the crypto and financial sectors, highlighting the cautious approach ahead of the Federal Reserve's announcements, the impact of analyst ratings on stock performance, and the potential for significant gains in commodities like silver and gold.
Full Transcription
Music yeah yeah sorry for that getting rugs
evan did you kick me again no i kicked everyone if you kick everyone do you kick anyone uh that's
that's the question in life so i apologize for for that. It was the internet here
just taking us down.
So I got a good old M
on the little bit
of the stapler of Wi-Fi.
I'll still be able to moderate this.
So you're still trapped
with me a little bit.
Bengals T. Higgins
in concussion protocol.
I'm just saying unfortunate.
But yeah, you're still trapped with me
and my squirrel moment tangents.
I apologize if you don't like football.
We should be getting Scott Redler
joining us back up here. Let me actually send him the dx
this yeah okay
options mike any initial thoughts on uh on what he was talking about there on the day
i mean it's to me it's just a uh it's a do nothing day here the market's me, it's just a do-nothing day here.
The market's obviously waiting.
It's probably waiting for the Fed.
It's really not about the rate cut, I don't think.
I mean, the market very much expects, hey, Scott, you back?
Yeah, I was just like talking to myself for four minutes.
Yeah, don't worry.
We all were.
I rugged the space.
As long as you don't talk back to yourself, Scott, you're good.
Yeah, then I'm in trouble.
That's only, you know, on the weekends.
Anyway, I'll just say, I don't think it's about the rate,
because it's about the messaging that comes out afterwards,
you know, what it looks like going forward.
And I'll turn things back over to Scott here now that's back.
We do also get the summary of economic projections.
We all got caught off at the same time.
Like, you were, like like five minutes ago, Scott.
So go ahead and start over.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
I was thinking the same thing.
Some people, I'm just saying I think the setup this way is better than last time.
Last time they gunned the market into all-time highs and then wanted a dovish cut versus a hawkish cut.
And we got a hawkish cut last time and then
we went down for a week and a half or whatnot. So for them to pull the market back today and
maybe be a little softer Tuesday into Wednesday, it might set up the table for a better move into
just say the Santa Claus week of 1226. So, you know, I'm thinking today, like I was saying before, some guys are like,
hey, you know, why won't you buy some Apple here at 276, 275 near the 21 day? This is where
we bought it before it took out 280, 281, and we were able to sell it at 287.
I'm like, into the year end, I'm trying just to limit my bleed. I just don't want to have too
many things on if levels don't hold and just say, you
know, we don't rally post Fed and there is no Santa Claus rally.
Not saying there won't be, but I'd rather just be a little bit more wait and see versus
anticipating.
I'll anticipate and have my levels written down, but I'm not going to just, you know,
start accumulating on a Monday when the Fed's not till Wednesday where we could get some
more price discovery. So I'm kind of just, I'd rather just save my powder and wait for more clarity,
because you also get that lot of volatility on Wednesday where it could, you know, even if we
bounce or, you know, we have options for 1226, they could make a big day where they squeeze some
shorts and they stop some longs out before they decide in the last 40 minutes what they want to do
post-Fed or sometimes the day after, which is the real trend day.
So I'm going to try and keep it light, even though some things are at better spots, just because we have a lot of time between now and 2 o'clock.
I would be curious on some of the levels that you are watching for.
Okay, so, yeah.
So, like, just say Apple, for instance,
just to do, like, a little, like, you know, just my thought process.
So, when we had that kind of cell set up in Apple
over 287, where it broke above 287,
made a new high and came back below,
where I call that a red dog reversal cell,
in my mind, I'm like, oh, Apple's going to test 280.50
and hold it, and then we're going to be great.
So, it tested 280.50 for, like like an hour, and then it wasn't great, and now here we are, 276.50.
So I lost a little bit of money testing that area, but in my head, I kind of knew that we could go back below.
So now in my head, I'm like, all right, 275, 276 is a spot.
It's the next spot.
I don't want to do no man's land. I wasn't buying 279, 278. I was like, I'm going to wait. So I'm like, all right, 275, 276 is a spot. It's the next spot. I don't want to do no man's land.
Like I wasn't buying 279, 278.
I was like, I'm going to wait.
So I'm trying to be patient.
And now that we're here, but it's only Monday and we have till Wednesday, you know, who
knows if 276 or 275 half is going to hold, we might see, you know, 272.
So I'm kind of just like in my head mapping out levels and also using days.
We get closer because nothing's going to really mean much except for booking trades and taking trades between now and 2 to 245.
So does the market, does the spies want to test 679-ish, which was the low from last week?
Or are we going to be holding around here?
You know, you don't know.
It's a guess.
Same thing with Tesla.
Like, I came along, which I got cut off before, long, very small Tesla because we, last time, last Monday, we were talking about Tesla here together.
I think we were, it was like 412 or, you know, I didn't even know exactly where it was.
It was like 435-ish.
And then it had to move to 455-ish, right?
Mike, you remember where the spot was when we were talking pretty bullish on Tesla?
Yeah, yes, last Monday.
It was right around this 4, it was right around this 4, 1230-ish, 420-ish.
Yeah, 430.
Yeah, it.20ish. Yeah, 4.30. Yeah, I use a tier system.
So I was long from like 4.12, and I added through 4.
I think it was 4.35.
That was the 50 day.
And then you had two days to sell some above 4.50 and change to book some,
because that's what we do as professional traders.
that's what we do is you know as professional traders you have to book in that money and then
You have to book in that money.
And then I held small.
i held small so i haven't bought that back yet you know because i'm like this is day one down
and tesla was weaker than the market so i'm going to be buying tesla just because it's having one
down day and i was able to sell it well same thing with apple i sold apple well you know 287 ish so
am i buying 280 50 just because i sold it well or do I want to buy it well? And we don't really know what that is yet.
So I'm more, again, in wait and see where this is one spot for Tesla.
And then you have more of like a 431-ish is also another spot.
So, again, I map out spots.
And then I see where we are and what the key to the week is before I start, besides just scalping those spots, put them on as something for
multiple weeks.
And I would think-
Doesn't this feel like a little bit of an overreaction for Tesla, Scott, to the downgrade
by Morgan Stanley today?
I mean, Morgan Stanley's never been very bullish on Tesla.
But it gave the whole three-day move back in one day.
That never makes me feel very comfortable.
Right, and that's why on day one down, giving back three days of potent move like this,
I'm not just buying it.
I'm not just saying, oh, I'm going to buy some 455 calls, which is above the high from last week,
for 1226 just because I'm saving myself $18 right here.
It hasn't proven where it's going to stop yet,
considering how potent the down move was.
If we would have held 438-ish, which we might even reclaim.
If we could reclaim 438, 439 into the close, it won't look so bad
because that means we held the 8-day and there was some commitment to it.
But if we close 437 or lower, that's not giving you a signal to buy some today.
It's saying you hey wait
and see it was really weak and we have to figure out what's next okay interesting so it looks like
actually what happened here is morgan stanley switch analysts uh covering tesla for them okay
because i was gonna say they have always been pretty bullish adam jonas was actually one of the most bullish people from wall street on them uh that you know
but uh interesting okay yeah i went over that on my in the 630 club because guys were trying to
explain who follow it in a lot more detail than me and maybe this new analyst that's covering them
because jonas moved you know they want to bring it down before. If I would have seen an Adam Jonas downgrade on this, that would have been really like,
whoa, I would have maybe expected a little bit more of a move downwards, honestly.
This makes me feel a little better.
But I honestly want to see the merits of what the new guy said.
I apologize for interrupting you.
That's all right.
He just went to an equal weight and said, I want a better entry.
Like no straight.
It's always weird.
Now the analyst wants to get a better entry as a trader.
And raise his price target to 425. right then we're above 425 so i hate when they do that too
but um anyway so what do you what is what does the day like today and tomorrow look like for
you you were saying they're obviously the the big play for the week that probably where the
trade is coming on is maybe that wed Wednesday afternoon after Powell, following up maybe some overreactions.
Does this Monday and Tuesday look like a sit, hand, and see, maybe manage prior positions coming into it?
I can see short enough time frames, maybe a day trade or two.
What does this Monday and Tuesday look like for you?
Exactly what you just said.
I came in thinking, will the spies hold Friday's, you know, and the spies in the queues are not?
And both of them didn't.
So from there, you know, I reduced a little risk because now it could be like loose and wide and do some discovery between now and Wednesday.
If we would have held there, you know, maybe things would have acted better.
Google, I had to sell my options just because, you know, Google is a good educational thought right now because some people say, hey, you know, when do you get out of your shares or get out of your options?
I say when the reason I'm in the trade changes.
So everyone has different reasons they're in a trade.
So for me, because I'm very active and I'm in front of my screen and I have four accounts, I can always revisit.
and I have four accounts, I could always revisit.
So for me, Google, I was like 313 has been holding for five, six sessions
to let the eight-day catch up.
So the reason why I'm in this trade is because I bought the options at 315.
It was trading at 315, the 320 is that if the bull flag gets back in play
and this thing wants to get above the prior high of 312 28 and show leadership again
you know this is a good play the risk is defined you know but right now google broke 313 it's not
it's not it didn't close yet to go to 311 so now all of a sudden to me that's telling me it's not
going to get back to those highs as fast as i thought it's no longer like a bull flag tight, getting ready to break above 320 or 322
to 328. It's more like, hey, you know what? Maybe it's got to see more.
So with that said, you have to be the trade change. If you're in Google from three months
ago when it took out 271 or a StarTac special and, you know, you're just
in a swing trade or you've been in it for years, that's different. But if you trade actively saying,
hey, I want to get paid in December on Google, because I think Google is a good candidate to
take out the highs from a week or two ago, you know, then certain characteristics would have
had to take place in order for it to happen sooner than later. And today's move tells me it might not be as fast as I want it to be.
You know, it could see 307 or 303.
So especially if I was in shares, I would have been stopped out.
You know, I kind of, again, like I said before,
I don't want to be in 10, 15 different options that aren't going to work.
I send the bleeds too much.
So I also got rid of the calls,
and I'll revisit when I see more coming closer to Wednesday or Thursday.
That's fair do we have logical upgrade up here right now should you as a listener yeah i'm i'm here what's up i feel like it's been a little bit with just timing and different stuff
and other conversations since we've had a good uh chance for you to come on here you got any uh
new things you're excited about right now?
It's a Monday.
You got anything we haven't talked about on here?
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
I think, you know, it is kind of interesting
that we're not going to get that PPI data.
I feel like they want to keep like J-Pow in the blind.
I mean, this is my tinfoil hat on,
but like they, you know,
we're getting ready for a new Fed chair
and they don't
want to give any fuel anything to this guy to come out and say anything that's not like that that
might be perceived as hawkish like if ppi like ticks up then you know maybe you know the thought
process there would be like well inflation is going to take up and you're obviously seeing the
move in the tenure right now which is up um so that starts you know making you
think okay economy is going to stay pretty heated up um you know because if we were headed into a
real economic just one thing to clear uh uh just make sure it's clear on that they are going to
release the october data print they're just not going to do it as a separately release they're
going to release it alongside the november print okay so yeah but is that going to come before the no
no no it is in january yeah so it's cooked right so i mean like look if you ever wanted to have a
tinfoil hat on it's right now and you know because think about it this is what his last meeting is
the fed chair so um no no he has three more after this he has to like may or like april so that
okay so then it won't be.
But there are no rate cuts projected in that time period.
But he'll still talk though.
Yeah.
He'll still talk, which means that, you know,
he could still have his comments.
