As I mentioned in my prior post this is the beginning of my market observations. Many of these notes are snippets from personal notebooks on what I’m looking at, trades and new narratives I’m hunting for. The topics I cover include BTC, Crypto, Tech, Moltbook, GME, Pokemon, Silver, Rates/FX, and Geopolitics.

These were written on Sunday, Feb.01.2026 I’m just a bit behind in posting.

BTC

• BTC is approaching a key level at $75k. Widely considered MSTR’s cost basis it will be a major line in the sand to defend. Beneath that as is cultural custom in crypto it will be the $69k level.

• Obviously BTC dropping below MSTR’s cost basis won’t lead to some giant liquidation by MSTR. But have to consider a few things

  • Many of the MSTR clones known as DATs have bought in at much higher levels. And BTC could be reaching a level that creates a cascade of forced sellers.

  • While MSTR won’t be forced into some kind of wild liquidation just because price dropped below 75k it does mean the algo machine will pick up the news hysteria around it. That will lead to all kinds rumors, panic and emotionally reactive decisions on the price action

• So either $75k ($69k at worst) gets defended at all costs or who knows where the next bottom is.

• The flip side to this is that BTC is now in its fifth month of selling. At some point buyers will pick up the slack and the sellers will have run out of energy.

  • Also, if you missed the Gold trade what looks like it has a better asymmetry? BTC or Gold?

  • if we are to bet that there’s a trend developing around currency debasement fears along with a lack of trust in fiscal responsibility

    • wouldn’t BTC need to do well here?? it can’t just be Gold?

• This leads me to wonder if it’s worth allocating into BTC here? Feels like a coin toss. If I was forced to guess it would lean closer to the idea of a bottom forming here but uncertain on if it’s just a bounce or a change in trend.

• So for now I’m choosing to wait and see. As well as debating if BTC rises will HYPE rise even further (chasing beta as the crypto kids would say)?

Crypto

• It hasn’t been just BTC that has been selling off for months now, crypto as a whole has slowed down. Many of my friends sound disillusioned. Casinos are no longer offering free money, in fact they’re charging for drinks now.

  • NFTs didn’t come back.

  • Trading memecoins feels like working in a digital minefield. Hoping you strike on a rare Uncut Gem.

• Crypto is probably going through a similar moment as the dot com era. Back then it was all about owning a great URL with a vague business idea. These days it’s been all bout coin launches around half baked business plans.

  • We’re nearing a decade since the ICO season. Coins on vaporware aren’t cutting it.

  • Holders of theses coins are demanding compensation for holding risk.

  • Crypto one could say is maturing from the Wild Wild West to Wall St.

• Crypto isn’t a total lost cause. It has found some capable product market fits

  • Stablecoins

    • Hopefully ones that produce better yield than carrying deposits at a bank via a digital T-bond or MMF that’s liquid and instant transferrable.

    • Instant Transfer, no longer waiting days for a wire to clear and PDFs to sign.

    • A digital dollar system that creates a perpetual buyer of US Treasuries.

  • Perpetuals

    • Are an efficient derivative of equities for those seeking leverage.

    • Levered ETFs have too much volatility drag.

    • Futures are static in leverage. MNQ offers 2x, NQ offers 20x. There’s no fine tuning slider

    • Further out derivatives built on top.

  • Predictive Markets

    • which you could argue is a function of the perpetuals in their own way.

    • Somewhat AMM like, somewhat Order Book

    • Bet on anything, anywhere all at once.

  • NFTs

    • this one is still vague but I’d be willing to gander a guess this technology makes break throughs around identity verification.

    • In an age of AI, it will be important to have the “Organic Human” label pasted onto our pfps and posts.

  • Digital Wallets

    • As these AI agents start flying around the web having digital isolated wallets will be useful.

    • They also help replace antiquated old models of username/password database style logging in.

    • Changes dynamics of identity on the internet.

• For me the best investment I can “underwrite” (if I wanted to sound like a pretentious make believe hedge fund manager on X) is HYPE. Unlike other crypto protocols HYPE accrues value back to the holders by way of buybacks. The fees HYPE generates are used to buyback the token.

  • More volatility in the markets lead to more fees

  • HIP3 and HIP4 are tantalizing prospects.

  • HYPE token volatility is dampened by the buybacks.

• HIP-3 is an interesting moment. Many younger investors got their start in crypto. They probably think futures are too complex. Modern brokerages like IBKR can be a hassle to open.

  • So these new league of traders and investors are getting their start on tradfi style trades via HIP-3

  • Many learned a lesson in commodities trading in fact over the weekend on Silver.

  • Only just the start as HIP4 will allow permissionless predictive markets and hopefully soon to be options.

• All of this is coming out during a time where the baseline for volatility is heightened. Active trading is back baby!

  • Passive investing takes a backseat in this world as not all boats will rise with the tide

  • Some would call this an Alpha world over a Beta one. Perfect time for the launch of things like HIP3.

