Episode 11: End of Year Investor Round-Table Bonanza

Hey guys, and welcome to episode 11 of Shooting the Bull Pod with Drowsy and Bear. As promised, we've got quite the episode for you all. We've got a star studded cast all behind the scenes right now doing their makeup to get extra ready for a great show. But before we talk about the format and before we introduce the guests, Bear and I just wanted to say a happy holidays, a happy new year to all our listeners. It's been just an unbelievable first year of podcasting for you all. It's been great to get to know you all. It's been great to connect and hopefully some of our banter and some of our ramblings have helped you investment-wise. So before starting Bear, anything sentimental to add? No, it's been a great six or possibly seven months or so. I had a chance to do the what is it? Generation Z thing, Alpha, whatever, but I don't understand it. So I skipped right over that. But no, thanks for being along for the ride. This has been a lot of fun. So for today's show, Bear and I are going to do something different rather than having one guest on, which is kind of our MO. We decide to have three distinguished guests on each representing a little bit of a different type of investing, each finding success in their own realm, and each really great at explaining their thinking. And we thought it would be really helpful as we kind of look back at 2025 and as investors planned for 2026 to bring that variety of investing thought into one place. So each of our three guests, which I'll introduce in a sec, have the same set of questions that we're going to talk about. We've asked them some questions to look back at 2025 and some questions to call out some themes and some predictions for 2026. So we'll kind of go through each of those with the guests and we'll back and forth and we'll do our usual shooting the bull pod banter as we go. So with that, our first guest and we're very thankful to have him on his Brian Stofl. He's a former teacher and current financial educator who runs the stock investing mentor program with long term mindset. And Brian's videos are an absolute must watch that Bear and I gawk about, especially during earnings times or whenever a stock falls for no reason. Brian's account is the first one we turn to. So Brian, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, you bet. Thanks for those kind words. I appreciate it. Happy to be here. I also, in ancient history, called Brian, my favorite Molly fool author on Saul's board a couple times because of some great writeups that from a long time ago, pay calm if you remember that. It was the beginning of SAS. It was back when as long as you put that, you know, SAS, it was like AI today. Those were good days. We've also got coming, coming even more directly from Saul's board. And also from the YouTube channel and Twitter X account growth investing mastery. We have WPR joining us. Please welcome. Thank you for, thank you for being here. And if you want to say something so people recognize your voice, that would be great. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be chatting with you guys. Awesome. I really enjoyed the YouTube videos you've been putting out and WPR has been contributing more than anyone, I would say, to Saul's board the last couple years as I have and others have definitely slacked off. But one of the Saul's board OGs, he's been, he does a lot of other things in life. He's had many, many careers, many lifetimes, but you probably know him as stock novice. Welcome to the conversation. Thank you so much for being here. You can mention anything that you're doing or just go with your stock novice street cred that you've built up over many years. Well, first of all, I appreciate the invite. I really enjoyed this series. I think that the way Baron drowsy, obviously with very distinct styles, but able to augment each other to kind of come up. And I'm actually looking forward not only to the conversation today because I think there's different styles represented, but I think the questions that you guys sent out that I know we're going to get into are going to to be interesting to hear as well from those different perspectives and see where there's some alignment. But yeah, we just really appreciate the introduction. A lot to Saul's board and the Motley Fool and really have come to value the power of crowdsourcing in a lot of these conversations and a lot of these forums are really looking forward to the conversation today. I mean, us too. And as our wives would tell us Baron are just a big ring-old couple, old married couple. So I'm glad you've loved the show. We've loved doing it too. So okay, let's get to the meat and bones of the show. So the first question we wanted to get our panelists thinking about looking back on 2025 and what made the biggest impression with them. So with that to kick off the conversation, Brian, what stocks or theme surprised you the most in 2025? I mean, I think if you just pull up a chart of what the markets did in 2025 and things going to stick out above everything else, which is the dip that happened around liberation day. And I think I think what surprised me the most, and I have to watch about the lesson that I learned here because what I'm going to say is what's surprised me the most is the fact that it doesn't feel like another shoe fell. You know, it doesn't feel like there was some sort of externality that came out of this shock to the system that was big. I mean, look, there are probably people listening to this or they're like, hey, my life has changed a whole bunch because of this or they're in an industry or what have you. But kind of writ large, I'm a little bit surprised by that. At the same time, I will say that the lesson, the tough lesson to learn is I remember I was surprised by the same thing when nothing happened because of all the stimulus that went out in 2020. And it turns out I just I just need to wait a little bit longer. And then of course that showed up. So I reserve the right to look back three months from now and be like, oh, there's the other shoe. But I was still surprised that there wasn't another shoe that really fell. Part of that also just throughout there could just be that there weren't there weren't like midterm elections or anything like that that could count as a quote unquote other shoe. Interesting. Yeah. That that was quite a theme and something we all reacted to a lot at the time. And turned out to really just be one of the many dips, probably the biggest dip that a lot of people ended up buying. So we can do this however we want just somebody jump in here comment or or give your theme. So Brian, one of the things and I wrote down my answers and I won't go too in depth on them, but not only did that kind of April tariff tantrum cause quite a stir, but kind of not matter in the long term trajectory, but it also kind of hid at something that I pride in myself on. And maybe it was a bit backwards where everything was going down the drain very quickly. These high quality names were falling like crazy. And I deployed all my capital in the highest of high quality names, which was never a wrong move, but Amazon and Mercado Libre and Google all fell and those are all the main ones I added to. But if you look at some of the names that if you had that high conviction and some of these AI plays going into this, the austere labs, the credo, the celesticas, I mean those guys are off the lows by five X those those are all percent. And I don't think it's ever a wrong move to go in and say, Amazon is now cheaper and you know this company's going to be around next year where some of these other companies might not be, but there was just crazy returns to be had. If you had the knowledge of some of these companies and conviction to kind of dive in a bit on them. Yeah, you know, the thing I will say to that because I agree with you that I mean, but we have hindsight and that's pretty convenient. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with claiming that you backed up the truck on the Stere labs in April 2025 and you've got a multi-bagger. That's great. But to use the baseball analogy, a lot of us came from the Motley Fool. I remember hearing David Gardner often use baseball as an analogy. I mean, if you put the money into Mercado Libre and Amazon a stock like that, I mean, what you're really doing is you're you're saying there's normally that might be a 300 hitter because it was down so much you've got like an 800 hitter stepping into the box. Just that a Stere labs might have been a 300 hitter, but there was a good chance that we're going to hit it past the state lines and they just happen to hit it past the state lines and that's that's great. But you got to understand the role that that plays and look, if I was a younger investor, I would have probably made moves like that. Luckily, I've been doing this for long enough that I don't need someone to come and hit it across state lines. If I can buy an Amazon and know that it's like hitting 800 and it might just be a double, it might not be a home run, it might not be a grand slam, that's fine with me. And maybe I'll tie this together because that fit in my kind of observations as well. I was I think for me as an investor, but I think for all of us that have been managing for a long time, I think 2022 and 2023 were the years of like macro. It really was the first time for a lot of us going I mean, I've been doing this since the mid 90s and just the interest rates and the macro cycle and all those things really took effect. If I had to put something on this year, this year's markets, it would probably be this is the most maybe news cycle sensitive market that I can remember ever and I mean, literally like a tweet would come out, you know, from the president and all the sudden, you know, the market's swinging like crazy. And I think it's the most we've ever or the most at least I've ever seen interesting like the Fed meetings and just things that are going on the news cycle this year really created some volatility. At least as volatile as I can remember due to news, due to just news being released and not even news. And sometimes it had some verification. So, but I think, you know, listening to drowly and listening to Brian, and I I read the same thing, markets have always rewarded the best companies, the best businesses. And as investors, we can never control the macro economics or we can't control the news cycle. However, we can control the companies that we look at, how we vet them and where we decide to place our money. And I think even with this again for the umpteenth million time, you know, the markets have proven that the best companies, the most stable businesses, the ones that generate, you know, profit are on the path of profits are on the path path to cash flows. Those are always have always been historically good investments. And I think again, for 2025, definitely that that that theme has been sized once again. Uh, you know, I do think that