The Pomp Podcast - How to Find the Next 10x Stock Before Everyone Else | Eric Jackson

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Eric Jackson is the founder of EMJ Capital and the investor behind the high-profile Carvana and Opendoor calls. This was recorded live at the Silvia Investor Summit in New York. In this conversation, we break down the rise of the retail investor, how he uses AI in his research, and what he saw inside Hut 8’s massive AI data center campus. We also discuss his AI-powered bitcoin model, when to sell, and using AI to beat prediction markets.======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates investment strategies across Stocks, Commodities, ETFs and Crypto. Whether you’re rotating into AI & Gold, allocating to the S&P 500, or accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public executes your plan 24/7 without ever taking custody of your assets or funds. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com, and start your FREE automated trading strategy! ======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp======================0:00 - Intro0:25 - Why public companies now care about retail investors3:55 - How Eric uses AI for investment research6:21 - Inside Hut 8’s massive AI data center build15:57 - Building conviction on misunderstood stocks18:10 - Eric’s daily routine & the Drake videos21:48 - Portfolio construction, small caps & crypto24:18 - How to know when to sell25:35 - AI bitcoin model: bull, or bear market?28:31 - Beating prediction markets with AI

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At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single-server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's technology at Capital One. Search Technology at Capital One, Canada. You know, obviously Bitcoin had the big jump in August, right? Right. And I said our model kind of flipped on, said, you know, get bullish on August 14th.

On August 12th, on Polly Market, there was 3% odds on Polly Market that Bitcoin would end the month of August at 70K. 3%. Obviously, like, Bitcoin had a run, and it ended the month at 79K. So the wisdom of crowds is not always correct. Let's talk first about the retail investor and the rise of the retail investor has completely changed. I think public markets. And most people will point to the open doors, the game stops, you know, a variety of other companies. But I don't think folks realize that a lot of public companies see you as reach out to me. They probably reach out to you. There's a couple of other folks.

And they're like, I want to engage with the retail investor. How do I do that? And my takeaway is just like the retail investor is important now to them. What have you seen? You've been doing this a while. How has that changed throughout your career? Yeah, I definitely think that's the case. I mean, I think we had that conversation before I joined the board of Sylvia about that and how to engage that important stakeholder group.

So there are a lot of companies thinking that way. I think that they got me twice. Be careful. These bottles are popping. So I think everybody wants to get retail on their side. I don't think there's a cookie cutter way to do that. that or you know established wisdom but i mean some pretty basic things are be open be authentic be transparent you know just just like you know it goes for politicians as much as it does for

CEOs of companies you want to make people feel you're a human being so doing things like having video earnings calls as opposed to just hiding behind an audio only earnings call i think is like an easy layup way to engage with people. But, I mean, there's another point about the rise of retail. I think people assume, like, oh, AI exists now. It's never been easier for retail to kind of rally support. I don't think that's totally true. And what I mean by that is that at the end of the day, for any online campaign,

you know, a group of shareholders to really, have a powerful effect on companies. It takes leadership, you know. Leadership matters in the military, leadership matters in community organizations, and leadership matters online too. Just because AI is great doesn't mean that things automatically happen. Like I have X, you know, subscribers, right?

And once a week, I do this like AMA, like, hey guys, you know, ask me anything, join the spaces, you know, come, step up to the month. and just ask me a question. And I'm often surprised that, you know, people, a lot of people prefer to kind of hide, you know, stand back and ask a text question, not even like just ask a, you know, ask the mic.

And I think, you know, so the opportunity for retail to gather, it still needs somebody to kind of want to step up on the soapbox and say, hey, let's do this, let's do that. It doesn't just like happen amorphously like from the mob like getting together. And so there's never been a better time in human history for retail to have an impact because AI makes it so easy. And AI makes getting to know a company and its strengths and weaknesses easier. But at the end of the day, like we, you know, individually have to kind of step up and make a difference ourselves and lead.

This room is full of independent investors. There are thousands of them watching online. right now, you are probably one of the most prolific users of AI in your research and your investment strategy in the identification of opportunities, but also the diligence of those opportunities. Can you just walk us through? How are you using the technology? And maybe how could people in this room use the technology to better enhance their investment approach?

