SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dustin, so much has happened since last week.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is uh crazy. Crazy week of news. We had a quiet week last week. This week's a little bit busier. Before we start, I just want to say to our listeners, if you hear any music in the background, it's because Hamid's having a bit of a party. He's throwing a rager and doing the podcast in the middle. Um, but you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna judge.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Well, all right, I'll I'll I'll give the scoop a little bit. I I'm actually on a cruise ship. Uh technically, I'm not in the middle of the ocean yet. I will be soon. But thanks to Starlink, I can still have this um uh you know do do the podcast. But you know, the the caveat here is that uh there wasn't good lighting in my room, and uh the internet wasn't as fast in my room as it is up here near the fitness center. So here I am. You know, you got some background music to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So I appreciate it. I think it sets a nice tone. Uh okay, so let's get into today's topics. We are gonna talk about my portfolio. I made a lot of purchases and one tiny sale. Uh speaking tiny. Uh Bumble is going private. Uh Micron has been selling off. I mean, technically everything's been selling off, but Micron's been selling off for the last few days. Uh Meta announced their latest model, Muse Wonder, and Google also announced their latest model uh or released their latest model, Gemini 4, Argonne. Uh, we maybe have some bonus topics in there as well, depending on timing. And as always, listener questions. Adrian is not with us today, so we will be moderating your questions. So apologize in advance if we miss a question or uh we're a little slow. Okay, with that, let's go to my portfolio. So I I made a lot of moves. Um okay, so let's bring it up. Let's start with uh crypto. Um and let me uh let me share my screen here. Uh so zoom in. I started buying uh Bitcoin again, and I increased my position by 16. I think at the time Bitcoin was 40% of my portfolio, and after the purchase it became 46% of my portfolio. Um but as I've said on this podcast before, the way I view my portfolios, it's really split in two. There's the crypto side and then there's the stock side. So um it's just kind of like the the I'm I'm using the cash that I made from the sales or the sales that I did earlier in the year, um, because I've been reducing my crypto exposure this year. Uh and I I've used that cash to now buy Bitcoin again.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Um I I have a question for you. So so is it fair to say that uh your portfolio is the bulk of your savings essentially? Like uh it's it's or or is there sort of like yeah?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

So this portfolio, that's a good question. This portfolio represents my taxable brokerage account and my crypto holdings. It does not represent my uh retirement uh okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

So it's separate from your retirement, correct, but but everything else, okay. And and 40 almost half is in crypto, basically. Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So to put that in to put that in perspective, this is probably around 10% of my net worth, if I had to guess. I don't know the exact number, but it's it's close to 10% of my net worth. So it's like I know it's 50% sounds like a big number. It's really got a lot smaller of an impact on my uh entire financial portfolio. And that 10%, by the way, is my personal net worth. It is that that does not include my spouse's net worth. Okay. So from a it's it's actually even smaller if you look at it that way. Um gotcha, gotcha. So why did I decide to buy now when I've been selling over the last year? So one of the fun things to do with Bitcoin in particular, because it is very very cyclical, is to figure out when did it top and when did it bottom in these cycles. Okay. And you can do it beforehand and you could try to guess, or you could do it day of, you know, which maybe the 0.001% do, or you could do it after, which technically everyone does. It's just a question of how long does it take for you to realize, oh, yep, that was the top, or yep, that was the bottom. Uh let me bring us back up here. And it has been roughly a hundred days since uh Bitcoin bottomed. Uh July 1st, it bottomed at like 58k for the cycle. And I'm looking at the chart, it had a crazy move in August, up like 25% in five days, which doesn't really happen when Bitcoin is like very low risk uh historically. And it's held and have and it has gone up since then. So I either can continue to be stubborn and say it's gonna there's gonna be weakness in Q4, which I still think might happen. Or I could pivot and say, okay, I think we're actually in the bull market now. There I think there's a good chance of Q4 weakness. I don't think it's going back down to 58k. And obviously, all this I could be wrong. This is just my thoughts. Um I don't have the luxury anymore to try to time anything because that would be going against what I believe is the larger trend of a bull market. So I need to I need to start getting back in because I know I want to own more Bitcoin. And obviously I have a bunch of Bitcoin, but I want to own more.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

So your overall thesis is that the Bitcoin has now entered a bull market again, and will be a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I have I have realized it has entered a bull market since July in October.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And so so then the thought is, you know, I think, and I've had this, I've had the thought. Like, right. Yeah, what am I too late? It's already up, like, I don't know, uh, 40% from the bottom or something like that. Right. Uh should I wait for it to drop? Should I not get in at all? But again, if I zoom out and I kind of think about how these cycles work, it's been a hundred days since the bottom. We probably have a thousand days to go until the until it tops, and there's plenty of time for it to move from here. So for me to try to get in at a perfect time, I just don't think makes sense that I'd be uh and I I'm just focused on catching majority of the trend, not the precise top and bottom of any trend.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Right, right. Uh did you have a comment about that?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Or no?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

No, no. I mean, it it you know, I'm uh you know, I'm not a big crypto guy, and I'm definitely not a timing and historical putting much reliance on historical trends and cycles, but um uh but no, I mean like your reasoning makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah, uh I think so too. Uh but the the I I definitely used a different thought process for Bitcoin than I do for stocks. Um the the other piece of this is I also bought uh Robinhood. Uh let me pull this up. I increased my Robin Hood position by 60% because I view that as a crypto-related asset. That's a uh another um I like when I was reducing my crypto exposure, I completely exited Coinbase. I completely exited Ethereum and I was selling Robin Hood. So now I'm buying back Robin Hood. I'm not planning on getting back into Ethereum or Coinbase unless if something crazy happens. But I'm uh right now I just care about increasing Robin Hood. Increasing Bitcoin. Now here's the thing if I'm looking at the data that doesn't really make sense. I probably shouldn't be doing this. And uh I've been working on a little side project. Um not related to Savvy Trader. This is the surprise, not related to Savvy Trader, trade the cycle. Uh and I I created some some fun visualizations, and I know you say, you know, all of this is uh astronomy, and I really leaned into astrology.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Astronomy is an actual science.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Astrology. Um don't insult astronomers.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

