Stock Expert: Here’s My “Cheat Code” That Turned $35,000 Into $10M In 5 Years!

What was the most you've ever made on a single trade? >> I made a million dollars and [music] lost a million dollars in backto-back days. Like that changes a man. >> GameStop [music] is back at it again. Shares skyrocketed more than 100% on Wednesday. >> I was one of the earliest whales on GameStop. I put in $1.3 million. How much would you [music] have made? >> Oh my god. So, you're known for trading $35,000 [music] into more than $10 million in two years trading stocks. How did you do this when everybody [music] else loses money? >> I'm a swing trader. I'm not an investor. I have a couple of rules that are very strict that I follow. No margin. [music] Don't chase the stock. Figure out the life you want to live and double it. >> How do you know you're [music] not going to lose everything? >> The main things I'm looking for is a store. Go all in and figure out, do you have an edge? [music] Concentration makes wealth. Diversification keeps it. So, in your opinion, what do you think is the next 10x opportunity from here? Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, you're known on Twitter and Wall Street Bets for turning $35,000 into $10 million. You posted each trade during the meme stock era. Then, once you reached your number, you diversified to lock in the profits. I got to say, that's what every single investor dreams of doing. And to be able to achieve that, if you could walk us through your biggest winners and your biggest losers. >> Yeah, sure. I mean, the first trade was the biggest percent win. I made like 2x in like a month off AP. The craziest trade was actually RKT, Rocket Mortgages. I made a million dollars and lost a million dollars in backtoback days. Like, like how does that happen? It was getting kind of squeezy. This was like right after the G GameStop thing in January, like February or March or something like that. And um I think they had a high short interest ratio. Maybe they were getting a squeeze. So, I kind of rode this wave up like 70%. And uh the next day kind of lost it all like really really quickly. >> What percentage of your net worth was that at the time to to gain a million dollars and lose it in two days? >> This is 100%. 100%. I had no >> But you didn't go down to zero. >> No, no, no. Well, I would my style is I would go all in one single stock at a time. No margin, no options, no crypto, right? Like I don't touch anything that could in theory go to zero overnight, right? if you're invested in like 100% invested in a single stock in a good stock like a good company is a legit um you know the worst is like maybe a 20% drop on earnings or something like that right and so that was kind of mentality I had that like you know I was I was working a very stable job at Google making like $300,000 a year right and I had this 401k that I couldn't touch until I'm 65 >> and so why not just keep yoloing it and I just kept working right I just kept going all in one stock at a time one stock at a time chasing bounces chasing earnings reports I I mean many I mean this was 2020 to 21, right? So like everything went up. I mean there there were definitely some big losses there too. Um but for the most part, yeah, I just kept doing that all the way to 10 million. >> Why do so many people fail to do what you've done? >> Yeah, >> cuz there's just as many people I've seen on Wall Street Bets who go all in on something and then they post this loss showing 95% is like I got to quit. >> 100%. I mean a lot of that is because they're chasing the really quick gains, right? Zero DT options. These things can literally go to your overnight. Um, I have a couple of rules that are very strict that I follow, right? No margin, don't chase the stock. Like a lot of people love chasing whatever the hot stock is. But you have to realize like once you hear about the stock, most often it's probably already run up a lot and it kind of loses the support, right? Like all of a sudden people could be taking profit, you could be down, you essentially bought the top. Uh, if you notice in my track record, like I never bought, you know, Tesla back then, right? And I, you know, even in this current, I never bought Nvidia. Like these are great companies like they will continue to go up but uh I just don't like I don't like chasing because in D could drop and then you could lose out a lot. I'm what they call a swing trader, right? So I try to buy near support and the worst case scenario is it just kind of bobbles to the side and then if some cat calls or some good use happens, it'll rise up sell for 20 20% profit and just keep doing that again and again. >> Do you think you could recreate what you've done back then today? >> That's exactly what I'm trying to do right now. [laughter] So, I restarted my uh uh a new 35K challenge account in Robin Hood, and in the last few weeks, it's already up to 52K. Uh so, I've gotten lucky on some some plays, it's up 50%. And I think in this current environment, yeah, it's a sweet, I mean, it's a swing traders wet dream. Uh it's so volatile, it's so narrative driven uh by headlines. And if you're, you know, my forte is I I'm spending like all day on X these days, right? Uh which is kind of like the new CNBC or Wall Street uh is where all the talk is happening. If you kind of can kind of stay on top of where sentiment is, I think you can make a lot of money swing trading. >> How much do you feel is skill versus luck? >> It's both, right? Like I I was incredibly lucky to have tried this style of trading during 2020 to 21. Like that's just incredible luck, right? Um but at the same time, not everyone made 285x in 21 months. Like that's an insane number. No. Uh and so there was definitely some skill involved. I mean, if I had a skill, it would probably be my ability to just kind of digest like so much content. Like I was on Wall Street Bets and other subreddits every day reading all the comments, you know, not just like the the the whatever is trending in a funny picture. Like I was reading all the comments because I it's a hive mind, right? Like the market like a lot I mean I'm not a technicals guy. I'm not a fundamentals guy. I've actually never even run like a discounted cash flow in my entire life. Like I understand sentiment. I believe the market is based on sentiment. So I try to predict where sentiment is going, right? and what uh uh you know what companies are riding off of these waves and I think that's even more so important today. >> So if you trade off of sentiment that sounds kind of similar to social arbitrage which is a trading strategy we've explored on this podcast quite heavily with Chris Camilillo a few times and he's famously ran like 20,000 up to whatever it is now $100 million. I'm curious in order to understand the general sentiment and the direction the sentiment is headed what are the main things that you look for? I call myself a vibe trader now because that's essentially what I'm doing. I'm just like trying to catch the vibes. Um, the main things I'm looking for is a story, right? A narrative, a solid thesis both in the short term and in the long term, right? The long term provides, you know, it's a good company, right? I I don't think like there's all these like mini narratives like, oh, GME is going to do something crazy tomorrow. Like, you know, I'm not sure what the longerterm future for GameStop is, right? But for a neocloud like my current all-in shad shaz Sharon AI it's a neo cloud based in Australia right and there's just so many narratives so much potential catalyst so much potential good news that could come any day about you know potential autoropic deal right uh with shaz or nvidia investment into shaz because uh data centers are just so important today the AI infrastructure buildout right now and so that's kind of what I look for I look for you know it's a good company with a good long-term future uh but also a potential catalyst and good news that could pop up any day in the short term If you're trying to replicate your strategy, like where are the main places you should be pulling information from? >> X wins by far now, right? It's where because not only does it have all the big financial accounts posting breaking news and as soon as it happens, but you have a lot of real traders doing deep dives, posting their trade receipts, and I think that matters a lot. That's what you're missing on Reddit. You don't know who people are on Reddit, right? Like I was very unique. I had a very unique posting style and username, so people gradually kind of gave to know who Sir Jack was. But for the most part, these usernames are completely anonymous, right? It's hard to follow people between comments. Versus on Twitter, you have an actual profile. You can follow someone's uh winning trade and and their logic and how much money they put in. And that kind of adds a lot of value to the actual content that they're saying. In terms of like how I identify real swing trades, um I have a very tiny watch list I'm constantly monitoring. So I have like five stocks on my watch list right now. And every day I'm just looking at like are they up, are they down, who's talking about them, um what stuff is coming up on them and basically trying to figure out like try to tune my cause and effect in my head, right? Like if you think this news is good for data centers, why is or isn't this stock going up, right? And then once it's at a decent enough floor or uh some news is coming up like next week, right? Like I also subscribe to the philosophy of buy the rumor or sell and use. And this is basically when you know something potentially interesting is coming up. could be an earnings report, could be an announcement or whatever. Uh, and there's usually a a runup into the into the actual news event, right? So, for earnings is a good example. There's a lot of earnings coming up. A lot of companies run up the earnings. And so, if I see a stock that like, oh yeah, has good a lot of people I think has good earnings next week. I might buy today and, you know, ride that wave into the earnings. >> What was the most you've ever made on a single trade? >> Big five sporting goods. BGFB. >> How did you find that? >> Oh my god. This was on Wall Street Bets and literally someone who who I decently respected, you know, I had commented back and forth with him before, uh, literally just suggested it to me, right? Like mentioned me like, "Hey, you should look into the big five. Uh, they just did like a special dividend, right? Uh, and they had good earnings or something like that, right?" And that was it. [laughter] I was like, "Oh, that's a good potential play." And so I fought I think. >> Wait, that was it? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was all of the I I did my own research and whatever like that, but it wasn't >> what Okay. But but I want the viewer to understand like when you say did my own research to them that could either mean 5 minutes or it could mean like 5 days. >> So like you heard about this information. You didn't just hear from some stranger that you should fullport into big five sporting goods. Cuz if we say that publicly then people are going to try to replicate the strategy. But I want them to see like transparently what it was actually like for someone that made how how much money did you make on this trade? >> Probably 1.7 million. >> Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah. I I full ported like $6 billion into the stock. >> 6 million. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I own like one and a half% or something at that time. >> Okay. So, walk us through the amount of due diligence. How long? Just let's just say you How many hours did you spend before you put 6 million in? >> So, so normally all the diligence happens right before the trade ever happens, right? Like I keep basically keep a constant background process of like all these stocks. I constantly watch again. I'm constantly scan the news. I constantly I'm getting familiar with them over time. Uh and then kind of like I feel like I call it like a limitless moment where like just everything kind of clicks like all at once, right? And so for that one it was the fact that they had a special dividend. It spiked like 20% on a day. Uh there were so many comments about this. Uh and also volume uh ticked up, right? So was one thing I really really care a lot about is uh increasing volume like the on the candlestick charts, right? Looking at >> what does increased volume tell you? >> Uh more people are are caring about this. There's >> and and volume can be it's like just transactions. So it's buyers and sellers at the same time. >> Correct. Correct. Yeah. Uh but generally increasing volume is you know is is is a good thing. It just means more market participants are entering the stock are caring about the stock and there's more room for growth usually in a positive direction. >> Yeah. But you bought in once it already went up 20%. >> Yes, I bought when it already went up 20%. I think the next catalyst was actual special dividend that was coming up, right? Uh and so I basically rolled that extra wave. So it was it was a little bit risky sometimes. Sometimes, you know, uh I like to try to catch stocks while they're kind of boring and and haven't bounced yet. Uh but sometimes I also try to catch stock like right at that first bounce to see like how far the wave goes. >> So, how many hours of research should the average person do before they go all in or even buy an individual stock? >> If I were to be honest, like I've definitely gone into stocks with just like, you know, only an hour research, especially these days with AI, right? Like you could ask your favorite agent or TBT just like give me the bull case, give me the bare case, tell me everything that's happened recently, right? And sometimes that's your perspective. That's like everything you need to know. [laughter] >> What would Warren Buffett have to say about this? >> Uh well, okay. So, look, I'm a swing trader, right? I'm not an investor. Like, recently I made a post I defi I said like there's three ways to use your money to make money. Uh you could be gambling, you could be trading, or you could be investing, right? And they have different risk profiles, different return profiles. I don't endorse gambling at all, right? I never touch, you know, meme coins. and never touch options, margin, leverage products, even prediction market, sports betting. I've never made a sports bet in my life, right? Cuz I could just go to zero all of a sudden, right? And uh, you know, maybe it's okay for the $20, but like when you like with serious money, you