This week, we’re tackling the dangerous cocktail of success and ego, analyzing a HUGE listener portfolio, and placing a high-stakes bet on a 500% one-year return!
🧠 Feeling like an investing genius? That’s your biggest red flag. We break down the psychological traps of a bull market and how to protect your portfolio from your own ego.
📉 Trump wants to kill quarterly reports. Would this save companies from short-term pressure or just leave investors in the dark? We debate the controversial proposal.
🔬 Is your portfolio bloated? We put a listener’s 46-stock portfolio under the microscope to find the hidden gems and the positions that need to be cut.
🚀 Monkey’s portfolio is up a staggering 462% over the past year! So we made a bet: can it hit 500% by year-end? A very fine bottle of vintage rum is on the line!
⌚️ A peek behind the curtain. Luke reveals his private investment in WHOOP and explains why this wearable is more than just a fitness tracker, it’s a health revolution.
💥 Numbers vs. Narrative: We dissect a fiery debate over OpenDoor’s future. When should you trust the spreadsheet, and when should you bet on a visionary pivot? $OPEN
💯 We’re hitting triple digits! Episode 100 will be a live-stream, unfiltered, Patreon-only event. Join the community now so you don’t miss out on the chaos.
Wall Street Wildlife is about to turn 100 (episodes!), and we’ve teamed up with our partners Fiscal.AI for a special – and lucrative – competition! One winner will receive a one-year Pro subscription to Fiscal AI, worth over $750! Entry details here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/139165245
Segments:
00:00 Introduction and Market Commentary
04:01 Trump’s Quarterly Reporting Proposal
11:33 The Hubris Trap: When Success Breeds Danger
29:58 Krzysztof’s 500% Return Bet
34:42 Patreon Portfolio Analysis Deep Dive
57:25 Stock Safari: WHOOP Private Investment
01:12:00 OpenDoor Investment Philosophy Debate
01:20:06 Episode 100 Live Stream Plans
WSW – With Ads – EP98 –
[00:00:00] Luke: I’m not coming from the perspective of Rocket Lab’s gone sky high.
I’m a genius. I cannot be beaten, you know, I’m the greatest investor in the world. ’cause that is gonna crush you when the market gives you a slap around the face. Which it will at some point.
[00:00:14] Krys: actually, in the end, take advantage of the situation by knowing whether it’s time or when it’s time to add more or whatever the case may be.
[00:00:24] Luke:
My plan is to go to cash ahead of a correction and pounce on discounted prices. Like if investing was that easy, like, you know, none of us would ever suffer drawdowns.
[00:00:35] Krys: how excited am I about this company in this moment? And just get that intuitive feel and just see where to start potentially cutting or nibbling
or
[00:00:44] Luke: For an advertising free version of the show, check out patreon.com/wall Street Wildlife.
[00:00:56] Luke: Welcome for Deep Investing Jungle with your hosts, Luke the Badger Hallard, and Christophe the Monkey Koski. On this week’s episode, stop. Ching. I’m trying to introduce the episode you Monkey, the dangers of investing, hubris and thinking you are smarter than the Pack. Christophe, you’ve got a new Wall Street Wildlife bet for me.
You’re making me an indecent proposal. We’re also gonna analyze a Patreon’s investment portfolio, but this is not investment advice. Plus I’m finally actually go on stock Safari with my private investment into whoop the activity tracker that’s becoming a medical device manufacturer. We talked about Opendoor last week.
This week Christophe’s got an update for us. Two pros are going at it. While he was his banana stock grow. Plus Christophe is taking us on stock safari with white fiber. The AI power compute tidal wave stock.
[00:01:55] Krys: Badge. So on Patreon this week, we sent out a post saying, Hey, over on the YouTubes we’re like, yay, close, like a hundred something. Watch hours away from starting to get, uh, some cash dollars sent our way. From the Googles. From the Googles. And we want all the cash dollars, we want all those bananas. So, uh, uh, if you’re listening to this on podcast, thank you. But also I found that because we use charts and we use figures that add to the, the, uh, investment case that we make often from, uh, fin Chat, uh, dot ai, that watching us isn’t just a stunningly excellent aesthetic experience. It’s also, you know, good, good to see exactly what we’re talking about. And every time I wanted to watch a podcast while driving, I’ve learned to cue up the YouTube, you know, uh, and sort of play it on the YouTube so I could every so often glance at the chart while keeping my eyes straight on the road, but also my Tesla drives itself.
So, you know, but anyway, uh, watch us on YouTubes.
[00:03:12] Luke: Yeah, like if you’re walking in the streets of Austin and you get moan over by Chris because he’s too busy watching like the All In Pod on YouTube, it’s Chamas Fault clearly.
[00:03:21] Krys: way to ruin, way to ruin my, my excellently calculated, uh, sales pitch to get us our first 37 cents from, from Google.
[00:03:31] Luke: this is quite an exciting point. On the YouTube though, you’re right, we’re about to start getting paid by YouTube and that will allow us to, along with all the excellent Patreons we get from our fabulous family of Patreons invest in the show, at some point we’re gonna buy Christophe a new mike, even on a webcam, even though he is like railing against having more technology in his office.
And, uh, there’s a bunch of other stuff we wanna invest in to make the show better quality for all of you guys.
[00:03:57] Krys: Indeed, indeed. Badge. All right, so let’s get to business.
[00:04:01] Luke: Before we get to our roster of stuff I introduced, I just saw a tweet from the Donald just two hours ago, I think, or someone’s reposted it from truth Social. Just wanna get your hot take on this idea. Hot off the press. Donald says, subject to SEC approval.
Companies should no longer be forced to report on a quarterly basis, but rather a six monthly basis. This will save money, allow managers to focus on properly running their companies, blah, blah, blah. Something about China. Um, what, what’d you think about that? No more quarterly reporting.
[00:04:35] Krys: Okay, so this is the first time I’m hearing this.
[00:04:38] Luke: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Krys: Honestly, it strikes me as good and uh, and this is why, because the short term game is based predominantly on what’s gonna happen in the next three months. And some companies, most companies take. Years to execute, but sometimes they’re also forced into positions to, uh, not necessarily financially manipulate, but to set certain targets that will satisfy Wall Street, which is the short-term thing.
And that comes outta great cost for potentially the, the bigger vision. And it certainly messes with investors. So it kind of, uh, places the weight more squarely on the momentum slash trading side. If, if I just take this statement holistically and I think, okay, I’ve invested in the company and then in the long term way for, you know, like as a, with an investor mindset and I get two updates a year on how they’re doing, that seems to be, ought to be enough. Uh, I mean that’s obviously subjective, right? But if, as long as the company also sometimes gets to announce some big, you know, uh, whatever big thing happened, you know, I, I imagine that would be part of this, right? Like any big news gets announced. You don’t have to wait six months to announce something.
Then this seems to me sort of shockingly anti Donald Trump, because he’s of the more, right, the, the kind of, I would say shady side of things. So this is sort of surprising and good. What do you think?
[00:06:26] Luke: Yeah. I think also I agree also, I think it’s good. I dunno if it’s like that out of character, like he is about deregulation and making it easier for business and this like fits that mold. I think interestingly, it’s kind of following what Europe and the UK did a while ago. I might have my timelines wrong on this.
I think back in 2014, something like that, the UK went from mandatory quarterly reporting to annual reporting. Um, because it was about, like the stuff you said, like preventing companies from being forced to focus on the short term. They can take like a bigger picture view plus like, you know, cutting a load of costs and administration, you know, it must, it must cost like millions of dollars for a big company to just like get the auditors in while they do that annually.
But, you know, put together the materials, have their C ffo spend like a ton of time having to like corral numbers from across the organization. Like focus on actually growing the business. Don’t focus on giving me like stuff where you’re just saying like, everything is on track and as you say, right, it’s not like they’re banned from reporting.
They could continue to report as frequent as they wanted. Like it becomes optional that like they’re just held to account. They must report every six months. In the UK it’s once a year. Um, and if there are material events, like there’s different regulations around that. Like if someone acquires. You know, a huge amount of stalk or some other sort of regulatory action happens.
They have to report those anyway. This is just one of the things they do. They could just ease some of the administrative pressure. See, I’m a fan too. It’s a good idea.