But the truth is that, so, okay,
then Tinfoil Hat comes, stays on because, you know,
this is the last time he's going to be able to, you know,
either object to some sort of
rate cut decision. And basically the next three times, since you're saying there is no rate cut
decision, then, um, you know, he's basically a lame sitting duck, right? Like there's,
doesn't even matter what he says because, you know, his, his successor is going to be the person
who has the decision for future rate cuts so yeah i i think basically they don't
we've you know basically since whenever trump took office you know he just wanted interest
rates down i mean he did as much as he possibly could he threatened this guy and honestly that's
not like really too out of the norm this has happened in you know like past presidencies
where they kind of tell the fed chair, you know, cut rates and they just
don't want to because, again, they're supposed to be independent and act independently. But
now Trump gets his pick of the litter. He's picking someone who's very pro cheap money.
Yeah. Again, I think the signal that the 10-year is sending you right now is that the economy is
definitely not slowing down. If the economy was slowing down, then you would see the 10-year down
and equities down. Today's selling, not really a concern. I think most people probably... Look,
we had a nice little rip after basically during that Thanksgiving week. I think the market's
been extremely resilient. We recovered the 50-day very quickly after the recent sell-off.
All you've seen is basically no pullback, just consolidation
here at the highs. I find that pretty bullish. You get a nice rip rally. You're getting consolidation.
You're not getting any sort of reasonable pullback. It's just staying floating above all
the moving averages. The moving averages are catching up. You're getting a low...
I'm going to agree with you for a second because again like it like whatever the market wants to do that it'll be able to do post fomc once it gets it out
of the way so that's why like you said we haven't pulled back yet so this is actually a more of a
bullish setup like by pulling back with the spies down three and the queues down 280 if we could
float a little bit lower without a lot of damage, then maybe we could rally post-Fed.
If we get, like, just say, Spies hold 679, the Qs hold 617, the IWM continues to hover here.
It shouldn't break out above 252, 252.77, above the high of the year.
That would be too cute.
It should hover here and wait for them to cut
wait for the language to be debated and then go not you know if iwm rallied to 254 into wednesday
chances are everyone would just want to sell the news you know i'm saying i mean like
yeah no i told i get you totally um what i will say though is like i think even I expected that we would get a pullback to the,
to the 50 day and you have not even gotten close.
You won't even break below six 80.
Look at today's cell.
I mean,
we're at 39 million volume.
That's half the average volume with 34 minutes to go in the day.
Nobody is selling.
you know,
until they're selling.
Well,
yeah,
exactly.
But there's no point in front running that selling either. Right. Because that cell may never come. Yeah. So I'd rather selling. Well, yeah, exactly. But there's no point in front-running that selling either, right?
Because that sell may never come.
Yeah.
So I'd rather –
Again, you just don't want to get caught that if we're going to be two, three, four points lower in the spies into the Fed because you could see like a little rising channel in the spies.
You could see a little rising channel in the queues.
the queues and if it breaks you know there could be a little bit of an air pocket which would be
fine to to 679 678 and the spies ahead of wednesday or the q617 ahead of wednesday or through wednesday
but then that should be viable for a move into you know into christmas if that's what's going to
happen just for for me that's at my desk at 327 and i7, and my points are very easy and quick.
I don't have to say I'm going to buy here and also buy there, too, where you don't know where it's going, when it's going, except for that things have acted pretty well.
And we have two days for them to push things around until 2, 2.30, 3.30, and then even Thursday, sometimes the day after.
30, three 30. And then, you know, even Thursday, sometimes the day after, but, um, yeah. So I
don't think, I think we're just both saying it a little differently depending on, you know,
how active you are. And, um, yeah. Yeah. I think, um, you know, Scott, you're a master technician,
you're a master trader. Uh, and also like, I would just say that, you know, everyone has a
kind of a different style or different take on markets. And like you said, like you're looking
to get paid a quarterly or monthly, et cetera. And like for those reasons,
I totally understand wanting to like optimize your entry and be like more confident about it.
I think that's when, you know, when you say 679, I mean, that's like 0.5% lower on the spot. It's
like, it's not really like something that I'm personally going to, you know, optimize for.
I just want to generally capture the meat of the move. To me, it's like above 50 day bullish and I'm extremely long. Um, you know, you, you sell below the 50 and can't
hold it. Then I'll, then I'll think about, you know, reducing exposure. What I will say though,
is like in terms of people feeling bearish or feeling like we're going to get a pullback,
it is statistically unlikely to get another like sizable pullback in the market after you just corrected from a 5%
pullback on the index. And when you looked at breadth deterioration during that pullback,
it was extreme. And then you almost got a Zweg breadth thrust for the breadth expansion that
came as the kind of that, that pushed this market back above the 50 day so generally when you go from that
bearish oversold to like and it was like this total neck head and shoulder breakdown and then
you go to the 100 day on the spy and then you get this kind of false breakdown it gets bought up and
immediately floats back above the 50 day over the next few sessions. I mean, that's just like a, that's a false breakdown to me. And for me, like the, like the most bullish thing you could have is a false
bear, like a failed breakdown. Just like, I think the most bearish thing you could have is, you know,
a false breakout that, that fails. And it just, all the momentum traders end up bouncing out of
the trade and, you know, add the add to the selling pressure.
I think we basically just got the opposite.
Now, can we retrace a couple of points and, you know, retest that 50 day on some sort
of jitters on the FOMC press conference or something like that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I always leave that open.
But to me, it just doesn't seem like after we just had all this, you know, the 10 years,
again, signaling that, you know the 10 years again signaling that you know
everything is fine in this economy and you know i think the fed or i would say the the trump
administration has showed you that they would rather prioritize wage growth accelerating economy
rather than cutting costs or you know whatever that And so it's the run it hot narrative.
You're seeing commodities break out.
That to me just feels like 2026 might be like this acceleration phase in a lot of these
equities.
I don't think we've seen any sort of bubbly valuations.
People keep trying to draw the lines between this and the dot-com bubble.
It's just not the case at all.
If you want to see a bubble,
I mean, if you want to call for this could be a bubble,
I'd agree that it could be one.
We haven't seen that yet.
If this turned out to be a bubble
and we ended up going into a bear market premiere,
it'd be the saddest bubble probably in history.
So I'm not
saying bubble is my uh you know bull case here but it you know market structure is holding up well
we had a five percent pullback in the index which is very normal you get three of those on average
per year um and statistically you don't get another one immediately after either so i feel
pretty comfortable being long but you know obviously
if there's something that comes from left field i will uh reduce exposure accordingly just i i
don't see that happening right now you know one thing i spoke i thought about logical this morning
was um when i saw ed yard denny's note that um you know the mag 7 is not going to be the place to be
next year that the other you know 493 stocks are going to be the place to be next year, that the other 493 stocks are going to be the place to be.
And right away I thought, you know, Mike,
then we need to have more of logical because he's the individual stock picker.
And I love to trade the MAG7 and rotate through when Apple looks like it's about to make a new high
and have follow-through or Tesla or Amazon or Google or the semiconductors
or even like a name, like an iron
and some of those that I'm used to. But for me, you know, I get, I'm going to, I might have to
create a whole new go-to list for next year of stocks that are making higher lows and higher
highs and moving well, because if all of a sudden the mag seven does go sideways and becomes a
source of funds, which I'm not saying it is. And the RSP gets better than the spies, which I'm not
saying it is, but that's what he's saying,
then it's guys like you who do a ton of work and a ton of names
and conviction or like stock talk.
His call last week for PATH was unbelievable.
I hope everyone here made a ton of money because PATH was trading,
I think, at 14 and change, and he was talking about how this quarter
could be the first quarter for it to go.
And I was like, yes, my friends and institutions are accumulating it. I'm like, I'm buying calls
right here. And P.S. it went to 17 plus and now it's at 19. So it's like research like that,
where stocks are turning a corner after two or three reports that could help you get involved
early. And then all of a sudden you find the name that trends. You can make a ton of money. You can
make your entire year on a few names that you find early like dash a year and a half ago we found it
111 went to 285 or even like an asts it went from four to 101 or iron that went from 11 to 75
you know there will be a lot of names a lot more names if if that's the case next year where
where mega cap tech is a little bit or Mag7 is a little
source of funds and that we need to find some mid-cap names that, you know, you get a great
narrative and the technicals match the narrative and you could stay with with the tier system.
Yeah, I mean, I think over, you know, I generally agree with you. I think I've been a lot more open
to the areas of the market that I'd like to have exposure in. Like, you know, I was like pounding the table on bios and healthcare. And I
think lately you've seen a nice re-rating in all of them. I still think there's a good upside there,
but I've been, after this pullback, I think that there has been a lot more opportunity showing
itself in the rest of the market, especially if we're not at a point where, you know, the economy
and market
are going to roll over, then it's, and there's a decent chance that we actually end up accelerating
because this was the false kind of like everyone got too bearish too quickly. And, you know, this
is definitely not the end of the cycle. I would say like, remember back in October, 2020, October
22, like literally October 22, a month ago, or October 29, when 29 when you know the market was topping and these individual names were talking the thing is that every person was extremely long and nobody was
ready for a pullback that's exactly how you get one but now everyone is ready for a pullback and
so I think that's just generally when you don't end up getting one I think with people bearish
enough um you know you just generally don't get that kind of uh kind of breakdown but you know
you can just watch the levels and determine you don't need to you know speculate but yeah go on
but logical we just had a pullback we're just coming off a five percent pullback i don't know
why people are clamoring for another one that's what i just said yeah but yeah i think that's
what i'm trying to say is that like um you know we just had a pullback and you know well the reason
why people are scared is because you you know, price drives sentiment.
You know, when everyone was up a million percent posting screenshots in October, late October, nobody was ready for the pullback.
Right. And now nobody's posting those screenshots anymore.
And so.
Except us.
Except us.
We weathered the storm pretty nicely sitting near the highs, which is great.
You know, when you've done this, it's not your first rodeo.
You know, it's tough.
I feel bad for people who kind of chase the highs, but welcome to markets. This stuff happens all the
time. You got to pay your dues. I think for people who are new to markets, just remember something.
If you end up persevering through all of this, you will end up a better man and investor or woman
on the other side of this. So it's the people who end up lasting longer than their first six months
where they got extremely lucky.
Then they blow up their account.
Happens to all of us.
You need to learn that lesson.
So just stick with the markets.
And eventually, maybe it's not this year or next, but eventually you'll figure it out.
And so hard lessons learned.
I agree.
Like, I'm basically saying I don't think another big pullback is coming.
I'm very long.
I'm 140% long. I mostly stick to equity, though, like common shares. So I don't really another big pullback is coming. I'm very long. I'm 140% long.
I mostly stick to equity, though, like common shares.
So I don't really do the calls.
That's just how I lever up.
And yeah, I mean, I've been getting exposure to a lot more sectors.
So like I was saying, bios and healthcare have already run quite a bit.
I still have a solid, it's still my largest bucket in my portfolio.
But these last couple of weeks, I have been rotating into other parts of the markets,
like Smithcap Financials.
We talked about Lending Club the other day.
I still continue to like that name.
You know, Stock Talk mentioned last time
when we were on here that it got named
the JP Morgan, like top fintech pick of 2026.
You know, there's quite a few names.
I actually like a lot of these potential, like getting some commodities exposure because if we end up, you know there's there's quite a few names i actually like uh a lot of these potential like
getting some commodities exposure because if we end up you know that's and that's what i was
saying about the 10-year like 10 years up on the day right like yeah interest actually on that um
gold's been gold's been what we talked about for a while scott is gold's or commodities something
you look at at all you trade copper yeah topper? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes people do. We just had a great move in silver.
Like silver had an awesome, awesome weekly breakout
when the SLV took out.
