Last year I started a trading account that has grown from 5k to roughly 500k, with 30k added along the way. On the other side of my investing, my more “risk-free” portfolio has delivered a 317% return over the past five years.
Today I want to share an interesting trade I executed; one that played out in under 24 hours; and walk through the logic behind it. I’ll also update on a few of my other positions and how they’re developing.
Netflix Short
If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you probably noticed Elon Musk declaring he’d had enough of Netflix and its “wokeness.” Around the same time, Chris Camillo; known from Market Wizards; posted about Netflix, and that’s when I immediately saw the trade.
The cancel-trend had already been brewing for about 20 hours. I asked myself: am I late? But when I looked at put options, they were still dirt cheap for a 30-day expiry. That tipped me off. I’ve come across a few similar setups before, like the Duolingo AI drama.
The key in these situations is to stop focusing on the stock price and instead track how the story is evolving; basically gauging sentiment in real time. In practice, that means refreshing Twitter every minute, watching who is talking about cancellations, and how fast the trend is spreading.
My findings were simple: cancellations were accelerating, and the volume was huge. That gave me enough conviction to take a small short. In trades like this you usually have two things working for you:
Wall Street is often slow to price in a rapidly evolving narrative.
If options are cheap, you can front-run the premium rising.
The result this time was a 45% gain in 21 hours. The trade could likely keep going, but I usually like to take profits when I get very quick, outsized wins. That approach has served me well overall; though not always, and I’ll share one of those cases next.
Nebius Options
Two weeks ago I wrote about my position in Nebius options, a play on the post-news drift that I believed would drive the stock higher. The trade worked; very well, in fact. The problem is that I sold too early. Since my exit, the trend has continued, and holding would have already doubled the return.
The mistake here was taking quick profits instead of letting the full thesis play out. I got the big gains fast, but by exiting early I left a lot on the table. Going forward, I think I need to start writing down clear inflection points in time. That way I stick to the original thesis rather than bailing just because the early gains came faster than expected.
If you read my Nebius piece back then, took a similar position, and held it; congratulations on the 300% gain.
However, with Nebius now hovering around 120 USD, I don’t see much opportunity left in the name. Yes, the AI boom is massive, but the story is heavily sentiment-driven, and I don’t feel comfortable with the valuation anymore.
Haypp Update
Haypp remains my largest holding, and I continue to track it closely. Nothing major has happened recently, but my web traffic data suggests that Q3 could shape up to be the best quarter ever. I still need to gather a bit more data and test the models to confirm, but my outlook is very optimistic.
On the site side, Nicokick seems to be gaining traction again now that ZYN is back in stock. I’ll be monitoring this closely and will soon publish a separate piece diving deeper into the numbers; subscribe if you want to get that first.
TechBio and Biotech Off to a Great Start
As you know, I’ve recently invested in several biotech and techbio names. Right now I own PRME, RXRX, and TEM. The timing and trading around these positions has been excellent.
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