that was something. And maybe what I'll do is because I know you mentioned themes and stocks. I'll actually throw out while I was speaking a stock that surprised me the most in 2025. And I think it's one that's been discussed on sales a lot. I think it's one that I'm a lot of the the growth uh, community on Twitter is talking about or is at least familiar with now. I'm going to go with the trade desk as the company that surprised me the most straight through my heart. You know, I've I've owned that I own them from being to into to 2020 when the when the when COVID hit and everybody cratered on ads like people just stopped spending on ads. I got out of it for a while. It took a big dip, it kind of came back. I got it back in it again in 2021 when the ad cycle kind of turned. I had coming into this year. I had a 9% position in it coming into the 2025 and I've just sold the whole thing. And I know I've followed the company. You know, I really have come to trust their management in Jeff Green and the own goal that they scored on themselves in 2025. They rolled out their new, their new, uh, you know, AI platform because you got to throw AI in there. And I think it was called Kona. If I'm not mistaken, maybe the old ones called Kona. And this was the new one. But regardless, they kind of did the platform upgrade. And then all of a sudden they, they release an earnings and and come out and go, well, one, we rolled it out the wrong way. Two, it's not customer centric enough. And three, what we're going to do is we're going to take our, um, old slow boring engineering, um, uh, kind of infrastructure. And we're, we're going to totally revamp the whole thing. Smaller teams, more nimble to match up to our customers. We're going to add this extra layer of management and uh, Jeff Green has been so, the CEO, Jeff Green has been so prescient in what's going on with the, the move to digital ads. And, and for them to make those glaring and errors all at one time and then have to kind of cop to it was kind of shocking to me. And I took it from 9% to zero. And, uh, that's not a two or three week fix. It might not even be a two or three quarter fix. And, um, that, that was, that was one that I really kind of changed. And I think there's some other ad companies that might come up later in the conversation that benefited from that or that we've seen have benefited and trade desk hasn't. But I think that's the biggest shock for me. But, but again, that the one theme, um, that I think is universal and again applies to 2025 is if you pick the right companies and they're doing the right things and they're strong enough businesses, um, they're, they have a chance to move up into the right because that's what the, the market usually does as far as rewarding companies that that are able to, uh, not only, um, maybe show those traits, but are able to execute on the trade desk was right through my heart. Sorry. So, uh, I bought in 2017, I've held ever since, um, and for the longest time, it's in, in Jeff Green, we trust this guy knows what he's doing. He's the visionary. He's all these buzz phrases and he still might be. However, completely blindsided to the fact of this own goal of the true threat from Amazon ads, which is growing very well and is kind of eating into their kind of previous unwalled garden. It's just been, it's been a really big learning lesson. I've started to, uh, reduce my position in the 50s and, and add about half a position now to what, what I once had, but it used to be my number one position at a 15, 18 percent, uh, holding. And now it's down to a 2 percent holding. And that's really tough lesson. I think it kind of portrays, or sorry, I think it kind of demonstrates the pros and cons, the double edged sort of long term investing, which is obviously where we should be and what we're doing, but also the verification process and just how quickly for me it was to fall into some of these biases. Some of this leadership anchoring bias to the past, unwillingness to sort of see the competition and realize that maybe management fumbled the ball unnecessarily, maybe even some of the ways they were talking about their competition. I felt, um, it was designed to portray confidence, but it actually kind of sounded pretty demeaning and diminishing the threat that they actually posed, which we all know now is a real concern. Um, I still am a shareholder. I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going to do with the remaining shares, but that, I mean, stock novice totally agree with you on this. That was a life lesson in 11 months and owning an ad company. And I love that you call out the verification process because I think, uh, from what stock novice was explaining there about why he sold, I really think that is super instructive. And nostalgicly, it's something I missed from the hey days of Saul's board is when we could all sort of hash out, does this need to be, you know, and why? Right? The other thing is, I think some of us would say Apploven might be taking the mantle that we thought was rightfully the trade desks. And, um, you know, that might be one of my most surprising, uh, stocks, but also the company results that they've been able to put, put out this year have just been incredible. But with that, I'll throw it to WPR and let him get in on this question. I surprised you in 2025. Yeah, I think, uh, the stock or theme is in the AI networking space with Credo, CRDO, and also a stair labs. I mean, it's a really challenging space to understand this AI networking and just moving at such an incredible pace of innovation. Um, and both companies went public about a year and a half ago. Um, and I was like, you know, seeing how they stacked up because there were almost the same market cap right around the five or 10 billion range. And, um, I just judge it as stair I had much more innovation, better margins, like they had a bigger vision, um, and more software driven. Also, like, Credo was was based out of the Cayman Islands, which is also a bit sketchy, you know, so I mean, it seemed like there was no reason to be interested in, uh, Credo, actually, I think it's pronounced Credo, but uh, but then out of nowhere, they just gave this incredible guidance. It went from like 70 something million up to, I think, uh, in the 130s. Um, so that was really impressive. But when they actually reported that earnings, they said that Amazon made up 86% of sales. And, um, that customer concentration thing is always a red flag when you have one customer, especially Amazon, who's kind of known for being cutthroat. And I was just thinking like, what if Amazon just, you know, cuts them off one quarter, um, that 86% also implied that some other customers had dropped off their platform. Um, so I ended up selling them, um, but then I bought them back after they had this, uh, they had another really big result and they said revenue diversified. They have all these, they have four hyperscalers or, I think three were above 10% and the fourth is coming online. And I was like, okay, um, and the numbers were really good. Um, then they did something that surprised me again. They, they introduced this software platform called Prism. Um, and they just talked about it on the earnings call, like it already existed. And I was like, hon, did I miss this before? But it was announced right before the earnings. Um, so I didn't feel like it was really introduced that well. And then they were at some tech conference. I don't remember which one, but they made zero mention the software platform. And they just sounded like a wider manufacturer again. So I'm like, so I sold it. And then just recently they had this another stunning report in a guide. And it's like, they have five new products somehow. And they have these things called ALC cables. They say it's double the total addressable market of, of AEC cables, which are their main products. I'm like, like, what the heck? That's just crazy. So they, I mean, they're, they sound like they're pushing the pace of innovation. Um, but you know, even the analysts, they have trouble pulling out this like customer concentration number from them. They never put it in the press release. The analysts are always like, well, what's your customer concentration? Um, the timing of my buys and sells has been like terrible. So I'm like, like, even though it's like a kind of called the stock a little bit of probably down on a year, but I'm in the prices. I've been swinging with Estera and um, Kratos so crazy. You know, it's like boomer bus all the time. And I think the markets is really having trouble, um, pricing like this, this rate of innovation. It's like, you know, super enthusiastic, overhyped. And then the next time it's crashing and then it's like flattening out, buttoning out and then coming back strong. For sure. And I totally agree that Kratos' results have been so just mind boggling and eye popping at many times, but just not what, what anyone was expecting. And even now I have a position, but they just guided for 29% sequential growth for Q4. So that's sequential. I reiterate. And yet they're saying stuff like, oh, we think we'll continue to grow at mid single digit rates or something like that for the next, you know, several quarters. And it's like, something doesn't add up here. They just grew a ton more than that. They're about to grow a ton more than that in Q4. Are they, are they trying to tell us something? Or is it just management just completely refusing to basically not tipping their hand in any way even to investors? Yeah, I was going to say their management hasn't been communicating very clearly to investors. And they mentioned there might be some supply blocks in 2026 with the, the fabs in Taiwan. So that was kind of interesting. But I don't know why they made that comment. It was kind of like a unforced error or something that I felt in the earnings to be, to be saying we're going to grow single digits after you're guiding for like 30% quarter, quarter, 29%. And obviously they don't want to, they want to set the bar as low as possible for themselves, but it's still, it's a head scratcher. And the reason for I think some of the surprises that you were going through, they've happened this year have been, we just didn't know what to expect because they're just not not really giving us all that information. Yeah, I mean, it's a new space and, you know, Nvidia and Broadcom have their own road map searcher pretty extensive. And those impact the price a lot. So you'll see Nvidia or Broadcom making an announcement or one of these socks will crash. But I think the investment community doesn't fully understand the tech, which creates those kind of wild swings there. And of course, Bear and I being very tech forward totally get exactly what you're talking about tech-wise. And all the different cables, it was on the tip of my tongue. I was just about to say the A that cable. It sounds like we need to take a trip down to the Grand Cayman. I mean, just the Whiplash of management. I WPR, I'm a