Well, I use a lot. Absolutely. And, you know, this is not going to be surprised probably that most people in this room. But obviously, like, you can waste a lot of money on totally. tokens, and I have. And the simplistic queries, like, what's the next open door? You know, like, show me the next open door that I can get behind, the next carvon or something. Usually doesn't yield much fruit. So the way that I've used it in my own research is to try to get at the more complicated questions. Like, if you see a space where there are a bunch of players

going after it and you don't and you don't really understand like what differentiates one versus the other like trying to unpack that and do some use AI to try to say hey company A is doing it this way company B is doing it that way why why are they doing it going at it differently what what advantage does the second company have over the first I find like there's like much more like unlocks for me in asking those kinds of questions and the other thing I'd say is you know, people again probably have realized this, but there's a big difference between the different LOMs out there, right?

So, you know, I personally find chat GPT is the most, like, artistic of them. Like, so if I want to write a tweet or, hey, I want to do it, put a PowerPoint together, like I usually find I get the best results from that. You know, clot is good and it's kind of like a good workhorse and I use it a lot, but I don't find that same pizzazz with it. But if I'm thinking about programming and actually coding or redesigning like a website that I'm working on or something like that, surprisingly, I find Kimmy to be the best.

It's the most thorough, the most kind of detail-oriented. And so you know what tools to leverage, to get what kind of outcome is, what I'd say. One of the companies you've been involved in is HUD-8, and they seem to be doing very well. They obviously have seen significant move in their stock price, but you recently went down and saw one of the data center campuses that they're building. And we were just talking about how inspirational, maybe, how incredible it is to actually, like, see it. Can you describe to people like what's happening when you go and you visit one of these sites?

And, you know, we talk about using AI, but like there is hardware and construction and power and land and all this stuff that is really being built to empower us to use it? Yeah, for sure. It was like, I mean, it's a good example of how you could sit behind a screen all day and you could think that you know, oh, I know iron, cipher, HUD, 8, you know, what differentiates nebius, core weave. And I've been investing in, you know, in those names for, you know, probably the last year and a half. And I think, I thought I knew them. But this was the first time that I actually went down physically and toured, you know, a campus that was being developed. It's 649 acres. It's called Riverbend.

It's about a half an hour north of Baton Rouge in Louisiana. And I was saying to Anthony before this, you know, you get in Baton Rouge, pretty small airport, like, you know, pretty small town, even though they've got LSU there and everything. But when you drive out, 30 minutes outside, like you see the old world and the new world, right? You know, you see like a suburban town. And then all of a sudden you see these like oil refineries. from Shell or ExxonMobil or whatever that are big, but, you know, rusting, you know, and not all that new. Obviously, the old ways that a lot of people in those communities made made money. And then you keep going and going, and you're basically in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden,

649 acres opens up, you know, just in the middle of a forest, that they are with, you've got cats everywhere, clearing land, you know, leveling, hundreds of... people teaming you know building out this site uh for this campus a massive site uh and uh jacobs was like the engineer um contractor of choice there you see like a whole section devoted to verative the company that does a cooling systems and stuff hut's got about 15 people who live physically have been on the site since february they live in baton rouge they commute every way to the campus and they're kind of like the the conductors like they've got a all these different folks from the workers on on on up to you know to know how to build it and until

i was there i'd never seen transformers that big or substations that big the power that these kinds of sites need is truly phenomenal and just how massive this was and this was just phase one of the first campus and there were a ton of politicians there like i drove up in my rental car, there was like some big tent that United Rentals is making bank off of these things. Like United Rentals and Cat, now I understand why their stocks are way up in the last five years, building out these data centers.

But I go into this one tent, I thought I was going in the right entrance. Turns out I was going in the back entrance. All of a sudden, like Don Jr. comes out with like about eight Secret Service surrounding him, all kind of looking me up and down, like I'm gonna jump him or something. The governor of Louisiana was there. And it was a total love fest.

