Good morning everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the market open. We are live and folks, we've got some job data. I actually didn't know we had private ADP payrolls coming out today, but we do. And it's a little ugly.

It's a little ugly. The pre-markets are green, and I think we can sustain this type of green. Got a lot of headlines to talk about, a lot of different news going on in regards to different earnings, macro updates, Trump saying some things about AI and robotics, and new energy fuel emission standards that he's probably going to be announcing today.

But the November private payrolls are -32,000 versus 40,000 expected. Here's some coverage on this. But once again, the conclusion is that we probably got to cut rates. ADP private payroll company saying private payroll shed 32,000 workers in November. That's the fourth negative number in the past six months for this series. The estimate was for 40,000. So, the street was off on this one.

And how did you get there? Well, goods producing shed 19,000 workers. Service producing shedding 13,000 workers. But the big story here, and I'll show you more detail on this, is what's happening with small business down 120,000. Medium and large business doing okay, up 51 and 39,000, respectively.

But take a look at this chart here. Virtually all of the job losses have come from small business which has been negative in six of seven months since April. Without those losses, ADP numbers would actually be positive. But you can't get rid of or you can't exclude small business. And then you look at it by sector. Well, we've seen those two sectors do it. Education, health services, legion, hospitality leading the way, but manufacturing down, information down, and professional business services down by 26,000. Also another sign of weakness in the job market.

Job stayers their their wages up 4.4% that's down a tenth from the prior month and job changers that was a big number or had been that's down 4/10 of a point to 6.3%. So at least according to ADP additional weakness in the job market and small business getting hammered and there is some information that some of this may be coming from being hammered by the tariffs.

Okay. So, yeah, we, we're getting this rate cut. It seems kind of inevitable, right? It seems kind of inevitable. If we look at the Fed watch tool, we are at the highest probability we have been at ever. Well, not ever, but in the past couple weeks, we were at like 95% at one point. Then we had the whole November debacle with the draw down. Got to 30%, now we're at 88.8. So, seems likely that we are going to get this rate cut. We got some people now questioning is it 25 or 50? I don't think we're going to get to 50. 25 would be enough to at least get the market excited.

The nuance here is that now that the rate cut is baked into the market. So let's put on the perspective of what an investor would be looking at here in regards to the good news bad news type of narrative when it comes to interest rates. We needed bad news that was bad enough to be good but not bad enough to be horrible to get to this point where we would get the rate cut because two weeks ago it was like 30% and all of us were like goodness gracious why can't the Fed understand that we need to cut rates.

We've gotten plenty of that. Now bad news might actually end up being bad news, right? Like we don't need more and more bad news because we we have enough bad news. So now if we keep getting data that the labor market is weak, well that's not the best thing, right? because the market already knows that, the Fed already knows that and now it would be nice to just see the labor market stable, not necessarily deteriorating because then it ends up affecting the market's perception of like, hey, are we getting into a recession?

So, it is a fun little puzzle of how to navigate good news and bad news. But we had enough bad news that needed to be baked in to get these rate cuts and the probabilities of the rate cuts to go higher. I think that has happened. More fuel on the fire only confirms it. But the more and more the worse data we get, the more people start thinking, hey, can a rate cut even solve this issue. And you don't want that happening because then it's like, well, maybe the market's not going to necessarily be in the best position.

But S&P 500 right here up 2.28%. It does look like we're going to get that rate cut. Take a look at Bitcoin. This thing was at 83,000 on Monday. And you're getting a nice little reversal here to 93,000. The 10-year by the way, just below that 4.1 level it was at a week ago now 4.061, but 93 on Bitcoin, which is very nice to see.

Again, the Fed did end quantitative tightening a couple days ago, and that's important. And then Ethereum as well, 3,910. BMR is up in the pre-market. You're up about 5.7%. Micro Strategy is up in the pre-market, up 4%.

