On the afternoon of 11 August 2026, Roger Federer stopped being a billionaire. He had only recently become one. Federer’s wealth was never really built on tennis prize money, which totalled something like $130 million across twenty-four years, but on endorsements and on one particular investment: a stake of roughly 2.5% in a Swiss running shoe company called On, which he had joined as a co-owner in 2019 after wearing the shoes and then, in the manner of a man with time on his hands, cold-approaching the founders. That stake did what the shoes did, which is to say it went up a great deal. In 2025 Forbes put him across the billion-dollar line. Then On reported its second quarter, the stock fell 20.3% in a single session, and about $52 million of Federer’s paper wealth went with it. Forbes marked him back down to roughly $952 million. I mention this not because anyone should feel sorry for Roger Federer, who is fine, but because it is the most legible way I know to convey the scale of what happened that day. It was the worst single trading day in On’s history since its 2021 IPO. And here is the part that made me want to write this piece: it happened on a quarter in which gross margin hit an all-time company record of 65.4%, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded, net income went from a loss to CHF 105 million, and management raised its profitability guidance for the year. The stock is now $27.41, at Friday 11 September’s close. It set a fresh 52-week low of $26.60 on 10 September, three days ago. It is down roughly 43% in 2026 and 57% from the closing all-time high of $63.62 set on 30 January 2025. I do not own On. My conclusion, my position and one specific reason for the timing of all this are at the end. Not advice, just my homework. Do your own. A garden hose, cut into pieces On was founded in Zurich in 2010 by three Swiss men, one of whom had a specific and unusual problem. Olivier Bernhard was a professional endurance athlete, a multiple duathlon world champion and an Ironman winner, and by the end of his career his body had opinions about running surfaces. He wanted a shoe that landed soft and took off firm, which is close to a contradiction in materials engineering: cushioning absorbs energy on impact, and the energy you absorb on the way down is energy you do not get back on the way up. The prototype, and this detail is real and is now part of the company’s origin liturgy, was a garden hose cut into segments and glued to the sole of an existing running shoe. Hollow tubes that collapse under a heel strike and then lock up when the foot rolls forward. That became CloudTec, the row of hollow pods on the bottom of every On shoe, which is also the single most recognisable piece of industrial design in running footwear. You can identify an On from across a street, which turns out to matter enormously. Bernhard brought in David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti, who had marketing and strategy backgrounds rather than athletic ones, and the three of them built the thing out in a way that looks, in retrospect, almost suspiciously disciplined. They went specialty-running-store first, which is the channel where credibility is granted rather than bought. They priced at the top. They did not discount. They expanded from running into training, then tennis, then apparel, then lifestyle, in that order, which is the order that preserves the performance credential rather than spending it. They listed on the New York Stock Exchange on 15 September 2021. Read full deep dive here https://cycledesk.substack.com/p/on-holding-onon-the-difference-between?r=7unzzg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueread more
Life is amazing! 🎉 I had the honor of meeting up with my friend @ryne for our annual Starbucks coffee. ☕️ I think this is year 3? 🕰️ This time around, we enjoyed Starbucks at Aria. 🎰 Fun fact: Realty Income, a REIT I own, has a preferred equity investment in Aria/City Center. I’m honored to call Ryne my friend, and he is an inspirational investor, athlete, and overall person. I’m grateful for the friendships I have made thanks to my investing, perhaps the greatest dividend of the dividend journey. 📈 (Disc: I’m long $O and $SBUX. Not investment advice.) #dividend #dividends #stocks #investing #retirewithryne
📊 Long-Term Investing: The Power of Thorough Analysis When it comes to long-term investing, understanding the fundamentals of a stock is crucial. It’s not just about jumping on trends; it’s about making informed decisions based on solid data. This chart breaks down the essential financial statements—Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement—that every investor should analyze before committing to a stock. 🔍 Balance Sheet: This tells you about the company’s financial health, specifically its assets, liabilities, and equity. A healthy balance sheet is a sign of stability and resilience. 💸 Income Statement: This shows the company’s profitability by detailing revenue, expenses, and profits. A strong income statement indicates a company that’s generating profits, a key factor for long-term growth. 💰 Cash Flow Statement: This reveals how the company manages its cash, from operations to investments and financing. Positive cash flow is essential for sustaining operations and fueling future growth. By mastering these fundamentals, you can make smarter investment choices that stand the test of time. Remember, successful long-term investing isn’t about timing the market; it’s about time in the market, supported by thorough analysis. $VGT$TXN$QQQ$AAPL$META #InvestSmart #LongTermInvesting #FinancialLiteracy #StockMarketAnalysisread more