Do you trade the futures or like the SLV?
I trade the SLV.
So like a week or two ago
when the SLV was hanging around 48, 49,
we were looking at it.
I had the 49 half calls
and you had that great weekend move.
It went to 51 and then rolled them up to like the 54s and silver's still hanging out i go with the slv some people trade the futures
i caught gold prior to that and now actually some of my gold guys are saying to me hey
don't lose sight of gold i know it lagged silver this last time this 383 in the gld 384 should
hold and we there should be one more new high move coming up in the
next, you know, I don't know what their time frame is, but I do trade it.
I'm not a gold or silver bug.
Like, my brother's been buying gold and silver coins since 2007 and some of my very affluent
friends.
I just traded when there's a nice setup, when it's above the A21 day and looks great.
Silver looked awesome like two weeks ago when that happened. And now it's still hanging here. So if anyone thinks that silver had that blow off crazy move of a short
squeeze, like we saw way back when it hasn't, like it had a nice move and now it's hovering here. So
if you were still short, there are some, I've heard some countries are short right now. I'm not
really, you know, you're going to get into the whole thing, but, uh, silver, you know, this SLV
still looks like there's some
kind of something that's going to happen soon to cause one more parabolic move. This doesn't
look parabolic. This just looks slow, steady, and awesomeness for those who trade silver.
I've got a great silver story that only coin dorks like me will understand. So my godmother,
she's 85, she lives next town over. And every now and then I'll go over there to help her do something.
And she called me the other day and said she's got three coffee cans, like the old Folgers coffee cans, full of silver dollars.
And wanted to know if I could grab them and take them to a coin shop and change them for money.
I said, sure.
So I went over there and I picked them up and they were all Eisenhower dollars.
So anyway, no silver in there. Hey, you know, I think Scott, you brought up a really good.
Hey, Brian, I wanted to jump in here before the close, if you don't mind.
Yeah, go for it. It's your show, man. What am I going to say? No, I know. I just want to
jump in before the close, get some thoughts out. I mean, I know people sometimes like to do
what we're doing, but big day for the portfolio andcor, which, you know, I don't know.
I don't have to mention it that much more.
I talk about it with you guys every week.
But it has shown tremendous resilience.
Still my largest position.
Gets higher and higher weighting every week, it seems.
Up another 4% today.
That was carrying for us.
Huntington Ingles, which is one of my defense names, had a ripper today.
3.7%. That's probably been the most stress-free name for me to hold all year. I mean, you just look at that daily chart for Huntington Ingalls, HII, thing just staircases to the upside
every single week. It's just pretty remarkable how much strength that stock has had. And still
a cheap stock in my view, 1X sales, sub 20 PE, the only commercial shipbuilder in the country they do all
of our nuclear aircraft carriers OSS my small cap that was designated the only
small cap my portfolio was designated for me as a core position over the
weekend I've never had a small cap as a core position I found the chart
extremely compelling on OSS and I also what's the symbols of that one OSS it's
a small market cap I don't know if it'll be for you but What's the symbols that I want? OSS. It's a small market cap. I don't know if it'll
be for you, but it's the only small market cap in my book. And I did designate that as a core
position over the weekend. That is up another 3% today. It's made a monster move. I mean,
we are in two weeks on that name. I got it at 471. We are already up 50% on shares in less than
two weeks on that name. So an absolute ripper.
I find it to be maybe the most compelling small cap on the entire market. So I had to designate
it as a core position. I couldn't keep playing about my conviction on that name. I generally
run 10 or so core positions at once. This is going to become my 11th in the portfolio,
or it did become my 11th in the portfolio. And then the rest of the positions in the portfolio, I currently have 16 get navigated
around that.
So Scout, I mean, Scott, Scout, Scott, thank you for the shout out on Path last week.
I actually opened another one of those types of plays today on an earnings that's coming
up this week.
And that's on Photronics, P-L-A-B.
and owned it. This was part of my semiconductor supply basket with Amcor.
And when the price actually got choppy in late October, you know, I'd make some hard decisions
about the portfolio and cut some names that I had wanted to own. And one of them was P-Lab Photronics that I ended up cutting.
And I've watched the recovery.
It's had nice bounce over these past couple of weeks, pulling back over the moving averages kind of quietly.
And I look back at the story and I'm like, this is still cheap.
And so I didn't want to see it potentially gap up on earnings and not be involved.
So I'm playing this the same way I played PATH, 0.5-ish, close to 0.6% position in purely calls for January, 25 calls.
And if it works, it works.
If not, I take a small hit.
And that's kind of how I like to play earnings when I'm taking a position ahead of earnings.
So I wanted to mention that. Old position. I've written a thesis on it before.
If you search from Stock Talk Weekly, P-Lab, P-L-A-B, you'll find my previous posts about it.
You'll also find a recording of a spaces where I talk in detail about it.
But for people that don't know, they make photo masks for chips.
Whenever you need new chips, you basically need these stencils, if you will,
to print the chips. And P-Lab makes those. They're pivoting towards higher end photo masks.
If you look at their segment growth, almost all of it is coming in the higher end photo mask
category. It's not enough to float the business yet, but I think that in the next few quarters,
you could see the high end photo mass division become a little over 30%
of the business. And I think at that juncture, you will have to start treating it a little
differently from a multiple basis. Right now, this stock has a third of the market cap,
actually a little bit over a third of the market cap in cash. It's not a biotech,
it's a semiconductor company, a little over a third of the market cap in cash.
Profitable, cash flowing, 12 PE, 1.5X sales,
the only photo masker, the only high-end photo masker in the whole country.
So I feel like it's an opportunity where I don't think it can go down too much lower.
I could be wrong about that.
I think it's pretty reasonably priced.
I don't think it's one of those names that's going to get sold hand over fist.
So, yeah, I'm going to be playing that earnings indirectly this week with a small position, just like with Path.
But friendly reminder, with Path, we went into that position with 0.6% of the portfolio allocated to just naked calls.
Those calls are now up.
I mean, let me look at them.
I still own them.
So they're basically 300% as of today. That's it? I mean, they at them. I still own them. So they're basically 300% as of today.
That's it?
Yeah, I mean, they were for the Januaries.
If I bought the earlier ones, they'd be up for $500.
Yeah, I actually went with the ones for Friday.
Yeah, you got it.
You cooked.
That was pretty sick.
Yeah, I went a little bit more conservative.
I'm looking at, just real quick, I'd like to give you my little technical take.
So, you know, when you bought Path or brought it to the group, that was like the most perfect spot ever.
Yeah.
You brought it right at that 14 before it broke above that little area.
Boom, boom, boom.
So I'm looking at Plaib, you know, PLA, I call them by their stupid symbols, Plaib.
That spot probably would have been 23. But 25 is not bad.
You're just poking your head.
I agree.
It's not a great entry.
It's not a great entry.
I agree.
You're poking your head right.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a fine entry, and who knows?
Maybe if it hung here for two more days before earnings on the 10th,
it would look better because it would look like it didn't just go from 20 to 25.
from 20 to 25. But again, you don't know if they pull back or they just continue to go.
But, again, you don't know if they pull back or they just continue to go.
But above 25, you know, there's really nothing until 30 to 32 if it delivers on a great,
you know, report and has, you know, a nice conference call. So I would just say, you
know, comparing this to PAP, this is, you know, this entry right here isn't as perfect,
but who the hell is always perfect? And, you know, there's a good spot here. This 25,
if it could pause here and go sideways for two more days, you know, there's a good spot here. There's 25. If it could pause here and
go sideways for two more days, then this 25 would be a gorgeous looking technical pivot for it to
then, you know, give you a gap up. And then it's, then all it is, is back to where it was in January
of 2024. So it's not like it's extended or, or price for perfection. It's, you know, just kind
of came back from the lows and it's in a good spot. Yeah, I agree. I think technically it's, it doesn't have to be like crazy for it to go up, but it's
going to have to be strong considering it's not sitting here at 20, like it was two weeks ago.
Yeah, I agree. I agree. The entry could have been a more ideal, you know, for me, sometimes what I
do is I like, there's positions that I like and they don't,, you know, for me, sometimes what I do is I like,
there's positions that I like and they don't, they're not working for me at the time that they're in the portfolio. And so they get cut for non-thesis related reasons. You know what I mean?
Where I'm just like, look, technically, I just don't want to hold this thing through a drawdown.
And when I cut it last time going into that November drawdown, it was the right decision,
right? Cause the stock fell from 24 down to the 200-day, right?
So rather than sitting through that drawdown, it was the right decision for me to get out.
But now, going into the earnings, I see the type of recovery this thing's had off the lows.
And I'm like, this looks like enthusiasm headed into the report to me from people that know.
Somebody knows what they're doing well, and they just got sold down with the computer's
downdraft before Thanksgiving. And now it came back because there were real buyers there. So yeah, that's what I
was thinking. And I look at this, look at this name is like a name that hasn't done much, you
know, like you look at the year to date chart, right? And I mean, this thing opened the year
at what, like 25 bucks and it's 25 bucks. So it's exactly why I said, if you deliver,
you got a free path to about 30 ish. Yeah.
If you can clear this, I mean, I don't know what you see on your chart, Scott, but I'm
seeing this 2550 level, you know, and you clear over this, you got blue skies.
So yeah, we'll see.
I mean, like I said, it's always one thing I want to emphasize with these though, because
I know there are people that follow me into it.
Please listen to the sizing I'm talking about guys.
Right.
Like I'm not putting 30% of my portfolio in this.
This is a very, very concentrated small bet.
If it goes well, because Path was a 0.6% position going into the earnings.
Now it's a 3% position because the calls went up 300%
and it retained value a lot better than some of the equity
that had volatility between now and then.
Now you look at the PLAB position, it has an opportunity to do the same thing.
Maybe become a decent weighting after the earnings if it goes well.
And if it doesn't, cool, I take a little loss.
So that's what I'm thinking there.
What else did I want to touch on?
By the way, I think your path for next year has an easy move to like the 25, 26 area.
That's why I'm still in a lot of those
14s because what i'm thinking is is coming up in the on the january expiration those expire january
16th what i'll do is i'll have by then i'll have sold half of them right covered more than the cost
right and then maybe i'll exercise a little lot of them and take the shares at 15 with the stock
trading 20 plus you know gives me a flexible position to hold them. So that's what I'm thinking of. And you can take the shares and you could probably sell some covered calls on it
and into an extended area.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And trade around.
Yep.
We were speaking my language.
So the other name, this is basically the only software name in my portfolio,
DigitalOcean.
The last four candles for DigitalOcean have been just absolutely gorgeous.
And today's candle was superb.
35 is where spx
could try to hold again oh is that docm wow dude i didn't even realize how weak the index
close right here i thought and you're in me dude no i was saying i don't i didn't realize how weak
the indexes were today because like my portfolio we have 16 names i have one two three four five six seven eight
nine ten eleven twelve out of 16 green so i'm surprised based on how the indexes are performing
today i'm pretty nicely that's because that's called good stock selection yeah i guess oh
you have 35 seconds until your imbalance is set to be fair we're only down what do you guys
something that i'm seeing today that i'm just going to point out because it's a name i trade Since your imbalance is it. To be fair, we're only down to a half percent today.
Something that I'm seeing today that I'm just going to point out,
because it's a name I trade a lot, is I think like Iron kind of turned the corner a little bit.
I know it's still an expensive stock, and you guys all traded also,
but I kind of got out of the way pretty well when it hit the high of 75-ish,
and they just did that last money raise at 41,
and now it's acting better.
