Wanna Be A Baller, Top Caller.

This week, ending October 3, 2025, the U.S. stock market showed resilience despite a government shutdown that began on October 1. The S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 all did their thing while oil did “it’s thing” again and gave back a nice rally to start the trading week but what’s new there?

All of this being while the shutdown occurs meaning no NFP data today either to start the month but the broad markets don’t care!

Gold made new highs again this week and I only have one view on this…there will be an asymmetric short here soon in this sector and when it comes there will be 3 and 4 baggers made. For us, when I look at this from a portfolio position perspective it’s just not what we do but shorts and some tail-risk ideas are what we do so this is something that I am watching from a distance.

October rate cut. Odds are 97% of a rate cut but I think the broad markets and shiny-object names are getting ahead of themselves.

Ignoring Politics When Investing. This is a chart from Opening Bell Daily that I found interesting this week showing SP500 price under both sides of political parties. As a money manager and trader this stuff never really is a care for me because policy changes, from either side, create opportunities. So, while others waste their time arguing about this we’ll be here doing what we do and that’s delivering actionable research and buying out of favor names nobody wants!

Our best ideas section takes a few ideas that I personally like from the +30 names of coverage in the report and highlights them. For readers, this gives you a quick-read view of what is of interest so you can get through the report in 10-minutes or less.

$META ( ▼ 1.07% ) - this was a name flagged in one of the Best Ideas this week from the report and it was down -20pts Monday, then down another $18 Tuesday before finding a little bit of support.

CapEx is a concern for many of these tech names and I agree which is why I’ve talked about select short ideas in this sector and some of the tech leaders.

Morgan Stanley had a piece here worth reading about this as well.

$COIN ( ▲ 0.36% ) - Coinbase is a trading sardine here for me and serves it’s purpose and for those of you that read the report and have awaken to the idea that you don’t always have to pretend to be ‘Mr. Economist’ or ‘Warren Buffet Junior’ then you know you can trade. This name had +$50 move from the $320 area this week which was key, and noted, in the Best Ideas section.

This is a big move on this in really just 3 days of trading which means a short-term options expression leverages it even more.

Everyone wants to be a baller, a top-caller who buys puts at every chance they can get to try to predict the market top…but there’s got to be a better way.

The conversation never gets into position sizing, targets or even into other tickers aside from the usual suspects, what are known as the ‘shiny object stocks’ aka the Mag 7.

I remember about 15 years ago watching an interview with Hugh Hendry and him saying that he ignores calls from brokers, doesn’t read any research and stayed far away from Canary Wharf (he was based in the UK).

15 years later I understand why, because most of them don’t know what they’re talking about it’s just folks talking about tops, bottoms and the same stocks over and over.

However, as Lil Troy once said back in 1999, ‘There’s got to be a better way’.

That better way is, of course, paying attention to out of favor ideas, turn-arounds and ideas not concerned with top-calls, doom and gloom or broad market dip buying, ideas like…….

You could argue the point that Boeing, Intel and Astronics were all dip buys but the reality is they’re all what? Turn-arounds - not market panic dip buying ‘strategy’.

They are ALL companies experiencing classic turn-around like symptoms and so far they’re working out so well that you don’t have to run around each week worrying about market tops or biting your nails at broad-market bottoms.

And for that matter, so is $ETSY ( ▲ 3.41% ) which we’ve talked about here for the last year given their depressed share price and plans to fix some issues with the company.

This included a large $1B share buyback (which had more added this Summer as well) and now they’ve just partnered with ChatGPT this week which is going to be a positive tailwind for revenues.

And not that I care, nor does it play a role in our investment framework, but the short-interest is still there and higher at 20% and we all know what that means when things start to turn around, and worse, when the retail army finds out about it……

For anyone that has not seen what social media has done for revenues then I’d say to you to go and look at the amount of young kids selling on TikTok Shop, Instagram and other social media platforms.

ChatGPT, while not a social media platform, has the similar reach and with more users turning to AI for everyday searches (the new Google) this is only going to be a net positive to Etsy.

The +16% move we saw this week was followed by a check-back of nearly all of that the next day but that’s likely just shorts covering and options mechanics at work. In my view, the real move is just starting.

And when in doubt….zoom out.

The Fall 2025 conference is officially closed to new registrants. We will be opening up tickets for the Friday dinner/bar event in Phoenix to those who want to attend - it will be an open bar and food until 11pm, please message us for info.

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