It's been a few weeks since we started one of these series… “Hedge Fund Hunt” took a lot of effort and I needed a break 😅 Now that the Q2 hunt is over I'm back with time on my hands and a lot of research already underway to discover new hidden gems that can behave positively when the times get tough or at least stand their ground during an economical downturn. I’m going to cover a number of stocks in this series that fall into 1 of 2 categories: 1. Truly counter cycle - It goes up when the market goes down… these are companies that thrive in a recession. 2. Defensive/Low beta - These are not ones that thrive in a downturn, but rather hold their ground when the times get tough because consumers will keep buying. Now I know what some of you are thinking... Here’s another post telling us about Walmart and Dollar General... If that's what you think then you don't know me very well 😁😁 Every company I share in this series will be one that isn't hyped or commonly known and definitely not on Blossom’s top 50... you’ll be happily surprised I promise. And if you want a teaser just check out $ECPG for now and how it's behaving right now. First hidden gem drops Wednesday, follow my account to keep track if interested. read more
I am not gonna lie,I am low-key very happy that the clarity act didn’t get enough votes, just gives me more time to prepare.  i’m personally a big believer in tokenization of assets in the future, definitely gonna take a lot of time and I am OK with (hopefully it dips more 🤣). I hope everybody’s having a great week happy investing! 
Ultra high yield investing isn't only a different investing strategy than dividend growth or growth investing. Rather it requires a different sort of investing philosophy than the typical investor has. It requires a different way of thinking about what a "return" is and when you get to count it. The core of the strategy is the ability to receive realized return through dividends due to great performance, because great performance makes dividends more sustainable, and that allows the "payoff" to happen more quickly. When the underlying holdings are performing well, the distributions flowing into your account aren't a depletion of the portfolio. They're a reflection of it. Performance funds the payout, and the payout is where your ROI becomes real. With a growth portfolio, you can get ROI too, but if you don't sell, it is unrealized. It exists on a screen. It's an effect you can look at but can't touch unless you want to lose exposure to the asset. Occasionally, a vocal minority of growth investors like to tell me my strategy is inferior to theirs. A favorite line goes something like this: "You would have had more liquidity if you bought growth equivalents like $SOXX and $DRAM because those investments outperformed yours in total return." My answer is, "Oh really? If I haven't sold shares and the gain is unrealized, it is not liquidity. It's unrealized liquidity. Could I potentially liquidate SOXX and DRAM? Sure. But if I do, I am losing exposure and if I want more exposure, I will have to buy more shares later on. There are many people who are okay with that, but that isn't the game I am playing." (And, if you are curious of what I am invested in, it's $CHPY, $DRMY, $GPTY, and $YRAM) That's the trap growth investors don't always acknowledge. If they do outperform, the returns sit in the share price, and the only way to convert it into spendable cash is to give up the very thing generating it. Sell shares, lose exposure. Keep the shares, keep the appreciation, but keep it unrealized. The dollar figure that makes them feel liquid is downstream of the shares. The shares are the cause; the dollars are the effect. For point of clarification, when a dividend is paid out, the value of the investment is reduced by it. Your dividend is depleting cash. This is why you need the underlying to perform well or else your dividend stream will shrink over time if you don't reinvest enough of it to keep your capital stable. When the underlying doesn't do well, even 100% reinvestment may not be enough to keep your capital stable during the downturn. Dividends are also paid out on a per share basis. The more shares you have, the more dividends you will get. And, if your investment is increasing in value, staying flat, or only going down moderately, the effects of the dividends can be quite nice. Psychologically, liquidating through distributions is easier. I don't have to make a sell decision. I don't have to forfeit a single share. The portfolio pays me out of its own performance, and my exposure stays exactly where it