    • can lever up on one equity name vs being forced to hold the index that will experience increasing dispersion.

• Another reason for crypto’s rerating is money is no longer cheap.

  • Without ZIRP, we can’t grow to infinity.

  • Investors are demanding return on money invested.

  • They want compensation for risk held.

• This leads me to Equities & Tech specifically…

Equities & Tech

• What I’m seeing in crypto seems to be the case in tech too. Tech is rerating

  • There’s healthy skepticism at the boundless increase of CAPEX by the Hyperscalers.

  • Tech companies are transforming from high margin high volume businesses to heavy capex cyclical industrial complexes.

    • Expenses are rising.

    • Many of these companies are no longer small nimble startups but behemoths with many corporate complexities.

    • The missions have become vague, focusing exclusively on the price of the stock.

    • META is a perfect example of a company that is trapped in increasing their spend despite the fact they’re just an ad company.

      • It’s quite a trap,

        • if you don’t spend on CAPEX you will be questioned by shareholders why you’re falling behind.

        • If you do spend, then there will be increased scrutiny on how much and what the potential return on investment will look like.

• I was left scratching my head when META does a +11% day while MSFT does a -10% day. Both had solid earnings, both increasing CAPEX, yet MSFT is rated lower on their spending plans while META is bought aggressively.

  • What do investors imagine META will be able to cook up at this level of spend?

  • Is the hope maybe META glasses become as ubiquitous as iPhones. Maybe.

  • How much does ad growth increase? Impressions made?

  • Maybe the AI traps users of these social media apps in deeper and darker spirals. Fine tuning the exact amounts of cortisol and dopamine to inject through your eyeballs to keep you glued to the screen.

    • It certainly has become better at finding the goldilocks amount of anger to keep you engaged without enough frustration to all together quit the app.

    • Double that with the ability to generate any AI image in fractions of a second, one can create a factory of endless content production, to push those metrics up, up and away.

  • I still don’t see how this justifies a $100B CAPEX spend.

• In fact I feel a trend coming in which younger generations are no longer interested in being online so much. They will see their older relatives become zombie like. Programmed by the algorithms. They will find luxury and peace by being offline away from the AI deatheaters.

• I had a personal experience with this recently as my mother is Iranian

  • It was so hard to get her to take a break. She was consumed by Iran content due to the protests.

  • Who could blame her? Many Iranians have spent decades suffering heartbreak at the loss of their country.

  • META’s greedy AI algos picked up on this suffering. And slowly begin to suck the soul out of all anxious Iranians. The AI took the anxiety, transforming their hope and frustration into recordable metrics such as DAU and hours spent on the app.

  • Once the algo has fine tuned exactly how much emotional content it needs to keep one engaged it can then cheaply farm out AI slop content to keep you glued to the surface unable to leave.

• Anyway I digress. My point is that META is an ad company, and I find that younger generations are witnessing the poison of social media. I can see an opposite route that the younger ones find it uncool to be so online. And META’s growth rate will in fact slow down rather than gain. But this could be a few years down the road.

• Outside of hyperscaler drama I managed to get lucky riding on the MU wave. It was an easy equation of limited supply and high demand increasing pricing power. I have been taking profits out of MU as memory is a hot new topic discussed on X.

  • It was important to catch my breath on such a rapid ascension.

• What I’m wondering based on the performance of this year so far is that maybe the economy is beginning to have breadth. As the MAG7 starts to lose steam the rest of the economy is catching up. We are certainly moving from growth to hard assets when you see how dominant XLB, XLE and XLI have been these past few month.

  • The rise of commodities

  • Geopolitics leading to an increase spend in defense and industrials

  • Soon to be engineered ways to get housing economy back on its feet.

  • Below is a chart of SPY vs the various sectors of the S&P 500:

    

    • As you can see, XLB has been the most dominant. With XLE quickly gaining ground along with XLV, XLI and XLP. Both XLK and XLU are the losers these past few months.

Moltbook

• A quick note on Moltbook.

  • Holy shit am I already tired of endless Clawdbot, Moltbook, the coming of the AGI christ posts on X. It feels like a startup convention I can’t leave. An absolute nightmare

  • What I can observe from these interactions though is that a new AI narrative is beginning to take shape.

    • LLM innovation has become stale.

    • LLMs are now like graphics chips. Marginal gains for just every so slightly better graphics

    • But now the AI agents are building their own TechnoCore!? Now that is some top tier marketing juice.

  • If you need to raise at the monstrous sized rounds these AI companies are doing, how do you sell the pitch?

    • AGI is coming, look at the rise of the TechnoCore here…

    • You don’t want to be left behind do you?? World changing tech and you don’t want to write a check? AGI is the future mannnnn.

  • And so starts a new phase of the AI hype cycle. We are nowhere near done on AI hype as vibe coding and now launching agents to Moltbook is just getting started. This is still probably mid 90s of a dot com like bubble approaching.

    • We’re just shifting from the hardware into the software plays now.

    • It’s probably time to look out for trades around this idea.