I I apologize. Uh so I really leaned into that, and let's go to hood here. So on the podcast, I've talked about how you have all these assets that are crypto-related that orbit around Bitcoin, Bitcoin being the sun. I thought it would be great if there was a visual that showed this. So we have the like uh correlation cosmos, where you have uh eight planets here, each one represents a stock, plus the SP 500. Each planet is size based on its market cap. So the bigger it is, the the uh the higher the market cap, and Bitcoin is based on its own market cap. And then the distance beautiful visualization. Thank you. The distance to the sun or the uh distance to Bitcoin is how correlated it is today, which is fine. But I also wanted to see how how did the correlation change over the last year? So this shows what I call the orbital path or the correlation clock. Each uh Robinhood mark here represents a month, right? So you could see at its low end it had a weak positive correlation uh back in August. And at the high end, where it was most correlated over the last year, was in April, where it had a moderate positive correlation. You know, compare that to uh MicroStrategy, which is one of the most correlated stocks on the market, it's just consistently a strong positive correlation, which is how I've really treated Robin Hood over the last year. So this is kind of telling me, even though I'm not fully listening to it, maybe I shouldn't be buying and selling Robin Hood with Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Bitcoin. Um you should just stick to one or the other. Is that is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

It's more so like uh I should be investing in Robin Hood without thinking about bit. Like Bitcoin doesn't have as big of an impact on Robin Hood as I thought.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Oh, interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

That's what that was.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

I thought I I thought it was showing a very close cor correlation.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

I I I guess I misread that. Sorry. So see how micro strategy is like in this inner ring here. So it's very strongly correlated because the the gravity is stronger, right? Gotcha, gotcha. But if I go to Hood, or you I mean you could just see it here. The farther away the planet is, the less correlated it is.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Right. So I thought this whole time that it was closer. It was even more correlated. And they are correlated.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Wait, does this mean I've been right this entire time when we have argued about Bitcoin and Robbins?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

And you know what? Actually, wait, you're gonna get your flowers in a couple months when our bet is done. So I'm I'm not giving you any credit until then.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yes, okay, that's fine. I'll take my by the way, it the the one uh share of uh Robinhood you owe me when we made the bet was only 65 bucks or so, or I don't know, $70. And you know you're gonna have to buy it at like over a hundred now.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Um it's fine. I have plenty of shares to give. I have plenty of shares to give, so that's fine. Um, no, I I I actually have a lot of thoughts on that bet. And I'm I'm even though it looks like I'm gonna lose, I'm happy with how it turned out, but we'll get to that at the end of the year. Um anyway, I would just wanted to show this visual to say, like, you know, I'm still buying Robin Hood with Bitcoin, but I probably shouldn't. Um again, if you want to check out this website, Trade the Cycle, it's really only if you care about Bitcoin. If you don't care about Bitcoin, don't bother with it.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Um trade the cycle.com.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

TradeTheCycle.com. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Okay, we'll put a link on it in the description of the uh video today, too. So yeah, and I haven't really been promoting yet.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So it's really just for my closest friends, all of you guys. I'll promote it maybe later this month or something. We're still working out, you know, fine polish. Um, okay, so that is all the crypto stuff that I did. Then it came out that Bumble is getting acquired. So I sold, I fully sold that, which is funny because we talked about last week how I was probably gonna sell half for tax loss harvesting and then hold on to the other half, cut to a week later. I'm fully exited out of uh Bumble. Let me pull this up. So I end up getting a 60% gain. Um, I sold at five dollars and ninety-six cents a share. And then with that, with some of that sale, uh, I bought more Google, I increased my position by 14%. Um, I bought Rocket Lab, I increased my position by basically five percent. And Iron, I increased that position by 13%. Um the reason why I chose those three stocks is it was just like I was looking at the allocation targets I wanted to hit. Those were underallocated. Uh and that is it. I've we're about to talk about the bumble deal in detail. Um, I don't want to go into it as a part of like my portfolio update. Uh any comments, questions, thoughts, concerns about how I am managing my portfolio? I know you have a lot of concerns.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

No, uh first of all, that that tool looks pretty awesome. The visualizations are very cool. Uh too bad it's about astrology. So, you know, I won't give it too much. But but it's a it's a beautiful uh website. Some of the most uh beautiful websites are astrology related, so you never know. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Sometimes astrology could be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

And exactly, exactly. And uh and and because uh I'm I'm dumping on it, it's probably gonna do exceptionally well. So it's gonna be the next bumble. But yeah. Speaking of bumble, should we should we move on to Bumble and talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