was. If I hold on to the shares long enough and my investment performs well, I will reach a return on investment where my paid out dividends exceed my initial cost basis. This is not theoretical as it would be if a growth investor's investments reached a value 2x their cost basis. Rather, it is a realized return on investment because returns from dividends are realized the moment they are paid out. Studies have shown that the majority of retirees feel more comfortable with collecting income from dividends than they do selling shares. None of this is to say growth investing is bad. It's a great strategy, and I'd never tell someone their approach is wrong for their goals. And, dividend investing is not objectively superior to growth investing. This is because the fruit of any investing strategy should be weighed by the goals of the investor. But since a vocal minority of growth are often quick to criticize mine, well, I enjoy counter punching. As a philosopher named Gordon Haddon Clark once said, "I love a good brawl." The two main considerations in my strategy are total returns and liquidity. I target outperforming sectors, and sometimes individual companies, so my portfolio can potentially outperform the market and give me the option to extract more liquidity without selling shares. Liquidity on demand, on a per share basis where exposure never shrinks. Many people who invest or advise others on investing think about the accumulation phase of investing and not the distribution phase of investing. I tend to think more about the latter than the former. The reason why is because I am thinking about what I can do with my money and how I can do whatever I want with it. I don't want millions in unrealized gains that I'll never touch in my life time. I'm not trying to win a contest. I'm trying to benefit from my investments in the easiest way I can while still meeting my investment goals. If I do well, I can get a return on investment in less than five years with ultra high yield funds (20% plus yields). In this case, When I say ROI, I mean distributions received versus cost basis, not price appreciation. By that measure, I'm currently at about 80% ROI since August of 2024: roughly 80 cents of every dollar I put in has already come back to me as cash distributions, while my shares, my exposure, remain fully intact (and have appreciated overall). That is a realized return. No selling required. And, the investing is still paying me despite me having taken more than my cost basis. It is house money at this point. I plan on adding $15,000 in November or December, so that statistic will likely change. That's the nature of the approach: it stays in motion, and the outlook that makes it work is the one that measures progress by what has actually been paid out, not by what could be, if only I were willing to sell the shares that generate it.read more
I’ve gotten to know a bunch of you through Blossom events, messages, and just being around the community, but I realized I’ve never actually shared much about myself or how I ended up here. For those I haven’t met yet, I’m Tim, I’m 20, and I work as an intern on the Brand Partnerships team here at Blossom. My journey here has been a pretty unconventional one. Growing up, my entire world was gaming. I started playing Fortnite competitively at a pretty young age, eventually playing professionally and getting signed to some of the biggest organizations in esports, including Overtime. Then, before high school, I decided to walk away from it. I had spent so much of my childhood behind a computer that I wanted to experience a completely different side of life. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with business. From flipping cars, to running Amazon FBA, to starting and eventually selling a landscaping business, I was constantly trying something new. Some things worked, a lot didn’t, but I loved figuring out how to build something from nothing. That same curiosity eventually led me to investing. I became fascinated by the businesses behind the stocks. How they made money, why some companies won while others didn’t, and ultimately where I wanted to put my own money. That interest eventually led me into finance and most recently private equity. For a while, I thought I’d stay on the traditional finance path. Then I joined Blossom. It was a completely different direction, but looking back, it brought together pretty much everything I loved: investing, entrepreneurship, technology, and building. And it’s genuinely been some of the most fun I’ve ever had. I’ve gotten to work on things I never expected to be doing at 20, travel across the country for BlossomCon, and learn firsthand what it takes to build a company. But easily the best part has been the people. Working alongside @tigertim , @maxstocks, @brandon , and the rest of the team has given me some of my favourite memories. Everyone here genuinely cares about what we’re building, moves insanely fast, and still manages to have a ton of fun doing it. The culture being built at Blossom is something really special, and I’m incredibly excited to see where we take it. I also want to hear from you guys. If there’s anything you love about Blossom, think we could do better, or want to see us build in the future, drop it below or shoot me a message. I’d genuinely love to hear it, and you’ll definitely be seeing more of me on here :)read more