  • Sidenotes on Moltbook:

    • I’m curious how much of Moltbook & Vibe Coding has spread outside of the X echosphere

    • Imagine a world where we all create replicas of our selves digitally to live on the web while our human selves go out and touch grass again.

GME

• wrote a wonderful piece on GME that I read over the weekend. My takeaway is that Ryan Cohen is entering his own Berkshire era.

  • When Buffet took over Berkshire it was a struggling textile business in a slowly declining industry. Sound familiar???

  • It makes sense Ryan is building a giant cash pile and being patient. Using opportune moments such as when Roaring Kitty reappeared to raise even more cash.

    • The cash sits patiently earning money on the yield. Waiting for the right opportunity to strike

  • All while experimenting in new arenas outside of a video game retail store such as a large push into collectibles especially trading cards. Riding on the giant wave Pokemon has been making.

Pokemon

• Speaking of collectibles, vintage Pokemon is coming back alive. The pace of sales is increasing along with the price.

  • Pulling up ZandG stats...

    • New Record Prices on:

      • 

        • Umbreon Neo Discovery 1st Edition PSA10 (population of 103)

          • +104% from last sold

        • LUGIA EX Unseen Forces PSA10 (population of 71)

          • +20% from last sold

        • Lugia Aquapolis PSA10 (population of 138)

          • +130% from last sold

        • Among many others getting bought at a rapid pace. Even Charizard 1st Edition Base Set in a PSA8 are jumping from an average of $18k to $25 to $31k. (a 72% jump)

• Also in December.2025 1st Edition Charizard Base Set in PSA10 and PSA8 both repriced.

  • The PSA10 jumped from an average of $250k sales price to $550k (a 100% increase)

    • 

    • The PSA8 Charizard Sold for $37.5k

    • Earlier in 2025 the Japanese No Rarity Charizard (some consider the ultimate 1st Edition as its population is 10-20) repriced to become the highest priced Charizard from a set.

      • Sold at $642k vs prior sell prices of $300k (a 114% increase)

        • 

  • Modern Pokemon repricing was much of the story from fall of 2024 into most of 2025.

    • For a while many millenials didn’t realize all the cool art cards that existed in Pokemon.

    • So they all started chasing the modern secret art rares.

    • To the point that any cool new rare art card is immediately priced in.

    • This leads shorter term traders and scalpers to go furhter out on the curve. Chasing after OnePiece and who knows what else.

    • Pokemon will only print more of the modern cards into infinity. What do they care about secondary prices. They know they can now sell anything they print into immediate demand.

  • So modern got priced in. But vintage was just sitting there. Much of it was expensive but the demand was low. Liquidity was difficult but as ZandG has posted on his IG lately the speed of vintage buys has increased. New records are being broken.

    • If we continue along the thesis of currency debasement and infinite inflation it makes sense millennials would be seeking anything in high demand but limited supply as a hedge against it

      • older generations did this with fine art, wine or luxury goods like Hermes handbags. But these things are already too costly and of less interest

      • Our entire generation grew up on Pokemon and it’s still relevant today, it makes for an obvious trade that Pokemon starts to become our generations version of putting money into various assets outside of the dollar and equities.

      • For our generation and those younger, Pokemon is maybe a more relevant collectible than say Dorothy’s Red Shoes (sold for $28M)

  • It will be important to keep an eye on the current Logan Paul auctions as he started the initial Pokemon craze back in 2020 buying the Illustrator Pikachu for an insane amount of money

    • Polymarket is pricing the 1st Edition Charizard to cross over maybe even $700k sold price

      • concerning as I voted no on $700k and expected the sale to hang around the same price as the prior sold on Heritage Auction for $550k

    • If this Charizard crosses the threshold of $1M it will become the first PSA10 card from a set to do so (meaning not a limited run exclusive)

      • just like the rise of fine art, I see this being a tipping point for other collectors wanting to get into the game even if they don’t care about Pokemon.

      • Thus vintage still has some room to run but it’s hard to allocate here beyond riding the vintage I already have in my collections.

Silver

• Silver will be an interesting price action to watch this week and perhaps a place to buy a small long position.

• There’s a quote from Nassim Taleb that volatility often begets volatility and in the case of a -38% sell off in a day it’s hard to jump right into what could be another sell off before we find a bottom.

  • Liberation week had 3 strong sell off days until markets found balance.

• There are too many trapped longs to not see a rise back in price. Whether it breaks out past prior highs or is a sell the rip moment has yet to be seen.

  • I want to ride on the wave of this hope with trapped longs

• I know nothing about Silver expect that the speculation got crazy. I’m not so sure what the hell the Gold/Silver ratio even signifies. Beyond past historical measure of valuation.

  • Valuation metrics change all the time, I’m more interested in whats out head of me when driving through a fog, not what I’ve already driven by.

Rates and FX

• Somebody tell me how you see a world where Japan can sustain a strong Yen? Their fiscal dominance spiral is blackhole. The gravitational field is far too strong for Japan to escape what they’ve created.