I think that's something for people to pay attention to a little bit more,
where I don't think it's going back to 70-plus anytime soon,
but if it gets above like 47-ish and this and that,
there could be like a move to 52 to 55,
kind of like when last week we were talking about ASTS. It kind of rebuilt down there, and we were buying it at 57.
I didn't quite get 50, but 57, it broke out, and here we are at 75.
So I'm thinking there could be a move for Iron coming up at this area.
Even CIFR is acting a little bit better, so that group is getting – the small caps are getting a little bit of love here.
So it's just something that I added to today.
I didn't add to a lot today, and I added to that today.
I think one thing I've noticed about the fact that my portfolio is mid-cap focused,
I only have one real true small cap, but the rest of mine are mid-caps.
One thing I've noticed is that there's been a tremendous ability for the portfolio to buck the trend in the indexes.
So when we're seeing CHOP and SP spy in the queues like my stocks are
just not responding to the chop you know and that's good you don't want you don't want your
stocks to be going down two percent up two percent the next day down two percent up two percent i
mean just if you especially if you're in options it's just going to kill you on the theta decay so
um it's good to see my name that's good that means there's real buyers in it too sorry go for it
that means it's it's real buyers not just computers going back and forth caught in different algos
exactly yeah if your stocks are continually getting caught up in the index volatility the
intraday index volatility spy waking up half a percent spy waking down half a percent if that's
what's happening to your portfolio, you're tied in probably
overtly liquid index-related names or overtly popular and thereby index-related names.
Even if they're not in the index, if a name is overtly popular, it's going to just trade
with the indexes. And I try to avoid that. More and more, I try to avoid that. The names that I
mentioned, VIAV, Amcor, ENS, PLAB, so on and so i try to avoid that the names that i mentioned viav amcor
ens p lab so on and so forth these are just not stocks that people talk about and so that gives
me more confidence that i'm operating sort of like for a position of strength but um yeah like i said
12 out of 16 positions green today portfolio literally ripping to new highs i had i don't
want to jinx it and say i might get to 600 by by the end of the year, but we hit five 89 today.
good job.
It's crazy on that.
On that,
I got to say that's frigging fantastic.
And I have to jump cause I got to get on the radio for the last eight
minutes.
I have a few phone calls I have to make before the close.
that's why again,
you know,
to run a three o'clock spaces where you get guys that do deep dives like
yourself.
And then you have old school technicians like me and like even options mike and you know guys like logical that also do
the deep dives like you guys are getting all this for for the whole price of no money back guarantee
of zero right there you go using your resources so good job tuning in good job staying here good
job you know pressing the keys because obviously we all can't do it for you you have to do it for
yourself in a way that's comfortable in a way for you to make money and learn but um
you know this is i'm sure there are a ton other great spaces that these guys are running so make
sure to look for them and and uh you can get a lot more out of that than than watching the guys on uh
you know the play traders on tv which we're not going to talk about
we appreciate you, Scott.
You're also live every single morning, 6.30 a.m. Eastern.
Shout out to that.
Also here every Monday.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
6.30 every morning, Monday through Thursday at the 6.30 Club.
It's free.
It's 20 minutes.
I'd love for you guys to tune in.
Usually guys throw me tickers.
I throw up the chart.
I tell them what I think.
Technically, besides good ideas, most people that tune in at 6.30 are 630 or up early getting prepared, like minded individuals that, you know, trade for a living.
So I'd love for anyone who's here to tune in 630. It's free. And, you know, and just say, hey, good morning.
And if you have any tickers that you want me to go over, technically, I'll just do my quick and dirty on all of them.
But again, the deep dive like these guys are doing, that gives you the conviction
and that gives you the wherewithal when
times seem a little tough.
You combine it all together and you can make
a lot of money in a lot of places.
On that note,
I got to jump.
Appreciate you, Scott.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome.
You do really enjoy that Monday segment.
It's a good time.
So we appreciate Scott for always coming on here.
Let's go back to Brian first because I cut Brian off before I went on my thing.
So let's go right back to Brian.
I'm sure, Brian, maybe you forgot what you were going to say, but I'm sorry.
We're back to you.
Yeah, no problem.
No, I haven't forgot what I was going to say.
I was going to actually make a point.
Scott had talked about next year and what names he's thinking about.
And I think this is important because I assume everyone's doing great.
I mean, everyone's not doing 600% like stock talk, but I'm sure this has been a good year for most people.
But there's no guarantee it's going to be like that next year. And so I think what's important is to be looking ahead, like some names that you
might be interested in next year. And, you know, maybe get a shopping list out of things that
you either think from a technical standpoint of firming up, or maybe from a narrative standpoint,
you think have potential to keep an eye out to see if they
do firm up. You know, I always say that you should prepare, not predict. You know, a lot of people are
like telling you what stocks are going to do this and that, whatever. I think it's much better to
have a game plan for a number of stocks and then let the stocks do the performing for you, you know,
before you actually get involved. So, you know, I know this year is not quite over, but I think it's,
it's not a bad idea to start looking towards the future a little bit.
I'm curious when tax sauce harvesting starts to become a conversation. I mean,
I feel like right now, Brian, is that some stuff that you ever look at? Are you a tax
sauce harvest type of guy? Yeah. So I, um guy? Yeah, so I bought some Kava today.
It's a much hated stock that looks like it might have bottomed.
It's got a very tight range in the last couple days,
so I've got a starter in there.
Keep in mind some other names in that space, CMG, SG.
By the way, these are not names that are going to generate you alpha. These are not
things that are going to make you money in the next two days or two weeks. These are things that
if you think secularly they're done going down and you think that you're about ready to see a
change in character in these names and they're going to get back to, I mean, I think Kava was
once 172. If that's your thesis, these are some of the things that I'm looking at.
And you never know, it could work out.
I mean, today I came in this morning,
one of my holdings that I had for a while, CFLT, was bought out by IBM, right?
You never know what's going to happen with these things.
But yeah, I am looking at some names that I think,
I mean, we should be in the tax loss selling season right now.
So if you see something that's really been in a bad downtrend, it's flushed and put a double bottom in the last couple weeks, it's probably past the tax loss harvesting.
I mean that's the way I would look at it at least.
Tax loss harvesting is a tough thing to navigate, I feel like,
because every year we think it's going to start at the beginning of December
and then the end of November and then go into the end of the year.
I feel like it's tricky because I've never really been able to put a grasp
on exactly when it happens.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of just like a general effect into the end of the year.
It's always tricky, I think, to navigate around tax-loss selling
and be like, oh, my name's going to see some tax loss selling.
That's always been hard for me to do, to integrate into the process.
That's why I don't base it on a date range. I base it more on a technical pattern, right? If I
see a pattern that makes sense, like, okay, it flushed, it popped up, it came back down to that
flush level held. I generally think, okay, probably selling and that name is done. But if you do it by a calendar, then just like you said, it's very hard.
Another one also, Okta, I think it looks like maybe it's done selling off.
It's had a horrible year this year, but it had a really nice reversal after earnings the other day.
I mean, it gapped down and then it just had this big igniting bar,
had a couple of very narrow days and it's starting to move back up. The thing about these plays is it's super easy to know where you're wrong,
right? If you start a position in Okta right now and it gets down below 84.50, you're wrong,
or at least you're wrong for right now. It gives very clear spots where you can be right on your
entries and know where you can get out. And you can probe these things a couple of times,
depending on how active you are,
how much you are interested in taking losses.
You try once, you take a small loss, okay?
You wait, you see if it sets up again, it does again,
you try again.
Sometimes the first time isn't always the right time,
but that's what I'm looking at on some of these names
that I think have probably made their final flush for 2025.
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think there's still one thing that is kind of interesting to
me is a lot of leading names from July and August are still trading below their 50 day moving
averages after what has been a hell of a single stock recovery in two weeks.
So that's curious to me.
Yeah, maybe a bit of a regime change going on.
I mean, I think the strength in semiconductors has been absolutely mind-boggling
the last two weeks.
You look at the strength in SMH.
I mean, even today, what, it's up a percent, full percent.
XLK dragging it up with it, 0.7.
And then a bunch of these other indexes are just weak.
I think the preference for chips has been interesting these last couple of weeks.
It's part of why I want to pick up the chip exposure.
There's actually another chip name that I am finishing up research on.
Is it Poet? Is it Poet?
No, no, no.
I'm actually, you know, I do like Poet, though.
It's funny.
I feel like Poet's sort of like a speculative stock because it's pre-revenue.
I actually do like Poet because of what they're doing.
The technology they're working on is actually very, very interesting and could be revolutionary.
There's a lot of upside to that name, you know?
It's like one of those high-risk, high-reward types of things.
And obviously, a great chart, which is why I'm sure you like it, Brian.
But fantastic charts.
I have nothing to say bad about it, technically. But you like it, Brian, but, um, fantastic charts. I have nothing
to say bad about it technically. Um, but yeah, it's spec as you know, you know, it's, it's, um,
it's spec. And so it's going to go up a lot. I'm going to have bad days and really good days. So,
um, yeah, I like that name a lot, but no, it's not that one. I'm right now. I'm trying to look
when I'm picking stocks in this environment, I'm trying to find names that I meet a couple
of qualifications. I want them to be cash flowing, aka profitable and cash flowing, not just profitable on one metric.
I want them to be trading at sub 30 P's, which doesn't necessarily make them cheap, but some sort of benchmark.
I want growth of some kind.
It doesn't need to be double digit growth.
High single digit organic growth is fine.
I know I'm not going to be able to get too many cheap stocks that are going double-digits
top and bottom, so I'm okay with that.
And the last thing I want is an inflection, either fundamental or technical, preferably
both.
And if I get all those things, those are the types of stocks I'm buying in this environment
because I think there's less downside to those types of names.
And I think there's especially less downside to those types of names if you buy them in relevant themes like semis, like energy, I think there's a chance that they become
those types of stocks over time, just like Amcor did in these last couple of months, right? Amcor,
nobody gave a shit about it. And now it's doubled. And now it's going to be on a lot of people's
radars. So try to find stories like that. And I think there's a lot of them out there, you know,
try to look for things like, you know, margin
improvement.
Okay.
Margin improvement tends to be a really, really good thing to look for across a lot
of industries.
If you see growths operating and net margins going up year over year, quarter over quarter,
the business is doing something right.
Generally, it's like a good, what's the term people use for this like not litmus test but
sort of like if you if you don't know anything about a company and you want to look at like
you want to know what's going on with the story and you want to look at one metric one metric
i would look at gross net and operating margin trend over the course of like, I like to look at it over a two year period.
Okay.
So eight quarters, but I mean, I don't know, whatever your, whatever floats your boat,
it's going to vary from person to person, depending on your thesis.
But I like to look at two years.
So what I do is on earnings hub, which is what I use, shout out to me.
It's actually a great product.
We advertise a lot of stuff up here, but like me and Evan actually use that product all
the time.
So, um, it's a nice product.
But you can look on Earnings Hub and you can see you can pull up over four years or 10 years or max.
You can do this on any site too.
It's not just Earnings Hub.
I'm not saying it's the only site in the world we can do it.
You can do it on Finviz, Yahoo Finance, whatever you guys like to use.
And pull up like two years, three years if you want.
Every quarter should be a different data point.
And you should look at something like,
you can look at earnings per share,
but earnings per share can be misleading
because of dilution earnings per share
for a variety of reasons.
You should really understand the story
if you're going to look at EPS.
Otherwise, EPS can be a really misleading metric.
So if you understand the story,
sure, you can look at an EPS trend.
But if you really want to just take away the noise, look at the margins. Go look at the margins
over eight quarters. Are they going up sequentially? Are they going up year over year?