I guess the question is, did we bottom on crypto? Was Bitcoin 83,000, Ethereum 2640 the bottom? Obviously, it's hard to say that it definitely was bottom or not, but if this rebound is baked into something and I don't even know what the headline is on this. I mean, you had a lot of shorts that got liquidated yesterday, which is the opposite of what was happening to the longs on Sunday, but maybe it's the rate cut narrative. Maybe it's the liquidity narrative. I mean, I'm not sure exactly what that core narrative is. Maybe it's a little bit more presidential legislation coming in on crypto, but it is helping the crypto derivative stocks. Hood is also benefiting from that. Robin, they're right. They're up 1.62% in the pre-markets as well.

So, Poly Market 94% chance of a 24 basis point rate cut. Yeah, it seems like it is going to happen.

So, that's what we got for the jobs data. We had a ton of earnings yesterday. We'll talk about that and we'll get into Marvell, which had a massive rebound. We had Macy's earnings this morning. How did Macy's do? I actually didn't see. I know they beat on the top and bottom. Is the stock up or down? Macy's, let's just take a look at that real quick. That's another consumer company or retailer company. Uh, don't see their earnings right here, but Macy's, are we up? Macy's is down.

Okay, looks like they didn't have the best earnings. You know, I said that I thought Macy's would be bad yesterday. And the reason for that is because they sent me a notification. I don't know what type of AI they have, but it says, "Hey, Amit these women's clothing finds might interest you." And I'm looking at this notification like I'm not a woman, so like why are you why are you telling me this? But regardless, so we'll take a look at what's going on with Macy's numbers and see see what they've got going on.

Yes, this Fusaka upgrade is happening today. Dude, I need to read about this and understand it. I know it has something to do with the Ethereum network. I really couldn't explain what the hell the Fusaka upgrade is on ETH if someone asked me. Like I I I have no clue. I just have not spent the time to look into it, but I will. And so that also could potentially be a catalyst that could be important for the entire Ethereum network as we as we go forward.

Okay, before we get into the earnings and everything else that we got to talk about, I want to play this quick video right here by Jack Mallers. Now, I don't agree with Jack Mallers on everything. He is one of the people that is very vocal on Bitcoin. And so this video has primarily to do with kind of his argument about Bitcoin, but it makes the broader point. It's a minute and 39 seconds. I thought it was pretty interesting yesterday about something we've been talking about for a while, which is that this administration is not going to let the stock market take that bad of a dip.

Buy every dip. The United States cannot afford to have assets go down over a persistent time frame. The US stock market is a Ponzi retirement account for the United States. They need it to both store wealth for Americans and for Americans to monetize wealth where they earn tax receipts. If the US doesn't have a stock market that's up 10 to 15% a year, it is insolvent because it cannot afford the interest payments on its debt. So, all dips should be bought.

None of these dips scream Bitcoin's going to 10K. None of these dips are talking about cats. I'm allergic to cats. Literally, I am. You learn something new about me every single week. I am physically allergic to cats. I can't be around cats. So, I know nothing about a cat, a dead cat bouncing. I know nothing about it. This is all to do with global liquidity.

The point is we're in the middle of a liquidity crunch. Again, that's kind of been my consistent theme is that today QT ended. So, first of all, for all of you, QT ended today. Quantitative easing QE is very likely to resume in the near term. We're very likely to get rate cuts going forward. Trump he said in communicated I know exactly who I want as my Fed chair. They're going to be allowed to use unlimited leverage for treasuries. Create a lot of credit. Create a lot of new money. We have 50-year mortgage. We have stimulus checks. We have midterms. I know I take a lot of for it. I think this cycle is 250k to a million.

Okay, I don't know if it's 250K to a million, but he's right. The first 30 seconds of the video, he's right. And and the cat thing got me. Like when I watched last night, I was like, why is he talking about a cat and the dead cat? I was like, that was good. That was good. You got me there. That was good.

But look, he's right. At the end of the day, the Trump administration understands that they are levered up on debt. The only way to monetize that debt or to be able to continue financing that debt is if they grow. And the only ability to grow is to make sure that there is an incentive for investors aka you and I to want to grow or want to grow into our capital and believe in the story of America of this market.