  • My hope is that it’s a wake up call for the US. So that we don’t find ourselves in negative rate territory like Japan. Having to inflate our dollars to infinity to try and keep things stable.

  • Even if BoJ raises rates, at what rate? They’re still far below the inflation rate so they could raise at the next 3 meetings and their real rate would still be negative.

• On that note I am happy to see Warsh as FED Chair. Along with Bessent he is a disciple of Druckenmiller. And one has to hope Druckenmiller has their ears.

  • I’m praying we find some fiscal responsibility and plan to look deeper into Warsh to understand what he means by reducing FED balance sheet and over reach in markets.

  • Will the FED Put be removed? Will we enter even more volatility??

    • Let’s make discretionary trading with balls great again I say!

• As for the bond markets. It’s hard to gauge what’s expected.

  • SR3H2027 did a full reversal back to 96.765. Which means markets are expecting about 2 cuts so far this year into March of 2027.

  • Maybe Warsh takes it easy at first and won’t be cutting like a madman.

  • I’m long a few H2027 contracts betting we push to the 3% real rate territory.

  • For a while there we were seeing a bull steepening happen as the 2Y was being bought more aggressive than 10Y on expectations of a cut.

    • The 10Y has held okay, maybe the market is happy it’s Warsh and not someone more dovish.

    • The 2Y10Y is still steepened a bit but not as much as it was.

    • It feels like they’re cautious. They know Warsh leans hawkish but will he comply with the demands of The White House? One has to imagine it’s a very delicate balancing act between the two.

Geopolitics

• I was long oil last week heading into the weekend. I don’t have much experience trading oil, it was the only way to get exposure on a potential Iran attack.

  • Hard to know what happens, maybe there’s some talks then US pulls another Venezuela??

    • Maybe the Venezuela was an isolated event to simply show the strength of the US and what they’re capable of to bring others to talking table.

Life Commentary

• I love this video of Jim Simon’s story on trading Gold:

  • A good friend of mine called this idiot logic. Villager logic. And I loved that.

    • We love to overthink things. Trying to look smart as a way of maintaining the illusion of control. When really the best choice is being the village idiot.

      • I’d rather be fat, drunk and happy than work so hard for status.

      • As Munger and Buffet would say:

        • Trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

    • Another great comment by my friend on Silver:

      • 

I’m not sure what to write here but I am tired of performative bullshit. I want the real thing. I’m seeking community not showing off how smart I am. I want to develop community. I don’t want to trade alone. Writing about this stuff makes me feel a little less alone in my thoughts. My hope has been the writing will help me find others who enjoy thinking for themselves. Even if the ideas are a little whacky.

It has been a while since my last post. I didn’t have a direction I wanted this site to go. I was vibe writing like I sometimes vibe trade. What I realized though was that I don’t enjoy posting about my portfolio. As Dr. Burry articulates in this tweet, exposing yourself to that level of criticism affects performance a lot more than I imagined.

When you have a non-consensus view, it’s difficult to hold tight to it. Sometimes you have a feeling. A gut intuition. It’s an idea that hasn’t fully formed yet. You see it forming maybe out ahead of others. So far out ahead, you find yourself alone in the room waiting for others to catch up. This casts doubt. Questioning yourself. Wondering if you’re a little crazy.

Why am I seeing this while others are not? Am I wrong? Am I foolish? So you try to investigate. You want to discuss the idea with others. The problem though is many of these people you try to discuss these ideas with are algorithmic zombies. They are afraid, so they cling to their precious beliefs. Unwilling to change their mind. Because who would they be without their beliefs? They are unwilling to see two steps out ahead of them. Instead they trudge along looking at the floor, going wherever their commander whips them towards.

Your ability to think for yourself rattles these zombies. You’re holding up the line. What are you doing looking up? Why are you out looking ahead?? That’s dangerous territory. These zombies have no interest in lively debate or sharing genuine perspective. What they see is an outlier. An outlying thought away from the mean. And the algorithm doesn’t like outliers, they need everybody to conform. So they WHACK you down.

How stupid of an idea they say. Laughing at you. I can’t imagine anyone strong enough to withstand endless ridicule on some small idea they had. The ridicule continues until you give in. Putting the idea in a little box. Filing it away in your mind inside a giant cabinet labeled: “dumb ideas”.

Until one day many months or years later it turns out your hunch was onto something. IT WAS NOT A DUMB IDEA AFTER ALL! You get elated. Excited. And then angry. Why did you betray yourself like that? How could you let these zombies fool you into being a slave like them? And so the cycle repeats.

All great things begin as small seeds. There is no grand perfect idea. Or fully formed way of being. Our lives are a journey. We learn by doing. By putting things out there, allowing them to fail. Adjusting our route as we go. Many of the best innovations are the opposite of some grand thought orchestrated in the depths of the mind. Often, they are happy accidents or silly little experiments.