You know, this is why sometimes zooming out to a three-year period can be better because then
you have three fiscal years of margin data and you have 12 quarters of margin data.
Gross operating net track it
track it our margins generally going up are they stagnating are they reversing to the downside
these are important things that will give you cues to ask what is going on with the business
why are these guys running a 45 gross margin when everyone else in the industry is running a 33% gross margin. Why?
What are they doing?
And you can find out.
These are not like rocket science questions.
Like you don't even have to ask yourself.
You can ask an LLM and it will tell you or it will try to explain to you why that is happening.
And once you get to the conclusion of those things, it becomes really easy to build conviction
and understand what's happening.
You're like, look, I have a company I like and an industry I like with a product I like
that's out-competing competitors. Their gross margins and net margins, operating margins are
going up sequentially and year over year. They have this specific product that's relevant to
data centers or to the energy industry or whatever that's driving the growth. I like their management
team.
They're not super dilutive.
There's not a ton of SBC, stock based comp,
for people that don't know what that means.
These are things you look for, green flags.
You line them up and you're like, cool, I'll buy it.
I'll buy it.
So yeah, that's just like a little overview
of what you should be looking for in an environment like this.
I really emphasize to people,
I think you should be looking for profitable companies in an environment like this. I really emphasize to people, I think you should be looking for profitable companies
in an environment like this.
I really, really, really still believe that.
Even after the recovery and a lot of momentum,
I think next year is going to be a lot easier to win
if you own these types of names.
I believe that.
I think 2026 is going to be a name
where profitable companies get rewarded.
I don't think that thematic stuff is going away.
Be very clear about that.
I don't think robotics and AI are going away.
I think there'll be the hottest themes next year too.
Robotics, AI, drones, those are like the themes.
They're not going anywhere.
But the preference of quality in those themes is changing.
All the anecdotes say it.
The data says it.
Last three months, you look at the relative performance of profitable stocks that are thematically relevant versus unprofitable stocks that are thematically relevant. It's night and day.
that have a valuation floor, that if the markets do pull back or correct or crash in Q1 or Q2 or Q3 of next year,
you're not going to be left with a stock that's down 80%.
That's hugely important in my view at this point in the market.
I mean, we've been in a straight line up since 23.
23 straight line up, 24 straight line up, 25 straight line up.
And yeah, maybe next year is
another straight line up. I'm not saying the bull market's over. There have been bull markets that
lasted seven or eight or nine years. It could go on. But it does behoove you to at some point say,
I've had enough of the speculative pre-revenue garbage. For me, that point was October 15th
when I put those tweets out. And I said, look, guys, party's been great in the speculative
pre-revenue garbage. I'm going to get out of all of it. And I did in October. And that
was the right decision. And I rotated to names that I've talked about since then, like Amcor
and ENS and VEAV and PATH and so on and so forth that have done very well and have held up relative
to those speculative names extremely well. Don't take my word for it. You can just look at the charts for all those names. So rotating your exposure in terms of the types of stocks is sometimes just as important as like
theme or regime related rotation. Because often what happens is people mistake selling in the speculative pre-revenue names as a damning point for the actual theme.
Like, oh, no one cares about AI anymore because the pre-revenue AI companies are selling off.
No, no.
And the perfect, perfect demonstration of this has been the relative strength in SMH these last few weeks.
It's the perfect demonstration of this.
Why? Because that's where the money is in SMH these last few weeks. Is the perfect demonstration of this, why?
Because that's where the money is in the AI theme, right?
The ROI in the frontier model makers
or the ROI in the rest of the thematic
has been underwhelming, period.
And the last two weeks, look at the strength.
I mean, Amcor is my estimation name,
so that's where I've seen the strength.
But if you own any semiconductor related name, Sam Sam a couple weeks ago was talking about ON, which has done amazingly.
Let it go.
You know, pick a semi-name.
Pick a semi-name these last two weeks, whether it's a supply chain name or a leader.
Look at how those charts have done.
They're exploding to the upside.
And to me, that says, look, that's the market saying, yeah, we're not done with the AI theme.
We're just done with the speculative pre-revenue garbage.
That's the stuff that we're not going to float back to the highs.
And you look at some of the pre-revenue names, still below the 50-day.
They've had signs of recovery just because liquidity has returned to the markets these last few weeks.
But they're not recapturing their all-time highs, whereas the reasonably priced names are.
Like Amcor keeps making new highs.
I mean, not all-time, but entry-year highs. And ENS, same thing, keeps making new highs.
Not retaking the 50-day, making new highs on the year. That's the difference. Which stocks are people willing to pay the highest price they've paid this year for going into the end of the year?
highest price they've paid this year for going into the end of the year. That has a lot of
anecdotal weight, right? If people are willing to pay all-time high prices for, or year high
prices for a stock headed into the end of the year on some of these thematically relevant names,
that to me is signal. And I'm paying attention to that. So yeah, I really like where the portfolio
is at. Add a little more semi-exposure today with those P-Lab calls. There's a third semi-name I'm looking at.
I want the book to be really geared towards U.S. semiconductor supply chain.
And I'm talking about going into 26.
I want my book to be really geared towards U.S. semiconductor supply chain specifically.
That means domestic suppliers to the industry.
industry. And the other theme that I want to be really focused on is the power grid.
And the other theme that I want to be really focused on is the power grid.
Those two, I want to go into 26 with heavy exposure to the US power grid and heavy exposure
to the US semiconductor supply chain. And so those will be my focuses. And right now,
the majority of my portfolio is in those categories. Over 40% of my portfolio is in those
two categories. So yeah.
We talked about this like in like the
general theme there is US on shoring and US like bringing yeah why are those the
parts of this like feel like you can share other ones that we've talked about
road I think they're the hardest I think I think it's really hard to lose in those
two categories that's why I'll explain why I think it's really hard to lose in those two categories. That's why. I'll explain why. I think it's really hard to lose in the U.S. semiconductor supply because one of the tenets of Amcor when I got into it was that
it was winner agnostic, that they didn't care whether Google's TPUs or NVIDIA's GPUs or Amazon's
TPUs or TSM or they don't care who wins because they package all the high-end chips
and they're the only capable packager of high-end chips in the entire United States of America.
So they don't care.
They get more volume either way.
Winner agnostic plays are some of my favorite because you don't have to debate with yourself
about what's going to happen at the top of the industry.
You don't have to sit there and say like, like will nvidia's uh demand get somewhat tapered off because of these tpus or
you know will will they still be competitive in tpus or you know or another competitor emerge in
gpus will will amd's products start being competitive you don't have to worry about any
of this because amcor is going to package all the high-end chips that are made in this country
period all the overflow of high-end chips that are made in this country, period.
All the overflow of high-end chips that are made in this country, period, will be packaged by Amcor.
No one else can do it.
So, and you're not going to spawn a packager.
You're not going to spawn them.
It's not that type of business.
You can't just say, oh, let's make a new packager.
So, yeah, anyway, winter agnostic. But on the power industry side,
it's also winter agnostic because people keep talking about the AI theme, like that this is
the driver of the US power grid. The US power grid has been outdated for over a decade.
It's not just about the AI theme. Everything that is happening in the global economy,
top to bottom, demands more electrification, demands more
power. And this goes from everything from emerging market growth, okay, the rapid growth we're seeing
in the economies in South America and Southeast Asia specifically, those are my two areas of
international focus. Those two areas, almost every country in Southeast Asia and almost every country
in Latin America is growing rapidly, okay? And those hyper growth markets, what do they need? Power infrastructure. When
you go from being a underdeveloped country to a more and more developed country incrementally,
the number one thing that drives that is power infrastructure. Your ability to deploy and
consume power plays a huge role in development of a nation.
So there's demand there for the global power grid industry, period, because of these huge
EMs that are growing rapidly. Second, AI, data centers. Obviously, we know that. Third,
the electrification of everything else, everything from e-commerce to the digitization of trends,
Everything from e-commerce to the digitization of trends to the storing of data to everything
that touches the modern economy requires power and electricity.
So investing in the power grid is like, it's a no-brainer.
It is a no-brainer.
We're going to hit a 10-year inflection cycle in power grid investment that we've never
seen before.
We're going to be investing at three times the rate we've invested in the prior decade.
So I think with both U.S. semiconductor supply chain, the reason these are my focuses,
and with the power grid, I think you get winner agnostic ways to play the future
with both of those. Winner agnostic ways to be involved in the future, to be involved in
the best thematics, and to benefit from them, both on a volume growth and an earnings growth
standpoint, without having to pick the winner and play that game and pay 100 PEs for the market
leading stocks. Instead, these names that I talk about that are in my book are trading at 20 P,
25 P, 1.5 X sales, 2 X sales, like they're not expensive. And most of them have no debt
or little to no debt. You know, that's significant.
When you add all those factors up together,
you see a potential for re-rating versus the peers in the industry.
And that's what I see.
So yeah, semiconductor supply chain, domestic,
and frankly, domestic power grid stocks,
because I'm not going to pretend like I own any foreign power grid stocks.
So domestic power grid and domestic supply chain,
that's why I picked those. But I have other themes in my portfolio too as you guys know i still have
aerospace and defense in my portfolio i still have nuclear energy my portfolio although there's only
one stock with that which is leu um yeah i still have other themes that i'm touching that i have
my legacy positions like why even have that stock why even still have the nuclear theme because i
like a lot.
That's why.
Just because I don't have other names in the basket doesn't mean I should have known any.
But you're kind of covering it with the grid theme.
No, no.
It's a different thing.
It's a different thing.
Nuclear energy and the power grid are different things.
Those are different themes. Because power grid, I'm thinking more of grid stabilization, grid renewal, grid improvement.
When I think about power grid investment, those are the three things I'm thinking about.
Stabilizing the grid, improving parts of the grid that need to be improved, and replacing other parts of the grid that need to be outright replaced.
The three biggest beneficiaries of those are things like line hardware, substations, fittings, energy storage, which is what I have ENS for those are to me the big four
line hardware substations hardware fittings and energy storage and I think you can get exposure
to either one of those four but and a lot of times with the first three substations fittings and and
and line hardware you'll see a lot of. I have PLPC for line hardware in that
basket. It's one of the smaller names of my portfolio in terms of market cap, but it's one
of the bigger names of my portfolio in terms of weighting. But I have PLPC for line hardware.
And then I have Inersis for energy storage, ENS, which I think is still such a cheap stock,
even though it goes up every day.
But yeah, so you basically dig through these themes.
You find parts of the themes that you think win either way.
And then you find stocks that are related to those parts of the themes.
It's really quite a simple process. The hard part is the distinction once you've narrowed it down to 10 or 20 stocks.
That's where the experience comes in, right?
That's where your ability to look at a chart and be like, nice chart.
Or your ability to look at a balance sheet and say, nice balance
sheet, that's where that comes into play, where you can start differentiating those names based
on the nuance. But yeah, with Centris, Centris is a very unique, interesting name. And the reason I
still own it is because, look, at a 4.8 billion market cap, I just don't think the market is still rewarding it for what it's worth.
The chance that we'll have another enrichment facility like the American Centrifuge plant in any time soon is very low.
Very low.
And even if one of the other international players wants to come
here and build an enrichment plant like it's gonna take a while and in the
vacuum of that centrist is the only enricher in the country if you want
nuclear energy to move two centimeters it can't be done without centrist that's
why I still value that stock that's why I still own that stock even though I
don't own any other nuclear stocks anymore that's the only one I still own
so yeah I don't know maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm right but I think that stock trends higher
over the next few years um you know I I think frankly speaking that stock goes a lot higher
in the next few years um so yeah we'll see Sam what's up yeah I was gonna say the on-sharing
theme is definitely something to look at.
