Michael Sikand: How He Finds 10x Stocks Before the Market Does

My name is Gav Blackber. I'm the CEO at Wolf and your host for today on the Wolf podcast. And joining me is one of the first people that I actually ever did a podcast with a long time ago. Michael Khan joins the Wolf Financial Show to talk about asymmetric bets. He has been investing and he's of course on autopilot where there is over $55 million that is investing alongside the portfolios that he has structured on there. His top portfolio is up over 100% in just 6 months. He really focuses on asymmetric bets in the market and today we're going to understand what those are and how he finds them. Michael, welcome to the show. >> God, it's so good to be here, man. People uh don't know how deep the rolodex goes on Finex. So, I knew a meet before he was a meat. Um >> Hey, >> and there's actually a tweet to prove it that he posted with me and then I knew you before Wolf. >> Yeah, way before early early days. definitely going to give some credit and you know we'll talk about that and by the end of the show people will truly understand how you find your five to 10x's in the market but I want to open up here with what I just stated right $55 million that is not a small amount of money 100 plus% is this a flash in the pan luck or is this a repeatable process you know I think it's a mix of deep research and having a great deal of like intuition for like how the market's thinking how the how the market might think Next, um, my goal for all those autopilot portfolios and for the most part has been to essentially position people into what I see as the most asymmetrical setups in the market, right? And the autopilot strategies I run are sector based, right? So, they're either going to be uh focused like on a specific industry or a specific like subsector of the AI trade, for example. And then I have asymmetrical bets, which is kind of like a cross-disciplinary portfolio. We own a lot of different stuff in there. Right now, we took some risk off. We went uh Mag 7. We went with some software. We went with some um uh consumer. But that's my goal. My goal is to help people own a piece of the biggest economic super cycle of our lifetime. And I'm willing to bet that AI is going to really change all of those industries. Uh whether it's space, whether it's defense, whether it's um you know the the downstream AI capex from the hyperscalers as we're seeing with photonix, memory, etc. So really really cool to be able to have a platform where I was able to get the average American to own photonics before maybe major institutions uh decided to really increase their allocations there. Uh I think that's really cool or getting them in memory in February which it had ran quite a lot but you know we still got some huge returns out of it. Um, let me just check the portfolio right now in terms of where we're at in terms of how much we're up. Like I know memory has really come down hard the past few weeks, but I'm up 120% on Micron. I'm up 118% on SanDisk, 30% on EWI, which is, you know, the famous Korean ETF. Uh, STX 52% and Western Digital 33%. So my goal is to get people into those trades, get them to think more like institutions, think uh a little bit ahead and position themselves into kind of the next rotation. So uh it's been a blast honestly. >> So I got a couple questions off of this and I want to start with a bit of a definition because people have heard about value investing, growth investing, momentum investing. What what's asymmetrical? Yeah, I mean asymmetrical investing is when you have to um you know put your head into the wind a bit because you've got to there's got to be something there's got to be disagreement like you can't just uh buy something that everybody thinks is good because that's already priced. So you have to position yourself into into some situation where you have information or you have a unique and differentiated viewpoint that the rest of the market doesn't have. Okay. Uh for photonix, you know, that was understanding um you know, how critical it is to have optics in data centers. Um and that was something I really realized by having my boots on the ground at NVIDIA GTC. You know, I was going to learn I I interviewed the head of networking at NVIDIA. Uh I learned from all these cloud executives talking about um you know just the shift to CPO and um you know how constrained optic supply was. Uh and that was I even got to ask Jensen a question about you know why he invested in luminum and coherent. Um so sometimes asymmetry can still be found in sectors that are already up a few hundred%. I mean, it must be real optics. When I set up my phatonics fund in February, it was many of the stocks were already up a few hundred%. But it's like you can still catch these trades where the world still doesn't fully grasp their power, right? They don't fully grasp how uh uh much demand or how important a certain technology is. And that was the case with memory and and and with photonics. Up a few hundred% but not up enough. >> So, >> and I think there's a lot of asymmetry there too. >> Yeah. How are you finding these things then in the early days? I want to kind of understand a little bit more about the research process and how you're getting comfortable enough to put massive quantities when people look at the portfolios. You know, some of these portfolios with tens of millions of dollars, you're not diversifying with 5% positions. I often see you taking 20% plus positions and you famously in your own portfolio at one point had a 70% position to Kraken. And so, walk me through the research process that gets you to the point where you're comfortable and confident making those types of bets. Yeah, I mean you really have to know what you own, right? You have to know a business in and out to be able to weather these massive draw downs. Like right now, right, we're seeing everything down 30, 40, 50%. And the people who