Sunday Conversation and Q&A

Hosted by @Mike Alfred · 2026-08-16 · Tags: BTC, MACRO

TLDR

Mike Alfred opens a Sunday subscriber Space on investor psychology, longevity on X, and why a smaller high-signal group reinvigorated him, then runs an extended Q&A.

Subscriber Spaces were launched to cut noise, restore signal, and keep Mike engaged after large-follower burnout.
Core investing edge is internal: equanimity, long duration, and doing nothing most of the time.
Short-term instruments and margin make participants easiest to exploit; stretch the time horizon.
Mike still sees Bitcoin’s pullback as a mid-cycle correction more like 2020 than 2022.
Sam argues financialization and products (e.g. Saylor-style builds) cross the adoption chasm; pure orange-pilling is tapped out.
Taxes are a high-grade problem; avoid contorting life around avoidance if it hurts compounding.
Matt: bears mistook summer seasonality for the end of AI; bounce continues toward Nvidia earnings.
Mike dislikes covered calls on core high-upside names early in the cycle; wants full cycle capture.
Prefer megatrends (AI, Bitcoin, power/data centers) and buy hardest when short-term sentiment is negative.
Greg trimmed ~20% Bitcoin into Cipher and IREN on near-term opportunity-cost probability.

Speakers

Mike Alfred — Host; frames mindset and longevity reasons for the subscriber group, then answers Q&A on Bitcoin, taxes, AI, covered calls, 13Fs, megatrends, and day structure as a full-time investor.
Speaker 3 — Fred praises the paid filter for signal-to-noise and compares it to Bitcoin Alpha; less deep on near-term Bitcoin catalysts in the clip.
Frans Bakker — Asks what the next catalyst for Bitcoin could be.
Sam — Argues financialization and institutional builds on Bitcoin beat one-to-one orange-pilling; notes fundamentalist fracture and noisy Spaces.
Ankit — Small taxable investor who paid off loans via Cipher; asks about managing capital gains and later about physical AI rotation.
Matt — Bullish commentary on Micron, SanDisk, Bloom, AI bounce after overleveraged washout; dismisses multi-year AI top-callers.
Speaker 9 — Brief mall cameo promoting a Spot 420 subscription product jokingly versus Mike.
Speaker 8 — Thanks Mike; asks about selling covered calls on large Cipher and about interesting 13F insights.
Bib — First-time speaker; describes calmer portfolio thinking from the group, first ballast trim, and asks how Mike structures research time.
Greg — Long-term Bitcoin bull who trimmed ~20% BTC into Cipher and IREN on 12–18 month opportunity-cost odds.

Transcript

Mike Alfred: Alright guys, there is a lag at the beginning of the space now in the subscriber spaces. There's also- no music, whatsoever, which is a little disconcerting, I know, for, for folks who are joining for the first time, but this is recorded, so you can just, fast forward. you know, you can fast forward, through this section. I also have noted that a lot of people are reporting issues broadly with spaces, particularly people who have just- just subscribed, if they have Android phones, whatever, the audio doesn't work, et cetera. So, you know, obviously those have all been surfaced. this guy Kevin on here made a, a connection to me with this girl who like runs the The, the creator program, what are-- you know, it seems like they're very new at this and they don't really know what they're doing, but, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, the whole point of this is to, to just, have a smaller group within the broader group. when you, when you have three hundred and, forty-five thousand, followers, it's very hard to know who's even in the room most of the time, and this has been really helpful, for me. So thank you everybody for all the, DMs, all the stories. Man, the stuff that people have told me, you know, fa-sick family members they've been able to help, people who are able to stay home with their kids, people who are able to retire earlier. people who've accelerated, you know, lifestyle things dramatically. so I appreciate all that. You, you'd have no idea what it's like to actually, be using X when you have that many followers. Like You get an artificial sense of like how many people hate you and like wanna take you down. and as strong as I am, and as much as it really doesn't bother me, day to day, it also, again, gives a warped sense of- What's really happening. so this has been a really, really useful few weeks, for me 'cause I've learned so much about the real impact, that we have when we participate in these platforms and the real, outcomes that people have experienced in their lives from, becoming a better investor, from, investing more aggressively, from investing more idiosyncratically. You know, as I, as I said, like I think it's, it's a tough thing, right, because everybody wants to think that they can sort of outrun the odds. Like everybody wants to believe that they can get better results than the average, and I think that's largely like the human existence, right? If you, if you stop believing that in any dimension of your life, then you're sort of guaranteed to be average. and so it's a healthy thing to believe, but in investing markets, what that typically manifests itself as is people overtrading, being too aggressive, using options and margin, et cetera, such that b-because people wanna be so much better than the other Average than doing things that ultimately lead to a worse than average outcome, because the, the math kinda shows that most people will do fine over thirty or forty years by just indexing, but of course, very few people wanna just get the average return. And as I said in most areas of life, I think it's quite healthy to be striving to do better than the average. but in investing, it's not always clear that that's, that's a good idea. all that said, and I've said this many times, like, i-in spite of the fact that the odds are against you, this is my favorite game. in the world, I think it's the biggest and most important, game in the world. I don't treat it like a game, I treat it as something more than that, but if you can relax and play and enjoy yourself while investing, I mean, that's good. it's, you know, to, to do investing at a high level, though, a lot of the time it's gonna feel hard, right? A lot of the times it's gonna feel like a grind. It's actually not that fun, like a lot of things that other people wanna do in life. They look at it from afar and say, "Oh, I wanna do that, that looks fun." But if they were actually doing it, they would hate it. Like, for example, a lot of people who work at a mid-level in a large company, they all think they wanna be CEO. but a lot of the people I've seen who ultimately get to that seat, they end up coming back and saying, "You know what? It wasn't so bad. Right? Being CEO is actually lonely. CEO, being CEO is tough, especially when the company's not working. Like you're, in the line of fire for everything when the company isn't working. You can't, you can't blame it on anyone else. You're the CEO." and especially in smaller companies, like you don't get paid that much to be the CEO, like in startup companies, for example, or even midsize companies, a lot of the headlines are about CEOs make three hundred times the person. It's like, well, yeah, that's at a hundred billion dollar company. Most people called CEO don't make anywhere near a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 type CEO, but that's kind of the, the view people have. So, look, being CEO is hard. being a twenty billion dollar hedge fund manager, even though that looks fun too, right? You get to fly around your own plane, seemingly do whatever you want, captain of industry, master of the universe. but when you're in a drawdown in a fund of that size, you're getting calls from some of the biggest- Allocators in the world asking you if you've lost something, or if you're wrong, or if you should reconsider your views, or maybe, maybe we should be pulling capital out of your vehicle. and so it all sounds great, right? It all sounds wonderful when you're making a lot of money, but then when you're not, it's, it's quite challenging. and, and I think that's true in a lot of areas of life, but I think at these pursuits like investing, like it's just tip of the spear, it's like right there, it's in your face. when things are good, they're really good. when things are really bad, they can be really bad. And more than anything, as I've, as I've talked about a lot, you've really got to be able to control your emotions. because there's gonna be huge swings. the more you try to reduce the swings, the, the lower your absolute return will sort of become organically. so if you, if you want those big outcomes, then you, you gotta tolerate a lot of volatility. and so the question is, how much do you allow the volatility to reverberate into yourself? right? Because if you allow the volatility, volatility external to yourself to impact the state of your own mood and, and sort of how you feel about yourself inside, then it's very hard, to consistently make decisions that emanate from the inside back out versus the outside back in. And that, that's the difference between really having a solid sense of your true north. When you're in the market every day, like why are you here? What are you doing it for? 'cause if you do, then you can, you can sort of see the things that are happening external, but you can't necessarily allow those vibrations to infiltrate your mind and your psyche and you know, interrupt your thought process or interrupt your strategy. I see a lot of reactive behavior, right? I think X society is an environment, it's a high dopamine very fast, very quick, environment, it's all about the, the latest news and the latest idea, and it's small sound bites, right? Short videos, short strings of text. It's not the kind of deep thinking, that the smartest humans throughout human history have done, right? Like slower thinking, deeper thinking, right? Longer duration thinking. And so it's, it's, it's a weird environment to operate in, but I think, I, I think there's certain principles that, as long as you maintain them, you'll always have an edge, right? So that's why I focus on psychology and mindset, it's one of the only things you can actually control. Day to day, you can't actually control whether Governor Abbott is gonna issue a letter, right? You can't control, you know, if some new AI lab out of China is gonna roll out something that looks more efficient, right? You, you can't control anything in the short term really that's external to yourself, but you can control your response to those things. and I think that'll be true forever. I think machines will be better at control generally because they just don't have emotions. so, you know, that's an easy area to, to exploit for machines, and they do every day. That's largely what a lot of these high-frequency market makers are all about, right? They're, they're sort of-- There's no emotion to it at all, it's just, if you have a small edge, you take it. and if you can do something to, to broaden your edge by triggering, certain types of trading, as, as Citadel has famously said to believe to be true, like we all eat as long as we can get someone else to trade. and so you have to understand that those forces are active, but I think if you can kind of maintain your calm equanimity through, all different types of environments where all your decisions are emanating from the inside out, through some sort of longer-term oriented strategic process. then the machines really don't, day to day, the machines don't really affect you, 'cause the machines can put whatever price they want on the screen tomorrow or next week, but if your process doesn't require a certain price to be on the screen tomorrow or next week, then, then it doesn't matter. A-and this is why people who are using short-term instruments and, and margin are the most easy to exploit, because the more margin you use and the more short-term, you know, derivatives, for example, that you use, the more you-- your success is predicated on a very short-term result that you don't have control over. and so the easier it is to, to manipulate or exploit your position, and the longer you stretch out your needs for a certain price to be on the screen, the less easily, you can be manipulated. You could still be scared. Right? If you're, if you're a beginner, you know, you haven't done this, before, and, and some-somebody wants to move the price on a Friday, to, to a certain area which causes sort of so-called MAC pain, right, for a certain number of market participants? then they can do that, right? And if you need the price to be at a certain point, that's gonna be painful. but if you don't, then the only question you're gonna be asking is, "Well, is the price that they're putting on the screen a good price?" for me to add something or a good price for me to reduce something. And that's it, right? It's-- there's, there's really no other major price, major question to ask because if you don't need to do anything with that price information, then most of the time the answer is to do nothing. Right? It's, it's just a truism in markets that if you don't have to do anything, the, the right answer most of the time is to do nothing. Most, most people take a, a different, lesson away and sometimes I'm not sure that, people aren't necessarily taking any lesson away, they're just reacting, they're just doing stuff, and there's this feeling that if I do more stuff, then I'll, I'll get more results. and that may be true in, in some context, right? But it's not true in the market most of the time, right? And so it's, it's hard for most people, to, to, to realize that, that like, if you're starting a new business, doing nothing's probably not a good idea, because a startup has thousands of things you need to do over the next three months. So if you don't start doing something, you're already behind. So the, the sort of action bias that you'd have in a startup company doesn't really apply, to investing, at all. And so it, it flips the paradigm and, there are times, right? The market will give you times where intense activity is, is worthwhile and useful. But those times are few and far in between, and they, they tend to s- come up when you, when you least expect them. and, and so part of being an investor is to be prepared. for whatever environment comes along, 'cause you may, you may literally be like the guy who's just lifting in the weight, weight room for two years and then finally gets put in the game in the third year, right? It's the same thing in investing, like your train-- your training is whatever things you need to do to get in the right mindset. Which could be simple as like a routine that you have, right? Like maybe you go for a run every morning, or maybe you go to the weight room every morning before the market opens, whatever. Right? And, and any of these little routines you have that allow you to put yourself in the right mindset so it's that you can do nothing most of the time, but be ready at a moment's notice to do something whenever there's something meaningful that's presented. that's tough, right? But it's, but it's the way you have to be. You need to kind of be in both minds at the same time. and you know, the, the, the whole paradigm of going to a, a sh-store, right, and wanting to get a, a good value, for some reason people are able to understand that when they go to Nordstroms or, or Hermes or something, they, they want a discount. There's no, there's no discounts at Hermes, but certainly there are discounts at, at Nordstrom. And when there are discounts, in those places, people, you know, get excited and they wanna buy more. They wanna-- nobody's selling, you know, nobody, nobody walks to a retail store and tries to sell. Something, right? They're, they're looking to spend money, but people wanna spend money when they think they're getting a value. and the same thing happens in the stock market quite a bit, and, and, you know, the market will periodically give you a discount, but a lot of times, people aren't that interested. In the discount, because the fact that the price is going down scares them into thinking maybe it's not worth as much. Whereas for some reason, if it's a blouse or a pair of pants or a shirt, it, it, the value hasn't moved in your head. Right? The, the price is the thing that's the determinant of whether you're interested in, in buying. so there's a lot of these things that are, they're psychological in nature, and if you understand them, then you can understand how they might apply in a number of the situations that you run into. in the market. so guys, this is the first Sunday, subscriber space. Appreciate everybody coming. We got a lot of new folks, that, you know, that are haven't been to these spaces before. and a lot of folks over the last A couple weeks since we've been doing these where they haven't been up to, to speak. so I wanna encourage, everyone to come up. everybody who requests is gonna get, especially at the beginning of the space when we, have more time, right? If you come up right at the end, I, I probably won't let you up 'cause I don't wanna, I don't wanna bring anybody up and then not be able to give them a chance to, to, to speak in the space. But I want anybody who's never spoken in a space, who didn't feel comfortable speaking in a kind of broader group with a thousand people or whatever, to please come up and Ask questions and participate, in the dialogue. But I see Fred, Fred, how you doing, man? What's, what's the latest with you? What, what are your thoughts on Bitcoin? I don't

