How Chris Camillo Made $10 MILLION In One Day

You texted into our group chat, "Finding cash wasn't easy today, but added to my Bloom Energy and Amazon knowing it could get a lot uglier before the market rationalizes, but been here before." Wednesday afternoon, a few hours later, you texted, "I don't know of many people who are as immune to volatility than me." And there was a moment this morning where I legit almost threw up, then picked up more Bloom Energy in Amazon. Thursday afternoon, 24 hours later, you texted, "This is so close to an 8 figureure up day. Unreal." I'm curious, why did you almost throw up? >> When it rains, it pours, guys. It's just I feel like this happens to every investor every time. It's like you have these bad days, these bad weeks at the worst possible times in your life. It's like when you're on family vacation spending way too much money or when you need money for something else and you're like already drawing down your account for something else in your life. I have a couple things going on right now that I needed to withdraw an insane amount of money from my account for. So like I already kind of watch my account dip because of something I need, right? something I want to do. Right as that happened, over the course of a couple weeks, I have one of the biggest draw downs of my investing career, 40%. I've been worse. How do you lose 40%. That's a lot of money. Hey, cuz the market only went down a little bit. >> That's what's so crazy. I mean, I got caught up. I just happened to have the same major investment as Leopold, right? Like, you know this. I was very early on Bloom Energy. He was very early on Bloom Energy. Both of us compounded and levered into Bloom. We 6x, 7, 8xed our money on Bloom, even without leverage. Like Bloom is one of the biggest investments I've ever made. Bloom got cut by, I don't know, 45%. It went from what, $300 a share to 165 over a short period of time. That was one of my largest positions right there. What price did you buy into Bloom Energy? >> I bought Bloom Energy all around. I bought few hundred shares at like 70 bucks. Bought a few hundred atund and something. Bought a few hundred at 300 and something. So, I was buying kind of like all around. But I ended up getting obliterated on Bloom. Fortunately, not that bad because I was selling some calls in the shares and I was doing some tricky options that hurt me and helped me at the same time. Overall, I would say I probably lost on Bloom, but it's okay because I made it up elsewhere. Here's the thing. So, my account was slaughtered. And don't feel bad for me because you guys know this. My account was hitting all-time highs. Like, like before this started, I was starting from a very good place, which is why I decided, hey, I can afford to take out these huge chunks of money to do these other things that I want to do in my life, other investments, other projects, right? I didn't expect within the same week for my account to get crushed 40%. So, it was kind of a big mental hit. I also knew without knowing what was happening to Leopold. I knew what he owned. Whether or not it was someone manipulating that to try to mess with him didn't really matter to me. I knew that he was getting margin called. It he had to be getting margin called. I assumed he owed something in the range of 10 plus billion very quickly. And I knew that was what was driving the down cycle in Bloom Energy and Nebius and a few of these other AI names in addition to sector news that was pushing it down. Right? So because I knew about that forced downflow, I knew it was going to revert. I just didn't have the timing. Right? And so here's where you get into what I do. Everything's a probability game. I knew we were days away from having that trade reverse because at some point his margin call would end and Bloom did not deserve to be at $165 a share. Like it it was outrageous. Um in fact all these names they were the entire sector move was completely ridiculous and fueled by not just his margin calls but I knew all of Korea was getting margin called. Basically every levered fund in South Korea was getting liquidated over the same time period because what are they invested in? Bloom Energy is one of the biggest names in South Korea, right? Basically all the Leopold stuff is all the South Korea stuff which is all the Chris Camilillo stuff. So me Leopold and South Korea were all getting crushed at the same time. So what are you going to do? Fortunately, I'm not managing an institutional fund. My account is more liquid. I have more control over it and I wasn't 4x levered like Leopold. I was like 1x levered, right? >> So, a lot of people are accusing you on Twitter of irresponsible risktaking that you shouldn't even be discussing publicly. What do you say to that? >> That's insane. Like I I have full control over the risk in my account. You guys know this. Like no one is more obsessive over every move that they make than me. So, first of all, let's start here. We all have different investment objectives, right? My objectives are very different than yours. They're very different from other investors. The entirety of my brokerage account is a ultra high risk, ultra high ward account. I'm trying to grow that account into a billion dollar account, right? That's not going to happen without concentration. It's not going to happen without leverage. And it's not going to happen without me making really bold bets when I have ultra high conviction in a trade. I only get that conviction a few times a year. So when it happens, I have to go all in on that trade. It's all about probability. I know that every time I go in on a high conviction trade, there's things that I know I don't know, and there's things that I don't know that I don't know. Okay? I know that there's an infinite number of things that could happen that could zero me out on that trade cuz they're usually levered. They're usually on margin. They're usually with options. I'm a big boy. I've been doing this for like close to 30 years. Okay? So, like I know what I'm doing. I know the risk. I know that if I make six of those trades in a row, that account is is pretty close to being gone, right? I get that. There is a theoretical in a ultra high risk, ultra high ward account. there is a theoretical there that that account can get wiped out. I I know that I'm willing to take that risk. Um hasn't happened yet. Hasn't even gotten that close yet, right? 