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

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

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What was the most you've ever made on a single trade? I made a million dollars and lost a million dollars in back-to-back days. Like that changes a man. GameStop is back at it again. Shares skyrocketed more than 100% on Wednesday. I was one of the earliest whales on GameStop. I put in $1.3 million. How much would you have made?

Oh, my God. So you're known for trading $35,000 into more than $10 million in two years trading stocks. How did you do this? everybody else loses money. I'm a swing trader. I'm not an investor. I have a couple of rules that are very strict that I follow. No margin.

Don't chase the stock. Figure out the life they want to live and double it. How do you know you're not going to lose everything? The main things I'm looking for is a store. Go all in and figure out, do you have an edge? Concentration makes wealth. Diversification keeps it. So in your opinion, what do you think is the next 10x opportunity from here?

Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Thanks for having me. So you're known on Twitter and Wall Street bets for turning $35,000 into $10 million. You posted each trade during the meme stock era. Then once you reached your number, you diversified to lock in the profits. I got to say that's what every single investor dreams of doing. And to be able to achieve that, if you could walk us through your biggest winners and your biggest losers. Yeah, sure.

I mean, the first trade was the biggest percent win. I made like 2X in like a month off APT. The craziest trade was actually RKT rocket mortgages. I made a million dollars and lost a million dollars in back-to-back days. How does that happen? It was getting kind of squeezy. This was like right after the GameStop thing in January's like February or March or something like that. And I think they had a high short interest ratio.

Maybe they were getting a squeeze. So I kind of rolled this wave up like 70%. And the next day, kind of lost it all, like really, really quickly. What percentage of your net worth was that at the time to gain a million dollars and lose it? in two days. This is 100%. 100%. I had no...

But you didn't go down to zero. No, no, no. Well, I would, my style is I would go all in one single stock at a time. No margin, no options, no crypto, right?

Like, I don't touch anything that could, in theory, go to zero overnight, right? If you're invested in, like, 100% invested in a single stock, in a good stock, like a good company is legit, you know, the worst is like maybe a 20% drop

on earnings or something like that, right? And so that was kind of medallity that I had that, like, you know, I was working at a very state able job at Google making like $300,000 a year, right? And I had this 401k that I couldn't touch until I'm 65. And so why not just keep yolowing it? And I just kept working, right? I just kept going all in one stock at a time, one stock at a time, chasing bounces, chasing earnings reports.

I mean, many, I mean, this was 2020 to 21, right? So like everything went up. I mean, there were definitely some big losses there too. But for the most part, yeah, I just kept doing that all the way to 10 million. Why does so many people fail to do what you've done? Yeah. Because there's just as many people I've seen on Wall Street bets. Yeah. who go all in on something and then they post this loss, shun 95%. It's like, I got to quit. 100%. I mean, a lot of that is because you're chasing the really quick gains, right?

Zero DTE options. These things can literally go to your overnight. I have a couple of rules that are very strict that I follow, right? No margin. Don't chase the stock. Like a lot of people love chasing whatever the hot stock is. But you have to realize, like, once you hear about the stock, most often it's probably already run up a lot. And it kind of loses the support.

right? Like all of a sudden, people could be taking a profit, you can be down, you essentially bought the top. If you notice in my track record, like, I never bought, you know, Tesla back then, right? And I, you know, in this current run, I never bought Nvidia. Like, these are great companies. They will continue to go up. But I just don't like, I don't like chasing because in the theory you could drop and then you could lose out a lot. I'm what they call it a swing trader, right? So I try to buy near support. And the worst case scenario is it's just not a boppel to decide. And then if some catalyst hits or some could use happens, it'll rise up, sell for 20, $20. percent profit and just keep doing that again and again. Do you think you could recreate what you've done back then today? That's exactly what I'm trying to do right now. So I restarted my new 35K challenge account in Ramahood. And in the last few weeks, it's already up to a 52K.

So I've gotten lucky on some plays. It's up 50%. And I think in this current environment, yeah, it's a swing treaters wet dream. It's so volatile. It's so narrative driven by headlines. And if you're, you know, my 4. I'm spending like all day on X these days, right? Which is kind of like the new CNBC or Wall Street is where all the talk is happening.

If you just kind of stay on top of where sentiment is, I think you can make a lot of money swing trading. How much do you feel a skill versus luck? It's both, right? Like I was incredibly lucky to have tried this style of trading during 2020 to 21. Like that's just incredible luck, right? But at the same time, not everyone made 285X in 21 months. Like, that's an insane number. And so there was definitely some skill involved.

I mean, if I had a skill, it would probably be my ability to just kind of digest like so much content. Like, I was on Wall Street bets and other subreddits every day reading all the comments, you know, not just like the whatever's trending and it had been a funny picture. It was reading all the comments because it's a hive mind, right? Like the market, like, I mean, I'm not a technical's guy. I'm not a fundamentals guy. I've actually never even run like a discount of cash flow in my entire life. Like I understand sentiment. I believe the market is based on sentiment.

So I try to predict where sentiment is going, right? And what, you know, what companies are riding off of these waves. And I think that's even more so important today. So if you trade off of sentiment, that sounds kind of similar to social arbitrage, which is a trading strategy we've explored on this podcast quite heavily with Chris Camillo a few times. And he's famously ran like 20,000 up to whatever it is now, $100 million. I'm curious.

in order to understand the general sentiment and the direction the sentiment is headed, what are the main things that you look for? I call myself a vibe trader now because that's essentially what I'm doing. I'm just like trying to catch the vibes. The main things I'm looking for is a story, right? A narrative, a solid thesis, both in the short term and in the long term, right? The long term provides, you know, it's a good company, right? I don't think like there's all these like mini narratives like, oh, GME is going to do something

crazy tomorrow. Like, you know, I'm not sure what the long-term future for GameStop is, right? But for a neocloud, like my current all-in Shads, S-H-A-Z, Sharon AI, it's a neocloud based in Australia, right? And there's just so many narratives, so much potential catalyst, so much potential good news that could come any day about, you know, a potential orthropic deal, right, with Shaz, or Navidia investment into Shaz because data centers are just so important today, the AI infrastructure build out right now. And so that's kind of what I look for. I look for, you know, it's a good company with a good long-term future, but also a potential catalyst and good news that could pop up any day or any short term. If you're trying to replicate your strategy, like, where are the main

places you should be pulling information from? X wins by far now, right? It's where, because not only does it have all the big financial accounts posting breaking news as soon as it happens, but you have a lot of real traders doing deep dives, posting their trade receipts, and I think that matters a lot. That's what you're missing on Reddit. You don't know who people are on Reddit, right? Like, I was very unique. I had a very unique posting style and username so people gradually kind of get to know who Sir Jack was. But for the most part, these usernames are completely anonymous, right? He's hard to follow people between comments versus on Twitter. You have an actual profile. You can follow someone's winning trade and their logic and how much money they put in. And that kind

adds a lot of value to the actual content that they're saying. In terms of like how I identify real swing trades, I have a very tiny watch list. I can constantly monitoring. So I have like five stocks on my watch list right now. And every day I'm just looking at like, are they up, are they down? who's talking about them, what stuff is coming up with them, and basically trying to figure out, like, try to tune my cause and effect in my head, right? Like, if you think this news is good for data centers, why is or isn't this stock going up, right?

And then once it's at a decent enough floor or some news is coming up like next week, right? Like, I also subscribe to the philosophy of buy the room or selling news. And this is basically when, you know, something potentially interesting is coming up. Could be earnings report, could be an announcement or whatever. and there's usually a run-up into the actual news event, right? So for earnings is a good example.

There's a lot of earnings coming up. A lot of companies run up to earnings. And so if I see a stock that are like, oh, yeah, a lot of people I think has good earnings next week, I might buy it today and ride that wave into the earnings. What was the most you've ever made on a single trade? Big Five sporting goods, BGFV. How did you find that?

Oh, my God. This was on Wall Street bets and literally someone who I decently respected, I had commented back and forth with him before. Literally just suggested it to me, right? Like, mentioned me, it's like, hey, you should look into Big Five. They just did like a special dividend, right? And they had good earnings or something like that, right? And I was like, oh, that's a good potential play.

And so I full ported, I think. Wait, that was it? Yeah, yeah. That was all of the due. I mean, I did my own research and whatever like that, but it wasn't. Okay, but I want the viewer to understand, like, when you say did my own research, to them that could either mean five minutes or it could mean like five days. So, like, you heard about this information.

You didn't just hear from some stranger that you should full port into Big Five sporting goods, because if we say that publicly, then people are going to try to replicate the strategy. But I want them to see, like, transparently what it was actually like for someone that made. How much money did you make on this trade? Probably $1.7 million. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Yeah.

I full ported like $6 billion into the stock. Six million? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I own like 1.5% or something at that time. Okay, so walk us through the amount of due diligence. How long? Let's just say how many hours did you spend before you put $6 million in? So normally all the deal just happens right before the trade ever happens, right?

Like I keep basically keep a constant background process of like all these stocks. I constantly watch again. I'm constantly scanning the news. I'm getting familiar with them over time. And then kind of like I feel like I call it like a limitless moment where like just everything kind of clicks like all at once, right? And so for that one, it was the fact that they had a special dividend and it spiked like 20% on a day.

There were so many comments about this and also volume ticked up. Right. So one thing I really, really care a lot about is increasing volume, like on the candlestick charts, right? What does increased volume tell you? More people are caring about this. And volume can be, it's like just transaction. So it's buyers and sellers at the same times. Correct, correct.

Yeah. But generally, increasing volume is, you know, is a good thing. It just means more market participants are entering the stock are caring about this stock. And there's more room for growth, usually in a positive direction. Yeah, but you bought in once it already went up 20%. Yes, I bought up when I already went up 20%. I think the next catalyst was the actual special dividend that was coming up, right? And so I basically rolled that extra wave.

So it was a little bit risky. Sometimes, you know, I like to try to catch stocks while they're kind of boring and haven't bounced yet. But sometimes I also try to catch stock right at that first bounce to see like how far the wave goes. So how many hours of research should the average person do before they go all in or even buy an individual stock? If I were to be honest, like I've definitely gone into stocks with just like, you know, only an hour research, especially these days with AI, right? Like you could ask your favorite agent or chatybtee, just like, give me the bull case, give me the bear case, tell me everything that's happened recently. Right. And sometimes that's your perspective. That's like everything you need to know. What would Warren Buffett have to say about this?

Well, okay, so look, I'm a swing trader, right? I'm not an investor. Like, recently I made a post I said, like, there's three ways to use your money to make money. you could be gambling, you could be trading, or you could be investing, right? And they have different risk profiles, different return profiles. I don't endorse gambling at all, right? I never touch, you know, meme coins. I never touch option, margin, leverage products, even predict market sports been like, I've never made a sportsman in my life, right? Because that could just go to zero all of a time, right? And, you know, it's maybe it's okay for the $20, but like when you're like with serious money, no. So investing, right? Warren Buffett is an investor, right? These are long-term holds. You believe in the You can go to sleep, you can go on vacation, you could be in a coma for 10 years, and you're still fine holding the company, right?