[00:08:03] Krys: Yeah, and you know what? I don’t know if you ever found this funny or odd. Some companies already sort of push back against the Wall Street game by saying we’re not gonna offer guidance,
which sometimes could be for bad reasons. But sometimes, you know, if the company is fundamentally sound, they’re sort of signaling, you know, we’re not gonna jump through your arbitrary hoops, Ely, you do the work, we’re going to build the company, uh, and others, you know, uh, play by the rules and say every, you know, you get this report and you get guidance.
And, uh, so it’s an industry, right? It’s an industry thing. The analysts feed off of the co you know, like the money has to come from somewhere. But all in all, this is a surprising proposition. And I think overall good for long-term investors, it would certainly make our lives less crazy by needing to listen to, you know, we, we would have half the number of earnings calls to keep up with.
So that would be, ugh.
[00:09:05] Luke: I agree. And I think it should lead to better results. ’cause you just take some of the bureaucracy away. Frankly, bureaucracy is not good. And focus on like, if my CEO wants to then go on more podcasts ’cause he’s doing less earning calls, great. And I’ll get my updates that way.
[00:09:21] Krys: Yeah. Bureaucracy bad. We should make a short outta that. Bureaucracy bad.
[00:09:28] Luke: totally, that’s my, like when I left like the corporate world, it was because of just the mountain of bureaucracy and bullshit that, uh, that like the world I lived in and I, I went out of my way to try and. Like bust the bureaucracy, but in a giant global machine like HSBC, that’s just impossible.
[00:09:50] Krys: You know what’s fascinating about this as a lifetime educator, uh, the academic world also has, its shared. Please don’t get me wrong. In many ways it’s a to, it’s also toxic, but I myself mostly have gone, uh, just done my own thing in the classroom. You know what I mean? You know where my greatest source of bureaucratic hell comes from
[00:10:11] Luke: Me,
[00:10:11] Krys: you. Exactly. Exactly. You took all your learnings from the corporate world and you put it on poor monkeys, shoulders,
[00:10:20] Luke: I know like, like I was going on vacation once and I gave Christoph this like 50 line spreadsheet of all the tasks that need to be done just to keep this machine of the podcast doing its shit every week.
[00:10:32] Krys: and, and how many of them were done? I’m afraid to because it’s, don’t tell me I got zero things accomplished.
[00:10:41] Luke: Yeah, no, you’re right, you’re right. Now keep, do, do you hold me to account on that shit? ’cause actually there’s a bunch of stuff that like, it’s probably, I’m going too far and I’m creating like admin for admin’s sake. So yeah, like shut me down if I say something dumb.
[00:10:55] Krys: all right. Uh, so the market is flying right now near all time highs, and this week, I believe on Wednesday, we, what the percentage, uh, on polygraph or whatever of expected rate cuts, I think is close to a hundred percent at this point. And people are now in, in what I’m hearing, starting to chatter, whether it’s going to be a quarter or a full, uh, 50 basis points cut.
Uh, but that’s for, you know, that’s neither here nor there. We’ll find out on Wednesday, might be a volatile trading period. What we wanna talk about is that. As always happens in the market, things come in cycles. And now, uh, grandma and grandma’s quilting friends are all asking about this investing thing, of course, when things are at the peak. So we already know that this will not end terribly well for those who are sort of writing the hype, right. That aren’t doing the, the, the investing properly. So you have, we wanna somehow frame this as a, not just a warning, but we’re, we’re picking up stuff about greed and hubris, uh, in these kinds of moments, and we wanna walk you through maybe a better way to think about this.
So badge, take us, take us to what you observed and, uh, what you wanna say about it.
[00:12:25] Luke: Yeah, and I suppose maybe to intro this, like I’m seeing some sentiment in. A couple of the investing communities that I kind of lurk around in. And actually, frankly, it reminds me of myself back in 20 20, 20 21. Um, and I learned a hard lesson and suppose so. I suppose, yeah. Like when you, it’s one of our laws of the jungle thinking you are smarter than the pack is dangerous.
And I’m just gonna, I’m not picking on this guy or girl. Um, but I’m picking just one narrative. But there are many, I’ve seen like a lot of people who think they’re essentially, they think they’re like investing geniuses, like right now. It’s very hard if you are like an investor and if you’re like, pretty much like a long investor as opposed to taking like weird derivatives and short positions, if you’re kind of long only, it’s kind of hard not to make money, right?
Everything is going up and the good, the quality and the great stuff is going up and the dumb shit is going up. Everything is going up and so, uh, I’m, yeah, I’m just gonna pick on this one particular character, but like, I’m seeing this in a lot of places. So this individual started managing their own investments in January, 2024.
I think probably I, I get the impression from reading some of their posts and this community, like they’ve been an investor for a long time, but kind of ETFs and indexes. So coming up for about a year and three quarters, two years where we’ll say he is like now hands on and picking his own stocks for, with some proportion of his portfolio and he’s on track for a hundred percent gain.
Over two years, which is great. Like that’s, you know, like everything’s going up, everybody’s doing well, but a hundred percent gain in two years, like that’s a good return. That’s absolutely market beating. Like good job. And maybe just to kind of call out two good things that I really liked in the way this conversation was framed.
Um, like solid portfolio, avoiding capital gains tax. So, you know, using the right structures. And that’s been like a, a rocket ship for me over the last 22 years. Like not having capital gains tax on my returns has really, like, now compounding is really, really like a steamroller for me. Um, like that, those tax breaks are very significant.
And then the other thing I think is good is this, I, this individual said like, he, well quote, believe, I believe I can easily outperform a financial advisor. And that might sound. Like, uh, boastfulness. But actually that is the truth, right? If you manage your own investments and if you’re smart, you can beat the market, you can beat financial advisors ’cause their incentives are totally wrong.
So these, these are all really good things, but in the last couple of days I saw a couple of quotes that made me go, whoa, like this is dangerous stuff. Um, one in particular. So this guy posted, I believe I have a gift for finding the gems. Um, they also posted like some real numbers. Like I’m always talking about percent percentage allocations and percentage gain.
Um, I think just if people who post like real dollar numbers, like, you know, I went from X dollars to Y dollars, that’s great. Like well done. You’ve now got like a really substantial portfolio. But there’s like an element there of like pride comes before fall. Um. And like kind of boastfulness. And it’s not that the thing, it’s like the achievement is fantastic, well done.
But when you’re kind of flaunting big numbers like that, that probably says something about, you know, your, the way you are feeling like you are just the best. Um, and then the thing that triggered me into saying we should talk about this on the podcast was just a, a comment over the weekend, I think where this person was being like challenged by other folk in the community and they said, my, I’m like, I’m good.
My plan is to go to cash ahead of a correction and pounce on discounted prices. Like if investing was that easy, like, you know, none of us would ever suffer drawdowns. And so let me just not make this personal because I don’t wanna attack this individual. Right. This is how I felt in 2020 and 2021. Like in 2020, I was in kind of COVID stocks and like zoom and things like that.
I did my best annual return of all time, like 90 something percent. I nearly doubled my portfolio in 2021. I had like a good market beating, but not like crazy, but market beating return. And I looked back and I went, I’ve got enough now I’m gonna quit my day job. And I became a, essentially a professional investor.
Like, this is, this is how I now run my life. And then I took, within six months of quitting my day job, I took a near, like 40% draw down in my portfolio. And I, I actually, I had got lucky, more than luck, more than judgment. I think I’ve said this many times before, like I did go to cash quite heavily just before the correction.
Probably more luck than judgment for different reasons. Um, so I, you know, I didn’t take it as, I didn’t get hit as bad as I could have been hit. Um, but if you think you can like time a correction, I don’t believe I can time a correction successfully. I think most people would admit to that if this guy or whatever many people think I’m a genius, I can time my way out.
I can miss the downside. I’ve captured the upside like this. If this is the first time at some point we’re gonna hit a bear market. I dunno if it’s like tomorrow or in five years time. At some point it’s gonna happen. If you haven’t experienced that, it’s gonna be like a reckoning and it’s gonna be painful.
And I think it’s good to just sort of get your head in that mindset of, I’m not a genius, I’ve been quite lucky, I’ve made some good decisions. Um, but you know, I’m ready for whatever the market can throw at me.