And what are the two stories that you can believe in that the Fed is going to ease that's a really big story and that AI is real. And so we got a lot of different initiatives by Trump this morning that we'll talk about especially that have to do with robotics that actually kind of reinforces the reason Tesla's up in the pre-market is because you got some rumors about what the Trump administration is going to be doing with robotics. Tesla, they're up 1.1%. Tesla likely going to be a big player in robotics.

But I think the Trump administration knows the next four years they've got to get that GDP growth of 3.5 to 4% if they have any chance of making sure that the debt is sustainable and that the deficit is sustainable. So, you know, Steve and I were talking about this last night. Every dip is viable. Now, that doesn't mean if we have like a 5% dip, you just go out and start buying. It it means that if you have capital that needs to be allocated and it needs to be allocated into something that you think can grow when the market does present opportunities like extreme fear that we had two weeks ago and you know a lot of stocks were on sale.

It's like where else are you going to put your money? You know, obviously you could leave it in cash, you could put it into gold, silver, real estate, but there's something that has to let it grow. And the administration is uniquely tied to making sure that the stock market grows, which is the broader argument around why every dip is viable. And so far, that has done well for people that took advantage of it over the past month.

Tesla right there 434, BMR, that's up 5.6%. Robin up 1.4. Micro Strategy up three. And then where's Nvidia? This one was moving overnight. Wow. Nvidia 183.38. All right, so that's up another 1%. It did hit 185.60 yesterday. If we can get that moving back up to 190, I think that would be very exciting as well.

By the way, December 3rd, which is today, tends to be the local bottom for December. Uh, historically since 1950, December tends to be uh December 3rd tends to be the worst day of the month. So, maybe we're getting set up for a little bit of a rug pull from the pre-markets and things are going to be uglier throughout the day. But if it is historically, that's how it has always been over the past 75 years.

Okay, let's get into earnings and then we'll get into some of the other headlines we've got. So, uh, Marvell crushed earnings. They beat on the top of the bottom. Their guidance for some of their margins were a little bit lower than expected. This stock was down 10%. It reversed up 15% now up 9% in the pre-markets. Uh, they said on their earnings that the AI acquisition that they did, they paid $3.2 billion for it is going to add a billion dollars in revenue. They also made some comments about competing with Nvidia and certain types of chip design.

And it's it's it's not exactly clear what the market loved about it, but I think if you had to put your finger on it, it would be that they're adding a billion dollars in revenue and they paid 3.2 billion for a company to uh get that billion in revenue. So that I think is just like adding more growth and the street didn't expect that even when the acquisition news came out earlier in the morning. So if you have Marvell took you through a bunch of emotions yesterday, but that one did very well.

Today after the bell, we have Snowflake and Path that I know a lot of people are interested in. Snowflake up 1.5% in the pre-markets and then you got PATH right here also up about 2%. Uh and then after Marvell you add American Eagle Outfitters which once again crushed expectations. They increased their guidance by 4x which is kind of crazy and they beat EPS by 20%. Uh you can call it Sydney Sweeney or you can say the American retailer has disposable income.

American Eagle, uh, Burlington Coat Factory, Best Buy, Abercrombie, Urban Outfitters. These are not companies that should be having these massive, massive beats on earnings, and they are. And either it's AI making them more efficient, so their margins are going up or the consumer spending. And in this case, it seems that the consumer is spending 15% of the pre-market for American Eagle.

Now, the two bare cases to that is that the consumer is spending on credit and that uh so so that's bad because that means there's a lot of money that they might not pay back. The second bare case is that it's a wealthy consumer that's spending all this money to make the earnings look good, but it's just it's been like eight or nine companies that have put up these really good numbers from the retailer space. So, I don't know if the wealthiest consumer is the one that's doing all of that spending.

There were some reports going around last night that said 95% of the spending in Black Friday was finance. None of that has been confirmed. Like the only source I have is this guy who wrote it and went viral on Twitter. It's like I don't know where he got those numbers from. So, I'm sure a ton of it was finance. I'm sure a ton of it was credit cards, buy now pay later, etc. You also have to look at the nuance of all the companies that were giving 5% cash back if you use buy now pay later and all the incentives they had and different things. But 95% of it being financed. I mean, until I see a source for exactly that being the case, then that might not be what happened.