know? So, uh, investing, right? Warren Buffett is an investor, right? The these are long-term holds. You believe in the company, you can go to sleep, you can go on vacation, you could be in a coma for 10 years and you're still fine holding the company, right? I think I mean right now I'm also an investor. My 401k is $5 million in SPY. pay $5 million in QQQ and about a million DRAM which is this ETF of membership companies >> um because they're you know they're diversified index funds are good for that lowering risk and I mean there's Warren Buff actually has another quote that's like concentration makes wealth diversification keeps it right so if you are in that point of that stage in your life where you're looking for the maximize gains you're willing to put in the energy and effort to try to find try to stay on top of sentiment and depending on your own personal finance situation right like again I was making uh 300k at Google like I could afford to yolo my 40k that I couldn't touch. Anyways, um I think it's worth, you know, uh uh spending more time and energy in in trading and finding those single stocks that you think you uh have a fairly good picture of like how it's going to perform over the next few days, weeks, months. >> So, who is this strategy for? Who would you recommend? They they look into, you know, full porting or buying like all of one individual company, doing the due diligence, following in your footsteps. Who is this for and who is this not for? So, we actually just hired our first ever full-time employee, Michael. >> Oh. Uh, my name is Michael. I edit the podcast and I love my work and I love my bosses. Thank you, Michael. And while hiring him was very exciting, all of the backend stuff, payroll, benefits, paperwork was absolutely not. But fortunately, our partner Gusto was there to handle all of it. For those unaware, Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you could pay higher on board and support your team from anywhere. Gusto handles payroll tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401k, workers comp, literally all of it. And if you ever hit a tough HR situation, you get direct access to certified HR experts. Switching is also super easy, too. All you have to do is transfer over your existing data and you are up and running fast. You won't even pay a scent until you run your first payroll. After that, it's one flat monthly price with unlimited payroll runs. So, I've actually used Gusto long before I ever partnered with them. In fact, when I first set up my escorp in 2020, I had no idea where to start. My CPA actually recommended Gusto to me. I signed up and they made everything incredibly easy, and I have been using them, I kid you not, for the 6 years since then. It's really no surprise that Gusto's ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026. Over half a million small businesses, including us, use them. So, try Gusto today at gustto.com/ist and get 3 months for free when you run your first payroll. That is 3 months of free payroll at gustto.com/iced. So who is this strategy for? Who would you recommend? They they look into you know full porting or buying like all of one individual company doing the due diligence following in your footsteps. Who is this for and who is this not for? >> I think it's for that you know that young that young person who has a job. I think having a job is really important. I think you know if trading is your full-time activity that's like your lifeline now and you start making very irrational decisions. So I think it's very important to have your have a have a stable job and then decide you know how much money you're willing to risk um and just yeah full port [laughter] whatever >> and by full port you mean go all in. All in. Yes. Because then you're like fully invested. You're fully concentrated. You're tracking every movement. For me, like if you're right and you were only in like 5%. Like you were right. That's really incredible. But you only got to gain only like from a little bit from even if I had like $20 in a stock. I'm I'm just obsessed with it. >> But if you're wrong, [laughter] I mean, then you only lose, you know, >> true. But if you're But when you're raw, you could you could sell. So here's here's my general take on it. My unsolicited two cents is that I think for a specific person, this strategy is probably better, but I would also hesitate at promoting something like this widespread because I know a lot of people are going to get absolutely rinsed. Do I think the average person listening to this right now is going to be able to do the right amount of due diligence, have, you know, like assess their own risk profile well enough to actually capitalize on this? I don't think so. But for the specific person, I actually think that this makes a lot of sense. I know I get a lot of like flak for always buying and then the stock goes down. >> Oh, tell them about your recent one, Jack. >> Yeah. So, like I bought a bunch of Bloom Energy like a week ago and then it goes down to like 230, but I also bought at 230 and so now it's like kind of like going back up a little bit. I bought some call options, you know, sold some weekly puts and stuff like that. But this all to say, every single individual stock I have ever picked has outperformed every index fund I've ever invested in. And so I'm like, if I had just gone in heavier, like I would, you know, I'd put like $2,000 into an individual stock while I have like a few hundred,000 index fun. >> Very funny is Jack has selectively forgotten 2020 and 2021. Well, even if you account for that, I'm probably up still about equal with my individual and ETFs. But 2020 and 2021, I got margin called on Palunteer and Robin Hood and I was forced to sell at 10, but I was buying them at 15 and 20 and 30 bucks. And now they've skyrocketed. And so for me, I was like getting margin called and I was like, I have the cash in my high yield savings account, but like this is like my fund money. I'm not even going to like feed into it. I should have, but still the stocks that I had picked at that time were the correct stocks that were going to end up doing really well. >> Oh, 100%. I mean, I think you kind of hit the nail. Maybe the framing is is better positioned to uh for most people. You had a fund account, right? And you were technically all in high-risisk stocks or individual stocks in your fund account, right? So, like I don't know, people make fun of me online all the time. They're like, "Oh, Kevin's all in these random stocks, uh, even though he has like 11 million in index funds." Like, I'm very transparent about this. Like, it's in my ex bio, right? Like, my net worth is, you know, 11.6 6 million and my all-in challenge account is at 52K right now. Like people could do the math, right? Uh I think whatever you know people are comfortable with, put that aside, make a whole new account for that and just go all in all all in there. But now if you say you've somehow bought some of these stocks with like an hour of research, let's just say where does it intersect between gambling and investing? because it just seems like there's an element of randomness that goes into all of this where >> if it might lean into gambling a little bit. >> To me, gambling can go to zero, right? Gambling can go to zero overnight, out of your control. And again, with most stocks, right, uh you're not going to go to zero overnight. And so that's that's where I draw the line between gambling and trading. >> Well, couldn't you say also with a slot machine, you're not going to go to zero every spin. If you do dollar spins, you're going to lose on average. Mh. >> But you could also just as easily stop at 80 bucks. >> Yes. Unless you just put it all on one spin or table on one trade. I mean, I'm also just a very simple person, right? Like I I can only really track like one or two stocks at a time, right? Like I think, you know, you mentioned selling call options, whatever. Like I've never sold an option. I'm I'm a very simple person. Like I believe in a stock. I think this is a good price. I think it's going to go up in the next couple days, couple weeks. Like like like I think that is actually rather promotable to a general audience that like just simplify. You don't have to get into all these kind of crazy kind of things and deal with margin trying to make more money. Just like find a good stock that you think is a good price. It's got a good story. You think it's going to go up 5 10% next week. Sell, buy low, sell high, and then find another stock. >> What are some of the red flags that stop you from investing into a company? >> Recently, uh if the wrong type of promoters are talking about it, right? Like, uh there's a lot of, you know, shady people on X, a lot of shady things happening. Um, people are promoting penny stocks and and and you know these people have a it's they're anonymous and they're not transparent. Like I'm super transparent. Like I've been actually I was thinking about it. I've been sharing every single trade I've made since 2020. Like either on Reddit or on After Hour or on X now. Like I'm extremely transparent about when I buy and when I sell. other people, they'll talk about like when they buy, but they'll never talk about when they sell or they're sharing, you know, obviously Photoshop screenshots or screenshots they took for someone else's uh someone else on their Discord. Uh, and so if you know I I post video trade receipts and so I I I well that's the biggest red flag. Like recently there is a stock that's come across my radar. Uh, people keep DMing it to me. That's another red flag. If someone ever DMs me like, "Hey, you should check this stock out." I'm like automatically like, "No." [laughter] You know, like you probably have some ulterior motive. >> How often do you see pump and dumps? back in the day, I saw it quite off and I think the algorithm has done a much better job of like filtering that kind of stuff out. Or maybe I just like I just don't care about that stuff, right? Uh if you know, if it's a sub billion dollar market cap, that's automatically like a pretty much like a orange flag for me. >> Uh because that's easy to manipulate. Yeah. >> And how do you know when to sell? >> I sell a stock uh or swing trade a stock, right? either when uh the thesis has been validated uh invalidated or I find a a sexier play [laughter] uh and so you know if a stock like for example I'm I'm playing earnings right uh and earnings was good it popped 26% which was my recent trade on on paying uh perfect it was earnings play dies is validated sell right uh or other times I'm just holding a stock right kind like I'm just waiting for a catalyst to happen uh maybe it's just like bobbing you know sideways for a little bit and I find something else that's like more exciting right, that has like a news coming up next week or they just launched a partnership. I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'll swing to there and then swing back." [laughter] That's that's actually that's how I missed out on GameStop. >> Tell us about that. What happened to GameStop? >> Yeah, so I was one of the earliest whales on GameStop. I put in $1.3 million into GameStop in October of 2020. Okay. My cost of business was around $13 a share back then. >> And uh I held until December of 2020. So, I missed the squeeze by a month. >> How much would you have made? >> Oh my god. [laughter and gasps] I uh I believe $100 would have been $120 would have been 10 million. So, it went up to $420. Uh so, probably around 30 to 40 million if I if I held to the top of the squeeze, >> you would have 40xed. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> How often do you think about that? >> I don't think about that at all. >> Okay. >> During those days, I was ecstatic cuz we were right. you know, the the the the short squeeze and and and all that kind of stuff. Like the thesis was right. I was celebrating. I was dancing it alongside, you know, Ring Kitty every day. You know what's funny? I actually bought GameStop when it was $3 and something a share. I put $5,000 into it because I saw it on Wall Street Bets >> and I just thought, "This sounds funny. I'm just going to do it." And I bought it. I completely forgot about it. And then the whole GameStop stuff happened and I sold. I think it was right after Robin Hood disabled the trading and I was like, "Oh man, this is gonna kill the momentum, right?" And immediately it started falling and then I remember I think I went to you and I'm like, "Dude, Jack, should I sell?" And it had turned into over like 150 grand I think at the time from a $5,000 investment. And I sold [laughter] and I was so happy that I didn't quite get the peak, >> but to be able to get that price for that, I mean, that was a Hail Mary just for fun. >> Uh, profit is profit, profit is profit. >> So, why do so many people miss these signals? >> I don't know. You know, psychologically, I I I've always been curious why some people get get married to the stock. That's another one of my principles. Like never get married to a stock, right? Like there are people who are just they they they they made their money on Tesla. They made their money on Bitcoin. Uh now with memory stocks, right? Like SanDisk and MU. And they're just like obsessed with it or holding about. That's all they talk about. Uh and I I don't get it. You know, if you're investor, you don't care about the short-term movements at all and and and you'll just kind of, you know, ride it for 10, 20, 30 years. If you're thinking about the stock, you're essentially thinking like, should I sell, right? And so if you're think so like you should be okay with selling. >> What would you say are the the shortcomings that a lot of investors fall into? They play with margin. Like you could play this game for a very long time as long as you're responsible and take, you know, take profit and and minimize your your your losses, right? Like if you're up 20 you're up 20%, uh maybe take some more risk. If you're down 20%, maybe play a little more conservatively or, you know, add money back to it. Uh, I think when people go on margin, when people go on full tilt, right, and trying to make that gain back as as much as possible, that's when they lose it all. >> And so, what do you think about Chris Camilo? I'm sure you're very familiar with who he is. He fully endorses margin. And if anything, he looked at my portfolio, he's like, if I could critique anything, I think you should have a little bit more margin. >> I mean, that's extreme conviction. Uh I I wonder if he has always had that view, especially when he was just starting out or that's now when he has much more of a cushion, right, to maybe take a blow for from margin. I mean, you have to be patient, right? Like this is this is also like a a patient man's game in order to uh be happy with, you know, 20% swings, 20% swings versus like, oh, it could have been 40% or something like that. Uh I mean, I think the math is like you only need like four 20% swings for a double, right? And I think that's very possible if you like find a good stocks. I'm curious, by winning a million dollars in the stock market in one day and then losing a million dollars the following day, what does this do to your mental? >> Like, how does this affect your your nights when you're trying to sleep or just like the overall gravity of daily existence? >> To be honest, it happens so fast it didn't quite register, you know, >> but the million that you had made had not quite settled yet. >> Exactly. And so it didn't feel like your net worth increased by a million when >> I think also psychologically it's very different than losing a million right first uh or or from your cost basis right like I gained a million and then it disappeared right uh so I think that that that's that's why I also prioritize like entry price a lot that's again back to like the my don't chase rule right like if you bought a stock and it went up 20% and then went back down 20% that's that you could hold that a lot better psychologically than if you bought something at the top and just dropped the next Now, in terms of getting started though, back in 2017, weren't you able to turn $8,000 into $300,000 with cryptocurrency? >> Yes. >> And then >> you lost it down to $35,000. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, this I call this like paying tuition. Uh this was all in crypto, right? Uh and this is I mean this is kind of where I learned everything, I guess. Um I mean I've been aware of Bitcoin for a long time. I learned about it in college. I had some friends that were doing mining and stuff like that. And so I kind of missed that kind of 2012 2013 bubble for Bitcoin. But when I learned about Ethereum uh in 2016, >> I went all in with everything I had at the time, which was only $8,000 from my from like working. >> How much were you making at at that time during 2016 2017? >> Not even that much. Like you know, I did a startup between 2013 and 15. I didn't go anywhere. Uh then I started my first, you know, big boy job at Stripe. Uh I was a software engineer over there and there were I mean there still are private startups that are only paying me like 150k. And so how did you only have eight grand though after like >> I only started working there like I just started working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I I had only 8K and then Ethereum was I think maybe $16 or something like that. And so I just decided to go all in that and then Ethereum went up to 100 pretty quickly. And so now I'm sitting at like you know 30 or 50K. Uh and then this was like ICO mania. There were so many you know random altcoins uh taking off. And so I was actually doing the exact same style. I was going all in one random coin at a time. back then that was a lot more sentiment based because you know these coins really don't have any fundamental value. So it's just like whatever the next hot one is as a funny story. Uh and so you know that 2017 run brought me all the way to 300K. Uh and then 2018 happened. Uh and I lost it all but unfortunately owed taxes on the realized gains from 2017. Uh so the way the counter math works out could really really uh hit you. Uh yeah that was a hard lesson that also why I've never touched crypto ever since. You owed how much in taxes? >> Uh, probably around 150k. How did you owe 150k when you brought it down to 30k though? >> Oh, that cap in 2018, right? So, the big the top was December of 2017 >> and so I was, you know, trading all the time, right? So, all the all the capital gains got realized in 2017. >> You would think that you should be able to use losses of the next year to offset the prior. >> You would think, right? >> Yeah. that you're only allowed to maximize 3,000 or 3,000 obviously your your income by 3,000 for that, right? I mean, this was also the early days of crypto and taxes and I just wanted to do everything by the books. So, >> so after having this crazy runup and then crash in your crypto account, few years later, you finally decide that you want to start investing in equities and stocks in your 401k. You started with $35,000. Let's talk about a few of the specific trades that you did to take your account up to like 8 million now at 101 million. And what did you learn from these trades? The first trade that you made was what company? It was called Alpha Protek AP. They made face masks and they were based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. And again, this was like back in the early COVID days, right? Where people were just like learning about it. The pandemic that shut down, the lockdown didn't quite happen yet. Uh and so I the thesis was really simple like Americanmade face masks that should be a big thing, right? Uh and so that brought me from 35K to 90K and I was like oh wow that happened fast. Uh and then in a similar vein I my next stock was uh CODX co-diagnostics uh PCR testing they no swabs remember that right? So they were they were building that uh and they were signing up all these contracts all these states uh like oh they should have good earnings and so I rode that for like a like a 2x. So now all of a sudden 90 turned it into 180. Uh and then we're approaching the summertime now and Norwegian Cruise Lines uh had like absolutely got tanked. It was down like 80% basically priced for bankruptcy, right? And there was like a rumor. I was like all these like Facebook groups for like cruise moms and stuff. Uh they were like buying like all these like on sale items that uh you know cruise lines are not going to go under. Uh CC was like maybe going to lift the ban on them, whatever. And so again, that's hope, right? There's a story. There's a potential catalyst. Uh and I got lucky and I caught the bounce perfectly. And so uh I caught like a 60% bounce and now all of a sudden like 180 turned to like you know 250 300 and I just kept doing that you know I got I got a I got a a dog and [laughter] uh Chewy I learned about Chewy right and like you know a lot of people got dogs uh so like e-commerce dogs perfect right and that was maybe like a 25% pop. So I just I just I just kept doing this. >> And so what then was your first like real loss in your 401k account? And really quick, I just want to say that when your business is growing, you need more hands- on deck. But training someone new takes time you don't have. 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That's shopify.com/ic or click the link down below in the description to get started. Shopify.com. And so, what then was your first like real loss in your 401k account? The first loss was actually Slack before it got bought by a Salesforce, right? Uh I mean, it just made sense, right? Zoom was like taking off, right? Pelaton was taking off and I was like Slack has not really moved yet, right? And that was that was it. That was the thesis. And then they had earnings and it was horrible like down like 25%. Uh and I think I kind of misunderstood the dynamics between Microsoft Teams and Slack. Uh which was kind of a miscalculation. And so that was like my first big loss. >> So your first investment that you kind of lost money on was Slack. How much money was your account at at that time and how much did you lose? >> Probably around like 700 800K, right? So your first loss was after taking your account from 35K to 700 800K >> I would say so. Yes. >> Yeah. >> And then how much did you lose on the slack trade? >> Yeah, probably like 200k or something like that. >> And what did you learn from that loss? Like was this an important lesson or was this just like you were taking the same kind of like outsiz bet over and over again. You kept winning and hey does this one just like the cards didn't fall in your favor? >> Yeah. I have this lesson still to this day like earnings are a coin flip, you know, like no matter how much you uh think you know about a company's revenue numbers or the climate or whatever, earnings are a coin flip, right? And so and and it could be pretty pretty expensive at that time, too. Uh and so I think what I learned is um you if you if you have enough of a buffer of safety, right, maybe you're up a lot recently, right? Like you could afford to take that coin flip. Uh just like I think you know anyone at casino, they're in a hot streak, right? Maybe you could you could take that extra extra bet. But um yeah, if it goes if it doesn't go your favor, you got to be conservative with your next play. >> Do you think that the volatility or the the percentage price change is greater if earnings are good or if they're bad? Like does a stock respond more aggressively positively or negatively if earnings are positive or negative? Or is it just like is it still just like a coin flip? So it's like 50/50 every time. >> It's really 50/50. there's these there's like a lot of complicated math using options for like implied volatility and trying to figure out like what are the expected move in upside or downside right and so this all this is kind of published out there uh but essentially you never know if it's actually already priced in or not right so like a lot of people you know even some of the biggest companies right now like Nvidia like you there's so much data about them you would think it's priced in because they're up so much right and then yet still they surprise to the upside and then it also depends on like how much of that surprise is so there's a lot of variables that go into it and like I mean You could obsess over trying to figure it out, but it's just it's it's a coin flip at the end of the day. I think it's actually more intellectually honest to treat it as so, you know, than like I'm putting this on a coin flip. >> Do people ever reach out to you with inside information and they say, "Hey, uh, here's a tip." >> Looking for that exact information. >> I'm just I'm curious because >> Actually, no. Actually, no. And I'm very careful to not even like accept those kind of DMs. Uh, if it kind of feels like that, >> I'm surprised because I thought for sure that people would say like if you've helped them make money that they might try to say like, "Hey, here's some info. Thank me later." >> Everything I use is public information. Like I' I don't ever I don't have any insider information, right? Like I just connect the dots. Like a lot of that is like, you know, hope or copium or insane kind of theories about like, you know, this guy liked this post on LinkedIn and like, "Oh yeah, they're in Miami together or whatever." Uh, but again, that's again that's public information, right? and it's just it's kind of more of a fun fun side story than uh the actual play. >> What do you think are some of the biggest lies that are spread about investing online or the the information that's being said that if the average person followed it's just not going to help them? >> I don't know why some people get obsessed with trying to make a trade every day. You know, some people think being a trader or day trader, options trader is making $1,000 every day. I I think it's because it's like it feels like work, you know, it feels like activity. That's I don't think that that to me is is not how I don't endorse that. I think that's a lot of energy that's wasted because yes, you can make $1,000 for a couple days and you lose $5,000 one day. You kind of break even, right? I think swing trading to me is kind of the best ROI on like your energy, on your time, on your sanity, on your returns, because generally the stock market goes up, right? Like you know the S&P 500 goes up, good companies should go up. What I'm trying to do as a swing trader is to maximize the gains in a shorter time frame, right? Because the market goes up and it also goes down. And if you try to cash things on bottom and sell them on the top, you are basically compounding your gains every single time. And that's how I was able to do 285x in 21 months. >> But that's also a very tax inefficient strategy. And I know a lot of people probably like, oh, Jack's talking about taxes like, you know, this doesn't really apply to me. But in actuality, taxes can cut into your gains substantially and then that compounded year-over-year. you have just a smaller amount post tax that you're able to build let's say 30% 40% year-over-year returns on I joke just make more money [laughter] I mean I mean again yeah my situation was really you know unique this was done in my 401k so I it was you know no no taxes I didn't pay a single on taxes until I withdraw um but even though I'm doing this in a um in a Robin Hood you know normal brokerage account right now I mean if you're trying to m if you're trying to maximize for long-term gains but the stock goes down, you kind of wipe out those potential gains anyways, right? So, I don't know. I think short-term gains are fine. >> So, how much time should the average person spend a day researching and trading? >> I mean, I don't think it takes more than like an hour in the beginning of the day and maybe like, you know, at the end of the day, right? Just like reviewing like what's trending, going on CNBC, see what people are talking about, follow a couple of people on X and see what stocks they mentioned. The algorithm, to be honest, is really good now. you know, like a lot of people have lamented how the X algorithm has changed over the last few years. Uh, but I think it's really really good now. So, if you follow the right people, uh, you'll be getting your, you know, intake of of of stock views and you could also turn the bell on for certain for certain influencers, uh, and get their post as soon as they make them. >> To get more specific, who are those people that you should be following on X, not including yourself? Like, who do you look for for information? >> The first one that comes to my mind is Emit is investing. Uh, he's the goat. He's got like 500,000 followers. He was ear he was early on Pounder. who was early on Robin Hood uh posting all these deep dives um and interviews with these with these folks. Um, another, you know, he's a buddy of mine, but Michael Sakand, he recently, you know, been posting a lot about the photonix trade and like all these kind of bottlenecks related to the AI infrastructure like Pix and Shovels kind of play again like these amazing deep dives cuz like, you know, it used to be that you could only get these deep dives