AVOID CASH

“It's more likely has to do with the bottlenecks of building out data centers right now. There's so much competition for resources. We heard from Intel last week that they had to take some CPUs out of the trash in order to sit to meet demand. We can look at memory prices quadrupling within a year, and and we're seeing all these bottlenecks to mention turbines and and and power generation and advanced packaging. There's states that are that have this NIMBY approach of we don't want a data center here.”

“So if you think of the investing world is like the Titanic, all the investors are on the Titanic. It's going in one direction. Now, if you're changing from scenario one to scenario two, well, that Titanic's got to make a really a beeline, like a sharp turn all the way around. That doesn't happen. It takes a while. It's not like a quick nimble ship. It has to go slowly over time. So pretty much that last month, slowly the markets turned and started to go negative. Then once Trump's like, hey, the war's over, even though it's not over, all of a sudden you had to do the big turn again all the way around. Well, the problem is everybody's chasing the market higher because they don't want to lose out on that return.”

“You're going from in the thirty, forty, 60% range over the past few years of earnings growth down to eight next year. That usually creates some sort of earnings multiple compression. I would be very patient to pick this up because of that growth slowing, which is creating multiple compression, which means probably lower prices.”

“There are five big forces that create the orders where that we're talking about. There's a monetary order. There's a debt cycle. There is a political and social order within countries. There is an international geopolitical order. There is, acts of nature throughout history. Droughts, floods, and pandemics have, been more disruptive, killed more people than wars and have, can't be ignored as a factor. And number five, technology.”

“The problems of the financial industry are a combination of the size of the problem and the transparency of the problem. If you have a small amount of problems that are non-transparent, it's a huge problem in the industry because people sell first and ask questions later.”

“I would just point you to the blatant front running in the oil markets, which I'm sure you saw. Right? Somebody, you know, on the March 24, somebody front ran on $500,000,000 in notional, shorting oil ahead of Trump's tweet. And then last week, somebody front ran the ceasefire, $950,000,000 in notional. That's those are big boy positions. Who's getting the heads up?”

“Any cash you're gonna need in the first in the next probably two, three months, I'd probably wanna be in money market or something like an escrow. And then anything beyond the three months, then you could probably park in something like this—between three months and a year, year and a half, two years max.”

“I'm giving MNTN a thumbs up if it can gather a little more momentum and break above this hundred day moving average, which it's trading right at right now. If it does hit those earnings numbers, then it looks cheap. If you can break above a dollar—or sorry, $11.75, $12 in that range, then I think this has more upside.”

“Foreign central banks who once upon a time were the one of, if not the biggest holder, they haven't bought any new treasuries since 2014 on net. Fed did a white paper in October '25 that pointed out that 37% of the net issuance of US treasury notes and bonds, 37% of net net issuance over the last four years has been the Cayman Islands, which is heavily US hedge funds. We've gone from financing with very patient foreign insurers and and pensions and central banks to highly levered hedge funds who who sell treasuries when risk goes off.”

“There's another game that Wall Street plays to do, which is hide the earnings. So typically what they do, they'll give an estimate of what they expect next quarter's earnings to be. Well, the expectation was always a dollar 25. They just told you it was a dollar 10, so they could walk over that bar a lot easier than if it was higher. So they lower the bar, and then they walk over. They're like, look at us. We won. It's like a professional athlete playing against somebody's little league.”

“Any cash you're gonna need in the first in the next probably two, three months, I'd probably wanna be in money market or something like an escrow. And then anything beyond the three months, then you could probably park in something like this—between three months and a year, year and a half, two years max.”

“If a typical retailer could halve their hidden food waste costs, it could grow their profit margins by more than 20%. That's without raising prices, without cutting staff. That's just straight to the bottom line. So it's about getting smarter about what they order in the first place, and that's what AI is helping with.”

“The markets were soft before the war. So all the war did was shuffle the pieces around a little bit. Now I'm not saying we're in for a market crash, but the markets are pretty much within a trading range, and they started to break down before the conflict even began.”

“The real opportunities are in the companies that are applying AI effectively to make their businesses more efficient. And I think those that run on small margins already have the most room to grow because small changes in their cost structure can make a massive impact on their total profit.”

“We had a surprise on Thursday night, Wednesday night going into Thursday, where the markets dropped really quickly as there was some news out that there was some missiles being fired back and forth. And then the reports came back and said, no. No. No. That was just they were just doing training missions. Like, oh, so in the middle of a war with the ceasefire, you're doing training missions where there's a bunch of firing going on. That's a good idea. That's a really, really smart idea. Glad they thought of that.”