I think, I mean, right now I'm also an investor. My 401k is $5 million in spy, $5 million in QQQ and about a million D RAM, which is this ETF of membership companies. Because they're, you know, they're diversified. Index funds are good for that, lowering risk. And, I mean, there's Warren Buff actually has an air quote that's like concentration makes wealth, diversification keeps it, right? So if you are in that point of that stage in your life where you're looking for, to maximize gains.

You're willing to put in the energy and effort to try to stay on top of sentiment. And depending on your own personal finance situation, right? Like, again, I was making 300K at Google. Like, I got four to yolo and my four-all-kick. I'm going to touch anyways. I think it's worth spending more time in energy and trading and finding those single stocks that you think you have a fairly good picture of like how it's going to perform over the next few days, weeks, months.

So who is this strategy for? Who would you recommend? they look into, you know, full porting or buying like all of one individual company, doing the due diligence, following in your footsteps. Who is this for and who is this not for? So we actually just hired our first ever full-time employee, Michael. Oh, my name is Michael. I edit the podcast and I love my work.

I love my bosses. Thank you, Michael. And while hiring him was very exciting, all of the back end stuff, payroll benefits, paperwork was absolutely not. But fortunately, our partner, Gusto was there to handle all of it. For those unaware, Gusto is an online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you could pay hire on board and support your team from anywhere.

Gusto handles payroll tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401K, workers' comp, literally all of it. And if you ever hit a tough HR situation, you get direct access to certified HR experts. Switching is also super easy to. All you have to do is transfer over your existing data and you are up and running fast. You won't even pay a cent until you run your first. payroll. After that, it's one flat monthly price with unlimited payroll runs. So I've actually used Gusto long before I ever partnered with them. In fact, when I first set up my S-Corp in 2020, I had no idea where to start. My CPA actually recommended Gusto to me. I signed up and they made

everything incredibly easy and I have been using them, I kid you not, for the six years since then. It's really no surprise that Gusto's ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026. Over half a million small businesses, including us, use them. So try Gusto today. at G-U-S-T-O-com slash Iced and get three months for free when you run your first payroll. That is three months of free payroll at G-U-S-T-O-O-com slash I-C-E-D. So who is this strategy for? Who would you recommend they look into, you know, full-porting or buying like all of one individual company, doing the due diligence, following in your footsteps?

Who is this for and who is this not for? I think it's for that, you know, that young person who has a job. I think having a job is really important. I think, you know, if trading is your full-time activity, that's like your lifeline now, and you start making your very irrational decisions. So I think it's very important to have a stable job. And then decide how much money you're willing to risk and just, yeah, full port. And by full port, you mean go all in.

All in, yes. Because then you're like fully invested, you're fully concentrated, you're tracking every movement. For me, like, if you're right and you're only in like 5%, like you were right. That's really incredible. But you only got gained only like from a little bit of a era. Even if I had like $20 in a stock, I'm just obsessed with it. But if you're wrong, I mean, then you're only lose, you know. True.

But when you're wrong, you could sell. So here's my general take on it, my unsolicited two cents is that I think for a specific person, this strategy is probably better. But I would also hesitate at promoting something like this widespread because I know a lot of people are going to get absolutely rinsed Do I think the average person listening to this right now is going to be able to do the right amount of due diligence, have, you know, like assess their own risk profile well enough to actually capitalize on this? I don't think so. But for the specific person, I actually think that this makes a lot of sense. I know I get a lot of like flack for always buying and then the stock goes down. Oh, tell them about your recent one, Jack.

Yeah. So like I bought a bunch of Bloom Energy like a week ago and then it goes down to like $2.30. but I also bought it 2.30. And so now it's like kind of like going back up a little bit. I bought some call options, you know, sold some weekly puts and stuff like that. But this is all to say, every single individual stock I have ever picked has outperformed every index fund I've ever invested in. And so I'm like, if I had just gone in heavier, like I would, you know, I'd put like $2,000 into individual stock while I have like a few hundred thousand index funds. Very funny is Jack is selectively forgotten 2020 and 2020.

Well, even if you account for that, I'm probably up still about equal with my individual and ETFs. But 2020 and 2021, I got margin called on Palantir and Robin Hood and I was forced to sell at 10, but I was buying them at 15 and 20 and 30 bucks. And now they've skyrocketed. And so for me, I was like getting margin called and I was like, I have the cash in my high old savings account, but like this is like my fun money. I'm not even going to like feed into it.

I should have. But still, the stocks that I had picked at that time were the crux. were the correct stocks that we're going to end up doing really well. Oh, 100%. I mean, I think you kind of hit the nail. Maybe the framing is better position for most people. You had a fun account, right? And you were technically all in high risk stocks or individual stocks in your fund account, right?

So, like, I don't know, people make fun of you online all the time. They're like, oh, Kevin's all in these random stocks, even though he has like $11 million dollars in index funds. Like, I'm very transparent about this. Like it's in my ex-bio, right? Like my net worth is, you know, 11.6 million. And my all-in challenge account is at 52K right now. Like, people could do the math, right? whatever people are comfortable with, put that aside, make a whole new account for that,

and just go all in there. But now, if you say you've somehow bought some of these stocks with like an hour of research, let's just say, where does it intersect between gambling and investing? Because it just seems like there's an element of randomness that goes into all of this where it might lean into gambling a little bit. To me, gambling can go to zero, right? Cambering can go to zero overnight, out of control. And again, with most stocks, right, you're not going to go to zero overnight.

And so that's where I draw the line with gambling and trading. Well, couldn't you say also with a slot machine? You're not going to go to zero. Every spin, if you do dollar spins, you're going to lose on average, but you could also just as easily stop at 80 bucks. Yes, unless you just put it all on one spin or not to really put it on one tree. I mean, I'm also just a very simple person, right? I can only really track like one or two stocks at a time, right?

Like I think, you know, you mentioned selling call options, whatever. Like, I've never sold an option. I'm a very simple person. Like, I believe in a stock. I think this is a good price. I think it's going to go up in the next couple days, a couple weeks. Like, I think that is actually rather promotable to a general audience. Like, just simplify it.

You don't have to get into all these kind of crazy kind of things and deal with margin and trying to make more money. Just like find a good stock that you think it's a good price. It's got a good story. You think it's going to go up 5, 10 percent next week. Sell, buy low, sell high, and then find another stock. What are some of the red flags that stop you from investing into a company? Recently, if the wrong type of promoters are talking about it, right? Like, there's a lot of, you know, shady people on X, a lot of shady things happening.

People are promoting penny stocks and, you know, these people have, they're anonymous and they're not transparent. Like, I'm super transparent. Like, I've been, actually, I was thinking about it, I've been sharing every single trade I've made since 2020. like either on Reddit or on after hour or on X now. Like I'm extremely transparent about when I buy and when I sell. And other people, they'll talk about when they buy, but they'll never talk about when they sell.

Or they're sharing, you know, obviously Photoshop screenshots or screenshots they took for someone else's, someone else on their Discord. And so if, you know, I post video trade receipts. And so I,

well, that's the biggest red flag. Like recently there is a stock that's come across my radar. People keep DMing it to me. That's another red flag. If someone ever DMs me, like, hey, you should check this out?

I'm like, automatically like, no. You know, like you probably have some multi-tier motive. How often do you see pump and dumps? Back in the day, I saw quite often. I think the algorithm has done a much better job of, like, filtered that kind of stuff out. Or maybe I just like, I just don't care about that stuff, right? If, you know, if it's a sub-billion-dollar market cap, that's automatically like a pretty much like an orange flag for me because that's easy to manipulate, yeah. And how do you know when to sell? I sell a stock or swing trade, a stock, right? Either when the thesis,

has been validated, invalidated, or I find a sexier play. And so, you know, if a stock, like, for example,

I'm playing earnings, right? And earnings was good. It popped 26%, which will, my recent trade on paying, perfect. It was earnings play,

thesis validated, sell, right? Or other time, I'm just holding a stock, right? I'm just waiting for a catalyst to happen. Maybe it's just like bobbing,

you know, sideways for a little bit. And I find something else that's like more exciting, right? That has like a news coming up next week or they just launched a partnership.

I'm like, okay, maybe I'll swing to there and then swing back. That's actually one, that's how I missed out on GameStop. Tell us about that. What happened to GameStop? Yeah, so I was one of the earliest whales on GameStop. I put in $1.3 million into GameStop in October of 2020. Okay, and my cost of basically was around $13 a share back then. And, uh, I held until December of 2020.

So I missed the squeeze by a month. How much would you have made? Oh my God. I believe $100 would have been $120 would have been $10 million. So it went up to $4.20. So probably around $30 to $40 million if I held to the top of the squeeze. You go to 40xed. Yeah.

Yeah. How often do you think about that? I don't think about that at all. Okay. During those days, I was ecstatic because we were right, you know? The short squeeze and all that kind of stuff. Like, the thesis was right. I was celebrating.

I was dancing alongside, you know, Mormon Kitty every day. You know, it's funny, I actually bought GameStop when it was $3 and something cents a share. I put $5,000 into it because I saw it on Wall Street bets. And I just thought, this sounds funny. I'm just going to do it. And I bought it. I completely forgot about it. And then the whole GameStop stuff happened.

And I sold. I think it was right after Robin Hood disabled the trading. And I was like, oh, man, this is going to kill the momentum. And immediately it started falling. And then I remember, I think I went to you and I'm like, dude, Jack, should I sell? And it had turned into over like 150 grand, I think, at the time from a $5,000 investment. And I sold. And I was so happy that I didn't quite get the peak.

But to be able to get that price for that, I mean, that was a Hail Mary just for fun. Profit is profit. Profit is profit. So why do so many people miss these signals? I don't know. you know, psychologically, I've always been curious why some people get married to the stock. That's another one of my principles, like never get married to a stock, right? Like, there are people who are just, they made their money on Tesla.

They made their money on Bitcoin now with memory stocks, right? Like, Sandy's going to MU. And they're just, like, obsessed with it or holding about it. Oh, that's all they talk about. And I don't get it. You know, if you're investor, you don't care about the short-term movements at all. And you'll just kind of, you know, write it for 10, 20, 30 years. If you're thinking about the stock, you're saying,

actually thinking like should I sell, right? And so you're thinking, so like you should be okay with selling. What would you say are the shortcomings that a lot of investors fall into? They play with margin. Like, you could play this game for a very long time as long as you're responsible and take, you know, take profit and minimize your, your losses, right? Like, if you're up 20%, you're up 20%, maybe take some more risk. If you're down 20%, maybe play a little more conservatively or, you know, add money back to it. I think, when people go on margin, when people go on full tilt, right, and trying to make that gain back as much as possible,

that's when they lose it all. And so what do you think about Chris Camilla? I'm sure you're very familiar with who he is. He fully endorses margin. And if anything, he looked at my portfolio as like, if I could critique anything, I think you should have a little bit more margin. I mean, that's extreme conviction.