[00:18:24] Krys: Oh my goodness. So much wisdom coming out of you. Let me back you up and then, uh, maybe throw a couple of, uh, contrary points. Badge your way. One, uh, monkey just spent some time in Greece and in Greece, that’s where the Greek staged on, on, on stage tragedies to help the Athenians see visually for themselves just how badly the gods could fuck with you or the whole city, you know, uh, in ways that are absolutely horrific and that you had no control over, in one sense, so that people could be more humble and sort of, uh, accept the, the vagaries of life, you know, as opposed to hide from them, you know?
So that’s like a thing, right? Go read your Greek tragedies friend. Seriously, seriously. Like, go read one of them, you know? Uh, go, go to, um, what’s it called, Oedipus, if you need, you know, if you haven’t read anything. So that’s 0.1. If hubris bad, uh. Two, uh, this, you know, one of our laws of the jungle, I think is there for absolutely good reason.
I mean, all of their, all of them are there for good reason. The, if you think you’re smarter than the pack, uh, well, it’s dangerous to think you’re smarter than the pack. I just wanna, again, qualify that, that that’s true. I would say what 87% of the time, uh, where it’s not true is where you have committed yourself to studying some industry on a, on a tiny granular level.
And you’ve bought subscriptions to like the digests of whatever field you’re looking into, whether it’s biotech or the AI computing world or the whatever. And you have literally through professional, uh, exposure, um, you’ve gained more knowledge and understanding than whatever is floating on the surface of, you know, chitter chatter.
And you’re making some investment decisions that are contrary because you really do know something that most people don’t. Uh, and that’s, you know, often you see on the small caps and the, and the, maybe even in the mid caps where you can squeeze out, uh, alpha from a gap in, in understanding. But I still think that’s a little different than hubris.
Right? That’s, I don’t think that’s, you thinking, you, you, you’re better than the market or you’re a genius. You’ve just. Don’t work and you know, more. Um, so that’s, that’s two three. I love the signal you picked up on like a good poker player. ’cause you’re using your poker skills, right? To read people. And you’re seeing some of these signs that are like, oh, this isn’t exactly somebody merely just managing their money now they’re posting their real gains.
And so two things about that, right? Um, we, because we talked about this ourselves, it’s I think just basic etiquette in the finance world to not use real money for many reasons, but percentages are actually more signal than noise because in the percentage point, it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand or 10 million, it’s the same amount, right?
So nobody gets discouraged and it’s Right. It’s just the, the more professional way to do it.
[00:21:59] Luke: Yep.
[00:22:00] Krys: So I think you’re right to say real money amount. In this case, point to hubris, therefore disguise or gal is in danger
[00:22:11] Luke: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Krys: accepted. What’s interesting to me is that you and I talked about this, that there is, because we do the King of the Jungle portfolio and we started with a mere thousand dollars mere, I mean, I don’t know, for some people that also might be a lot, uh, that some people aren’t, weren’t taking our, our portfolio seriously because, you know, oh, these guys are only starting with a thousand, uh, and there was a case to be made.
Well, what if we posted our real amounts and now we’re talking about whatever the real amounts would be, but they’re certainly larger than the thousand. Maybe we would be taken more seriously, like, oh, these guys aren’t just, uh, monkeying around though I’m definitely always monkeying around. I’m sorry.
It’s just I was born this way. You know, listen to your lady Gaga to, to understand. Um. So I’m a little bit torn about this and there are some, I think people on the XI follow that I think aren’t starting from mere hubris, but they’re posting larger amounts, so there’s a little bit of more credibility be there maybe.
But that said, uh, uh, I don’t know. Um, I, uh, it’s, it’s, it, it’s, it’s a little bit of a mix. Uh, and, um, I’m left torn. I’m left torn about the, it’s kind of maybe I come back to know why you’re posting real dollar amounts, if that’s the route you choose and all things else being considered equal. Uh, be, be courteous and don’t do that. Don’t do that.
[00:23:58] Luke: Yeah, I suppose that’s like, and the reason I pointed that out was um, ’cause it might, as you’ve identified, like it’s an insight into this person’s thinking. Um, and it’s like the danger, right? I, and this, this is the reason we want to talk about this segment on the podcast this week, because to, to some extent, probably all of us are thinking like, we’re investing geniuses right now with valuations and like the way stocks have gone.
If you’re invested in quantum computing stocks, you feel like you’re a genius. Um, and I, you know, I might believe that that’s complete garbage. You think like there’s a, there’s a case to be made for investing in them, but regardless, right, you made a shit ton of money even in the last 24 hours on your stocks, right?
So you’re feeling like a genius. And so kind of what’s the lesson from times like this, like. It is when markets are richly valued and high and everything is like buzzing. Those are the times to be cautious and be wary and actually do much more work. Like, it’s so, it’s almost counterintuitive when valuations are depressed and everything you invest in is losing money.
’cause like, you know, you’re on the way down in some ways. Like they’re the easiest times because, uh, you know, you just, you try and you find some good quality companies, you buy them. And in some ways you just kind of turn off and just go and do something else with your life, right? And then wait for the cycle to come back.
And for those like cheap stuff you bought to hopefully turn around if it’s good quality. But when stuff is, like right now, when valuations feel. Like they’re not, everything is egregious. I think like Palantir and CrowdStrike and Axon. Those stocks in my portfolio, I think they are fairly egregiously valued.
But I’ve got other stuff that’s reasonably valued, like Alphabet, even though it’s like the market’s come into that realization, but it’s like those richly valued stocks, they’re the ones I’m giving a lot of attention to and looking at almost weekly just to see like, what’s the trajectory here? What do the valuations look like?
Should I be trimming, should I be preparing myself? And I’m always asking myself that question. Like I’ve got, uh, now Rocket Lab all time high in the last one, trading day on Friday. Um, I’ve got, it’s now the biggest allocation in my portfolio by some margin, even more than cash. And I’ve got a chunk of cash.
I think that’s like, my portfolio is like 16% Rocket Lab right now. So I, I’m asking myself the question, whereas every day, if that halved in value overnight, how would I feel? And. Like if I, if it’s going to impact me, which it probably will for that to go from like eight, 16% down to an 8% allocation ’cause I just got smashed.
Well that probably tells me I should sell some Rocket lab. And I’ve made a very structured decision around how I’m gonna manage that position. ’cause I’m preparing to start trimming it. Yeah. And then maybe trimming is not the right answer. I don’t know. But I’m just trying to be thoughtful about it. I’m not coming from the perspective of Rocket Lab’s gone sky high.
I’m a genius. I cannot be beaten, you know, I’m the greatest investor in the world. ’cause that is gonna crush you when the market gives you a slap around the face. Which it will at some point.
[00:27:16] Krys: Yes. Badge. I have an answer for you. If Rocket Lab fell 50% and you said, how will I feel? Uh. You won’t feel that great.
[00:27:27] Luke: Yeah. For real.
[00:27:30] Krys: This is my crystal ball. It wouldn’t feel that great. But here’s the difference between you and and our buddy, is that you, despite not feeling great, you would not catastrophize and you would not panic sell or whatever the, the panicky decision might be. And you would actually, in the end, take advantage of the situation by knowing whether it’s time or when it’s time to add more or whatever the case may be.
Uh, somebody coming from the hubris position, they actually might employ catastrophic thinking. And once you cross a certain psychological line, you, you, it’s actually pretty dark. We’ve been there in different, you know, in different moments, in different degrees. You, you go from being a genius to the complete opposite, saying, you know, nothing.
Everything was a hoax. Everything is a fraud. You can’t trust anything. This investing stuff doesn’t work. You drop out, you sell at the low, and you’re back to, uh, a very bad place financially. So,
um, that’s 0.1, 0.2, badge is I think we should devote an upcoming episode. Two strategies that are, I think of them as insurance strategies, and I’ve done quite some work over the years learning how to use options as insurance, for example.
And so after a certain point, uh, preview, you know, like we have insurance on our house and our car, it’s money. You expect to go to zero, but having it is a worthwhile investment because the way insurance works. Right. So that’s for another episode. Let us know maybe in the comments on Patreon com, wall Street Wildlife, what your own, uh, experience has been or experience or strategies managing. Upcoming potential downsides. How do you negotiate, uh, the flip side of the coin and then we’ll, we’ll maybe make an episode segment outta it in the future.