really know what they own are are going to be a lot better off in situations like this. Unfortunately, the state of the market has been people crowding into trades they don't fully understand, bottlenecks, they don't fully understand. Not a single uh iota of my soul has lost conviction in the optics trade over the past few months. And there's been so much FUD. You know, there's been these reports that there are delays. There's just been like a sentiment complete flip in the markets of like owning AI Infra. Um but I think it's simpler than people think. Like for one you can really learn a lot by obviously learning from people at X learning from AI doing your research but for example Goldman on photonix has that industry going from 9 billion to like 45 billion by 2028. So you understand how much the industry is growing and then you look at the individual companies and you kind of uh have to figure out what has the most upside. So for example like AOI has been a trade that I've had a lot of concentration. down a lot uh right now. It's down a lot right now, but uh if you just look at uh the demand for what they're building and the strategic importance of building onshore laser fabs um at at the market cap that they're at that is a fraction of light and coherent. That is an asymmetric setup and there's a lot of FUD around that stock. There's a lot of cloudiness because the management has a negative track record. But in my opinion, it's like there's it's an impossibility like for them not to take advantage of these resources and assets and strategic advantages that they have. Um, so that that's a a pretty good example. So I don't necessarily like obsess over PE though it is helpful. Um, you really have to listen to management on these earnings calls and figure out uh what they're saying and understand the setup. You know, in a case of like an AOI, right? This is a company that is planning to scale its revenue uh from 500 million a year last year to a billion a year this year and then 5 billion the next year. Right? That's an asymmetric setup right there. But the market has has yet to understand like has yet to price that in. Um >> pull this one up. >> And that's why there's a but that's why there's asymmetry. >> I I actually like AOI here. I I did you add back to this position just recently as well? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I took another I added a large stake in it to our asymmetrical invest fund when I was at like 110. You know, it's down from there, but it felt like a pretty good entry. >> Feels like a great spot right here. You know, not that I'm an applied optometrics uh electronics uh expert, but you know, from what I can see, this had a huge run. Looks like earnings came out. People were very excited about those earnings. That happened a second time right here. Clearly, the earnings reactions have been positive for the last couple times. You've got earnings coming up right here un, you know, as long as they can keep following up here hopefully for a positive reaction. You've got a 200 SMA, this green line right here. And you've got a nice buildup where you kind of traversed here right before if I was looking for an entry. This is the kind of the time. Do you marry the technicals at all or, you know, upcoming earnings or pieces like that with the fundamental story that you're building out? >> I really don't look at charts. No. Um I'm purely based on information and kind of like sentiment that I can like uh absorb and feel in the market. So not necessarily my style to draw lines or anything like that. I mean really what I'm trading is uh where what the fundamentals are like what position the company has made clear in the case of AOI it's they can scale transceiver revenue to 500 million a quarter some roughly in that range like low 400 million or whatever a quarter. So, that's a thesis I'm playing. I mean, if the stock's going to trade down 50% on sentiment when no information has changed, um, you know, uh, then I think it's a an interesting time to increase my conviction and load up. Like, I was buying all the way down. So, sometimes you get caught in these situations though where the market just loses the sentiment and you get kind of bagged on a on a trade even if it's a really good idea. And that's why it's important to know what you own. You know, I haven't really wavered in my conviction around that stock. >> Yeah. And I want to show people on the opposite side, not the chart side, the fundamentals which you're speaking to, which is these earnings. And so people can see on here, you know, earnings over time, they really were pretty stagnant for a couple years here. And then you just start to see growth. And then you start to see here what I like to call explosive growth, right? You're now moving from 100 million here to your 150 and then boom, all of a sudden you're at 265. Uh this is projections, right? And we'll see what happens to come up. But right now, they're looking to go to $190 million of revenue for Q2 of 2026. That's a nice jump. It's an even bigger jump than you saw from Q1 to Q uh to QT, sorry, than you saw from Q4 into Q1. And so when you see this, like this to me is pretty interesting as it's continuing to move and the projections that they're seeing. And I think that maybe you could talk a little bit about this, but this seems to be the overall thing that people need to wrap their head around, which is the non-yclicality of what's happening here and how there's actually going to be continuous increases in earnings, right? And in this and so that seems to be what you're looking at >> 100%. Right? Like uh if you look at the EPS estimates or the just the revenue estimates uh until 2028, it's it's insanity, right? Um but again, the market's just concerned, right? like uh these stocks have run a lot and like we're seeing right now it's exactly what you might have predicted, right? High beta selling off, people go into