I mean, I don't know if this is going to be in your scope, but one of the major on-shoring
theme, not necessarily the semiconductor fabrication, but consulting for teaching companies how
to fabricate silicon, and especially onshore is Skywater.
I think you mentioned this before in your community, but that's something
I've been looking at. Chart looks pretty interesting today. It's pretty green today. I don't know
if there was any recent news or anything. I still have to look into it more, but that's something
I'm looking at. But other than that, On Semiconnector has been on a massive rampage. It's
about 25% from its lows just a couple of weeks ago.
And it's actually pretty funny because like,
whenever Amcor's up, this is up.
Whenever this is up, Amcor's up.
And I'm not saying that one's attributed to another,
but it's all obviously in that theme of on-shoring.
I mean, if you think of power chips around the entire world,
you have Saitime, which is one of the major suppliers for Tesla,
are contributors to supplying power trucks for Tesla. But then there's also Navitas and there's also Wolfspeed.
But those GAN technologies and GAN fabricators, their profitability profiles are not that great.
In fact, Wolfspeed almost declared bankruptcy recently. Navitas is probably years away from
being profitable.
Onset Tractor is already profitable
and doesn't have exactly the best gross margins out there.
But they are saying that there's going to be
about 10 to 12% growth,
which is obviously a much faster acceleration.
I don't think next quarter is actually going to be
that much of an acceleration at all.
I think next quarter is going to be
another contracting quarter.
But I think that will be their last quarter contraction
until they continue to accelerate.
And who knows, maybe they might even guide higher.
But this was another one of those stocks where the chart looked terrible at the time.
But then they announced that $6 billion buyback, which is about one third of its mark cap at
that time.
It was $18 billion and trading at $46.
And the stock just faded its entire pop after ours that day.
And it was a name that I went pretty heavy on.
I would say I took a little bit of notes from how you position yourself in certain companies
you're very bullish on, making a very big, concentrated position with calls.
Did the same thing with this one.
And it's been helping the portfolio too, along with Amcor as well.
And I don't want to take credit for Amcor or anything, but you know,
the conviction is pretty important when you got to do your own research.
Like even though you have your, your favorite,
your favorite guru or a favorite investor that you like following,
you just got to do your own research and build your own conviction.
I said one, I said one. But anyways, you know, I mean, you're not doing bad. You're
about 600% a year. You're not doing bad. I mean, a lot of it was up 200%. You guys aren't doing bad
at all. Anyways, obviously, you guys are killing it in the market. So whenever someone's up like
600%, 200% a year, you got to kind of listen to like the way that they structure their investments,
not like following their plays or anything. I mean, I've never been really one to think
that it's a good idea to borrow conviction from people
because then when the market drops,
you're just like freaking out when it's dropping.
You have no idea why,
but then you could sell it at the bottom.
Like I know a lot of people
who were big fans of Nvidia in 2021
and kept buying, buying, buying
and then sold right below $150 pre-split.
And then they're just beating themselves in the butt because they completely missed the
entire thing because they just borrowed that conviction.
But when you're buying, or maybe like you hear about a good stock idea, or maybe you
read someone else's report or thesis or something, it's like, that actually sounds pretty good.
Let me go ahead and check this out.
Right?
And then you kind of build on that conviction,
do the research and hours of research, days of research, whatever it is,
that'll help you hold the stock as it comes down. And timing is really everything in this market.
But what's more important is not selling at the bottom because it's very easy to do that.
When everyone thought the world was going to collapse in the last couple of
weeks?
Well, not really collapsed.
When a lot of speculative stuff got sold out,
you had a lot of people who were thinking iron is going to go to a hundred
bucks who just completely sold out or they're still in it,
but they kept on buying calls and everything.
And it was likely because it was very popular and trending ticker on
FinTwit.
Now, mind you, I still do believe in the fundamentals for that company, but there's a lot of companies out there that a lot of people buy that were riding very high and
getting a lot of excitement because the price kept going up.
They thought it was going to go to the moon.
And then it's just hasn't even recovered since then.
And the problem is, is that some of them are selling it.
They're selling it because the price isn't going every day as it had been.
And a lot of people don't really do the research into certain things.
And I'm not saying that you have to do the research in the stock market to make money.
What I'm saying is that if you don't understand what you own,
or if you don't have the conviction to what you own, you're going to sell the bottom.
Or you're going to sell near the bottom.
Because you're going to go through an inevitable drawdown. Everyone goes through a
drawdown all the time. I mean, I went through a pretty nasty drawdown last October. I still
remember October 10, I was riding sky high on so many things. I was riding sky high on iron,
nebbius, everything. And then I just got my butt handed to me after Trump made that tweet.
It's been pretty rough since then, but I was able to make new all-time highs last
week and continue to push all-time highs today in the portfolio, which is great.
But it was a rough lesson learned. A lot of those speculative companies that I was making so much
money on are not doing so well today. I'm not going to lie. I have a position of irony. It has
not been working out so well, but I've sized it correctly. I haven't limited it up or anything.
It's just in shares and I'm willing to wait that one out. But then there's other companies where I think
the valuation is still really attractive today, including Zeta. Zeta is a company that I've been
buying pretty heavy when I was in the 16th and 17th, especially when it pulled back to the 15th
for a moment. Another company I mentioned was On Semiconductor. And there's even more of a few
names that are out there, but like,
there's still attractive valuations, attractive companies at current valuations in the market
that could continue to push higher. And a lot of the companies that I mentioned are all profitable.
They're not specular companies like you're mentioning, where it's pre-revenue, no revenue,
whatever it is. These are companies that actually have tangible profits. And while they might not be in the US semiconductor onshoring theme,
they still have a great history of beating earnings.
Stata has beaten earnings 16 out of 17 times
to continue to raise guidance.
They always beat guidance.
And on top of that,
the free cash flow margin terminal is probably around 25%.
Right now they're at about 12%
and they're still growing about 28% year over year.
And they're likely going to continue to accelerate as long as marketing stays relevant in the
market.
Because if companies pull back on marketing, a lot of these other companies are going to
pull back.
That includes Reddit, that includes ZapLovin, all that.
But if the market still stays bullish, earnings growth still expands and everything, whatever
is working today will likely continue to work.
And there's no guarantee that all the speculative will likely continue to work and there's
no guarantee that all the speculative stuff is going to work out even if the market goes up you
haven't even seen it so we'll see yeah no i agree with that there's there's a lot of there's a lot
of angles by which you approach this market i think if you if knowing what you own even though
that's constantly repeated by me and just i don don't know, feels probably like a cliche at this point, I think to everyone is the best advice still, even
though it sounds so simple.
It's just a really a matter of like actually getting to that point of understanding.
And I think the biggest thing I've noticed with newer, younger traders is that they don't
really understand what that means.
They think they know the stock, but they don't actually know it.
You know, they like understand what the business does generally.
They probably don't even know, like, you know, if the business has multiple divisions.
They don't know what the industry standard margins are.
They don't know any of these very, very important things in order to contextualize the company.
They don't know any of these very, very important things in order to contextualize the company.
And so if you are one of those people that owns, I think if you own over five stocks, you have to start considering this, especially if you own over 10.
But if you're one of those people that owns 10 plus individual stocks and you're sitting around and you scroll through your portfolio every day and you don't really have a sense of differentiation in other words when you look at all the names in your portfolio you feel the same way about
everything that's a good sign that you don't know what you own that's a good sign that you do not
have like if all of your if all of your stocks just appear to you as like uh marbles in a bag
where you know you're like oh you, you know, that position, the only difference
between the positions to you is the sizing in them, then you don't know what you own.
You should, like when I scroll through my portfolio, whenever there's like market weakness,
for example, like let's say markets are pulling back and I know I need to take exposure off the
table. Like this is one of the first things I do when the markets are pulling back
as a way to manage risk instead of like hedging immediately, you know, because the reason I don't
hedge immediately when the markets are pulling back is because there's more often than not,
pullbacks at a bull market are fake outs, right? So you're not going to get much room to the
downside. So I do hedge 21 EMA breaks. I hedge 50 day breaks. I hedge even bigger.
So nothing I don't hedge. I do hedge with naked puts when those technical breakdowns happen.
But far before I ever consider hedging, I take long exposure off. So I like reduce my net long
exposure. It's pretty simple. I just sell stocks for people in the newer traders, the audience,
that don't understand what that means. I just take down my long exposure.
So whenever that's happening, markets are pulling back.
And let's say I have a book of, you know, in peak bull market scenarios, I tend to have a book of like 15 to 18 positions.
Let's say I'm in that scenario.
Let's say I have 18 positions and the markets start pulling back.
Then I look at myself and I go, okay, too bad, so sad.
Markets are pulling back here.
I need to take long exposure off.
How do I approach that?
Well, what I do is I scroll through my portfolio position by position,
and I ask myself holistically, am I a seller here?
Why or why not?
Or am I willing to be a seller here?
Why or why not?
And for my high conviction positions, like, for example, during when the October selling started in individual stocks,
not in the equities, when the late October selling started in individual stocks, I was like, okay,
I see the young wine happening in front of me. There are 21 EMA breakdowns everywhere.
These are going to go lower. I need to take exposure off the table. Positions like Amcor,
ENS, VIAV, Robinhood, Kratos. I just scrolled past those. I was like,
there's no way I'm selling those. It didn't even cross my mind. Like I didn't even stop. And
you know, I have options, different options, strategies on different positions, et cetera,
et cetera. So sometimes I'll be like, oh, okay. You know, I might have to go through each of those
individual options, positions positions or each of the
components of the position and ask myself like, Oh, maybe I take a little bit off here for those
core positions. I just scrolled past. I was like, there's no chance I'm selling any because I know
the story so deeply and intimately in the thesis. I was like, dude, a little bit of negative price
action is not going to scare me out of those. So what I ended up doing is I scroll past those
10 core positions. And then when I get to the other back half of the. So what I end up doing is I scroll past those 10 core positions. And then
when I get to the other back half of the book, then I start asking myself, okay, let's pull up
the daily chart. Let's pull up the weekly chart. Let's pull up the monthly chart. Are there any
technical breakdowns how happening? If they are, I asked myself, what is my actual loyalty to this
position? What's my actual conviction level in this position? And that's why I sort of think that these 5% or 10% pullbacks that happen during the year
are very good, healthy for market participants, not just from a price action standpoint,
because it tests your conviction. It forces you to say, like, do I really want to hold this through
whatever might happen? If this 5% pullback turns into a 15% pullback, do I really want to hold this through whatever might happen if this 5% pullback turns into a 15% but do I really have the conviction to sit in
this thing and if the answer is yes it probably means you really do like that
stock and you really do understand that stock if you're willing to say you know
what I'm gonna sit through a 30% drawdown on this thing and I don't care
you probably know it well or you're just an
ignorant which that's happens too sometimes you're just ignorant and you think you know it
you don't and then you know you sell at the lows that's a lesson learned as well but um
you have to think through those things and you have to like ask yourself in those moments like
what do I really want to own what am I unwilling to sell and that'll really help you organize your book you know when i look back at some of the stocks i
sold in like late october november like i don't have an interest in buying some of them back
and maybe that's a testament to the fact that i didn't have the conviction in the first place
maybe i thought i did but i don't have a testament maybe it's like oh you know what
you don't want to own them now so you
know that getting shaken out of them was enough to keep you out of the stock you know so anyway
what what's up trump said he told she the us will allow nvidia to ship at h200 oh wow
is nvidia getting juiced on that oh let's get bit. I was looking, there was a lot of headlines
from other places,
but they were mostly quoting Semaphore.
G responded positively
to NVIDIA shipment news.