[00:29:34] Luke: Good stuff. Great. Yeah. Okay. I think we landed our lesson and like I say, like we we’re not saying the market is gonna crash. We’re not saying you go to cash and you should trim. We’re just saying like have all of these potential outcomes in mind and. You know, try and be balanced with your emotions, not, uh, overexcited.
’cause that is gonna lead to doom.
[00:29:56] Krys: Yes. So badge, you want monkey to undo everything we just said. Here we go. So, uh, I have an indecent proposal for you, and you get you, you get to make the call.
[00:30:15] Luke: Okay?
[00:30:15] Krys: This is absurd. This is in the realm of, of monkey thinking. He’s the world’s most, uh, profound investing genius of all time. But I looked at monkey’s, uh, king of the jungle returns for year two of our contest.
So year two started November of 24. So we are what, two months, two months away from, uh, round trip number two. And sort of, uh, disgustingly or preposterously monkeys gains for his whole portfolio are 462%,
[00:30:51] Luke: Wow.
Five Five bagger on your portfolio.
[00:30:55] Krys: on the whole portfolio. So here’s my indecent proposal. will monkey end the the round trip at over 500% because he’s an investing genius. Or, or is it gonna, or is it gonna end under 500%, uh, or whatever the number might be. And you get to make the over under call. And this would be good for, uh, a fine bottle of, of scotch.
[00:31:25] Luke: Yeah, I’m down for that bit. I’m down for that bit. Thanks. Giving me the option. Um, I am going to wager, I, I might, I might trade the scotch for a rum. There’s a particular bottle of rum I would like. So if I, when I win this,
[00:31:39] Krys: It goes great with the negronis. It’s just yeah, yeah, yeah, It’s just your favorite. Yeah.
[00:31:44] Luke: yeah. Um, yeah, I’m, I, I believe in you that your portfolio is almost entirely eos.
It’s almost nothing else on you.
[00:31:53] Krys: I, I.
[00:31:56] Luke: That’s what I, no, I think you’ve definitely found something like you’ve found a secular growth trend in energy that I think we’re just seeing the early stages of, uh, and like the whole administration, Trump administration right now is focused on energy, um, and, you know, trying to create more of it to keep up with China.
So, uh, good job with EOS and a whole bunch of your other wrecks. So yeah, I think you are going to exceed, uh, 500% return. So a six bagger by the second, well by the anniversary November anniversary.
[00:32:31] Krys: Oh my God, I’m, I’m actually shocked. I’m, uh, because I was preparing for you to say, obviously the o the opposite. ’cause I think numerically it’s just, you know, pretty, pretty silly numbers. But, uh, I was ready to, uh. I, anyway, I’m shocked, but this means that now in order to win the be I have to root against myself. So maybe, maybe for the Patons who are on our dolphin trading channels, if all of a sudden you see monkey making some very shady, shady trades to keep under the 500%.
[00:33:08] Luke: It’s a cheap bottle. It’s a cheap bottle around, but don’t worry, you maximize your gains, buddy.
I think what, what you’re really asking isn’t about your portfolio. What you’re really asking me is, are stocks gonna go up over the next two months or go down over the next two months? And. Like there, there seem to be a lot of positive catalysts.
I think in the short to medium term, I’m certainly structuring my portfolio. Like I wanna be more invested, uh, in the longer, medium to longer term. I probably wanna be higher cash. I’m just not, you know, not withstanding what we just said about uh, you know, the red flags we’re seeing in some of the investing communities we occupy, um, we’re probably not at the top yet.
Again, not, not of financial advice. Maybe everything collapses tomorrow, who knows? But it’s my feeling.
[00:33:55] Krys: Right. Oh, the irony. I mean, and we do have, uh, to go back to an earlier point, whatever the Fed says on Wednesday, the, the, I mean, I think if we get the quarter, quarter basis point cut, that’s sort of what’s expected. So the markets are gonna, might be a little solve the news, but I don’t think it would create too much of a ripple.
If we get the half cut, that obviously will be signaling recession and there we might actually have a significant drop. Uh, and who knows how soon it would be, uh, bought back up. So, I don’t know. Uh, choppy waters are certainly, uh, potentially in the cards, uh, for this week. So. Let’s see how well this ages.
Okay.
[00:34:40] Luke: All right.
[00:34:42] Krys: Uh, we wanna talk about something fairly new to, to, I don’t know if we, I don’t think we’ve ever done this before, right? Uh, we got, uh,
[00:34:52] Luke: we did once. We did once, but introduce it.
[00:34:53] Krys: okay. Well, uh, we, in conversation with one of our Patreons, he said, would you, mo, would you, uh, fellas take a, would you mind taking a look at my portfolio and giving it the old stink eye?
And, um, as a little bit of a, of a warning label. One, we are not financial advisors. Two, if we were, uh, we would charge, you know, a pretty penny for this because this is, you know, this is serious money in people’s lives at stake. So it’s not something you get advice from, you know, over the internet, so to speak.
But we thought this is a really useful exercise, sort of in general role. So we could share with our, with our listeners and our Patreons the kind of things you may wish to consider when evaluating your portfolio. And maybe, maybe if this provides value for people, maybe we’ll include another tier on our Patreon site where in a non-financial advice kind of way we could offer some feedback and provide value that way.
But that’s in the future. So, uh, let’s see how this goes. Badge. What do you see when you see, uh, this critter’s portfolio?
[00:36:19] Luke: so let me just describe our Patreon’s portfolio and outline. So, and there’s too much here to show on screen. So right now I think we’re just showing like the top 10 stocks. Um, so.
[00:36:31] Krys: Actually, badge one. Let me fill out just one detail, uh, one extra detail. It’s like we’re looking at a big spreadsheet in which there’s 46 positions. Uh, so it just, it’s a, to me, first glance when I looked at it, it’s like, oh, this is a sort of lengthy, large portfolio. Large in the sense of many
[00:36:53] Luke: Yeah. And a mature portfolio. So like, we’ve had to read between the lines a little bit with some of the columns, but there’s a couple of, there’s like stocks where, our Patreon has bought them like many times. Some things he’s bought like 20 times plus, which I can only assume is like, you know, every month pay pack comes in, okay.
You know, what are my favorite picks this month? So that’s actually a pretty good approach, like dollar cost averaging, I’m assuming that was the approach. Um, and I think. And I also like, this is like a robust, well diversified portfolio that’s, it’s like somewhat concentrated in that. If you look at just his top 10, that’s a more than half of his total assets.
So like most of his money is in a top 10 of high conviction bets, but there’s like a long tail, I’ve gotta structure my own portfolio this way. There’s a long tail of another 36 other things that make up like the other half. And there’s some interesting ideas in there. And like the portfolio itself resonates with me because like I own like many of these stocks and the ones I don’t own, like you own them.
This is actually the portfolio that’s very similar to both of ours. So let me, let me just give a quick
[00:38:04] Krys: Combined, Combined, right. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like a combination with some, uh, additional companies. Neither of us own, but.
[00:38:12] Luke: yeah, yeah. So let me, uh, let’s, so again, not financial advice. Like if we were really giving financial advice, which we are not regulated to do, you know, you’d fill out all sorts of questionnaires and we’d have conversations about. You know, your risk tolerance and your plans for the future and who your dependences were and how much, you know, what salary and when do you wanna retire?
And all this stuff like this is looking at a portfolio in a vacuum and almost saying like, if this was my portfolio, like how would I think about it? That’s kind of how I’ve approached this question. Um, like to start with, I really like the structure of the portfolio, uh, and just some of the things that are being tracked.
So like our Patreon is tracking the size of the company, and I did, I did some my own kind of analytics on that. So like, he’s classified like the real kind of mega caps, like the, you know, the big, you know, Nvidia and the Teslas as being his like extra large stocks. He’s got about 23% of his portfolio in those extra large stocks.
He’s got about 40% of his portfolio in the medium stocks and he’s got about 12% of his portfolio in small cap. That feels pretty reasonable to me. Um, I also like the fact that he’s tracking the industry. I think that’s, that’s a good simple but a good lens into, um, really properly tracking your diversification.