more riskoff assets. Um but again, it it's a it's a good time to know what you own. I mean, a lot of people are just a lot of retail investors uh are just, you know, they full poured into the market. Maybe they're on leverage that gets unwound, right? Uh but I think here it's like pretty clear like there's some really great buys. I think AOI and Nebus. So we have like nearly half of that asymmetrical bets fund that we play really risky and really high concentration uh into and Nebus and that was at like I think 190s or something like that cost basis and then AOI. Uh we've seen obviously a bit of a slide here. There's a lot of FUD in the market about this uh the Kimmy model. Um and again just like talk to that actually because I haven't really had to be able to talk to that today. >> Yeah, I haven't been able to digest it too much. Uh my read on it is that if it is bearish for the big model labs um it's extremely bullish for AI infrastructure. So optics memory data centers neoclouds GPUs uh land and shell uh power because you still need an equivalent amount of compute to serve a model like Kimmy to the user. So um I think if you're trading AI infrastructure nothing's really changed. We can't even own the model labs yet. A lot of these infrastructure companies though have done deals with the model apps and they're propped up by the valuations of those companies to be able to pay and and gain investor appetite to be able to pay those infrastructure providers. So that's why we have seen some weakness and some uh some fear. So uh again long AI infrastructure as you know and and and I I think that's like a a bullish situation because if open- source is really going to be equivalent to these model labs like I think it's a good thing because it means that uh if there's more competitiveness at the LLM layer it means AI is going to be more widespread. It's going to be more abundant. It's going to be more accessible. We're already seeing usagebased pricing with Fable. They're phasing that out in two days. So, um, we're already seeing kind of like that all you can eat change and now like the best AI is only accessible to large companies with massive budgets. So, I think it's a good thing that we're seeing a lot of competitive LLMs because I think it's just net positive for consumers and businesses. And again, all that value then flows down to the layers in which retail is obsessed with, right, that are have been the most asymmetrical trades for a reason because that's where all the hyperscaler earnings are just shifting down to those companies and their, you know, uh, their balance sheets. So, um, that's really been the trade and that's what I kind of, uh, I saw coming. You know, I didn't see a lot of upside for MAG7 this year euro. We actually seen decent kind of activity there recently. I didn't see a lot of upside there. I just saw okay downstream and then what what really hasn't been priced effectively given how aggressive this AI built out's going to be. And we have a few weeks until hyperscale earnings. And I think if you can just stick it out, you know, there'll be some really positive signals. But all we've seen the past few weeks has been been bullish. It's just been it's just been a sentiment shift. You know, confidence can go like that, right? And when these stocks are up a few hundred percent, you know, it's it people get scared. I mean, these institutions are just as scared as you as all these retail traders. They're so afraid to lose their money as well. Like, it's been a crazy run. So, they're also getting scared. You You had a tweet that I've actually referenced a couple times on my shows in the last few days cuz I thought it was pretty great. And you mentioned nothing better than weak tech se tech sentiment going into another record-breaking earnings lineup. So many redhot setups brewing. Uh you mentioned Pang which went up over 25% after earnings to make a new all-time high. You said there's so many names down 20 to 30%. Off their peak ready to melt faces. Uh that was 5 days ago. You know it has that become even more true? >> I think so. I mean look at AHR. I mean air test systems has been a core holding our photonics portfolio. that stock uh I think in up to pre-market was up 50% after their earnings 50%. Penguin Solutions was up 25 30% after its earnings. I mean these are two retail favorite AI Infernames and uh crushed it. So >> uh yeah really really positive data and fundamentals. So I'm very confident this selloff uh you know I'm not even confident to certainty this was not around fundamentals. This is purely sentiment, profit taking. >> Your sale on Ping looks a little better now. >> I know I did exit Ping before their earnings. Um, which was still an excellent 60% gain, but you know, now it's back down to about where I I sold it or below. >> Yeah. >> Where is it at right now? >> It's 6060 right now. >> Yeah. Okay. So, looking like uh decent. If it slides a little more, I'll look better. But um I'm still bullish paying. Like I think it's a a good stock to own. I think it's a a a good it's a little more expensive up here. I mean, I was buying in the 30s, but um you know, smashing success. So, again, let's see what happens. I you know, expect a lot of these optical companies to crush it. Um you know, these valuations have come down, but again, like just understand that AI companies can grow into their earnings. Nvidia did it for years, just kept growing into their earnings to the point where now they're at 15 times forward, right? So now it's just like this next layer of AI infra downstream, the less obvious stuff, batonics, memory, etc. Just continuing to follow that same path. So again, focus on the fundamentals, focus on like owning really really good businesses. Um, I do believe the AIM for trade is the place to focus. Um, you know, there's there's great deals in space, there's great deals in defense. You know, I bought into that dip yesterday. So