Here's what he said.
Interesting. 25% will be paid to the US government.
So there's a 25% tax on this? Same policy applies to a mean Intel also give us a second here We're all doing the same thing. We'll see. My post is going to be right.
You said Intel and who else?
He said AMD, but you don't even have to put Intel for being real. What is NVIDIA stock doing sorry?
They're up 1.4 percent well that explains the relative strength and um that explains the relative strength in chips these last two days then
it's right back to where they pumped it in the middle of the day on that some of four article
came out the funny thing is being a p-lab it's actually bullish repeal abtica's peel I was trying to exposure so
it's a uh where's he making these oh it's true there it is yeah
you know i have not looked at true social as much recently i feel like i have not had to
yeah it gets reposted on twitter pretty much not even that well i'm someone who reposted i just
don't think they're valuable at all most of the time for the stock market as much as they were
that's crazy it's the president of the united states um yeah
there have been some wild posts that have affected everything yeah yeah that's a crazy lesson
we're gonna pretend you didn't say that all right what's what are the big true social posts
i feel like they haven't been coming from truth so i'm just saying like you can't say that it's
not worth paying attention what the president President of the United States is saying, regardless of, like, anything else.
Where it's coming from.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, like, if...
I'm just...
So what I'm saying is...
I'm not saying it's not worth looking at.
What I'm saying is he has made less on Truth Social recently.
It feels like.
He talks a lot on the...
The thing is, is he's made less...
Okay, I'll give you this.
He's made less market-related comments lately.
But he, at any point, is liable to say anything.
So like, you know, he does press conferences sometimes about like totally unrelated stuff.
And the people will ask him about the market and he responds.
So I don't know.
It's yeah, you got to pay attention.
What are you saying?
I don't think I said you don't have to.
I just said he's been doing less.
Okay, so apparently Blackwells and Rubin are not part of the deal.
Yeah, of course.
But it is the
story earlier from Semiforce
of the chips, these were like the 18 months behind the leading in chips we're probably hear
story from China that they don't want them and then they're probably gonna
take a bunch of them and then then these are gonna get banned again then they're
gonna say we already have them it videos you they get 15 billion out there's
gonna they're just trying to say to hate them it's gonna get knocked down the US
government's gonna raise like what like 3 what, like, $3 billion,
and we'll do this again in six months.
I'm telling you, this is his way, we talked about this last week.
Like, you know, I said this, and people were, like, kind of,
I felt like I was being speculative, but I said, I was like,
I bet you that Trump asked for a stake in nvidia and jensen said no and because you know two weeks after that jensen meeting with um
with trump they signed the intel stake so it was like a it was like a consolation prize for them
i think because i'm pretty sure jensen was like no we don't want the u.s government taking a 10 he was asked about it he was asked about it um when i went to that gtc thing was
right after it and he was definitely like yeah we didn't want it we don't need a stake we didn't
want a stake or something specifically he like directly asked like i mean he didn't say no we
didn't do it but it felt like yeah we didn't need it yeah exactly like they he knows he said we
don't need the government's help we are leading the industry without the government like why do
we need the government to interfere and like add any, you know, throw
any wrenches into the mix? So yeah, he probably said flat out, no, sorry. Thank you very much
anyway. And then in the same breath, he probably was like, oh yeah, when can we ship to China?
And so I think this is Trump's way of being like, okay, you won't give us a stake, but if you are
going to ship to China, you're going to give give us 25 which is effectively a stake in the china part of the business so um yeah seems like you you uh satisfy both parties on this
i know i just posted but i'm gonna post again we did hear for a while though this is a good
one to post we did hear for a while of China saying that they don't even want the chips.
So now it's going to be put to the test a little.
It is quite clearly going to be reversed within the next six months.
I'd put betting odds on it.
Make it, Kalshi.
But I genuinely think this is
obviously going to get reversed at some point. But the question is now
how much can NVIDIA, how much can AMD
snuff through to China? NVIDIA has multiple
times said that they have no China sales
into their forward guidance
at all.
What's all-time eye on NVIDIA?
200?
210?
Got a little ways to go.
Interesting.
So that was the big story of the day from earlier.
Semaphore put out this article a couple hours ago
and obviously Trump mentioning it right now
there was a
Tesla
downgrade from Morgan Stanley but they also
did switch their analysts which we talked about a little
earlier on that one
I saw it originally I was like oh Adam
Jones going bearish on Tesla that's interesting
not only did they raise their price target but
it is a new guy I don't know did you read that analyst report stock talk to get the chance
sorry on what uh uh the morgan stanley tesla report i know they switched it off no i did not
read it i did not read it i'm curious unfortunately i didn't get the chance to
I'm curious.
Unfortunately.
I didn't get the chance to.
No, I didn't.
I read some stuff this morning, but not.
I don't really read large cap reports that much, to be honest.
They're never really saying anything interesting.
They're always just covering obvious stuff.
There's not a lot of alpha and large cap sell-side research.
Never has been, Probably never will be.
Those companies are too big.
Their customers are too well-known.
It's just, yeah.
I'm not saying they're bad investments.
Obviously not.
They're just, there's not, it's hard to find alpha,
like incremental alpha on those names.
No worries on that one.
I did see that report.
That was one of the ones I thought was a little interesting today.
There was a couple
Google stories. There's one that Google says
they're going to be making AI glasses
powered by Gemini in 2026.
AI glasses wars. I put in my
tweet that in the future, people are going to be made fun of
for not having glasses which it was a little bit different in the past there's also another story
that google reportedly told advertisers that it plans to bring ads into the uh it's ai chap out
gemini starting next year see how that rollout ends up going stock talk do you have any thoughts
on that ads and these chatbots Maybe it's the lower end tiers.
Well, I thought the glasses,
did you see Warby Parker today?
No, I did not.
I guess they are.
Are they Google's partner?
Official?
Yeah.
The Google's partner for the glasses.
The stock was up 14% today.
That chart actually looks superb right now,
pushing into the 200-day.
I don't know.
I used to look at The AI in Gemini,
I think I've maybe seen before.
I don't know if I have seen
smart glasses from Google 2026.
Maybe I'm just not remembering it correctly.
No, no, that's new.
Yeah.
That was today, yeah.
That news is new.
Yeah, and so,
Warby put up,
what is this, an HVE?
Close to an HVE today.
HVE being highest volume ever.
Close.
It might be.
I don't know what my chart is.
Hold on.
It's close.
It's close to the highs from 22 at the lows at $10.
There was a huge, huge bar.
It's pretty much the same size
that volume candle today
on that 13% move up,
which is probably because Warby
is going to be making those glasses for Google.
So we'll see.
Next red day,
I may try to look to get into that one,
but I wasn't going to chase it today.
But yeah, that's relevant
to the news you're talking about.
I think that's interesting.
I mean, I think the fact
that Google's now getting into it too
and Meta's in it and Apple's obviously in it but now pivoting
away from the vision pro into like more of a lightweight you know consumer oriented device
that's clearly going to be the next personal compute device it's gonna be glasses does warby parker make like a iconic style of sunglasses
or just kind of like off-brand i know it's their brand but like a like a ray-ban type i wouldn't
say they have like an iconic like glass like the wayfair or something like ray-ban does but
warby's a newer brand right so they do have some i mean i buy my
eyeglasses from warby i usually wear contacts but when i'm not wearing contacts like i have
a pair of eyeglasses i buy them from warby it's super easy i mean like it's super cheap super easy
pretty good quality like for 100 bucks you can get like a very good quality pair of glasses
go in they do your eye test there they ship it to you within a week it's like
modern buying for um for eyeglasses i like their business model and like how their stores operate
a lot i've always like liked the business in general but um now with this google partnership
it's a more interesting business it's actually pretty reasonably priced stock anyway um like
if you if you just want to own it for owning the
eyeglass business like there's a thesis to be had there too but um as you guys know like s
laura luxottica has dominated the eyewear market for a long time and so it's really hard to be a
new entrant in the u.s eyewear industry you're fighting against a you know a giga giant in s
laura luxottica who owns pretty much all the major brands, Sunglass, Hot, Ray-Ban, everything. They own everything. So Oakley, so on and so forth. So
yeah, Warby has to compete with all of them, but Google clearly saw something because Google was
like, yeah, you can build our smart glasses. So I imagine the meeting between Google
Brass and Warby Parker Br brass, where they convinced them like,
Hey,
don't build your own glass.
We'll do it for you.
That's pretty compelling to me for a small ass company like that,
to be able to convince a multi-trillion dollar company that they're better
off using Warby Parker to build the glasses than they are building them
themselves.
Like how hard is it to build a pair of glasses?
It's not exactly an engineering feat.
We've been building glasses for 400 years
pretty well modern eyeglasses like what almost 500 yeah so it's like what why does google need
them there must be some reason right or maybe google thinks like oh you already have the retail
stores so that when we drop the google glasses you can just throw them on the shelves i mean i
don't know there has to be some reason why Google's saying,
yeah, you're a $3 billion company.
We'll make the glasses with you.
I have a question.
Do you think any part of it is that, hey, Meta did it,
so we're going to do it?
Or are they not that stupid?
No, no, no.
That is part of it, Evan.
But it's like when Meta went to Ray-Ban,
they went to Ray-Ban because they're like hey you have this
iconic sunglass that's the most popular sunglass in the united states which is the wayfarer
the first smart glasses were made on the wayfarer right because it's an extremely popular pair of
sunglasses like i have a pair of wayfarers like millions and millions of people have wayfarers so
meta was like look we're gonna piggyback on the popularity of your sunglass, not on
the popularity of like our product.
That's what Meta did.
Meta was like, look, people already like your sunglasses.
Let's make them smart.
Now, Google's going to Warby who has no comp to the Wayfarer.
No one knows.
No one even knows the names of the Warby Parker models.
When's the last time you saw somebody wearing a pair of eyeglasses and they were like, oh dude,
nice. I mean, I don't even know what the, I don't even know what the name of my own Warby Parker
glasses are, whatever the, whatever the brand name is. So like brand recognition matters a lot.
Network, there's a net, it's a network effect, right? It's like people are going to go to stores,
people are going to go to sunglass huts around America anyway, and buy Wayfarersares. When they walk into the store, and then the guy who's selling them is like,
oh, by the way, have you seen our smart version made by Meta?
Do you want to check those out too? And the guy's like, oh, look, it doesn't look that much different. Sure, I'll buy those.
That's what Meta was hoping for. It was just piggybacking the sales on an iconic
product. Warby does not have that. So
the thinking for Google cannot be, oh, let's use your Warby
101 as a pivot point. No, they don't have a glass like that. So Google's going to them for some
other reason. I don't know what that reason is, but there's some other reason. Either the retail
presence or maybe Warby showed them something that they were working on already maybe warby was already working on smart glasses i don't know something happened in that room which
that meeting wasn't disclosed but three members of google brass met with warby parker brass and
then two weeks later warby parker announced they're going to be making google smart glasses
something happened in that meeting i don't know what it was but something happened and it wasn't
we have a wayfarer because they don't so i don't know these are was, but something happened. And it wasn't, we have a Wayfair, because they don't.
So I don't know.
These are the kind of things that make me interested in stocks, where it's like, I know something happened.
And then I asked myself, what could have happened there?
It was the same thing with Amcor.
When Apple paid for Amcor to expand their facility, I was like, why is Apple doing that?
Amcor was a $6 billion company.
Then I was like, why is Apple paying for them to expand the footprint of their facility?
That led me into a deeper rabbit hole. Then I found about the TSM overspill on co-host packaging
and how TSM had no packaging facilities in the United States. I started scratching my head and
I was like, wait a second, started connecting the dots. And then I didn't know the answer.