And I do exactly the same thing. Like if you go to, um, let’s say you go to, I dunno, fin chat.io or any of these websites or Yahoo Finance, right? You can see the segment that a company is in. But often, like there’s only one bucket and it’s often not truly accurate. It doesn’t change that often. It may not really reflect like the nature of the business.
So what I like to do personally and, and what our Patreon I think has done here as well, is they’ve. Come up with their own categorization of industry and like, so our Patreon has identified, you can’t see it on the screenshot, he said like Alphabet, Google is, he’s classifying it as an internet company.
And if you look online that like it would be considered like a advertising company. And in my own structure I consider it like an AI company. So by kind of bucketing your stocks based on your own way you think about the world, you can identify are you overexposed? And our Patreon has about 22% of his portfolio in AI stocks and that excludes Google.
So it’s probably a little bit higher than that. And he’s got about 20% in e-commerce. So you can start to get a feel, you know, where are your biases and is there some like secular risk that could like hit you if you have a whole ton of money in let’s say batteries like yourself. And if like suddenly the energy sector falls apart, well, you know, maybe you have like a big risk exposure.
So anyway, good structure of the portfolio and we got a little bit of context as well that, um, our Patreon also has about, um, 7% of his investments in a ticker called V-M-F-X-X, which is basically, uh, the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund. So it’s essentially like cash, kind of overnight cash. That’s a pretty good idea.
Like it’s a proxy for cash where you’re getting a bit of an essentially like an interest rate. Um, and our Patreon tells us that that is about three years of expenses. So that is a good, healthy, like position of safety. If the Asph falls out of the market, you know, you’ve got three years worth of the bills covered, it’s gonna help you not panic.
So again, I really, really like that approach, having. Like if everything goes to shit, I’ve still got, like, I can pay the bills. I’m not gonna have to start panic selling stocks just to like keep the lights on. So that’s good structure. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff, but Go. What’d you think?
[00:42:14] Krys: All right. Badge. Yeah. Thank you for that. I wanna address the, the number of positions here.
and this is exactly why this can’t be financial advice because wherever monkey’s at in his investing journey is different where our friend is. And so, as one example, if he’s retired and needs to conserve capital, that’s a whole different ballgame than trying to raise money, uh, you know, to, to remodel a house in Sicily, for example. So, uh, but because I can’t speak for him or her, uh, then, uh, then I’ll speak for me. One. I’m glad you named the bias inherent in getting our eyes on it, because I’m looking at many of these tickers and I’m like, yes, great job. Yes, yes. Brilliant. Oh my God. Oh wait, I own all of these. So that’s a bias, you know, sort of a problem.
Bias two, however, is, uh, I recently sent out a, a sort of promotional ish post on X with my own King of the Jungle portfolio. And I structured it so that you could see that I have 18 positions, but I numbered the, the spreadsheet one through 20 with two being blank. And that is an exercise in saying to myself, I’m only going to allow my portfolio to get to 20.
And then after that I have to sort of start thinking, okay, what would I need to sell in order to, to. Uh, make the next purchase. That’s just the, that’s just the frame of mind. But why, why am I doing it that way? For me, uh, anything past 20 has exceedingly greater diminishing returns, both in time spent following anything more than 20 companies, but also it starts looking like more and more of an index.
So in this context, especially because he actually has a large index position sort of built in, literally with the index and 46 total positions, I think there’s, as a first step, certainly room to cut at least five. I would probably try to cut 10 to get it down to 30, which would already be larger than what I have.
But, you know, uh, variance in, in all the things I can’t know. But as an exercise. I know for sure that not all of these 46 for, for this investor, have the same call level of conviction and, you know, um, and excite like, like future. So he’s probably hanging on to a bunch of companies that are there out of legacy or out of, uh, I call it a kind of inertia.
Well, I already own it, so it’s better to not do anything, which in some ways also is the right case. Uh, but I think I would, I would start there. I would, I would, I would actually just go down one row by row and saying, how excited am I about this company in this moment? And just get that intuitive feel and just see where to start potentially cutting or nibbling or doing a, actually let me take that back where I would do more research front to see if this is a legitimate.
Company to cut and for one, as one example, not financial advice, but because a Patreon also asked about this company in, in our, uh, investment channel Datadog, for example, I see as, uh, uh, where is it, uh, number 18, and it’s done well. But from my, from my own understanding, this is the kind of company that I’m neither excited about, nor do I think is a bad company, but it’s just sort of now sort of floating around in the middle.
Could that capital be used more effectively in the company that’s, say smaller than $48 billion, but has a much more interesting path ahead of it? And my answer based on my portfolio is, yes, but, but you wouldn’t get to that conclusion unless you were forced to say, I gotta cut something. Like, where do I start? So that’s, that’s my fee, uh, initial feedback. What do you think?
[00:46:52] Luke: Yeah, that’s not a bad shout. Like I, I suppose I spoke up in favor of having the long tail, but you don’t want such a long tail that you’re just not able to keep track of what your companies are doing. Like maybe it gets easier if we go to like six monthly, not quarterly reporting, but you do wanna stay on top of what your companies are doing.
And if you’ve got like 46 positions, it’s a lot to stay on top of. But you know, if you do this full time, which I essentially do now, like it’s certainly doable, but you’re right. You know, it doesn’t harm to just go through and clear out some of the chaff from time to time.
[00:47:26] Krys: Yes, and follow up thought. Uh, I don’t know if this was mentioned badge, maybe you could answer, but the amount of, I now think of cash as a position and in my King of the Jungle portfolio at the moment, it’s basically zero because I just found too many opportunities to invest, uh, in, in things. So, uh, but. A follow up to, let’s say, uh, he identifies, uh, to go with my example, Datadog or maybe Trade Desk.
Like these are the ones that I no longer feel particularly excited about. Why not sell those and then actually build up a cash position? Start, you know, keeping track of that position on here so that when the inevitable market correction comes, you also have a new position to take advantage of the fall.
[00:48:17] Luke: I think, I think he sort of does have that, ’cause that’s the money market fund. But you’re right. You could divert some of the, sell some of your. Just like the stuff that is less interesting. Um, and then turn that into like a bit more optionality by chucking it into your money market fund. Good. Uh, yeah.
Good help.
[00:48:32] Krys: Okay. Uh, do you want me to offer one more, one more piece of feedback that’s totally different from what I’ve said? we also heard that, uh, he said he’d like to have more chain link, but can’t use retirement funds for that easily. And so his chain link position is 0.1%. Obviously, I’m biased because it’s my largest position actually in the real world, but in, in, in King of the Jungle, it’s like my number five.
So I’m thinking, yeah, you should have more chainlink, but that’s not really the point. The point I’m seeing is that this sense of I can’t use retirement funds for that easily. I’m wondering what the stuck point is, like what the barrier is exactly to, to, to executing that. Do you know?
[00:49:24] Luke: Yeah, well, I, I, I’d assume this guy is US based, I dunno how like, like your 401k accounts work and I guess you probably can’t easily own link in a 401k.
[00:49:37] Krys: Okay, so on that level, so the, the, to me, I, I don’t like getting caught by what I would name, like artificial barriers. Like, if I put it this way, let me work backwards. If we knew for sure, because we, we have a time machine, that link was gonna go up a thousand percent by year’s end. Right. Would you, one way or another, find a way to own more of it now.
[00:50:05] Luke: Oh, interesting. Right. I’m gonna push back on this because, ’cause because, okay. I, if we knew it was gonna tend back up with certainty, obviously. Yes. You’d put, you’d sell everything, your house, every asset, and you’d buy link and then you’d,
[00:50:19] Krys: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. But let, no, no, I, I got you. But let, let’s stay within sort of the more, the slightly more rational, right? Like
we have great odds. We’re holding ACEs, right? We’re at the poker table. We’re trying to, I’m saying we’re trying to get a lot of cash into the pot ’cause the probabilities are good, but we have obstacles.
Right? Like, call it the structure of his plan. I think. I’m only saying that. Okay. Well the portfolios, you could have two portfolios, you could have three portfolios and maybe you just open up a side account and, you know what I mean?