“You're going from in the thirty, forty, 60% range over the past few years of earnings growth down to eight next year. That usually creates some sort of earnings multiple compression. I would be very patient to pick this up because of that growth slowing, which is creating multiple compression, which means probably lower prices.”

“If you're investing in tech, especially the the Mag seven, here's something you should keep in mind. Now this is we call it CapEx. So this is the amount of money they're spending. If I own a company and they make a $100 and my earnings as an investor is $30, but then they take 29 of those dollars and go spend it on a data center that earns them no money, I'm not gonna be happy. I'm gonna sell that stock and go find another one that they treat me better.”

“We work with families right now, looking at schools with $50.60, dollars 70,000 cost of attendance. But this is a real world example of a family that we worked at with a 42,000 executive scholarship, plus an $8,000 music scholarship. And by the way, affluent families aren't filing FAFSA. They got a $2,000 scholarship just for filing FAFSA. So it pays to file FAFSA and they got another $2,000 referral credit. That was 54,000 right off the top of that $72,000 cost to tenants, and that didn't even touch local or department level scholarships, yet.”

“Rates are going higher and the dollar is starting to go lower. And that shows you that money is fleeing out of US markets, out of US assets and into foreign markets, which means higher interest rates, downward pressure on equities. The internals of the market are showing you what's happening.”

“Preserving capital during periods of uncertainty is often more important than trying to time short-term market moves.”

“We are, on the brink. Now the brink might be, I would say, particularly risky period, is between the, two next two elections. So between after the twenty six midterm election and the, twenty eight presidential election, is a a riskier period, and this is a very risky period. I think that, the monetary situation will be more threatening. The United States, basically, the US government spends 7,000,000,000,000. It takes in about 5,000,000,000,000. So it has it's 40% over spending.”

“If a typical retailer could halve their hidden food waste costs, it could grow their profit margins by more than 20%. That's without raising prices, without cutting staff. That's just straight to the bottom line. So it's about getting smarter about what they order in the first place, and that's what AI is helping with.”

“Preserving capital during periods of uncertainty is often more important than trying to time short-term market moves.”

“When you put it together, you don't really get a simple growth story. You get a mixed picture. Businesses are borrowing more. Consumers are active, but uneven. Housing is weakening. Banks are adjusting how they find themselves. That is not broad expansion. It is selective and shifting activity inside the system. This is late cycle behavior. And that data doesn't show that a booming economy, it doesn't show a collapsing one does show sign for caution.”

“What I'm doing is I'm taking a step back and I'm pausing. I'm just going to watch and see what happens because I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not going to predict right now; it is way too early to predict.”

“Let's talk about credit college loans. If you've got a $72,000 cost of attendance, but this is a real world example of a family that we worked at with, a $42,000 executive scholarship plus an $8,000 music scholarship. And by the way, the fluent families aren't filing FAFSA. They got a $2,000 scholarship just for filing FAFSA, so it pays to file FAFSA. And they got another $2,000 referral credit. Oh, by the way, their parents could refer the child. So the referral credit certainly didn't take some outside party. They could refer themselves. That was $54,000 right off the top of that $72,000 cost of attendance.”

“I'm giving MNTN a thumbs up if it can gather a little more momentum and break above this hundred day moving average, which it's trading right at right now. If it does hit those earnings numbers, then it looks cheap. If you can break above a dollar—or sorry, $11.75, $12 in that range, then I think this has more upside.”

“How do you invest right now? Patience and caution. Don't jump on the market just because it's going higher. Be patient. Maybe take a small position in something. Start. If your full position is 5%, maybe put 1% in. Start there. See if you're right. If you think it's going higher, okay. At least you have something and you can keep adding to it. But if it goes lower, well, you don't have that much exposure. You're not gonna get hurt that much.”

“If they don't let inflation print the real number or they cap yields or whatever they do, then real inflation's gonna show up politically no matter what. It's a good environment to, you know, own cash and own gold and go to the beach and have a drink because it's gonna be it's gonna be a tough environment.”

“I had thought that number was 4.6% to 4.8% on The US ten year treasury yield. Last three weeks, four weeks have shown me at least that Bessent and Trump seem to think that number is 4.4% because every time it breaks 4.4%, like, the war goes away for a couple days and some sort of positive announcement. Or the last week, week and a half ago, Bessent did the single biggest treasury buyback in a single day in history at $15,000,000,000.”