Like, you know, the community was happy that all these people were there building out this campus. The CEO, Asher Gnutt, who's 32, he's like a super smart guy. He's not that well known. So I think Hut ends up being kind of a misunderstood company. But, and he spoke like a total politician. He was talking, he wasn't talking about engineering. He wasn't talking about AI at all. He spent his whole speech talking about people, people in the community and so forth and, you know, how this thing was just one of like,

10 sites that they looked forward to developing in Louisiana. So if you were dropped in from a spaceship, you would have, and then you tended this event. And then later on that day, somebody'd come up to you and said, hey, did you know that everybody hates AI data centers, you know, and they're banning them, you know, and they think they're evil and they're, you know, you just wouldn't have believed it had you been down there in Louisiana because these politicians, you know, they couldn't get enough of this. So, but I, I sort of better understood that, you know, for all these companies, Navias or whatever, I mean, we all hear these news releases that they're getting these like $20 billion

or five-year contracts and so forth from Microsoft or whoever. But there's a real coordination challenge. Like, and it's not just cookie cutter again. And so I think the opportunity exists for companies like a hut, and I think they do it better the most to show to the world because it's sort of like unproven right now this is like the first of like a big campus that are developing that they can take they they they're they could be the best at this coordination game because the coordination game is how you you light up megawatts and then you know gigawatts of power and and how you do it economically that's the other thing is that they

had raised for this one river band site they raised a three and a half billion in non-recourse debt instead of diluting their shareholders. Now, there have been other players, I won't mention them. They're done big, you know, $6 billion, like equity offerings and stuff like that, diluting to, and justified it saying like, hey, you know, this is going to be, you know, well, we'll all be better off in the long run. But they, it's taken a risk. And, but they're, and it's a race to like, how quickly can you get this, this campus built?

How quickly can you coordinate all these different, you know, people together? to get this thing lit up. And then once you do, you de-risk the whole project. So for them, they'll probably have to borrow something like $10 billion, you know, from the beginning to line up, you know, and they've got Google backstopping them financially. They got fluid stack. They landed their anchor tenant in Anthropic for this place. But once all those pieces are in place and the things lit,

my calculations are they probably have created like a $15 billion of extra, value that didn't exist before. So on top of the $10 billion, you know, paying that back. So their plan is, okay, now we create an extra $15 billion. Okay, we're going to put it in the next project. So they got something beacon point in Texas, East Texas, I think it is. And then once they get the $15 billion or $20 billion from that project into the next one, and all the while not diluting the shareholders with these like equity offering. So I came away thinking like, hey, this is one of the most misunderstood stocks out there. usually that's a good sign because that's what carvana had in common that's what open door

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when you find these things that are misunderstood, how do you build the conviction to know that you are right and not just like, it's not that I'm different and right, I'm just different and dumb, essentially, right? Because the market is pricing something else and I misanalyze this. I mean, I think it's just trial and error. I mean, you got and you got to accept the fact that you're going to be wrong, you know, sometimes. Or too early. You know, I've, you know, open door worked great. You know, you know, You know, last year, stock went on a, you know, killer like two-month run from like 50, you know, well, I got in like in the 70-cent range to like 11 bucks almost in September when we were, you know, here last year, I think, it was pretty close to the top. And then obviously the stock struggled since then. Nothing's wrong with the stock. Nothing's wrong with CAS, as you guys probably know from, I don't think there's anybody that could be doing a better job.

But there are these times where the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater in the sector. Like earlier this year, like, you know, all SaaS stocks were going to be, should have been dead by now, according to the conventional wisdom. And yet, you know, last I looked, crowd strikes up 125% on the year. You know, Twilio is up 100% on the year. But there are some stocks in that space, like Zoom, Zoom info is down a ton. So, I mean, there was a kernel of truth in the conventional, wisdom, but then there's the opportunity to kind of like, you know, sort through and find the real

winners and take advantage of that, you know, moment in time where, like, everybody got to one side of the boat. So I think, you know, Open Door is going to be proven to be one of those cases of that when we look back in a year or two or three that, you know, yeah, it was unfairly punished during this. I guess it made sense because the tenure was really ripping and all that kind of stuff, but they were doing all the right things. And, you know, for the patient ones, I think they'll be paid off. I think a lot of people are fascinated by you in that you're not scared to publicly state what you think. You've been right more than you've been wrong.

You put out amazing explanatory rap videos, not rapping, but explaining the hip-hop and rap world via a business lens. And then you also obviously manage money as well, right? And you're actually investing in these things. You're not just creating content or something like that. What's your day like on a daily basis? You know, like what do you do in kind of the actual? average day of Eric Jackson. I usually do my daily videos, like first thing.

So if I'm up at like five or something, if I haven't done it the night before, I'm trying to like, okay, what the heck am I going to talk about today? My best ideas for the videos. It's kind of evolved over time. You know, I have my son Julian here in the front row in the blue shirt, who is, he's 17. He was the one who came up with the idea when I was doing the open door campaign about like standing in front of Drake's house.