So for Bumble, let me break down the details of the deal. I'm gonna talk a little bit about more about why I sold, and then I want to click on something, by the way, to change the subject to Bumble.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yes, thank you. On the video, yep, you're gonna have to remind me that every time.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Um I'm gonna uh so I'm gonna break down the details why I sold. You're gonna give your thoughts, and then I'll give my thoughts. Uh so a little sandwich. So overall, my perspective, it was time to break up with Bumble. I wasn't, I didn't think it would today was gonna or yesterday was gonna be the day, but it was. Um, it is being taken private by Ithaca Holdings, it is a $1.3 billion deal, uh, which equates to $6.05 per share uh for investors, which is a 138% premium compared to Friday's close. Uh the co-CEOs of Ithaca will become Bumble's co-CEOs. Whitney will become a minority investor and remain on the board. Uh if Bumble walks away from the deal, they have to pay Ithaca $29 million. If Ithaca walks away from the deal, they have to pay Bumble $102 million. And this deal has to close by July 12th, 2027. I expect it to close much sooner than them. I don't then then I don't think there's going to be any major issues here. Um, and they will be skipping their Q3 earnings call. So we're not gonna get any details there. Uh so why did I sell? And also kind of going back to why was I holding Bumble? So back in August, I said, and this was after a rumor was announced that they were looking to get acquired, I said that Bumble was an extremely strong risk-to-reward ratio because the price has just totally deteriorated. And the reward was either the turnaround story was going to be real, and they were going to overhaul the product, and then the stock would uh you know follow suit and and uh bounce back, or they're going to be acquired and something like this would happen. Uh now now that the deal, now that this deal is announced and Bumble is at like five dollars and ninety cents a share or whatever, the risk reward ratio has totally flipped. Where it is the the reward to hold the shares to wait for that six dollars and five cents is virtually meaningless. And the risk, if the deal falls through, this stock will go right back down to the two dollar range. So to me, it makes no sense to hold Bumble at this point. The only caveat is if you think that there is going to be some sort of bidding war that is going to drive up what it's actually going to sell for, which I I think the likelihood of that is extremely low. Um, so I would I am not comfortable making that bet. But that is the only angle I could see why anyone would want to hold shares at this point. Okay. With all of that said, um, Ahmed, what are your thoughts on this actual deal?

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Okay, so I think most people who are listening to us uh know that I I sold my shares in the $2.70 range um after the last quarterly report, you know, where um there was a series of events that happened. One of them was this uh uh rumor that came out, and then the way in which the uh company sort of treated my interactions with both Whitney as well as uh just executive team trying to find out the details of this rumor that uh Bumble was looking to get acquired. But in that episode in uh uh August or whatever it was, we we did a sort of like a breakdown of what would the potential acquisition end up being. And uh, if you remember, we we said that uh Bumble is worth roughly you know $11. So it'd have to be south of $11, maybe it would be in the $7 or $8 per share range if there was going to be an acquisition. So that might be sort of like a worst case scenario. Um, but to a strategic acquirer, let's say like Match or uh Grinder or whatever, it might be worth even more. So you know, to me, this acquisition by uh John and Ruby, uh Rob Robbie, rather, uh Robbie Gupta and John Hedgeman, uh, who are, by the way, like uh uh former partner at Sequoia, former Instacort CFO, and then uh John was former chief revenue officer at Meta. So these guys have pretty substantial network uh and also uh finances. They also identified that this company is very much undervalued and decided to buy the whole thing. This is sort of like the whole thesis that I've had is that this company is extremely undervalued. Uh, even at seven or eight dollars per share, when I first started investing in it, I thought it was undervalued. Uh the fact that it might be turned around by Whitney, I was very excited about that. Unfortunately, the Whitney turnaround never happened. So, like the product turnaround never happened. But the company was still generating anywhere from $30 to $50 million per quarter of cash. And that's, you know, without like strimming it down, stripping it down to the core essentials. So if you know, it's a company that's pumping out roughly $900 million of revenue per year, uh, and somewhere between $120 or $150 million of cash per year of profits. Uh so you know, the fact that they bought this company for $1.3 billion is a bargain. It's not like it shouldn't be looked upon as like this amazing reward for shareholders, in my opinion. So I view it as like, wow, they kind of gave up. Uh, everybody gave up. Whitney gave up, the board of directors gave up, uh, they they just decided they're not going to be able to go at it and figure it out on their own, uh, and they need help, and they're bringing in uh a potential buyer. Now, the way in which they have brought in this buyer also just kind of rubs me the wrong way a little bit because uh they didn't go shopping it. Uh to me, a appropriate acquire should be a match.com, who I would think should be willing to pay more than $1.3 billion for um for bumble, uh, or grindr, who has uh a fraction of the revenue, but a significantly higher uh market cap. And again, $1.3 billion from them. Have been a no-brainer as well. So there should be some kind of bidding bidding war happening over here. And the fact that it's not.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah. And the fact that it's not good, you know, like tells me that the like something is off here. It just totally rubs me the wrong way. The way in which they interacted with me, one of their biggest advocates, uh, and a significant shareholder, by the way, who literally just uh they they forced me to give up on them by like mistreating me, uh, and uh you know, like causing their share price to go down even further. Like, if I had to guess, um, my guess is that the uh over the past couple of months, uh, this offer has been on the table and they're trying to work it to completion. And in order to get it to over the finish line, they wanted to make sure that the price doesn't run up in any way, shape, or form. Because the higher the price, the less likely it is to go through at $6.05 uh per share, because then the premium wouldn't be there, right? Um, so you know, uh investment relations was basically uh uh non existent. Uh Whitney went silent. Uh the board of directors has, in my opinion, probably gave up on Whitney, looked for a potential buyer, and was motivated to get this thing over the finish line. And I don't know. If uh if they weren't gonna pull off this turnaround, then this is probably the right thing for them to have done. But seems like they should have just announced that they are up for sale because there would have probably been a lot more interested parties at uh the ridiculous price of three bucks a share, which is what they were at. Uh there would have been more interested parties looking into it and potentially trying to figure out what is Bumbleworth. And anybody doing those calculations should have come up with, you know, it's worth at least, you know, eleven dollars a share. And then the bidding would have come up from you know three to closer to eleven, probably. And if there was a strategic acquire, it might have even gone above eleven dollars a share. So I don't know, it just uh the whole thing does not feel right to me. And um certainly it's not great for shareholders who bought it for a higher price than six dollars and five cents and have been loyal to the company and then have kept their shares. And I was one of those shareholders and I finally gave up uh in the past month. So anyway, that's sort of like my full thoughts on this on this company.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

I agree with you. It would have been more strategic for yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