[00:50:56] Luke: I do, I do. But you’re framing it. You’re framing it from your perspective of like this great bullishness in link, which may or may not be true, right? There’s just one man’s opinion and you like the whole community of link people that behind you, right? and if you dunno what link is like, go check out our episode with Daniel Dha like 50 episodes ago and that’ll tell you what link’s all about.
And he’s obviously gonna be in your camp. The, the difference between. Well, I dunno, about 4 0 1 Ks, but in the uk, like money in my, in sip, my pension account versus like a general investment account, I have a massive tax advantage in my pension funds. So it, so, and that, that amounts to almost, you know, like gains in my pension account are twice as valuable, let’s say as gains in my, in, in my taxable account.
So I have to be, I guess, twice as confident about link than any other thing. Like it has to be twice as good as the second best idea for me to be putting money into link, if that makes sense.
[00:52:02] Krys: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great. Yeah, great point. And so maybe, maybe this is too obvious a point. I think all I really was trying to say is sometimes we, for whatever reason, and it might not apply in this case, we lock ourselves into what I would call arbitrary, uh, um, hurdles that actually aren’t necessarily true if you just step outside of it.
You know, you just walk around and say, no, I, uh, I could open a, a side account and then problem solved, uh,
[00:52:38] Luke: Yeah.
[00:52:39] Krys: all of the things being equal, so on and so forth. So, but obviously lead with the conviction and investment that’s, that’s primary. And then the, the structure of the vehicle should be relatively secondary.
[00:52:53] Luke: Yeah. That’s fair. That’s fair. Yeah. Yep. Cool. Alright. But on the whole, I think this is a great portfolio. I, I think your advice is good about like just reducing the number of things. ’cause it’s just easier and it allows you to be a bit more excited about the stuff you own as opposed to having like, you know, the stuff I really love and then a bunch of other shit on the side that I’m not really paying attention to.
couple other
[00:53:15] Krys: And it’s, and it’s actually not, not necessarily just a bunch of shit though, too. ’cause these are all quality. Right. Um, and, and sorry, just to make the point finer, it doesn’t even have to be end up cutting everything though. I would advise, I advise but not advise that it would be just getting more clear which companies are floating along like Deadwood.
That’s the main point.
[00:53:41] Luke: yeah. That’s fair. That’s fair. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s, I mean, the stuff you’re just not paying enough attention to, like on its own, that’s probably good enough reason to cut it. ’cause you’re not paying attention to it. Like you can’t have an advantage over the market. Right. anyway, so I have some final observations from me.
Uh, his biggest positions tend to be ones that he’s held for a bit longer, like Mercado Libre for on average, he’s done like 11 buys or net buys, like maybe 12 buys and a sell or something. And he’s held it for like over five years. So I suppose what that says to me is like he’s allowed his portfolio to concentrate itself over time.
Um, and that’s actually a really good thing. Like you’re getting compounding working on your side and at some point you presumably start sort of trimming stuff ’cause it’s got overexposed, but he doesn’t have, like, you know, his biggest exposure is Nvidia at 9.4%. You know, there’s, there’s probably good reasons that that doesn’t, that may not be overexposed.
Again, it’s personal advice. You have to just sort of decide in your risk tolerance. The only thing I could suggest in terms of an improvement to his process, and I do want to use this to, uh, tell you guys again why. Fiscal AI is a superior investing platform. Um, our Patreon is classifying his stocks by the market they listed in.
So for example, like Nvidia is a US company, Mecado Libre as an Argentinian company, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that is useful in one respect ’cause you know where they’re regulated and what rules are gonna apply to them. And you know, so like the reporting frequency and various other things. But it’s less useful for big global companies like Alphabet, like Nvidia, where actually, you know, they’re listed in one market.
Maybe some of them are like listed in bloody island for tax reasons, but actually they’re global companies and they generate their revenues everywhere around the world. So I’ve got quite a lot of value out of looking. At that nuance just to see where the money actually, the revenue comes from. if you go to fiscal.ai and if you wanna help us out, go to fiscal ai slash wildlife and sign up with a handsome discount.
But even if you use the free version, um, they have segment reporting. So here’s a pretty picture from Nvidia and I picked Nvidia ’cause it’s our Patreon’s largest position. But I’ve done this for like a whole bunch of stocks I own and they, they pull like the numbers out of the quarterly reports and they turn it into data that you can use and manipulate.
So here’s fiscal AI’s breakdown and I generated this report myself. Of its revenue by each of the major geographies. So you can see like the big green chunk is the US revenue, and then like the next biggest chunk is the purpley one, which is Singapore, and then like a bunch, and then like other countries And because it’s his data, you can also then, like you can construct your own formula. So here’s a graph based on a custom report I created for Nvidia, and this is simply a simple formula of US revenue divided by total revenue. So we can see since I’m just showing here January, 2020, but you can go way, way, way back.
We can see from 2020, Nvidia was kind of 10% directionally of its revenue from the US and now it’s 50% of its revenue being generated in the us. So that tells you something quite interesting in nuanced about the company. It is clearly a US company. Half its revenues come from the us but you can see that that journey it went on.
So yeah, there’s a nuance that might improve your process.
[00:57:22] Krys: Amen. And hallelujah.
[00:57:24] Luke: I.
[00:57:25] Krys: We are, uh, now running on the hour. So God, we, we keep having things to say, can you believe it? But, but I think, uh, uh, so maybe we push back some of those promised topics from, uh, from upfront to another episode. But we definitely gotta hear about your stock safari. Whoop. Uh, because I wanna know about this thing, uh, and we’ve been pushing it back for some weeks.
So hit us up. What, what is this new gadget that’s turned you into, uh, a, a ro a robot badger, uh, um, bio biotech badger, uh, Terminator badger. What do you, what, what is this thing?
[00:58:07] Luke: Yeah, so it’s my Safari stock. Uh, but it’s a private company. You can’t buy this in in the stock market. They’re not list, they’re not a publicly listed company. Lemme just tell you quickly like who they are and what they do. And then maybe let’s have a conversation about private investing a little bit.
We’ll keep it tight ’cause you’re right, we are, uh, we’ve had a long conversations there already, so this is a whoop. Um, I’ve had friends owning them and going on about them for some time,
[00:58:31] Krys: Oh, what, what view, what, listen, what podcast listeners just missed is that Badger showed this fancy gadget on camera. Another reason You need to watch us on YouTube to get those hours pumping. Look at that fancy thing. It’s like, it’s, it’s like a Rolex, but, but like,
but not.
[00:58:50] Luke: it’s a wristband with no screen. Basically it’s like a sensor that just sits on your arm or maybe like in your bra strap or in your pants or wherever. It’s just like touching your body somewhere. And then gathering just like a crap ton of telemetry every second on like various things. And they just upgraded the sensor this year, I think, in May.
And then finally I jumped on it and bought myself one because they had a longevity focus in their kind of whoop life tier. And that’s something I’m focused on myself. I wanna live to be like a thousand year old badger if I can. ‘ cause I really wanna see compound interest where that gets me. If I can do 22% a year for a thousand years. Yeah. Um, like I’ll buy myself a solar system or something. but I, I like this company so much that I did buy. Private stock in it. So, um, so let’s talk about that aspect. I told you what the thing is, right? It’s a, it’s a, I bought in, they didn’t have an official funding round, but I, I had access. So I’ve, I’ve been doing crowdfunding in the UK for about a decade or so, and in the UK anybody can do crowdfunding.
You literally go to a website like Angels Den or Crowdcube or Cedars, and then you could buy, you know, private stock. Typically in like really, really tiny companies. Um, and you could, you could buy like 10 pounds worth of stock if you wanted to. But if you’re writing slightly bigger checks, then you do get better access to founders.
You can meet with like founders and CEOs. And in some cases, like I’ve had the opportunity to like steer the roadmap of companies and like participate as beta testers and things like that. And some of the stuff I’m invested in, unfortunately it’s harder in the US to, uh, be a private investor. And so the US has, you have to, you have to self-certify irrespective of where you are.
So if you are a UK citizen, you can self-certify as a sophisticated investor. And essentially you just tick a few boxes, fill out a form, and you say like, I’m a sophisticated investor. I, I understand private markets. And you then. You are permitted to buy these private stocks. Um, and, but you give up certain protections that you would have if you were invested in public market stocks.