I wonder if he has always had that view, especially when he was just starting out, or that's now when he has more of a cushion, right, to maybe take a blow for a margin. I mean, you have to be patient, right? Like, this is also like a patient man's game in order to be happy with, you know, 20% swings, 20% swings versus like, oh, it could have been 40% or something like that. I mean, I think the math is like you only need like four 20% swings for a double, right?

And I think that's very possible if you, like, find a good stocks. I'm curious, by winning a million dollars in a stock market in one day and then losing a million the following day. What does this do to your mental? Oh, my God. How does this affect your nights when you're trying to sleep or just like the overall gravity

of daily existence? To be honest, it happens so fast, it didn't quite register, you know? And the million that you'd made had not quite settled yet. Exactly. And so it didn't feel like you're not worth increased by a million.

I think also psychologically it's very different than losing a million, right? First or from your cost basis, right? Like, I gained a million and then it disappeared. right. So I think that that's why I also prioritize like entry price a lot. That's again, back to like my don't chase rule, right? Like if you bought a stock and it went up 20% and then

went back down 20%, that's that you could hold that a lot better psychologically than if you bought something at the top and just dropped the next day. Now in terms of getting started, though, back in 2017, weren't you able to turn $8,000 into $300,000 with cryptocurrency? Yes. Yes. And then you lost it down to 30. $35,000. Yeah, yeah. So I call this like paying tuition. This was all in crypto, right? And this is, I mean, it's kind of where I learned everything, I guess. I mean, I've been aware of Bitcoin for a long time. I learned about it in college. I had some friends that were doing mining and stuff like that. So I kind of missed that kind of 2012 or 2013 bubble for Bitcoin. But when I learned about Ethereum in 2016, I went all in with everything I had at the time, which is only $8,000 from like working. How much we were. you making at that time during 2016, 2017? Not even that much. Like, you know, I did a startup between 2013 to 15. I didn't go anywhere. Then I started my first, you know, big boy job at Stripe. I was a software engineer over there. And there were, I mean, there still are private startups.

They were only paying me like 150K. And so how did you only have eight grand though after like? I only started working there. Oh, so it was just, oh, okay. I just started working. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I, I had only 8K. And then Ethereum was, I think, maybe $16 or something like that. And so I just decided to go all in that and then Ethereum went up to 100 pretty quickly. And so now I'm sitting at like, you know, 30 or 50K. And then this was like ICO mania. There were so many, you know, random alt coins taking off. And so I was actually doing the exact same style. I was going all in one random coin at time. Back then, there was a lot more sentiment based because, you know, these coins really don't have any fundamental value. So it was just like whatever the next hot one is as a funny story.

And so, you know, that 2017 run brought me all the way to 300K. And then 2018 happened. And I loss at all, but unfortunately owed taxes on the realized gains from 2017. So the way the countermath works out, it could really, really hit you. Yeah, that was a hard lesson. And that also why I've never touched crypto ever since. You owed how much in taxes? Probably around 150K. How did you owe 150K when you brought it down to 30K though? Oh, that happened in 2018, right? So the big, the top was December of 2017. And so I was, you know, trading all the time, right? So all the, all the capital gains got realized in 2017. You would think that you should be able to use losses of the next year to offset the

prime. You would think, right? Right. Yeah, but you're only allowed to maximize 3,000 or 3,000 off to your income by 3,000 for that, right? I mean, this was also the early days of crypto and taxes, and I just wanted to do everything by the books, so. So after having this crazy run up and then crash in your crypto account, a few years later,

you finally decide that you want to start investing in equities and stock. and your 401k, you started with $35,000. Let's talk about a few of the specific trades that you did to take your account up to like $8 million, now at $10, $11 million. And what did you learn from these trades? The first trade that you made was what company? It was called Alpha ProTech APT.

They made face masks and they were based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. And again, this was like back in the early COVID days, right? Where people were just like learning about it, the pandemic, the shutdown, the lockdown didn't quite happen. yet. And so I, the thesis was really simple, like American-made face masks. I should be a big thing, right? And so that brought me from 35K to 90K.

And I was like, oh, wow, that happened fast. And then in the similar vein, I, the next stock was CODX, co-diagnostics, PCR testing, because of the nose swabs, remember that? Right? So they were building that and they were signing up all these contracts, all these states. I'm like, oh, actually, they should have good earnings. And so I wrote that for like a 2x. So now all of a 90, turned into 180.

And then we were approaching the summer. time now and Norwegian cruise lines had like absolutely got tanked. It was down like 80% basically priced for bankruptcy. And there was like a rumor. I was like all these like Facebook groups for like cruise moms and stuff. They were like buying like all these like on sale items that, you know, cruise lines are not going to go under. CEC was like maybe going to lift the ban on them, whatever. And so again, that's hope. Right. There's a story. There's a potential catalyst. And I got lucky and I caught the balance perfectly. And so I called like a 60% bounce. And now all and like 180 turned to like, you know, 250, 300. And I just kept doing that. You know, I got,

I got a dog and, uh, uh, uh, uh, chewy. I learned about chewy, right? And like, you know, a lot of people got dogs. Uh, so like, e-commerce, dogs. Perfect. Right. And that was maybe like a 25% pop. So I just, I just kept doing this. And so what then was your first like real loss in your 401k account? And really quick, I just want to say that when your business is growing, you need more hands on deck. But training someone new takes time you don't have. That's why smart businesses are using our sponsor Upwork. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, marketing, business operations, and over 125 other categories. You could browse real profiles, check past work, and see exactly what you're getting

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That's Shopify.com slash ICH or click the link down below in the description to get started. Shopify.com slash ICH. And so what then was your first like real loss in your 401k account? The first loss was actually Slack before they got bought by a Salesforce, right? I mean, it just made sense, right? Zoom was like thinking off, right?

Peloton was taking off. And I was like Slack has not really moved yet, right? And that was that was it. That was a thesis. And then they had earnings and it was horrible down like 25%. And I think I kind of misunderstood the dynamics between Microsoft teams and Slack,

which was kind of a miscalculation. And so that was on my first big loss. So your first investment that you kind of lost money on the Slack, how much money was your account at at that time and how much do you lose? Probably around like 700, 800K, right? So your first loss was after taking your account

from 35K to 700,800K. I would say so, yes. And then how much did you lose on the Slack trade? Yeah, I probably like 200K or something like that. And what did you learn from that loss? Like, was this an important lesson? Or was this just like, you were taking the same kind of like outsized bet

over and over again? You kept winning. And hey, this one just like the cards didn't fall in your favor. I have this lesson still to the day, like earnings are a coin flip, you know? Like, no matter how much you think you know about a company's revenue numbers

or the climb or whatever, earnings are a coin flip, right? And so, and it could be pretty expensive at that time too. And so I think what I learned is, if you have enough of a buffer of safety, right, maybe you're up a lot recently, right? Like, you could afford to take that coin flip,

just like I think, you know, anyone at a casino, they're kind of hot streak, right? Maybe you could take that extra extra bet. But yeah, if it doesn't go in your favor, you got to be conservative with your next play. Do you think that the volatility or the percentage price change is greater if earnings are good or if they're bad? Like, does a stock respond more aggressively, positively or negatively if earnings are positive or negative? Or is it still just like a coin flip?

So it's like 50-50 every time? It's really 50-50. there's these, there's like a lot of complicated math using options for like implied volatility and trying to figure out like what are they expected move in the upside or downside, right? And so this, all this is kind of published out there. But essentially, you never know if it's actually already priced in or not.

Right. So like a lot of people, you know, even some of the biggest companies right now, like Navidia, like you just so much data about them, you would think it's priced in because they're up so much, right? And then yet still they surprise to the upside. And then it also depends on like how much of that surprise is. So there's a lot of variables that go into it. And like, I mean, you could,

obsess over trying to figure it out but it's just it's a coin flip at the end of the day I think it's actually more intellectually honest to treat it as so you know that like I'm putting this on a coin flip do people ever reach out to you with inside information and they say hey uh here's a tip

if so gram's looking for that exact information I'm just curious because actually no actually no and I'm very careful to not even like accept those kind of DMs if it kind of feels like that I'm surprised because I thought for sure that people would say, like, if you've helped them make money, that they might try to say, like, hey, here's some info. Thank me later.

Everything I use is public information. Like, I don't ever, I don't have any insider information, right? Like, I just connect the dots. Like, a lot of there is, like, you know, hope or copium or insane kind of theories about, like, you know, this guy, like, I like this post on LinkedIn and like, oh, yeah, they're in Miami together or whatever. But, again, that's, yeah, that's public information, right? And it's just, it's kind of more of a fun, fun side story than the actual play.

What do you think are some of the biggest lies that are. spread about investing online or the information that's being said that if the average person followed, it's just not going to help them. I don't know why. Some people get obsessed with trying to make a trade every day. Some people think being a trader or day trader or option trader is making $1,000 every day. I think it's because it feels like work, you know, it feels like activity. That's, I don't think that, that to me is not how, I don't endorse that. I think that's a lot of energy that's wasted because, yes, you can make $1,000 for a couple days, and you'll lose $5,000 one day, you kind of break even, right?

I think swing trading to me is kind of the best ROI on, like, your energy, on your time, on your sanity, on your returns, because generally the stock market goes up, right? Like, you know, it has to be 500 goes up. Good companies should go up. What I'm trying to do as a swing trader is to maximize the gains in a shorter time frame, right? Because the market goes up and it also goes down. And if you can try to catch things on the bottom and sell them on the top, you are basically compounding your gains every single time. And that's how I was able to do 285x in 21 months.

But that's also a very tax inefficient strategy. I know a lot of people probably like, oh, Jack's talking about taxes. Like, you know, this doesn't really apply to me. But in actuality, taxes can cut into your gains substantially. And then that compounded year over year, you have just a smaller amount post tax that you're able to build, let's say, 30%, 40% year over your returns on. I joke, just make more money. I mean, I mean, yeah, my situation was really, you know, This was done in my 401k, so it was, you know, no taxes. I didn't pay a single-tenant taxes until I withdraw. But even though I'm doing this in a in a Robin Hood, you know, normal brokerage account right now,

I mean, if you're trying to maximize for long-term gains, but the stock goes down, you kind of wipe out those potential gains anyways, right? So I don't know. I think short-term gains are fine. So how much time should the average person spend a day, researching, trading. I mean, I don't think it takes more than like an hour in the beginning of the day and maybe like, you know, at the end of the day, right? Just like reviewing like what's trending, going on CNBC, see what people are talking about, follow a couple of people on X and see what stocks they mentioned. The algorithm, to be honest, is really good now. You know, like a lot of people have lamented how the X algorithm has changed over the last few years. But I think it's really, really good now. So if you follow the right people, you'll be getting your, you know, intake of stock use. And you can also turn the bell on for certain for certain influencers and get their post as soon as they make them. get more specific, who are those people that you should be following on X, not including yourself? Like, who do you look for for information? The first one that comes to my mind is

admit is investing. He's the goat. He's got like 500 dollars followers. He was Earl Heels early on Poundeer, who was early on Robin Hood, posting all these deep dives and interviews with these folks. Another, you know, he's a buddy of mine about Michael Saccond. He recently, you know, posting a lot about the photonics trade and like all these kind of bottlenecks related to the AI infrastructure, like picks and shovels kind of play. And again, like, these amazing deep dives. Because, like, you know, it used to be that you could only get these deep dives from like these Morgan Stanley,

you know, 30 page PDFs, right? Which are like really, really dry. But I think in the kind of more modern era, people are reading bite-sized tweets and learning a lot from that kind of grip feed of information. And then I think another one is Serenity, this anonymous, you know, white-haired anime profile picture.