Speaker 3: know, not much. I'm, I'm, interested in your new idea. I think this is a Cool idea, this subscriber thing, because you kinda need some filter, and, you know, ten dollars isn't a filter. You know, so I, I'm super interested in this experiment. And, I wanna see where it goes. And, yeah, happy to be a subscriber. So, yeah.

Mike Alfred: Well, I, I saw that last night. I appreciate that, and it, it surprised me. I wasn't expecting it, obviously. But, look, the, let me just give a quick, just really quick, because I don't think you've heard it from me, Fred, but, about three weeks ago, I just kind of woke up in the morning and I'm like, I was thinking about Michael Burry, and I was thinking about how this space is evolving. I was thinking about how my own enthusiasm for running spaces, participating in spaces, posting in general, had, had declined quite dramatically. some of that is, is, is because most of the noise and what you hear is criticism. Right? And I'm on these public boards, and so I get an added dose that those of you guys who are lucky enough not to serve on public boards don't get. but when the stock's going up, like you are, everybody's, you're a god, you're a golden god, you walk on water. And then the moment the stock is going down a little bit, you, you're responsible for everything that happened. Like, you did it, you did this. Like, you're the one. It's like, I'm not, I'm not the founder, I'm not the CEO, whatever. but you're still gonna get attacked. And I, look, I'm, I made myself a huge target by having a big audience and doing the stuff that I do and being outspoken and, I pretend to be less humble than I am, right? Like in private, if you ask my friends how I am, I'm nothing like the shtick. Right? This sort of persona that I've created online, it is an extension of me, but it's not me, right? Just like we're all slightly different in different, environments. And so I said, "Hey, let me try this. Like, like, let's just launch a..." I wanted to do five hundred or, or a thousand, like, to make it really, really small, like, I was hoping I would be able to do a number where only like twenty people would join, and it could be like a super, focused, like, mastermind thing, So I said, "Well, 2:39 is just a weird number, I don't like it. Let's do 2:19. Let's experiment." So I launched it. I had really no idea what was gonna happen. I went to bed, I woke up the next day, there were like 13 or 18 subscribers, and again, I hadn't said Anything about it, I hadn't posted about it, I really hadn't done anything. I didn't even know what I was gonna do with it. And then all of a sudden, there, there were 13 people, 18 people, 100 people, whatever it is now, 640 people or something. and, and what, what I discovered when we started doing the spaces is like, there's a total-- it was a lot of people that I was familiar with, but it was a smaller group of people that was really like laser-focused on a lot of the same things. Like what I've discovered in here is that a lot of the, a lot of people have actually made money following some of my ideas over the last three or four years that I didn't even realize, 'cause the people who've been the happiest and made the most money don't comment. The only people who've spent a lot of time- The commenters or the haters, like the people who, have had issues or whatever, and, and they wanna blame somebody else, and this group has been like almost universally people who've had success. In the market, people who've like made good decisions, people who wanna make even better decisions going forward, people who wanna learn more about the mindset and wanna understand like live time, like how is a professional thinking about things? So I didn't know any of this, 'cause when you do these like thousand-person spaces, you never know who's even in there. Like, it's obviously a lot of bots, right? It's a lot of people who don't really like have anything in the market, they're not really focused, they're not really in the space. Pretty much universally, like near a hundred percent of the people in this room Have significant investments in Bitcoin, significant investments in other crypto assets, significant investments in the data center space, stocks. I've had multiple messages of people who've made five, ten, fifteen million dollars that were willing to say that on the record. over the last few years, and, and I had no idea those folks were here, 'cause I was spending so much time weeding through the, the number of interactions, many of which weren't positive, that I was having on here. So I found it to be completely reinvigorating. Thank you, Lee, Fred, and like I, I wanna be here more. and it's really nothing to do with the amount, I was just trying to set the amount at a level that would weed out a lot of the nonsense and noise. On this platform because it was getting so loud, and so even with all the tens of thousands of people I blocked over the years, it was still, too noisy and not enough signal. so yeah, I appreciate, look, I appreciate you even being interested in what I'm doing here, but it's a hundred percent an experiment. it's designed primarily to give me longevity because I was losing interest in even participating. I figured there's enough people in here that would want to see This experiment, who would wanna see what happens when we have a smaller group of people who are really interested, in this stuff, and if, if the people have already been successful, then they're probably much more likely to be able to get more value in the future and to give more value back, right? So I, I expect the average quality in here is just gonna be, and it has been so far, it's just been so much higher, the noise is gone down, and also in the posting, there's no bots. So I don't have to police the replies at all, because the posts in the subscriber section are just, folks that are in here. So- Look, that's what we

Speaker 3: found at Bitcoin Alpha. It's just, you know, it's, it's personal, so it's-- you can even tolerate fewer people, but, you know, to-- the, the signal to noise at two hundred people is so much better than the signal to noise at two thousand people. You know what I mean? So I'm all about it. I think, I think you're, you're 100% right, and I think, it's all, it's, it's all about cutting through the noise. That's it.

Mike Alfred: You nailed it. Well, let's see what happens and, hopefully we'll get a number of different, you know, groups with a little bit more momentum. It's also interesting that we're at a weird inflection point where the equity market's at an all-time high and Bitcoin's in a mid-cycle correction. I still, I still believe it's a mid-cycle correction. We, we should have been going down since February. We should have tried to rally and break lower multiple times if this was actually like a real- cycle ending bear market, it's mu- it reminds me much more of twenty twenty, than it does of, of, of, of say twenty twenty-two. So we'll see, but like, you can imagine probably what will happen if we have these kind of like renewed interest, reinvigorated inter-interest with these smaller groups of folks, and then we also get a Bitcoin bull market that extends. you know, I'd love to see Bitcoin at a hundred and fifty or two hundred K, I think that would breathe a lot of life back into the space. but let's go to, let's go to, in order, let's go to Fran, Fran, and then we can keep the conversation going. Fran, what's up?

Frans Bakker: Hi, guys. Good evening. I just wanted to ask you, Mike, what's your thought in what could be like the next catalyst for, for Bitcoin?

Mike Alfred: That's a good question. I mean, good, good thing we have Fred up here. Fred probably has a better idea or Sam, 'cause these guys are like still following the Bitcoin market like day to day much more deeply, than I am. So I would de- defer to them, but I- I, I don't think there needs to be a catalyst. I base-- I think price leads narrative and price leads headlines. So effectively, like when the price goes up, magically there'll be headlines, and it'll be unclear which one was responsible for which. Right? Chicken or the egg type of thing. and so I think it's, it's just a reflexive ac-asset where A lot of the reflexivity and the volatility in the short term has been squeezed out by institutional factors. we've got so much institutional trading of Bitcoin now and, and way less retail. The market's less brittle, but it's also harder for it to go parabolic. but I think because of the embedded scarcity, at some point it will, break out and, and become more parabolic. And I've made this argument a bunch, like predicting when the volatility will increase is impossible. But clearly, I believe volatility is gonna increase. The primary way I've, I've, sort of, expressed my bullish long-term view on both Bitcoin and Bitcoin's volatility is in buying out-of-the-money call options repeatedly, like rolling them out. I've been doing it for a year unsuccessfully. I'm gonna keep doing it until we get into a more bullish Bitcoin volatility regime, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna happen. predicting when is hard, so I just keep buying the out-of-the-money, calls and waiting for, for that process to, to play out. so I, I'd love to hear from Sam or, or Fred though if you think there's More specific things that we will be hearing about, other than Clarity Act, which is an obvious catalyst. You guys have any, anything else that you're watching?