So, we're going to kind of see in the future what these retailer earnings look like and what it means for all these Black Friday sales that we also had. J, thank you for the super chat. got to admit, please buy one Bitcoin and forget about it. You know, I was telling Steve about this last night. The two things I want to DCA into next year that I have really no I've not started a DCA into for the past couple years is the good old S&P 500. Should probably start buying that thing. Um, and Bitcoin. So, I think I think we'll do that next year.

We'll open two separate Robin Hood accounts and just throw some money every month at the S&P and Bitcoin and uh we'll make sure we start that DCA. S&P is more the safe one. One could argue Bitcoin is the more safe one if we keep printing as much money as we print. But yes, I I I do plan to just throw some money in there. Regardless of what the price is, you know, 20 years from now, I'm sure I'll be happy that I did that.

Robin right here up about 1% then Tesla up .9%. All right, so let's transition to the Tesla news. What's going to happen with Tesla in terms of robotics? And that was all the earnings updates that we had from last night. We only had two earnings. Today after the bell, we'll have a lot more earnings.

Um, this was pretty interesting. So, the Trump administration is planning to accelerate US robotics development. Politico says Commerce Secretary Lutnik has been meeting with robotic CEOs and made back an executive order next year. The initiative follows the administration's AI acceleration plan with a federal robotics working group reportedly in the works and new legislation under construction.

I thought this was really interesting because at its core, you had a Department of Commerce spokesperson said, "We are committed to robotics and advanced manufacturing because they are essential to bringing critical production back to the United States." And they're going to be announcing a robotics working group. This is essentially what they did for AI. And they had like an AI czar, which is David Sacks, who had to deal with some controversy with the New York Times the uh over the weekend in terms of what he was saying, but and they just did like a massive hit piece on him.

Um, but the the AI robotics ecosystem is how things are going to grow. If you had a robotic czar, that would also be really important. And in order to get that type of robotic czar, well, you would need to incentivize companies to feel that robotics is a big deal. And so maybe we're going to get that, maybe we don't, but that would be very important for Tesla, Figure, Google, which by the way, Google has a stake in a robotics company called Atronic. So there's a lot of companies that are going after this humanoid robotics ecosystem. Amazon. Obviously, that would be a massive deal for them, but we're gonna need to see if that plays out.

Why are you guys saying it's dumping? Okay. Yeah, Bitcoin's down like 700 bucks. That's a $700 candle. I I don't know if that's a market thing or that's just a Bitcoin thing. Oh, she keeps falling. Is she going to break 92? S&P. Oh, no. S&P. Okay, that's everything. Nope, that's everything. That's not just Bitcoin. Okay, what's the news? It's not necessarily a dump, but I am curious why everything went red. S&P officially just went red. Hood, look at that red candle. BMR just lost 2%. Wow, that's weird.

That's If it was just Bitcoin, I would Wow, Bitcoin just lost a,000 bucks. Huh. Iran continues to fall. We'll talk about Iran in a second. That's down 15% from yesterday, down another 1% right here. Nvidia is about to go red. Huh?

December 3rd. Dude, I love these little macro stats when you guys are blaming me for the market being down. I be like, "Guys, like, look at the data from 74 years. It says December 3rd is our bottom. So, you don't you don't need to get mad at me. Like, I'm just the messenger of the data." That's weird, though. That's not just Bitcoin. That's everything.

I wonder if that just is a like a algo glitch and that comes right back. But it's been a while since in the pre-market we've seen literally everything just take a dump after being up almost 3 to 4%. Look at Microsoft. Why is Microsoft down 2%. Look at that. Just look at that chart in seconds. Literally at 490 to 480. And it's less about the 2% or 1%. It's more about the the everything following in that same way. The ADP jobs report was an hour ago.

Microsoft lowers AI software sales quotas. Oh boy. Of course it's the information. Well, why? Of course it would be the information. Microsoft lowers AI sales quota. Okay, let's see. Microsoft better not ruin Christmas, bro. Nadella better not ruin Christmas.