She or he blew up from nothing to almost a million followers just in the last six months. And it's really, really good, like deep takes on like the AI infrastructure. build out. I really want to get down to what separates you, though, from all the people who want to try this or have tried it and fail. Because I am worried that people go and they see your story going all in and they say, oh, I'm going to go all into, and they just lose a ton of money. What separates you? Like, at the end of the day, have you just gotten lucky? Is there a skill? Is there something you look for specifically? Are you able to avoid red flags? Is it an intelligence thing? Is it like

a personality trait thing. I get very obsessed. And I think that is probably one of my strengths that once I'm in the stock, I'm like obsessively watching it like all day. Like back in, you know, the pandemic era, like I would even be like, you know, on a Zoom call, right? And I have like my chart open over here. If you, I mean, if you were following me, I think the most important thing to learn really, I mean, is learn how I do things, right? I endorse independent thinking. Like I'm here trying to share my my research, my train of thoughts, like why I'm thinking this, right, what I noticed, how I'm connecting the dots, and obviously my trades themselves, and I'm really hoping that people kind of pick up that like if you, you know, have figured out, okay,

I'm willing to all in this much amount of my money, right, all into one stock, follow it, okay, and now you basically watch it play out in real time. I think that's much more better than kind of a simulation or kind of back testing or a real test. reading a book, right? Because when you're reading a book, I have a box here, a boss over here. But when you're actually watching it play out in real time, you'll kind of feel it that like, oh yeah, he sold this because, you know, everyone on Twitter is

scared of this news or the Fed chairperson did this things and, like, Kevin kind of connected all these dots and decided this was the top, it's time to sell. And I think that's much more going to, you're going to get that much more ingrained in you by kind of following me and watching how I trade in real time. Do you ever set limits where it's like, hey, if it automatically,

if it's down 20%, even if I'm sleeping, or I just wasn't paying it, it's going sell. Or if it goes up a certain amount, it's automatically going to sell. I've also never said a stop limit. I'm very weird. I'm very afraid of actually, you know, your situation, right, where it's like randomly down 20% one day for reasons that I disagree with, right? Just some random macro or some fear headline. And then I get automatically stopped out when no, you know, so I've never said a stop limit my whole life. Now, you've previously said that every man should trade stocks like they date women only one at a time. Why don't you like diversification? Yeah, that's my, uh, my specialty on

Twitter. It's a financial rage page. Why don't you like polygamy? Well, I've been very loyal. Why shouldn't mandate 10 women at a time? Yeah. So, uh, like Jack. Props, props. That's just not even true. Concentration creates well, diversification keeps it, right? That's, that's just true. And, um, I think, you know, we go all in on things all time in our lives, right? When you're a job, that's an all in on your time, right? A woman, that's an all in, right? I'm saying, like, and it's true.

Like, you know, when I met my wife, it was like, only like six weeks in, we decided moving together, right? Because I was like, this is it. Like, I think I love her and I want to move in. I want to get to know her, right? I'm just, I just went all in. And I think, I don't know, a lot of people try to hedge, right? And, you know, try to, especially in the dating world, like, oh, yeah, let me try to

be in front of the best person? No, I think you should go all in and I think that's really important. And you also really quickly find out whether it is working or not. Either with a relationship or even with a stock. You really quickly get obsessed with it. You research everything about it and you figure out like, oh yeah, if you only in like 5% or only

5K, you're like, you know, whatever, I don't really care about this. But this seems like this is your personality type, is you're an all-in type of person. You're either 100% in or you're out. Yeah, yeah, I will say that's my personality type. Do you think most people should follow that personality type, or do you think some people would be better off not doing that? Or maybe they're a bit indecisive, and when they go on and something, they don't really think it through. I think it depends

on your goals, right, and your time frame. I mean, just to use your view on life. I have always been a very impatient person, right? I've always wanted gain, success, whatever, as big and as fast as possible. And obviously, I've been willing to risk it. And I've made many losses, right? I lost 300K in crypto, right? I did my startup back in 2013 and I failed. And so I, you know, I failed a lot. But I also kind of, you know, over the course of my life taking like a very, um, a TikTok kind of pattern in my life, a risk on, risk off, right? You do something risky, didn't work out. Okay, you know, quiet out for a couple years. And once you kind of regain that financial buffer, that mental sanity, maybe you try on some risk again, right? So I think there's like phases in your

life, too, where it's appropriate to kind of take out risk. Does it worry you right now that stock market valuations are seemingly pretty high? Not really, because of how, insane this AI buildout is going to be. Like, this is essentially our version of the industrial revolution, you know, and I think especially the modern investor, maybe a little bit too used to these, like very quick bubbles, right? Like, like, crypto is maybe a year or two, right? Mimstocks maybe a year or two. But, like, people don't understand, like, how big and still there's so much more to come with building out these AI data centers. You have to just, like, try building an app with Codex once and you'll realize it. My view is the future of AI work is

long-running, compute-intensive workloads. Basically, you know, most people just ask, you just ask how you be a question, right? And it's a bit of a quick answer. But what people are doing in Silicon Valley right now is you're running these like 24-7 jobs, right, to basically keep churning tokens to do work. You know, the one example is like, solve cancer.

Like you can imagine just giving an agent access to your lab and all this data. and other agents that it could spawn and whatever and just keeps running in a loop, right, trying to figure out how to solve cancer. And so that is very compute-intensive, and we don't have enough GPUs or CPUs or memory or anything. The stat is what?

Like trillions of dollars in CAPEX buildout over the next five years, right? And so we just don't have enough, and I think it's going to continue going into the future. How could you be wrong? Either there is some technological innovation that increases the supply, right? That maybe, you know, China develops like a,

their own NVIDIA style of GPU really, really fast, that increases supply all of a sudden. Or these workloads don't really transpire. So right now, especially Silicon Valley, like, coding is, like, is what most people use these LMs for, right?

Because it works, so you could build these websites and apps now. But can LMs really replace, you know, accountant, right? A lawyer, a doctor, right? Can it really build robots? Like, that's another, like, 100x,000 X,

thematic bet that I have. have that like robotics is actually the next inflection point for something called physical AI that requires like all the kind of same things right like if that stuff doesn't transpire there's no need for it it just kind of stays encoding then a lot of this kind of both pieces falls out what do your robot plays because I tend to agree with you that it seems like the next thing would be taking chat GPT but making it physical yeah turning it into a person or a robot that could do something so how do you see that playing out and where are you invest in that. Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to change the world just as much as like ChachyPD did.

There is just so much investment. Recently, A16 and Z produce report that says like venture investment in robotics at all time high, like, you know, 5X in the last quarter. I think, you know, humanoid robotics specifically is really, really interesting because a lot of the world is already designed for humans, right? Like how you open a door, how you put into a screw, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you can have a robotic, just, I mean, they're, they don't ask for insurance. They don't ask for sick leaves, vacation leaves. They can work all day. They don't even have to be perfect because humans are not perfect, right?

They could show up late. Exactly. Slip and fall. And so there's just, there's so much investment in robotics right now. And actually, what's really frustrating is that there's no way as a retail investor to really play this. That's been really frustrating. Just like every other kind of way before, right? It's always been happening in the private sector, right?

Like, you know, from startups to AI stocks right now. There are two or three stocks that are interesting in the robotics world if you're interested in playing it. One is called O-U-S-T. They make LIDAR tech, right? So like the lasers, you know, they kind of tell you how far away things are. Most recently they invented colored LIDAR. So they're the only ones to make it. And so that replaces two cameras.

Before you used to have like a camera for color and one for LIDAR, and now you just have one, right? And so they're signing up a lot of customers. They're a public stock. Another one is a SPAC that's coming out pretty soon called CCXI Agility Robotics. And it's gotten a lot of hype recently because of some Twitter influencers talking about it. But it is one of the only pure robotics companies to actually list on the stock. And then actually one that I've played a few times is called Robo Strategy. And they have the best ticker, BOT, bot.

And the quick story behind that is this guy, Andrew Kang, he basically was an early investor in all these robotics names through his family office. and decided to turn that into a close-end fund to basically let anybody invested in. There's a lot of mechanics behind it, very similar to micro strategy for Bitcoin and a creative dilution. But basically, yeah, it holds like equity stakes in figure AI. Do you remember that live stream with the robot, you know, for nine days straight, right? Like sorting packages, right? That was like a medium moment, right? And so like that's one of the biggest holdings in BLT.

So like, you know, you basically get access to that. So what do you think is going to happen over the next five years in terms of the economy? K-shaped, man. Everything is unfortunately K-shaped. And, you know, I think there's, that's why there's this desire, this angst that I noticed in the general population, especially the young people, to bridge that gap, right? From one end of the K to the other. And a lot of each to see behind this. But I mean, like, I don't know. My fringe theory is that like this last, like, 50 or 80 years of the middle class was the exception to the norm. like across like general history right most of history it was like you know you got the rich people and you got a poor people and uh because of the internet the internet a globalization whatever and america was able to kind of create this middle class uh but it does seem like it's kind of going back in the other direction right people talking about the wealth income gap and etc and so uh the most important

thing is to own assets so how can someone increase their chances maximally that are on the lower part of the K-shaped recovery to then go to the higher part? Is it focusing just broad strokes here on income or on investment and buying the right assets? The most important thing is you first have to build your base, right? You have to take care of your debts and you have to build your base. And what I mean by base is, you know, your financial base, your security base, you know, you can't be worried about when you take risk, you can't be worried about your livelihood, right? And so what that means is, you know, get a good job, right? Like, like, make sure it's like save as a gear,

you know, just make sure you're in a good place to actually go take out risk. And then you can take on risk in many ways, right? Like, if you find, find where you're good at and just go do it. I think a lot of people just get caught up, like trying to think too much

and trying to take like baby steps. When I say go all in, you know, it means many things. It could just be go on in and start making YouTube videos, right? Just go, just go do it. If you, you know, want to trade stocks or even do sports betting, right?

Like, go all in and try and figure out. Do you have an edge? I mean, don't go on, don't go on blindly without feedback loop. Otherwise, you do end up losing money or like, you know, not growing your YouTube channel. A set a timeline and I, you know, set a timeline like by one year, I hope to achieve these things. And really have a close feedback loop. Like, am I developing an edge here? Because I think the world is more and more rewarding people that are unique and have something different to offer in the world.

So for the average person who's making $60,000 a year, a few thousand dollars invested. What should they focus on first? A quick thanks to Ethos for sponsoring this episode. Most of you guys don't know this about me, but when I was in college, my house burned down in a wildfire. And it's very human to think that nothing bad will happen to you, but the unfortunate reality of life is everything can change in an instant. And when it does, the last thing you want is your family scrambling financially. That's why we partnered with ethos. They make getting life insurance fast and easy.