I deployed 100K into the market yesterday across a bunch of stocks. >> I'm usually a very asymmetrical investor, but yes, but yesterday I did. I bought everything. I bought a little bit. I nibbled a bit of everything. Memory photonics defense space all the all the stuff I have on autopilot. I basically just backed into that. Um, and whether or not I'm right, I I don't know. There's a lot of uncertainty over the Middle East. There's a lot of uncertainty over rate cuts. Uh, but I'm really excited to see what what we see out of this earning season. I mean, it's it's coming up right right here. So, I encourage a lot of people not to capitulate right ahead of AI capex guidance getting raised and another smashing set of earnings from your favorite AI infrastructure companies. Do you use any other tools like options or anything along those lines to potentially play earnings? >> So the thing about playing options with earnings is you really have to have a move that far exceeds what the market is already pricing in because the market is already pricing in massive moves around earnings. So, typically I don't play options around earnings um or just specifically long calls around earnings because for that exact reason like IV crush. I think it's a good idea sometimes to buy options into companies before and then sell them before earnings just taking that rise just getting paid on that rise in IV like right before. Um but yeah, I'll play earnings. Um you know, maybe for example, like one trade I crushed it on for earnings was Qualcomm. I hit a 10x on options for Qualcomm. That was at I think it was like 140 150. I just understood their uh nent uh roots or and nent potential in like the CPU market and A6 and they mentioned that they landed a hyperscaler stock went crazy. Then I did exactly as I said uh wrote about this on substock and X it was going to trade alongside the semi-names went up to 240. I think I sold it at like 2 220 230 sold the options. So, that was a great trade, but again, that was like a really like unexpected move, you know, like typically like a stock might go down a little bit, go up a little bit after earnings. It's hard to know if it's really going to move like crazy. >> There's another sector that I've seen you talk a good amount about, and I'm not sure if it's really in your thematics right now, but that's quantum, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it. >> Yeah, I mean, um, I don't focus too much on quantum. Um, I really do believe that investors right now are really just going to focus on where are the earnings going to show up downstream of the hyperscalers. If they're not going to show up, if I don't get to own a great business, a bunch of cash and buybacks with these hyperscalers, I mean, I better own where it's going to show up downstream, right? That's the focus. It's very simple, right? Many of those names are now down 30 40% off their highs. So, um, when I see when I think about I don't even think about quantum here right now. Okay. Yes, inflection at $9 or whatever it's at today is interesting to me. I I like inflection. Uh where is that today? >> Yeah, INFQ. >> It's down 3% today. Trading at $9 a share. >> I mean, it's trading almost about where I did my interview with one of their executives at GTC. Uh, Inflection was one of my favorite picks from Nvidia GTC even though it wasn't um, uh, a AI stock because they were there and we were like, okay, like this looks really interesting. Um, you know, their architecture is unique and, uh, I really like how they're generating revenue here. Uh, trading at, you know, the lowest price of sales in the category. I think generally like a little bit misunderstood and I really like their focus on like defense and um quantum sensing in the short term to generate revenue, but I just don't think that makes a whole lot of sense to be focused on quantum already when um there's massive still massive uncertainty around what's happening in the AI trade. >> Yeah. All right. So, I'm going to just do two more quick sections here because I also want to give people an opportunity to get to know you a little bit more. But just coming off of you mentioned you put $100,000 into the market buying the dip here in this July p this J July pullback. Um with that being said, you said you sprinkled it around a little bit diversified. What were the largest additions that you made and are there stocks right now that you're watching that if we do see a continuous draw down that you would continue to add into? >> Yeah. Um let's see. I went pretty broad here. Uh probably the largest positions would be AOI, Nebius. So, Photonix, Neocloud, um, and Memory. So, those are probably the biggest. And then I also had like a pretty big buy. Like AVAB was the biggest. What I did is I split it equally across like my autopilot portfolios. So, uh, whatever had like a whatever has a super high concentration in any of the autopilot ports is going to be one of the larger buys. So, it was Micron and SNDK. Those are both like over 30% positions in the memory super cycle portfolio. And then um light coherent, you know, just the photonic blockbuster heavyweights, uh consensus photonics winners, AOI, non-consensus photonics winner. Um so it was a really broad basket to be honest with you. Uh picked up space stocks, AS bounce today. See if it still held up. >> Yeah, >> it has been getting hammered, but I mean I think I bought it at like 50 bucks or 50 $55. Yeah, something like that. But uh yeah, space is space has gotten killed to be honest with you. I think my biggest mistake is like I I think I I just have really good intuition and I wish that I had shared that more publicly. Like when you're a permeable like me, right? You're just constantly trying to keep people into this futuristic mindset. But again, like it's really important and healthy to be a trader that takes profits and an investor that takes profits and understands when