But by the way, one quick note on Robbie and John, I I think they're not doing anything wrong. They're trying to like they've identified an opportunity here. Uh, and as co-CEOs of you know an investment company, they're like, let's go after this company. It's you know, it's easily worth significantly more than $1.3 billion. That's why they're paying $1.3 billion for it for a company that they know nothing about in terms of like the industry, the the dating uh industry. It's not like they're dating industry experts coming in to buy a lackluster company for cheap and then like uh taking it to the next level. No, these guys are former meta-exec, former Sequoia exec, and uh they just identified that this is an incredibly inexpensive asset to buy and own. And you know, you could like strip out uh the essentials and and you know, reduce costs, by the way. Like if this company was uh was operating on bare bones for the past couple of years, basically their product has not changed for the past couple of years, and they've still generated $900 million of revenue in the last year, uh they could have gone down to expenses of just $100 to $200 million and pumped out six or seven hundred or seven hundred million dollars of profits in the past year, if they just stripped it down to fair bones, right? So these guys could get their money back by just stripping it down to like get rid of everybody, right? Keep the same product, the same product for the past two years has generated those kind of revenues and uh uh and you know, get their money back within two or three years. I mean, from profits alone. And then you could put a uh AI uh software engineers on a new next generation product with a very, very small team. This is the sort of like path that uh you know highly uh capable teams go, like Meta and you know, uh Elon and uh Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and so on. So you put a crack team of uh you know five to ten people on a new next generation product, that doesn't cost you a fortune. It costs you, you know, maybe 10 million, 20 million dollars a year, uh, and and boom, you all of a sudden are saving hundreds of millions in other expenses, eliminate all the marketing costs, eliminate all the software engineering costs of today. And uh now the company is way more profitable. So sorry, just super, super uh high level rant on Bumble, but uh not an exciting outcome, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

But it goes back to what you've always said, which is if you could buy the entire company, would you? And that's a signal of if you should invest. And basically what these two guys did is identified that they could buy the entire company and they want to uh buy the entire company.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

So that's right. And they were even willing to pay 100% premium for for based on the Friday's price, but when they started, it may have been higher price point, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Um I I I I do think this was a good move for them. I also think it was a good move for Bumble users, um, because you know, and this is speculation, it seems like Bumble by themselves was struggling to achieve this turnaround. And my hunch is the these Ithaca guys are going to whip Bumble into shape and create a much better product for users, um, is my guess. You never really know, but I I think that's what they would want to do. Um, and from everything I've read.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

They they would have to bring in a new team of uh engineers because the engineers so far have have not done it. Uh and if I had to guess, six months from now, Whitney is not there. Um, you know, like um uh they might have an improved version of the product. I don't know about a whole new product. I I mean we'll we'll see. But uh you're probably right. Like it can't get worse. I mean, the product hasn't improved for two years, right? Like it's it has barely even been touched for two years.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

I think they're going to hire a completely new team, a smaller team, and it's gonna be a better product. And that's the world we live in, right? Right? Like they just need to be able to transfer the the users from one product to the other seamlessly, and as long as they could do that in golden. Um, I agree with you, in an ideal world, this wouldn't have happened, the turnaround would have worked, and I would have made way more than 60% on my investment, right? But again, if this turnaround, if there were issues with this turnaround, and you know, maybe Whitney didn't believe in the team to achieve it or didn't know how to execute to get there, this is the next best thing. Um, especially for an investor like me, where I've been really getting in bumble over the last year, so this has been all profit as opposed to like breaking even um or losing money from this deal. Obviously, it hurts if you were invested in bumble uh longer than that. Uh and then in terms of uh the bidding war, though the one thing I'll say, because I I also agree that they should have opened it up, but there were those rumors months ago at this point that they were looking to be acquired. So I don't know what conversations they had in the background. I'm sure that article was a signal to Grinder and Magic to have a conversation, which is why I think the likelihood of there being a bidding war now is very low. If we compare this to the Paramount uh uh Warner Brothers uh Netflix deal, where Paramount out of nowhere tried to acquire Warner Brothers, um that created a bidding war because Netflix had no time to react until after Paramount made that deal. This is very different that where there was plenty of time to react. So even though I there's obviously companies where it would make sense that they would want bumble, um it those conversations probably happen. So the likelihood of a bidding war taking place is uh on the lower end, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

I I agree with that. I agree with that. Also, like once a uh board has sort of like made its choice, it's sort of like hard to get them to switch and you know they would have to drive, it would have to be a hostile bidding bidding war. And like usually you don't want to get into that kind of situation, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Okay, let's move on to the micron sell-off. Um, do you wanna talk about the latest reason why uh micron's been selling off?

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Well, it it sounds like the latest reason is because uh uh again China's uh CX is it CXMT uh has uh made some progress on um making DRAM chips and um again like there's still a shortage of supply. I like I don't understand the sort of like sell-offs. Uh the the anticipation is that um China getting into the DRAM business or the memory business is suddenly going to make things extra available, and um uh and you know you know there's gonna be a glut of supply for everyone who needs memory, and uh you know, there's gonna be more memory than uh is needed, and therefore prices are gonna drop sharply. Uh that has not materialized. Uh it does not appear to be close to materializing, um, but the panic is real. So, you know, uh people uh go off of their personal beliefs or whatever. Um now, what are my thoughts on it? My thoughts on it are that like again, the market is uh not reacting in my view correctly, and therefore um, you know, I'm just gonna continue to hold. I like I have no uh reason to sell. Not like from my perspective, the core thesis that there's a memory supply shortage, and that uh shortage is going to continue for at least the next two, three, four years, possibly longer. Um and the fact that uh Micron itself is selling, uh pre-selling its supply for the next several years give you the give me all the indication that I need to sort of like feel confident about my Micron investment. And then every day you see a um a post or um confirmation that sort of like memory supply is still uh extremely tight. Um Elon just uh tweeted or had a post about how uh Micron has actually been quite reasonable with their pricing, they haven't been price gouging unlike other memory suppliers. Uh and uh he also tweeted that um uh the high bandwidth memory that is used in AI and servers are actually uh quite complicated to replicate. So uh the Chinese are nowhere close to being able to replicate those yet. So um, and and again, like assuming that they do, uh there's there's still a bigger demand for uh for all of these chips, not by just the United States, but also by China itself. So if anything, they're probably going to supply their own demand for uh for what they need, as opposed to um supplying it throughout the world. So uh and and oversupplying it, because that's the key, is until you get to oversupply, you don't have prices dropping. You have to sort of match the uh demand first before you before prices start to drop. So micron continues to be in a great position, in my opinion, and uh price has gotten better. But so has the price of everything fast last week. So uh Micron is not unique in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