All right, here's the headline, guys. Microsoft lowers AI software sales quotas as customers resist newer products. Wow, some bearish AI news on December 3rd. Um, everything getting hit right here. Obviously, it's Microsoft. Microsoft's a very big AI company. My goodness, everything getting hit.

So, the reason this is happening just as I'm reacting to it in real time, if there is even a hint of the market thinking AI is not real, and if you have a hyperscaler come out and saying we have to lower our forecast because we don't see customers adopting these AI tools, whether it's true or not, that market's going to react.

Market's going to react. Now the question is the quality of this report because Microsoft just got done having a big conference um a week ago where they were talking about how their agentic ecosystem and workflows are uh integrating with their user base yada yada right like they're basically saying demand is good also Microsoft is going to spend $120 billion next year on capex you don't do that if customers are resisting AI products so I'm struggling to I'm not saying the report is fake but I am struggling to conclude that the report is necessarily fully accurate given the things that Microsoft has said.

Uh, and again, that's the only thing I have. I'm seeing if I can get the article. The only thing I have is this headline. I don't see much more than that. If the report is true, then Nadella's got some explaining to do. And Nadella might have to come out and say, "Yeah, all that great demand stuff we were talking about, we were lying about it." Which I don't think Nadella is gonna say he lied about it. uh especially because he said it two weeks ago unless I misinterpreted what he said.

And the other question is how the hell did the information get this report? Also, is it just like one product category and one vertical like in finance if not everyone is adopting co-pilot? Is that the argument? But like when you say lower AI software sales quota, you're talking about like a a public earnings type of uh comment which they got leaked from someone who is close to Microsoft because when you say when you say a company lowers their sales quota that that's like a legit like it's like a legit like some something that investors need to know, right? That's not some random one-off piece of headline, especially if you're lowering guidance or something like that's like very serious type of economic data for a company.

Nvidia still going down. S&P going down even further. There you go. 0.2 S&P was flat and now it's actually dumping. Bitcoin continuing to go down. Uh Hoodie just lost all of its gains. Marvell just went from 10% to 6%. Nvidia down two. Nebius down one. Meta down one. Wow. This just became the story of the day.

If it's not related to Azure, it's a nothing burger. Yeah. I mean, if it's related to co-pilot and like, you know, I agree. It sounds like the It absolutely sounds like the MIT report, but then again, they're attaching Microsoft to it. Microsoft's a big deal. Microsoft cuts AI sales code after Teams mis-targets customers back at 30 bulk at $30 user per month. Copilot add-on, sticking with plain Office 365.

Okay. So, so some more nuance of the headline from Cactus right there is co-pilot rejection from customers again. How did the information get this in this information? That that is the the broader question like who at Microsoft told them this because here's the thing. If the information talked to some customers and and they were like yeah we're not using Copilot because we don't get any value out of it. That's fine. But then for the report to be Microsoft lowers their sales quota because some customers that we've uh anonymously talked to say that they don't they don't like copilot. I mean that's just I don't know. I don't know if that's enough to make the argument.

You can extrapolate whatever you want as an investor from that headline. say Microsoft lowers sales quotas, especially when they just had a an event where the chief business officer talked about how strong their co-pilot Agentic enterprise has been.

I don't know. That's weird. We're not getting any coverage on it yet. I don't see anyone talking about it, but obviously the stock market is reacting to it. I I think we got to give the market a second to see how they think of this. Uh, and definitely when the market opens, you're going to probably get more details on this piece of news.

Either this news is taken seriously and everything is a falling knife right now or this news is an absolute nothing burger and we are quickly going to rebound to where we were in the pre-market. Like I think it's one or the other. I think it's going to be a violent reaction up or down. But you're just going to have to give the Amazon down 0.45. You're going to have to give the market some time, I think, which that time might be at, you know, maybe an hour or two to just get more data on this news.

If you are a sellside analyst on Microsoft right now, you are probably calling as many people as you can probably emailing investor relations and asking, hey, like, is this true? Is this legit? Because we need to know if that's the case.

Um, okay. Here's the summary of the article. I got the summary of the article. Shout out to our boy Cactus. Making sure we're updated on everything. Let me pull this up. Okay, so this is the summary of the article. Let's see what it is. So, again, we don't have the source for how the information got this, but this is the summary of the article.