Sam: hi, Mike. so Fred and I differ on this. I believe the financialization of Bitcoin, is the way forward. Fred, I think doesn't. I respect his views, I enjoy Talking with him about it, I enjoy his spaces for that reason, people trying to tease out what's happening. My, my opinion is, there, there's a, there's a fairly wide fracture at the minute between What I would call the Bitcoin fundamentalists and, yeah, I guess you could put everyone else in, in, in, in one bucket. It's the fundamentalists and everyone else. And everyone else includes Sillar, capitalists, I, I guess people who think that other things are going to get built on top of Bitcoin and that can give it added value I think that seizure, that fissure, is, is very apparent at the minute. The bit one time thing passed off, but I think that fight hasn't gone away. I would expect more And you can hear it on spaces, like I run Bitcoin spaces half the time, like I, I, I shut them down after 30 minutes, because people are just so, divided and cranky and bitter and, you can see that in any space, there's not much alpha. and I think that's all stemming from fundamentalists pushing back against. And by, by the way, I think, what Saylor is trying to do watch the space. Like, he, he may get it wrong, he may nosedive, but he's trying. and others strive. so look, I think that's the way forward. I, I think Bitcoin doesn't get To a million dollars by meeting a guy in the diner and, and trying the orange column and then telling him, "Look, you have to take self custody, you have to buy this little quirky device, and you need to roll dice, and you need to..." The average person doesn't respond to that, so- Fred and I disagree on this. I think Bitcoin is kind of tapped out in that sort of one-to-one personalized orange polling, because I study the technology adoption bell curve and You've kind of gone through the innovators and the early adopters, right? the, the people who are yet to come into this thing have a different personality. They, they want a more, they want a more streamlined experience. That any technology that adopts AI is probably the same, Mike. You get the real, entrepreneurs and innovators and the people who like tinkering with things, who get in early because they understand that something's being built. But the mainstream don't want that. The mainstream want a, a pretty product with a bow on top before they're going to adopt. That's what that technology adoption bell curve shows us. So look, I think we're at the chasm with Bitcoin. I think Saylor and other institutions, trying to build on top of Bitcoin is what will get us across the chasm. interesting to hear how Fred responds to that, but That's, that's my view. And by the way, Mike, I, I, I commend you. like, spaces are pretty, I don't know, sometimes, sometimes they're fun when they go off topic, but recently I've just found spaces, I've stopped hosting spaces for the past couple of weeks, because you get some guy who has five hundred dollars of Bitcoin, shouting retard at a guy who has two million dollars of Bitcoin. So It, it's a fine line between freedom of speech and getting to the alpha. And recently I found, if I, to use the gold panning analogy, like you're, you're panning for a long, long, long time through the mud. You get the one little speck of, of, of gold dust. So a-anyone who's trying to put together a more streamlined, platform for For more alpha, like, well done, good luck with it.

Mike Alfred: Yeah, thanks, man. And I just realized that the space was open. The whole time this isn't gonna be a subscriber space, I was gonna try to. Thankfully, it's been just like a subscriber space, 'cause I basically won't let anybody on the stage, which, which is what I have to do in order to, police it. But Fred, do you have any thoughts on, on catalyst for Bitcoin or did we basically hit most of them? We may have lost Fred already. Let's go to- Let's go to Ankit, actually, Ankit, you, you, you're still up, go for it.

Ankit: Hey Mike, so my, my question is a little bit off tangent. So for, for people like myself who, who aren't that big, but are a pretty small investor with taxable brokerage account What is like, what should be a, a, an approach for managing like capital gain? Because, a-n-and I've been following you, and like I've been, I made, you know, like I said in the past, I paid off my student loan, you, you know, my pharmacy school student loan using Cipher, so- How, how should small investor like myself should be managing capital gain on a yearly basis? Is there somewhat of a tax loss harvesting? Kind of hear that, but because I'm not Into this, like day in, day out, because I'm heads down, with my work, like, is there, you know, things that I should be learning, reading, reading a book or any book that you could recommend or, or your insights, advice? Thanks.

Mike Alfred: Who does your taxes?

Ankit: I actually do it myself.

Mike Alfred: Okay. So you're like, you're pretty proficient understanding. Short-term capital gains, long-term capital gains, right? Yes.

Ankit: Wash sale, wash

Mike Alfred: sale rules and things like that.

Ankit: Yep. Yes.

Mike Alfred: then the question is only the, the extent of which you, need to sell or need to transact, and whether that's worthwhile relative to the taxable implication of doing that. and to some degree that's a feel thing, like I think a lot more Time, energy, and money may have been lost in the pursuit of avoiding taxes than in actually avoiding taxes. like people contort themselves into all different shapes. In order to buy, you know, to, in order to get away from taxes, right? Like charitable giving and people buy real estate and they buy airplanes and try to accelerate the depreciation, they do opportunity zone investing and, at the high end, right? People are doing anything and everything they can, they create charitable foundations. And, and it's unclear to me, like, whether all that stuff, depending on how convoluted and complicated it is, is really worth the effort, or if it's better to just- when you need to make a decision, just decide to pay the taxes.

Speaker 6: I see.

Mike Alfred: and so, like, again, it's a spectrum, it's all the way from, you know, people who don't trade at all, 'cause like if you're never selling anything, you're never gonna owe any taxes, right? unless you're, unless you're getting dividend yield, right? So if you're getting dividend yield, you'll have qualified dividends. But if, let's just say you own a, a stock that has no dividends and you just hold it for ten years, there's no taxable implication. until,

Ankit: until I sell it.

Mike Alfred: Until you sell it, right? So the whole question is at any moment is, is there something that's so much more important than I need to do with this money, whether it's reallocate to another? Company or take it out to buy something totally different. Is there something so valuable that I'd be willing to pay, you know, let's say long-term capital gains 'cause you've owned it for more than a year? then that's it, like, it's, it's, it's not a ra- it's not a hard question. Your job over time is to lower your drag as an investor, so you wanna limit how many things you're doing that c- make it harder to generate compounded returns. but that, that means sometimes though you're gonna pay taxes. Right? Like, I'm happy to pay taxes. It's what I call a high grade problem. If you're paying a lot in taxes, it's 'cause you made a lot of money. There are plenty of people who don't pay any taxes 'cause they lost money. I'd much prefer to make a lot of money and pay a lot in taxes. and again, it's a false choice. You can make a lot of money and be intelligent about how you structure it. I've talked about this a lot, like p-people like Fred who are living in higher tax states, like he's making life a lot harder. On itself. you know, and look, to each their own. I like California too, it's a nice place to visit, but, I didn't want, didn't wanna live there anymore because the drag of thirteen point three percent on high levels of income, makes a huge difference, in your ability to continue to compound your capital. so I don't know if any of that is helpful, but th-those are some of the things I think about when I'm making decisions.

Ankit: Yep. That, that, that helps, because I, I hear a lot about, you know, invest in, real estate, buy a land, and, and things like that, but it just- For, for me, it just creates more headache than, than anything else. So, you know, if I'm, if I do what I'm good at, I think that's better than, and, and like you said, you know, well, paying higher taxes is, is probably a good thing versus, or paying more taxes is a good thing versus not paying or, or whatever, right? Find some ways to kinda harvest it and, and things like that. So, thanks, thanks for your insights. Over.

Mike Alfred: Alright, thank you, buddy. let's go, let's go to, Matt C with any commentary. I know Matt's been bullish on Micron and SanDisk, and Matt's been bullish on Bloom Energy, Matt's been bullish like I am on the longer term AI supercycle, is not believing this, these short term bearish narratives, obviously Nubia's move last week. is causing a lot of consternation amongst the Michaelbury, bear crowd. But what are your, what are your high level thoughts on where you think we are here?

Matt: Yeah, I, I think, thanks for having me up, Mike. I think that bears mistaked summer seasonality for the end of AI. It's literally that simple. And, you know, throw in fears of a rate hike and what if there's a second spike of inflation and, and all the, all the geopolitical stuff, but I think that's what happened. I think bears got- Way too excited about a, a sector correction, pressed the short button, and yes, we saw Leopold Aschengräben, all the bigents of South Korea get liquidated, but that, that's typical in corrections, you know? Those who get overleveraged get carried out, and then surprise, surprise, as soon as That was over, it was immediate bounce back, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty percent plus on some names, and it's not even over. Iron had a fantastic bounce back, and that's not done. I know that, Nebius and Coreview stole all the, attention with their earnings, but, this, you know, the AI bounce back since literally, FOMC day, it's not over by a long shot. This probably keeps floating higher and moving higher until Nvidia reports earnings in about, what is that, ten days? very obvious catalyst to look forward to that I'm sure the market will absolutely reward if, oh, what do you know, Nvidia. Double beat again, raising guidance again, the demand is there again. Jensen, Jensen promises that 2027, looks as, bullish and as strong as ever. Yeah, I, I could see, the dip completely disappearing by, by that date. and so, yeah, You could have literally thrown a dart at AI and, just anything that was in a dip, and you're probably sitting pretty. You're, you know, you're probably pleasantly pleased with yourself right now. So, Yeah, I don't know why bears keep trying to hero call like, "Okay, this is the end of it." No, wait, now is the end of it. No, wait, you know, like some names, like Ed Zitron and, and, et cetera, and Jim Chanos and Bury for sure, they've been calling it the end of AI since late 2024. These guys are so late. I mean, oh, excuse me, these guys were so early that people forgot how long they've been beating, this drum. as New, this isn't their top call, like, no, they've been trying to top call it for, for as long as, Nvidia, as long as Jensen famously signed that, autographed that woman's bra. That was, almost a year and a half ago now. So, yeah, it, it's been, it's been an exciting year. It's barely half o-- it's barely more than half over. but I don't see how this train slows down at all for the back half of twenty twenty-six going into twenty twenty-seven. We're about to, last but not least, we're about to cap off one of the best earning seasons beyond just AI, you know, all eleven sectors, one of the best earning seasons going back to twenty twenty-one. Nvidia's gonna put a cherry on top. And the Bears are moving their goalposts yet again.

Mike Alfred: They just never seem to learn, huh? Bitcoin, I agree with that. thoughts?

Speaker 9: You know, I'm at the mall, so I can't talk too much, but, Mike, Spot 4:20 is, around the corner. I know, wait, this isn't a, a public space. I, I can't believe anybody shared this alpha. It's public.

Mike Alfred: It's public. It's public. but please share the alpha anyway, 'cause people wanna-

Speaker 9: Mike Alfred, the Mike Alfred, the, the, the Sophie Reign of X, financial Twitter, is eyeing spot four twenty on my subscription, and we're, we're selling out quickly, so if you wanna beat Mike, Mike Alfred at something, you might not be in the markets, you might not be as popular as him. but you could still get the alpha by subscribing to me. 'cause I, I think there's like five or ten people that are looking at the, spot four twenty. And, Mike doesn't like to lose, so I know he's refreshing it. And, that's the alpha for, for now. Thanks. All

Mike Alfred: right, enjoy the mall. let's go to Akash. Hey, you, buddy. Hey, Mike. Can you hear me? Absolutely. Go ahead.

Speaker 8: Alright, first off, thank you for all the, all the thoughtful exchange you've shared across all spaces and your commentary on the markets. It's been super helpful and well done, so thanks for that. I also admire your sort of patience level with some of the trolls and how, how calm you are in answering some of their questions, which I often scoff at, but admire that a lot. couple questions. One, what are your thoughts on selling covered calls, especially given, let's say, the cycle position you have, which is pretty large? You could probably on a monthly level make millions in just doing that, even if you're selling like egregiously high prices, meaning ciphers at fifteen, sixteen, whatever Sell the covered call at thirty-two, forty, something on those lines, and just collect the premium, at least if part of the portion, part of your position gets called away, so be it. high beta name you could buy back again. That's question one. Second question, were your general thoughts on some of the thirteen that came out? Any? Any interesting insights besides the, one of the tiger cubs, buying cypher?