So as with everything, it seems like negativity is louder than positivity. Um one tweet that you had, I think it was earlier this week, was you called out that Micron adjusted their planned buybacks and increased it to $30 billion, which by over 30 billion.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

I think it's around 35 billion. Yeah. Um and I think it starts in December, uh, like technically it can't start, I should say, until December 9th, if I'm not mistaken, due to the CHIPS Act. So this is uh um not firsthand information. I'm just going off of what other people have summarized about the CHIPS Act, but that seems to be pretty um uh uh pretty uh well-known consensus that the CHIPS Act prevents Micron from doing significant buybacks that were not already planned uh for their own stock uh because they're getting money from the government and uh due to the CHIPS Act. So um so once that starts, uh you know, currently $35 billion would would buy uh roughly 3.5% of the company. So that's a pretty significant chunk of the company for a single buyer. And that's just the buybacks that they have already approved. And uh and every quarter they're gonna be generating a significant amount of cash going forward. So um this next quarter, for example, it's like over $40 billion that they're expected to generate in profits. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Uh let's move on because we're we're running short on time. Let's move on to uh Meta Muse Wonder and Google Gemini Argon or Gemini for Argon. Too many words with all these models. Um both of these were announced slash released. Uh I you know it's funny. I thought Spark was like Muse's core or Meta's core model. I didn't realize they were working on an even like stronger, more frontier level model. Um did you know they were doing this, or is this also a surprise to you? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

No, no. Uh uh Mark Zuckerberg had uh mentioned it in in a few interviews, and and he also mentioned it again at Connect that they're working on a um that uh I guess I just thought it was still gonna be in the Spark branding, maybe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The branding, I feel like the like nobody is sort of keeping up with all of the different names uh of the brandings is is kind of weird. But um uh internally it was called watermelon, by the way. Like uh the code name for their wonderful um or wonder, their wonder model was called watermelon. Uh but yeah, it's uh it like suddenly Meta is one of the leading uh AI labs, if you will. Uh so this whole superintelligence meta superintelligence uh lab that they have created, MSL as they call it internally, Meta Superintelligence Lab, uh is now producing not only uh frontier models, but also uh applications that are being adopted at a faster rate than even ChatGPT was with uh with Meta's Muse sort of AI agent. Uh it's growing faster than ChatGPT's uh growth rate uh was when it first got introduced. So um Meta is like now the company to be. You know, you know, it's uh it's pretty interesting how quickly everything has come together. Now, for a year they were getting a lot of smack because they weren't producing anything as this team was sort of like cooking up uh and working on their products, but um, but now they've come out and hit the road running.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

It seems like there's been this game of leapfrog, at least between uh OpenAI and Anthropic. And then all of a sudden you had kind of Grok join in the game and Google, and now Meta is playing this game of leapfrog. The thing is, well, you were just kind of hinting at like the leaps that Meta and Google, because Google hasn't really updated Gemini in a while, are taking are much larger uh relative to where they were previously. Like when enteropic does an update, it's a smaller jump, but they're just kind of constantly in the lead. Um, I guess my question is do you think this is just going to continuously be a game of Leapfrog? Do you think that the players in this game are just gonna change, but it will still be Leapfrog? Or do you think at some point the the legacy companies, Google, Meta, are just gonna totally surpass based on the rate that they've been able to improve?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Well, I I think uh it's easier for your rate to be significantly higher than your your own previous like position, right? Uh so I think once you get to the frontier, then it's harder to uh make much bigger or big leaps or continue to make big leaps because you're now like on the front front line of trying to figure out how do we improve this thing more, right? Uh I think Anthropic and OpenAI historically have had a tougher job of trying to figure out all right, how how do we get how do we make this thing that is super smart even smarter? Um now uh assuming all of the players know exactly what to do to make these things smarter, and what they need is resources, meaning they need access to data centers and chips and memory and so on and so forth, then the the company that is the most well resourced could would eventually win, right? That that might be like one way to look at it. Uh another is that um some of them are taking different uh approaches to different things. Like, for example, uh in Meta's case with Muse, uh, it's trying to be a very useful personal agent. And for a useful personal agent, you don't necessarily need to be solving the world's math problems, right? And OpenAI and Anthropic are kind of taking this sort of other approach that is more maybe on the cutting edge of um science and uh and and technology that uh that that they might be rewarded for extremely well in that in that space. Uh now it's hard to know whether Meta will make progress in that realm, even considering that their new model, Wonderful, is uh, or Wonder, the full version of Wonder, which is called Wonderful, two words, uh, is uh even if it's like on the cutting edge, it might, because like their sort of like focus is on the uh agentic side and usefulness for three billion people, it's it might not get adopted as much as anthropic and open AI. So uh there is definitely room for multiple players to be successful. Uh what I would say is that again, like looking at the company's resources, looking at Meta and its ability to continue to fund its ambitions and its data centers and building the entire stack of all the way from chips to computers to data centers to uh the software, and then be able to market the whatever they build to 3.6 billion daily active users. They they have the full stack of everything under one roof, whereas OpenAI has to rent its data centers anthropic as well. Uh it's still not profitable. It still has to, like both of these companies still have to like go out and market their products to uh to their customer base or to new attract new customers. They have to go out there and spend dollars to get that done. Uh, and not to mention, they have to get investment at the same time to be able to uh fuel their ambitions of growth and build the data centers that they need and so on. So um financially Meta is in a much better position. I would say again, Google is also in a similar position to Meta, except they don't have the leadership that Meta has. Uh and that's what I think Google has been lacking.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Okay. Do you want to move on to a bonus topic or do you want to do listener questions? What's the bonus topic? Let's let's uh we have two options for bonus topics. We have SpaceX uh becoming a mobile carrier or Apple Home View.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Uh both of those are exciting. We can we briefly touch on both of those. What are your thoughts on you want to try to go fast? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do a speed round and then we'll jump into questions.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Uh okay, we'll do uh home view first. So Apple announced a new product, it's like their home pod or like an Amazon Alexa, but with a screen, it's gonna cost $299. Um and I think it's a totally fine, fair product. I have some concerns. So it looks like a Dyson.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