“At the end of the day, it's neither bullish or bearish. This is late-cycle behavior. And that data doesn't show that a booming economy, it doesn't show a collapsing one. It does show sign for caution. Late cycle is an area in which it's time to start getting your financial house in order and trying to keep it that way from the things that can hit. Late cycle economy has credit still growing, but concentrated. Business growing, but maybe defensive. Consumers active and inconsistent. And housing is starting to weaken from being flat. That's what traditional late cycle looks like.”

“The real opportunities are in the companies that are applying AI effectively to make their businesses more efficient. And I think those that run on small margins already have the most room to grow because small changes in their cost structure can make a massive impact on their total profit.”

“The markets over many, many decades, they tend to have certain correlations. If you look back 20 years, there's a inverse relationship between stocks and bonds of negative 0.5, which is pretty good, stocks and bonds, which means when stocks go up, bonds go down, stocks go down, bonds go up, it's an inverse relationship. And that's how most people have their portfolios. Problem is starting in 2022, when interest rates went up, stocks went down, prices of everything went down. And since then, now we're at a positive 0.5, which means when stocks go up, bond prices go up, when stocks go down, bond prices go down. That's a weird thing to consider. So what's the point of diversification? It doesn't work.”

“You should understand, like, cash, which people think is the safest investment, is the most assuredly bad investment in in most times, normally, because cash has a lower return, but it's particularly, a bad investment in a period of stagflation. So we're dealing with, kind of a stagflation kind of environment or an uncertain.”

“I think it's as simple as the people in finance who are not physical crude oil market traders just don't understand the logistics lag effect. And trust me, the among professional physical market crude oil traders, there's no complacency crisis there. They're scared shitless. And I think what people don't understand is the last tanker to transit successfully on February 28 before all of this stuff started, that Hormuz oil will arrive at its destination next week.”

“Semis are also a part of technology, and semis have actually done reasonably well. You look at the semiconductors, it's back to all-time highs. Should it be? I don't think so, but it is. My views don't matter, but it's a pretty big part of technology showing divergence.”

“The power in The United States, for example, 1945 created a new monetary order, created a new world order, and that was a multilateral world order that was designed, almost to some ways replicate The US approach to, representative democracy. The creating of the United Nations multilateral organizations, including, can you imagine, the World Court or the World, Bank or the World Trade Organization or the World Health Organization. That's all over.”

“The way it works is that the credit system is like a circulatory system that brings nutrients, buying power, to different parts of the economy. And if that money is borrowed and, used to create productivity that produces income, then there's debt service. When, on the other hand, debt service debts and debt service rise relative to income, It's, you see the debt service is like plaque in the, circulatory system in that it squeezes out spending.”

“So if you look back twenty years, there's a inverse relationship between stocks and bonds of negative point five, which is pretty good, stocks and bonds, which means when stocks go up, bonds go down. Problem is starting in 2022 when interest rates went up, stocks went down, prices of everything went down. And since then, now we're at a positive point five, which means when stocks go up, bond prices go up. When stocks go down, bond prices go down. So what's the point of diversification? It doesn't work. If you have a sixtyforty, it's not working for you.”

“Our world and data put out a chart. Data is 2015, but it shows world population of seven and a half billion. And then it shows world population supported without synthetic fertilizer. World population in 2015 with fertilizers, seven and a half billion. World population without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in 2015, 3,900,000,000. That's the dynamic we're talking about.”

“The problem is, is what typically happens, is you earn a dollar a share, and Wall Street says, oh, earnings are going to be tough next quarter. It's going to be real tough. We're only going to earn $1.10. And then it comes out with like $1.25, and everyone's like, oh, my God, you did great. Well, the expectation was always $1.25. They just told you it was $1.10, so they could walk over that bar a lot easier than if it was higher. So they lower the bar, and then they walk over, and they're like, look at us, we won. It's like a professional athlete playing against somebody's little league.”

“Software stocks are ugly. This has not helped them much at all. You know, if I look at the software sector, if I'm looking at the IGV, it's actually lower than before the war. If you look at the last three days, it's actually gone down a lot; it's just getting ugly in the software sector.”

“Closing the Red Sea and the Strait Of Hormuz at the same time sounds to me like lights out for the global economy. That's a really big deal, and a little bit of research I did suggest, well, hey, the Houthis have already successfully closed the Strait Of Bab El Mandeb a couple of times previously, there's really no reason they couldn't do it again. So is that a serious threat?”

“OpenAI is proving to be one of the most structurally critical companies in the market to the point where even small details about the business are eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars of market value. Yesterday, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had missed its revenue target in 2025. Nvidia, for example, fell 4% on the news. Oracle fell 6%. Coreweave fell 7%, and SoftBank fell 12%. In fact, when you add up the market value that was erased, it comes out to nearly $400,000,000,000, all because of one report about one company that isn't even publicly traded.”

