~20 years L/S hedge fund career, emphasis on the S. All things stocks, themes and macro. Hoping the pod and passive bubble keeps creating inefficiencies
Joined February 2019
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PassiveBubble retweeted
Humans are amazing.
A little over a month ago OpenAI launched Astra and I remember feeling a little emotional realizing how profoundly humanity was about to change.
The last 48hrs I haven’t moved from this chair as my thumbs have incessantly argued across five different buyside group chats re what lab ARR is likely to be and what the bogey is and how are boomer PMs going to react while they wait for spec sales to tell them if the interpolated ARR ex five different adjustments is actually bearish or bullish SOXX and if every neocloud deserves to die a fiery death.
Humans are infinitely adaptable and literally could wake up with aliens on the White House lawn tomorrow and the next day would just argue over what kind of waffles they should make.
We’re a fucked up species man ❤️
PassiveBubble retweeted
The Blue Duck Capital letter to $SNAP is another green shoot.
This is now the second hedge fund to openly criticize the way Snap has been run, and the letter touches almost every issue shareholders have been talking about for years: stock-based compensation, spending, capital allocation, accountability and the need to finally put shareholders first.
I’m not going to repeat the obvious. We all know the numbers.
What Snap needs now is for @evanspiegel to start acting responsibly as CEO.
And there are some signs that things may finally be changing.
Spiegel is now actively engaging with investors on X. Snap has started cutting jobs. Revenue is improving. Pressure from shareholders is increasing.
Then there are Specs.
I believe Specs are very unlikely to become a commercially successful product in their current form. Ironically, that failure may be exactly what finally forces Evan Spiegel to accept that Snap needs an outside partner or investor with the capital, technology and expertise to help build the AR opportunity properly.
Spiegel may remain hard-headed. I can’t tell you whether he will ultimately make the changes required.
But the green shoots are there.
The interesting thing about $SNAP is that very little needs to go right for the stock to rise 50% from here. That can happen with minimal improvement.
For 100% upside, real changes need to be made.
Will Evan Spiegel make them?
I don’t know.
But for the first time in a while, the pressure is building in the right direction.
The Blue Duck Capital letter attached below is excellent and worth reading.
morningstar.com/news/pr-news…
PassiveBubble retweeted
Stocks r +ive skewed: they can lose 100%, but their upside is theoretically unlimited
Long-term data: <5% of stocks create virtually all wealth, while other 95% collectively underperform cash or indices. Strong mkt uptrends are often driven by these few superstar growth stocks
PassiveBubble retweeted
$FRNM Seems like Cathie started buying in $ARKG on news of the breakthrough Simple Screen Lung Cancer blood biopsy. Was not sure whether it was good or not, but then I realized she was a huge backer of $GH in 2 Funds which she sold completely in early 2026. Maybe, just maybe $FRNM is her next $GH?
PassiveBubble retweeted
$SNAP (ex specs) is probably worth $50+ .. specs may be worth $10 if sold to $NVDA
.. but together they are worth $4.50 according to the market .. I am dropping an article today and increasing my position. – at Panama
So $META is playing flood the market game. They're trying to convince people all glasses are the same-ish and to just buy on brand. Don't over think it until their Orion is ready.
$SNAP is playing the high tech game. The tech we all loved in Iron Man and saw a fictional specs version in the movies but IRL. Snap Specs hasn't even begun to get started. Who knows if the RDJ news is real, but for a man who made half a billion playing Iron Man, connecting a pop icon that everyone already knows to product people saw in movies is a no brainer move- not to mention Avengers Doomsday is coming where he's the lead villain.
But of course $SNAP investoors out with pitchforks yet again. I'm convinced the top commentators are just engagement farming at this point. Outrage is the easiest story to sell.
PassiveBubble retweeted
Want to go on record that $SNAP is a pretty compelling acquisition target at a minimum...
They're trading at 1.3X TTM revenue. The glasses look corny but they have phenomenal IP and a half billion people using their platform.
I'm buying this stock on the sell off 🤷♂️
PassiveBubble retweeted
I've seen lots of discussion on the $SNAP specs and want to clarify a few things. The product is quite different from the Meta Raybans. It has way more functionality, and a very cool digital display system that is more functional than even the Meta glasses with the display.
The issue is - management has not clarified what the business opportunity is here. What would constitute a successful outcome. How many glasses are they expecting to sell.
The market is left scratching its head, and thus shareholders are uneasy with an open ended venture bet with no parameters.
It is a failure of @evanspiegel 's ability to communicate and properly set expectations. Meanwhile, the Specs should not preclude executing well on the core business which I fear has languised.
I believe a large percent of the $SNAP workforce is focused on Specs.
PassiveBubble retweeted
$BLND volume approaching 5x today. nice to see Haveli add another 2 million shares the last few days, wouldnt be surprised to see them adding more again today (big intraday move, was down -16% at one pt).
as rates come down later this year this will rip
$BLND K.I.S.S - primed to rip for a few reasons: Warsh will push to lower rates. if Iran deal happens inflation concerns will abate. 10-year has a real chance to move sub 4 this year. all of these will drive mortgage volumes
PassiveBubble retweeted
I wouldn't be surprised if we see $AMZN buying $PINS and OpenAI buying $SNAP.