I saw your your post about that.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah, you know what's funny? So I post on like different social networks, it went pretty viral on threads. It did not do well on LinkedIn. Oh really, it didn't do great on on Twitter. It got like 12,000 views and like 300 likes on threads.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

On threads, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

How funny. Um, I compared uh the new home pot or home view to. To a Dyson Air Purifier and an Apple Watch combined, uh, which is what it is. That is how they built it. Uh so my my but my real concerns is I think it's difficult for someone to buy a product that is built on top of Siri right now. Um I this would be a much more exciting product if it was agentic first. Think about if if someone built this but it had Muse inside of it, right? Like that is a much more compelling product, at least to me. Um and then the the other or two other call-outs I have is it's just a little too similar to an iPad, where it almost feels like what they should have done is you could just dock an iPad into this thing, and then the OS kind of changes. Um, I understand like they want to have different product ones.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Okay, but but but uh so somebody else uh like uh on my post said something like, Oh, this is just an Apple Watch, but bigger. And I was like, Yeah, and and iPhone is also just an Apple Watch, but bigger, but yeah, but but bigger, right? Like it's uh it it's weird, but it's for different purposes. I have uh exactly looking just like um Apple view uh that has a screen and is sitting in my kitchen, right? Like there there is usefulness in having a kitchen-based device that is also a speaker, by the way. Um, because you you you're not gonna like go looking for it. First of all, you can't use an iPad as a speaker, right? So like there's that problem. Uh so if you want a smart speaker, which you know people have been using Alexis for, but it's nice to have a display on it, which again, Alexa has a variety of different speakers with uh with displays on them, um, this is the way to enter it. And then the $299 price point, I think people underestimate how uh how incredibly attractive $299 is. First of all, an iPad still costs $500, right? Like you, you, you, you know, like, and you don't get a speaker with it. So the fact that this thing is even being compared to an iPad is just like an iPad, but with a big speaker and stable in a in a home environment. Well, if you just get a stand for your iPad, you're not like close to $600, right? Like, and this thing is $299 and it's not going anywhere if you put it in your kitchen or what wherever, so some room. Um and then the the uh fact that you can do FaceTime on it, have your photos on there. Uh they it it seems like they've done a lot of work to make sure that there's privacy from the standpoint of who's talking to it or uh unlocking for the appropriate person. All of these things I think make the device that much more useful. And then if you combine it with a Siri that we can imagine might be a little bit more useful than historical Siries, uh, and this is something that might actually happen if um the Google Gemini integration with Siri happens, then all of a sudden you have a very useful AI in your kitchen that has also got a great speaker and can do all kinds of stuff. So uh I think this is a huge win for uh Apple. I mean, it's not again, not gonna move the needle for a company that has $400 million of revenue, but it is a great entrance into a space that is already very flooded with uh with options, right? You don't come in with a $349 just speaker, which is what Apple previously tried to do. Just the speaker portion alone costs $349 or reduced it to $299. Um, but now for the same $299, you also get the screen and make it makes it so much more useful. So uh I like their price point. I like uh what John Turnace has done from the standpoint of like these new products, the prices on them, he's nailing it, right? The MacBook Neo, uh, and then the home at just like $6.99 and then the Home View at $299. I think that they're both going to be huge winners.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

I have no issues with the price. I still think this product is going to fail for the reasons I said, where it's built on top of Siri. I either they needed to go in one or two directions. One of two directions. Uh I still think the doc idea is strong where it's still a smart speaker without the iPad docked in or plugged in, right? Like the bottom piece is the speaker. But if you wanted to add that visual, then it would just be more incorporated into the Apple ecosystem because a lot of these uh consumers already have iPads. Um, and you could just leave your iPad on there, and people do this already. Uh, the other way they could have gone, when I say they could have made it more agenc, not only do I mean that from a software perspective perspective, but I mean that from a hardware perspective. This thing should be like a little robot that stays, you know, docked on uh uh on your kitchen counter, right? Where like it could kind of move around and be a little bit uh human-like, robot-like. Um, that would have done really well. I just think this idea is a little half-baked um for where we are in the larger industry right now. But I agree the price point is totally fair. Um, and I one last thing, and we'll move on. I know we normally don't give uh financial advice on this podcast, but I will give technology advice. They make a version of this that goes right onto your wall. Uh, it's not docked into anywhere. Do not buy that. And the reason why I say that, do not buy it because it will age so freaking poorly. You're going to have this thing on your wall in 10 years. It's not gonna get any updates, it's gonna look really old. If you want this, get the version with uh the the full like speaker doc um and put it on a counter. Do not install this on your wall. My advice.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

I do I do agree with that though. All right.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Um, okay, SpaceX quick and then listener questions. So uh SpaceX announced that they're gonna buy uh 800 megahertz low band spectrum from gain uh management. This will allow SpaceX or Starlink to have their own mobile uh cell phone service. Uh this low band signal works indoors, so you'd be able to connect in theory to the satellite through your house. Uh most phones already support this band. And uh the exact terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but it's the the estimates are this deal was for roughly eight billion dollars. My question for you is this bullish or bearish for ASTS?