I love this passage from Lord of the Rings when Samwise Gamgee gazes upon the ring:

“…he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command. ‘And anyway all these notions are only a trick, he said to himself.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

That’s what I want. My own small garden to tend to. I don’t care about impressing the crowds. Or changing the zombie’s mind. What I’m seeking is friendship. Lively debates. Learning from others. And offering my own perspective.

So I’m changing the route of this writing project. We are setting sail to new uncharted territory. Where Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidon may all lay. But we will not be afraid of them. Keeping our thoughts raised high. We will not allow these creatures into our soul.

It will be an experimental project. Most likely scattered. Rambley. And a zig zag of paths taken. I will share market observations. Random notes or research I’ve been doing. Maybe some of it unfinished and to never be completed. I will share whatever I feel called to share. But will do my best to curate signal from the noise.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

INTC || Leap $24 Calls for Mar.2026 & June.2026

Profit: 556%

I purchased these call options in early August. What led me to to the trade was watching large blocks of INTC options being purchased over the summer. It got me thinking, what if INTC was a US re-shoring narrative? It has a foundry. Chip manufacturing is essential for national security. Any kind of China-Taiwan clash was a major risk. Why wouldn’t the US want a foundry run by an American company on local soil. As I was mulling it over, I saw President Trump start to mention INTC on Truth Social.

It was game on.

I’ll reiterate that I have ZERO edge on stock valuations. I don’t know what the fair price for a stock should be. This trade was led by my gut. I had a feeling something was bound to happen on INTC. What that something was though, I wasn’t sure.

With the help of ChatGPT I looked into INTC’s price. At $19 it was trading below book value.

Book Value is Total Assets - Total Liabilities

Book Value is what would be theoretically left if the company sold everything and paid off all debts. To me it was what analysts might call “underpriced”.

At the time INTC was at $19. This felt seriously underpriced. There was a number of potential catalysts INTC had going for it. It also wasn’t far from the prior ~$24 book value. I needed to create a trade where I didn’t have to lock up all my capital to make a bet something was going to happen in a near but unknown future.

I ended up buying $24 LEAP CALL options for March-2026 and June-2026.

Why LEAPs?

LEAPs are a bet on both delta (change in price) and vega (change in volatility). $19 isn’t far from being ITM. $24 was the top of INTC’s range since August of 2024. Anything above $24 would leave my options ITM. I would have stock exposure with a much higher notional value while not having all my capital locked up. A LEAP offered me both time and convexity in direction. Any catalyst would drive both the price and implied volatility up, increasing the value of my options.

It was a better asymmetric bet than short dated options because they’re a bet on gamma (change in delta) and theta (change in time). That means despite needing less upside due to lower premiums I would have to be precise on both timing and price. I could make a lot more but it was closer to a lotto ticket. Where with a LEAP I have flexibility.

The traded ended up doing really well. I booked a 556% gain which added 20% to my portfolio’s equity side.

I got lucky that the events happened shortly after my buys. The first major announcement was the US Government investing in INTC. I felt it was too soon to let the options go. The train was only just getting going. I had optionality to wait it out because of the LEAPs.

Not long after came the NVDA investment news. My options were now deep ITM as INTC rocketed to $35. Interest in INTC was gaining momentum. This was when I decided it was time to sell my earlier expiries.

I sold the Mar-2026 $24 calls. The proceeds of which covered the entire cost basis of my trade plus some extra profit. Allowing me to ride the rest of my June-2026 call options with house money. Being deep in the money made it easy to ride profits as more good news flowed in.

A difficult thing for any trader is to accept when they no longer have edge. As INTC Q3 2025 earnings were coming up I felt I had reached that point. A lot of good news had come out. Sentiment had shifted bullish. But it was now more about execution than good news. Using the elevated interest heading into earnings I decided to sell the rest of my options. I may have given up a few final % upside but my concern was that the trade was getting crowded. Expectations were higher any kind of disappointment would erase months of patience.

I closed the rest of my INTC trade at $37.

Recent Yen trades:

Profit: -8.8%

As I’ve talked about in my first portfolio update I love Japan. I trade Japanese equities and the yen as way to stay in touch with Japan. Earlier this year I made a killing being long the Yen from 150 to 140 during the Liberation Day volatility.

The summer was slower. I was bidding my time looking for opportunities when Jackson Hole happened. Powell leaned dovish while Ueda came off hawkish with commentary like: “Labor markets in Japan continue to tighten.”

It wasn’t much to go on but it had me intrigued as the Yen was back near its 150 USDJPY levels. Most of August the Yen had been chopping between 146 and 149. I took the middle of the chop to build a small long position at 147 USDJPY betting on markets pricing in a potential Oct hike.

Shortly after during the September BoJ meeting I saw that there were 2 dissents in favor of hiking rates. I felt more confident towards a hawkish October so I increased my size to a moderate position to ride into Oct/Nov.