Mike Alfred: Yeah, and did you see Gavin Baker? Botsai for two, or at least has, has, has a,

Speaker 8: is the three point five. I saw one of his large, large positions being set up as an SOS, brand

Mike Alfred: Yeah, yeah, they're all in the, well, it seems, I mean, I think the, the thing you notice from the thirteen f's more than anything is like this crowding effect. There seems to be this, this pretty massive groupthink Between the Tiger Cubs, some of the like very Silicon Valley oriented hedge funds, where like you look at their 13Fs and they all own the same thing. You know, so one example of a somebody who I feel like has gotten more and more plain vanilla is Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman used to have like pretty interesting differentiated positioning, and he was very concentrated, right? He'd have like two billion dollars in like five stocks. but they were very different stocks, and a lot of those stocks at the time were either smaller mid-cap type companies or less understood companies, less widely owned companies, and now he's basically indexed to like all the same companies that everybody else owns. and, you know, maybe to some degree that's rational, as I've said. you know, for some of these folks, they, as their funds get bigger, they become more like fee collectors. Like it's, it's not rational to take maybe as much? Idiosyncratic risk is you used to take 'cause you're a billionaire now and like you can preserve your legacy by just owning Amazon and, and, and Meta and Mastercard and Visa like, like a lot of other good investors have for a long time, versus trying to find like new things where there's maybe real alpha because it's something that's not as understood. And I think this is why a lot of allocators like, managers that are earlier, in their, in their careers, because those people have more to prove. And the thirteen Just kind of prove that, like when a lot of these guys were younger and earlier in their careers, you would see, you would see stuff in there that you wouldn't see anywhere else, or you'd see companies you didn't hear that every, everybody owned. Now it seems to be like a popularity contest. Like everybody kinda owns the same thing, and at some point you're, you're basically hugging the S&P, 'cause if your portfolio is just Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, right, Netflix MasterCard, Visa, etcetera, like you're, I don't understand why, why anyone would pay you two and twenty for that, so, yeah, like my general view is, I'm seeing less that I find interesting in the 13F's because so many people own the same stuff, which is, which is kind of disappointing to me. And then your other question again, sorry, remind me, 'cause I kinda got off track.

Speaker 8: thoughts on covered

Mike Alfred: calls? Yeah. I, I guess I, I had, I did cover this in one of the spaces over the last couple weeks. I personally, I understand why people do it, but I, I'm not a huge fan. Of, of the idea, like I'm not trying to generate additional income, I wanna actually capture the full cycle move on the concentrated positions that I'm holding. And so I would only consider doing that if I actually wanted to sell the stock at those prices. So if, like, I own a stock that's worth twenty and I think it's worth a hundred at some point, I'm not selling thirty dollar or forty dollar calls against it, 'cause I really don't wanna sell the stock for thirty or forty if I think it's going to a hundred. even if it would generate more income for me if it didn't go to those prices in some timeframe. and I, I've seen a lot of people who were selling covered calls on like very volatile, you know, Bitcoin mining slash data center type stocks over the last three years, and a lot of those people got a big chunk of their shares called away. and, and unfortunately, that's usually gonna happen during these big up moves like we saw after April of last year, where the stock bottomed and they proceeded in some cases to go up ten X. and so a lot of people who thought they were being clever were selling covered calls, and they basically got their entire position. Or a big chunk of their equity position called away before the stocks had even really begun to complete the move. and, and again, it's, it's all about why you're in it. Like if If adding an extra ten percent a year or something of, of income makes a difference for you, then by all means, like, if it's a personal portfolio and you use it for income and you're using that to- Pay your bills, like that may be fine, but that's not really what I do. I'm trying to generate the maximum absolute return over longer periods of time, and, and so I don't wanna do anything that would cause a big chunk of my core equity position to be diminished too soon. a-and so I, I don't do it personally. Again, there may be some, there may be some time where I would, like, if I thought a stock was worth a hundred and this stock is eighty Then I might sell hundred dollar covered calls, but that, that would be later, right? If, I just think we're too early in the, in the cycle. I think there's too much upside left in some of these names for me to be interested in selling, calls, 'cause in order to make a lot of money, you need to sell calls that are close enough in, price-wise. Like, you don't wanna be selling calls that are way, way, way out of the money 'cause there's really no- Premium. So, like, it's unclear why you'd even care. You wouldn't want it to be called away if the stock doubled, but you only get a tiny amount of money in premium for selling those calls. So what are you really getting? I'm, it's unclear. You need to sell the calls that are-- like if it's at twenty, you need to sell like the twenty-five dollar calls or twenty-seven dollar calls in order to make any money? but if you're selling twenty-five or twenty-seven dollar calls on a stock like Saylor, for example, you're probably gonna get a significant amount of your position called away before you get to forty or fifty, because you're You, you invariably, you're gonna sell them into one of them, one of the jagged up moves. so anyway, that's just my opinion, right? Everybody has their own strategy. I don't, I don't do it, I haven't done it this cycle. If I had, I wouldn't have as many shares of some of these stocks as I do. since I'd like to continue to own those stocks, I, I'm not gonna start calling covered calls, selling covered calls anytime soon, I don't think.

Speaker 8: Super helpful. Thanks for sharing that.

Mike Alfred: No, no problem, guys. Ankit, any other, questions?

Ankit: No, I, I don't have any other question. just, about the iron and cypher and all these, neo clouds. Do you, I hear I read a lot about like physical AIs, the next frontier. is, is like media, is that gonna be the next thing that the, the media's gonna start talking about? And all of a sudden, you know, everything else just fades away and, and those names will start taking up? Is that, is that a common theme? The whole AI value chain, is-is that what, what you have seen in the last, I don't know, five, six years? is that pretty common?

Mike Alfred: You have to restate like, is what specifically really common?

Ankit: just kind of ro-rotation, funds moving in, moving out from, you know, X, Subsector to something different, like robotics and, and things like that.

Mike Alfred: Yeah, that's a story as old as time. I mean, that's literally the market. People's attention spans are short, capital flows into an idea, either it becomes a really big long-term trend that people continue to pile in or at some point people, people pile out and go into something else that's, that's hot. And there's, and they're cyclical, right? There's like cyclical moves even within a long-term structurally bullish trend. So like, I think AI is a thirty or forty or fifty year trend, but within that, there'll be shorter micro cycles, right? So there'll be two, three years where everything is super bullish and CapEx is going up and everyone's excited, and then there'll be periods of time where there's like a trough of despair. Because then the news headlines will flip over to, "Well, AI isn't as useful as people thought. You know, three years ago this company started an AI investment program, thinking X, Y, and Z would happen, and three years later they have very little to show for it." You know, that's-- those are the types of articles that come out at the bottom of the, of the microcycle. at the top of the cycle, it's like, "Oh, everybody has to be in it. If, if you're not in AI, you don't matter at all," right? And to some degree, that may be true, right? I actually think it's possible that AI will be sort of in everything, over the next twenty or thirty years, such that it's sort of like People saying these are dot com companies, right? So like if you had an internet website in nineteen ninety seven, you were a dot com company, and Walmart was a real company, right? And Costco was a real company, and Microsoft was a real company. well, Microsoft had a website very early on, right? But most of the major businesses weren't focused on the internet in the mid nineties. and so, but now, like basically every business has an internet presence, every business uses, the internet to, to, to transact and do business and do all kinds of things, right? Like basically the entire economy runs on the internet. and so I think like that's the question really you have to ask yourself is, are, are you participating in a megatrend, like a super trend, like something that's gonna go for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years? Or are you participating in a micro trend that's like more compressed, it's maybe more tied to narrative, short-term narrative, liquidity, macro cycles, et cetera? And, and I personally prefer to participate in the biggest Megatrends, but I only tend to wanna allocate a lot of money when the, the sort of microtrend is negative, meaning like when people are most concerned about it. So like a good example would be December of twenty twenty-two or January of twenty twenty-three, when you couldn't find a bull on Bitcoin, you couldn't find a bull on Ethereum, you couldn't find a bull on Bitcoin miners, you couldn't find a bull on MSTR. Obviously, there were a few people in this room that were bullish. But the broader market sentiment was extremely negative, extremely bearish, and, that was when you got the best price, even though you were in the right long-term megatrends like data centers, power, infrastructure, Bitcoin, right? They're all related, right? 'Cause Bitcoin and AI and data centers are, are like a beautiful, you know, love triangle in a sense, like you need power, and you need data centers to run AI, even though AI is largely viewed as a digital technology, and Bitcoin is largely viewed as, as digital money There's an incredible amount of real world infrastructure and power that needs to be wielded, in order for those platforms to function at scale. and so the, the, those things were, were, are megatrends, like bi- Bitcoin's a fifty, hundred year, maybe plus megatrend, AI is a fifty or a hundred year plus. I mean, the, the ubiquitous intelligence is gonna be everywhere and everything at some point, right? It's already happening. people, chips in the Brain, right? Robotics, like physical AI, everything's gonna converge. Like everything you can think of that, is interesting twenty years from now, it's gonna be powered by ubiquitous intelligence, right? And so, that, that's a mega trend, but that doesn't mean in the short term that sandisk wasn't too expensive at twenty-five hundred. Right? Or Micron wasn't too expensive briefly, or, that there won't be a recession that causes a, a sixty percent drawdown at SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic once they're public, for example. Right? Those companies will be fine probably over ten years. But anyone who says they can't go down 60% for external reasons hasn't lived through, you know, like a 2008 scenario where all the best technology companies that- That existed at that time had very large drawdowns, which with the benefit of hindsight had nothing to do with those companies. And the long-term S-curve of growth that you were gonna see in those companies was basically gonna continue uninterrupted, once the sort of short-term overhang of the macro receded, right? People stopped worrying about you know, what was happening with, mortgages and what was happening with the real estate market and with the recession and all that, and focus back on, well, what's really happening in the economy? Oh, wait, the demand for the internet, the demand for software. the demand for technology broadly, the demand for the iPhone, et cetera, is, is skyrocketing. the fact that there was a macro recession is an independent thing. So, you said, "Hey, like, does this always happen?" Yeah, it always happens. The question is, as these things are happening, is it sort of the same as what's happened before? Is there, there a good historical analogy? Is it something that maybe in, in this form we haven't actually seen before? these are the kind of questions I ask, like, " So you have the best probabilistic understanding of like what's likely to happen going forward and therefore make the best decisions about which securities and which crypto assets and, which things to own to take advantage of whatever's happening. And, and for me, that's in a long duration way. Like I'm less interested in short-term narratives that emerge in the market that cause traders to pile into certain names for short periods of time. because of news or, or rumors of acquisitions or things like that, I'm much more, much more interested in things that are fundamentally deep, in nature and likely to play out over ten, twenty, thirty years, but I tend to most like to allocate to those things where the short-term narratives and the short-term sentiment is negative, 'cause that's when you get the best price. Yeah, no problem. Let's go to Bib. One of my, my, one of my friends, Bib, Bib, Bib, didn't speak in spaces until he came in to one of the spaces.