SPEAKER_00 50:48

ASTS is not even a company. I I don't I don't know how that that company is still around, but uh people got so excited about them and they were able to raise over what three, four billion dollars and at incredibly high valuations, so they have a ton of cash to burn. But uh so far, as far as I know, they still only have a PowerPoint, and supposedly they have a few uh satellites in space. We don't know what those satellites do in space yet, uh, but they have confirmed a uh a test call. So uh they put that out a few months back. So, you know, I I think ASTS is just a funny uh I think this is bullish for ASTS company personally.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

I'm not saying that I don't think the stock price is necessarily going up from here, but I think a big part of both of our concerns with ASTS is like, is the technology going to work at scale? And this doesn't this this deal doesn't confirm that, but it does uh validate it a little bit. So to me, I I I view it as bullish, even though this is technically a direct competitor.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Yeah, I mean, like if the question is, can this technology work from space? The answer is like yes, it probably can, and like there's no reason to doubt that part. But can some company who has never done anything space related be able to pull it off from scratch as ASTS has been trying to do, versus a uh company like SpaceX? Well, my money would be on SpaceX being able to pull it off as opposed to ASTS. So um this is not an easy problem to solve. And uh you're already starting to see um you know, like uh the uh mobile wireless industry like trying to explain how difficult this uh and uh tough of a challenge this is going to be to compete with um uh the ground-based networks and um as a way to sort of like diffuse concern for you know ATT and Verizon and T-Mobile and so on. But uh but long term, this is where it's going. And um, you know, both internet, which I'm using right now through Starlink uh and mobile is eventually all going to be uh, or vast majority of it is going to be um satellite-based. This is sort of like the EV adoption. Eventually, all cars are gonna be EV, or again, most cars are going to be EVs. Question is how long is it gonna take to get there? Is it is it 10 years away or is it you know 30 years away? You know, that's that's the really the only real question in my mind. But okay. Speaking of questions, and who are the companies that are gonna be bringing it to you? So yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Let's go to listener questions. Again, Adrian's not with us today, so we're gonna be a little bit slower than normal. Um let's start with uh Jalen here. Is hype outrunning micron's fundamentals, or does it still have north of 3x potential despite the market pullback?

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Well, hype is not outrunning micron's fundamentals because micron's fundamentals are such that uh it has a uh current PE of um 12 and a forward PE of 5.2 now, which is unbelievable. Um so the fundamentals are incredibly strong. Um you know, like uh it just seems like the market is to again to me, it seems like the market is mispricing it um because of the concern that memory is cyclical and it's about to get flooded by Chinese memory makers, both of which uh have been wrong for at least the past couple of years, as people have been saying those things, and I expect them to be wrong for the next few years. Um so you know, we'll have to wait and see.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Thoughts on Rivian. I noticed many known investors are leaving the ticket. Should we be worried?

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Well, it's definitely not a good thing when people are like giving up on a company. Uh again, like what we know on the surface level is that Rivian continues to get better as a company. Their R2 product has uh has been very well received to the point where they're only selling the most premium version of the vehicle, which is the $60,000 vehicle, and they still can't keep up with the demand of the $60,000 vehicle. Uh they haven't even started selling the lower price trims. Uh, they just had record deliveries. Like all the indications for Rivian is uh extremely positive. Now, now, why the stock is down is anybody's guess. Uh it's not good that the CFO and um I think uh another executive just recently left the company. You know, like people get um worked up about these kind of things, but they also do happen. I mean, like if you look at uh uh Tesla, it's like losing a major executive every month, right? Like so so um but it's become so such a norm for like people working with Elon to leave that uh it's not even uh nobody blinks and bats an eye anymore. But uh but for Rubian, it's a big deal. So we'll we'll have to wait and see what their actual report says in terms of um both revenue, which should be a record revenue quarter for them, uh, but also what they project for next quarter and uh what their commentary on profitability and margins are.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

I meant to talk about this when we were uh talking about Bumble, but Blackstone was selling shares two weeks ago at $2.94 a share. If that's right, you know, like it's not these larger investors don't necessarily know everything. And sometimes you just have to, you know, think for yourself, do your own research. And if you think a stock's a good deal, you know, maybe buy. If you don't think it's a good deal, sell. Um, non-investment advice, but like just think for yourself, don't worry too much about what what other people are doing. Um, because you know, doesn't matter who you are, you could be wrong, uh, except for me. Okay. Uh this is in reference to uh when we were talking about my portfolio. Does that mean your investments are only worth 10% of your total net worth? So just to clarify, Bitcoin is roughly 10% of my net worth. My savvy trader portfolio is roughly 20% of my net worth. My total investments are probably like 50% of my net worth, if I had to guess. I don't know the exact number there.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

So the other 30% is what? Uh retirement?

SPEAKER_01 57:36

Retirement accounts, yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. If I had to guess, that's roughly the breakdown.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

Uh okay. Do you do you um do you have them mostly in index fund on the retirement side?

SPEAKER_01 57:48

Or yeah, majority of it is in a target 2060 fund, but I am starting to uh invest in individual stocks, but I'm not doing like a big switch. I'm just kind of testing the waters. Gotcha. But like for example, I did buy a lot of bumble shares in there um at an even lower price than I did at in Savvy, and that was in a Roth account. So that was nice fantastic. Um, okay, question from Jackie in reference to the Bumble deal. Isn't it already a done deal? They approved it. Question mark.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

Yeah, I mean, it's most likely going to be a deal that goes through. Um, but uh I don't know whether it's a done deal because uh there could be other bidders that could come in. Um you usually these things take a few months for them to actually close. So until it's closed, it's not a done deal, is the way is the right way to think about it. But the market is pricing it such that the um the price of the shares, I think today closed around what $5.99 or $590 something. Uh is it's only one or two percent off of what the deal price is. So you can think of it as that's about the risk factors, about one or two percent risk that it won't close. Right. And you know, uh that's that's the only premium that you're getting if you're holding on to your shares for the deal to close. Uh unless uh some you know, you know, other factor happens and there's bidders that come in after the fact.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Yeah, it also has to go through a bunch of like legal filings. For example, if Match Group was buying Bumble, there would be more concern of like, is this creating a monopoly in the dating app space? And that might uh have a bit more resistance because this is Ithaca Holdings. I don't think there's gonna be much resistance there, but those things do take a little bit of time. Right. Um, Amit, I'm not pulling this up to poke fun of you at you. Uh this is I think this is genuinely a good question. Uh, how do you psychologically deal with selling a stock that uh a few months later jumps 100% in two days?