Despite aggressive promotion, adoption has been slow. Companies like Informatica, a cloud software firm with 5,000 employees, exemplify the reluctance despite fitting the ideal profile for co-pilot, they have not committed to the widespread rollout. Customers often stick with core Office 360 tools, viewing AI add-ons as a non-essential amid budget constraints.

Quote a reduction and restructuring. This marks a rare downward revision in sales goals following 2025 layoffs and sales teams and internal criticisms. It's part of a broader effort to streamline AI sales pitches, consolidating solution areas to reduce confusion and and improve efficiency. It seems like they're getting these sources from like disgruntled Microsoft employees just based on how that's sounding.

Uh strategic response to to boost uptake. Microsoft is accelerating co-pilot rollouts and bu bundling vertical AI tools. The company's also diversifying AI providers. We knew about that. The move reflects industrywide AI monetization hurdles with with competitors like salesforce echoing similar difficulties. Analysts know potential for growth in 2025 via cheaper hardware and refined features, but warn of the ongoing resistance if the ROI is unclear.

All right, so whatever source the information got, it sounds like Microsoft employees that are getting annoyed of having to sell this if it's not actually being sold. Yeah, it sounds like enterprises not necessarily hitting their target. A lot of you guys saying co-pilot is crap. I've heard that many times from people, so I I've never used it. Um, but I I've heard it plenty of times, so I wouldn't doubt that you're wrong there.

The question is what Microsoft is saying. And I remember driving to the dentist two weeks ago. I was playing the Microsoft chief business officer in my car, listening to him talk about how important Co-Pilot is and how well it's doing, yada yada. So, like, from what I heard, he's pretty excited about it. Now, maybe he was just BSing the whole time. Or maybe this report is fake. It's one or the other. But it's hurting the market as we're seeing right now.

Speaking of AI, let's uh take a look at a couple of other different things. So, you had two clips that I wanted to show everybody right here uh from Mark Chen. Mark Chen works at Open AI, which Microsoft owns a stake in. He is um the chief research officer. Here's a couple of clips in a podcast he said that I thought were pretty interesting. First clip is uh what Zucks has been doing to get talent away from OpenAI.

You know, Meta, they've gone after a lot of people quite unsuccessfully. So just to give you context, right, within my staff, within my direct reports, uh before they hired anyone from open, I think they went after half of my direct reports and they all declined. Um and of course, you know, if they have something like $10 billion of capital per year to deploy towards talent, um they're going to get someone. So I actually feel like we've been fairly good about protecting our top talent. And you know it it's been kind of interesting and fun to see it escalate over time.

Um you know uh some interesting stories here are Isak actually went and yeah hand delivered soup to people that he was trying to recruit from us like a just a just to show how far he would. Yeah. I think he he handcooked the soup and and you know it was it was shocking to me at the time but you know over time it kind of update towards these things can be effective in their own way right.

so for those that are heavy meta you've got someone who's in the words of Mark Chen hand delivering soup to some of the best research uh scientists at opening eye to get them to leave to meta and some of them he was successful I mean a lot of them did leave back in the summer and then here was the next clip that I thought was interesting uh this Is Mark Chen responding to Gemini 3?

Yeah. Yeah. So, um to speak to Gemini 3 specifically, you know, it's a pretty good model. Um and I think one thing we do is try to build consensus, you know, um the benchmarks only tell you so much. Um and just looking purely at the benchmarks, you know, we actually felt quite confident. um you know we have models internally that uh perform at the level of Gemini 3 and we're pretty confident that we will release them soon and we can release successor models that are even better.

Um but yeah again kind of the benchmarks only tell you so much and I you know I I think everyone probes uh the models in their own way there there is this math problem I like to give the models uh I I think so far none of them has quite cracked it even the thinking models um so yeah I'll wait for that.

So, I thought those clips were rather interesting because OpenAI has had this sort of code red based on Gemini 3 based on the reports that we've seen. They're going to have to come out with a new model pretty soon. In fact, they might be delaying some of their business applications of OpenAI in terms of advertising in order to come out with a model that's better. So, you can tell internally they are scared.