And because basically he was like, dad, you know, most people don't watch CNBC or Fox business or Bloomberg. So how are you going to reach those people and try to tell them how great open door is? And, you know, so I did that. And he was the one who said, you know, you should do it every day until like Drake does, you know, buys a share or something. Julian, did he listen right away or did he fight you? He fought you? He listened right away? Oh, that's interesting.

He was my cameraman for the first few days because it was the middle of the summer. social media manager I hear them say that sometimes but then it got kind of boring so I got to do something more to keep people's interest and stuff and then it's sort of evolved and you know Drake came out with a new album

earlier this summer so I thought well maybe I should like start talking about you know I can't be Joe Budden sort of giving my critiques on the eloquence of the rhyme so maybe I could talk more about the business of hip hop and some of these questions like is Drake gonna resigned with Universal

music and it kind of took on a life of its own and there's been this whole like community of followers now that i have on social media that don't follow stocks but they're primarily interested in hip-hop but now because they hear me sometimes talk about stocks and markets they're there's like hey you know i want to you know invest in the stock market i want to you know raise my family up and so it it kind of like worlds collide and like all the rising dynasty ideas that we talked about last year of like you know where retail shareholders were you're going to try to spend some time doing research and getting behind a few stocks like an open door, Carvana, that could really make a big difference in their lives. Like that's kind of like a universal thing. So, you know, I try to put an interesting video

out like right in the morning and then immediately kind of jump, you know, jump out of that, get into the markets, what's going on, what's happening with the 10 year today, you know, how can I use AI to kind of better understand exactly what's, you know, what's, you know, how, how can I use AI to kind of better understand exactly what's going on with the 10-year. And more importantly, like, you know, what does it mean that it's, you know, gone up so quickly? Is it how's that going to play? How's it going to affect Open Door? How's that going to affect Hut and any other stocks in my portfolio? Try to, you know, ask those kinds of questions. And, you know, obviously watch how the market's progressing during the day. I'm trying to think of long-form written or, you know,

video pieces I could be doing to kind of better explain what's happening in the markets and stuff like that. So I'm kind of like an ADHD guy. So like I like jumping around and not just like spending like eight hours straight on one problem, but like hopping back and forth. And that works for me. When you think about investing in today's market, it feels like we're going to get 24-7 trading. It feels like we are going to get this like rapid acceleration in how. how fast stocks, companies, revenue profits can grow. And then we also have the backdrop of the governments

are never going to stop printing money. How do you think about investing or constructing a portfolio today? What's in your portfolio, you know, in terms of, are you 100% equities, do you have other assets, just kind of talk through, you know, your approach to that portfolio construction? I'm more on the, like, riskier side of the spectrum. So I'm more concentrated than, you know,

probably most people would be comfortable with. I'm more comfortable, you know, having a good chunk of that concentrated portfolio in, you know, more, you know, smaller names, smaller cap, growthy names like a, like a hut or a open door or, you know, I also like next door is one I like a lot right now. There's a company called Dave that does like, you know, small $200 kind of payday type, you know, loans to people using, like a plaid integration. So I like those kind of more unconvincial names. But I do love crypto as well. I'm big on crypto, spent a lot of time focused on crypto. So for me, that's probably 90% of what I play in and think about in terms of my exposure. And I think the biggest mistakes that I've made in constructing those kinds of names is just,

being too early to a story, you could be totally right about a story, but, you know, we might be like two years away from it really starting to play out in a way that the market's going to notice. And so probably, like I spend most of my time saying once I convince myself, like, okay, this is interesting story, it's differentiated. Like, is it right for right now? You know, is it about to inflect? Is there something in the growth rates of this company that we're going to to stop seeing 10% revenue growth, 10% and suddenly like 30% revenue growth and, you know, why and all that kind of stuff. So that's if, you know, and you only learn those kinds of questions like just from obviously like stubbing your toe and making mistakes on names.

So I know this is a loaded question, but how do you sell? I'm convinced that's way harder than buying. You know, I can pick a lot of names that are going to go up, but sometimes you round-trip it. Sometimes you sell. Sometimes you sell and then it keeps going. You know, I mean, there's all these, like, variations. So what is your maybe approach to knowing when and how to sell? Yeah, first of all, you've got to know yourself.