from like these Morgan Stanley, you know, 30-page PDFs, right, which like really really dry. But I think in the kind of more modern era, uh, people are reading bite-sized tweets uh, uh, and learning a lot from that kind of drip feed of information. Uh, and then I think another one is uh, Serenity, this anonymous, you know, white-haired uh, anime profile picture. Uh, she or he blew up from nothing to almost a million followers just in the last 6 months. And, uh, it's really, really good like deep takes on like the AI infrastructure build out. >> I really want to get down to what separates you though from all the people who want to try this or >> have tried it and fail because I am worried that people go and they see your story going all in and they say, "Oh, I'm going to go all into." and they just lose a ton of money. What separates you? Like at the end of the day, have you just gotten lucky? Is there a skill? Is there something you look for specifically? Are you able to avoid red flags? Is it an intelligence thing? Is it like a personality trait thing? >> I get very obsessed. [laughter] Uh and and I think that is probably one of my strengths that like once I'm in the stock, I'm like obsessively watching it like all day. like back in you know the pandemic era like I would even be like you know on a on a on a zoom call right and I have like my chart open over here if you mean if if you were following me I think the most important thing to learn really I mean is is learn how I do things right I I I endorse independent thinking like I'm here trying to share my my my research my train of thoughts like why I thinking this right what I noticed uh how I'm connecting the dots and obviously my my my trades themselves uh and I'm really hoping that people kind of pick up that like if you you know have figured out okay I'm willing to all in this much amount of my money right only to one stock follow it okay and and and now you're basically watching it play out in real time I think that's much more better than kind of a simulation or kind of back testing or reading a book right because when you're reading about I bought here boss over here but when you're actually watching it play out in real time you'll kind of feel it that like oh yeah he sold this because you know everyone on Twitter is is scared of this news or the Fed chairperson did things and like Kevin kind of connected all these dots and decided this is the top it's time to sell and I think that's much more going to you're going to get that much more ingrained in you by kind of following me and and watching how I trade in real time. >> Do you ever set limits where it's like hey if it automatically if it's down 20% even if I'm sleeping or I'm just wasn't paying it it's going to sell or if it goes up a certain amount it's automatically going to sell. >> I've also never set a stop limit. I'm very weird. I I'm I'm very afraid of actually, you know, your situation, right, where it's like randomly down 20% one day for reasons that I disagree with, right? Just some random macro or some fear headline and then I get automatically stopped out. >> Um when no, you know, I so I've never set a stop limit my whole life. >> Now, you've previously said that every man should trade stocks like they date women, only one at a time. Why don't you like diversification? Yeah, that's my uh my specialty on Twitter is uh financial rage bait. >> Why don't you like polygamy? [laughter] >> Well, I've been very >> Why shouldn't men date 10 women at a time? >> Yeah. So, uh >> like Jack, [snorts] [laughter] >> props. Props. That's just not even true. Concentration creates wealth. Diversification keeps it right. It's that's just true. And I think, you know, we go all in on things all the time in our lives, right? When you're a job, that's an all-in on your time, right? Uh a woman, that's an all-in, right? I saying like, and it's true. Like, you know, when I met my my wife, it was like >> only like six weeks in, we decided to move in together, right? Cuz I was like, "This is it." Like, I I I think I love her and I want to move in. I want to get to know her, right? I'm just I I just went all in. And I think I don't know, a lot of people try to hedge, right? and and like you know try to especially in the dating world like oh yeah let me try to meet and find the best person. No I think you should go all in and I think that's really important and you also uh um really quickly find out whether it's working or not [gasps] either with a relationship or even with a stock you really quickly get obsessed with it. You research everything about it and you you figure out like oh yeah if you're only in like 5% or only 5K you're like you know eh whatever I don't really care about this. >> But this seems like this is your personality type is you're an allin type of person. You're either 100% in or you're out. >> Yeah. Yeah. I will say that's my personality type. >> Do you think most people should follow that personality type or do you think some people would be better off not doing that or maybe they're a bit indecisive and when they go all in on something they don't really think it through. >> I think it depends on your goals, right, and your time frame. Um I mean just your view on life. Uh I have always been a very impatient person, right? I've always wanted uh gain success whatever as big and as fast as possible. And obviously I've been willing to risk it and I've made many losses, right? I lost 300k in crypto, right? I did my startup uh back in 2013 and I failed. Uh and so I you know I failed a lot but I also kind of um you know over the course of my life taking like a very um tick tock kind of um pattern in my life a risk on risk off right you do something risky didn't work out okay you know quiet down for a couple years and once you kind of regain that financial buffer that mental sanity maybe try out some risk again right so I think there's like phases in your life too where it's appropriate to kind of take on risk. Does it worry you right now that stock market valuations are seemingly pretty high? >> Not really because of how insane this AI buildout is going to be. Like this is essentially our version of the industrial revolution, you know? And I think especially the modern investor maybe a little bit too used to these like very quick bubbles, right? Like a crypto is maybe a year or two, right? Mean maybe a year or two, but like people don't understand like how big and and and still there's so much more to come uh with building out these AI ident data centers. you have to just like try building an app with codec once and you'll realize it. Uh my view is the future of AI work is uh longunning compute inensive uh workloads. Uh basically, you know, most people just use ask you just ask a question, right? And it's basically, you know, quick answer. Uh but what what people are doing in Silicon Valley right now is they're running these like 247 jobs, right? To basically uh keep churning tokens uh to do work. you know the the one the you know the one example is like solve cancer right like you could imagine just giving uh an agent access to your lab and and all this data uh and other agents that it could spawn or whatever and it just keeps running in a loop right trying to figure out how to solve cancer and so that is very comput inensive and we don't have enough GPUs or CPUs or memory or any of that the stat is what like trillions of dollars in capex buildout uh over over the next five years right and so we we just we just don't have enough and I think it's going to continue going into into into the future. >> How could you be wrong? >> Either there is some technological innovation that increases the supply, right? Uh that maybe, you know, uh China develops like a their own Nvidia style GPU uh really really fast. Uh that increases supply all of a sudden. Uh or these workloads don't really transpire. So right now, especially Silicon Valley, like like coding is like is is what most people use these LMS for, right? Uh because it works. They can build these websites and apps now. Uh but can LM really replace you know accountant right a lawyer uh a doctor right can it really build robots like that's another like 100x thousandx thematic bet that I have like robotics uh is actually the the next inflection point for something called physical AI um that that requires like all the kind of same things right like if that stuff doesn't transpire there's no need for it just kind of stays in coding then a lot of this kind of both falls out >> what are your robot plays cuz I tend to agree with you that it seems like the next thing would be taking chat GBT but making it physical >> turning it into a person or a robot that could do something. >> So how do you see that playing out and where are you investing in that? >> Yeah, I mean I think this is going to change the world just as much as like Kachbd did. Uh there is just so much investment recently A6 produced a report that says like uh venture investment in robotics is at alltime high like you know 5x in the last quarter. I think you know humanoid robotics specifically is really really interesting because a lot of the world is already designed for humans right like how you open a door how you put in a screw etc etc and so if you can have a robotic just I mean they're they don't ask for insurance you know they don't ask for sick leave vacation leave they can work all day um they don't even have to be perfect because humans are not perfect right >> they could show up late >> exactly slip and fall um and so there's There's there's so much investment in robotics right now. Uh and actually what's really frustrating is that there's no way as a retail investor to really play this. That's been really frustrating just like every other kind of way before, right? It's always been happening in the private sector, right? Like you know from startups uh to AI stocks right now. Um there are two or three stocks that are interesting in in the robotics world if you're interested in playing it. Um one is called Aust. Uh they make LAR tech, >> right? Right? So like the lasers, you know, they kind of tell you how far away things are. Uh most recently they invented color light LA lightar. Uh so they're the only ones to make it. And so that replace that replaces two cameras. Before you used to have like a camera for color and one for uh LAR. Now you just have one, right? And so they're signing up a lot of customers. They're public stock. Um another one is a spa that's coming out pretty soon called CCXI uh Agility Robotics. uh and it's gotten a lot of hype recently because of some uh Twitter influencers talking about it, but it is one of the only pure robotics companies to actually, you know, list on on the stock. Uh and then actually one that I've played a few times is uh called Robo Strategy and they have the they have the best ticker bot bot >> and the quick story behind that is this guy Andrew Kang, he basically was an early investor in all these robotics names through his family office and decided to turn that into a close-end fund uh to basically let anybody you know invested in. uh you know there's a lot of mechanics behind it very similar to micro strategy for Bitcoin and like a creative dilution uh but basically uh yeah it holds like uh equity stakes and figure AI do you remember that live stream with the the the robot you know uh for nine days straight right like sorting packages right that was like a media moment right and so like that that's one of the biggest holdings in in BLT so like you know you basically get access to that >> so what do you think is going to happen over the next 5 years in terms of the economy >> K-shaped man everything is unfortunately K-shaped and And I you know I think there's that's why there's this desire this angst that I notice in the general population especially young people to bridge that gap right uh from from one end of the cave to the other uh and a lot of agency behind this but I mean I mean like I don't know uh my my fringe theory is that like this last like 50 or 80 years of the middle class was the exception to the norm like across like general history right most of history it was like you know you got the [laughter] rich people and you got the poor and uh because of the internet the internet and globalization whatever and America was able to kind of create this middle class uh but it does seem like it's kind of going back in other direction right people talk about the wealth wealth income gap and etc and so uh the most important thing is to own assets so how can someone increase their chances maximally that are on the lower part of the K-shaped recovery to then go to the higher part is it focusing just broad strokes here on income or on investment and buying the right assets. >> The most important thing is you first have to build your base, right? You have to take care of your debts and you have to build your base. And what I mean by bases, you know, your financial base, your security base, you know, you can't be worried about when you take risk, you can't be worried about your livelihood, right? And so what that means is, you know, get a good job, right? Like like like find make sure it's like safe and secure. Um find, you know, just make sure you're in a good place to actually go take a risk. And then you can take a risk in many ways, right? Like if you find find what you're good at uh and and and just go do it. I think a lot of people just get caught up like trying to think too much and trying to take like baby steps. When I say go all in, you know, it means many things. It could just be go all in, start making YouTube videos, right? Just go just go just go do it. Uh if you, you know, want to trade stocks or even do sports betting, right? Like go all in and try and figure out do you have an edge? Uh don't go in don't go in blindly without feedback loop. uh otherwise you do end up losing money or like you know not growing your YouTube channel. Uh uh set a timeline and I you know set a timeline like by one year I hope to achieve these things and really have a close feedback loop of like am I developing an edge here because I think the world is more and more rewarding people that are unique and have something different to offer in the world. >> So for the average person who's making $60,000 a year, a few thousand invested, >> what should they focus on first? >> A quick thanks to Ethos for sponsoring this episode. Most of you guys don't know this about me, but when I was in college, my house burned down in a wildfire. And it's very human to think that nothing bad will happen to you. But the unfortunate reality of life is everything can change in an instant. And when it does, the last thing you want is your family scrambling financially. That's why we've partnered with Ethos. 