Bib: Yeah, this was my, first, public space too. So I guess you opened up something in me, Mike. You know, I, you've, you've, I've seen you say how your experience, on Twitter has changed the last couple weeks. I just want to tell you as a listener in this group how much it's changed for me. you know, I'm not, I don't- I don't know much about sushi, but this guy took me once to a really good sushi restaurant. Once you've had good sushi, you can't go back to, grocery store sushi. So, It's been the same experience for me here. a-after this experience here, I just can't go back to other spaces. If you're in there, I'll go. I do actually go to Bitcoin AI guy spaces now and then. 'cause he was, he was nice enough to welcome me into, Mining Mafia, and he had some good alpha there too. But the signal here is just so strong from you and the other listeners, it's such a calm vibe in here, We had a guy ask about your questions about risk, about portfolio construction, even that guy that asked a question about his kids in the school, it's just such a different vibe. I mean, I just feel like so relaxed, and I think you were in, Bitcoin AI guy space, and you, you were, you were talking about, you said, "Look, I'm trying to run a hundred mile race in my investing, and these guys are trying to run a one mile race." And I realized before I was trying to work harder and harder, and I was like looking at the daily price of Cipher, you know, wondering, and now I realize, you know, they're just a comet, doesn't really matter what it's doing today, I should be looking over the next two or three years So I gotta tell you, the last three or four weeks have been, got such an in-depth thing for me because rather than being glued to the screen looking at the price on an iPhone, I've been asking deep questions about like, what is my portfolio construction? I did my first trimming to try to create a, a small ballast, position. And so it's been so calming in here the last month, I think I've grown so much of an investor this last month just from the calmness that's, that's come from here. so it's been really good, and, I appreciate you so much. There's probably a lot of people in here that, you know, we might know what a put call ratio is or witching options and window dressing. which most people probably don't, but there, you're just teaching me, man, there are so many levels to this game that I have to kind of be really careful and stay in my lane, and I've been really asking myself, 'cause I'm 62 years old, is like like, why do you wanna do this? You know, is it, is it really that-- You know, I've been, I'm still, I would call myself an aggressive investor, but I'm like, is it really worth it to try to get another five percent rather than to create a balanced position or something like that? So it's been really good, and I know the, the, I don't think the answer's gonna come to me all right away, it, it's almost the way it integrates with your life, but the calmness from here has almost extended to my, my own life, and let me ask deeper questions there. So thank you so much for all that. I just want to say that that that's been my experience. I've really enjoyed everybody in here, their, their questions. They, they've all been, so good. And I'll be honest with you, if, if I hadn't like to sit down with an hour with you, I've probably learned more by the other people's questions. Like from what they asked, because what they asked took things in a direction I hadn't thought. So I really appreciate, every, everybody's thing here. So I'll have two quick questions. One is, if you can open your DMs, I'd like to send you a thank you note to, so if you could do that, I appreciate it. the other question, if you could just ask real qu-quick, is, because I'm now having all this, this, extra time, is like, how do you spend, like, most of your time? Do, do you do a lot of deep research? Are you trimming every day? Like what kind, how's your breakdown on like doing deep research or going into new areas and try to find new areas? I'm just trying to get a look into like how, like your day to day, operations are as an investor. Thank you.

Mike Alfred: Thank, thanks, Bevan. You've been one of my favorite, people that I've met through this. And just, just so everybody knows, this has become like a bonus. public, space. This was intended to be, subscriber space, but either there was a glitch or I forgot to click the flag. but at this point, it's basically all, subscribers up, up on stage anyway. but Bib, on the, on the, like, sort of structuring of the day. For me, because I don't have any other job, right? And I just, I'm a professional investor for a living. I try to structure my day so that I get the most enjoyment, out of what I get to do, right? So for me, one, one thing that I've always discovered myself, I'm extremely disciplined. I'm able to, to maintain a very high degree of focus. For a long period of time, but also I don't really enjoy rote, routine, repetitive tasks, right? So I can't work for anyone else. I can't go sit in an office and like sit at a desk. For a certain number of hours a day, like even if it's only two or three, it, it really grates on me. I have to be moving around, I have to be doing different things every day. I really don't like routine There are some things that you need to do on a routine basis, but even those, I try not to do them on the same day at the same time. I try not to preschedule things, I try to have as much white space. in my calendar as possible, because I'm a voracious, reader and learner, and so I don't know when I wake up tomorrow what I'm gonna wanna read about the most. I have usually a list of things that I'm working on or thinking about, but a lot of it is serendipitous, right? It's, like, I'm already pulling on a bunch of different threads, and it leads me to something new, and I'm able to make time that afternoon to sit and read about it for two hours. and most other folks, they're Company or whatever, I mean, you-- people are putting stuff on your calendar, you have a certain number of meetings you just have to do to run your business, let's say, and so it is harder, right? Like- The best lifestyle for an investor is a lifestyle where you look at your calendar every week and there's almost nothing on it, like it's basically empty, and then you just fill that up with whatever intellectual opportunity you find most interesting at any given time. Like if you wanna go deeper on Behind the meter power, go read some research reports, right? If you wanna go, deeper on Bitcoin, like go read about Bitcoin for two, three hours. If you wanna, you know, get a wide range of things, you can sit in some of these types of spaces or you can, listen to other people talk or you can listen to a podcast, et cetera. There's a lot of different ways, there's a lot of good- High quality information. I think the, the, the real skill though in modern investing is because there's so much information, you've got to be really careful about curating your information diet. Sort of like your regular diet, if, if you're not careful and you start eating a lot of junk food, then your health is gonna deteriorate organically, all other things being equal. And I notice on here a lot of low quality consumption being consumed, low, low quality content and information being consumed, and then it's no surprise that people get poor outcomes. Like you remember all the influencers, last cycle who didn't really know what they were doing, encouraging people to put all of their Bitcoin in, BlockFi and Celsius, for example. Like that was completely avoidable. behaviors, I knew it was avoidable because I was actively telling people to avoid it, because there was literally hundreds of red flags in Celsius, and yet a number of sort of very vapid media personality type people who were getting paid to, to, to recommend them were on there. telling people to do it, and it gave people a false sense of satisfaction. So just 'cause you're consuming content doesn't mean you're learning necessarily. It doesn't actually mean that you're learning in the right direction. and it doesn't mean that you're necessarily focused on the thing that can generate the highest asymmetry or value or leverage. That's where the skill comes in. and I look, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at that, right? Like I, I can naturally and organically kind of find my way Through the maze and into things that have the highest value and are the most interesting intellectually to me. Like, there are plenty of things in the economy that are high value, I'm just not interested in it. Like, I- Even if I wanted to, have understood like advanced micro devices better than another investor, like I'm not, I'm just not interested in the technology, or the specifics of that business as much as I am the other stuff. that I, that I'm doing, right? And so, like, I'm just gonna have to miss that alpha, right? And that's okay, right? 'Cause one person isn't gonna be capable, you know, of, of understanding everything. So I do have to be somewhat careful, right, about not trying to underwrite dozens of things at the same time and then basically dumbing down the average, like making my average insight or my average edge fall quite a bit because I'm trying to do something that a lot of other people are doing where I have no edge. so, s-some of it for me is like being hyper-focused on those areas, and but then also kind of keeping your head on a swivel, looking for other things that are adjacent, looking for other things that are related. But maybe different that, that you might also have an engine. and then being smart about not trying to do things, where, where you really don't. and so a, a lot of, a lot of my time is just that. And of course, keep in mind also, for me, I also have some official obligations. Right? As a public board director, there's a certain number of, meetings you go to every year, if you're on committees, you've gotta do those committees, it's part of what you get paid for when you're representing, the other shareholders, and so- there's certain things like you can't avoid, and, and, and I try to minimize the number, right? Like you don't wanna be on five boards at the same time that have a really high cadence and a lot of information, because then your life basically becomes absorbing just that information, not being able to absorb new information, or, or to focus on things outside of those, that group of companies. and it's, you know, it's-- there's a lot of benefit and a lot of advantage when you go into a boardroom and you have the insight of, of following other sectors and other companies, beyond the companies that you're in, because if you have a very insular mindset Where you're just focused on like one thing every day, it's gonna be hard for you to understand the context. You just don't have the perspective to see everything in the broader context, and that broader context can oftentimes allow you to spot opportunities before other people who are either too far away from it, right? Like to really have any direct edge, 'cause they're just too removed from the business, or too close to one thing. Such that they can't see everything else, right? It's, it's, it's, it's like a microscope versus a telescope type of thing. Like you kinda have to, you kinda wanna have both. Right? And, and you kinda wanna have a wide, lens view as well that's not neither a microscope or a telescope. Like you wanna be able to see things from a lot of different perspectives, so that you can really understand things sequentially and you can understand things in context. so anyway, I don't know, but are you retired or do you still have a job day to day?

Bib: Oh, no, I, I still work.

Mike Alfred: Yeah, so when, once you get to the point where you're able to do this full time, it's a really different conversation.

Bib: Okay.

Mike Alfred: Right? 'Cause, because I think- The hardest thing for people when they first retire is reinventing their identity. But if you already have decided you wanna be an investor, it's actually not that hard, right? 'Cause there's- Being an investor is, can be a full-time job if you really think of managing your own capital as a full-time job.

Bib: Okay. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you very much for everything, man.

Mike Alfred: Absolutely, thank you. Let's go, let's go to Greg.

Greg: Hey, Mike, I appreciate the opportunity to come up. So, yeah, more of, More of a statement, but if you wanted to comment on it, I'd, I'd be, I'd love to hear what you think. so it might be an unpopular opinion, so I'm, I'm a long-term Bitcoin bull. I, I probably will stay that way until they stop printing money or demonstrate some fiscal responsibility, right? So I'm a Bitcoin, a Bitcoin bull, but I've had this intrusive thought that There might be like an opportunity cost of, of holding Bitcoin, let's say over the next eighteen months. So I think of like an open door at, what is it, three fifty, and I think about the next eighteen months, and I say, okay, that's got a certain probability where it could go to like a high five or a low six, and then I look at like a cipher at what, sixteen, seventeen, And then touching like a, like a low twenty or a mid twenty over the next eighteen months, maybe that's even conservative, right? Or, or even in iron, which is could touch like a high fifty or a low sixty in the next eighteen months. And I think the probability of those, those, those equities hitting, those targets, I, I think like the probability of that, I'm feeling like, like I said, it's an intrusive thought, maybe it's a, maybe it's an unpopular, thought in, in this, in this group, but I feel like Bitcoin going up an equal percentage, so let's, let's call it back to like a ninety, like a ninety, ninety-five. and I've been kind of thinking that through. so like I said, more of a, more of a statement, I decided to trim, twenty percent of my Bitcoin position to add to, Cipher and, and, and Open equally. I probably won't trim too much more because there's, there's, you know, there's a reflexivity to, to Bitcoin, it could get a little bit explosive if it starts The swing, and I've been like way too patient, to not get paid for that, so I probably won't trim further. But I did decide to trim, you know, just about twenty percent because I think, probabilistically, at least over the next twelve to eighteen months I, I, I think just Open and, and Cipher, just, I, I just think probabilistically it's, it's gonna be higher than Bitcoin going up that same percentage. So, I don't know, like I said, it might be an unpopular opinion, but I decided to make that decision. let, let's see how it goes. But, yeah, if, if you wanted to comment, love to hear what you think. But, more or less, that's it. Yeah,