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Again, that is ETHOS.com slash iced coffee. The link is also down below in the description. Application times may vary and rates may vary. So for the average person who's making $60,000 a year, a few thousand dollars invested, what should they focus on first? I mean, just load up your Romano hood account. Buy something. It doesn't have to be an individual stock.

I think most people have never even bought a stock their life. They have their phone, okay, automatically buy one or something. But buy Spy, buy KKQ, maybe buy $1 of Google, right? Once you have money invested and stuff, you just care so much more about it. And start tracking it, right? Start seeing what people are thinking about it. Start watching YouTube videos about it. Start educating yourself about what it means to be either an investor or trader.

And then gradually, basically, you know, kind of do paper trades in your head. Right? Like, oh, yeah, that guy was talking about, you know, the video might have good earnings. I'm not going to do it, but like imagine I did today, right? And then, oh, it was right. And it basically kind of retroactively analyze, oh, why was it right? You know, maybe I'll do the next one or something like that. I agree for a lot of my friends that do have a little bit of margin in their life,

meaning like money between what they earn and what they need to spend on their necessity expenses. So like this kind of like entertainment budget, whatever the budget is that they can, the discretionary spending. I always say of that money, invest first, spend later. Yeah. Like, you should, as soon as I get paid, like, even when I was getting paid like $4,000 a month, like, immediately I was shipping off $1,500 into my Robin Hood account. And then the additional $2,500 was just like rent taxes. And then, like, I had a little bit of money for food.

And that was really it. Like, invest first, and then everything else comes later. Yeah, that's also great advice. Do you think people spend too much time, though, trying to find the next 10x stock and not enough time just trying to increase their income? it really depends on your growth potential at your job, right? Like a lot of people, I mean, you can work really, really hard

and get a 3% increase that year and maybe that time was better spent elsewhere. I mean, that's kind of where I bring it back to this weird, like, angst that I noticed. It's called financial nihilism. You know, a lot of people written about it. That just feels like your effort

does not translate into results anymore. But there's this app on your phone now that does translate your effort into results good or bad, right? And I think that agency, that field of control, is, like, more and more important for people these days. I think generally, I think if you're just, like, aware of, like, what you're doing and also aware of, like, what the payback time period is, right?

So, like, you mentioned your, early example, if you're making $60,000 a year and even $1,000 discussion in income, you know, you make that back in, like, a week, right? And so, like, if you, you know, did something and it cost you a week of time, then don't do anything for a week, you know, recuperated, then figure out, as long as you're learning something. If you were to start from zero and build back to 10 million, ideally, what stocks would you explore and how exactly would you do it? Like, what are like maybe three main picks you'd look into?

My pick right now is Shaz, right? Sharing AI to NeoCloud based in Australia because I think this data center build out is only going to continue. Another one that's actually really interesting is Nokia. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because they recently got a billion dollar investment from the Vidae itself. and they also make these local edge node chips

so basically as compute increases they get slower too right and so you want them to go really really fast and so instead of like everything like happening in the cloud and coming back it could happen at your local like telco tower or something like that

and so that's kind of another really interesting one and for someone who does not want to trade stocks or swing trade but they want to build their wealth over the next 10 years what do you recommend by Google I mean, if I were to distill it down to the simplest piece of the device, right? Like, buy Google.

Why Google? They're at the center of everything, right? They have the consumers, right, via Google, YouTube, Google Maps, Android, everything like that. They're building one of the best models out there. They have Google Deep Brain and all these really, really intelligent people. They're the only one at that intersection, actually, if you think about it. Like, there are a bunch of, you know, AI infrastructure-specific, plays. There are a bunch of companies that have, you know, a lot of consumers, but there's no other

company in the world that has both. And I think that's just, it's an incredible mode and it'll just keep continuing growing. What's a realistic annualized return that you think someone could expect over the next five, 10 years? I mean, I think the spy is going to make like 10 to 20 percent. You think it's going to continue that trajectory? Yeah. Yeah. Like I think the profits, the revenue numbers are all there to be companies are going to continue getting bigger. Like I said, this is our version of the Industrial Revolution. And so I think if you're trying to trade, you're actually trying to beat that.

Didn't that somewhat end, though, with the 1920s Great Depression? There was a lot of margin, there were a lot of other factors, like the Dust Bowl and stuff like that, right? We're seeing a mini version of that right now in Korea. I don't know. I'm watching, I get the Twitter notification

where it's like there's stock market circuit breaker, just, you know, down 10%. But then I'm looking at the U.S. markets and we're up. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, we have developed a lot of rules and regulations and guardrails since the 1920s, right? I think the market also moves a lot faster and any bubbles, you know, kind of a mini pop and any corrections get a mini bounce a lot faster. And so I don't think we're going to get like some kind of crazy depression. I think we'll have a lot of volatility, but I still expect that, you know, like good 10 plus percent per year over the next five years.

I am always worried that we've gone up so much over these. last 15, 16 years since 2010. I'm like, how much longer can this continue before we start averaging like 2 to 6% a year for a while? Maybe like a forgotten period, right? Right. And then people kind of grow bored of it. And then they reallocate their assets somewhere else because the stock market's not doing anything. I mean, what else do you invest in? Right? Like America. T bills. Graham has what, 25% cash? It's 20, 25% somewhere. Cash right? Yeah, I have, that cash. It's not cash. It tax free muni. bonds.

Tax fee money money. Make a blended 4% tax free. It's great. No state income tax. You should transfer it to X money, 6%. You know what's so funny. So I could take out a pledged asset line below that 6%. I did all the math on this and net taxes.

It's not worth it for me to transfer. I see. It's such a small increase that I would be able to get. And I would have to take millions of dollars to even make it worthwhile. And I'm like, am I really going to risk? millions of dollars to like a point something percent. Simplicity. Annualized return.

It's not worth it. But I thought of it. And I worked every which way if I could take margin and I could take a pledged asset line and move it over here. Wasn't worth it. But it is very appealing. The line only goes up, right? Like America's still the number one country.

The U.S. dollar is still the most important currency. You have 401k still reinvesting into its spy every year. You have Trump accounts now. They're also going to be invested into the markets, right? The best companies are in America. and like I said, they're only going to keep growing. I don't see a bear case. Man, I feel like this is what everyone says, though, right before.

It's like we cut to like a month later and like something happened. Even the 2022 blip is a blip now, right? I mean, yes, like, I mean, this is, you know, we're to young to remember, like, what was 2001 to down the 8 like, right? Because that, in theory, was kind of like a flat line for the U.S. stock market. Albeit that's from top to top, trying to 1 to 8, right? Like maybe people have talked about how euphoric and senseless the dot-com bubble actually was with, you know, really fake revenue and stuff like that. We're not seeing that now.

And again, I think everything just gets corrected now because you have social media, because you have like this forum of people arguing every single bear case that exists out there. All the idea is kind of get out. Like people talk about like, you know, the circular financial engineering, whatever, like companies. People are talking about openly, right? Like, you know, no one's finding anything. It's not scaring billions of dollars to keep getting pushed in. So I think, yeah. What about any Black Swan event?

For like a COVID-25 or something. Yeah. I tend to think it's something nuclear. I tend to think all it takes is, why are you laughing, Jack? I'm just saying because, like, dude, if, like, if we have, you know, nuclear fallout, I am not caring about my Schwab account. It's like, I'm not going to care that, like, you know, I really shouldn't have taken on an additional $100,000 a margin to buy, like, Google stock. That's why you should be buying. That's why Jack doesn't buy the bottoms.

He only buys the dots. Excuse me, I invested in Bloom. It plummeted, and then I also bought the bottom. So I do sometimes find the bottom after I've already lost a lot. Let's just say all of a sudden, you know, some country, I'm not going to say which one, drops 10 nukes on America. Right. But there would be some fear. Right.

Or there would be something on the other side. I don't think anything could get this over here. It's impossible to predict. So it's like hard to live or kind of invest like that. right? And I don't know if you're going to get the push your application early enough to sell before it happens. Get the Amber Alert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Immediately sell everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, in that sense, like, you know, build up as much money as you can and then switch to gold. Is there a specific type or style of investing that you have officially banned

yourself from ever doing again? And you would recommend people ban themselves from doing that same thing? Yeah. I mean, I don't touch options. I don't touch options at all. It's just, it's too enticing. What do you think about Jack's option strategy? Wait, do you buy or sell? I sell options. You sell options. So I sell puts to enter positions. And I'll find something with a high implied volatility on a blue chip company that I really like, such as Robin Hood, such as, you know, I have a little bit of elf. I have a little bit of bloom. And I sell puts to enter the positions. And then I sell calls to, you know, ideally make some weekly premium. And if I'm buying options, I buy them over leaps where it's essentially just leveraged money.

Does it increase your stress at all? Like, are you watching a close to the strike? No. If anything, it decreases my stress because it's a hedge against the position. So like my stress would be amplified if I was just owning the stock outright because that's technically a more aggressive strategy than hedging against it, which would be like a covered call. Yeah, yeah. So like the way I see it is if I can make two, if I have to collect 2% premium per week on a company,

3% premium per week on a company selling covered calls, then I know if the company goes down 3%, I'm exactly where I was. If it goes up however much it is, I collect 3%. If it stays the same, I collect 3%. If it goes down 10%, the IV spikes, and if the IV spikes, so do premiums. And then I'll just sell another covered call

to continually decrease my tax bases. And the same logic that you said, the only thing you really consider is the average cost or like your enterprise, that's essentially what I'm doing too by selling calls to decrease, you know, it's one way of looking at it, my average cost. Yeah, I don't know. I'm a very simple person, right? And that's a lot of math.

And to me, if you're willing to, if it makes sense to you, right? And like the math is easy and it doesn't add stress or take too much time to kind of analyze and figure out what the right options to sell are. I think, you know, I think it is good. I mean, many people I recommend it to me. I just like to try to keep things simple. Let's compare Robin Hood accounts. We're all going to compare Robin Hood accounts at the end of this podcast, guys. I have to ask you, why were you banned from Wall Street bets?

Oh, I don't know. I think someone just got really jealous and kind of like rage, banned me and deleted a bunch of my posts. Because you were kind of famous on Wall Street bets. Yeah, yeah. Like, I didn't do anything wrong. I was posting, you know, just screenshots in my trades, right? And like, they got tons of upboats. I mean, I had someone DM me who was apparently part of the mod team, right?

And she said, like, there's just one random person who, like, hates you. And just like to say, A moderator that hates you. Yeah. When did you get banned? I don't know. This is probably like mid-2020 or something. Do you have any idea why?