huge fan of of your write-ups. I've been following along. I'm not investing this one just kind of an outside observer, but the Whiplash and back and forth is what has come through and kind of my reading your work. And for someone who really doesn't understand the tech, it's been that red flag is kind of stood stronger because I don't understand the underlying networking, the underlying system. So I've stayed out for that reason and it was interesting to hear you talk about kind of what you've seen kind of management try to communicate or lack thereof. Yeah, I think Whiplash is a great word there. So definitely, I agree with that sentiment somewhat too, because my position's pretty small again. I think I'm at 2% on them. So we'll see what they do, but the numbers are really impressive. I'm just not totally pleased with the story there. If I'm ages real quick, because one of the really interesting things about what I'm hearing you guys talk about is a management team that doesn't know how to communicate. And you know, all of us have experienced the Motley Fool in some way, shape or form, and communicating is what we did, right? Like we were on the boards literally just communicating. And I know in my own work, that's that's what I have to do. And I see this happen sometimes. And I'm like, how could they be this bad at communicating? Like it's just it's, well, I still remember when I started teaching, that was the most important thing ever for communicating because I had a group of fifth graders coming into a classroom. And I remember my principal was like, what are you going to have him do at the end of the day? And this was an inner city classroom. And I said, well, they're going to write a paragraph about, you know, who they are. And she's like, if you can do that by the end of the year, I will be happy. If you can do that at the end of the first day, then I don't even know what I'm going to do. And she was totally right. And so I, and so, but, but okay, so that's like, how can they be this bad at communicating? Okay. On the other hand, you'll only really, really like, existentially, you're only really threatened as a terrible communicator if you need investors. If you need to be able to go to the market and sell shares, credo doesn't need that. They have great margins. And it's, it's really funny because, you know, basals had to be a great communicator because if you wouldn't, we never would have been patient enough to build out the fulfillment centers. And we wouldn't be patient enough for AI. And a musk, you know, hey, you can have a ton of different opinions on him. But he communicates the core story, especially when they were just getting started. Really, really well. They don't have to do that at credo. Like they, unless an activist investor comes along, they can largely ignore, you know, the investment community. And here's the weird part. In a way, I would actually want that if this was, you know, a company that's founder led and has high insight ownership, like credo does. So it's, there's a little bit of nuance around there. But it, it's interesting how, as long as they don't need it, I almost want it to be run by someone who's not very good at communicating. And you know what, I'll tag onto that because I think there's one, I agree with Brian and two, especially if you're in tech companies, a lot of tech companies are run by techies that don't communicate very well. It's not really their niche. And you know, I could think of something I don't want to jump around too much, but like I own Z-scaler for a long time. And if you listen to J-Chargery, like I love J, you know, and but if you listen to J like every time, it's like techno, every answer is like techno bab. Instead of just like, yeah, we were leaving our products, it's going like, we were going to our products and it does this, this and the underlying, you get the acronyms that are thrown out and everything like that. And I think for me, like looking at these two, and I own both Estara and and credo, at some point credo's numbers are phenomenal. And you can say what you want about Cayman Islands and that kept me out of it early. And I didn't like the way that management necessarily communicate. I thought Estara Labs had a better communication platform. I understood what, you know, I don't have to know how their products work, but I knew what their products were. I knew what their vision was. I knew what their roadmap was. They, I thought they articulated that really well. And credo just, credo just didn't. So I wasn't in credo for a long time. I've just recently gotten into credo after this last report, because the numbers are phenomenal. I was worried about the Cayman Islands and I was worried about the customer concentration. Well, at some point they are getting their numbers audited and signed off on. And the customer concentration kind of thinned out. And I know that data centers are being built. Somebody needs to connect them. And at some point credo's numbers lead the conversation. And the numbers, the story, or the story, the numbers are telling me is attractive enough that, okay, I'm going to let, you know, I know management's not a good, you know, not a good communication group. That's okay. I'm going to let the numbers communicate for them. Now, I've just, I've sized it accordingly. You know, like right now, Estara is about a nine and a half percent position for me. And credo, as I'm building it out, is right now roughly 2.4. And you can argue, like, I know they made the 9% comment. Their numbers have never really steered that way. If they got the 9%, there's probably a problem that makes me take that to zero. You know, but for now, when the stock was in the 170s or 180s right after earnings, and now it's pulled back into the 150s and even the 140s, I'm like, yeah, you know what, this is something that I'm comfortable building out. I can't tell others what to do, but, you know, that's the way I looked at it and thought about. But I think to Brian's point, at some point, even if they don't communicate well, the numbers will communicate for them as they get bigger and get to bigger scale. And if they can keep doing what they're doing, again, it's got a chance to to go up into the right. And that's the main thing I'm concerned about when I'm managing our portfolio. Yeah, and one more thing to keep in mind about these two companies, they have really low sales and marketing. I think Estara is around 8% sales and marketing. And that's just way different than the SaaS companies that we typically use to concentrate in, where they might be spending 50% or even when they IPO, they're spending over 100%. And they really need to get their names out there. It's just like the hyperscalers, they know who these two companies are, they know who to go to. So then, yeah, they might play into why they're communicating a bit poorly too. It's just like, you know, they're already known in the industry. They don't need to go out and market or sell themselves. So before going back to Estara Labs for a quick sec, you mentioned Zscaler. And I, I've listened to dozens of interviews with CEO, Jay, Chaudry. I can distill down every interview to two facets. First one is tech speak that lots of acronyms, lots of competency, just oozing out, lots of understanding the industry. And number two is attacking everyone else. And I love it. He's very much, you just don't understand these other guys, they don't, he just gets so aggressive. And I love it. I want that in my CEO, maybe not all the time, but I like it. I've owned since 2018. And that's been a stalwart in my top 10 ever since. And I'll add a third one that actually made me sell out of Zscaler. Jay has done three things. One, techno babble, two, attack, and three, always point to buildings as the best underlying health indicator for the business. And even when it was like, and our, you know, net retention rate or revenue growth, anytime that buildings wasn't quite right. And analysts gave him an out. He constantly pointed to buildings. And, you know, for me, the combination of they had a huge turnover in their C suite over the last probably six or eight months. And being, I believe it was a CEO, CEO, I think, went on to be a CEO, got a CEO job, which is great. But I think the CFO might have left as well. And now they have a new CEO, and now the sudden buildings doesn't matter. And you want to talk about moving the goalposts. I'm like, oh my god, like from 2017, you know, for eight years, like it's been buildings, buildings, buildings, and now it's not. There's a little bit of like, okay, techno. And I don't want to call it pigheaded. But I do think that it was like convicted in what Zscaler was. And for him to be like techno babble, attack, and buildings. And now he's techno babble, attack. And ah, okay, well, maybe it's not going to go in a few seconds. No, but this is again, you know, the patented stock novice verification process, right? This is when you move the goalpost, you're telling us something, you know, and this is a snowflake that this year's ago with, with RPO, they were like, RPO is everything. RPO, when it was growing 300% year over year. And then as soon as they came up against, oh, we're, you know, it's not going to grow that much even sequentially. They started talking about other stuff. So I think that's a huge red flag. Yeah, and also I think it's important for listeners, um, like drowsy said, ah, I still own a little bit of trade desk and drowsy, you might own a little bit of Zscaler. I think it's important that people understand the game that you're playing. I know that you have a lot bigger portfolios cars, far as a number of companies that you own. And you might have your core positions and kind of your tail positions. And if companies kind of underperform, you're willing to let them slide through your tail position and and and and work their way out if that happens. If it ever happens, because I know that you are sometimes load the cell, I run something more concentrated. This is like, hey, you're either in the best 10 companies that I can possibly own or you're not. And if you do something that falls out of the top 10, I'm going to find somebody else. I usually have someone on the waiting list that's kind of knocking at the door. And the second company number 11 leapfrogs company number 10 in in my conviction, I'm willing to take company 10 to zero and give company 11 a position. And that's that's how credo got in and it's how you know Zscaler and trade desk fell out as kind of the year went on. So we are playing very, very different games. I'm willing to go, this is my these are my top companies. And if something falls out, I'm okay taking it to all the way to zero and letting someone else have a shot. And but I know that you do, you know, kind of more tail end than the companies go through. And I think it's important for listeners to understand both those styles can be wildly successful. You just need to make sure that you know the game that you're playing. Yeah, no, I