Mike Alfred: thanks, Craig. Thanks for, for being here and, I think it's an interesting-- there's always an opportunity cost with any of these things, and holding Bitcoin over the last five years has cost people a lot of money, relative to the alternative. Now, we know what happened We, we wouldn't have necessarily been able to know that going forward, but we know what happened now, so we know, with the benefit of hindsight, yes, there were other places you could have made more money. But that doesn't mean it, that doesn't say anything necessarily about what will happen over the next five years. Right? Like what happened in the previous five years is what already happened. and that's what makes investing so fun and interesting and an intellectual challenge, right? Because you can learn something from What happened historically, but nothing that happened historically will necessarily predict, the future. So look, like, I own a lot of Cipher and I own a lot of Open, like they're very large. chunky positions, and, I'm obviously bullish on them. I think Seifer, to some degree, is very de-risked. it's a proven management team that has shown they can build greenfield. they can deliver on time or early, at or under budget, that they can sign the biggest customers in the world, that they can finance at the lowest cost of capital or among the lowest cost of capitals in the, in the sector. so like I'm not so worried, the, the price can go up and down based on the utterings of, you know, a governor, you know, like it's It's what happens, right? there are external factors that have an impact on short-term securities prices, but I don't really lose any sleep, I haven't, haven't really once thought, that anything has changed, with, with the thesis there, so I don't have any problem with Owning them, obviously I own them, personally. I'm just not sure you can draw any conclusions yet on Bitcoin, 'cause Bitcoin, when it is in a parabolic advance, again, it'll probably be beha-- hopefully behaving very idiosyncratically relative to the rest of the market, but we've had it you know, we're at all-time highs in the equity market, and Bitcoin is largely decoupled from the equity market, it's largely decoupled from global M2. Like a lot of things that people drew charts showing that Bitcoin would follow those charts, like the Nasdaq, like the Trabibros, who thought they were so clever. that of course Bitcoin's correlated with the QQQ, like, like that's obviously been proven wrong, not necessarily in the way we would have wanted, but it once again has proven that Bitcoin isn't just levered QQQ, Bitcoin is something distinct, which means in periods when it's outperforming, it can Perform very differently. and one period when it's underperforming, it can, can seem to lag for a very long time, just long enough to frustrate, people. So I don't know what's gonna happen in the future. I'm, I'm actually not, interested in removing any Bitcoin exposure and I've actually been trying to add, right, via Strive and stuff like that, I've been trying to add a little bit of levered exposure. I do own the out-of-the-money Bitcoin and I-bit calls too, which I'll just keep extending as I need to, to maintain, maintain a similar, exposure profile, because I'm confident that Bitcoin will, come back alive at some point. I think it's just math, I, I think it's just a matter of time. for that to happen. But in the meantime, like, I also am very bullish on, on Cipher, open a number of other ideas.

Greg: Yeah. Appreciate the comment. Just the, the intrusive thought being, you know, how much of a opportunity cost is it to, to hold a good percentage in, in, in BTC? And, I don't know. I'd, like, like you, I hope we get some re-reflectivity and, and some parabolic moves, but, I've just been Like debating with myself, is it, you know, what, what that opportunity cost may be, and just decided to, to trim twenty percent. I probably won't touch the, the remainder. but let's see, let's see if it was the right call or not. Definitely doesn't change the thesis, you know, five years plus out, but, over the next eighteen months, decided to do it. So appreciate the con.

Mike Alfred: Got it. And, and the Maxi's would rip your head off. Five years ago, in 2021, for saying what I did at the time, which is that I'm gonna do private equity transactions, I'm gonna maybe start a hedge fund at some point, like I'm gonna keep investing in equities, I kinda like these Bitcoin data center, I was one of the first people to call them Bitcoin data center companies. this, this so whole terminology Bitcoin miner basically obfuscated away the real value, right? It's not, it's not a miner, it's not a mining company, it's not data mining, it's, it's an infrastructure developer. Good ones are all infrastructure, though. It was, it was always the case. It was the case as far back as twenty twenty-one. If you, if you were just doing it in a, in a, in a box, right? If you were doing it in a shipping container or something like that, that's a different Business. so anyway, like, I, I think doing nothing sometimes is good, sometimes it isn't. but I, I tend to wanna have a more diversified approach across all market environments. So I told the Maxes to fuck off. back in twenty twenty-one, they didn't like that very much, and as I've stated many times, I kind of got blackballed from, you know, going to certain, speaking at certain events and going on certain podcasts. It was honestly the best thing that could have happened. You don't want to be subsumed into a cult like- Ideology of any type ever, right? You wanna maintain your true independence, and the world-- it's the same folks that just got their cold cards hacked. Right? It's the same folks who haven't had any return in five years. They were indoctrinated into a cult and they stopped thinking independently. And it is true that Bitcoin has the attributes people are saying, but that doesn't guarantee dollar-denominated returns. if you want dollar-denominated returns, buy Renaissance and, and Citadel and Millenium, you know, shares in their hedge funds, because, they're gonna get you their ten, fifteen, eighteen percent every year, even if they have to do all kinds of nonsense in the market every day in order to generate that. and take a tax out of the system. They will get you that. the Bitcoin guys, you know, in twenty twenty-three, they, you got a hundred and fifty percent or whatever, and you got a decent return twenty twenty-four, but that was just getting you back to where you were in twenty twenty-one. Right? And so we're basically flat, you know, maybe a little worse than flat, depending on, where you're measuring from, 'cause Bitcoin was already starting to rally again into the end of the year. at this point in, in twenty twenty-one. So it's been five years. and look, I've been holding Bitcoin that whole time, so I've been, I've been here too, and so I'm not saying that. you know, like you're never gonna avoid every underperforming asset that, that underperforms for some period of time, but if you own high quality assets, they will consolidate, like Microsoft did for a long time, like Google did for a long time, and like Amazon did for a long time, like Tesla did for a long time. People only remember the parabolic expansions, they don't remember the many, many years where these stocks and, you know, the things didn't do anything. So I, I, I would say, overall, all makes sense to me. and most importantly, thinking independently and being willing to trust your own intuition. to make the decisions that, that allow you to feel good and sleep at night, right? As long as you're sleeping well enough and feeling calm enough that you can let it run, then you're gonna make money. It's only the people who are constantly feeling FOMO and regret, right? If you're constantly swinging from regret and FOMO, back and forth, then you're not gonna make as much money as somebody who maintains calm equanimity, which is sometimes structural, right? Like if you run your portfolio a certain way, it's gonna create more calmness. If you run your portfolio too aggressively, you're constantly gonna be in a state of disarray. That state of disarray eventually is gonna cause issues, right? So it's maybe less important whether you perfectly, rotate from Bitcoin to something else or from something else to Bitcoin, and more Finding an allocation that allows you personally to live with whatever the result is, 'cause that'll be the thing that allows you to stay in the game. If you stay in the game and you stay positioned, you'll tend to do well on assets like this. in my experience. So let's, let's go to, go to Dennis, 'cause I don't think Dennis has been in one of my spaces before. Dennis, you're welcome to go.

Dennis: Hi, Mike. I've, yeah, I haven't been in anybody's spaces before. This is the first time I've ever, participated. So, I wanted to thank you for your, For your, for your willingness to, to set this up, it's the, the smaller group and the, the lack of negativity is certainly appreciated. just to comment on what you said at the beginning of your space is that The ability to keep your head is kind of been paramount from, from what I've learned over my last twenty, twenty-five years, and that's what I appreciate the most about coming on and listening to these spaces is, is just to be able to calm down when you've got, when you've had a day where You just feel like you're in the wrong spot or anything, it's, most of the time just keeping your head about it is, is a good part of the game, so I appreciate that. And a, a comment on the other one where everybody's arguing about where Bitcoin sits. I don't see how Bitcoin goes anywhere unless it's part of the financial system, and that's the whole point. So you have to, we, we have to welcome the, the assets from the other, from the other sectors for sure. and then just a couple of, just a comment on What people discussed a number of, spaces ago about schooling. I guess if there's one thing I actually know about is homeschooling, I got a 32-year-old, a 29-year-old that never went to school at all. and that's true sovereignty for your kids and for your family. And so I would encourage people to really look at that. it's not for everybody, obviously, but I think the key is to Don't give the education system too much credit. kids learn, and all you have to do is give them a platform to learn. And now my, youngest just had a Had a, a, a baby, so we've got a one-year-old grandson, and now I look at that from a homeschooling standpoint, and I think just hold your horses, wait five or six years. And what you give your kids with AI available is truly just an ability to learn first, be re- be resourceful, follow passion, and that's, that'll set them up very well. I guess if I had a question, I would probably ask you when you're looking into a new opportunity and valuing a company, what, what do you value? How, how do you value it? To, to go mainly on just books or the people you talk to, your gut? how do you, how do you approach that? and then I'll just, shut up and listen then. Thanks.