I mean, I've perused your Reddit account. You do say some things that are, you know, maybe a little bit abrasive to some with, you know, moms or mother-in-laws. It's Reddit culture, right? It was Walter Bia cultures. I was obviously just kind of playing into it. No, I think probably they just saw me getting too big and just wanted to cut it.

it out. You think it would help their forum, though, to have you on there and bringing in more views, more I mean, these moderators on Reddit are weird. You're weird. It seems like they like lost porn more than they enjoy the games. Yeah, yeah. Like, you're one of the few people on Wall Street bets that turned, you know, 30, you made effectively $10 million from nothing and they banned you. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, you post yourself losing 99% of your portfolio. What I've learned a line is that everything, All hate is just jealousy, you know? And so probably they hate to see a winner, right? And, yeah, the moderators on Reddit are just extremely power hungry.

They just love banning people for any reason. It's basically like a power trip. And what's more toxic, X or Reddit? 100% Reddit. Yeah, people say like, X is bad. I'm like, this is nothing compared to what I used to deal with. What makes Reddit so toxic? Do you think that the stereotype of like the neck beard, you know,

sitting at like the, you got like some sauce from the night before, dribbling down your chin or whatever, you know, like your bellies hanging over your desk. Yeah. Like, is that accurate, you think, of Reddit users? They call it like the internet high mind theory, right? When you take, like, a bunch of people and you anonymize them and put them in a group, it just descends into, like, the scum of the earth. It's the anonymity, you think.

Exactly, exactly. Like, I've connected with several people on Reddit. And, but the problem is I had to use, like, my own thinking skills and reading skills to articulate, okay, this guy actually sounds like a well-educated adult. versus like some 10-year-old kid, right? And I would actually connect with them and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I trusted a word more. But generally, the way the algorithm works and the upvotes work is just, you know,

very much based on dunking and extreme content. And, yeah, you just don't know who these people are. On the topic of Reddit, you created R-slash the Race to 10 million. I'm curious, why did this resonate with so many people? Because it has like 500,000 members. And what is so important about getting a $10 million net worth? it all started as a kind of inside joke with me and a couple other Redders

that like we were all kind of racing our own ways to 10 million and see who gets there first. I mean obviously it's just like a nice big number. And we created a subreddit. We're basically posting updates and screenshots and like you know, I made it first and there was like a spreadsheet of like, you know,

where one was at. And it actually kind of died down for a little bit between like 2020 to 2023. But somewhere in the middle, I think it crossed like a magical number just like on his own, like around like 25,000 members. and I think that's when it started getting trending on the front page.

And I mean, that was my favorite part of Wall Street Betts. It was the game porn and loss porn, right? Like the big kind of numbers on the screenshots. And so people just started posting their crazy gains on the race of 10 million. It was like the perfect forum for it. And so I kind of cleaned it up a little bit. I started promoting it. And Wall Street Betts at that time, I mean, it just started turning into like an Instagram meme page, right?

It turned a bit into a new assess pool. Exactly, exactly. No one was actually sharing any real DD. People, you couldn't follow it. people's stories. And so I think the race to fill that gap. What gets unlocked as a $10 million net worth? Why is that number so important? I mean, first and foremost, I live in California. It's a very, very expensive state. And I think, you know, if you want the modern life that social media is sells to you these days, right? It is very expensive. Like, whenever I post something like that,

people are like, oh, you can move to Southeast Asia. You could just like, you know, buy this kind of house in Tennessee or something like that, right? But like, that's, yes, you can live and I can retire, you know, for 50, 60 years probably in Thailand, right? But do I want to? Right. Like, you know, and I think you've talked about this on your videos often, right? Like the, the, the, what people want in a house. Yeah, right? Compared to like 30 years ago, people who can't stand on single paint windows, right? They want central air. Like, that be, that's the quality of life that we want has dramatically increased. And you could blame social media for that. You can blame a lot of things for that. But we're also just still humans, right? Like, we get fed, you know, this information

unwillingly, and that kind of raises our own bar for, like, what we expect. And happiness is basically expectation minus reality, right? And so your expectation because of just various social media and life tells you that you need to, you know, be able to send your kids to this kind of daycare or go on vacation twice a year or something like that. Like, that's kind of like, unfortunately, what you expect from life now. And so, like, you know, even at $10 million, that's not going to survive me for 60 plus years.

Like, I've done the math. Like, it's very expensive to live. And you're not even taking an account inflation. And like, who knows what happens is the future, right? Because again, like, if you retire, you're probably not going to be able to get a job after your out of the workforce for 10 years, right? So are people misguided them and they have their site set on $10 million when in actuality it should be more?

I think so, actually. How much higher? There's this really good report from the Hampton Club. And they had this PDF where they kind of did a survey and got all these like numbers and results and feelings around the, right? And I think it quoted $50 million as the number. where you just stop worrying, right? You just stop worry.

No matter what happens, you could tank it, you know, the market goes down. But I will say, because I saw that survey and I did a whole video on that survey because I found it very interesting. A lot of those people don't have 50 million liquid. It's 50 million net worth. That's fair. And a lot of that net worth could be tied up in their company or private equity. Who knows? So the liquid amount is lower?

I would argue that the liquid amount is lower. But according to that, it was a 50 million net worth. That was the point. Psychologically. Where people cared more about legacy and doing something with purpose than they did about making more money. But under $50 million, they cared more about making more money in terms of importance of, you know, there's that and also family and everything else. But that was still on the radar. It was still worried.

It's still stress. Like, oh, the market had a bad year or crap. Now I need to like grind again. So explain then your logic in, I mean, you had the. this race to 10 million Reddit. This was clearly your fire or your fat fire goal was 10 million financial independence retire early. You wanted to race to $10 million net worth. You did exactly that, swing trading going all in on individual stocks. But then once you hit that net worth, you threw it all into ETFs. And so explain this cognitive dissonance where you think that actual

freedom is higher than 10 million. You race to 10 million. But then once you hit it, you did exactly what one would do to kind of slow down and preserve their capital instead of like race to a higher net worth. Yeah. So I mean, this was my grind, right? Like I made it to $10 million and essentially is my nest stake now. I think it's also compounded by the fact that I can't really access it. You know, it's in my 401k. If I withdraw from it, I get taxed, it turns into income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty. Right. That's really significant. Right. So essentially, like I kind of think of it like a trust fund that I created that you're not supposed to touch like you know maybe I would draw from the top off or maybe I want to buy something nice and I would have withdrawn like a few million

from it right for life stuff but you're not supposed to and I think that keeps me hungry too like I want to make my legacy I want to make my impact and success you know through my startup through the old-fashioned way right actually happen like it makes something impactful for people a real business and this is just it's a safety buffer now right so rather than continue to go all in on that and and the stresses that come with you know trying to do that for 10 million that's parked in the next funds. It's going to double in 10 years. That's 20, right? It's going to double again in 10 years. Like, why not just wait? And if you use my time in something else. And so then how is your current net worth divided up? How much money is in your 401k?

Yeah, I have currently, I think, $11.5 million in the 401k. That's divided up in $55 million in a spy. 5.5 million is QQQ. And I think, like, you know, close to millions in DRAM, you know, memory chips. and then I have the Robin Hood all-in account. That's currently at 52K that I trade with and look at every day. And then the rest is just, yeah, just like savings and the house. See, I never liked the 401K. Yeah. I hated it.

I hated the idea of foregoing taxes today and paying taxes later. Because in my perspective, taxes, I think, are going to be higher in the future. Right. Especially, I think, in California, where you are. Right. Well, this gives me options. I don't have to be in California whatever for all.

But you're still going to have to pay federal income taxes? Sure, sure, yes. And that can change in the future, right? And so, yeah, that is a small risk I'm taking. But I like to have, I like, you know, well, now I'm, you know, kind of like a, you know, trying to justify it

and how it works at all that stuff and strategize around it. But this is all a happy accident. But if you could have done it differently, would you prefer to have done it in a Roth or in a taxable account, anything other than a 401? Definitely.

Roth. I get quite depressed when I run the numbers. And you know, what's funny is the reason I didn't do in a Roth, right? Like I said, like I started January 2020 with 35K into 401k. I had the option to transfer to Roth to do a rollover. But then that means I would have had to use my own cash to pay the tax for the rollover, which was around 12K. I was like, I don't want to pay 12K out of pocket for this rollover. So it was a few million dollar mistake. Yeah, yeah, I mean, in hindsight, right? You never know. No one expects a 401k to turn it to $10 million, right? Well, you did.

You certainly did, and you still didn't pay it. I still would suggest doing it in a 401k and Roth because, again, psychologically, you can't touch it. And I think that saves you a lot of stress and pressure from, like, down days or whatever. And also it just feels compartmentalized, right? Versus like in your taxable mortgage account, I've got to worry about all these things and taxes

and you could withdraw from it anytime you want. So how much should the average person aim to save? I mean, you just got to figure out the life you want to live, right? And double it. I mean, there's a fire map, right? For 4% of your net worth, right, as your kind of average yearly spend, right? And so, but I think it is important to double it. I think I don't, you know, there's very few people who've actually retired early and tell stories about like, I mean, I, basically, you always want to avoid the worst case.

And to me, a worst case scenario is you retire early because you thought you hit a number, right? Five to 10 years pass. Something happens, maybe like a Black Swan or something like that, a market tanks, or you made a mistake or accident, who knows, whatever, right? Something miscalculated. Now you're 10 years out of the job. How do you bounce back? Right. So for you, doesn't that mean 20 million? So now it's a race to 20 million? Yes. I think 20 million is kind of my next target. And I will feel a lot, a lot safer with 20 million. And now you say double it. What if someone has 20 million? Is it 40? I mean, at $20 million, what is 4% a year? $800,000 a year. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a pretty good life. 20, you don't have to double. No, no. I mean, $800,000. I mean, a million salary a year, right?

You think about what kind of life you can live with that. I think that's pretty good. I mean, other people have different ambitions. They want to travel every day. They want a private jet. I get it. But for me, I'm a pretty simple guy in real life, you know? So at what point does taking on additional risk just not become worth it?

Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this as well as early access, and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. So at what point does taking on additional risk just not become worth it?

I would say it's at 10 million. you know, there's something nice about that number. I think, you know, the first million is nice, but it's really meaningless these days, right? And I think you need to kind of keep going. And I think it's also important to kind of stay hungry through that journey, right? Either the grind, whether you're doing YouTube

or investing or trading or whatever it is, to stay hungry until you hit like 10 million. I think 10 million is pretty important. And so have you fully retired from your job? No, I'm as busy as ever. So you're still working your career? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm the founder and CEO of this company called Alpha A.I.

We build a proactive, agenetic trading companion. So it's like a mobile app that you could talk to and it will trade for you. And I guess you could call me an ex-influencer now. You know, my ex-juryne is kind of crazy. Like I started posting just to kind of market the startup, right? And I grew from like a couple thousand followers, so over 160,000 followers now. How much do you make on X?

It's kind of funny. So on RevShare, I make like $1,000 a week, I think, is the kind of average rate. But I've kind of blown up my X subscriptions. quite a lot. And so the story behind it is another happy accident. I turn on X subscriptions because I thought it might help me with the Algo. Like that's it. And I said it at the highest price because I didn't want anyone to actually buy. How much is the price? I said out at $200. A month? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't have any content. I was like, I'm not. I don't want to post subscriber only content. I don't want this like, you know, extra thing to do, right? And then like,

you know, one person subscribed, you know, two persons subscribed accidentally. I asked him like, what do you want? You're like, oh, I'm just happy to support. I'm like, okay, cool, thanks. And then 20 people subscribed, and then 100 people subscribed, and a couple hundred people subscribed. How many people do you now have to subscribe to you? I think people are going to go crazy about that.