things might shift. For me, my biggest regret is not uh is is not just like acting when I saw it. Um basically towards the end of June, all the alpha dried up. Okay. Every AI IM for stock was priced to perfection and then all the retail guys started going to humanoid robotics and that is when I knew it and I didn't act and now I'm bagged. And um I just want to act on my intuition a little bit more. And I don't want to be afraid to be bearish sometimes. And I think that my biggest fear is being bearish because I built this big permable thing and I have all these long funds and these asymmetric categories, but it's kind of obvious to me when things when things might be a little too overheated. So, I'd like to share in that like sometimes when the market realizes what you knew, uh I I'm one of those guys who might stay in the trade too long, get too greedy, right? We all do. and uh then it goes down. You lose that information arbitrage trade that you made and you stay in it for too long. So I admire uh a lot of people who have the discipline to get out of a stock once their thesis plays out. I think it's easy to get greedy and I think that's what happened to a lot of traders here. Like memory at a trillion isn't that to me isn't the RR isn't really there. I think we might I'd love to see that stuff rerate go back here another rally 20 30%. But I really don't think that Micron at a trillion dollars or SK or Samsung, it's not a full port trade. Trillion bucks, what you're going to go to two trillion maybe. It's not that interesting to me. >> Yeah. Yeah, that that makes sense. I'm curious when you say things are, you know, perfectly rated, is that a basis off of their earnings? Is it how are you, I guess, kind of lining that up and not thinking that there's additional alpha at the moment? Yeah, I would say from a from like a valuation perspective, I mean everything had just ran so much into June like the market was was so uh it was just everything was expensive in that the charts looked overextended and the valuations were extremely high you know seeing 40 50 60 even forward PS. So then when nobody's really >> Micron's 4P is like six. >> Oh yeah. I mean again but that's still pretty respectable for Micron at this point in the cycle because like even at like a 6 7 8 9 10 PE like it's in between being a cyclical and being not like it's still like pretty good for a company that a lot of people still see as cyclical. So I would still say that that in the moment that's still like that was a big move for Micro. I'm very impressed that they were able to go up that much that fast. So I would even say like if you just understand the memory trade you understand that that was okay. That was pretty healthy. um not saying it can't go to a structural multiple. I mean I still think that's possible. I still think that these memory companies can be viewed as structural businesses. The analogy that I've used is um you know like oil like being used for lamps and then being used for automobiles. It's just you know completely different setup and um you know these oil companies are treated they all sell the same product just like memory companies HBM or what DRAM but uh they'll give structural multiples. >> Yeah. >> You know 15 20 times earning uh earnings. So, um, yeah, we're we're going to see what happens. Uh, but I think it really is important to, um, be somewhat active in this market. Like I think any I could have seen the space thing coming from a mile away, too. I have an autopilot space basket up 50% in a month before the SpaceX IPO at the end of May. And I just >> I wish I could be I just need to be a better active manager, be a better better investor. When you say that, is it because you had an intuition that SpaceX would have pulled the liquidity out of that market? >> Yeah. I mean, didn't really It was just a pure hype trade. I mean, space just uh it's a little bit of a scam like these stocks have no earnings. These stocks, but I still think the space super the the space super cycle is incredible, right? There's so many satellites going to be built. Just look at the data. The problem is just like the short-term volatility of all these like really futuristic trades, high beta stuff, right? Um, again, I think if you want to be I I still think like Afro is the place to focus. >> Uh, especially with these draw downs. Yeah. I don't know. Would would you agree with that? I know you're out of like the small cap, high beta, asymmetrical market. Like I know you're kind of just in like hyper you're kind of in the mag 7. You have a pretty diverse portfolio yourself and you guys just cover the news. You're not really judged by how much alpha you generate, but curious. Yeah, >> definitely on the timeline it's a little bit different. I would say I think when it comes to some of the portfolios, there's a few things in there like if people go in and they look at my Wolf Financial flagship AI portfolio, I don't think they're they're necessarily going to know all of the names that are in there. They're certainly going to know, you know, my top holdings that are within there, right? The top holdings right now, if people were to look at it, you've got Nebus is within there, right? That's one where I was able to get in pretty early and get some good gains. Right now it's up about 150% inside the portfolio even after this pullback which is nice. You've got Nvidia, Google Meta. And then I think towards the lower end of it, there's stuff like Synaptics, right, where you're getting maybe a little bit more into the weeds of what is going to be a picks and shovels type play. They recently got acquired as well. So I thought that was an interesting one. And similar to you, you know, it's I think important when you see these moves to be able to take some profit. Um there's some TSM in there which I just love TSM. I think that that's one that's going to continue flying through. But yes, you're right. Like I'm