perfectly, what perfectly said, I my core five positions are 78%. And that's where I devote most of my research, my attention, my verification, my interviews, my talking to people. And if a company was in my top 10 and I owned it at some point, there was obviously some merits that I saw on it. And I want to give it as many chances as possible to kind of figure itself out and really kick myself for cutting loose some absolute monster winners because I was kind of trigger happy. So I'd rather see it slide into that tail position at a two or three percent. And meanwhile, Nvidia is still at a 34% axon still at a, I don't know, 18% ish. Those are the companies I spend all my time researching. And those are the companies I have highest conviction. And yeah, I mean, there's some downside in this, right? Like I've lost a lot of money on trade desks that I should have probably pulled the trigger earlier. But at the same time, I think any of these 60% drawdowns in Nvidia, I wouldn't be in the same position as I am today. So in theory, the good outweighs the bad, hopefully in the long run, giving a little extra of a shot. And I do wish, I mean, as stock novice, you perfectly call out the trade desks trajectory. I wish I realized those and took them more seriously and then just fall back on the wisdom and the euphemisms that I've been saying since 2019. Jeff Green and oh, the trade desk and AI and ML and all this other buzz and really kind of think through what are the implications and also risk tolerance. I am, or my risk tolerance for that position, which was a lot lower than it was. Maybe when I did see the numbers were amazing, the numbers have not been amazing for a while now. They've been passable pending what the market wanted, but not amazing. And that should have been a bigger red flag. So yes, you're absolutely right, saying the difference between the styles. We both have had some good years and some less good years, and we're both kind of heading in the right direction. But I do, I do want to transition to the next question. And I think WPR, why don't we start with you on this one? We started mentioning some names, but if you look back on your portfolio over the past year, what has changed the most and why? And now you can take it in a stock question, like which stock has come in the most. You take it in a management question. How have your management styles proved or changed? However, direction you want to go. So. Yeah, so I think the thing that was most interesting about the changes over the past year was, I looked at my portfolio and there were surprisingly a lot of the same names there. Like Apple, and the stair labs, Reddit are three ones I was big into. And then I picked up ones I used to own, but I didn't own in the middle of the year, like Paymentus and Credo. But I'm pretty pleased that my core holdings like a stair labs and app love and are still there. And they're just keeping up with that kind of predictable growth and a huge vision. You know, they both have very long road maps. And you know, talking about 2027 or these years down the road where they're going to have more products, more growth. But the reason this is surprising kind of is it's in contrast from when I went from 2023 to 2024. I had 100% portfolio turnover. I would remember being very surprised on this other side where I look from 23 to 24. And I think that's to do with kind of like the AI boom and stuff like that where it's like there's a lot of sectors that are rapidly changing. And then I have like kind of a lot of new sectors in my portfolio like crypto miners. Like I was always kind of over the opinion is better to, you know, own the underlying asset there if you want Bitcoin or something like or other crypto. But there's some miners who are, you know, transitioning to high performance compute and the Neo clouds. That's pretty interesting. Also like battery companies have gotten my radar in a big way. Energy is kind of changing quite a bit. So that's pretty interesting this year. And then I guess one more thought I had is I didn't have sezel at the beginning of the year or the end of the year. But that was a big driver of results where they were on just the absolute tear for six months. And it's almost like a footnote in my portfolio. But it's driven a huge part of the results because it was a medium confidence position that was maybe around 10% and then it just five X in the middle of the year. It had a nice earnings and it kept running up. Eventually crashed and it was kind of just like boom and bust. But that actually ended up driving a fair amount of results on the year. So that was an interesting note to make. We have received, Baron, I've received a ton of questions and comments on app loving. Lots of interesting investors, lots of MI2 late. Did I miss this boat? It's up however many percentage it is over the last couple of years. What does the SEC investigation or any legal kind of finding actually mean for it? And I would love to hear kind of your thoughts as you mentioned along road map. As you mentioned, you're still long despite the turmoil and rise and fall throughout the year. Although we're definitely on a rise right now. So anyways, welcome your thoughts on that. Despite the fact that it's more than doubled in 2025. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the valuations definitely not as attractive as it used to be. But they have pretty much what's kind of a new product launching, which is pretty unusual for a company of their size. So they've been mostly in the gaming advertising space and expanding to web is what they call it, but that's pretty much like any business can run on web, right? And that's just ramping up. I think what's really interesting is they say the return on ad spend is better than meta. I mean, that's kind of their main competitor in this space. So I guess I keep thinking if they have a better product than meta, they're able to scale up. They don't really need customer support. I saw on their latest update, they have only 900 employees, which is just wild for how big the market cap is. The company used to say the metric they track the most is adjustity, but per employee. They don't report that anymore for some reason. I think because it's like so insane of a number now, which is probably like, you know, in the millions per quarter, I think at this point. I guess the other question was in regards to the SEC investigation, you know, it seems like the short report themselves kind of referred themselves to the SEC, which is a bit, we heard, you know, like, but when I ended up looking into those because the market crashed on them, usually short reports are kind of bogus. But when you see the stock price go down 20% that's definitely something you want to investigate. When I looked at that, it was like, you know, they're providing like grainy YouTube videos. And I used to be a programmer, so I was able to kind of like, you know, understand some of the stuff they're posting. And it just didn't seem legit at to me at all. So, but, you know, I do consider like a risk if there is some investigation going on, but I see it is like pretty small, but it's something I want to keep my eye on. So, so Apple oven was up 278% in 2023. 713% in 2024. And it's up 125% this year. Is there video game numbers? They're quarterly reports of video game numbers. Like the amount of growth that they've done, they clearly have eliminated the mobile gaming ad industry. They did have a kind of a mobile game studio attached. And, you know, for me, it's my biggest position as well. I kind of, I'm going to say lucked out, but it's also where we do our due diligence. They had always had reported total revenue. And then also gave us, they called it platform revenue. And then they called it ad revenue, I think it was. And, and they always guided to that. And they told us that they had, they told us that they had, you know, they were going to divest themselves of the gaming. They were going to sell it. But they had given us all the ad numbers anyway for apples to apples comparisons. And the quarter that that sale closed, they did their report. And the algorithms drove drove the price down because the number looked like a sequential decline. When it wasn't really a sequential decline, it actually was a significant beat on the ad number because that's what they were guiding to. And I think even bear had jumped in on that one. Was it like the 160s or something like super low? Maybe 260s. Yeah. For sure. It got sold off on that. And then even, you know, in a few minutes, briefly after hours, when they reported the number, which was great, it was just, you know, bad cops, which is, which is always fun. But for me, that's the quarter. When they divested the business, the legacy business, there wasn't really growing. It became clear to me that they were, they were not really just a, you know, 35 to 45% grow or no, they were actual business was growing 70 something percent. You know, that was that it sort of opened my eyes to what they're doing and how incredible it is. And you know, we haven't even mentioned that they have like a 60% net profit margin or something. So this is a, this is a unicorn of a business. What would you, you know, done in the gaming. And then if they go into the kind of the e-commerce of the web, like there's this huge greenfield that they have a chance to get into and they, they are saying, you know, they're ROI driven and it's easy to track and the cut, they have a waiting list for customers. They're rolling it out kind of slowly. They call it axon, which is unfortunate because I only was part of the company, which is terrible. But anyway, this really has a chance to continue scaling at a pretty, pretty incredible rate in 2026. So they're lined up really well. Now, that being said, and they don't want to discount, they're an ad company. So if something happens macro wise where people don't want to spend on advertising anymore because that's the first thing you're going to cut back, they do have a chance to either run into some tough comps or maybe it doesn't roll out the way they like or things like that. But again, just phenomenal numbers driving the, driving the conversation. And I feel like at some point, yes, even with the huge gain that they had of the 125, like if you are following along enough to see, well, wait a second, those numbers don't make sense. They just divested the company. The algorithms shouldn't, the algorithm algorithm shouldn't be selling everything off, you know, this drastically. If you're able to do that, there was a chance to get in and make a good return. And again, keeping its size appropriately is probably the thing. For me, it's my biggest position right now, but I haven't bought it probably since, I think the last buy might have done was maybe under 300. And it's sitting, you know, it's in the 700s nails. It's just, it's grown to get that big. And I don't want to punish winners for winning. So I think it's a really interesting company that's set