3 years ago this month ... two major life events happened to me... I retired after a 37 year career... and in the same year 8 months before I retired... I decided to TOTALLY OVERHAUL all my bank manged portfolio into my PIIVERSE Income portfolio... including commuting my pension into it. looking back after 3 years... my retirement transition journey... and how my income portfolio has been successful beyond what I imagined... https://youtu.be/Y4ePJ27XlXE
I'm not comparing company size. I'm comparing the TRAJECTORY. To me, IonQ today is Nvidia in 2015. Same disbelief. Same execution. And almost nobody has understood it yet. The numbers: • 2024: $43.1M revenue, +95% YoY, beating guidance • Q1 2026: $64.7M • Q2 2026: $80M revenue, +287% YoY, 5th consecutive record quarter • RPO (future revenue): $485M, up from $122M a year ago • 2026 guidance: raised from $260-270M to $280-290M, and now $450-460M after SkyWater This is not hype. This is scaling. This is execution. The checkmate move: SkyWater On July 31, 2026 IonQ completed the acquisition of SkyWater Technology, the largest U.S.-based chip foundry, for ∼$1.8B. The first and only fully vertically integrated quantum platform company in the world. Jensen did it with CUDA and owning the full stack. Niccolò is doing it with quantum, owning the foundry, the manufacturing, the platform. Google and IBM do research papers. IonQ does revenue. If quantum is the next AI, this is the CUDA moment. Not financial advice. Just pattern recognition. My personal thesis.read more
Have you bought just ONE share of at least ONE energy company yet??? 😂🤣 Or is your stubborness standing in the way? Natural selection is alive and well! This is the Way! 🏄🌊🏄♂️🌊🏄♀️🌊
Every day there's another headline about how AI is going to kill us all... with Sam Altman recently delaying the OpenAI IPO and implying that AI has a 10% chance of killing everyone by the end of the decade. Every time I see this kind of stuff I somewhat wonder how much of it is a real risk vs a marketing play to pump the stock... One Bloomberg opinion piece calls it "AI Panic Marketing": basically the message that "we're building a powerful, godlike AI that could end the world" is a form of advertising. On the other side, more than 1,000 employees across the frontier labs signed a letter this summer warning that competitive pressure was preventing anyone from slowing down, so I'm not really sure what side I'm on What do you guys think?
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-08-11-IBM-and-Together-AI-Sign-Multi-Year-Agreement-to-Scale-Open-Source-AI-Inference-with-NVIDIA-AI-Infrastructure-on-IBM-Cloud I missed this one, it's a little old (like a month ago) but this is a powerful partnership considering how IBM is revolutionalizing the chip-making space. "IBM announced a collaboration with Together AI to deliver IBM and NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Under a multi-year $240M agreement between IBM and Together AI, IBM is positioned to deploy a large cluster of NVIDIA HGX B300 systems on IBM Cloud with expected availability in Q1 2027. Together AI will use this cluster to provide open-source model inference. This deployment is the first dedicated, large-scale cluster built for inference on IBM Cloud using HGX B300 systems and NVIDIA Spectrum-XTM Ethernet networking. According to NVIDIA, it is built to deliver 30x more AI factory output compared to prior generations." $IBM $NVDA
I see many beginners posting that they’re new to investing and don’t know where to start. 🤔 As someone who was in a similar situation just a few months ago and learned, here are the 4 ETF types (& ETFs) that are popular among long term investors 😃 : 1) S&P 500: US: $VOO / $SPY / $SPLG Canadian: $VFV / $ZSP / $TPU 2) GROWTH / TECH: US: $QQQ / $VUG / $VGT / $SCHG Canadian: $QQC / $HXQ / $TEC / $ZUQ 3) DIVIDENDS: US: $SCHD / $VYM / $DGRO Canadian: $VDY / $XEI 4) ALL IN ONE / BASKET / Global Exposure: US: $VT / $AVGE Canadian: $ZEQT / $XEQT / $TGRO / $VEQT / $ZGQ I noticed many people following this type of a basic / uncomplicated portfolio and are doing really well for themselves 🔥 For % allocation, you can divide evenly among the ETF categories or allocate a higher % based on your preferences. Just DCA regularly and you should be good. 😎 Some people even just put it all into an all in one etf like $XEQT. This is also a good approach - it is much simpler and it works. Ultimately, it comes to whatever you prefer 🙂 Oh and yea, there are overlaps, but I don’t think there is anything wrong in that though - it would just count as doubling down on good things. 💯 I’m sharing with you all what helped me, but don’t forget to do your own research too! 🙏🏼 read more
I’ve been saying this since Elon started working on robots and all the companies creating AI. We’re all focused on making money from tech companies but at what cost?