I mean, even the way the guy that was talking about it, he was uh nice to Gemini 3, but he's also like, "Hey, don't count us out. Like, we still have models that are very sufficient and probably better." Uh, the problem is Google just has hundreds of billions of dollars they can use to keep doing. Now, OpenAI has a war chest, but they don't have a war chest as big as Google, and they don't have as many employees as Google. So, it really comes down to the talent at this point. And that's why that clip about the talent and Zux taking town talent was super important because if Zux is taking your best talent, maybe Zux is not going to come out with a better model than Gemini 3. But if he's taking the best talent from OpenAI, maybe they're not going to do it either because they don't have the money to pay for that talent.

So there's a massive AI war going on right now. The consumer ultimately wins. I think at the end of the day, Nvidia, AMD, these guys win as well. But the foundation models are competing at a pretty high level to see which one is going to win.

Ladies and gentlemen, Stock Talk. What's up?

What's going on? What's going on guys? Good to see a lot of you. I'm sure many of you have probably heard me on audio before um on spaces or you know either with Amit on on the new space that we're starting with Equity Edge, but it's good to be with you guys. I was excited to come on these streams. I've watched these streams with it many times. So, it's good to be on um and and to chat. So, yeah, let's get into it.

Well, you made a lot of people a lot of money on this Amcore name. So, very included.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one of the one of the reasons I I wanted to do the the show with you is because I've respected you a lot as a stock picker. And I think there's a literal handful of people, like I can count on one hand the amount of people I really respect when they say, "Look at this ticker." Because everyone has an idea of a ticker, but not everyone does enough research to say this ticker deserves to take a look at. You do, and you found some really undervalued gems throughout the year, uh, that have obviously done very well. So, I guess let's start off with that first question. First of all, how long have you been investing for? And then the second part to that is what is your general philosophy when it comes to actually picking a stock in the market.

Yeah. So I mean a lot it's funny because a lot of people hear me on Twitter and they think I'm a lot older than I am. Maybe because of my voice, but um I'm 32. I'm I'm not I'm not old, but I've been investing since I was 18. Trading and investing since I was 18. So, you know, it's been 14 years. In terms of doing it seriously, it's really been a little over a decade.

So I would describe my strategy like this. I focus on the midcap niche. There are occasionally small caps around my portfolio. There's one right now. I'll go over all my portfolio holdings with you guys later. I don't typically do that publicly but you know from its audience. It's my boy so I'll do it. Um and we'll chat about all those stocks.

But um I typically don't do small cap. It's typically midcap. So 2 to 10 billion market cap range. And what I'm looking for is I'm looking for a story that's about to inflect, right? And that can be an inflection that's happening fundamentally, technically, or thematically. And for me, my high conviction picks, Amcore being one of them, you know, Nurses Systems, ENS. Actually, three of the three stocks that I covered on Equity Edge with it were are actually my three biggest positions.

But yeah, in a nutshell, what I try to do is I try to find midcaps that are at an inflection point. And my high conviction picks are when they check all those boxes. They're thematically relevant. They have a fundamental inflection and they also have a technical inflection. So, you know, Stanley Ducken Miller talks about this. He's like, I never take an idea where it's not fundamentally a good idea and also technically a good idea. And I'm the same way. I need both the chart and the story to be telling me the same thing.

And like there are there's this thought process on Twitter from a lot of people I think that you have to be encamped. You have to be a balance sheet guy or a chart guy and that's it. That's how you pick stocks. And all the chart guys, you'll see them say, "Well, I don't need to worry about the news or the catalysts or the themes. It's all noise to me." And then you'll see the balance sheet guys say, "Well, I've never used a chart in my life and I've made great money." In my view, both camps are wrong. like be using them both as objective data sets and trying to get the most probability in your favor I think is the objective of investing. You want the price and the story to be telling you the same thing in my view.

