Position Journal

I learned a painful lesson yesterday on $PINS yesterday and I lost a lot of money. It's a bit of long one but I need to get it off my chest. As soon as earnings report hit, I reviewed the financials, and to me it seemed OK. The stock price immediately tanked -15% after earnings. But I was not phased at all. This is because my invalidation criteria did not trigger. I needed to see user growth and ARPU growth and I saw US MAU +4% and US ARPU +4% so they both technically "passed". But the quality of the story matters, not just the metrics. Everything turned horrendous once the earnings call started. Bill Ready (CEO) stated: >Large retailers have started pulling back, due to tariffs on furniture and due to reduced ad-budgets. And Bill's answer to losing their big-earners was to tighten up GTM strategy and hire a bigger and more effective sales team. You knew the tariffs would have an impact. You knew they were here to stay. You knew retailers were shaken up. Yet you did nothing. Big retailers leaving, spending decreasing in key geographies like US can all be observed via internal metrics and business reviews, months ahead of any public reviews. You mean to tell me you did not have the most basic foresight to do something about this? When tariffs were a known factor since Trump's election? At the very least, hire a sales team months ago? A Year ago? On top of that, your answer is to instead focus on small to medium businesses? The businesses who contribute to 20% of your revenue while making up 80% of your advertiser-base? You want to send your sales team on a wild goose chase? What are we even doing here? Bill continued to emphasize out-of-place statements: >their monthly queries are 80B a month which is higher than ChatGPT's 75B. Great. Why is this relevant, Bill? Reddit grew from $7 to $10 ARPU and I don't even see or interact with any proprietary AI on there. You have a fantastic product on your hands, a niche segment that does not have equivalency, data that is only matched by hyperscalers, yet you couldn't do anything about it? You have 80B monthly queries where half of them are commercial and your ARPU only grew +4% YoY for the MOST important market, US & Canada? This is when it all hit me. This is what I failed to see even after going through their call transcripts, watching hours of interviews, gathering anecdotal feedback, combing through their financials. What I failed to see could have only been understood once I heard this leadership team speak. As I ended up motionlessly peering out the window listening to him on speaker, I realized: "Oh my God. These guys don't know what the fuck they're doing." These are all execution gaps of the highest caliber. A total fumble of an amazing product. As a final cherry on top, Bill stated on the call (paraphrasing): "We're growing so fast in user base, and search queries but we only started building an ad platform only a few years ago and going up against competitors who have been doing this for 20 years" Bill. Why are you saying this and complaining about big boys taking your lunch, to Goldman Sachs? On the call? Who cares? Every company deals with this. You need to be the most cunning, the most innovative and decisive leader with some basic level of foresight. And you came to the earnings rug-pulling everyone. One of my core tenets is to have confidence and conviction in the leadership of a company, they broke that tenet today.

100% not financial advice and don’t transact on this but: The candle on SPY today is the kind that you see near tradable bottoms

Politically speaking, especially with the mid-terms, Trump may look to make April the greenest month we've seen in a while. A total reversal of 2025 liberation day, by timing the announcement of multiple completed trade deals, targeted tariff relief on key allies, and fresh pro-growth executive orders right around the April 2 anniversary. This is to be able to say something like: “One year passed since Liberation Day, and the DOW is at record highs of xxK" If you think he's not able to, you forget that the market has "settled in" to the shocks of tariffs and all the fiasco from 2025. He very well could reset us to go higher.

𝕏 is reportedly developing AI-generated content detection features that will prompt users with a warning before allowing them to post.