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Like I it happens, you know, like when you've been in it. Uh yeah, I mean, in in my case, uh also like uh my average purchase price of um uh bumble was between five and six dollars. So not only did uh like I I lost a significant, I mean, like I probably lost a pretty nice house on Bumble in terms of the amount of money that I lost on Bumble stock in particular. And um uh yeah, you're right. Like uh there is some uh like uh psychological effect that it has when um when there's sort of like that opportunity cost of having pulled the trigger like a month earlier versus having waited. But like literally that sort of thing happens in reverse too. Like I sold a significant amount of uh Rocket Lab just uh coincidentally for a great price between 100 and 150, right? So um the reverse happens. And when you've been in it long enough to where, you know, like uh both on the positive side, you know, you know, the the positive coincidences and on the negative side, the negative coincidences, they all work itself out. Um what what I'd like to keep a perspective on is my overall portfolio and overtime over the course of multiple years. And you know, my performance over the past few years has been like beyond anything I could have hoped or expected. Uh if you asked me three years ago where my portfolio would be today, there's no way I could have predicted that I would have like two years of 100% year over year growth, and then this year 40% on top of two years of 100% year over year. So uh it's kind of crazy that it has done as well as it has the overall portfolio.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yeah, the other angle to think about is like, yeah, maybe you missed out on an opportunity, but this cash that you sold is going to a new good home in theory, right? Like, so you sold Bumble and you bought Micron, and I have a feeling that's a pretty good move.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

Like, yeah, I I actually significantly increased my meta position as well because of the uh bumble bumble sale. Yeah. So um, and that has already gone up 20%. So it's like already some of it was retrieved. Uh and at the time that meta was up 20 or 25 percent, bumble was down 10 or 15 percent. So yeah, you know, like it had a positive psychological impact for for a little bit. And right now it happens to be negative, but you know, it's not like not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

What's holding you back from buying Rivian after the sell-off? Is it existing exposure or other factors? How do you approach position sizing and risk allocation across your portfolio?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Yeah, so um one of the things that uh I always like try to keep in mind is that a company that is not yet profitable is significantly riskier than a company that is profitable and um and is generating cash on a quarterly basis. So Rivian is not yet profitable, so it is a higher risk uh uh company in my portfolio. So I'm not comfortable investing even more into it, at least not until I know more, right? And we're gonna know more in a few days uh after they report their quarterly earnings. And um, you know, there's a chance I might want to own more of it, uh, but again, I've like it, Rivian is already my third largest investment, and um I put a pretty significant investment into the company. So now I'm just sort of like wanting to see the execution just continue. And they it has been, by the way, just the stock price hasn't been matching, which is fine. That happens from time to time. It happened for five years for Tesla between 2015 and 2020 when I was in Tesla. Uh the the price just wavered between $10 and $20, split adjusted. Uh, and um, and the base during those five years was between $10 and $20, and I just kept adding to my position every now and then. Um, and then in 2020, it just shot up, right? It 20x in a matter of a year and uh went beyond that by 2021. Um so these things happen. Uh again, I'm like used to it. I'm I'm not uh super worried. What I would be worried about is if they come out and they're uh there's negative news and information in their quarterly reports. That would that would potentially be worrisome, much like it was, for example, with Bumble for me, and then I lost hope and you know sold. So things can change for me. It's not that like I'm 100% committed no matter what, but um, but right now the things have only gotten better for Rivian while the stock price hasn't reflected it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

I'm gonna do one more question and then we will wrap. Uh EOS is down roughly 50% over the last month. Given their recent earnings miss, do you view this drop as a high risk warning sign uh warning sign or a buying opportunity? So I've just been holding my EOS position. It's extremely small uh in my portfolio, it's like 0.6% right now. Uh I am not the biggest believer in EOS right now. There's a good chance I just sell it all for tax loss harvesting. So personally, I would not buy, but if I was a believer in EOS, then yeah, this is 100% of buying opportunity. Um with that said, for in regards to earnings, if we look at their upcoming earnings, the analysts are expecting major growth from EOS, which to be fair, the market isn't buying because EOS has missed of their last 17 uh uh earnings reports, they've missed uh 15 or sorry, 14 of them. They've only they've only beaten uh three times. So and they had a really big miss uh earlier in the year, and it seemed like they were gonna take uh their uh expectations more seriously. Uh they since then they beat once and missed once, which still is not great. So we will see. But regardless of if they're beating expectations or not, they have been growing, they've just been growing slower than the market has expected. So it's not like this is like a a dead or bad company, in my opinion. But I do think the business is getting com more convoluted, and it isn't helpful that they are growing at a slower pace than expected. So I don't know if that necessarily answers your question, but those are my thoughts on EOS. Okay, with that, episode 60 in the books. Uh awesome. Thanks for thanks for sticking with with us. Also, by the way, I I did want to call out like two weeks ago when it was your birthday, Hamid, we got like over 250 likes on our videos, and then they've significantly dropped since then. So I'm not gonna say anything to anyone, but like I I know you guys are out there and you are capable of liking these videos. I don't I don't know why we need to have a free day uh in order for you to do it. I'm not asking you for to do anything, I'm just calling it out. It's an observation.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:28

Go review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Read between the lines. All right, awesome. Thank you very much, everyone. Bye guys.