John Rotonti Jr
34.5K posts
John Rotonti Jr
@JRogrow
Portfolio Manager at Bastion Fiduciary. Views are my own. Not investment advice. On here mostly quoting Bruce Lee and Walt Longmire.
Katılım Ocak 2021
2.8K Takip Edilen18K Takipçiler
Analog training about to become the edge
"I would have people on Wall Street learn the old fashioned way [without LLMs] for the first six or twelve months…I sound like an old man, but let’s walk into the room rather than run…I’m a believer in the tools but I also think it’s stunting the growth of this generation…it could lead to degradation in your 30s that you won’t be able to come back from. If you don’t know how to do anything, then you don’t know how to do anything, and competing on your raw smarts isn’t enough because everyone is smart."
John Rotonti Jr@JRogrow
Too many bangers in here, but here are some of my other favorite quotes from this episode 🙏... "I got to spend the last 8.5 years of my career on the Street working at Point72 for Steve Cohen…The competitive advantage at Point72 was about understanding when stories change by one degree instead of ten." "Every piece of content that you share with a PM has to create lift or there is no value in that content…at the end of the day, every PM on the Street is being evaluated on three things. Number of at bats, hit rate against the number of at bats, and then sizing against that hit rate. If you are building a function to inform a PM’s process…you need to help them generate more ideas, have a higher hit rate against their ideas, or help them improve their slugging percentage and/or conviction. If you are not creating lift in one of those three buckets for a hedge fund when you are running the research business, then you don’t have a research business." "In the content business you want to be relevant, different, and accessible." "Alpha is a construct that evolves through time…Alpha moves around. It’s always there, but sometimes it’s in speed to information. Sometimes it’s in just the information itself or access. Sometimes it’s in the organizational ability to process something and turn it into a trade." "Don’t be too married to a view. You want to get it right, not be right. At the end of the day, alpha rewards those that value assets in a cold way…Larry [Robbins] and Steve [Cohen] just wanted to get it right. They were maniacal about getting it right through best practices and best processes." "Having a competitive advantage takes work, and it’s not asking a chatbot." "I used to do thousands of calls talking to CEOs and CFOs of private companies and one of the questions I always ask was ‘when was the last time you saw this? And then what happened after that? And what was the timeline of that?' And then I had a playbook, and I was just matching against the playbook. Once you start thinking in frameworks, stuff really scales." "I would have people on Wall Street learn the old fashioned way [without LLMs] for the first six or twelve months…I sound like an old man, but let’s walk into the room rather than run…I’m a believer in the tools but I also think it’s stunting the growth of this generation…it could lead to degradation in your 30s that you won’t be able to come back from. If you don’t know how to do anything, then you don’t know how to do anything, and competing on your raw smarts isn’t enough because everyone is smart."
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@JasonGreenwal12 Yeah, but look at the dish. And it’s Vegas. And I’m Italian 💪🙏
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
After four transformative years at @Stocktwits, my role was eliminated on Friday as part of a company restructuring. I’m incredibly proud of what we built, from launching a newsroom that reaches millions to representing the voice of retail investors on global stages and in the media. I’ll look back on this chapter fondly.
Thank you to @howardlindzon and the team for the opportunity to help evolve such an influential platform during this "golden age" of retail investing.
What’s next? I’m a dual-certified (CPA/CMT) leader looking for my next challenge in the financial media or fintech space. I specialize in bridging the gap between deep market analysis and retail investor engagement.
I am exploring full-time and contract opportunities where I can lead or contribute to:
- Content Strategy & Editorial Operations
- Market Insights & Research
- Growth-Focused Media Products
If you’re building something in this space or just want to catch up, reach out here or at business@tombruni.com.
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
I completely agree with Alix. Learning the analog way and getting reps is a critical foundation before you augment with AI. Just like I can't debug code because I have no foundations as a coder, those who don't learn the analog way won't be able to debug a thesis or an earnings preview. In a game of inches like investing, that matters a lot.
OGs can look at a company model and find the error in 60 seconds. This is a skill forged through many years and many reps. Bypassing the building of this muscle is a risky decision.