You give up, you know, you acknowledge very clearly that you expect your money to go to zero. It’s illiquid. You cannot get your money out. Um, if, if a company doesn’t have a liquidity event, that’s it, your money’s tied up. You might be sitting on like a hundred times return, but you can’t get to that, right?
It’s trapped until the company like IPOs or gets acquired or you know, does some other transaction where they start giving money to shareholders. So you could be like destitute, living on the street, but you could be like a millionaire and you can’t do anything about it, right? You’re stuck. in the US you can’t self-certify in that same way.
Uh,
[01:02:00] Krys: Damn it, because monkey was ready to say, Hey, if this isn’t a sophisticated.
[01:02:10] Luke: You are very sophisticated. You’re very sophisticated. So the rules in the US are a bit different and I think, I think you still self-certify, but there’s like a monetary aspect to it as well. So you could become an accredited investor and an accredited investor gets you access to certain private deals, and I think directionally you have to have like a million dollar net worth to be an accredited investor or earn over $200,000 a year.
Then there are some deals that were a bit more stringent, where you have to be something called a qualified purchaser, and that is actually materially a step up. You have to have $5 million in invested assets. So that’s like not your house, not like your pension, like in your investment account. 5 million bucks to be a qualified purchaser.
And I think that’s like the highest tier that gets you access to kind of pretty much everything. Um, but like I say, so it’s kind of, it’s more difficult in the US and I don’t recommend this to anybody. I’ve been quite lucky, like my very first investment was almost like friends and family round in a uk, a London based tech company.
I got introduced to them by a buddy. It’s the first private investment I did. And we, and I did it actually because we have some really incredible tax incentive schemes in the US in the uk. One called Enterprise Investment Scheme, EIS, and another one called SEIS, seed Enterprise Investment Scheme. You get like really serious tax breaks if you are, if you’re earning like an income and if you have capital gains from other sources.
Actually for the first couple of years of this scheme, I’m not joking, uh, if you are buying seed enterprise investment scheme qualifying investments, you would get more than a hundred percent tax break. So every like 10,000 pounds you. You’re getting like something like 10,001, like 11,000 pounds in tax breaks.
So actually you’re getting paid to invest pretty much. Um, so they’ve, those breaks have been reduced materially, but essentially like you’re getting, uh, almost like a 50% tax break today if you have an income and if you know, you’ve got tax to offset. So it’s pretty advantageous, albeit the stuff is still, like if you expect eight out of 10 of your investments to go to zero, so you, okay, you’re getting a rebate almost on say half of the money you invested, but you’re still gonna lose money unless you are, you know, what you’re looking for are these big multi bag of returns which you can get.
And I got lucky with my very first investment because, uh, these guys got acquired by Snapchat in fact. And then people in my round all made like a seven x return, like 800% return.
[01:04:45] Krys: Hey, congrats badge.
[01:04:47] Luke: So that gave me, gave me a head start.
[01:04:49] Krys: Yeah. Can, uh, so obviously this is advanced, advanced like level stuff. all beginner. I don’t know if this is fair to say, like, I would not touch this until you’ve, you’ve had several years experience, uh, because of the great, great risks.
[01:05:07] Luke: Yeah.
[01:05:09] Krys: But can I be, can I be, uh, a little bit, uh, simple here and ask you to tell me more about the the whoop thing itself?
And the main question I have for you is that, uh, I love my Apple Watch mostly. Honestly, it’s mostly because I, uh, it’s just, uh, always on my wrist. And so anytime I do, you know, workout, I collect the data, I get the map and all the health stuff is the product that you are backing. Uh, somehow that much better than what the Apple Watch is offering or what’s the ’cause?
You know, that’s a huge, that’s a major, major, huge, now segment of, of apple’s. Well, I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s a big thing. Right? So do I have, should I buy one of these things to replace my Apple Watch or coexist with my Apple Watch?
[01:06:03] Luke: probably not. I think as likes, the one thing as an Android committed, like alphabet Google guy that I’m jealous of is the Apple Watch. ’cause it’s a really incredible bit of technology and it’s definitely like it, uh, before, like I, I think they’re probably on parody now with the latest whoop, but that was like leagues ahead, the latest Apple Watch leagues ahead in terms of the sensors and the things it could do than like the nearest Android counterpart.
Maybe there were some decent devices from Samsung, but nothing quite had like that design edge from Apple and the fairly sophisticated tracking data. But I didn’t want. Like a watch face on my arm. I wanted something that was like, I tried a ring, it just didn’t work for me. And I liked the idea of a band that was just literally there.
I don’t have to look at it. It doesn’t notify me, don’t do shit because I’ve got my phone on me all the time. And I had like a Android watch being jealous of the Apple Watch for years and years. And I’m like, why have I really got this thing? ’cause it’s just mirroring what my phone’s telling me. I just don’t need it.
[01:07:05] Krys: Okay.
[01:07:05] Luke: but they, they do do some stuff that I think is a bit nicer. So, um, it’s like, you know, heavily caveated and beta testing. Um, they, the, the latest medical grade, so this version of the whoop monitors your blood pressure. I don’t think Apple Watch does that yet. And they’ve got some proprietary algorithms for how they do that.
Um, and it has more of a recovery focus. So if you’re like, if you are real a real sports person, you probably have like a Garmin or a Plar or one of those things. And this is like a good compliment to that. Like your whoop is more about like sleep and recovery and like long-term behaviors. It’s less about like tracking my run and how like the segments and how quick I was.
And although it does track that stuff too. But one thing I really liked about Whoop is like this, like I said, this longevity focus. So I get like a report every week that tells me how many years younger than my chronological age I am, and the things I’m doing that are either helping or hurting that,
[01:08:06] Krys: Well, you’re barely like 18. You just, right. You’re about to, you’re fixing to have one of your first drinks at the, at the pub.
[01:08:15] Luke: When I win that bottle of rum. Exactly. Yeah. That’ll be my first drink. And the whoop has encouraged me to drink less like that. That’s a behavioral change. It’s driven. It’s, I, I never do like strength stuff. I run like every day if I can and it’s encouraged me to get in the gym and actually do a bit of strength work.
So it is making like tweaks to my, because I’m a healthy guy, but I wanna finesse it because I do wanna get to a thousand. Um, but one thing they’re doing that I don’t think Apple have on their roadmap is whoop have announced that they’re planning, they haven’t done it yet to introduce blood tests as well.
So you get a lot of information if you take like a blood draw and I think whoop are planning to incorporate that under their banner. And then, you know, every, I dunno how the per.
I
work, but every quarter, you know, you’ll send like a blood sample in and then that’ll be wrapped into the whole ecosystem.
And there’s a really nice kind of AI coach, personalized coach built around all of this data. So that’s, that’s, I think that’s actually pretty, it’s an interesting model and it’s definitely one that I think the world is gonna want more of, as increasingly people think about like their health and longevity.
[01:09:25] Krys: Yeah. That’s so cool, man. We could talk about, uh, this for a lot longer. Couple quick banana points. One, uh, I’m doing deep dive into himss. They
[01:09:36] Luke: Hmm.
[01:09:37] Krys: the health platform, and so that too is about blood, you know, upcoming blood testing and lab results. I wonder if there’s, I mean, this seems like competition, but maybe not.
Maybe there’s synergy between just collecting more data and getting blood, whatever. That’s cool. I watch the apple. Uh, event last week, and the newest watch now has, uh, capabilities to measure blood pressure. So if, and that I think is like in terms of heart attack awareness or things are not looking good.
I think that’s one of the first times I’ve heard like, oh my God, this legitimately could save a huge number of lives. So these kinds of products are interesting to me. I’ve always wanted to wear my Apple watch to track fitness. I mean, I’m sorry, uh, sleep, sleep health, but I need to charge the damn thing.
So I’m, you know, so, and it’s my alarm, so I can’t, I can’t, where I choose not to. I wonder if this could be, if I’ll also get the band in, in, you know, bio, bio, bio mechanize.
[01:10:45] Luke: L let me show you, let me show you something really cool because, and I keep taking it on and off ’cause I’m trying to show the thing on the podcast, but I’m charging it right now. Like I’ve ne I haven’t taken this thing off since the day I bought it. This is the charger. It’s like a little add-on gadget.