Originally published on Blossom on March 24th, 2024 Please find retrospective commentary at the end. My aim is to help investors avoid the common, conventional wisdom pitfalls – that are always present – but really start to be more frequently broadcasted to the masses at this point in the cycle. As we continue to melt up in these final 6 to 8 quarters before the cycle completion, activity, news flow, speculation, fear, greed, and irrationality really gets going. It is just starting on the cusp of a prolonged period of a fevered pitch. So you may ask yourself, why would I want to buy into a period of irrationality? The simple answer is because you can literally log a decade worth of returns in this final phase. Don’t believe me? Go back and study the culmination of real estate/ banking crisis cycles going back to the markets beginning. Clockwork. So while the conventionalists (those that preach the word and lessons of “conventional wisdom” found in any average investing for dummies book) are building energy right now for a full out assault on your thinking and your portfolio by keeping you out of stocks, you need to keep a clear mind, study for yourself, and continue to be a participant in this TIME of great returns. By the way, most of these conventionalists are good, well-intentioned, intelligent soldiers that don’t even know they are enlisted! Instead, we take profitable actions. If you follow my portfolio, you can see how it is probably graded (based on types of companies, risk levels, AND percent of holdings) MORE CONSERVATIVE than your portfolio - yet the returns are greater. So please don’t take this post as a calling to jump head first into speculative stocks. In this part of the meltup phase the conventionalists are going to harp on you to protect yourself and run into SPY ETFs. While some of that is always a solid holding, you are in a momentum, stock picker’s market. This is a time where the SPY can move sideways or slightly up for a long time but select stocks can rocket. They’ll talk to you about investing being a marathon, and after 40 years it really begins to compound, etc. But if you are an observer in this only 5x in a lifetime event, you will likely regret. Because once the cycle completes, it typically takes 6-7 years to take out new market index highs. If you don’t believe that, then go study the ticker tape. It’s all right there in front of you to learn, perfectly recorded for anyone that takes the TIME. So don’t miss out on this period of AMAZING returns and give your nest egg a boost before the period of stagnancy that follows. Because it will take TIME to work through the mess that leads to this collapse - it ALWAYS (that’s right, I used ALWAYS) does. For a specific approach that can help you position right now, read my earlier posts and track my trades, especially the one on Follow the Sector. Remember, just 1% of outperforming the S&P 500 each year can have a ground impact to your nest egg. We’ll take on that exercise in an upcoming post, but for now, let’s dig in on individual stocks that have rising earnings estimates and a rising 1-month chart as a good place to find potential buys. Make sure you dig in further on business fundamentals after that before pulling the trigger. Retrospective commentary - September 14th 2026 As you know if you have read KTS #2, #3 and #5 as well as our very first publication – the self-proclaimed greatest post on this platform, "They Are Telling Us – So What Are You Waiting For?" – select areas of the market, the ones we pointed out, have indeed been outperforming ever since we started sharing our strategies and knowledge. But this is Beskar 101 and as this KTS #6 suggests, we have much more potential than just being ETF pickers. Choosing the right sector is just picking the low hanging fruit. Still better than the rotten and crushed apples on the ground (i.e. Index Funds), but not as good as the crispy and juicy hidden gems. Which we thrive for. We pointed out in this KTS #6 that we would be in a momentum, stock pickers' market at that TIME. Beskar, can you give us some retrospective performance on your picks?? How did that “digging for individual stocks” go for you, huh? Did you find the juicy and crispy hidden gems? Of course we did. If you take the TIME to dig into the early transactions logged on Blossom when we started sharing our journey, you’ll recognise the tickers in the chart below. All our early followers can confirm to you that these are all stocks that Beskar Capital was accumulating. $FTI , $USAS , $EOSE , $RYCEF … when you think of these stocks, you automatically think: BESKAR CAPITAL. Just like Coca-Cola immediately evokes Warren Buffett, or Dunkin Donuts Peter Lynch. All right, enough talking. Take the TIME to study the chart attached. Okay, Beskar, I see you. All these green columns definitely outperformed their sectors/subsectors (that are shown in blue just right of each stock in the chart). Indeed they did. And not by a narrow margin. We mentioned that outperforming the S&P 500 by a mere 3% has massive consequences for your returns. It can fast-forward your retirement by A DECADE. Now imagine what HUNDREDS