All right. So the first theme I have these separated by thematic. So the first one is power grid and batteries. Um inus ENS is my biggest position. Um in the whole portfolio currently but obviously also in that basket. Um I'll give you the relative weightings too. Why not? Just because you know. That one's at a 15. just put that one at 15 to 16% because it's going to bounce between that and then.

next one in the that basket is PLPC that's at 8 to 9%. That is just all common stock. Uh okay, the cost base on ENS is 112.87. PLPC is 192.16.

Uh okay then the next basket is US semiconductor supply chain. This used to be two socks. It used to be Amcore and Pab. Now it's just Amcore. Um that is 13 well actually nope. Ampcore is not 13 to 14% anymore. If you include the options it is 16 to 17%. Um so Amcore has now overtaken ENS. Um, and there is a 24.35 cost basis on the shares on on Amcore.

the other one's my small cap name. Um which, uh you know, be cautious. It's the only small cap name in my portfolio, but it's going to be volatile, yada yada yada. Uh which is OSS, Onetop Systems. Uh my cost base on that is 471. That is at a 5 to 6% waiting.

Okay. So this one is in so this basket this small cap fits in um oh so for that theme uh put not don't put small caps for that theme put uh data center because this is the data center basket. The other one in that is nebus um that is at see if this has changed that's at 6 to 7% waiting has gone down on that obviously since it's dipped. 23.92 is the cost basis on that.

the third one in that is Vav. That's 9 to 10%. Um that's 13.58 cost basis. Okay. All right. That's the data center. Oh, sorry. We also have digital ocean and path and that which are these are more so options plays, but I do have some digital ocean shares. Um I have path 14 calls. That's 4% that earnings is today. Um but that's 4%. And then dockend that's 2 to 3%.

next basket is nuclear. That's just one stock in that uh LEU that is at 9 to 10%. Just shares uh cost bases on that is 96.94.

Uh, aerospace and defense Kratos. Um, I have some 35 and 40 calls expiring January 27, but the cost base on the shares is 22.34. Um, and then HIi, that's 219.30 is the cost basis on that. That's Huntington Engles. It's the only ship builder in the United States.

Oh, sorry. The waiting Oh, yeah. Did I even give you the waitings? Yeah, I give you everything else. Uh, waiting on Kratos is 3 to 4%. Waiting on hi is 2 to 3%.

The last category is legacy positions and these are all going to be small waitings, too. These used to be huge waitings, but the portfolio grew a lot. So Robin Hood 4 to 5%. That's 19.74 cost basis. Um Tesla 3 to 4% that is a 19.38 cost basis. Um, Amazon 3 to 4% 88.93 cost basis.

All right, so that's what we got. Thank you everybody for being here. Again, Stock Talk, this is Twitter. We'll be live in about 30 minutes on X. We're doing another pitch here ticker. If anyone wants to be there, just DM me on X and we'll get you in the queue. Uh, but this is where people are going to pitch their ticker for like two to three minutes. We'll ask them some questions and then that'll allow you to kind of get a better understanding.

683.07 on the S&P 500, we are green. Amcor continuing to move higher 43, Nvidia 180, AMD 215, Nebius 95, Pounder 173, Hoodie 131, Tesla 440. Tesla having a pretty decent day. And then that Microsoft news that kind of messed up the morning is not that big of a deal anymore. Microsoft still down 2% but they did come out with a response.

By the way, the information these freaking journalists, do you want to call it reporters? How do you want to frame this? I mean, look what they did. They had to replace the headline. Look at this. Microsoft lowers AI software sales quotas to Microsoft lowers AI software growth targets right after Microsoft responds because they don't want to be sued for defamation instead. Like it is incredible what's going on with these AI headlines. But this is not journalism. This is just nar and narrative creations that quite frankly might be financially incentivized for a variety of reasons, but it does not seem like it's trying to get to the the uh the truth claim of what's going on here.

All right, that's it. Thank everybody. Appreciate it. Glad you guys enjoyed the guest. Again, his Twitter I'll put in the chat right here. Stock Talk Weekly is his ex. I will see you guys for the close and then we'll be live in 30 minutes on Twitter spaces and uh we'll keep going from there. Thank everybody. Appreciate it. I'll see you guys on the mark close. Bye everybody. Have a good one.