Mike Alfred: Thanks, Dennis, and, and congrats on being a, a grandfather. I found being a father to be the most important thing that I've ever done, in this life by far. It's been the most rewarding. in some ways the most challenging, but, but also the most rewarding. so appreciate it. thanks for coming in and thanks for participating. My goal is to have more First time spaces participants in my spaces than, than anyone else, on X. and so far so good. And just in the subscriber spaces, we've been getting like five or ten brand new speakers that have never spoken in a space, before. So more of this. in terms of, look, I view valuation as, as, part science, part, part art. There are plenty of traditional, you know, methods you can use as a value investor to try to value business, business and like, one, one good book like Security Analysis, right? Which is like the original Graham and Dodd interpretation of like what value investing is. starting with like understanding the different components of that, like w-what is book value, what are, multiples, right? What, what does any of this mean? How do you compare one company to another? and if you understand just the basic frameworks on the kind of financial- side, right, and the number side, it, it, it can be really helpful, but I think the real art and the real skill is when you can also understand the qualitative things, like you You watch a business, two businesses in the same sector for five or ten years, and after a few interactions with management, combined with watching the company execute, using the product, maybe yourself, in some, cases, talking to customers, talking to suppliers, talking to anyone who interacts with that company, like anyone in their broader ecosystem, the reputation of that company will precede it. And so you're constantly looking for the scuttlebutt to- Identify like intangible sources of edge, intangible advantages in terms of brand power or relationships with suppliers or relationships with customers, brand loyalty, things like that that, should flow through in terms of the financials. Like companies that tend to have a better brand than others in the same industry trade at higher multiples. So if you look at the, you look at the valuation, you say, "Wow, this one looks more expensive than the other." The question is not whether one is more expensive than the other, the question is whether that valuation is accurate in the sense that does it represent like some sort of real representation in the present of the differences in quality between two, similar companies, let's say hypothetically they're two companies in the same industry and they have the exact same revenue? Yeah, and the exact same profitability, but when you talk to, the customers of one company, right, the customers of that company seemed to be much more thrilled with the direction of the company and the direction of the products and the pricing than the other one. you know, that might tell you that, that the, the, the first one has a better trajectory in the future and therefore may, maybe, worthwhile to pay more, than, than, you know, than, than the other one, even though it seemed to have similar economics in the short term. and then some of it is about like the rate of change, right? Because sometimes you have two companies that seem to be similar, but one of them is moving in a totally different way. So maybe up until now, and if you look at the sort of steady state right now, they look similar. But one of them has totally different momentum, like it's growing faster, it's growing more profitably, maybe it's turned itself around such that it has similar economics, but the economics are trending in a totally different direction. and, and then, you know, ultimately, you're trying to identify situations where your assessment of the valuation is different than when the market's assessment of the valuation is, right? And so like a example of this would have been if we go back to, December twenty twenty-two, I was in spaces with Bitcoin AI guy and Matt and some other folks talking about these Bitcoin data center companies and saying, "It, it's shocking to me that they're trading these valuations, "because I'm pretty sure I could take all of the land and the power and the infrastructure and sell it for more than the valuations, the, the overall market caps of those companies at that time. So, like, that was a situation where, like, all you really needed was the company's not to fail outright and for the market to normalize, and you were probably gonna get a three-acts, something like that, because that was basically what the balance sheets were likely to be worth. in a more normalized market. and, and so that's just the financial side, then, then the question, well, which one of them should I buy? And that's more the qualitative side. Well, in an environment where, you have like a very uncertain set of paths in front of you. So think of like a Antarctica scenario where there's snow everywhere and the snow's kind of blowing, and there's not a lot of visibility, and there's a bunch of roads, but you don't know which road is gonna efficiently get you to the other side You're always looking for waypoints, 'cause you're doing wayfinding through a perilous and, you know, opaque environment where it's hard to see, everything clearly, and so what, what are you relying on? Well, preferably you, you hop in the car with somebody who's driven it a bunch of times. Right, you hop in with a proven, driver, somebody who can be the jockey, right? Somebody you can bet on, so that you don't have to, you can look out the window and try to see the waypoints yourself, but you probably want someone else driving the car if it's your first time. in that environment, and that, that's that management quality element, which is, you know, a lot of people say it's easy to measure 'cause you can see it in the financials over time, but the question is, can you identify it before? It's visible, because a lot of time that'll, that'll create a mispricing where you're betting on a team that's going to create substantial value with the assets they're assembling, but the market doesn't understand that yet 'cause they don't understand the difference between A, B, C, D companies. Right? They think they're all the same, in the moment, right? And, and, you know, the market will do that from time to time, it will give, valuations that would have benefited in hindsight aren't quite correct. but maybe the only way you would have been able to dis-decipher the difference between them, is to actually kind of assess the management team yourself directly. so again, long-winded way of saying that, I, I try to be aware of you know, the basics, right? Like, you, you don't wanna buy buy companies at, a hundred times earnings if you really don't think they're gonna grow really, really fast, right? And, and over a long period of time. Right? So like if you're not aware that you're buying companies at a hundred times earnings, then like, it's probably not a good, good sign. But knowing the company trades at a hundred times earnings, by itself doesn't tell you that it's too expensive or too cheap. Right? The question is, like, is it growing fast enough, to trade at a hundred times earnings? And which is why I don't, like, after doing, like, an initial basic analysis of the balance sheet and The valuation and like looking at peers and trying to understand like how the market might be thinking about the company, then the only question is, do you have any edge on the qualitative stuff? because the, the analysts, the, the, the sell side analysts are gonna largely cover the financials, they're gonna put out estimates, some of 'em are better than others, but at the end of the day, like the, the general path of things is, there's some consensus around it, right? 'Cause these analysts aren't paid to give you like wildly insightful information, they're largely paid to, to tell like a pretty clear and believable story. and they, they want you to hire their bank to, to, to sell their securities, right? to sell your securities with. and so a lot of what you get from them is pretty generic, like you'll see this trend where analysts will say a stock that's worth three is worth six, but when it gets to six, all of a sudden it's magically worth nine, and then when it gets nine, it's magically worth twelve. Nothing's really changed. You could have known it was worth twelve when it was, when it was three, but, but the sell side guys aren't paid to To make those types of calls. They're basically just telling you like what's gonna happen very, like immediately next, that's kind of a low bar based on the financial situation that they see. there's no real magic in that, and to, to some degree, they're assessing quality and believability and reputation, and look, if a company keeps putting out numbers and exceeding them for a long period of time, the stock tends to re-rate over time. It's a good way to make money in investing. and so if you can buy stocks, right, where I think the valuation is reasonable, but you think that the management team is going to start to execute really well and start to hit numbers and, and- And beat forecast for some prolonged period of time, as we've seen with historically with stocks like Amazon and Netflix, et cetera, where like they just all of a sudden start hitting, when they really start hitting, they just hit for long periods of time, and they just keep growing 'cause it's just a really good business, right? And, and if you constantly put out forecasts that are allowing yourself a little wiggle room, you'll, you'll keep achieving, or exceeding your forecast, and then you start to become known as a company that constantly beats their numbers, and then the stock- the valuation reflects that confidence from, from investors. juxtapose that with a company that's in a turnaround mode where it has largely missed expectations for years. People have given up on it, expectations are very low, and so, you know, you, the valuation of a company like that's gonna be much lower objectively on any sort of fundamental basis based on the numbers, but if they start-- if they're able to start to change you know, change that perspective by actually starting to achieve, you know, their financial objectives and their targets, then the, the stock will re-rate. and so val-valuation is, is a moving tar-- it's a moving target, right? It's constantly moving Based on a number of inputs. to make money, you have to identify gaps between the current view and current expectations and what, what actually happens in the future, so you have to find situations where you think the market is miscalculating. Underestimating, like, thinks that something worse than is gonna happen is gonna happen, which is why I oftentimes like to buy scenarios where the worst is sort of priced in, because it's an easier way to make money in a sense, right? With more downside protection. Because if a lot of bad things have already happened, then in order to get returns, in order to get a higher valuation, you may only need fewer bad things to happen. You may not even need particularly good things to happen. You just need a decline in the number of bad things that are happening. which is a different, a different ask than asking a company where a lot of good things are happening to, for even more good things to happen, such that the market can further re-read it. And this is why people get in trouble Buying va- like higher valuation stocks at the peak of the euphoria around those stocks, right? At the peak of euphoria, everything good that, is known about that company is, is already like well known and understood by almost every market participant. So there really isn't anyone new to get excited, and the only thing that possibly could happen is even if the company continues to be a great company, at some point it stops achieving expectations at the same, rate as it had, up until that point, such that and this is where you see stocks that have been on these huge runs, and then all of a sudden they top out, they have one earnings report where growth is, it's still thirty percent, but the market thought it was gonna be thirty-two percent or thirty-five percent, and the stock's down thirty percent, and you're like, "Well, why is it down?" Thirty-five percent and only missed growth by two percent, it's because the entire, valuation, the entire multiple for the whole company that was built up over the previous ten or twelve quarters was predicated on consistently beating those expectations. And so there's this feeling that the company had the wind in its back, and there's all this momentum, and, and as long as it can continue to beat, maybe the market will continue to give it that premium valuation. But the moment there's even a whiff that, that something might have changed, the, the market doesn't just reprice that small delta between expectations, it, it's sort of, it's sort of like a light switch, it's like on or off. When things are on, you trade a premium valuation. When the light switch turns off, you immediately- retract quite a bit because the market like, like, like a ratchet, like re-ratchet your valuation back to something that's more pedestrian. And a lot of people are, are shocked by those types of moves because they didn't, they didn't really understand the expectations that were built in the stock before it went into that eleventh or twelfth earnings report where It was likely to, to beat according to the Wall Street, you know, estimates. So anyway, like a long way of saying, I, I try to consider as many different inputs as possible, from my experience, running companies, from my experience sitting on boards, from my experience watching and reading about companies. And investing over long periods of time, and I try to identify situations where there are companies that I understand pretty well, that I believe the market is getting the valuation wrong for some reason, right? And those reasons differ every single time, right? There's always a For a food company, it could be because somebody got sick eating your food at one of your restaurants. Maybe it was one of your suppliers. Maybe it wasn't even your fault, but your stock's down thirty percent anyway, that may or may not be an opportunity. Right, for a technology company, it may be, again, like I said earlier, temporarily growth comes down, but, but you believe growth's actually gonna reaccelerate again because you don't think whatever short-term headwinds are visible today are gonna la- are gonna persist and therefore, when the stock re-rates from forty times earnings to thirty times earnings, maybe you think that's a better bet, like maybe all things being equal, thirty times is better than forty times, given that in your view, the growth isn't gonna really accelerate again in the next few quarters. those are situations that a lot of investors will, will look at and broken growth companies, com-comp, companies that were highly loved, right? At some point, but then their growth slows down for some period of time. Those, those are always gonna be interesting situations. A lot of quality companies go through that. idea of like Chipotle. this was like back in, I wanna say, 17, 18, 19 timeframe, there was a period of time there where people didn't think Chipotle was a growth company anymore. Right? Nike's going through that right now. Nike was a growth company for like thirty, forty years, was one of the best performing stocks in the S&P, five hundred. It's been an absolute, a dumpster fire for the last five years. It's been a really tough stock, down eighty percent. The question, it's a broken growth company, will it ever grow again? Is this, is this a permanent thing or is it just a... is it just a blip? I mean, it's, it's getting a little long in the tooth to maybe be just a blip, but even if it is a longer term headwind, is it, is it, should it really be trading at this valuation, or is even this valuation still too high? again, in the moment it's really hard to know. It always seems obvious in retrospect when you have the benefit of knowing what happened, but in the moment it's always challenging to identify. situations live time where a stock is definitely or a company is definitely undervalued. and no matter what anyone thinks, right? A lot of people, are too academic about this. They think everything is a spreadsheet. They think everything in life can be condensed into something you just plug into ChatGPT and get the answer. and I, I just, I haven't found that to be true. I think, like, if you ask AI right now, like, what it thinks the best long investment in the entire stock market is, they're gonna say Nvidia, but that's a consensus long that everybody agrees is a, is a great company. it's definitely been better than holding Nike, and, and possibly, and probably will continue to be better, but you're not gonna learn anything from, from ChatGPT. on that, you're not gonna learn anything from, on that, because it's largely the priced in consensus view. The, the question is, what are the things that aren't priced in? What are the things that, like, not enough people are thinking about? What are the things that people are gonna have to understand in two or three years from now that they're not thinking about, they're not talking about? And that's where the art comes in. 'Cause if you could actually determine that in advance, then you could buy a lot of stocks that are, sort of undervalued irrespective of what the spreadsheet says right now. 'Cause the spreadsheet doesn't know, like, how the world's gonna change over two to three years. It only knows how to tell you, what the profit margin is or what the growth is today, 'cause those are the Only numbers that you can put in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet isn't capable of processing numbers that don't exist yet. But your human brain is able to try to forecast or predict, what those things might be. Right? And the extent to which you get those things right, you may be able to buy stocks today that other people feel are overvalued, but you actually think are undervalued, and vice versa. which is why, like, again, I think once you understand how to put the numbers in the spreadsheet, and once you understand what the numbers mean I think after that, the real artistry and the real upside comes from, understanding the, the qualitative stuff a little bit better than other people. And I think a lot of that is probably comes from experience more than anything else. Alright, Mc- McLaughlin Portraits, y- if you're still there, you may not be there anymore, but you were there for a long time, sorry about that, buddy. Let's go to Jeff, Jeff, are you still there?