up pretty well for 2026. But they are making themselves susceptible to a new advertising market, even usually doesn't have a huge Q4 and declining Q1. Because the holiday, like people aren't spending more holiday ads on games, they are spending it in other arenas and they're going to get into that. And I don't know how that affects the numbers yet. We'll find out in XQ4, but they are lined up to do some really, really good things going to 2026. Yeah, I was going to add the gaming divestiture is pretty interesting. I like that they're fully focused on this one aspect of the ad tech, you know, you see the other companies like hyperscalers or meta right? They want all these side businesses and moon shoots and different things on the side, you know. But I do like that they're this like small company that's just really hyper focused on the one or two products they have. They've also been buying back their shares too, which is pretty interesting. You know, the share counts been going down over the last like year or two. So they seem to believe in the business quite a bit. And not to add more salt into jails, these wounds, but that's part of the reason with app loving. That's time you're on my show. I think with app loving doing this and moving in and they're starting to do some some streaming ads and connect the TV like they they added a company they bought a company that's gonna like again, this is a mist. This is an own goal by the trade desk in what's an up part of the ad cycle right now. And when I looked at the two, then I was like, okay, like I don't I don't want to split it up. I just want to go with the one I think is more dominant as a chance to be the more dominant company. I mean, well set and bear and I are speaking for you bear, but we're both long app loving and we both got in at that pullback around 300s ish. So I'm right there with you. It's it's a small kind of growing position of mine, but doesn't I mean, at least for me, the numbers were too good to ignore and to kind of write off and to get confused with some of these short term narratives. So I'm long as well. I wanted to transition to Brian. I wanted to see kind of looking back at 2025. What changes in your what what what has changed most in your portfolio and why position or management style? Yeah, management style has changed the most. So I run my own so interesting thing about this is is that until about 18 months ago, you know, I would manage my own portfolio was largely for me. I would share it. I rolled out a community program. Funny thing is we I rolled out this community program and the idea was was it's an hour of education every week with 24/7 access to boards to ask questions and things like that. And when we when we test pilot it, it's called stock investing mentor when we test pilot it, no one was interested in it. And then we said, okay, you can see my portfolio in real time too, which to me is by far the lowest value add out of all the things that we were shooting for and interest went through the roof. So I mean, go figure. I like to say if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that unless you have like a government mandate, everything that you sell needs to be like children's medicine. And so what I mean is is if you have great medicine, great medicine, which I think our education part of what I help run is, no one will ever even know about it if you don't put enough sugar in it, which is what kind of looking at anyway. So the point is I spend a lot more time thinking about about my portfolio now than I did in the past. And it's not like I didn't, it's just that I had other things I was focused on. I have become much more concentrated. And the reason that I have is that I've been spending so much time on this and a lot of people asking questions about it and gaining confidence in my own abilities. So January 1st, 2025, I had 16 positions and my cash balance was zero. Today, I've got nine positions and my cash balance is 30%. Wow. Now, here's the thing. I'm not saying that this is going to work out well for me. It might not work out well for me, but I will say I'm going to learn something from it either way. And you know, more than anything, but 2022 taught me. So I've been measuring my results since 2014. I think right now it's probably in the ballpark of 19% per year for 11 or 12 years. And that's with a 54% drawdown in 2022. That was painful. And I'm sure you guys remember it too. As it was, I mean, very well. And and as I was saying before, I'm at the point now where I don't, I don't, I don't need to have the best results of everyone who posts their results on Twitter. I would love it if I did. That'd be great. But one thing I absolutely don't want is to backtrack seriously on the progress that's been made so far. So that cash position, you know, I've become a lot stricter with my valuations. I'll say that. And I've become a lot more convicted in big names that boy, they seem to be selling at a nice discount. I mean, I'll throw one name out there right now. See limited. It's not perfect, right? It's not perfect at all. And they've got competition. They've got TikTok. They've got countries that they're spread out over. They have a gaming division. That's always like, you know, it's not part of my long term thesis, but it is the bridge that gets you to the long term because it provides so much cash. So it's not perfect. But man, I look at that valuation and I'm just like, they just, they just need everything has to go perfectly wrong for this valuation to make sense in my mind. And it might all go perfectly wrong. But that's a bet I'm willing to take. And so I'm willing to put a little bit more of what I have into that now. Whereas in the past, I wasn't. Again, if I get burned, I'm going to learn something. But if you're not learning and trying new things, then it's just not fun. And maybe I'll jump in there and I'm going to maybe steal the answer, keep you from having to ask me. I'm in a very similar boat to Brian in that I radically adjusted my portfolio. Like you talked about going from 16 down the nine with cash. And I'm 55. So now I'm at a time stage where I don't have as much investing career left to wait out these big drawdowns like 2022. And, and, and I was down like the seven percent or something. I mean, I got crushed in 2022, but I also had a 200 percent gain in 2020. And you live by that sword and you die by that sword. And I think the big adjustment for me and as part of the reason I've had people reach out, it's why I stopped posting monthly reports and why I stopped the newsletter. I knew going in the 2025 that I was going to be radically adjusting my portfolio. And I actually will give credit to a poster name, a Goucho Rico, who I know a lot of people will follow. He's in OG. I'm a regional member of Sal's board. And he wrote something along the lines of like, when is enough enough? And it's like, you know, your target number. And for me, I've really adjusted to I am a growth investor. It's just who I am at heart. And for me to try and be something that I'm not doesn't work. But how much of my family's future do I want to actually have in growth investing? And I think we're constantly like pounded. You got to grow, grow, grow. Well, at some point you want to conserve a little bit or preserve. So I've spent most of this year changing my feeling where or changing my approach where I still manage the growth part of our portfolio the way I always have because I feel very comfortable with that. And I feel like I have something that works. And I've been tracking my notes since 2014. But from 2018, and I'm handling beating my benchmarks. So I want to keep doing that. At the same time, you want to try and you know, kind of protect. So I have a cash allocation as part of that. But to Brian's point, maybe he looks at the whole thing and the 30% is is also kind of insurance for the future. I have a larger, much larger cash percentage as well. I've just permanently removed that from the investing part of my, my family's portfolio and kind of adjusted from there. And and I didn't want to drag readers through that. And I know I haven't been as active. But I didn't want to try and explain to others something that I really didn't even understand myself as I was making such a huge kind of change. But listening to Brian that Brian that really resonated with me because I feel like I did something similarly in trying to not change who I am as an investor. But maybe try and change how I manage my family's future and thinking more about it that way as opposed to just what I have in the market and what I might be doing. And and Brian, the sense exactly like something that bear and I have talked to a while about bear grew to fame kind of riding some of these growth stocks that had good numbers and sass and kind of and I'm speaking on behalf of you here bear as your advocate and best friend. But like grew to fame on that and the numbers made sense and you could see where it was going. And you know, you mentioned Target the other day, which is not that. And it's really interesting. I mean, the valuation, you know, there's a valuation play there, but just keeping money out of the market, being smart about it and seeing the kind of valuation, not chasing to be the best kind of fit to it reporter, but being a good kind of citizen, a good investor, one that it has a lot of perspective. Yeah, if I had to answer this question, which I'm not sure if I do, but my portfolio, I feel like it's been on a journey since long before this year, really the last two or three years of trying to figure out, okay, sass companies aren't growing like they used to. What do I do now? And, you know, I think for a long time, well, where do I start? If we go back before sass, a lot of us sort of wanted to be garp investors and never did a very good job with that. And it, you know, it's like, what is a reasonable price? And how do you, you know, vision talks were all the buzz. And so it's been a, it's been a long, long course of trying to figure out, you know, if a company growing at 75 or 100% is, you know, going to be priced like this, what's it going to be priced at when it's growing at 30% or 25%? And, you know, what I've realized, and what I realized, I guess maybe a year and a half, two years ago is, you know, Amazon and Google, and these companies are still growing at double digits. It may not be 25 or 30, but it may be 15 or 20% and they're not priced at 20 times sales, you know, the Amazon is not priced at 10 times sales. It's not even priced at five times sales. And you can say the same for Mercado Libre and see limited as Brian mentioned earlier. I do think that I have started, I have sort of started to reevaluate what a reasonably priced company is even for growth companies. And I've started to move over to some of those rather than trying to find just the fastest growth and that's the only things. That's probably a chance for me. It's been more of a two to three year journey than just this year. What about your