The sizing of my position was my first mistake. It wasn’t big enough to hold my attention. I thought I could drift into the Oct BOJ. What I hadn’t realized during that time was the change in Japan’s prime minister could lead to a change in status quo. Japan frequently goes through Prime Ministers but this time the strongest candidate was a major fiscal dove from the LDP: Sanae Takaichi

Takaichi’s platform centers on aggressive fiscal spending and stimulus to revitalize Japan’s economy. Prioritizing investments in growth while boosting defense spending. This puts a lot of pressure on BOJ to hold rates rather than raise them.

My second mistake was I held the losses when I should’ve cut them the moment Takaichi was in the lead. The Yen gaped from 146 to 149. At 149 I had a chance to not only get out with minor losses but reset. I could have switched to the short side once it broke the prior 150 levels. Instead, I held onto a stale thesis hoping for some kind of bounce to exit on.

The Yen quickly breached 150 plummeting to 153 pushing me out of my contracts on the way down. By the time Yen landed at 153 I was flat. It was here I felt as though a bottom may be forming. I moved on from the loss to focus on what was in front of me. With such a violent move from 149 to 153 the Ministry of Finance could have intervened to “stabilize volatility”. I decided to get long at 153 hoping for a small push to 151 or 150.

I got lucky as I went long at 153USDJPY several things happened:

• Trump threatened China with a 100% Tariffs

• Komeito, a long time coalition partner of the LDP chose to NOT back Takaichi. Meaning she had to find the votes from the other coalitions to cross lower house majority.

These events became a tailwind pushing Yen back to 149. An added bonus during this time was managing to get a few MES(Micro-ES) stink bids on the Friday October-10th sell off. I chose micro because of how violent of a sell off it was. I wanted low leverage and size. I was willing to carry risk overnight into a closed market until Sunday futures open. Betting by Sunday things would have smoothed over.

On both trades I managed to get lucky. I was able to close out of everything by Sunday evening clawing back some of my earlier losses with a few important lessons learned.

• I have to be aware of my sizing. If it’s too small I might drift into autopilot not paying as much attention as I should be.

• The moment my thesis has gone stale I need to cut my losses. The sooner I can mentally reset the sooner I can find a better opportunity instead of crying over spilled milk.

Had I cut my losses immediately I would have had 3 separate chances to not only make back my losses but compound profits.

• The short from 150 to 153 on the Yen

• The long on 153 to 149 on the Yen

• MES stink bids on Oct.10th sell off.

Onwards and upwards.

Current Portfolio Snapshot:

My most concentrated bets: HYPE

Crypto: 69% (nice)

• HYPE: 85%

• ETH: 8%

• BTC: 7%

Equities: 17%

• UNH: 51%

• META: 24%

• MU: 14%

• AMZN: 9%

• INTC: 2%

Active Trading Book: 14% (perps & futures)

• ZT: Long

• 6J: Long

• Flat on perps

Options:

• HYG $79 Puts for Dec.2025 and Mar.2026

Portfolio Reflections:

Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.
Nassim Taleb

Since this is the start of my portfolio updates it’s important to address two things about the portfolio:

• What’s the mission?

• What’s my competitive advantage?

People participate in markets for a number of reasons but I believe it can be condensed into two modes:

Capital Accumulation or Capital Preservation.

My mission is capital accumulation. Why beat around the bush? I’m here to get rich.

This means one thing:

TAKING AGGRESSIVE RISK.

Aggressive risk means I’m not interested in diversification. I don’t care about safe bets. I don’t want a few percent yearly returns. I’m looking to take big swings when I see them.

In my thinking, concentrating your bets decreases your overall risk because if you have a big, massive position, it has your attention. My favorite quote of all time is maybe Mark Twain: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket carefully.’ I tend to think that’s what great investors do.

Stanley Druckenmiller

The ability to take aggressive risk is part of my competitive advantage. I’m not afraid of risk. Nor do I use risk as a way to feed myself dopamine. I don’t care if I lose it all I just want to know what I’m capable of.

My edges comes from my ability to listen to my gut. I trust my instincts more than my mind. I’m often early to trends. I intuit a narrative forming before others. I can sense how others will feel & act before they do. What I’m not however is detail oriented. I’m not big on numbers or valuation. I know this about myself so I try to stay away from games I can’t win.

Being a big picture guy means my game is played by observation. I’ll take my time watching markets develop. I’ll explore any alley I can to understand what story is developing. I’m willing to trade any instrument. It doesn’t have to be just stocks. I’ve traded SOFRs, Yen currency futures and a number of other derivatives. I’m aware I’m often a tourist in these arenas so I’m cautious about overstaying my welcome. Sometimes, my gut will lead me to the edges of what’s investable such as betting big on NFTs or Pokemon cards.

I don’t care about my image as a trader. I only care about making money. Absolute returns matter far more to me than relative. I will participate anywhere there’s an opportunity to make money. It’s all one big adventure to me. Being involved in markets feels like I’m living inside the epic fantasy novels I used to read as a kid. It’s a lot of fun for me.

My Current Bets:

Let’s start with my most concentrated bet:

HYPE.