of percent of outperformance can do in 10 years! It can be life-changing. It truly can. If you want to know more, I suggest you read this post: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/Why-Outperforming-the-SandP-500-Index-Matters__POST-1712844746313-WeQtSmOp_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML You see, most sectors/subsectors have a few workhorses that drive the whole sector’s performance. These workhorses pull the dead weight (poor sector performers) within the sector/subsector in order to post incredible relative outperformance for the sector versus the index. So these individual workhorse stocks???? Absolutely amazing performance. These are where we want to be. And the key to our approach is being able to read and listen to the markets to find them. This whole series, which we are sharing again up to KTS #91, is exactly about showing you how we do it… and how you can do it too, if you are willing to put in the work. We no longer share our trades on social media, so if you're interested in knowing what Beskar Capital is buying NOW and in discovering the crispy, juicy hidden gems, our membership gives you access to all our trades and rationales. As our members know, our portfolio has been undergoing a slow but major transformation that is not reflected on our current displayed Blossom holdings, which are not updated anymore. What about the cycle and the meltup phase you're also referring to in this KTS #6, Beskar? What about the "activity, news flow, speculation, fear, greed, and irrationality really get going" part? Well, think about the last two years, right up to this past week. The volatility, the fear, the greed, the irrationality, the news flow – it has all been on steroids, hasn't it? Liberation Day, tariffs, the federal debt, escalating geopolitical tensions, AI, precious metals… all of this while the market keeps recording all-TIME highs. And the volatility: we've witnessed a fair number of S&P 500 constituents moving double-digit percentages in a single DAY. Younger investors and recent market participants can't yet appreciate that this type of volatility IS NOT NORMAL. And now it's yields and inflation and WAR, while companies keep presenting a positive outlook for the future (think Oracle this past week). But it doesn't feel as safe now, does it? You feel like you should be more cautious. We can all sense that the tension is rising, that the boiling water is starting to make the lid seriously rattle. This is the meltup. This is why we are fast-forwarding the KTS series – so that investors who want to take the TIME to protect their nest egg can still do it… in TIME. But the tsunami is coming, and even fast-forwarded, this re-edition can't come fast enough. So if you really want to be positioned for this cycle, access to our current trades and to the most recent KTS — all available on our website — could be the best way to do so. I always give you my best. 🏆 This is the Way! 🏄🌊 read more
I’m not looking for the stock with the most hype next week. I’m looking for companies I believe can become materially larger businesses over the next 5–10 years. These are some of my favorite true growth stocks in the market right now: 1/ SoFi Technologies $SOFI SoFi is one of my favorite growth stocks because I think it is still early in building a much larger financial ecosystem around a member base that continues to scale rapidly. 2/ Advanced Micro Devices $AMD AMD is already a major company, but I still think Data Center, AI accelerators, EPYC, networking, and rack-scale systems can drive another big phase of growth from here. 3/ Oscar Health $OSCR Oscar is one of my favorite growth names because it is pairing strong top-line growth with dramatically improving insurance economics, which can make the business much more valuable over time. 4/ Zeta Global $ZETA Zeta is still relatively small compared to the size of the opportunity in front of it, and I think its mix of AI, first-party data, and enterprise relationships gives it a long runway. 5/ ServiceNow $NOW ServiceNow is already a high-quality growth business, but I think AI can make the platform even more important as enterprises automate more workflows across more departments. 6/ Snap $SNAP Snap is one of the more speculative names here, but nearly a billion monthly users, improving monetization, and growing direct revenue streams give it much more long-term upside than most investors think. 7/ AppLovin $APP AppLovin is one of the most interesting growth businesses in the market to me because its ad engine has become extremely powerful, highly profitable, and potentially expandable beyond its original niche. 8/ CoreWeave $CRWV CoreWeave fits the definition of a true growth stock almost perfectly, with enormous AI infrastructure demand and a business that could still be in the very early innings if execution stays strong. 9/ CrowdStrike $CRWD CrowdStrike is one of my favorite large-cap growth stocks because cybersecurity remains a huge secular growth market and the company keeps expanding what customers can do on the platform. 10/ Toast $TOST Toast is interesting to me because it is doing much more than just point-of-sale software, and I think the company still has a lot of runway as it deepens its role across restaurant operations and payments.read more