not typically taking up something that is a smidcap, right? Event, you know, two, three billion within these areas. There are some larger cap area pieces and I think that it does make for different types of pieces, right? It's less volatility in some of these portfolios. Like my um I looked at a lot of the portfolios that are on the platform and a lot of them are down 10 20% in the past week. Um this one's down 5%. >> Um you know, in that same time period. So it just does provide people with a little bit less volatility on the items and um and you know in tandem it's not up 100% year to date within those pieces. So yeah it is a little bit different but I I'm curious kind of last question here on the alpha when you're trying to discover like new alpha walk me through what that process looks like. Are you using social media a lot? AI for research traveling to conferences like what does that discovery of alpha look like? >> I don't think there's any like one triedand-true way. I think a little bit of it is just keeping your ear to the ground like staying up to date. Uh that means following some of the top uh influencers on X who are curating ideas, curating your timeline. It's not always the best place to look. Um I think a lot what a lot of traders don't understand is um a lot of trading is networking. Like I've got a army of guys that I I work with, I'm friends with, they either work for me, they work with me um who are generating great ideas. And um again, the great thing about being a retail investor is like uh it's not like maybe on Wall Street where these banks are competing against each other and we're not really competing against each other. Maybe the influencers are for calls and for for being early to stuff, but uh you know when you're making friends and relationships with other traders, um it's really kind of a as long as you're providing alpha to them uh providing value to them, they'll provide value to you. And uh I think that that's a really important piece. So just surrounding yourself with really smart people who love to trade as well. So network, reach out to people, DM people. They don't have to be big. Like build a trading community of smart guys uh who do their research and who know how to position and and riskreward, listen to great podcasts, consume media like this. Um watch D Money with Chris Camelo. All of that's been like pretty life-changing for me to like get into that and consume. Uh because I really just live for asymmetry. And I think, you know, all my stuff is pretty high risk, high reward, but like that's how I [ __ ] roll. And I think that's why people will want to gravitate around me because uh that's that's what makes it fun. Multibaggers are fun. >> Well, and I think it actually really connects well with your background, right, when you're talking about the networking and those types of pieces because you had one of the first largescale Gen Z media companies that I really came to, you know, my notice with our future. And so I do want to kind of give people some background for you. So you're at Michigan, right? And co hits and it's like all right, what's what's going to happen here within these pieces and you start this company and you've built it. I think it ended up doing over 800 million views on TikTok together with an acquisition from Morning Brew and Aqua Hire right there. Can you give people some background as to like who is the person here that they are having, you know, maybe they're invested in your Autopilot portfolios, maybe they just follow you? >> Yeah, I mean I've always been really passionate about media. Um, and I've always been like a major lover of business. uh a business storytelling, you know, reading biographies in high school. Um, and really just leaned into my talent like uh as a podcaster, as a speaker, as a you know, somebody like that. Um, so I ended up starting like a podcast from from being sent home during this uh college and I just realized like you don't have to ask for permission in this life. You just have to go and do it. So I reached out to a lot of great CEOs. I interviewed many sea suite at publicly traded companies from Chipotle, CMO of Chipotle, CFO of Spotify, I mean all talking to me as a 20-year-old really interested to engage with me and um I really learned how to sell myself, sell myself and pitch myself. Then I pivoted to creating short videos on Tik Tok, Instagram with the short form revolution. Scaled to a few like one and a half million followers combined across a couple different platforms um and then was able to uh get acquired by Morning Brew more a company that had been on the cutting edge of media uh but didn't have as much of a stake in the multimedia world which they've crushed it on now but we were part of like that strategy for them to diversify uh some of their audience base off of email and into the new realm. Um it's funny how things work in media, right? Morning Brew gets acquired for being fresh and new for newsletter and then they're like, "Okay, damn, we need to be fresh and new now and get into Tik Tok and Gen Z, right?" Uh, but these were short 60-cond videos that I mastered telling stories about business uh startup news, etc. And then um I just saw this massive opportunity with investing and I just really seeing this president that we have be so pro markets seeing um uh just what's going on with the amount of investment into uh all these different technologies um and the accessibility of investing with apps like Robin Hood and the proliferation of of these these people on on social media sharing really high quality research. I mean, I have a pretty exciting, you know, I've been kind of like a hype man for this new world of retail investor research. Uh, to be honest, I think the category is extremely nent still. Uh I think we need to get a way bigger percentage of the world to be paying attention to markets, understanding riskreward because you know when you have