I’ll link my longer Hyperliquid thesis later but I believe the perps narrative is in early innings. Perps are a solution for a number of participants in crypto. TradFi firms have an easier time providing liquidity using order books rather than AMMs. Traders can use perps as a way to hedge exposure and earn yield in a number of ways. And for active traders perps are a better tool for leverage than memecoins, nfts, amm coins, leveraged ETFs & things like 0dte options.

Every few years crypto rotates from one casino to the next. We started in DeFi Summer of 2020, moved on to NFTs from 2021 to 2022 and then saw the rise of Memecoins from 2023 to 2024.

These assets inherently have leverage built in. They provide high beta for eager traders but are very illiquid. I doubt many care about the asset underneath. They just want exposure to the beta offered. During a time of high volatility these high beta assets provide a lot of excitement. Perps becomes a better tool to express these trades than owning the underlying asset by offering a more liquid ability to get in and out of the trade.

There is a similar effect in futures & options. Traders chase beta. Hungry for leverage. They care little about taking delivery of the asset underneath. Futures provide a very liquid market at 23/5 hours vs equities that only offer access 9:30-4pm ET on open business days.

Hyperliquid offers an elite perps trading solution. Their venue is efficient, liquid and transparent. I’m not worried about getting liquidated on a scam wick. It has proven resilience in times of high stress in the market. They also offer spot trading via Hyperunit, an EVM and custom liquid perps by way of HIP-3. All with lower fees than what may be offered on an opaque centralized exchange.

Unlike many crypto projects Hyperliquid generates income. They drive value back to $HYPE holders via buybacks from that income. It’s a fee generating monster. As of recent stats the daily fees ranges from $3M to $4M a day. That’s annualized to a yearly revenue of ~$1.5B. All of which is driven into buybacks. Consider that these fees are generated regardless of the market’s direction. Even in downturns income will be generated from traders who are hedging, closing trades or entering shorts. A lot like CME or trading desks at big banks that make much of their revenue during periods of heightened volatility.

Right now, there’s little else that excites me in crypto. I don’t care much for this privacy narrative. I would rather just trade the privacy coins on perps until it rotates to something else. (Another advantage of perps is the ability to quickly rotate from one meta to the next).

My ETH and BTC spot are both held on Hyperliquid. I use them to airdrop farm HypeEVM protocols as well as park my cash in crypto until opportunities strike to deploy more into HYPE. With the launch of HIP-3 I see more upside for HYPE. It’s exciting times to see what new products get built on top of custom perps. Such as Equity Perps and Pre-IPO perps. Because of this I have only taken some profits around $50 and continue to ride the rest while using HYPE perps to hedge exposure on downswings.

Onto the rest of the portfolio:

EQUITIES

In equities UNH dominates my allocation. Now as I’ve said before I’m not much of a valuation or stock analysis guy. My thinking was that a 61% drop YTD on a low beta stock like UNH meant much of the bad news was priced in.

I entered at $305 thinking:

• UNH dividend was close to 3% at that price. This is while anticipating FED to begin their cutting cycle soon.

• At 3% yield my cash is at least matching the inflation rate while being exposed to the upside of a turnaround narrative.

• This would allow me to park my cash with exposure to the upside while planning to sell shares as needed to fund new trade ideas.

Of course the 13F filings certainly don’t hurt when you’re in the company of Buffet and Tepper.

As for the rest of my allocation:

This has been a year of change. The status quo has shifted. With that comes a lot of volatility. Which makes it difficult to anticipate what might be ahead. With low visibility conditions it has been hard to hold positions for any period of time. Outside of HYPE I’ve had a tough time settling into any single trade.

At first my trades revolved around defense and LNG. A basket I wish I was still in as the year has played out. I’ve jumped around more than I like. Over the summer I was in neutral until August when I started to buy the dip on LLY while allocating the rest into UNH. With the end of QT coming as well as the FED now on a slow but steady cutting cycle I’ve rotated some of my profits back into growth.

Q3 earnings have done well. It’s clear there’s some AI fatigue. Investors are less starry eyed about the possibilities of AI. They want to see a ROI on these huge increasing AI capex. Despite that fatigue AI build outs have also generated a lot of business. Banks are back in deal making mode. Energy companies are providing a ton of power to these data centers. There’s pick and shovel opportunities to take advantage of.

Overall the rest of the market is also doing well. Consumer spending is stable. Healthcare has had a big boost this season. The trade negotiations have helped our exports. Many of the deals have revolved around buying our LNG as well as increasing defense spending. In my view there’s been a renewed wave of nationalism among many countries. Even Japan wants to boost defense spend to 2% of the nation’s GDP.

Though earnings in both Q2 and Q3 have done well it’s also important to note missed earnings have been getting punished. There’s more discernment from investors. They need to start seeing results. META, FI and a few others have been pummeled by poor earnings.