In theory, younger investors should be leading the charge with AI augmentation for investing. In practice, I see so many young people building bridges to nowhere with complex coding tools that are technically intriguing but useless in practice. The most impressive investors I've seen in terms of AI augmentation are experienced investors who know exactly what problem to solve and why.
And as a PM, managing a junior analyst churning out AI slop at 10x speed with false conviction sounds like a nightmare. I'd much rather have that junior analyst go slow, build rigor, and very selectively deploy AI in the early years. Crawl, walk, run.
Alix Pasquet@alixpasquet
Analog training about to become the edge "I would have people on Wall Street learn the old fashioned way [without LLMs] for the first six or twelve months…I sound like an old man, but let’s walk into the room rather than run…I’m a believer in the tools but I also think it’s stunting the growth of this generation…it could lead to degradation in your 30s that you won’t be able to come back from. If you don’t know how to do anything, then you don’t know how to do anything, and competing on your raw smarts isn’t enough because everyone is smart."
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
100% agree with this. Best way to learn is sitting in a room with a few people bouncing around ideas; tearing apart financial statements, critiquing competitive positioning and debating the quality of management. AI will increase the effectiveness and cadence of those meetings. I have said this before but the best investments ideas come from the most talented rooms of people the same way the best entertainment content comes from the best writers rooms.
Alix Pasquet@alixpasquet
Analog training about to become the edge "I would have people on Wall Street learn the old fashioned way [without LLMs] for the first six or twelve months…I sound like an old man, but let’s walk into the room rather than run…I’m a believer in the tools but I also think it’s stunting the growth of this generation…it could lead to degradation in your 30s that you won’t be able to come back from. If you don’t know how to do anything, then you don’t know how to do anything, and competing on your raw smarts isn’t enough because everyone is smart."
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
The Pirates make what we already knew official.
Opening Day at Citi Field: Freddy Peralta vs. Paul Skenes.
Pittsburgh Pirates@Pirates
Duh.
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@JRogrow The 300 hours math is solid. The part people miss is what you do with those 300 hours matters more than the hours themselves. 300 hours of the right work vs. 300 hours of busy work - completely different outcomes.
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“I just outworked people…I started working Sundays. I worked Sundays from 2006 or 2007 through 2020 and I worked six-hour Sundays on average, and I learned if you work six hours on Sunday and fifty Sundays a year, that’s 300 hours. 300 hours on a 50-hour work week is six weeks. So, if I’m working 13.5 months a year to somebody else’s twelve months, it doesn’t matter how good your process is or how smart you are, you are not going to beat me to the ball. And in a knowledge research business you end up compounding knowledge value, which makes you faster and so your 13.5 months in 2011 is not as effective as in 2013 which is not as effective as in 2015 because you are compounding knowledge, which shortens your time-to-answer and shortens your time to alpha or relevance.”
Ethan Kho@ethanrkho
Ex-Point72 Proprietary Research Head Kirk McKeown on building edge, alpha decay, & why everything that happened on Wall Street is about to happen on Main Street. Kirk McKeown (8.5 years @ Point72 under Steve Cohen | Built primary research at Glenview under Larry Robbins | Now founder of Carbon Arc @CarbonArcAI) "Alpha rewards those who value assets in a cold way. You want to get it right — not be right." We cover: - How alpha creation differs across multi-manager vs. concentrated shops - The 3 vectors every middle office function must move to justify its existence - Why he worked 6-hour Sundays from 2006-2020 — and the math behind it - The TSMC call that signaled semiconductor cancellations before anyone else knew - What the quant revolution on Wall Street tells us about the AI economy today - His framework: 4 market structures, 9 business models, & why they have rules - The MIT beer game & why every business problem is really an inventory problem - His hot take: a top hedge fund launches an enterprise AI lab in 2026 Highlights: 00:00 Intro 04:47 Tutor vs Glenview vs Point72: how edge differs 12:29 How to build “lift” for PMs: at-bats, hit-rate, sizing 18:44 Building research edge: outwork, read, fieldwork 27:16 Personal moat in 2026: analogs, history, decision trees 40:08 “Main Street becomes Wall Street”: what that actually means 44:30 Carbon Arc thesis: “decimalization” of data market structure 46:43 Why the edge migrates to data plus domain context 51:00 How to win in commoditized research: sample size beats anecdotes 01:03:26 Factorizing everything: themes, market structure, business models 01:08:37 Pruning decision trees: signals, scale points, inventory dynamics 01:14:18 Contrarian 2026 take: hedge funds launching enterprise AI labs 01:23:32 Final question: one habit to build career alpha
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Too many bangers in here, but here are some of my other favorite quotes from this episode 🙏...