And like, so I'm more of the optimist, you know, and there are some people in the world that are more the pessimists, right? And so, you know, we can both have our moments to be right, but we're not always right. either way. And so when you're an optimist, you obviously hang on too long. You believe in the story too much. So in individual equity names, it's trying to understand like, hey, did I get it right or wrong about the quality of the CEO, quality of the management? Was I early here? You know, as something changed materially in the story compared to when I got into it, I don't know,

six months ago, eight months ago versus like what just happened in the story? You know, what just happened the last quarter. Was that last quarter if they missed? Was it a blip? Or, you know, is it the, you know, the beginning of something like more ominous here in terms of the business changing? What's been positive, though, for a guy like me who's more optimistic and helpful in answering that question of when you get out is I've been working, spending a lot of time over the last few years on AI models specifically around Bitcoin. And so I sold those, those models to a company called SRXH, you know, I don't know, six, I guess last, last December, we announced it. And the deal only closed in June. Now we're starting to put it into place.

We made an announcement this week that we're going to turn it into like an ETF. But we've been running the models, obviously, you know, in real time. And it's basically a kind of what kind of Bitcoin market are we in model? So are we in a bull market for Bitcoin? Are we in a mixed choppy market or are we in a bear market? And, you know, it gives you about 30 days advance notice when you sort of flip from one of those regimes into the next one about where the price is going to go. Obviously, if you're in a mixed market and you go into a bear market, you can guess that the price of Bitcoin is going to go down. And so it's great that it's been accurate. You know, it sort of told us like May 26th, we were in a mixed market.

Bitcoin was like 77K and said, well, get out. We went into stress. And then six weeks later, Bitcoin hit like 58K. And on August 14th, it said, oh, we're back into a mixed market all aboard when Bitcoin was at 62K, right before like obviously went up to as high as like recently, 87K. Just a week ago, when Bitcoin was around 84K, it went back into stress. And we're still in stress now.

So, and you know, you get those signals and you're like- I don't want to hear that. Am I wrong? Like last week, if you'd ask me, just like, you know, Eric, the human, you know, Bitcoin bull, you know, is, is, are there warning signs on the horizon for Bitcoin at 84K? And I would have said, no, you know, everything, it's all good, you know, like, things are, things are looking good. And, and then, you know, obviously, we've had a bad day today. So, it's, I mean, it's not always right, but, like, you know, that's where AI, I think, is really going to help us become better investors over time is, is, It takes time to develop your models, but like when you get one that really works,

it helps take the human emotion out of trading and be a little bit more detached. I don't ever look at the price because you said that. I just looked. It's 81.5. What the heck is going on there? Your model is maybe your model. I mean, turn it green. It looks like we're sort of starting to come back.

So, I mean, if I was here tomorrow, I might say, hey, good news. We're back into the mix market. Let's all get bowled up and go buy some Bitcoin. I think this room is enough bold up. We don't eat anymore. All right, can we send people to find you online? Where's the best place for them to all go check out? So EMJ Capital is my hedge fund.

You can check that out. There's a website for that. There's obviously, like, if you want to know more about the Bitcoin model, SRXH is the stock. SRXH is the ticker. SRXH. Yeah, SRXH. But also check out my new website that I just started this year called eventhorizon IQ.com.

So it's basically using AI models to outsmart prediction markets. And so we find where Kalshi and Pauley Market are off with some of their current predictions. So, and again, we're not always 100% right, but we're looking to tell you where, you know, more often than not we will be right, where maybe they're over bullish or over-barish on different things, whether it's on crypto pricing or on politics or Supreme Court decisions and stuff like that. Interesting. Like one last thing I'll say about Polly Market, you know, obviously Bitcoin had the big jump in August, right?

And I said our model kind of flipped on, said, you know, get bullish on August 14th. On August 12th, on Polly Market, there was 3% odds on Polly Market that Bitcoin would end the month of August at 70K. 3%. Obviously, like Bitcoin's had a run and it ended the month at 79K. So the wisdom of crowds is not always correct. And AI can I think be a great supplement to kind of spot different opportunities like that in all different kinds of contexts. It's different types of intelligence. Yeah. Right. Crowd intelligence, superhuman intelligence, Eric Jackson intelligence. It's all the same. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks guys.