My current positions:

META:

• META is nothing more than a mean reversion trade. I think it has oversold on post earnings. Meta revenue and profitability are solid outside of the one time tax hit. META has great margins from their ad network. I don’t see that ad revenue slowing down anytime soon. The one time tax hit plus skepticism ROI from AI capex feels overblown.

• It’s impossible to time these things I got in around $646. I chose to own spot so I can ride out volatility as META finds a bottom.

AMZN:

• AMZN is a short term bet that they will outperform earnings expectations. Seeing GOOGL and MSFT cloud rev both knock it out of the park it’s hard to imagine how AWS doesn’t do well. Also, a lot of the spending data I’ve seen has shown consumers are spending more on e-comm than physical retail. Amazon dominates the e-comm space. With AMZN below prior highs it looks mispriced.

• I entered this position at $230

MU:

• This is an idea I’m fiddling with. AI capex isn’t slowing down tomorrow. Hyperscalers have increased capex for next year. Instead of trying to find the winning racehorse so late in the cycle why not bet on the picks and shovels that benefit from all this spending.

• HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) is one of those picks and shovels. Demand is so high it has outstripped supply. HMB is sold out until 2026 from all 3 main suppliers: Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung.

• In trying to find a way to invest in these pick and shovels I first considered LRCX, KLAC and AMAT. Talking with GROK at length. I was worried about the China exposure. Instead settling on on MU due the lowest valuation at 9.8x forward P/E vs semis 25x forward P/E.

• The best risk/reward might be in SK Hynix. There’s an added bonus if KRW strengthens against USD. This is something Gundlach has talked a lot about. Investing in foreign stocks with the local currency. I’ve mulled on it but SK Hynix also has China exposure.

• I worry about China exposure because China has been pushing self-reliance to minimize dependance on US or Western allies like South Korea.

• I’ve been entering MU ~$200

OPTIONS

HYG $79 PUTS - DEC.2025 & MAR.2026

This is more of an insurance policy. Credit spreads have been tight. They’re as low as they’ve been in 10 years. But you never know when cracks will appear. The spreads feel too tight with how long we’ve had high rates for. During JPM’s earnings we heard about the Tricolor write off.

As Dimon said: “When you see one cockroach, there’s probably more.”

On the heels of that earnings call, drama has unfolded around several regional banks with bad fraudulent loans on their books. Thinking about this a bit deeper there could be second order effects. Especially, in the auto lending business. Consider there’s a large number of deportations happening. Many of those deported had some form of a high interest loan on their cars/work trucks. Payments they’re obviously now unable to make. Or they could have just left with the vehicles with no plan to return. Leaving the lenders unable to recoup their losses.

Another dynamic is that parts on newer cars are so expensive that often the car gets totaled out instead of repaired. Auto insurance premiums are only going higher. Insurance rarely pays out the full value of the car. So now an owner must get a new loan on a even more expensive new car with higher interest rates than their original loan. Mix that with an increasing number of layoffs and it could lead to some concern.

Seems like there’s potential for spreads to widen. I like the risk/reward so I’ve put on a few bets.

FUTURES

ZT LONGS

My ZT longs are a bet that once the government shutdown fog clears we will see a further drop in labor. Many of the earnings report this quarter were about cost cutting measures. Seeing huge lay off numbers at AMZN, INTC, etc. So I think despite a hawkish Powell on a Dec cut we will see the markets price that back in.

I prefer to be in ZT over ZN due to the fact we are so focused on immediate FED cuts. Going into next year I am sure we see the curve steepen with a new FED chair. I’d rather be in ZT over longer term.

YEN FUTURES

Ah the Japanese yen, a favorite trade of mine. I’m often in and out of the yen. I think it’s naturally my love for Japan. I like to trade Japanese equities along with the yen as a way to have some skin in the game. It helps me stay on top of the news going on there. Right now my Yen trades are tactical.

The new PM of Japan is a fiscal dove. She wants to boost government spending. This pushes back rate hike expectations from Oct to maybe January of 2026.

(What’s interesting though is that there are now two dissents on the BOJ meetings asking for a hike. It’s pretty rare to see something like that in Japan. As quoted in Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered” . Seems like the culture in Japan is changing. I was shocked to see dissents. It’s something to keep an eye on.)

Anyways, now that the yen is past 150 there will be a point where the yen will weaken too much. As carry traders pile into shorts pushing Yen down further it will force Japan’s Ministry of Finance hands. This has happened a few times in the past.

And they recently put out a report they’re keeping an eye. Let’s assume based on history it will be closer to 157 - 160 levels since we are well past the 150.

Now my advantage here is I can be a nimble little fish in a vast ocean. I can ride along the waves created by bigger whales unlike a large fund that may have a more difficult time maneuvering. I plan to strategically allocate Yen Future longs at opportune times to ride intervention spikes along with any risk off moments that led to a flight into the yen. They’re small trades but profitable.

With Yen near chopping around 154 on the hourly chart it’s a good spot to open small size.

Recent Trades:

My recent trades are linked below.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

New intro coming soon