You charge the battery, the charger separately, and then when you wanna charge the gadget, you just kind of mount it. And like between these two things, that’s about, uh, maybe 20 days battery life. Like the device itself lasts for about 10 to 14 days and then the battery gives it a full charge. So you’ve got like nearly a month’s worth of usage without going anywhere near like a wall outlet.
[01:11:22] Krys: All right. Thanks for, thanks for Bri bringing whoop to the table. Uh, okay. So yeah, we’re running long. Here’s how I’m gonna handle, uh, my Safari stock. I promise to actually talk about it, but I’m not going to. If, uh, I did make a purchase of this company, I announced it over on our Dolphin channel, dolphin Trading Channel on patreon.com/wall Street Wildlife.
Uh, so if you wanna do some research yourselves up ahead of me talking about it on this pod, probably next week, then you could find out a big secret mystery that’s not really a mystery, but, uh, check out our, our Dolphin trading channel there. But I think it’s a, it’s a good purchase and, um, I like a lot of what I see. I do wanna, however, talk about something timely. Uh, it’s because it’s just being talked about quite a lot, which is open door. Uh, ticker symbol, OPEN and monkey took a position, small, tiny, tiny position a couple weeks ago, and we had a back and forth. You know, is this, is this preposterous? Is this really investing or is this just, you know, going to the casino?
And I think I have a different take here than, than maybe what you, uh, expect. And this comes from a conversation for full disclosure purposes. Monkey and Mr. Tinker actually had some, some live in-person. Uh, I’m sorry, uh, we talked over the phone.
Uh, some years back when we were doing massive EOS due diligence. So I know quote, no, Mr. Tinker more than I might know, a complete stranger on, on the interwebs. Here’s, here’s the conversation. So I’ll read this out loud and then comment on it. Mr. Noble says, want to speculate, be my guest. But let’s not pretend that there is a fundamental case for Opendoor.
The numbers have never worked and will never work. End of story. To which Mr. Tinker says numbers have not worked in the past, but what tells you they won’t work in the future? Have you seen all iterations of the new business model and how they will impact economics of the business? I haven’t. A lot of things have changed in terms of technology and market structure since Open 1.0 has been created.
On top of that, open is again, founder style, led lots of levers that can be pulled, pulled. Mr. Noble replies, no. Instead, you don’t understand basic finance, to which Mr. Tinker says, I may not understand basic finance, but I am fluent at Advanced Finance. That was part one of the conversation. Mr. Tinker is in fact a very sophisticated investor.
Uh, so this isn’t a case where you have one noob or me mish cult member talking to, you know, a professional. Here’s what I see in this conversation. This is, this is the main point. You have two call it intelligent and smart investors that have, that really are sophisticated in terms of spreadsheets and numbers and running lots of money.
And one is saying basically, you’re an idiot. You don’t understand finance. And the other saying, uh, no, I’m looking at this in a very different way than you, and I think my. What I wanna come across is that it’s not one of these guys is going to be right. And maybe it’s the guy that’s sort of fundamentalist driven.
Maybe it’s the guy that’s saying, Mr. Tinker’s saying market is not backwards looking. It’s forward looking and there’s all kinds of new things happening, but it’s this, this, this thing that humans tend to do, which is, which is arrive at a fixed viewpoint. Then not allow the possibility that something is not exactly how they see it.
And this is, especially, I think the people that are guilty of this are those that are exceptionally good with numbers in, in one way in their spreadsheet. You know, they, they put in their numbers in the spreadsheet and they sort of lock themselves into thinking this is the objective absolute truth. Now if, if investing was as simple as doing, call it basic math, not even basic math or sophisticated math, then there’d be no room for call it the unexpected things and the subjective things.
And the, and the God only knows the, the, the call it emergent things that complex systems reveal. And so there’d be no, you know, the market would be efficient and that’s where basically the first guy is arguing the market is efficient. There’s no way in hell this is ever gonna turn the same thing. And sure, he might be right.
I mean, of course he might be right. But I’m, I took a position in this more for Mr. Tinker’s reason, that there was enough substantial fundamental things that intrigued me. And some of that did have to do with the call it, uh, see change in management, see change in, uh, going from, from a dead company that was doing more of the same to, oh, we have something legit here and if we could reorient ourselves or reorient the model, then we’ve already done massive work on the call it data platform level.
This could be a, a whole new thing. And I leave, I, and I was okay making this an actual investment in King of the Jungle, because I don’t fully know which way it’s gonna go. I, I size my bet properly and I’m open. I’m open, I remain open to. Uh, you know, whatever the thing grows into, I’m not, uh, you would never see me saying you don’t know basic finance to somebody who, ironically, obviously, to beat the Dead Horse is a very sophisticated investor himself.
[01:17:28] Luke: Oh, it’s easy to argue with people online, right? I get, I get baited into it sometimes, and I, I usually reflect and go, oh, I shouldn’t have gone there. I should just take the high road.
[01:17:37] Krys: Yeah. Uh, and so I’ll end, I’ll, I’ll end this. Uh, the, this, this, I, I hope it doesn’t come across as a tirade, Mr. Noble again says, but we do understand that Open has lost money. Every year is valued, you know, at 22 EV revenues, and it’s just continuing to list the sort of like I would call.
Um, call it fundamental metrics. And Mr. Tinker replies that, you know, this, that the probability is not about flipping houses, it’s about owning the transaction rails of US housing. Meaning that this is, this is a pivot, and that they have enough to make the pivot a non-zero, whatever probability, so that this guy, you know, it’s, it’s kind of, it’s like two people arguing past each other and, and, um. It’s, it, it, there’s no reason for that, right? I think both guys could, could sort of learn from one another and acknowledge that there’s, there’s both sort of sides have something worth paying attention to. But don’t dismiss the whole, you know, make this into a black and white case. It’s, it’s quite mixed.
And by the way, monkey’s up like 120% on the trade. So in, in the end, you know, I could be the monkey that just gets his bananas, pockets them. Let the pros argue out, you know, uh, it could be as simple as that. Whatever.
[01:19:03] Luke: No, that doesn’t turn into Horis. Yeah,
[01:19:05] Krys: Exactly.
[01:19:07] Luke: yeah. All right. Very good. Hey, before we wrap, I just wanna give a shout out to a. Uh, a fatal error I may have made. So, uh, but last week we had Musk, we talked about Musk’s compensation package. I was like, yeah, this is great. Like, he’s got these soft provisions around not getting involved in political, uh, antics.
And then, um, over the weekend he like live streams into some, like far right demonstration in London. And I’m, I’m gonna give credit to Ben at the seven investing discord for this one, but I thought it was very funny. Uh, Musk inciting civil war in the UK brings a new meaning to the term wartime, CEO. So,
[01:19:47] Krys: Oh man. And also, also, I think he just bought like a billion dollar of stock.
Uh, so I mean, you know, the, the Musk soap opera, uh, uh, rumbles on God only, you know, uh, fascinating. Anyway, alright, badge.
[01:20:06] Luke: Well, if you wanna be part of the Wall Street Wildlife Soap Opera, uh, we have something quite exciting coming up. So I think we’re right now recording episode 98. Episode 100 is gonna be a Patreon exclusive live stream. So if you wanna be part of the live stream conversation, we’re gonna have some of our jungle Beasties joining us on the pod, uh, firing in their questions, their challenges, their memes, and their nonsense.
Maybe we’ll have a drink together and then we’ll be heavily redacting the nonsense that happens in the live episode 100. And that’s gonna go out as the official episode 100. So if you wanna see if you wanna be part of or see the real episode 100, then go sign up at patreon.com/wall Streete Wildlife and become part of the team.
[01:20:54] Krys: Right. And if you’re a regular listener, please take a look at the poll, our scheduling poll. ’cause we’re trying to make it as easy for as. Many of you to join us, and I believe right now there’s a Friday and a Sunday date that are winning in. Uh, I think they’re, no, they’re tied. So, uh, please vote if you can.
We’d love to do the community thing and get to see some of your furry faces on the live stream.
[01:21:18] Luke: Great stuff. Are you ready to become a beast of an investor?
[01:21:22] Krys: 500%, uh, portfolio returns. Here we come.