Income investing is not the problem, it can provide an investor with cash flow and remove some decision-making, which can be beneficial. But there are things it cannot do that some investors assume it can, and I believe that is largely due to how many funds are marketed and the rise of social media. Older income investors have seen this before. A long time ago, many funds were playing with higher distribution rates, and many of the problems that people are now seeing with covered call funds are not new. People just have short memories and do not look at the past, so we are dealing with a similar issue once again. A distribution rate is not the same thing as income, and the way to know whether your fund is producing enough return to support its distribution is to look at total return. The problem is that total return is a trailing metric. We don't know in advance whether the fund will earn enough to support its distribution rate, and there can be periods where a fund is crushing it and other periods where it goes through years of underperformance. It can be the same fund. While the fund you are investing in today might be killing it, in a year or two it might not be, and that could be due to any number of reasons. The more thematic the fund is, the more likely money is to move in and out of that sector compared with a fund that is more broadly diversified. I've seen two posts recently that show one of the biggest problems in income investing: investors misunderstanding distribution yield and total return. One post was from an investor who said they were already generating about $1,200 a month from covered calls and believed that would allow them to retire much sooner with far less money invested than people normally say they need. This is something that is often pushed by retail investors, and I have yet to see a fund company come out and say anything similar. They generally talk about total return as well. That is more than likely related to the regulatory constraints they operate under. The second post was much more intentional. The investor named specific funds and said their goal was to eventually generate $400 a month in distributions to pay their car insurance. That example is easier to look at because we can actually take the fund, its distribution, the amount being invested, and start to see where the math begins to break down. The fund currently pays $0.255 per share twice per month and is trading at $22.82, giving it a current annualized distribution rate of about 26.8%. They want to generate $400 a month to pay for their car insurance. Starting with an existing portfolio of about $1,280, adding $100 every two weeks, and reinvesting all of the twice-monthly distributions, the portfolio could theoretically grow to around $18,000 in roughly 3.5 years if the share price stayed around $22.82 and the $0.255 distribution remained unchanged. Those last two points are important because since the fund launched in this current bull market, the unit price has dropped about 8%, and the distribution has already been reduced once. Now fast-forward and assume they dropped the whole amount in today and were generating $400 a month. If they withdrew the full $400 every month, that would be $4,800 per year, or almost 27% of an $18,000 portfolio. For that withdrawal rate to be sustainable without steadily consuming the portfolio, the investment would have to generate roughly that amount through actual total return over time. Simply distributing 27% does not mean the portfolio earned 27%. There was a recent YouTube video where the person mentioned seeing an ad showing a 13% distribution yield and thinking, "How is this possible?" They investigated, learned about covered calls, decided that it was possible, and so began their journey. Not once while they were telling the story did they mention looking at the fund's total return or even talking about it, only the advertised distribution yield. That is the exact issue that has been a long-standing problem in the income investing space: focusing on how much a fund distributes without first asking how much the investment is actually earning. Fund companies, when they go on interviews and sit on panels, often tell investors to look at total return and not just the distribution yield. There is a whole thing about not making portfolio decisions based on the distribution yield. Yet many funds are marketed heavily using the distribution yield rather than total return. That is somewhat understandable because future total return is unknown and historical total return is a trailing metric. You could have a great total return for a few years, and then it could be horrible and the fund could erode its NAV. Retail investors become very effective marketers for these products. They can make aggressive or just plain ridiculous claims about what is sustainable, focus entirely on yield, and build entire YouTube channels or social media accounts around how much "income" a portfolio produces. Fund companies are incentivized