And this is the most transparent financial influencer on X, right? Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I repeat that. Okay, I'm the most transparent. So I need to show her this now. Okay, okay. Yeah. Okay, I can show you my creator studio.

a subscriptions panel. Oh, wow. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so you have about 600 active subscribers paying you $200 a month. Wow. Yeah. I feel like we got to be, uh,

Michael, take note of that. This has only started in the last two months. Wait a second. I can't do math. Yeah. 120 grand a month. Yeah, I mean, that's gross revenue. You've got to take out the Apple fees

and strike fees and all that kind of stuff, right? So that turns a Yeah, yeah, 25% off. And then taxes. 1099, 9, all that kind of stuff. So you're making, I don't know, like 80 grand a month, post all of fees, everything on Twitter.

It's kind of crazy. I think there's a strong desire for, you know, transparent and authentic financial media. Like, I mean, I'd love to flip the interview back to you a little bit and just get your thoughts on, like, where you think the future of, like, financial influencers is going to go. Like, no one's watching CNBC anymore.

It's true. I think, I think there's such a fine line. because I noticed with any sort of stock trading person, subscriptions are like the number one way to make money. But in a way, you're almost selling money because there's this idea that, oh, I'll pay $200, I get some proprietary information that'll make me more than that. And so it's a very easy push of like, hey, if I pay $200,

I could see an ROI of even $100. I make $100 a month paying $200, as an example. It just, it sells itself in such a way, so I see a lot of success with that. Yeah. The gray area becomes, what's the success rate of the stocks? Mm-hmm. And do you have an influence on the price going up? Oh, yeah.

If you buy something, does that cause the price to go up? And then all of a sudden, now is this the self-fulfilling prophecy of like, I buy a stock and it goes up because they buy it. Yeah. And, you know, I take this better. very seriously, right? It affects like the stocks I pick and like when I post about it. I mean, I think the number one thing is I'm very transparent, right? I post my buys and my sales. Like people know exactly what I'm talking. I don't have any other accounts. I only have those two accounts, the 401k and my robin hood account, right? I post my exact thoughts.

I, you know, recently, I only post my trades after market close down. To me, this is no different than someone going on TV and saying like, I own this stock, right? Or even like Kramer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like Michael Barry. right? Like he has a substack. He's making, you know, multi-million. Yeah, yeah. And like he, you know, he's definitely aware if he was in a movie, right? And so like, I think that's freedom of speech is very important.

But I think where people get, you know, just the bad people are doing very bad things. I've been in these discords. I have read the SEC filings, the lawsuits against these people, right? Where they're just lying. You're just straight up lying. They're saying like, my price target is $1,000, I'm holding it is forever. And they just sold.

Like, you just, you just, it's just bladen lying. So what should they do to prevent that from happening or what disclosures do you think should be required to crack down on that? The SEC can only go after big people, right? Like the region went after Andrew left, right? The Citron short seller guy, because he was doing this exact same thing, right? He was telling people, I'm still holding his my price target and that he would just be selling into that movement. He created, right? I think that's just, that's, that is wrong. That is, deceitful. That's what the SEC defines as manipulation and deceitful. I think transparency is really important, right? Like, how much are you playing with? When you buy, when you sell. That's why I post all my

trade receipts. It's like a video, too. Like, it's like, you know, completely real. And I think directly to your question, you have to teach everyone how to do independent thinking, right? You have to teach people how to recognize these scams and these, like, deceitful people. Like, that's really how you protect the masses. Because no matter what, the SEC can't go after everyone. So how much money are you making on X? I mean, currently, I guess you could say I'm making a million dollars a year. That is absurd. A million dollars a year. And that's from $200 a month subscription fee that people pay into your membership. Yeah. It's from the ex-subscription I started only about two months ago. That's only going to go up, man. Especially with the amount of you tweeting.

I mean, I'm not even doing much. I post like a, you know, a few posts a day. I post my early thoughts, my watch list, you know, my trades, right? I think there's just so much, there's a latent opportunity, right, and a small window to become, I think, you know, I think X is going to be the most important platform for all the tastemakers and the world. Like, I mean, the vision for X or space X AI, right, is for to be the operating system on Mars, right? The social platform, the chat platform, the money platform, et cetera. But even here on Earth, I mean, Zuckerberg tweeted the latest model release on X, got 12 million views. Right? Like the chief AI officer, Alexander Wang, I met a post like 400 times on X and like a few times on threads, your own product, right? So that just shows you how important X is to kind of the general talking points and population. It's all downstream from there. And so I think it's really important to be an influencer there. So I skim Twitter or X daily. Like I'm constantly looking at X and you started showing up in my feed and I would see your tweets and I liked them and I would kind of like keep tabs on you because I thought. the transparency was really interesting. I'm like, okay, like, I wonder if he's making money,

losing money. What is he buying? What is he selling? When is he doing all of this trading activity? And I enjoyed it, but I also found myself like a little annoyed by your account too. And I think, obviously, that's kind of like you do it on purpose. You post like rage bait. And I wanted you to correct any of my observations, because I could be wrong about some of these things, but these are the main contending points that I have to the stuff that you say on Twitter. And I want to hear your opinion on this. obviously you publicly shared that your net worth was like $10 million, $11 million, ish, $12 million close to now. It's in your bio.

So you're like, you showed your net worth. But then for some time, you created this challenge account. And in the challenge account, you said, I'm going all in. Like, I'm full porting. But I think for a while you didn't really stipulate that that was your challenge account. And so some could be led astray thinking you're putting $11 million into some company. When in actuality, it was, you know, less than point whatever, zero three percent. of your net worth. Was this, was this true? Or was this? I assume that people were following me

aware of the entire story, right? Like people have seen me post about my journey. People have seen me post about my 401k, 11 million dollars screenshots. And they'll see that this is a rom-neco screenshots. Right. And this is an all-a-challenged. Which I also do mention in various kind of reply in its comments, right? Yes, not everyone follows every single tweet. Sometimes they just see one tweet and that's your first time exposure for you. So I do, you know, make sure I add an a ask risk. I make sure. I saw that you started doing that recently. Yes, yes, yes. Which I appreciated because you said, I'm going all in, added an asterisk. And then you said down in the bottom of the tweet, you clarified this is all in on a challenge account.

So it's not actually like my public $11 million net worth. It's just like the 35 or so thousand. But then another thing that I saw that you do that I was like a little about was you started the new challenge account with $35,000. You ran it up to what was the peak? Oh, yes. I did run up to about $100K. So you ran it up to $100K, how quickly? I mean, like a month or two, yeah.

A month or two. But then you ran it back down to like 35K. Yeah. Basically, exactly what you were in the beginning. And then you recently tweeted, I turned 35K into 50K in a matter of like a couple months. Yes, you did do that because now you're at 50K. And so you did that. But it was from the second time of being at 35K, which I also thought was like, okay,

this seems like it's lacking a little bit of transparency because technically you're still down, you know, 50K from your all-time high. granted the returns are still solid. Yes, yes, yes. It's, it's very hard to, you know, explain all that nuance and disclaimers on Twitter, right? And especially, you know, you're trying to balance, you know,

engagement and going viral and content, whatever. Like, people say that in the comments, right? And I like them and I retweet them too, right? But like, you know, kind of tongue in cheek, right? Like, dude, like, I don't try to hide that, right? Like, other people expose that. I'm like, you're right? right? Like I really kind of lean into the fact that like, you know, I round-tripped already, right?

To me, it's, you know, it's marketing, right? Like Twitter, I mean, it's similar to I think how Apple always says every iPhone is the best iPhone they've ever made, right? Like when a common person hears that, they're like, oh my God, this is the best phone ever made, right? But only, you know, kind of tech insiders, like, oh, yeah, that's a very specific sentence they said. And, you know, similar to me, when I say I went from 35K to 52K in two weeks, that is technically accurate. accurate, right? And so, you know, in terms of disclaimers and is there other information, you know, people are not getting. This is why, again, I endorse, you know, independent thinking and doing our research. Like, you have to kind of click in the profile, I'll see the other tweets and kind of catch it off on the story, right? Like, there's just so much, like, I can't be explaining the whole story to you every single time. Otherwise, none of the post will go viral. So when's the last time you were wrong? The worst trade I made in this, this new account has been R-Cat, Red Cat, Drones. Because I thought,

that the Pentagon, they approved like a billion dollars spending and the whole, you know, Ukraine war kind of changed how the war story works and there's going to be a lot of investment in drones. Like that is actually true. That did not reflect in the stock price at all, you know? And so I kind of held this down and all the way, that's what kind of made me round trip all the way down to back to 35K.

What I was curious about is I know you bought RKAT and then it went down a lot, but then you doubled down by buying RKACs, which is the 2X leverage. R-CAT stock. And I'm curious, did your thesis change or did your conviction level change in order for you to go from, you know, just the base share of R-Cat to the 2X leverage? I had never done any leverage ETM ever before, right?

I try to stay away from those. And that was a rule I said. But, you know, rules are meant to be changed, right? Different market conditions, different styles, whatever, is meant to be, you know, played with. You got to experiment with yourself, too. And so I did get successful with Palu, which was a 2X version of Palo to Network. works, right? And that went well because of earnings and whatever like that. So I was like, oh, you know, maybe 2X leverage things are worth playing with, right? You have extremely high

conviction. And with the Red Cat play, you know, I thought like I could catch the bounce. And with a 2X levered play, you only have to bounce halfway there in order to make it all the way back. But again, the bounce never came. And I think my main takeaway there is, yeah, you don't, that was almost essentially going off full tilt. And so the mental kind of stop loss was 35K because you didn't want to go probably beneath the original. That is fair. Yeah, I don't do real stop losses, like systematically, right? But I do have mental stop losses, right? If something's, you know, down 20%, 30%, and the chart just looks absolutely ugly, you know, then yeah, there's that God. I'm curious how your membership fees changed from, you know, taking it 35K to 100K,

like how many members did you have paying you $200 a month? And then how did that change after you were incorrect about the R-Kat and R-KACs thesis? The analytics behind extra subscriptions are actually very light. There's not that much information about churn rate and who's canceled and when they cancel whatever, right? But the gross number. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen it dip down. I mean, like, you know, I'm not sure if it's related to the R-CAP play or just like, you know, they subscribe for one month, I want to see what it was behind the content. They liked it or didn't like it. And then they churned. Like, I think like, you know, similar to me, like, a lot of times you sign up for subscription, right? And the first thing you do is just go cancel, right? So I'm not

sure if that's not, if it's related to the play itself or they just wanted to try. for a month. What's funny to me is like technically speaking, you did bring it back up to 50 or 55 is where you're at right now. Who's to say you're where you'll be in a week or two weeks or a month. Who's to say? But the funny thing is you bring it up and then everyone starts subscribing. And I imagine like the gross amount of subscribers that you had went down, right? After Arcad and Arcax? Like once you were incorrect about that thesis, then people unsubscribed and stop paying you. But then probably as you're going back up again, then people are like resubscribes subscribing. But they don't have the foresight to look over a long period of time. And this is not

my endorsement into you as an investor. I'm just saying, like, technically speaking, if you do look at the data over a long period of time, you have been correct more than you've been wrong. Yes. And it's funny how it just kind of like there is a clear correlation between how you're doing and how you're not doing, like in a small window of time. Well, that's investors across. Yeah, it's just, it's just funny. And I share my. And the hype and selling the fair. always. I share this message with every new subscriber. I highly endorse independent thinking, right? I share my thesis. It's up to you to decide whether you like it or not, right? And for the R-Cat one, a lot of people disagree with me, you know, and I noticed that. A lot of people did not

enter to play with me because it was a fairly weak thesis, like looking back on it, right? And so I'm happy that, you know, a lot of you will skip that one. Do you think that you felt pressured to go big to like prove yourself again in that trade? Yes, there was another lesson I posted about recently, which was, don't force a trade, right? I think because of whatever was happening at that time, right, I was like, ah, let me find another trade. And like the thesis just wasn't strong enough.