$PINS gives $AMZN a platform to work on social commerce and another important distribution angle.
$SNAP gives OpenAI access to a social network with valuable human data, a chat surface for AI agents, and an AR smartglasses unit, which they can merge with Johny Ives OpenAI business. Spiegel has supervoting for $SNAP.
Both $PINS and $SNAP have founders with super-voting rights, but $PINS founders are not engaged with the company day-to-day anymore (Silbermann stepped down from $PINS CEO in 2022). Also, $SNAP's Spiegel must not be very happy as $SNAP now trades at $8B (out of the +$10B club), so selling and getting a big role in OpenAI would probably be seen as a win for him.
PassiveBubble retweeted
I had just a great day yesterday with the heads of various mortgage and related companies. They described our meeting as a “home run”. I appreciate the industry realizing we are pro business , pro competition, and focused on growing their businesses! Thank you to all!!!
PassiveBubble retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: In an enormous development, HUD Sec. Scott Turner CONFIRMS President Trump has called a meeting of his top economic advisors in Florida to draw up the most AGGRESSIVE housing affordability plan in US history
This is HUGE! GREAT news for the midterms. 🔥
"He has been working 24/7! We will be meeting together in Florida to talk about housing affordability ideas. This is top of mind and top priority for the president."
PassiveBubble retweeted
LLMs are the new disk drives: commodity infrastructure you hot-swap for whoever’s cheapest + best. The fantasy that the model is a moat just expired. ☠️
PassiveBubble retweeted
If I had to pick one founder every early-stage builder should study, Filip Kaliszan would be near the top of the list. He’s not on X, he rarely gives interviews, and @VerkadaHQ doesn’t really chase headlines.
But I’ve learned a great deal from him ever since we first partnered together, all the way back to his first company in 2008, and again in 2017 when @firstround was lucky enough to lead Verkada’s seed.
When the Verkada team first started out, you could buy high-end cameras with cloud-based software to protect your home, but options were lacking and outdated in enterprise.
Just under a decade later, they’ve hit 30K+ customers, $1B+ in annualized bookings, 2M+ devices deployed and a $5.8B valuation in a new round led by @CapitalG.
But whether it’s hacking together Raspberry Pi cameras to build the early prototype in 2016 or figuring out how to apply advances in AI and computer vision to physical security in 2025, Filip’s product building philosophy has remained remarkably consistent (and effective): he’s a student of the problem.
“If you're willing to do the work, have the customer conversations, get on the plane and get out of your bubble to see how customers are using different solutions and build a picture of what will work for them, it's more of a well-defined process than it is a guessing game.”
Filip gets at more of this idea below where he walks through Verkada’s path to PMF in an interview he did with us last year.
Massive congrats to Filip and the entire Verkada team on this very well-deserved milestone today.
PassiveBubble retweeted
Dave: "Masa Son, welcome to the show. What's going on?"
Masa: "Dave, I sold my entire NVIDIA position."
Dave: "How much?"
Masa: "All 32.1 million shares. $5.8 billion."
Dave: "And why did you do that?"
Masa: "To go all-in on AI."
Dave: "You sold your NVIDIA stock... to invest in AI."
Masa: "Yes."
Dave: "NVIDIA makes the chips that run AI."
Masa: "Correct."
Dave: "So you sold the shovels to buy lottery tickets."
Masa: "I prefer to call them 'high-conviction bets.'"
Dave: "Got it. And this is your second time selling NVIDIA completely."
Masa: "That's right."
Dave: "In 2019, you sold $4 billion worth."
Masa: "Yes."
Dave: "Which would be worth $150 billion today."
Masa: "I'm aware."
Dave: "So you already missed out on $146 billion from the first sale."
Masa: "When you say it like that—"
Dave: "And now you're doing it again. To put $30 billion into OpenAI."
Masa: "And a $1 trillion AI manufacturing hub in Arizona."
Dave: "Right. Because WeWork worked out so well."
Masa: "That was a stain on my life, Dave."
Dave: "Cost you $11.5 billion in equity losses. Plus another $2.2 billion in debt."
Masa: "Adam and I fell in love."
Dave: "You fell in love with a guy who wanted to trademark the word 'We.'"
Masa: "He had vision."
Dave: "And before that, you lost $70 billion in the dot-com crash. The largest personal loss in history."
Masa: "But then I made it back with Alibaba."
Dave: "After a six-minute meeting."
Masa: "Jack Ma is very persuasive."
Dave: "So your entire investment strategy is falling in love during short meetings and then losing generational wealth."
Masa: "I believe in the singularity."
Dave: "Right. So just to recap: you've lost $70 billion, missed out on another $146 billion, burned $13.7 billion on WeWork, and now you're selling NVIDIA at what might be the worst possible time to bet it all on Sam Altman."
Masa: "Sometimes you have to push all your chips to the center of the table."
Dave: "You've done that four times and lost three of them."
Masa: "But that one Alibaba win though."
Dave: "Okay. Thanks for calling in."