drowsy? I mean, this may owe to, I'm at a different point in my life where I'm not quite at preservation of wealth status. I'm still kind of accumulating and putting money to the market each week. I'm maybe Brian of last year. I still hold next to zero percent cash. I'm fully invested almost every moment. I'm religiously trying to research 75% of my holding this as much as possible. I'm trying to find those valuations. So like Brian, I put more money to work with C limited recently after their earnings. It dropped like crazy. The numbers looked good to me. Partly thanks to Brian's helping me decipher kind of what to focus on with some of his great videos. I am trying to be more mindful of the valuation place they're adding to Mercado Libre as well. Seeing just trying to take that holistic look at these companies are dominating what they're trying to and they're expanding to go to David Gardiner's kind of snap test that we've talked about before do these companies exist if you snap. Now, I think that maybe is a little simplistic, but these companies are massive parts of society and are growing and are institutionalizing. And those are something that are hard to value. So I do think there's a play there, but I'm still in my generally putting as much money to work in the best ideas as possible and then trying to give them as many years as possible before making decisions. And again, going back to what Stockman office said earlier, some of some of the time that pays off with 200, 300 baggers. And that's amazing. Other others, it leads me down. I mean, maybe we just titled this episode Jeff Green and his downfall, but it brings me back to kind of giving people maybe one too many chances and not making decisions, tough decisions sooner, which is maybe something I've avoided. But I could see myself pulling back. I'm quickly realizing that chasing to be the best puts you up against people who are just playing other games and have other expertise and have other, maybe it's inside knowledge, not in a malicious way, but just they know the industry is stronger. And I just don't compete well with those. So I think I could see myself building out that cash position in the future maybe next year or soon thereafter and just kind of taking a step back and kind of rethinking approach soon. I think one thing you do that I've tried to do a little bit more is just take those small positions when something interesting that you don't understand comes along. So, you know, we both did this recently and I think Nebius for you and then Iron and Nebius for me don't understand it. We got that so wrong to start the year. But I think there is something to be said for stretching yourself a little bit with small positions. And I'm not ever going to have a 30 stock, 40 stock portfolio, but I have a space now for five or 10 really small positions that I don't claim to have figured out the company or have any kind of strong conviction on I want to keep learning. And you know, I kind of part of the not having as many fat pitches to swing at, you know, is trying to broaden your horizons. I think I think WPR and many others have done an exceptional job of finding value where I never had a good track record doing so. Yeah, I was going to add those small positions and I talk about this in my strategy videos. They act as a forcing function because you just don't know enough and you own them in your portfolio. So, you know, it makes you kind of want to research more and learn a bit more. And when you learn more than it gives you that option, you know, you can increase your position or end up selling it. So, I've had so many companies where I've owned them for a day or two and then I found out some massive red flag throughout the company. I was like, oh, whoops, like glad I didn't write that one up or make a video about them. So, yeah, that happens like a lot in my strategy where, you know, I learned about something new. It sounds really exciting. Sometimes that turns into a medium or high confidence position, but a lot of times it just stays at a low confidence or, you know, might hover there and then they report an earnings and we re-evaluate. So, I'm constantly trying to re-evaluate, which is kind of hard to do. Sometimes as an investor, when we get really attached to like a management team or something like that. That's exactly what it is for me. It's a forcing function to, you know, make you pay attention. If you don't own the thing, you may just forget about it. Speaking of what we're looking at and what we're excited about, maybe we should move on to the third question, which is, I don't want to make you read them all. Go ahead. What stock are theme, are you bullish on going into 2026? And let's make this a two-parter. So, what stock and theme are you bullish on, but also give us your reckless prediction too. So, stock and office, why don't we start with you? Sure. And I'll say, I'm going to say the AI trade. Sometimes, you know, sometimes the obvious answer is the one to go with, at least as far as this. But I'm going to change it up a little bit. I think every technology cycle, there's three parts of it. The first winners are kind of your picks and shovel winners, like they're kind of involved in everything. The second set of winners are your hardware winners, you know, the infrastructure hardware winners. And then the third set is always the software winners. What's the software layer? And so, when I think about the AI trade, you know, Nvidia has already won the picks and shovels. And I'll go with my crazy prediction. I actually think they're whatever, four and a half billion trillion company now. I wouldn't be surprised if they threw a 40-50% year, which would take them to like six and a half trillion in something as a. You are welcome back on our show, whenever you would like. You're back in our good graces. Please continue, sir. And you're welcome. Guess what they are doing is one of one. The number of companies that have thrown up this type of growth at that level of scale. It's one of one. Like, literally in the history of the world, there's never been a company like this. And they're so embedded in being the leader in what they do. And everybody needs them. So, anyway, they're the picks and shovels. I can also think for people that are listening, like, we thought Supermicro was going to be the winner in the picks and shovels on doing their acts. And then the next thing you know, like, they might get delisted. So now, maybe they're not the picks and shovels winner and people lost a lot of money there. But I think the, that second stage, that hardware infrastructure stage, we're already seeing it with like Credo and Astero Labs and Nebius and Iron and Wolf and some of the smaller companies like Cypher, like, who's going to win that, that hardware infrastructure part? And I think the markets already bid up some of those kind of front running. And as soon as they changed their mind, everything craters. So we've seen a lot of volatility. But I think we'll get a lot more clarity on that AI infrastructure to layer in 2026. I think the winners and losers, or at least the winners and the better winners will separate themselves a little more. Right now, everything is whipsawed so much. We're going to have another two, three, four quarters worth of data and numbers. And right now we've got some crazy, almost back like estimates were like ARR and revenue growth and things like that. And we'll start to get more clarity on where that kind of goes. So I think for 2026, it's going to be the AI trade again. But it's going to shift a little bit from the picks and shovels, which is what Nvidia seems to have already won. And we'll get a lot more clarity on that hardware kind of infrastructure layer, which right now is whipsawing like crazy. And I think those those whipsaws will narrow down a little bit in the upcoming year because we'll get better clarity on who's actually executing on their road map and who isn't. Because right now, you're just betting on road maps. Yeah, the Oracle whipsaw is another one. Oracle needs to go away for like, I don't know, 10 new cycles. And then but definitely goes back. I'm just so over them right now. Well, it goes back to your your theme from this past year, Stagnavices news has been driving a lot of that. And so now we're going to we're going to have to get some meat behind those bones. And I think Oracle's great example because they keep really doing these press releases and everybody bids them up. And then they actually release their earnings report where they miss on revenues and they miss on profits. And then they get slaughter, which they should because at the end of the day that the performance is going to drive the results, not the other way around. Well said WPR same questions looking to 2026, bullish for themes and then give me a reckless prediction that has Nvidia going higher than 40% like what's off of a said and you're welcome back anytime. Nice. Okay, I got one word for you, batteries. Okay, this question actually made me think of this scene from the graduate where there's this older man giving advice to the main character. And he's like, I just want to say one word, do you just one word? And he's like, are you listening? Plastics. So I think investors are going to be surprised by some of the announcements that are coming out of these older industries. And kind of my strategy really loves when we find a stodgy industry that's being reinvented. It's still kind of a hard pitch to institutional money to say like let's buy a battery company I think too. But there's massive demand from data centers, robotics, there's electric aviation, which is actually ramping up and that kind of ties into drones and even stuff like axons doing. And then a lot of these batteries have become high performance and they're a lot safer. So the safety profile has increased massively. I think the high cap ex model is likely to turn off some investors. You know, the cash flows for these businesses aren't going to look great as they're scaling up. But they're basically seen as a commodity now. And I feel like batteries might be in this pre-AI moment sort of like 2022 for AI where people aren't really too focused on them. But I thought to throw at three names. But two of them I own. The first is electric buy. It's a medium confidence position. They're Canadian company. And they do basically next generation lithium ion batteries. They're expanding to New York for three times capacity. And that also allows them to be a domestic US producer. For right now mainly the product is used in warehouse forklifts. But they're expanding to all these different verticals like robotics and defense. I just started a new position in this company called Shoals Technology. It's SHLS. They do solar and their battery company. They're expanding to these battery energy storage systems. What's really interesting here is like there's all this customization still. And they were talking about how each customer has kind of these different specs. So