And so it's actually funny because even like last week, when the market was down a little bit, I'm like, oh, should I like swing again? No, no, no. Like, just cool down, right? If you're, like, trying to force it. If your thesis is not strong enough, just, like, cool down. It's fine. You can even stay in cash for a little bit until you feel like you understand the market.

And so a lot of lessons, yeah. Who do you think is the best investor alive right now? There's a clear answer for that, actually, is Leopold Messionbrunner, right? The ex-open AI guy that started his situational awareness fund and invested in all these picks and shovels, right? Like, he's, I think, up to like $20 billion in AOM, which is from, this is from like a two-year track record, by the way, right? This is equal to Bill Ackman's Pershing Square that he's developed over 20 years, right? And this guy, because, you know, he wrote his early thesis on the AI infrastructure buildout, invested in all the picks and shovels along the way. Now that's why he's up to like 20 billion now.

Doesn't that concern you though? Because Kathy Wood had a similar upswing 2020, 2020, 2021. Yeah. I mean, I think the game changes at different scales, right? Like, I think he knows this industry well. There's obviously this is the right timing for that, but who knows what wave happens in the future, right, that he or may or not benefit from. And also, you know, honestly speaking, like all these hedge fund managers at a certain point, you're like, you know, trying to increase your AOM because you can kind of bank the fees, right? You're not necessarily in it for the gains themselves. That's an interesting point.

Yeah. That they're probably not so focused on taking risk that could, on average, yield them 40% if that means they have some years where it goes down 10. That is my critique of that quote that, like, hedge fund managers statistically don't beat spy. Because I think most managers are playing a different game, right? You're playing a game of delivering good reports to your bosses. You're playing a game of like, I better make a game. sure I don't lose money so that, you know, my LPs don't exit, right? And they're playing a game

of like, hey, we develop, you know, we double this year, give us more money, right? Versus if you're playing with your own money, you're actually really invested in concentrating these bets and thinking deeply about your own network and stuff. It's easier to sell a product that guarantees, you know, positive return, even if the positive return is like three to five percent, that it is to sell something that could have negative 10 percent one year, but up 40 percent and like that volatility because people don't have the stomachs. The dirty secret on Wall Street is most people just want to make that one year claim to fame, right? Start their own fund and then just codes for the rest of your life.

What are your thoughts on Chris Camillo? I love Chris. Yeah. I watched a podcast with you guys. He was on another live stream with Amit and Wolf recently. Talk about AI agentic trading. I think he's the goat. We asked him what he thought about you.

And he said, I actually don't know much about him and can't remember why I started following him. but there must be a reason. Since he is a coarse guy that likely regularly shares trade ideas with traders who will pour money into each of them, I'd ask the question about exactly what parameters he puts in place to ensure that he's not profiting off of the trading flow of his subscribers. How many days minimum does he wait before exiting a published by trade? Does he fully disclose his exits? By Kevin Schu's own words in his article embracing degeneracy, he seems to be the byproduct of right time, right place, luck fueled by a methodology that is highly concentrated. Feels like he is better than an average investor who spends time researching and taking concentrated bets that have worked out. But most of this appears to have been fueled by a bull market. So not necessarily a genius investor with a meaningfully differentiated strategy as much as a bold investor who is benefiting from simply bringing aggressive, long, and concentrated in high risk growth equities. It's a relatable story as most anyone can replicate that success to some extent. What do you say to that? Thank you. I think it's a fairly accurate.

critique. I am very bold because I like big rewards. Like small rewards don't excite me that much, right? It's not worth the time and effort. And there's definitely a huge degree of luck, right? Like I'm doing this in these bull markets, right? But I also, I mean, the way, the reason I post on X and try to get engaged in bait is because I'm trying to, I think you need to put yourself in positions of luck too, right? I think a lot of people don't. I think a lot of people are very conservative. They can't deal with any money loss at all. Like I know people with millions in cash and they've been in cash for the last five years. Right. I'm like, what are you doing? At least put in spite. You're like, oh, but I could be by the top or et cetera. I don't get it. I'm just like,

I think you need to put yourself in positions to become lucky, right? And also just like minima minimize your loss, right? And that stuff. In terms of like the, you know, the course guy. It's funny, I don't have a course. I don't have a discourse. I don't have any of the that stuff, right? I told you the story of X subscriptions and people, I am very thankful and people enjoy my kind of like more longer form, rambling thoughts, right? Because like on X, you have to be more polished and,

you know, and maybe tight and concise to go viral, et cetera, versus my sub only pull like a kind of full more long form in terms of like what I'm thinking about, etc, et cetera. And I take that duty very importantly,

right? And so I do have some card rails I set for myself, right? I never touch a company like less than a billion dollar market cap. Um, I never sell same day. you know, I mean, that's generally just because I, I, I want to see the thesis play out, right? And so I don't really have like a strict time.

Like, I bust hold for this amount of time, right? But if you actually do look at my track recorder, I never sold a stock like within three days, right? Like, again, like, I want to see the thesis kind of play out. And I'm very upfront with folks that like I might trade at any at a whims notice, right? Like, I add that disclaimer. I even give a heads up that like, hey, like, I'm looking, the market's looking weak today. I'm not like this, you know, I might exit in like the next few hours or something like that, right? And so like, I'm not, I'm not front running anybody.

Here's an interesting question. Do you think people should have savings accounts if they don't have any thing in the foreseeable future that they're planning on spending their savings on? Or should it just, should a savings account for those types of people just be spy? I'll say yes to that, but I feel like I'm a little bit of hypocrite because I do have 400K in S-gov, you know, basically like bonds as well as of the Uber. But I think that's just because of my, you know, cash flow these days. I just want to make sure I have a bigger fund. I think, I mean, establish an emergency fund, like, hands down, right? But then everything else beyond that, yeah, definitely put it into spy.

Oh, yeah. Let's compare our Robin Hood accounts. Sure, sure. All right. Grand, pull yours out. Well, I don't have. Don't you have something in there? I have something.

Want to do like a race to a million dollars in our robo hoods? I would do this for the members. Would you put 10K? Yeah, for sure. I'll do 10-gale. Yeah. And then we could. And I just deposit money in there.

If this is something that you guys would be interested in, let us know. This is something that I would be down for. But first, let's just show off our show off, you know, whatever you want to call it. Technically for me, it's not really showing off. But mine is $169,000. And it's because Bitcoin is up quite a bit today. Okay. And then what's your, what's your like monthly and then you're yearly?

Oh, we don't want to see the yearly. That's not important. weekly, I'm up by two and a half percent. Monthly, I'm up 5.4%. Okay. And then what's your one year? We don't want to see that, Jack. Come on. This, we have to, we have to catch a flight. Yeah, but that's just because crypto's down. And then what's your all time? Uh, that? Now, I don't know, because I don't really use this account. I just moved it only for the bonus. Dude, so how are you going to hate on me when you've lost more than I've, like, the thing is, I only moved to this in because Robin Hood gave me the 3% crypto bonus. So I

moved something into here. Right. So that 90,000 loss is kind of fake. It is fake because it doesn't know my cost basis. My cost basis of Bitcoin in this was like 28 to 32K. Sure. So this only tracks from when I put it in. Whatever your portfolio is, you're choosing to buy those holdings every single day.

And so like just because you bought Robin Hood a while ago doesn't mean that you continued to hold it through the over-s priced valuation. Tax loss harvest and off-set games. Here's mine. This account, as you can see in my all-time graph. I ran it from like 40K to 81K. This was selling options right here and then buying options right here. And so like selling options was working out great.

And then I got greedy because I'm like, I know how to do this. Started buying options. Also Dogecoin, lost everything. And then I restart and I tried it again, lost everything. I'm like, okay, this time what I'm going to do is something different. And I'm only going to let myself sell options because every time I've sold options, it's worked out really well for me. So I started with like basically 10K.

I'm up, I don't know, 11. And then if I go to my other account, my gamble account, this is the account that I loaded with 100K. And so it's fresh, only ever had 100 grand in it. And the idea was I would make enough money to purchase this watch. And so in two months, I'm up about 13.3%, which is not bad. And I'm really only selling options. This is kind of what I'm doing right now. But that's it.

Pretty good. What you got? I'm at 53K right now. Up 3% today, all in. Shaz, one stock, keeping it simple. Over the last week, up 23%. And over the last month, technically down 8%,

so you can see here, this is what I hit that 35K round trip. You never went down, though. I never went down, yes. I kind of, you know, that's like a lot. I'm very big on psychological numbers, right? And so I started with 35K. You kind of don't want to go below that.

And then I tell, I say I locked in and made my next, my next trades count. And so on June 24th, yeah, I went back. back to 35K and, you know, technically, let me see the one year? 50% since then. I think the one year. Yeah, so this is where you see, like,

you know, if you look at the all time, it's like all weird. Like, I've had this account since, like, you know, 2015 or whatever. So it's like all the different deposits and withdrawals and whatever. The lines get messed up, right? And then, like, I started this account on e-trade because I got in, like, the Reddit IPO IPO and they forced to create an e-trade account and et-trade account and et-e-cetera, and then I transferred over here for a bonus as well. So that's why all the kind of,

numbers look weird, but if you see here, yeah, like I traded it the 35K challenge count up to, let's say, 44K, right? And then kind of pause it for a bit to work on my startup. And then basically around November, December, last year I started up again and it's been up and it down. Cool. Kevin, thank you so much for coming out. Filming with us. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Really appreciate it. We got to go on a flight right now. Yep. We got to catch a flight to Florida. So hope you guys enjoyed. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you. As always, we would not be here. If not for you. you guys. And also, if you want early access to videos just like this, as well as extra content,

feel free to join the channel memberships. We're also posting extra episodes of Jack and I. We have occasional guests. We do post shows. So really hope you enjoy it. Feel free to join the membership. Thank you so much. And until next time.