Like, I still don't know why Apple paid to expand that Amcor facility.
But the conclusion I came to was this is an extremely critical supplier.
And I bought the stock and the stock doubled.
And these are the kind of questions where you see something happening in the industry.
Then you ask yourself, why?
you ask yourself, why? Why? Why did Google sign a contract with a $3 billion eyeglass company that
Why?
is, you know, the smallest in the country? Like, why? What did this show them? What happened in
that meeting? So that's always how I like to think of stocks is like, ask myself the why question
over and over again, you kind of have to be like a little kid when it comes to stocks,
if you want to understand them, well, you know, kids are always asking, well, why? Well, why? And then you answer
the question four times and they still ask why? And it seems annoying to you. That's actually how
you should think about stocks. You know, why is the gross margin higher? You find out why it's
higher and then you go, okay, well, why is that product driving a higher gross margin? Then you
find out why and then you go, okay, well, what is it about that product that's allowing that to happen? And then you go and you say, okay, well, how is the
product built that makes it different for that to happen? Oh, is it not about how it's built? Oh,
it's just about a feature of the product. Okay, what is that feature? Okay, why is that feature
driving more demand? You see what I'm saying? Before you know it, you're 12 questions deep.
And now you know the company, the product, data the comps everything from just answer asking the why question over and over
again so ask why more often with your stocks when a stock's going down okay
you own a stock it's during relative weakness versus the market for six
weeks in a row why you might want to say no, it's just price action. No,
the market's trending up and your stock's trending down. There's usually a reason.
Find it out. And when you find it out, then ask yourself, okay, is that a good enough reason to sell? Or is this a bad reason for the stock to be weak and I just buy more? That's where the
hard assessments come in, because when you get to the bottom of the why, the really hard stock picking assessments come in when you ask yourself, okay, is the market right?
Okay, I identified this reason for relative weakness in my stock.
I feel like I know why now.
But is it stupid?
Is it a dumb reason for the stock to be weak?
Is it getting thrown out with the bathwater?
Is it getting sold indiscriminately? Is it getting sold with a basket of stocks
that are getting sold for X, Y, and Z reasons, but really in reality, it's a winner agnostic
play and it shouldn't be getting sold that much? These are the kind of critical thinking
estimations you should be making in those instances if you want to be really, really good as a manager of
stocks. Because the difference between the guy who identifies the why and says, I'm selling,
versus the guy who identifies the why and says, no, I'm buying the dip, the difference between
those two guys is the performance difference. One of those guys is going to kill it on the year,
and the other guy's probably going to do okay. the guy that thought it out and was like no no no no no no okay i get it the price action is weak
for x y and z reason this is what's happening this is the industry driver for it but the market is
misgrouping this stock this is an undeserved uh you know um sell off i'm gonna buy it you know
and the same thing goes for earnings. Sometimes there'll
be an earnings report and a stock you really like goes down on earnings. Ask yourself, why?
What was it in the report that's making it go down? And then go back and say,
okay, is that a good enough reason? You know, like Amcor, for example, after their last earnings was
down 7%. A lot of my members were tagging me. They're like, does this change your thesis? And
I was like, no, the stock's down 7% because gross margins were down slightly. The thesis is not
about gross margins. The thesis is about revenue expansion from the new customers and partners in
the Peoria facility. So I said, no, this is not a dip that you should be worried about.
A week later, a research came out with a report on Amcor and it was up 17% on the day,
reversing the entire down, moving back to the upside.
That is understanding the why and saying, no, this is not a good reason to sell.
No, I know the stock's down 7% on earnings, but you should not be a seller here.
Yes, I know it's breaking down below the 21 EMA, but you should not be a seller here.
That's conviction.
That's conviction versus the tech versus the pure chart guy who looks at that and goes well Amcor is breaking below 21 EMA
I can't be in this anymore
You know how many technical guys who were following me on Amcor that got shaken out?
On that move the first dip below 21 EMA this immediately sold it
Because they're technical guys. They don't know the Amcor thesis
They maybe heard what I was saying, but they didn't really understand it
And they sold in the next week is up 17% I had one of my friends in real life
He like texted me and he's like shit dude. I that, and he texted me, and he's like,
shit, dude, I just sold.
I was like, why'd you sell?
And he's like, went below the 21 EMA.
And I'm like, yeah, you don't get it.
So if you get the story, you're able to look at those fake outs and say, no, this is a
fake out versus the guy that gets faked out.
Like, that's the difference between actually understanding the why so ask yourself why repeatedly and if you if you haven't asked
yourself that question about your holdings do yourself a favor this weekend go through everything
you own and ask the why questions why do you own it why do you still own it what price did you buy
it at when you bought it what did you think of the stock do you still think that all those things
about the stock uh is it still as cheap as you thought it was when you bought it would
you buy it here do you buy it here that's a good one that I like to ask a
lot you know why or why not is it because it's too expensive or is it
because your price anchoring and it's up too much from your cost basis going
through your portfolio and asking all these questions taking notes putting on
a reference sheet just will just change the way you trade.
It'll be way better because you'll understand everything.
And you won't just have a book of positions that you own without context.
And you're just sitting on them, sucking your thumb, wondering, why is it up?
Why is it down?
You know, that's the dumb question to ask on a day-to-day basis.
That's the dumb question to ask on a day-to-day basis.
You know, if you want to ask about price action when it's consistent, when it's showing you a trend.
Like I was mentioning earlier, if for four or five weeks the stock is relatively weak versus the indexes, then you ask why it's down.
Not if it's down on one day.
You know, let's say a stock goes up, you know, relative strength versus market stocks up 20% in two weeks, then it's down one day.
You're not going to ask yourself, why is it down?
It's down because it went on a parabolic move.
Let it cool off a little bit.
That's a silly question.
But with sustained relative weakness or sustained relative strength, you should ask yourself,
why on the price?
And with sustained trends in the fundamental realm, sustained margin increases or sustained
margin decreases over several quarters.
You should ask yourself why.
You have to know these things.
You cannot just look at a business as a business and say, I like the business.
It's a good company.
It doesn't matter.
This is just like rudimentary school, 15-year-old level stock analysis.
Don't do that.
It's not just, I like the company and the products, so I want to invest in the stock.
That is a ridiculously simple-minded way to think about stocks you're not going to generate alpha doing
that you have to ask yourself the very very specific questions about the industry and the
company and the data and the fundamentals and the chart the simple questions ask yourself those
in detail and you won't you'll you will realize how much better
you become just by asking why just by doing that you'll be like wow I never
even knew I had to look at these things I never even knew that these these were
things you could know about a stock that's the point you'll get to and then
you'll know the questions to ask for every other stock from there then it
becomes easy once you've figured out the ladder of reasoning which is what I
like to call it for a name and it'll vary from name to name the sort of ladder
of you know what is what is the balance sheet look like what is the growth look
like when the margins look like what does the chart look like once you go up
that ladder and answer all those questions you'll have a process
effectively for doing the same thing with the next stock
and the next stock and the next stock.
And then over time, you'll add elements to that.
Or you might say, oh, you know, this process I traditionally use is for tech stocks.
Well, now I'm looking at an industrial stock.
I should probably be looking at it a little bit differently.
And again, ask yourself why.
Ask yourself, why would I be looking at it differently?
What is different about this industry versus the technology industries I'm typically looking at?
Maybe the margins aren't as important.
Or maybe the margins just generally aren't as high as the tech stocks I look at.
So maybe I have to be more forgiving on that end.
Maybe the net income isn't what I'm used to.
Or the profitability levels or the free cash flow levels aren't what I'm used to when I'm looking at my tech stocks.
So I have to tamper my expectations on that as well.
I can't have as high of a bar for those things when I'm looking at the industrial stocks.
Same thing goes for the growth.
Maybe I'm used to these 12%, 14%, 15% growers when I look at my tech stocks.
When I flip to my industrial page, I got to be okay with high single-digit organic growth.
These are the things that you have to know, the distinctions that matter.
The industry matters.
The type of company matters.
How many peers they have matters.
Is it a competitive industry or an uncompetitive industry?
You know, are there commodity pricing issues on either side of the industry?
Is there, are there big inputs from any rare commodities like nickel?
Or are there any, you know, alloys that are involved in the industry?
Do the pricing of those alloys vary widely quarter by quarter?
Could it affect the margins for the company going into a Q3 if this particular alloy that they use is at year-high prices?
This sounds really annoying and boring and nuanced, but it is.
And that's how you get good at stock picking, is going through this boring stuff and asking the right questions.
So, yeah.
That actually, that rant is a good rant, that rant the last five minutes.
If you're a new trader, go back and listen to that on the recording if you don't know how to study stocks because i did a lot of um mind dumping there on on different
points but yeah that's good for new traders to know asking the why you've been on mute the whole
time no just kidding imagine imagine oh my god repeat myself yeah i didn't hear anything no that
was really good though that was really good you know you know Stocktop doesn't come out of it too many times
going yeah dude good job bro
sometimes you come out
saying yeah sorry for a rant today guys
but no that was a good one
all these spaces are recorded and you can go back
and listen to it
and asking why is very important
it kind of goes into making these plays
your own there's also a really good time ined off um nvidia's did put out a statement from uh from a spokesperson just
basically what you'd expect but um yeah the earnings for the record toll brothers did end they beat on revenue missed an eps toll
stock down five percent uh but yeah no that was a good stocks on spaces today i know
amp is going to be opening up that stock picks for the week show it is monday so we had a hard
cut off there stock talk we uh got a good P-Lab talk on this one. For the
record, when he gives out plays or when anyone gives
up plays, don't chase on the day.
You got to know what a
trader is. Stock talk isn't here giving out
plays. He told you, hey, I'm in it for the earnings
and the thing. Not in for the next
five seconds. Some people are scalping.
It's not going to rush in. Give it a second.
I'll be watching P-Lab for
tomorrow and if it gives me a chance to get in, I will get in.
Well, if you're part of his community,
you don't have to wait until he's set it here.
Yeah, that is true. I also don't front run anyone
on here, so I do see it in the community
and then wait until you mention it on the spaces
and then buy it here.
Wow, man of the people.
Man of the people, right? I give them a couple minutes.
It's gone well so far.
I mean, I can tell you sometimes they even wait.
But a lot of my stuff, this is the thing.
Like, I've been a SmidCaps specialist my whole life.
So now that my following is bigger, I still trade SmidCaps.
My ideas get a lot of attention now because of how consistent I've been.
And, you know, I get that.
So sometimes people really ape into my ideas.
And one thing I want people to know in the audience is like the thing,
the difference between me and a lot of these other influencers is I never,
and I mean never, ever sell into an alert, ever.
I don't care how much it goes up.
It could go up 50%.
It doesn't matter.
Never sell into an alert because all of my ideas that I put out,
I genuinely think are good swing ideas. Now, they don't all work. could go up 50 doesn't matter never sell into an alert because all of my ideas that i put out i
genuinely think are good good swing ideas now they don't all work you know sam brought up zeta
earlier me and amit on our show had a guy pitch zeta a few weeks ago um ronnie and i bought with
him and then four days later i got stopped out because the stock got knifed like fell like i
don't know 12 on the day and i just hit my trailing stop and i got stopped out did i want to hold that for longer yeah but sometimes that's
going to happen so the thing to understand about me is everything i buy is intended to swing
but sometimes there are stocks that stop you out and you just have to deal with that so it's really
that simple appreciate you follow the speakers We will be back same time,
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Stock Talk, Scott. Some cool stuff in his bio. I appreciate everyone.
Appreciate you all. See you tomorrow. Thank you.