"I got to spend the last 8.5 years of my career on the Street working at Point72 for Steve Cohen…The competitive advantage at Point72 was about understanding when stories change by one degree instead of ten."
"Every piece of content that you share with a PM has to create lift or there is no value in that content…at the end of the day, every PM on the Street is being evaluated on three things. Number of at bats, hit rate against the number of at bats, and then sizing against that hit rate. If you are building a function to inform a PM’s process…you need to help them generate more ideas, have a higher hit rate against their ideas, or help them improve their slugging percentage and/or conviction. If you are not creating lift in one of those three buckets for a hedge fund when you are running the research business, then you don’t have a research business."
"In the content business you want to be relevant, different, and accessible."
"Alpha is a construct that evolves through time…Alpha moves around. It’s always there, but sometimes it’s in speed to information. Sometimes it’s in just the information itself or access. Sometimes it’s in the organizational ability to process something and turn it into a trade."
"Don’t be too married to a view. You want to get it right, not be right. At the end of the day, alpha rewards those that value assets in a cold way…Larry [Robbins] and Steve [Cohen] just wanted to get it right. They were maniacal about getting it right through best practices and best processes."
"Having a competitive advantage takes work, and it’s not asking a chatbot."
"I used to do thousands of calls talking to CEOs and CFOs of private companies and one of the questions I always ask was ‘when was the last time you saw this? And then what happened after that? And what was the timeline of that?' And then I had a playbook, and I was just matching against the playbook. Once you start thinking in frameworks, stuff really scales."
"I would have people on Wall Street learn the old fashioned way [without LLMs] for the first six or twelve months…I sound like an old man, but let’s walk into the room rather than run…I’m a believer in the tools but I also think it’s stunting the growth of this generation…it could lead to degradation in your 30s that you won’t be able to come back from. If you don’t know how to do anything, then you don’t know how to do anything, and competing on your raw smarts isn’t enough because everyone is smart."
Ethan Kho@ethanrkho
Ex-Point72 Proprietary Research Head Kirk McKeown on building edge, alpha decay, & why everything that happened on Wall Street is about to happen on Main Street. Kirk McKeown (8.5 years @ Point72 under Steve Cohen | Built primary research at Glenview under Larry Robbins | Now founder of Carbon Arc @CarbonArcAI) "Alpha rewards those who value assets in a cold way. You want to get it right — not be right." We cover: - How alpha creation differs across multi-manager vs. concentrated shops - The 3 vectors every middle office function must move to justify its existence - Why he worked 6-hour Sundays from 2006-2020 — and the math behind it - The TSMC call that signaled semiconductor cancellations before anyone else knew - What the quant revolution on Wall Street tells us about the AI economy today - His framework: 4 market structures, 9 business models, & why they have rules - The MIT beer game & why every business problem is really an inventory problem - His hot take: a top hedge fund launches an enterprise AI lab in 2026 Highlights: 00:00 Intro 04:47 Tutor vs Glenview vs Point72: how edge differs 12:29 How to build “lift” for PMs: at-bats, hit-rate, sizing 18:44 Building research edge: outwork, read, fieldwork 27:16 Personal moat in 2026: analogs, history, decision trees 40:08 “Main Street becomes Wall Street”: what that actually means 44:30 Carbon Arc thesis: “decimalization” of data market structure 46:43 Why the edge migrates to data plus domain context 51:00 How to win in commoditized research: sample size beats anecdotes 01:03:26 Factorizing everything: themes, market structure, business models 01:08:37 Pruning decision trees: signals, scale points, inventory dynamics 01:14:18 Contrarian 2026 take: hedge funds launching enterprise AI labs 01:23:32 Final question: one habit to build career alpha
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
@JRogrow Over-earning for a long time due to their density. Their returns are such a target and FL is drawing in tons of concepts (Aldi acquired Winn-Dixie and is about a third of the way through their expansion plan with those locations).