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Get your free quote at ethos.com/iced coffee. Again, that is ethos.com/iced coffee. The link is also down below in the description. Application times may vary and rates may vary. So for the average person who's making $60,000 a year, a few thousand invested, >> what should they focus on first? >> I mean, just load up your Robin Hood account, buy something, right? It doesn't have to be an individual stock. I think most people have never even bought a stock in their life. They have their 401k automatically buy one or something. Uh but buy spy, buyq, maybe buy $1 of Google, right? Once you have money invested in something, you just care so much more about it and start tracking it, right? Start seeing what people are thinking about it. Start watching YouTube videos about it. Start educating yourself about what it means to be either an investor or a trader. And then gradually uh basically, you know, kind of do kind of do paper trades in your head, right? Like, oh yeah, that guy was talking about, you know, Nvidia uh might have good earnings. I'm not going to do it, but like imagine I did today, right? And then, oh, it was right. And basically kind of retroactively analyze, oh, why was it right? You know, maybe I'll do the next one or something like that. I agree. For a lot of my friends that do have a little bit of margin in their life, meaning like money between what they earn and what they need to spend on their necessity expenses. So, like this kind of like entertainment budget, whatever the budget is that they can the discretionary spending. I always say of that money, invest first, spend later. Yeah. Like you should as soon as I get paid like even when I was getting paid like 4,000 bucks a month like immediately I was shipping off 1,500 into my Robin Hood account and then the additional 2500 was just like rent taxes and then like I had a a little bit of money for food and that was really it. Like invest first and everything else comes later. >> Yeah, that's also great advice. >> Do you think people spend too much time though trying to find the next 10x stock and not enough time just trying to increase their income? It it really depends on your your your growth potential at your job, right? Like a lot of people I mean you could work really really hard and get a 3% increase that year and maybe that time was better spent elsewhere. I mean that's kind of where I I bring it back to this weird like angst that I noticed. Uh it's called financial nihilism. You know, a lot of people written about it. Uh that just feels like your effort does not translate into results anymore. Um, but there's this app on your phone now that does translate your effort into results, good or bad, right? And I think that that agency, that feel of control is like more and more important for people these days. I I I think generally I think if you're just like aware of like what you're doing and also aware of like what the payback time period is, right? So like you mentioned your early example, if you're making $60,000 a year and you have $1,000 discretionary income, you know, you make that back in like a week, right? And so like if you you know did something and it cost you a week of time then don't do anything for a week you know recuperate then figure out as long as you're learning something >> if you were to start from zero and build back to 10 million ideally >> what stocks would you explore and how exactly would you do it like what are like maybe three main picks you'd look into >> my my pick right now is Shaz right Sharon AI the Neo cloud based in Australia because I think this data center buildout is only going to continue um another one that's actually really interesting is Nokia IA [gasps] >> really? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Because they recently got a billion dollar investment from Nvidia itself and they also make these um uh local edge node chips. So basically um as compute increases the they get slower too, right? And so you want them to go really really fast. And so instead of like everything like happening in the cloud and coming back, it could happen at your local like telco like tower or something like that. And so that's kind of another really interesting one. Now, for someone who does not want to trade stocks or swing trade, but they want to build their wealth over the next 10 years, what do you recommend? >> Buy Google. [laughter] I mean, if I were to distill it down to the simplest >> piece of advice, right? Like buy Google. >> Why Google? >> They're at the enter center of everything, right? They they they have the consumers, right? Via Google, YouTube, Google Maps, Android, everything like that. They're building the, you know, one of the best models out there. they have Google deep brain and all these really really intelligent people there. They're the only one at that intersection actually if you think about it like there are a bunch of you know AI infrastructure specific only place and there are a bunch of companies that have you know a lot of consumers um but there's no other company in the world that has both and I think that's just is incredible mode and it'll just continue growing. >> What's a realistic annualized return that you think someone could expect over the next 5 10 years? >> I mean I think the spy is going to make like 10 to 20%. Uh >> you think it's going to continue with that trajectory? >> Yeah, like I think um the profits, the revenue numbers are all there. The big companies are going to continue getting bigger. Uh like I said, this is our version of the industrial revolution. >> Uh and so I think if you're trying to trade, you're actually trying to beat that. >> Didn't that somewhat end though with the 1920s Great Depression? >> There was a lot of margin. There were a lot of other factors like the dust bowl and stuff like that, right? >> We're seeing a mini version of that right now in Korea. I don't know, you know, >> I I'm watching I get the Twitter notification where it's like there's stock market circuit breaker just, you know, down 10%. But then I'm looking at the US markets and we're up. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, we have developed a lot of rules and regulations and and and guard rails since the 1920s, right? I think the market also moves a lot faster and any uh um bubbles uh you know, kind have a mini pop and any corrections uh get a mini bounce a lot faster. And so I don't think we're going to get like some kind of crazy depression. I think we'll have a lot of volatility, but I still expect like, you know, like good 10 plus percent um per year over the next 5 years. >> I am always worried that we've gone up so much over these last 15 16 years since 2010. >> I'm like, how much longer can this continue before we start averaging like >> 2 to 6% a year for a while? >> Maybe like like a forgotten period, right? >> Right. And then people kind of grow bored of it and then they reallocate their assets somewhere else because the stock market's not doing anything. >> I mean, what else do you invest in, right? Like Americans. >> Graham Graham has what? 25% cash. >> Yeah, it's 20 to 25% somewhere. >> Yeah, I have. >> It's not cash. It's taxfree mun bonds. >> Tax free bond. >> Making blended 4% taxree. >> It's great. It's great. No state income tax. >> You should transfer it to X money 6%. >> You know what's so funny? So, I could take out a pledged asset line >> below that 6%. I did all the math on this >> and net taxes. >> It's not worth it for me to transfer. Like, it's such a small increase that I would be able to get and I would have to take millions of dollars to even make it worthwhile. And I'm like, am I really going to risk millions of dollars for like a point something% simplicity >> annualized return? It's not worth it. But I thought of it and I worked every which way. If I could take margin, I could take a pledged asset line and move it over here. Wasn't worth it. But it is very appealing. >> The line only goes up, right? Like America is still the number one country. The dollar is still the most important currency. You have 401ks still reinvesting into SPY every year. You have Trump accounts now. They're also going to be invested into the into the markets, right? Uh the best companies are in America. And like I said, they're going to only going to keep growing. Uh I I I don't see a bare case, >> man. I feel like this is what everyone says though, right before >> it's like we we cut to like a month later and like but even the 2022 blip is is a blip now, right? Uh I mean yes like 20 I mean this is you know we're we're to remember like what was 2001 2008 like right because that in theory was kind of like a flat line for for the US stock market albeit that's from that's from top to top 2008 right like um uh maybe people have talked about how euphoric and senseless uh the docom bubble actually was uh with you know early fake revenue and stuff like that. We're not seeing that now. And again, I think everything just gets corrected now because you have social media, because you have like this forum of people arguing every single bare case that exists out there. All the ideas kind of get out. All like people talk about like, you know, the circular financial engineering whatever like companies people are talking about openly, right? Like you know, no one's finding anything. It's not scaring billions of dollars to keep getting pushed in. So I think Yeah. >> What about any black swan event? >> So like a like a co 25 or something. [laughter] >> Yeah. I tend to think it's something nuclear. >> I tend to think all it takes is Why are you laughing? >> I'm just saying because like dude, if if like if we have, you know, nuclear fallout, I am not caring about my [laughter] my Schwab account. It's like I I'm not going to care that like, you know, I really shouldn't have taken on an additional $100,000 of margin to buy like Google stock. >> That's why you should be buying. That's why Jack doesn't buy the bottoms. He only buys the tops. Excuse me. I invested in Bloom. It plummeted. And then I also bought the bottom. [snorts] So I do sometimes buy the bottom after I've already lost a lot. >> Let's just say all of a sudden, you know, >> some country, I'm not going to say which one, drops 10 nukes on America. You know, they would America, but there would be some fear or there would be something on the other side. >> I mean, it's impossible to predict. So it's like it's hard to like live or kind of invest like that, right? Uh and I don't know if you're going to get the push notification early enough to [laughter] sell before it happens. Get the Amber Alert immediately sell everything. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean in that sense like uh you know build up as much money as you can and then and then switch to gold. >> Is there a specific type or style of investing that you have officially banned yourself from ever doing again? And you would recommend people ban themselves from doing that same thing? >> Yeah. I mean I don't touch options. I don't I don't touch options at all. It's just it's too enticing. >> What do you think about Jack's option strategy? >> Wait, do you buy or sell? >> Uh I sell options. >> You sell options. So, I I sell puts to enter positions and I'll find something with a high implied volatility on a blue chip company that I really like, such as Robin Hood, such as, you know, I have a little bit of ELF, I have a little bit of Bloom, and I sell puts to enter the positions, and then I sell calls to, you know, ideally make some weekly premium. And if I'm buying options, I buy them over LEAPS where it's essentially just leveraged money. >> Does it does it increase your stress at all? Like, are you watching it close to the strike? No. If anything, it decreases my stress because it's a hedge against the position. So like my stress my stress would be amplified if I was just owning the stock outright cuz that's technically a more aggressive strategy than hedging against it which would be like a covered call. >> Yeah. >> So like the way I see it is if I can make two if I have two collect 2% premium per week on a company 3% premium per week on a company selling covered calls then I know if the company goes down 3% I'm exactly where I was. If it goes up however much it is, I collect 3%. If it stays the same, I collect 3%. If it goes down 10%, the IV spikes. And if the IV spikes, so do premiums. And then I'll just sell another another covered call to continually decrease my tax bases. And the same logic that you said how the only thing you really consider is the average cost or like your enter price. That's essentially what I'm doing too by selling calls to decrease, you know, it's one way of looking at it, my average cost. >> Yeah. I don't know. I I'm a very simple person, right? And that's just that's a lot of math. And to me, the if you're willing to if if it makes sense to you, right? And like the map is easy and it doesn't add stress or take too much time to kind of analyze and figure out what the right options to sell are. I think, you know, I think it is good. I mean, many people recommend it to me. I I just like to try to keep things simple. >> Let's compare Robin Hood accounts. We're all going to compare Robin Hood accounts at the end of this podcast. Guys, I have to ask you, why were you banned from Wall Street Bets? Oh, I don't I don't know. I think someone just got really jealous and kind of like rage banned me and deleted a bunch of my posts >> cuz you were kind of famous on Wall Street Bets. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like I didn't do anything wrong. Um I was posting, you know, just screenshots of my trades, right? And like they got tons of up votes. Um I mean I I had someone uh DM me uh who's apparently part of the mod team, right? And she said like there's just one random person who like hates you and just like >> a moderator that hates you. Yeah. >> When did you get banned? >> I don't know. This is probably like um mid 2021 or something. >> Um >> do you have any idea why? I mean, I I've perused your Reddit account. You do say some things that are, you know, maybe a little bit abrasive to some with, you know, moms [laughter] or mother-in-laws. It's Reddit culture, right? It was Wall Street culture. I was obviously just kind of playing into it. Um no, I I think probably they just saw me getting too big and just just wanted to cut it out. You think it would help their forum though to have you on there and bring in more views, more >> these moderators on Reddit are weird. >> You're It seems like they like like like loss porn more than they enjoy >> the games. Like you're one of the few people on Wall Street Bets that turned, you know, 30 you made effectively $10 million from nothing and they banned you. But then all of a sudden you post yourself losing 99% of your portfolio. What I've learned online is that everything all hate is just jealousy, you know, and so probably uh they hate to see a winner, right? Uh and yeah, the moderators on Reddit are just extremely power- hungry. They just love banning people for any reason. It's basically like a power uh trip. What's more toxic, X or Reddit? >> 100% Reddit. Reddit. Yeah. People say like X is bad. I'm like, this is nothing compared to what I used to deal with. >> What makes Reddit so toxic? Do you think that the stereotype of like the neck beard, you know, sitting at like the you got like some sauce from the night before dribbling down your chin or whatever, you know, like your bellies hanging over your desk? >> Yeah. >> Like is that is that accurate you think of Reddit users? >> They call it like the the the high internet high theory, right? When you take like a bunch of people and you anonymize them and put them in a group, uh, it just descends into like the the the scum of the earth. Um, >> it's the anonymity thing. >> Exactly. Exactly. Like I I've connected with several people. uh on Reddit and but the problem is I had to use like my own thinking skills and reading skills to articulate okay this guy actually sounds like a well educated adult versus like some 10-y old kid right uh and I would actually connect with them and you know etc etc and I trust their word more but generally the way the algorithm works and the ups work is just you know very much based on dunking and and extreme content uh and yeah you just don't know who these people are on the topic of Reddit you created r/the to 10 million I'm curious why did this resonate with so many people because it has like 500,000 members and what is so important about getting a $10 million net worth? >> It all started as a kind of inside joke with me and a couple other Redditors that like we were all kind of racing our own ways to 10 million and see who gets there first. I mean obviously it's just like a nice big number. Um and uh we created a subreddit. We're basically posting like updates and screenshots and like you know I made it first and there was like a spreadsheet of like you know where one was at and it actually kind of died down for a little bit uh between like 2020 and 2023 but somewhere in the middle I think it crossed like a magical number just like on its own like around like 25,000 members and I think that's when it started getting trending on the front page right and I mean that was my favorite part of Wall Street Bets it was the the the gain porn and loss porn right like the big kind of numbers on on the screenshots and so people just started posting their crazy gains on fundraising 10 million was like the perfect forum for it. Uh and so I kind of cleaned it up a little bit. Uh I started promoting it. Um and Wall Street Vets at that time, I mean, it just started turning into like a Instagram meme page, right? >> It turned a bit into a cess poolool. >> Exactly. Exactly. No one was actually sharing any real DD. People, you couldn't follow like people's stories. Uh and so I think the race took kind of filled that gap. >> What gets unlocked at a $10 million net worth? Why is that number so important? >> I mean, first and foremost, I live in California. [laughter] It's a very, very expensive state. Um and I think you know if you want the modern life that social media it sells to you these days right it is very expensive like whenever I post something like that people are like oh you can move to Southeast Asia you could just like you know buy this kind of house in uh in Tennessee or something like that right but like that's yes you can live and I can retire you know for 50 60 years probably in Thailand right but do I want to right like you know and I think you've talked about this on your videos often right like the the what people want in a house, right? Compared to like 30 years ago, people can't stand on single pane windows, right? They want central air. Like the the the quality of life that we want uh has dramatically increased. And you could blame social media for that. You can blame a lot of things for that. But we're also just still humans, right? Like we get fed, you know, this information unwillingly and that kind of raises our own bar for like what we expect. And happiness is basically expectation meets uh minus reality, right? And so if your expectation because of just various social media and life tells you that you need to you know uh be able to uh send your kids to uh this kind of daycare or go on vacation twice a year or something like that like that's kind of like unfortunately what you expect from life now. And so like you know even at $10 million that's not going to survive me for 60 plus years. Like I've done I've done the math. like it's very expensive to live and you're not even taking in account inflation and like who knows what happens in the future, right? Cuz again, like if you retire, you're not probably not going to be able to get a job if you're out of the workforce for 10 years, right? >> So, are people misguided then? And they have their sight set on $10 million when in actuality it should be more, >> I think. So, actually, how much higher? >> Uh there's this really good report from the Hampton Club and they had this PDF where they kind of did a survey and got all these like numbers and results and feelings around it, right? And I I I think it quoted $50 million as the number where you just stop worrying, right? You just stop worrying. You know, no matter what happens, you could tank it. You know, the market goes down. >> I will say cuz I saw that survey and I did a whole video on that survey because I found it very interesting. >> A lot of those people don't have 50 million liquid. It's 50 million net worth. And a lot of that net worth could be tied up in their company or private equity. Who knows? So, >> so the liquid amount is lower. >> I would argue that the liquid amount is lower, but according to that, it was a 50 million net worth. >> That was the point >> psychologically >> where people cared more about legacy and doing something with purpose than they did about making more money. But under $50 million, they cared more about making more money in terms of importance of of, you know, there's there's that and also family and everything else. But that was still on the rad. >> There was still worry. I was a little stressed like, "Oh, the market had a bad year. Oh crap, now I need to like grind again." >> So, explain then your logic in I mean, you had this race to 10 million Reddit. This was clearly your fire or your fat fire goal was 10 million, financial independence, retire early. You wanted to race to $10 million net worth. You did exactly that, swing trading, going all in on individual stocks, but then once you hit that net worth, you threw it all into ETFs. And so explain this cognitive dissonance where you think that actual freedom is higher than 10 million. You raised to 10 million, but then once you hit it, you did exactly what it what what one would do to kind of slow down and preserve their capital instead of like race to a higher net worth. >> Yeah. So I mean this was my grind, right? Like I made it to $10 million and essentially it's my nest egg. Now I think it's also compounded by the fact that I can't really access it. You know, it's in my 401k. if I withdraw from it, I get taxed uh it turns into income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty, right? That's that's that's really significant, right? So, it's essentially like I kind of think of it like a trust fund that I created that you're not supposed to touch. Like, you know, maybe I'll withdraw from it to top off or maybe I want to buy something nice and I would I have withdrawn like a few million from it, right, for for life stuff. Uh but you're not supposed to. And I think that keeps me hungry too like I want to make my legacy. I want to make my impact and success uh you know through my startup through the oldfashioned way, right? actually have present like make make something impactful for people uh a real business. Um and this is just it's a it's a safety buffer now, right? So rather than continue to go all in on that and and the stresses that come with, you know, trying to do that for $10 million that's parked in index funds, it's going to double in 10 years, then it's 20, right? It's going to double again in 10 years. Like why not just wait and use my time uh in something else? >> And so then how is your current net worth divided up? How much money is in your 401k? Yeah, I have currently I think 11.5 million in the 401k. Uh that's divided up in uh 55 million in SPY, 5.5 million in QQQ. Uh and I think like you know close to millions in DRAMM uh you know memory chips. Uh and and and then I have the Robin Hood all-in account that's currently at 52K uh that you know I trade with and look at every day. Uh and then the rest is just yeah just like savings and and the house. >> See I never liked the 401k. >> Yeah. >> I hated it. I hated the idea of foregoing taxes today and paying taxes later because in my perspective taxes I think are going to be higher in the future. >> Right. >> Especially I think in California where you are. >> So this gives me options. I don't have to be in California when I draw. >> You're still going to have to pay federal income taxes. >> Sure. Sure. Yes. And that can change in the future, right? And so yeah, that is a small risk I'm taking. Um, but I like to have I like, you know, well, now I'm, you know, kind of like a um, you know, trying to justify it and how it works and all that kind of stuff and and strategize around it. Uh, but this was all a happy accident. >> But if you could have done it differently, would you prefer to have done it in a Roth or in a taxable account? Anything other than a 401k? >> Definitely a Roth. I get quite depressed when I run the numbers. And you know what's funny is the reason I didn't do in a Roth, right? Like I said, like I started uh January 2020 with 35K in the 401k. I had the option to transfer to Roth uh to do the rollover, but then that means I would have had to use my own cash to pay the tax for the rollover, which was around 12K. [laughter] >> I was like, I don't want to pay 12K out of pocket for this rollover. But >> it was a few million dollar mistake. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in hindsight, right? But you could never you never know. No one expects a 401k to turn into 10 million, right? >> Well, you did. [laughter] you certainly did and you still didn't >> I I still would um suggest doing it in a formal raw because again psychologically you can't touch it and I think that that saves you a lot of stress and pressure from like you know down days or whatever and also um uh it just feels compartmentalized right versus like in your taxable progress account you got to worry about all these things and taxes and you can withdraw from anytime you want. >> So how much should the average person aim to save? I mean, you just gota gota figure out the life you want to live, right? Um, and double it. [laughter] I mean, there's a fire math, right? 4% of your net worth, right? As your kind of average yearly spend, right? And so, but I think it is important to double it. I think I don't, you know, there's very few people who've actually retired early um and and and and tell stories about like I mean I I you always want to avoid the worst case scenario. And to me, a worst case scenario is you retire early because you thought you hit a number, right? Five to 10 years pass, something happens, maybe like a black spot or something like that, a market tanks or you made a mistake or or accident, who knows, whatever, right? Something miscalculated. Now you're 10 years out of a job. How do you how do you bounce back? >> Right. >> So for you, doesn't that mean 20 million? So now it's a race to 20 million. >> Yes. I think 20 million is kind of my next target. And I will feel a lot a lot safer with 20 million. >> And now you say double it. What if someone has 20 million? Is it 40? I mean, at $20 million, what is 4% a year? $800,000. >> $800,000 a year. So, yeah. I mean, I think that's a pretty good life. >> 20. You don't have to double. >> No. No. I mean, $800,000. I mean, a million dollar salary a year, right? You think about what kind of life you could live with that. I think that's pretty good. I mean, other people have different ambitions. They want to travel every day. They want a private jet. I get it. Um, but for me, I'm a pretty simple guy in real life, you know. So, at what point does taking on additional risk just not become worth it? Hey, by the way, really quick. If you want extra content just like this, as well as early access and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post along with priority responses to all of your comments. So, if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. So at what point does taking on additional risk just not become worth it? >> I would say it's at 10 million. You know there's something nice about that number. I think I think you know the first million is nice but is really meaningless these days right and I think you need to kind of keep going. Uh and I think it's also important to kind of stay hungry through that uh through that journey right either the grind whether you're you know doing YouTube or investing or trading or whatever it is uh to stay hungry until you hit like 10 million. I think 10 million is pretty important. >> And so have you fully retired from your job? Uh, no. I'm as busy as ever. >> So, you're still working your career? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm the founder and CEO of this company called Alpha AI. Uh, we built a proactive a aentic trading companion. So, it's like a mobile app that you could talk to and it'll trade for you. Uh, and I guess you could call me an ex influencer now. [laughter] You know, my ex journey is kind of crazy. Like I I started posting just to kind of market the startup, right? And I grew from like a couple thousand followers to over 160,000 followers now. >> How much do you make on X? >> It's kind of funny. So on Revshare, I make like $1,000 a week, I think, is the kind of average rate. Um, but uh I've kind of blown up my ex subscriptions uh quite a lot. And so the story behind it, it's another happy accident. I turned on X subscriptions because I thought it might help me with the algo. >> Like that's it. Um and I set at the highest price because I didn't want anyone to actually buy. >> How much was the price? >> Uh I said at $200 >> a month. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't have any content. I was like, I'm not I don't want to post like subscriber only content. I don't want I don't want this like, you know, extra, you know, thing to do, right? And then like, you know, one person subscribed, you know, two person subscribed accidentally. I asked them like, what do you want? They're like, oh, I'm just happy to support. I'm like, okay, cool. Thanks. Um, and then 20 people subscribed and then 100 people subscribed and a couple hundred people subscribed. How many people do you now have subscribed to you? >> Uh, you think people are going to go crazy about And this is the most transparent financial influencer on X, right? >> Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Repeat that. Okay. I'm the most transparent. Okay. So, I need I need to show this now. Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. >> I can show you my uh creator studio uh subscriptions panel. Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, you have about 600 active subscribers paying you $200 a month. >> Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like we we got to be uh >> and this is >> Michael, take note of that. >> This has only started in the last two months. >> Wait a second. I can't do math. >> Yeah. >> 120 grand a month. >> Yeah. I mean, that's gross revenue. You got to take out the Apple fees and strip fees and all that kind of stuff, right? So that >> Jack 25% off and then taxes 1099 all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Tax. >> So So you're making I don't know like 80 grand a month post all of te fees everything on on Twitter. >> It's kind of crazy. I think that there's a strong desire for, you know, transparent and authentic financial media. Like, I mean, I'd love to love to flip the interview back to you a little bit and just get your thoughts on like where do you think the future of like financial influencers is going to go. Like, no one's watching CNBC anymore. >> It's true. I think I think there's such a fine line cuz I noticed with any sort of stock trading person, >> subscriptions are like the number one way to make money. But in a way, you're almost selling money because there's this idea that, oh, I I'll pay $200, I get some proprietary information that'll make me more than that. And so, it's a very easy push of like, hey, if I pay $200, I could see an ROI of even a $100. I make a $100 a month paying 200 is an example. It just it sells itself in such a way. So, I see a lot of success with that. >> Yeah. >> The the gray area becomes What's the success rate of the stocks? >> And do you have an influence on the price going up? That if you buy something, does that cause the price to go up and then all of a sudden now is this this self-fulfilling prophecy of like I buy a stock and it goes up because I buy it? Yeah. And you know, I take this matter very seriously, right? Like it affects like the stocks I pick and like when I post about it. I mean, I think the number one thing is I'm I'm very transparent, right? I post my buys and my sells like people know exactly what I'm talking. I don't have any other accounts. I only have those two accounts, the 401k and my Robin Hood account, right? Uh I post my exact thoughts. Um I you know even recently I only post my trades after market close. Now >> to me this is no different than someone going on TV and saying like I own this stock, right? >> Kramer. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like Michael Barry, right? Like he has a substack. He's making you know multi. Yeah. Yeah. And like he you know he's definitely aware of he was in a movie, right? Uh and so like I think that's freedom of speech is very important. Uh I but I think where people get um you know just just the bad people are doing very bad things. Uh I've been in these discords. I have read the SEC filings uh the lawsuits against these people, right? Where they're just lying. They're just straight up lying. They're saying like my price target is $1,000. I'm holding this forever and they just sold. Like you just just blatant lying. So what should they do to prevent that from happening or what disclosures do you think should be required to crack down on that? >> The SEC can only go after big people, right? Like they recently ran went after Andrew left, right? The Citron short seller guy because he was doing this exact same thing, right? He was telling people, I'm still holding. Here's my price target. And that he would just be selling into that movement that he created, right? And I think that's just that's that is wrong and that that is deceitful. That's what the SEC defines as manipulation, deceitful. I think transparency is is is really important, right? Like how much are you playing with, when you buy, when you sell. That's why I post all my trade receipts. Uh it's like a video, too. Like it's like, you know, completely real. Um and I think uh to directly to your question, I you have to teach everyone how to do independent thinking, right? You have to teach people how to recognize these scams and these like deceitful people. Like that's really how you protect the masses because no matter what, the SEC can't go after everyone. So, how much money are you making on X? >> I mean, currently, I guess you could say I'm making a million dollars a year. >> That is absurd. A million dollars a year. And that's from $200 a month subscription fee that people pay into your membership. >> Yeah. Uh it's from the ex subscription I started only uh about two months ago. >> That's only going to go up, man. Especially with the amount you're tweeting. >> I mean, I'm not even doing much. I I post like a, you know, a few posts a day. I post my early thoughts, my watch list, you know, my trades, right? I think there's just so much um there's a there's there's a latent opportunity right and a small window to become I think you know you know I I think X is going to be the most important platform uh um for all the taste makers in the world like I mean the vision for uh X or SpaceX AI right is for it to be the operating system on Mars right the social platform the chat platform the money platform etc uh but even here on Earth I mean Zuckerberg tweeted the latest model release on X and got 12 million views Yeah, >> right chief AI officer Alexander Wang I met posts like 400 times on X and like a few times on threads their own product that just shows you how important X is to kind of the the just general kind of talking points and population. It's all downstream from there. Uh and so I think it's really important to be an influencer there. >> So I skim Twitter or X daily. like I'm constantly looking at X and you started showing up in my feed and I would see your tweets and I liked them and I would kind of like keep tabs on you because I thought the transparency was really interesting. I'm like okay like I wonder if he's making money, losing money, what is he buying, what is he selling, when is he doing all of this trading activity and I enjoyed it, but I also found myself like a little annoyed by your account too. And I think obviously that's kind of like you do it on purpose. you post like rage bait and I wanted you to correct any of my observations because I could be wrong about some of these things but these are the main contending points that I have to the stuff that you say on Twitter and I want to hear your opinion on this. >> Obviously you publicly shared that your net worth was like $10 million $11 millionish $12 million close to now it's in my bio. >> It's in your bio. necessarily like you showed your net worth, but then for some time you created this challenge account and in the challenge account you said I'm going all in like I'm full porting but I think for a while you didn't really stipulate that that was your challenge account and so some could be led astray thinking you're putting $11 million into some company when in actuality it was you know less than point whatever 03% of your net worth. Was this was this true or was this >> I assumed that people were following me aware of the entire story, >> right? Like people have seen me post about my my journey. People have seen me post about my 401k 11 million screenshots and they'll see that this is a ramical screenshot completely different, right? And this is an all challenge which I also do mention in various kind of replied comments, right? Yes. Not everyone follows every single tweet. Sometimes they just see one tweet and that's your there's your first time exposure for you. So I do, you know, make sure I add an asterisk. I saw that you started doing that recently, which I which I appreciated because you said, "I'm going all in, added an asterisk, and then you said down in the bottom of the of the tweet, you clarified this is all in on a challenge account. So, it's not actually like my public $11 million net worth. It's just like the 35 or so thousand." But then another thing that I saw that you do that I was like a little h about was you started the new challenge account with $35,000. You ran it up to what was the peak? >> Oh, yes, I did run up to about 100K. >> So, you ran up to 100K how quickly? Um, I mean like a month or two. Yeah, >> a month or two. But then you ran it back down. Yeah. >> To like 35K. Yeah. >> Basically exactly what you were in the beginning. And then you recently tweeted, I turned 35K into 50K in a matter of like a couple months. Yes, you did do that cuz now you're at 50K. And so you did that, but it was from the second time of being at 35K, which I also thought was like, okay, this seems like it's lacking a little bit of transparency because technically you're still down, you know, 50K from your all-time high. Granted, the returns are still solid. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. It's it's it's very hard to, >> you know, explain all that nuance and disclaimers on on Twitter, right? And especially, you know, you're trying to balance, you know, engagement and going viral and content, whatever. Like people say that in the comments, right? And I like them and I retweet them too, right? But like, you know, kind of tongue and cheek, right? Like like dude, [laughter] like I don't try to hide that, right? Like other people, you know, expose that. I'm like, you're right, right? Like I really kind of lean into the fact that like >> [clears throat] >> uh you know, I roundt tripped already, right? Uh to me it's it's, you know, it's marketing, right? Like Twitter uh I mean it's similar to I think how Apple always says every iPhone is the best iPhone they've ever made, right? Like when the common person hears that, they're like, "Oh my god, this is the best phone ever made." Right? But only kind of, you know, tech insider is like, "Okay, that's a very specific sentence they said." And you know, similar to me when I say, "I went from 35K to 52K in two weeks." That is technically accurate, right? And so, you know, uh, in terms of disclaimers and is there other information, you know, people are not getting. This is why again I I endorse, you know, independent thinking and and doing our research like you have to kind of click in the profile, see the other tweets and kind of catch them up on the story, right? Like there's just so much like I can't be explaining the whole story to you every single time. Uh otherwise none of the posts will go viral. >> So when's the last time you were wrong? >> Uh the worst trade I made in this uh this new account is uh has been uh RCAT Redcat drones uh because I thought that you know the Pentagon they approved like a billion dollar in spending and the whole you know Ukraine war kind of changed how the the war uh story works and there's going to be a lot of investment in drones. Like that is actually true. that did not reflect in the stock price at all, you know, and so I kind of held this uh down and uh all the way that's that's what kind of made me round trip all the way down to back to 35k. >> What I was curious about is I know you bought ARCAT and then it went down a lot, but then you doubled down by buying ARAX, which is the 2x leveraged ARCAT stock. And I'm curious, did your thesis change or did your conviction level change in order for you to go from, you know, just the the base share of ARCAT to the 2x >> leverage? I had never done any leverage ETM ever before, right? I try to stay away from those. And uh that was a rule I set. You know, rules are meant to be changed, right? Different market conditions, different styles, whatever is meant to be, you know, played with. You got to experiment with yourself, too. And so I did get successful with Paloo, which was a 2x version of Palum networks, right? Uh and that went well because it's earnings and whatever like that. Uh so I was like, oh, you know, maybe 2x leveraged things are worth playing with, right? If you have extremely high conviction. Uh and with the redcap play, you know, I thought like I could catch the bounce. Uh and with a 2x levered play, you only have to bounce halfway there in order to make it all the way back. Uh but again, the bounce never came. And I think my main takeaway there is yeah you don't that was almost essentially going off full tilt >> and so the mental kind of stop loss was 35k cuz you didn't want to go probably beneath >> that is fair that is fair. Yeah, I don't do real stop losses like systematically, right? But I do have mental stop- losses, right? If something's, you know, down 20%, 30% and the chart just looks absolutely ugly, you know, then yeah, there's that. >> I'm curious how your membership fees changed from, you know, taking it 35k to 100K, like how many members did you have paying you $200 a month? And then how did that change after you were incorrect about the ARCAT and ARX thesis? >> The analytics behind X subscriptions are actually very light. There's not that much information about churn rate and who's canceled and when they cancel whatever, right? So, >> but the gross number. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it dip down. I mean, it's I mean like like you know is I'm not sure if it's related to ARCAP play or just like you know they subscribe for one month and want to see what was behind the content. They liked it or didn't like it uh and then they turned like I think like you know similar to me like a lot of times you sign up for subscription right and the first thing you do is just go cancel, right? cuz I'm not sure if that's not if it's related to the play itself or they just wanted to try for a month. >> What's funny to me is like technically speaking, you did bring it back up to to 50 or 55 is where you're at right now. Who's to say where you'll be in a week or two weeks or a month? Who's to say? But the funny thing is you bring it up and then everyone starts subscribing and I imagine like like the gross amount of subscribers that you had went down, right, after >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Arcad and Arcax. Like once you were incorrect about that thesis, then people unsubscribed and and stopped paying you. But then probably as you're going back up again, then people are like resubscribing. It's but they don't have the foresight to look over a long period of time. And this is not my endorsement into you as an investor. I'm just saying like technically speaking, if you do look at the data over a long period of time, you have been correct more than you've been wrong. >> Yes. >> And it's funny how it just kind of like there is a clear correlation between how you're doing and how you're not doing like in a in a small >> window of time. Well, that's investors across [laughter] buying into the hype and selling the fair always. >> I share this message with every new subscriber. I highly endorse independent thinking, right? Uh I share my thesis. Um it's up to you to decide whether you like it or not, right? And for the the arcat one, a lot of people disagree with me, you know, and I noticed that uh a lot of people did not enter the play with me because it was a fairly weak thesis like looking back on it, right? Uh and so I'm I'm happy that, you know, a lot of people Do you think that you felt pressured to go big to like prove yourself again in that trade? >> Yes, there was another lesson I posted about recently which was uh don't force a trade, >> right? I think because of whatever was happening at that time, right? I was like, ah, let me find another trade and like the thesis just wasn't strong enough. And so, it's actually funny cuz even like last week uh when the market was down a little bit, I like, oh, should I like swing again? Like, no, no, no, like just cool down, right? If you're like trying to force it, if your thesis is not strong enough, just like cool down, it's fine. You can even stay in cash for a little bit until you feel like you you understand the market and so a lot of lessons. Yeah. >> Who do you think is the best investor alive right now? >> There's a there's a clear answer for that actually. It's Leo Mashion Brener, right? The uh the ex OpenAI guy that started his situational awareness fund and invested all these picks and shovels, right? Like he's I think up to like 20 billion in aum which is from this is from like a two-year track record by the way, right? This is equal to Bill Aman's Persian Square that he's developed over 20 years, right? And this guy because you know he he wrote his uh uh early thesis on uh the AI infrastructure buildout uh invested in all the pixel and shovels along the way. Uh now that's why he's up to like 20 billion now. >> Doesn't that concern you though because Kathy Wood had a similar upswing 2020 2021. >> Yeah. I mean I think the game changes at different scales, right? Like I think um he knows this industry well. There's obviously this is the right timing for that but who knows what wave happens in the future, right? that that he or may not benefit from. And also, you know, honestly speaking, like all these hedge fun managers, at a certain point, you're like, you know, trying to increase your AOM because you could kind of bank the fees, right? You're not necessarily in it for the gains themselves. >> That's an interesting point. Yeah. That they're that they're probably not so focused on taking risk that could on average yield them 40% if that means they have some years where it goes down 10. And is my critique of that quote that like uh hedge fund managers uh statistically don't beat spy because I think most managers are playing a different game, right? You're playing a game of delivering good reports to their bosses. >> You're playing a game of like I better make sure I don't lose money so that you know my uh LPs don't don't exit, right? And they're playing a game of like hey we develop you know we doubled this year give us more money, right? uh versus if you're playing with your own money, you're you're actually really invested in in in in in concentrating these bets and thinking deeply about your own net worth and stuff. I think >> it's easier to sell a product that guarantees, you know, positive return, even if the positive return is like 3 to 5% than it is to sell something that could have negative 10% one year but up 40% and like that volatility because people don't have the stomach. >> The dirty secret uh on Wall Street is most people just want to make that one year uh claim to fame, right? start their own fund and then just coast for the rest of their life. >> What are your thoughts on Chris Camilo? >> Love Chris. Yeah, I watched a podcast with you guys. He was on another live stream with uh Emit and uh and Wolf recently talking about AIC trading. Uh I think he's he's he's the goat. We asked him what he thought about you and he said I actually don't know much about him and can't remember why I started following him but there must be a reason. Since he is a course guy that likely regularly shares trade ideas with traders who will pour money into each of them, I'd ask the question about exactly what parameters he puts in place to ensure that he's not profiting off of the trading flow of his subscribers. How many days minimum does he wait before exiting a published buy trade? Does he fully disclose his exits? By Kevin Shu's own words in his article, Embracing Degeneracy, he seems to be the byproduct of right time, right place, luck fueled by a methodology that is highly concentrated. feels like he is better than an average investor who spends time researching and taking concentrated bets that have worked out. But most of this appears to have been fueled by a bull market. So not necessarily a genius investor with a meaningfully differentiated strategy as much as a bold investor who is benefiting from simply bringing aggressive long and concentrated in high-risk growth equities. It's a relatable story as most anyone can replicate that success to some extent. What do you say to that? >> Thank you. I think uh it's a fairly accurate critique. Uh I am very bold uh because I like I like big rewards like small rewards don't excite me that much, right? It's not worth the time and effort. Um and uh there's definitely a huge degree of luck, right? Like I doing this in these bull markets, right? But I also I mean the way the reason I post on X and and and try to get engaged in bait is because I'm I'm I'm trying to I I think you need to put yourself in positions of luck too, right? I think a lot of people uh don't uh I think a lot of people are are very conservative. They can't deal with any money loss at all. Like I I know people with millions in cash and they've been in cash for the last 5 years, right? I'm like what are you doing? At least put it spot. You're like, "Oh, but I could be by the top or etc. I don't get it." I'm just like I'm just like think you need to put yourself in in in in positions to become lucky, right? And and also just like minim minimize your your loss, right? And and that stuff. Uh in terms of like the you know the course guy, it's funny. I don't have a course. Um I don't have a Discord. I don't have any of the that stuff, right? I I told you the story of X subscriptions. Uh and people I am very thankful and people enjoy my kind of like more longer form rambling thoughts, right? Cuz like on X you have to kind of be more polished and you know be tight and concise to go viral, etc. versus um myself only like kind of go more long form is like what I'm thinking about etc etc. And I I take that duty uh uh very importantly, right? And so I do have some guardrails I set for myself, right? I never touch a company like less than a billion dollar market cap. Um I never sell same day, you know? I I mean that's generally just because I I I I want to see the thesis play out, right? And so I don't really have like a strict time like I must hold for this amount of time, right? But if you actually do look at my track record, I never sold a stock like within three days, right? Like I kind like I want to see the thesis kind of play out and I'm very upfront with folks that like I might trade at at a whim's notice, right? Like I add that I add that disclaimer. Uh, I even give a heads up that like, hey, look, uh, I'm looking the market's looking weak today. I'm not liking this, you know, I might exit in like the next few hours or something like that, right? And so, like, I'm not I'm not there's I'm not front running anybody. Here's an interesting question. Do you think people should have savings accounts if they don't have any thing in the foreseeable future that they are planning on spending their savings on, or should it just should a savings account for those types of people just be spy? I I'll say yes to that, but I feel like I'm a little bit a hypocrite because I do have 400k in esgo, you know, basically like bonds as well as an emergency fund, right? But I think that's just because of my, you know, cash flow these days, I just want to make sure I have a bigger fun. I think I mean establish emergency fund like hands down, right? But then everything else beyond that, yeah, definitely put it in spy. >> You were going to show Let's compare our Robin Hood account. >> Sure. Sure. >> All right, Grant. Pull yours out. >> Well, I don't have Don't you have something in there? >> I have something. want to do like a race to a million dollars in our Robin Hoods. >> I would do this for the members. Would you put 10K? >> Yeah, for sure. I'll do this right up here, right? And they just deposit money. >> If this is something that you guys would be interested in, let us know. This is something that I I would be I would be down for. But first, let's just show off our show off, you know, whatever you want to call it. Technically, for me, it's not really showing off, but mine is ex $169,000. And it's because Bitcoin is up uh quite a bit today. >> Okay. And then what's your what's your like monthly and then your yearly? >> Oh, we don't want to see the yearly. That's not important. Weekly I'm up by 2 and a half%. Monthly, I'm up 5.4%. >> Okay. And then what's your one year? >> Uh we don't want to see that. Jack, >> come on. This we we have to we have to catch a flight. >> Yeah, but >> but that's just because crypto's down. >> And then what's your all time? >> It's about that. >> No, I don't know cuz I don't really use this account. I just moved it. Why are you going to hate on me when you've lost more than I've like? >> The thing is I only The thing is I only moved this in because Robin Hood gave me the 3% crypto bonus. So I moved something in here, >> right? So that 90,000 loss is kind of fake. >> It is fake because it doesn't know my cost basis. My cost basis of Bitcoin in this was like 28 to 32K. So this only tracks from when I put it in. >> Whatever your portfolio is, you're choosing to buy those holdings every single day. And so like just because you bought Robin Hood a while ago doesn't mean that you continued to hold it through the oversized valuation >> tax harvest and offset games. >> Here's mine. This account as you can see in my alltime graph I ran it from like 40k to 81k. This was selling options right here and then buying options right here. And so like selling options was working out great and then I got greedy because I'm like I know how to do this. started buying options, also Dogecoin, lost everything. And then I restart and I tried it again, lost everything. I'm like, "Okay, this time what I'm going to do is something different." And I'm only going to let myself sell options because every time I've sold options, it's worked out really well for me. So, I started with like basically 10K, I'm up, I don't know, 11.4% in 2 monthsish. And then if I go to my other account, my gamble account, this is the account that I loaded with 100K. And so, it's fresh, only ever had 100 grand in it. And the idea was I would make enough money to purchase this watch. And so in two months I'm up about 13.3% which is not bad. And I'm really only selling options. This is kind of what I'm doing right now. But that's it. Pretty good. What you got? >> Uh I'm at 53K right now. Uh up 3% today. All in. Shaz one stock. Keeping it simple. uh over the last week up 23%. And over the last month uh technically down 8%. So you can see here this is what I hit that 35k round. >> You never went down though. You know >> I never went down. Yes. I kind of you know that psych I'm very big on psychological numbers right and so I started with 35k. You kind of don't want to go below that. Uh and then I tell I say I logged in and my made my next uh my next uh trades count. And so on June 24th yeah I went back to 35k and you know it's technically up. Let me see the one year. >> 50% since then. Um I think one year. Yeah. So this is where you see like uh you know if you look at the all time it's like all weird like I've had this account since like you know 2015 or whatever. So it's like all the different deposits and withdrawals and whatever the lines get messed up, right? Um uh and then like I started this account on Erade uh because I got in like the Reddit IPO and they forced you to create a Erade account and etc. etc. Then I transferred over here for bonus as well. Uh, so that's why all the kind of numbers look weird, but if you see here, yeah, like I I traded it, the 35K challenge got up to, let's say, 44K, right? And then kind of paused it for a bit to work on my startup. Uh, and then, uh, basically around November, December last year, I started up again and it's been up and down. >> Cool. >> Kevin, thank you so much for coming out, filming with us. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Really appreciate it. We got to go uh on a flight right now. >> Yep. We got to catch a flight to Florida. So, hope you guys enjoyed. Thank you so much for watching. As always, we would not be here if not for you guys. And also, if you want early access to videos just like this, as well as extra content, feel free to join the channel memberships. We're also posting extra episodes of Jack and I. We have occasional guests. We do post shows. So, really hope you enjoy it. Feel free to join the membership. Thank you so much and until next time. >> Until next time.