“Google is the one that's the the star of the show today because they're doing so much better than anybody else, not just in Google Cloud. They're also still seeing acceleration in advertising revenue. Their search business accelerated to 19%. That's a massive business, still accelerating. It's catching up to Meta. And Google also started talking about selling TPUs. This is something we started talking about a year ago as a wild idea, and now Google's actually doing it.”

“For example, as a as a an inclination, I would say, how much gold do you have in the portfolio? You shouldn't have too much and you shouldn't have too little, but it is an effective diversifier ifier to, other assets that you probably do have in a portfolio because, when you have a bad set of circumstances, gold tends to do well because of either the debt problem or the world war problems and so on and so forth. It's not only a long term currency, but today, it's the second largest reserve currency held by central banks.”

“If you're investing in tech, especially the Mag-7, here's something you should keep in mind. Now, this is we call CapEx. So this is the amount of money they're spending. So historically, Big Tech has not had a lot of capital expenditures, because they don't need it. It's a very scalable model. They generate a lot of cash and they don't have a lot of expenses. Up until right around when AI started to pick up, and now you see that the CapEx starts to pick up. If I own a company and they make $100 and my earnings as an investor is $30, but then they take $29 of those dollars and go spend it on a data center that earns them no money, I'm not going to be happy.”

“When you think of investing, you have to think of the world in terms of frameworks. We as human beings are not good at all at predicting the future. We all do it. Our brains operate like a prediction engine. We all try to predict the future, and we're terrible at it. All of us are terrible at it, because if you're good at it, you'd be a bazillionaire, but we can't predict the future. But our brains naturally go there. So rather than trying to predict the future, a better way to handle it is to look at the world in terms of frameworks.”

“And when it started, my worst case scenario was that this could end up being a US SUEZ nineteen fifty six moment. And now seven weeks in, Hormuz is still closed. Supply chain issues are just now really starting to to stack up. So I think the base case now for me is that this is a US Suez 1956 moment where until Hormuz reopens, I think supply chains are gonna keep getting worse exponentially from here.”

“They're very insulated. Right? Oil is not an input for these companies. The their exposure is only the second order exposure. If the global economy was to slow down, then ad sales to Meta and Google would slow down, retail and Amazon would slow down, and some aspects of Microsoft business would slow down. But there's no direct impact on these companies. Their driver, again, by a mile is the growth in demand for AI compute, and that seems to have very little to do with the conflict, in The Middle East.”

“HSBC's CEO, you know, quoted and and noted that, the highest delivered barrel of an of a barrel of oil he's seen so far that has soothed this crisis was $286 a barrel for a cargo that was delivered to Sri Lanka, which, like, clearly, there are massive physical dislocations in this market. Now that can only last for so long in a market that is freely traded. Those immense acute local pain points can get arbitraged away through trade. But that takes time.”

“I do think over time, AI will probably overtake that to some degree. It's pretty clear that AI is a transformational force within the software space. And probably the majority of names in the space today will experience major issues over the coming decade or so.”

“When you think of investing, you have to think of the world in terms of frameworks. We as human beings are not good at all at predicting the future. We all do it. Our brains operate like a prediction engine. We all try to predict the future, and we're terrible at it. All of us are terrible at it. Because if you're good at it, you'd be a bazillionaire.”

“The former commander in chief of the Iranian, the IRGC came out, like, a week, week and a half in and said, listen, our plan is simple. They were planning on a very short stay. We can see that from their logistics. All we're gonna do is we're gonna hang in here and we are going to create a financial crisis. Like, Hormuz stays closed, the world economy is gonna collapse. We can debate how long it'll take Hormuz to stay closed for it to collapse. But if it stays closed long enough, the world economy will absolutely 100% collapse.”

“Patience and caution. Don't jump on the market just because it's going higher. Be patient. Maybe take a small position in something. Start. If your full position is 5%, maybe put 1%. Start there. See if you're right. If it's going higher, okay, at least you have something and you can keep adding to it. But if it goes lower, well, you don't have that much exposure, you're not going to get hurt that much. But that's how you should be thinking about the markets is slow and steady.”

“I do think over time, AI will probably overtake that to some degree. It's pretty clear that AI is a transformational force within the software space. And probably the majority of names in the space today will experience major issues over the coming decade or so.”

“Rates are going higher and the dollar is starting to go lower. And that shows you that money is fleeing out of US markets, out of US assets and into foreign markets, which means higher interest rates, downward pressure on equities. The internals of the market are showing you what's happening.”