AI um and everything change and the way we're in late stage capitalism where all this value is acrewing to such a small percentage of people. It's a little dystopian. Um and like I said my strategies are high risk high reward because they have to be. Okay. if all these companies are trying to take your job um you know they're trying to uh verticalize as much value as possible um you know you have to become capital faster than capital can become labor through AI that's my opinion >> and that's why I think that people need to change the way that they think about risk award you know Warren Buffett might say okay just go long the S&P and go to sleep but that's okay you can go long the S&P and go to sleep if you have a stable career ladder you know grinding your way up you know, the traditional way that maybe your parents did um in the old way of business, but now nothing is guaranteed to you. Nothing is promised. A house isn't promised. A career isn't promised. It's really just going to be your risk appetite, your creativity, your ingenuity, and your drive to make it and be an elite in the society because it's going to change. And it's really it's going to be a very clear strata like a cast system, you know. Um maybe I'm being way too doomer. I I do think there's a tremendous opportunity here, man. >> Yeah. But that's that's why he ain't trying to be in district 12. >> But tell me like like what is there really to lose if you're poor? What is there really to lose when the vector between like what your life looks like if you if you have risk appetite and hit it or what happens if you don't? that it's such a huge difference in those two lives, in those two outcomes. And I don't mean just trading. I mean, it's entrepreneurship. It's hustling. It's creating opportunity for yourself, seeing and acting on things and trying new things. Um, but trading is just an expression of that. And I think that more people um, and I don't I I hate to say the word trading. I think it's a little bit of a dirty word, but think about how you can use your unique knowledge and skill sets to generate as much potential uh, as possible. and that might be researching stocks or starting a business or what have you. But I think it's really important to think about risk. Uh I've heard people say it's like less risky to start a business now than it is to uh like work a normal job, right? I don't know exactly if that's true. Uh but really like what did you have to lose? Like you know it's houses are so expensive, food is so expensive, everything's just getting inflated. um is that really going to change with money printing and uh just the way that these governments are set up? So, yeah, I think it's a important time to to to own some of these businesses and figure out which ones you want to own and figure out which ones are going to get you to your goals. >> Yeah, it's well said. What's something, and maybe it's that piece right there, but different different from that, what's something that you would go back and tell your 20-year-old self, that's a good one. H, what would I tell my 20-year-old self? 19, 20, somewhere in that range. >> 19 or 20. Uh, I would have told myself I I actually was late to investing. I think that's what everyone should know. like I haven't been in stocks for a long time and uh it was mostly just like I was just focused on entrepreneurship right um and like the riskreward profile and doing that like starting a business from my dorm room but uh I would have I would have told myself to to educate myself about investing in public markets >> I really wish like I remember buying Tesla I had $200 in college I bought Tesla at 200 a share because I was like okay this is insane like there's no way like the stock is worth this much And I ended up writing it to like 800 bucks or a thousand, something like that. And it was like, "Oh my god, this is crazy. This is nuts." I mean, had I just had my money in like the Mag 7 since 22, I mean, wow, right? Like consensus, obvious trade. Um, so I' I'd say that really is what it is. Just like so many people are like too afraid to like pick individual stocks. >> Yeah. >> And like they just miss out on such enormous upside. Tesla's one of my favorite stories actually from back in college. I had a professor in a class and he was talking about basically fundamentals and trying to outline them and he was explaining what a over you know bought stock looked like and this was you know Tesla's way way way before you know a thousand% ago basically at this point right and he puts up the fundamentals on the screen and he goes all right who thinks Tesla's a good buy here and I'm the only person in the class that raises my hand and to be honest I was just so fascinated I think at this point as well with Elon and Elon was working 100 hours a week in the factory at this right? He had just got into a whole fight with SEC and was like not backing down. I was like, I think Tesla's a good buy here. They were like, why do you think Tesla is a good buy here? I was like, well, not looking at the current cash flows and pieces like that. I'm looking at the future, right? And tried to talk about professor like reams me in front of the class. He's like, see class, like this is how you lose money. He's like, this is how you lose money. And uh like years later, he actually like reached out and apologized to me. Uh cuz I was like, man, like I don't think I've ever been roasted like that in front of a class, but sometimes like that's an asymmetrical bet right there, right? everybody in the class is saying this sucks and you stand up and go I think I'm gonna buy this uh and you stick with it. You know, >> that's a good feeling, bro. And uh it kind of sucks to be right too early because like >> people are only going to give you credit once it happens and like they didn't listen so they can't get in. Then maybe they'll follow you for what's next. >> But um >> yeah, I mean Tesla