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"Publix’s net margins (net income divided by sales) are nearly 7%, against 2% for Kroger."
Disclosure: Publix is private and no position in Kroger.
barrons.com/articles/publi…
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
Jason Statham to Terence Crawford: "You’re the greatest fighter I’ve ever seen; you made me rich."
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@obsidiancap1 @JRogrow No doubt the guy is impressive on many levels, but this is not how it works at all.
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
Scenes from the annual "New at Citi Field" event today in Queens, courtesy of the Mets.
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
Citi Field added new shuttles to take fans directly to the stadium from certain locations.
New Jersey:
• Newport Centre Mall
• Paramus Park
Long Island:
• Walt Whitman Shops
• Roosevelt Field Mall
Bronx:
• The Mall at Bay Plaza
More on what’s new at Citi Field: metsmerizedonline.com/whats-new-at-c…
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@partners_road Hi RiverRoad. Thanks so much for sharing this. 🙏💙
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@JRogrow Got to known him when I was involved in a name that Larry also owned. Kirk shared his work on the company & I was extremely impressed by the depth & breadth of his differentiated research on the company. The bar his work set was beyond almost anything I’ve seen on the Street.
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“What I was really good at was getting on the phone and collecting information…I could get on the phone with anybody. I was really good with it, and Larry [Robbins] put me in charge of building out the primary research team so I looked at the space and asked how do I create a competitive advantage? So how does the Street usually do it? Well analysts usually did three or four calls at the end of a quarter on their name and so I was like OK, they do 4 calls a quarter, I’m going to do 20 calls a month. I’ll do the 4 calls they are going to do and I’ll do 12 of those in a quarter and I’ll do the rest and at the end of the quarter I’ll have 60 calls to their four. And I’ll know if something is changing before they will and I’ll have a better sample so I’ll have less bias, and over time it will compound.”
Ethan Kho@ethanrkho
Ex-Point72 Proprietary Research Head Kirk McKeown on building edge, alpha decay, & why everything that happened on Wall Street is about to happen on Main Street. Kirk McKeown (8.5 years @ Point72 under Steve Cohen | Built primary research at Glenview under Larry Robbins | Now founder of Carbon Arc @CarbonArcAI) "Alpha rewards those who value assets in a cold way. You want to get it right — not be right." We cover: - How alpha creation differs across multi-manager vs. concentrated shops - The 3 vectors every middle office function must move to justify its existence - Why he worked 6-hour Sundays from 2006-2020 — and the math behind it - The TSMC call that signaled semiconductor cancellations before anyone else knew - What the quant revolution on Wall Street tells us about the AI economy today - His framework: 4 market structures, 9 business models, & why they have rules - The MIT beer game & why every business problem is really an inventory problem - His hot take: a top hedge fund launches an enterprise AI lab in 2026 Highlights: 00:00 Intro 04:47 Tutor vs Glenview vs Point72: how edge differs 12:29 How to build “lift” for PMs: at-bats, hit-rate, sizing 18:44 Building research edge: outwork, read, fieldwork 27:16 Personal moat in 2026: analogs, history, decision trees 40:08 “Main Street becomes Wall Street”: what that actually means 44:30 Carbon Arc thesis: “decimalization” of data market structure 46:43 Why the edge migrates to data plus domain context 51:00 How to win in commoditized research: sample size beats anecdotes 01:03:26 Factorizing everything: themes, market structure, business models 01:08:37 Pruning decision trees: signals, scale points, inventory dynamics 01:14:18 Contrarian 2026 take: hedge funds launching enterprise AI labs 01:23:32 Final question: one habit to build career alpha
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John Rotonti Jr retweetledi
Self Recommending: "One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets" by Hendrik Bessembinder. A century of data for nearly 30,000 U.S. public companies.
Fun fact: "Shareholders' wealth was enhanced by $91 trillion over the century, but long-term investors in nearly 60% of stocks incurred wealth reductions."
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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