40% markdown. I basically had another 20% of the account at risk. Uh and by the way, that Wednesday, I had a lot of options that expired on Wednesday. All got zeroed out. Okay. >> How much money is that? seven figures of options that got zeroed out that day that I had. It was a 24-hour trade that got zeroed out. Again, I knew that we were close to the end. I knew that the liquidation had to end within a matter of hours to days. And I was willing to take that risk because even though I got wiped out on that Wednesday trade, if it would have turned that day, it would have been it would have been insane. It would have been like a 25 to 30x investment. I we're talking about tens of millions. And that's the trade that I have been working all spring and summer. That is the highest conviction trade I've made in years. I was hoping it would play out before earnings, but if it didn't, earnings was my last shot. And because of the things that happened running into Amazon earnings, I had an exceptionally high degree of confidence that it's not about Amazon nailing earnings. That was obvious. It's about how they would handle the earnings call. And these are things that other investors generally don't think about that I'm obsessive with. >> So, walk us through the last month at the peak. How much were you down? >> All right. I I'm going to not going to get like super granular because people have started and this makes me really nervous, especially with the Leopold stuff. Maybe I'm paranoid. Um, over the last couple years, I feel like there's one or more people with a lot more money than me that for whatever reason, they want to mess with me and my trades. And I've seen it. I've seen it with some of my trades that are easier to mess with when it comes to like midcaps, small caps. >> How do they do that? >> Well, as you guys know, like I run a very anti-wall street kind of content and I have for 20 years. I poke fun at the institutions of Wall Street. Now that some of those guys are my best friends, but I've been harping on Wall Street for two decades, saying that it's the world's largest skimming operation. I believe it is. I don't think that people should have the world's money parked in, you know, institutional accounts that basically skim money every year uh to not perform any better than you could perform being invested in a passive fund. And I think that's probably pissed more than a few people off. And the same way that I think Leopold probably pissed more than a few people off being a cocky 20 something year old that is managing what $40 billion of capital and is now taking probably more media airspace than the Citadels and the King Griffins of the world. He put himself he put a target on his back, right? I'm not saying like I have that big of a target on my back, but it's something that's on my mind. So, I'm trying to stay a little less granular these days about my exact trades and exactly how I position them, but it's eight figures. I was down eight figures, right? Or a little close to eight figures. What chance would you have been wrong? 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So, if you want your LLC done right the first time, just go to northwestregisteredagent.com/ic to get started. It's northwestregistered agent.com/ic or click the link down below in the description to get your LLC filed. Thank you, Northwest Registered agent for sponsoring this episode. What chance would you have been wrong? >> I would say there was probably a 20% chance of that trade not going well on Friday. So, I was like I was like 80% confident and and the 20% again are kind of things that I knew I didn't know and things that I didn't know that I didn't know. I mean, we're in a situation with Trump and Iran. We don't know what's going to happen any night of the week. You know, Amazon I was confident was going to beat their numbers. I mean, I was obsessive. You guys, I put so much work into this trade. It's obscene going right into that trade last week. I was still searching for every theoretical data point that I could find that would allow me to properly assess the degree to which they were likely to beat their AWS number. Now, you know, I think Amazon had predicted like a 22% beat. I think the whisper number was like 25% on the street and I was confident it was going to come somewhere north of 25. So, the only question in my mind was how are they going to handle the call? Now, this is the nuance in the social orb trade here. If you look at how Google handled their call and you look at how Microsoft handled their call, you have to look at Amazon management, okay, and you have to look at Jasse. He's a smart guy. He sees what happened to Google. He sees what happened to to Microsoft. Microsoft flawlessly handled the capex question, right? They got in front of it and they were basically like, "Hey, we don't have any capex risk, guys. if the demand doesn't fully materialize as we see it right in front of us, we can redirect it. And so I knew it was it was to me it was like a 99.9% chance that Jasse was going to handle it the same way in his own way by basically saying, "Hey, we know this is scaring you. 200 billion. We're actually going to increase the 220. But guys, not only do we see the demand, it's factual. It's happening. But if something catastrophic happens, the majority of the money that we have in capex projected the next year, we can take off the table because it's towards equipment that we don't have to commit to until the very last piece of that data center. Right? So, I felt confident like there's no way that I was going to put that much work into Amazon this year. And even after what happened to me on Wednesday and the week before, cuz I've been losing money like every week, right? There's no way I was going to watch Amazon knock it out of the park and me not participate. I wasn't even nervous. That's what's so crazy. Like I was actually in my truck driving to Austin uh when earnings happened and I wasn't even following it. Like I was just like I had a real sense of calm over me. I was like, "Hey, if I have to do this and I think it's going to work out. I just didn't know how well it was going to work out." >> And so I'm suspecting you probably took your portfolio down to like the low seven figures, which is somewhat of I mean for you >> it wasn't that low. It wasn't that low >> that low. It was like it was still kind of in and around high seven figures, low low eight figures, >> but you had previously lost close to eight figures in the portfolio. And now then you for this Amazon trade put I'm a few million bucks into Amazon call options and >> and it was a heavy investment >> and bloom and bloom. Amazon and Bloom. Are you willing to say how much you put into those trades for the >> Yeah, it w it was I don't know like couple million dollars of options and >> expiring when? >> Friday the next day basically. Uh yeah. So and on top of that my account was fully levered. So I basically had to sell stock to make this happen. So I had I had to liquidate I had to liquidate millions of dollars of equity that was less important to me in order to make that optionist trade. And so you ran it up about eight figures. >> Yeah, about 10 million in a day. >> And how did that feel? Like like walk me through looking at your portfolio and seeing that it's up $10 million a day. >> I will tell you this, making money like that after you lost money feels better, much better than just making the money, right? Like there's something about seeing your account get crushed and then making a really bold move to make it all back plus some. Cuz I I I I ended up doing better than what I lost. It was like a few million more than what I lost is what I made. It was the best feeling in the world because you know it was the hardest thing in the world to do and you and and you force yourself to do it cuz it was the right thing to do. I would say from my sense it would have been bad risk management for me not to do it. If you know, if you know how much work I put into the trade, you would think it's really bad risk management not to make that trade.