to gather more assets under management because that generates more fees, and they can benefit from that attention without directly making those claims themselves. They can appear on those channels and talk about total return without substantiating the creator's claims, but simply appearing can make it seem like they support them. Looking at your portfolio and saying it pays you $5,000 a month means nothing if you have to reinvest the full $5,000 to maintain the capital. I know there are a lot of people who do not like Adriano or his investing style, and I would call him more of a covered call investor than an income investor since he doesn’t really diversify his sources of income. But on his channel, at least, he isn’t making ridiculous claims. He continuously mentions that total return is what matters. He walks people through how to calculate the total return and while you might not agree with how he invests or what he invests in at least you can’t say he’s out making outlandish unsupported claims about what income investing can actually do. If your total return over time is sufficient to support the amount you are spending, you can make the strategy work. Could you have made more investing in another fund with uncapped upside? Sure. But will the portfolio still support your spending? If the answer is yes and that fits your lifestyle, then who cares? The problem is when you are watching channels that aren’t looking at the fund’s total return at all. They are talking almost entirely about the yield and basing their investment decisions on the fund’s advertised distribution rate. That isn’t doing anyone any favors. At the end of the day, income investing is not the problem. The problem is confusing the amount a fund distributes with the amount the investment actually earns. There is nothing wrong with wanting cash flow, using covered calls, or choosing a fund that pays a higher distribution if it fits your goals. But the distribution itself does not tell you whether the strategy is working. read more
Just watched Jensen Huang at the All In Summit hosted by Chamath. He doesn’t believe in any “AI needs to slow down” Partly because his own company is $NVDA haha Another funny bit was that Trump called him live during his interview and said “He can create the best AI chip in the world but can’t figure out how to put me on speakerphone.”
$QQQ just erased half of its losses as Trump just posted: "The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel”" A lot of stocks are bouncing 🤣
TL;DR Will re-buy in 35-45 days though. Since I started to document my investing journey on Blossom for nearly 3 years now, I’ve always been very transparent about my losses and gains, so I thought I would share a little more about my tax-loss harvesting plan with you! As you know, I thought that space stocks crashing 30% crash in early June was basically the greatest deal ever with some companies trading at more juicy metrics in a long time, so I bought even more (on margin, but not much) The thing is that space stocks kept falling double digits, so as my TFSA shrinks, so the collateral available on my margin. Plus the collateral decreased further as my $LUNR position shrank inside my margin too. I was getting more and more in the over-leveraged territory, but somehow, and for those wondering, I managed to never get the special call from Wealthsimple, but I was not far away 😅 My $LUNR position in my margin account ended up down around 60%. Small caps and space stocks have been hit hard by the SpaceX IPO, macro uncertainty, fears of rate hikes, etc. Meanwhile, $LUNR now trades at roughly a 3.5x forward P/S, while many other space stocks trade at significantly higher multiples around 75x ($RKLB) to 150x ($ASTS) and even 420x (hey $SPCE) $LUNR is also expecting positive adjusted EBITDA and roughly 4x revenue growth for full-year 2026. Btw, the stock has a $1.8B backlog which is more than half their market cap 🤦♂️ So yes, I still think $LUNR is insanely undervalued, which is exactly why I didn’t want to sell! This was for context. Earnings are still about 60 days away, I don’t really see the macro environment improving much before November and I currently have a couple of grands in losses I can potentially use for tax-loss harvesting. So here’s the strategy I chose: 1. I (temporarily) sold the $LUNR position in my margin account that was down around 60% to harvest the loss. 2. Since I can’t repurchase the same position within 30 days without risking the superficial loss rule, I’ll probably wait around 35–40 days just to be safe. 3. The risk is obviously that $LUNR surges higher during that period and I lose the chance to buy back at these levels. But if the stock falls I can potentially rebuild the position at an even lower price. Time will tell! 4. In the meantime, I continue to hold 400 shares of $LUNR in my TFSA. If $LUNR increases, so the collateral in my margin. Finally taking a decision on this feels like a relief. Sometimes you just have to take advantage of the opportunities you have to realize losses when it makes sense 🫡 Looking forward to re-increase my $LUNR in 35-40 days before earnings.read more