I don't think there's any sort of standardization or there's no Nvidia in this space of the dominant hardware provider who's way ahead of everybody. It's just a really nascent field. And the last company is the Amprius AMPX. They're more of a they have revenue but it's the valuations a little bit ahead of themselves I feel like. But they're a solid state battery maker and they're scaling up. They do a lot of electric aviation. And a lot of companies have completed their prototypes now on these newer batteries and they're starting to ramp up production. They finally got to positive margins. But one warning on them is they sell a lot to the EU. And I think the EU is also looking to go domestic recently. So that could be a risk there. And it actually ties into my bold prediction for 2026, which is I think we'll have a deep seek moment or major disruption to the energy markets. There's a lot of progress in traditional energy sources like solar or batteries. But I'm going to put on my tinfoil hat. There's a lot of talk about like alien tech recently with this like 3i atlas comment of interstellar origins and like a massive amount of anomalies chemical compositions. You know, it's just some people say it violated a laws of gravity or physics. And there's also watching this age of disclosure documentary where there's like kind of these public announcements of alien tech, which sounds so strange to say. But there's people, higher government officials claiming that alien tech has been sold to defense contractors. So I think if you know the scenario plays out whether it's from a disruption in solar or disruption in batteries or if it really is this crazy scenario like aliens are coming or something. I think the market's going to have a tremendous difficulty pricing these innovations where you might see stocks like dropping like 40-50% in a day. I don't know where or you might have a stock go up 100 or 200% just because they're supposedly you know got their hands on the latest tech. And it does kind of make me think that might be a risk for like something like electric via. But then at the same time I'm like you know they have the manufacturing capacity available. So if they do get their hands on it on a new tech the companies that are already ramped up on production might be able to just like transition their assembly line over to a new technology. I mean and if you could see us right now you would see Baronife usually typing in tickers to try to try to play along and kind of do quick looks. I mean one of some of these companies are up 60-70% year-to-date. This is definitely I mean this is probably number one reason we were most looking forward to talking to you and kind of expanding our horizons. I mean at least for me batteries is not even remotely in my radar right now. I've let alone these companies. I mean and also the definition of a bold pick and the alien technology being incorporated into like cutting edge technology that is a very bold pick and I love it. I mean I think you back it up and then kind of walk us back maybe perhaps from alien tech to like really an unknown mispriced potential revolution in the battery space. Yeah for sure and you know like I was saying like tech like solar is getting so competitive on pricing that even if it if it flips you know with like oil or traditional fossil fuels it could happen that way as well but but yeah like and there is a big ramp up on this industry too right it's you know the different types of batteries whether it's let acid solid state or lithium ion it's like you know again I don't really know like I'm kind of like faking it till I make it on describing those but so trying to learn about those was simultaneously you know making good investments but you know we end up like picking up some details here and there as we read through different transcripts and see what different companies are saying and I'm kind of big on you don't need to understand you know everything about the tech to need to and about or to to get into a company. I'll say over over you Brian so bullish sector or stock for next year and then reckless prediction. All right so bullish stock so instead of saying just bullish here's what I'm going to say transmittix is going to be 50 to 60 percent away from where it is right now up or down okay now here's here's the thing we've got a company and I own it now for the second time because I I realized there was too much that I didn't know the first time around so it's at 130 today so it'll either be 50 higher percent or 50 lower percent for a long time they've been saying we're gonna target 10,000 organs by 2028 and and there's this alternative procedure that kind of was a legitimate threat in a good way because it helped more people get organs without needing to pay lots of money for transmittix that's great for society but and that's kind of what scared me out of it but then within the last year they just dropped this nugget where they're going from targeting 10,000 in 2028 to 20 to 30,000 just two years later so they're like they're probably going to end the year in the ballpark of 5,000 organ transplants this year 2025 so they're saying from now until the end of 2028 although they've admitted they think they're going to pass 10,000 before the end of 2028 but I mean that's an order of like that's a growth rate that's an order of magnitude different now it really comes down to will they get approval for their next generation heart and lung which are two organs they already do and will they have a new kidney tool that is used right now I think that the market isn't totally buying it I know it stocks up a whole bunch on the air and I get it but if you actually believe these numbers like if you actually believe them I think the stock would be much much higher and I think that this is a tough this it's tough to know you know they're hidden variables like what is the reimbursement rate gonna look like how do these different centers make their decisions is this it's called NRP nor nor see now I can't even remember there's another procedure that can take away market share will that happen so my money is on it being higher but I understand that it might not be because there there is very clearly a disconnect between what management thinks it can believe and what the market thinks management can accomplish by 2030 and then my bold prediction I think my bold prediction is just going to be and I don't have a very clear idea of who this winner will be but I think we're going to start to get a much clearer picture of what the future of autonomous driving is going to look like because I I mean I live in Wisconsin nobody wants to test their cars out on the ice and snow that we have here I see stories coming out of Dallas and San Francisco and it's like a different country because it's just there's none of that around here but I do think I just I have a belief that we're and I mean by like December 2026 it will still be a small percentage of of miles driven but I think that there's going to be there's going to be a narrative about who the one to two to three big winners are going to be by the end of next year I think that's an excellent call I think we're reaching kind of the pivill moment of consolidation in that space and leadership and actual advances and not just narratives on earnings calls to your transmedic points so baronite did a deep dive on transmedics last year and I mean I listened to conference calls when I was putting my kids to sleep and gave them nightmares like it was a whole big ordeal not something you want to talk to a kid about Oregon transplant right be okay user air hand out it was me so and we looked into this and actually I made transmedics my bold prediction for last year that it would double and it's up 93% this year but I think you perfectly called out the mismanagement misperception angle and that and I I think we're I think it's probably going to be to the north rather than the south and 50% just because I think you make those bold claims they must be seeing something behind it right you don't really sensitize the market to something so outlandish that then your stock price gets hammered especially you know let's go back to we were talking about credo earlier I mean they are gap profitable but if unlike credo if transmedics wants to expand their operations abroad and if they want to expand to new use cases they will need investors to be on board this is not a company where insiders own 10% of the shares like they do in credo so in this case you know if credo management kind of goes does whatever they want to do it's like well it doesn't matter it matters with transmedics like they will suffer if they are telling a bad story and they also get the award for one of the most aggressive CEOs as well oh in interviews and on conference calls holy smokes I now want to be on his in on his bad side bear with kind of the last few minutes we have here I wanted to pulse you on prediction for or not prediction but what stock or theme are you bullish on and then let's go reckless predictions to mark them for the record last year for listeners my reckless prediction with Celsius and transmedics both with double in 2025 both did double at one point in 2025 transmedics finishes the year about 90 ish percentage with a few days left maybe that happens Celsius is down in the 60s again plus 60 a great year for them not 100 I'll give myself half credit there and bear your prediction was on Tesla no that was a longer term prediction my my my 2025 prediction was that either you or I are both of us actually I think I said both of us will own a company that doubles and I guess that's probably not as bold you you picked actual companies so I'll get you win this round but but yeah we definitely came true I mean app love in his doubled route at one point a double and then it pulled back but others have others have doubled you know and I guess my point if I was trying to be cheeky about it is like that happens all the time you know and we've all been through years where millions of st seemingly millions of stock you know dozens of stocks have gone up 200 300 percent you know I just gave you app love and crazy three year history with you know they've gone up triple digits three years in a row and one year was 700 so this is just something that people need to be aware of when they think oh well stocks go up 15 percent a year no no that's not how it works a stocks can also go down but I just think people don't understand I wrote a post on Saul's about 30 years ago it seems about stocks move like wild stallions you know like this is just something that's part of what we do and we should we should think about that for you know going both ways but certainly we we shouldn't cut ourselves off at the knees as I've done meant too many times not being not being bullish enough or selling too soon but anyway sorry long long soliloquy on last year as far as this year you know I think I have a negative capacity to identify trends I don't I don't feel good about