Michael Sikand: He Saw the Top Coming and Didn't Act

To be honest with you, I think my biggest mistake was 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 permable 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 rer rate 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 going to go to 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 and I was seeing 40 50 60 even forward pees. 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 Micron. 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 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 earnings 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 a Emperor 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 well 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 Nebas 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, even 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-rue way. I think a little bit of it is just keeping your ear to the ground like staying up to date and 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 a 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 Money with Chris Camello, 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. Multiaggers 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 largecale 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 or 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 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 TikTok 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 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 this society because it's going to Change.