$META bulls totally miss how slow moving large organizations are and how they don't deliver instant yields after a major pivot or strategy shift. Don't expect instant rebounds. Here's the real timeline most investors miss, speaking from experience YEAR 1: Planning, heavy investment, internal deliberation, what will we do, when, why and how (Meta announces $70B in CapEx, rolls out Llama foundation model, begins massive integration of AI into their platforms). Market gets hyped on the announcements in AI such as promise of increased AI investments and stock often rallies on the vision. Year 1 passed, we saw highs of $750-780 in 2025 YEAR 2: Execution kicks in based on the plan. But the markets have already been ecstatic and they expect results and fireworks NOW. But true returns will only be delivered late Year 2 at best. You cannot expect Year 1's vision to have delivered returns. That means the rally to $750 was unjustified fundamentally. In Year 2, $META announces they're still executing to the plan and everything is fine, but the cash balance dropping from billions of CapEx coupled with revenue not materializing now SHAKES UP THE MARKET. This is when hope fades, selling pressure hits, and the stock gets punished. We saw this play out when Meta announced earnings this year and stock popped from $666 to $738 (+10%) and only for it to fade back down even lower, to now $617. A -16% drop despite amazing results, why did this happen? Because we are impatient investors, we need our money now, we need to see the future, today. YEAR 3: If execution is near-PERFECT, returns finally start to materialize and potentially explosively. But honestly, taking just 1 year to execute to core objectives is unrealistic. This is easily observed once you've seen the inner workings of how a Mag7 operates. I think we are in Year 2. Zuckerberg is executing, returns on investments will not be meaningful yet, but market hype and money will outflow, as it already happened dropping from $738 to $617, and will likely continue to outflow. But in reality, the company is improving. My message for you: $META bulls you are going to have to be much more patient. Expect more short-term pain. This is a long-term hold, record revenue, AI tools already at scale in ads and a clear path to frontier model releases. Wait it out until Year 3, to see if Zuck nailed the execution.

Today was the date I have been waiting for since January. 3/19. Here is everything that happened today & what may next. 🧵

Today is a sad day for me. I’ve decided to part ways with a large portion of my $HOOD shares. Not because I’ve lost conviction in the company. I still believe in the business and in Vlad’s leadership. But I’m staying disciplined to my macro thesis. I believe the next few years could be severely impacted by economic headwinds. If consumers have less capital, they have less to invest. And if they have less to invest, platforms like Robinhood feel that pressure. AI is advancing at an incredible pace. I believe it will drive productivity, but I also believe it could accelerate unemployment faster than we’re prepared for. Less disposable income across America means less money flowing into stocks. It’s that simple. I could be wrong. I genuinely hope I am. But I’m positioning for what I believe is coming. I’m building my fortress. Before trimming, I held 2,500 shares. Now I hold 1,400 shares, still one of my largest positions at roughly 20% of my portfolio. What am I doing with the cash? For now, I’m staying patient. Holding tight. Adding to $GLD. Observing. If the environment unfolds the way I expect, I want to be in a strong position to act decisively. Godspeed, fam.

$META bulls totally miss how slow moving large organizations are and how they don't deliver instant yields after a major pivot or strategy shift. Don't expect instant rebounds. Here's the real timeline most investors miss, speaking from experience YEAR 1: Planning, heavy investment, internal deliberation, what will we do, when, why and how (Meta announces $70B in CapEx, rolls out Llama foundation model, begins massive integration of AI into their platforms). Market gets hyped on the announcements in AI such as promise of increased AI investments and stock often rallies on the vision. Year 1 passed, we saw highs of $750-780 in 2025 YEAR 2: Execution kicks in based on the plan. But the markets have already been ecstatic and they expect results and fireworks NOW. But true returns will only be delivered late Year 2 at best. You cannot expect Year 1's vision to have delivered returns. That means the rally to $750 was unjustified fundamentally. In Year 2, $META announces they're still executing to the plan and everything is fine, but the cash balance dropping from billions of CapEx coupled with revenue not materializing now SHAKES UP THE MARKET. This is when hope fades, selling pressure hits, and the stock gets punished. We saw this play out when Meta announced earnings this year and stock popped from $666 to $738 (+10%) and only for it to fade back down even lower, to now $617. A -16% drop despite amazing results, why did this happen? Because we are impatient investors, we need our money now, we need to see the future, today. YEAR 3: If execution is near-PERFECT, returns finally start to materialize and potentially explosively. But honestly, taking just 1 year to execute to core objectives is unrealistic. This is easily observed once you've seen the inner workings of how a Mag7 operates. I think we are in Year 2. Zuckerberg is executing, returns on investments will not be meaningful yet, but market hype and money will outflow, as it already happened dropping from $738 to $617, and will likely continue to outflow. But in reality, the company is improving. My message for you: $META bulls you are going to have to be much more patient. Expect more short-term pain. This is a long-term hold, record revenue, AI tools already at scale in ads and a clear path to frontier model releases. Wait it out until Year 3, to see if Zuck nailed the execution.