any any any the way I think the world is going but I'm pretty neutral to bullish on the entire market like everybody's talking about how expensive the market is I think there's a lot there's reasons for that you know I think earnings per share and revenue are probably growing faster than they were 30 or 50 years ago you know I think there's a lot of reasons for where the market's at I don't see a big problem with it if you make me pick a slightly that's that's a that's a tepid prediction if you want just a you know a not not bold but warm prediction I'll call out my top position rubric like I think there's a chance that it's AR could accelerate that's going to low 30 percentage right now but I'd like to see that you know move up closer to 40% again it's a stacking XS curves kind of situation and I don't really understand cybersecurity that well so I don't I mean I can be completely off on this but I think if not rubric I think there will be some SaaS companies that do show a little bit of re-acceleration probably not the old guard but there's got to be something out there and I hope to to climb onto it and then for a bold prediction I'm going to go negative because I'm I'm the bear right with apologies to stock novice and WPR I'm going to have to say that Reddit goes lower in in 2026 and if that's not bold enough I'll say what's what's bold 20% down I mean I don't really think it's going to fall 20 or 25% but I see reasons why it could and just to briefly lay this out they have not faltered yet in being able to drive this arpu growth which is really what where they're what that's the reason for the gaudy revenue growth numbers their users are not growing that fast they're growing you know 19% I think this last you know you're here and that's and that's trending down because I've got to 300 400 million of them anyways what's growing is arpu and that's that can only go on for so long and if I'm wrong about it in 2026 I'll double down in 2027 yeah no I actually kind of agree with some of those points there believe it or not even because at the beginning of the year I was I'd read it around maybe 14 15% and out to two to three so I've kind of lost some confidence there you know similar things to what you said we'll see hopefully it doesn't crash your predict I said this the first time in February when it hit like 220 or something and then it went to close to 300 so I'm perfectly happy being wrong again I just think it's it it becomes a harder game that's okay and I'll I will agree with that even though I'm going to continue to hold it until the number is going differently but I think one of the things is not only is it arpu but for any companies and I've owned quite a few that do average revenue per user which is what arpu stands for if anyone can catch that but a lot of those break it into domestic and international and not only is it 19% that's overall like it's only like 7% user growth in the US and the US is drastically driving average revenue per user which is how most of those work so when it gets a little disconnected when you have a lot more international growth than US growth average revenue per user is almost always smaller for all these companies internationally so it's not just a 19% growth at the higher end of the arpu it's a it's a 7% growth at the higher end of the arpu so that that that combination for me is something to be paying pretty close attention to but I am going to continue holding it until the numbers tell me that it shouldn't because at the end of the day they are beating by a significant margin on both the top and bottom line and those always those percentage amount of those beats always decline as time goes on but until that that gap kind of narrows I'm okay continuing to watch the numbers but I view that as something if it's going to be where it needs to be in three to five years as an investor I also need to be where it's going needs to be in three to five quarters and I always want to keep that well and the trend is with you that I'm usually a few quarters early to jump off something like so you're good and and I bear we and I we spoke about this too I owned quite a large portion in reddit and then reduce my position kind of throughout the year as I thought the arpu angled the algorithm angle the kind of at the whims of others and I mean I've been wrong so I still own but a much smaller position kind of akin to wpr's to to wrap up bold I wanted to put out a bullish theme and a reckless prediction to in terms of well first off I want to get out my axon we almost went an entire show without me talking about axon so just getting this out I think I think we see a thousand dollar share price I think we hear in a big announcement of an enterprise customer one that we aren't aware of right now I think they finally tell us their logistic partner that has hundreds of thousands of axon devices that has been used right now and I think we see share price go up after some heartburn with some recent acquisitions okay moving axon aside I think the bullish trend going forward one that just has been taken to the wood shed in 2025 was the payment space I think the narrative right now is that payment processors are all the same everyone knows that you could use square or shift for payment or Mercado Pago or any of these are pretty much interchangeable and the margins aren't good and and and and and most of these stocks have been hit pretty hard so I think I think we actually start to see a turnaround I think this payment space is somewhere to look I don't think we see crazy growth but I think if you look under a hood at PayPal to some extent see limited Mercado Libre shift for payments which I'll come back to in a sec I think the numbers are going in the right direction and I I think we start to see some positive news for the stock price many of these are down 40 50 percent so I think if I were to go bottom picking this is bottom picking is quote-unquote because I think C limited and Mercado Libre in particular are world class companies but I think these are areas that I'll certainly be looking and I think this sector as a whole outperforms next year so with that in terms of a bullish stock I've been adding a position in shift forepayment I've taken a small kind of lead position which is pretty unusual for me but I think the numbers are going in the right direction I think this this company was taken to the woodshed I think insider buying former CEO now NAS administrator bought 17 million dollars worth which I I don't think is a small amount their buyback program is putting a floor in at acquiring 17 percent of their shares I just think there's a lot of good that is happening there and I think the narrative wins right now are sweeping it down so I took a small lead position which I really don't do often and just seeing how this plays out over the next couple years so my my prediction it's that I don't know probably like 65 or something right now my prediction is we see over a hundred dollar share price by the end of 2026 I again a name I've been I mean we certainly did a deep dive on it months ago name we've sort of been tracking but just I think this area is one that I would look towards and getting of course I think the AI space and some of these other batteries certainly sounds interesting there's other main places to play but this one I think overperforms for what people are expecting yeah I was gonna add on shift four I've been surprised how low their valuations got because their revenue numbers are getting really big now and the market just seems to keep underestimating them so I've been planning to reevaluate them and take another look but I haven't looked at them recently but it seems pretty compelling on valuation their price to earnings I think is 12 going forward their price of sales is under five their growth you know their growth last quarter lived good they did an acquisition where I think some folks kind of scratched their head at buying a company that does luxury retail but I mean all this does is expand their footprint and we're going into a world cup year so I think we're gonna see a lot of travel a lot of sales a lot of hotel and restaurants which is where their forte is so for me it's sort of kind of a bet on I think they're just mispriced so we'll see if that turns out in WPR obviously if you do a write-up or video can't wait to watch and learn more but I think I think this concludes kind of the shooting the bull pod first annual round table this was exciting to have you guys all on as inaugural members luckily stock novice saved his return invite by a good Nvidia prediction so we'd love to obviously have you guys back on individually and as a round table soon bear in mind missing things for kind of our wrap up no I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for joining us this has been a lot of fun and I knew it would be because you're all great minds and you all have your own perspectives and they're very well thought out so thanks a lot if anybody wants to plug anything real quick feel free and then you know I know some of you need to need to run so thanks again for joining us I'll just say thanks to the listeners and thanks for the invite I always find these conversations very educational I hope for especially for those who stuck around for the entire like this I hope they got something out of it and I hope that both Nvidia and trade desk holders a lot of money in 2020 steps we'll talk schedule very soon yeah no I'm sure for two I guess yeah I was really great to catch up with you guys I'm really glad we did it obviously yeah you know me on growth investing mastery on YouTube which I'm trying to get going and on Sal's board is WPR oh you know what I've got one I can give you first of all thank you for for inviting me as well this is great Brian for oldie and I've had our same YouTube channel together for ever since it started in like 2020 we've gotten some advice yes the Brian's we've gotten some advice that he does kind of evergreen content and I do more time sensitive content that we're really confusing YouTube's algorithms so on January 1st we still work together we still do everything together but they're going to be two separate YouTube channels and they're both under our name so if you just look up my name Brian Stofel it'll be there he gets to keep it because he started the other one so I've got a lot of catching up to do he's got the long term mindset yeah he does he started it before and I was just like let's just go on yours we have the same names it just make so much sense well thank you concentrated portfolio bro now yeah I I'm underscore Brian well they thank you guys again for coming on this truly was a great that folks if you have comments if you want to reach out to some of our guests please let Baron I know and I think this will do it from Baron I for year 2025 and we look forward to talking to you kind of early next year so thank you all again happy holidays happy new year from Grazzy and Bear and our guest see you next year