Tesla I mean I I'm really excited about Optimus and all that. Uh, but again, like I like to focus more on the >> Yeah. >> smaller to midcap stuff. I do own a Tesla. I love Teslas. >> I love it. One or one or two just quick rapid fire questions here. I'm curious what the best piece of investing advice that you ever got was and who it came from. >> Uh, okay. Two. So, my favorite quote in investing is from um James Anderson from Bailey Gford, which is a very legendary investing firm. And I'll read it to you right now. The asymmet the asymmetric payoff structure you can make far more if you're right about a stock than you can lose if you're wrong is the fund fundamental attraction of investing in equity markets and really what that quote embodies is uh what we're doing with this asymmetrical bets brand which is getting people to think about riskreward properly and like I said in this changing world where all this wealth is flowing to a few people and how are you going to get ahead how are you going to have the life that you want and you've got to be taking risks and understanding that a company's value can go up by many many hundreds of percent. >> Thousands of percent. >> It can only go down 100%. >> Correct? >> Life-changing. The second thing would be a more recent quote that Howard Marx has where he said sometimes when when investors consider an investment to be risky, they actually price out the risk. So when you're buying a stock, uh it's actually not risky anymore because everybody priced the risk out by not wanting to buy it or selling it. So two really interesting things to think about there. Um, and I think uh >> you'll have a a real a joy to reflect on those things and maybe try and apply them to to your own investing journey. >> I like it. And then last question for me, if you had to pick a stock right now that you were going to hold for a decade, >> which stock would it be? >> Stock that I have to own for a decade. It's hard to say. Let me think. I know you're more active investor as well, but I'm just curious if there's anything that you have that kind of confidence in that it's going to continue to outperform. >> I could also give you a couple more short-term trade ideas that I have. I think longterm something that's like resilient, super resilient to like market structures, >> market draw downs. I would say I want to go back to my OG here at $4 cracking robotics. I'm really bullish Anderil. I think the defense buildout is uh I think the defense buildout is kind of like the equivalent of hyperscaler capex. It's just not being treated like that. So I love I love Kraken's business. I think super wellrun. Uh working with Ander. And is going to scale so much as a company, especially their underwater division over the next 10 years. So that might be a really good trade that right now is like very there's a lot of very low sentiment. Uh but 10 years down the line, really incredible company. Um >> uh producing this next realm of like undersea uh drone technology. Like we're already seeing so much of it. Like that rescue being done in the straight was with uh Seronic uh boat. Um so I'm really excited about NeoPrimes and then by virtue of that uh Kraken. So I think that's a clear-cut winner for a for a 10-year hold >> and and that's only sitting at a $ 1.3 billion market cap. So, I think that should really show people like where where your mind's at with these things. Always great having you on. I do encourage people to check you out. So, there's a lot of places that people can find great content from you. You've been very active on X now at Michael Sakans where people can find that. You also have a company page on X, right, asymmetric bets where you're sharing some more information from yourself and your team. We're both on autopilot. Encourage people to go check you out on there. If anybody hasn't found it, Autopilot is an app that allows people to essentially copy, trade, invest alongside. people know it for Nancy Pelosi and others like that. Michael runs great portfolios in there 50 million plus dollars that is investing alongside his portfolio. So encourage people to check that out. And then of course you have a YouTube as well and I believe there's also um a written portion is it a discord uh mainly that you would point people towards? >> So we have our our substack asymmetrical bets pretty big now. Um you can check that out asymmetricalbs.substack.com and then part of that is we also have a discord. You can find the discord on the substack website. Same with the autopilot portfolio. just go to my act and link in bio should get you uh whatever you need uh at Michael's a >> beautiful yeah encourage people to check it out Michael it's been a long time coming to have you uh back on in a pod format I feel like this is a six-year round trip glad we were able to do it and excited to do more any final comments for the audience before we close out >> no uh I appreciate you having me go we'll talk soon I'll be on I'll try and come on every few weeks >> sounds good looking forward to it thank you audience for watching wished everybody a great weekend this will turn into recording as soon as we close it. So if you missed the beginning, you can go back and watch it. Appreciate everyone as always. Have a good one. We'll see you on the next one. Hey there, it's Gav Blackburg, CEO at Wolf, and I'm so excited to see you at the Wolf Summit NYC on August 3rd. We've got the best names coming to this, ranging from Peter Toughman from the New York Stock Exchange to Vashal from Stock Talk Weekly and so many other amazing traders, investors, educators throughout the day. It's going to be in Manhattan. We've got food planned for everyone, breakout sessions, and some exciting activities, plus plenty of merch and giveaways. Grab your ticket now. They're just $250 with a public account, and you can be one of the few to secure your spot. They're moving fast and we'd love to see you