Jeff: Yeah, hey, what's going on, man?

Mike Alfred: Not much. What's on your mind? What are your thoughts about how this is all playing out, the week ahead? Anything you wanna share?

Jeff: Yeah, I think the geopolitics is looking very interesting. The Mekah agreement with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan is huge Means, you know, Iran had been shooting at Saudi Arabia, but, and by proxy as well through the Houthis in Yemen, but no, no one'd ever been shooting at Pakistan or Turkey for obvious reasons. So there's a, you know, real hope for peace here in the final innings, and this is, also the most dangerous time. But it seems like there's news out of Korea about possible peace talks between the North and the South. Trump, De-escalating military drills. So it, you know, we could be at this inflection point where a great peace breaks out, and I'm always in favor of peace. There's definitely a path to it, no matter what the propaganda says. And, things haven't gone as smooth as- Everybody thought, of course, never does, but there's no reason not to be bullish on the, on US markets because, you know, the US continues to innovate and build the future And, you know, AI as a theme is, isn't going away. If, if anything, it's, it's ending up more and more on, People's to-do list, e-every week, somehow AI is on your to-do list, w-whether you're dealing with it, w-whether you're countering it, whether you're developing it, whether your competitors doing it and you have to watch it And so I, you know, I really appreciate the zoomed out big macro picture that you've been hammering on for so long about where the bottlenecks really are and finding that quality, and, and even though it's, you know, it's a high beta, high volatile, assets in some, some of the names. it's still, you know, if you're plugged in, it seems like the safest place to be, which is kind of ironic, safer in HIBA because you're buying the future. So, I'm, bullish America, bullish AI data centers for sure. Still bullish Bitcoin, but, I, I'm bullish on peace, I'm bullish on America, and, I think, I think this is when, you know, big things can happen, you know, So, you know, we're not out of the woods yet. There could always be a black swan. But, no matter what happens, the, the, the demand for, AI or response to AI is completely insatiable, and it's actually starting to make me very busy. And, like, my, my personal work. so yeah, the, every time some, another email or another signal chat comes in or another person wants to talk, it really comes down to, "Well, you really have to, this is AI. It's like, well, geez, I'm really glad I'm long on IRI." Cipher, and she said, "Because, like, it's got-- that's where the, that's where the puck is going. Gonna figure it out." But, I very much appreciate the subscriber spaces, the, the people that are coming up and talking. You know, people we haven't heard from, before, the story, the ugly, all of it's super, super helpful, high quality, very well worth it. So happy I'm a subscriber and, wish everybody the best. On the, on the kids with homeschool thing, I've homeschooled my kids from day one. And, they're head and shoulders above their peers as a result, and they've hung out with, you know, homeless street kids in Albania and been able to talk to them, and they've had, dinner with deputy prime ministers And everything in between. And, yep, I agree about getting them into competitive sports. my girls are equestrians, and, yeah, phenomenal thing for them to be able to do. And very fortunate that my wife and I made that choice to homeschool them, 'cause I can't, I can't recommend that enough. No one will ever love your kid as much as you do And so no one will ever put in the effort into your kid, in developing your kid, as much as you will. And if you're a smart person, you know, who better to teach your kid than you? So, yeah, I yield back balance of my time, thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Glad to be

Mike Alfred: here. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for the geopolitical views and, for your support, it means a lot. I think we have another first time speaker in spaces, I think, McLeod. Are you a first time speaker in

Speaker 6: spaces? Yeah, so I'm a first time speaker on, Your Spaces. I've spoken on AstroID two other times, just basically defending Open and talking about, the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska. So, But, I was, I was curious on your thoughts. I've heard you speak, before about the AI build out over the next twenty to thirty years. I've seen, well People that are asking that question, I'm kinda curious because I don't really see the limits, to the AI built out. Maybe it's my imagination, or something, but... I don't really see how it, how it ends. I don't know, I've seen people compare, like the Manhattan Project or the interstate build out, But a lot of those things seem, seem to have limits, but I feel like intelligence doesn't really have, a limit in the same, same way. I was just kinda curious, about your thoughts.

Mike Alfred: I, I, I look, you're speaking to the choir. I think, intelligence at scale is gonna be ubiquitous. I think it's gonna be in everything. I think it's gonna be the biggest consumer of all energy, on the planet. we're basically gonna have like these massive super brains, and then the whole planet's gonna be like a super brain. using energy, and hopefully that'll translate into like real prosperity. and especially with physical AI robotics, maybe that means the removal eventually of like all unnecessary manual labor. Meaning like, yeah, like you can still do manual stuff, but like you don't have to. and because, because there's enough opportunity economy to kind of like move up the stack. I'm not sure, right? But, but I do know that I'm not fading, I'm not fading, I'm not gonna be bearish on the data center sector, I'm not gonna be bearish on AI compute, I'm just, I'm just gonna refuse. To do that, I may be short-term cautious if Nebia goes from two seventy to twenty-seven hundred or something, like at Sandisk, right, if it were to do that over the next six months, I'd probably advise people to be cautious about Nebia or any other stock that does something like that. just like I was about SanDisk itself when it was on its way up to its highs, it, it may very well go much higher than that, I don't know. But I, I tend to get more, worried about things when, when, when things are more exuberant. I don't think the fundamentals here, though, are really in question. Like I think if you're thinking about the long term Fundamentals, there is theoretically like no real limit to some of the stuff, to, to, to use your kind of, nomenclature there. I, I don't think, I think it is somewhat infinite, and I don't- and that's why I'm, I'm refusing to become bearish in the short term for no reason. And I think anyone who's trying to short, like, neoclouds, for example, right now, like, it's just an overly cute, potentially hugely value-destructive trade. And I think some people are doing this stuff to be heroes, not because it's very thoughtful. Right? Like you don't do anything in the market to be a hero. You're not like, you're not like, Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Like you don't hold up your sword and defend your whole country with the sword. Like you don't need to do that. in the market, like to some degree you need to move out of the way and let these tectonic forces play out, and you just identify them and make sure you're positioned so that they work in your favor. you don't have to be a hero, I think, standing in front of you know, the neocon army right now is probably a bad idea. so I don't know if any of that is agreeable to what you said, but that's kind of how, how I think about it.

Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree, with that. Yeah, I, I was just, I was thinking about it as kind of a, almost thinking in a, kind of like how, the Chinese think in, centuries, rather than, president to president. I was just kind of thinking of it, in a larger scale. I s- I saw a quote, or I was thinking of a quote. that I'd heard a long time ago. It's, as the sphere of understanding grows ever larger, necessarily the surface area of ignorance gets ever bigger, and it just seems like with intelligence, the more that you get, the more you realize that you don't understand, and, I just feel like there isn't, there isn't a limit, and I, I also, I've heard you speak about, like Buddhism, Buddhism and Zen, and I just, I- Like hearing you talk about that 'cause I'm really into that and, I just feel like it's a good mindset to have. So.

Mike Alfred: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here and, thank you for being part of. Our growing community. I think we have another new, potentially new, space in speaker, Ryan, if you're up, if you wanna hop in here.

Ryan: Yeah, hey, thanks, Mike. Appreciate you sharing your experience and, and insight over the years. I've learned a lot from you and, appreciate you talking about Bitcoin miners years ago and the AI potential. And, I'm new to the spaces with you, but was wondering if you could talk about the, Texas audit letter that came out from Governor Abbott. And how big of a deal that is really, I've heard some people saying that it's more kind of performative, and I've read stuff about China pushing a lot of anti-data center kind of propaganda in the United States, and I'm wondering how serious you see that as a threat to, investments in some of the companies like Iron and Cipher over the long term. I would just love to hear your thoughts. I know you said that Cipher's been kind of de-risked Tier, with this recent drawdown, because of what happened in Texas. So for someone who's looking at just opportunities to deploy capital, i-is that s- like just looking like a more, attractive opportunity right now even compared to before? So thanks for anything that you would share on that.

Mike Alfred: I, I was mainly talking about Cipher as D-Risk because of the nature of their business model. I think their, their business model is, is, is actually pretty simple Right? And, the, it's already working. It's just there's a delay when you build these really large AI factories between when you, have a customer that wants to be a long-term tenant in those buildings and when you actually deliver the site. And maybe one of the most important things that was announced in Cyprus' most recent earnings call is that they delivered a portion of their Black Pearl site, was already turned over to Amazon like several months early. they still need to deliver the rest of it. These, these things tend to happen in phases, but you very rarely hear somebody turning over a site, of that size, right? ahead of schedule without apparently any major issues blocking it. so look, I, I take everything that a governor's office says seriously, and I do think There's a tremendous amount of propaganda globally right now, and it makes sense. Jeff definitely understands this. We were talking about this in another space a week or two ago about drone swarms. I mentioned drone swarms, I mentioned the need for Compute just for defense alone, right? Like everything is gonna be AI powered, like not just the economy, but like global and national defense, is, is gonna be AI powered, and so- Jason, Lowery mostly got it right. He was talking about Bitcoin, but maybe what he really meant to say is the data centers behind Bitcoin, right? Is the real, is the real soft power here, because if everything is controlled by a central intelligence or at least a group of intelligences, then the only thing that really matters is how much intelligence can you wield. And to the extent in which how much intelligence you can wield is, is gated by how many data centers you can build, how much power you can wield, how strong the chips are, and this is why we're trying to prevent the chips, right? Like the US government is trying to actively stop the models from proliferating, right? So that's like the software, right? The, the, the, the model, right? Like we don't want the best models, the most powerful models, to get in the hands of our enemies. We don't want the most powerful chips to get in the hands certain power assets to people that might be viewed as future, enemies, right? And so any propaganda globally to try to stop data center development is good for our enemies, if you're an American. Right? Because it, because compu to some degree is defense in the future, because even your kinetic power, your, your aircraft carriers, your F-16s, your, you know, intercontinental ballistic missile, type of setup, right? All this stuff, your drone swarms, everything is ultimately gonna be directed by AI. So even if you have the highest quality technology in your missile, if the AI that's guiding the missile or the AI that's directing, your missile Defense is, isn't as good as your competitors, then you, you may not be as successful as you think in the, the act of, of, of warfare. and I think that's gonna be true largely Of almost everything. So, as it, as it relates to the data center thing, these blue-haired people that were out marching for all the wrong causes are out marching again, right? And, and yes, there are some real considerations, with, you do wanna think about power usage, and you do wanna think about water usage, and you do wanna think about environmental stuff, like you certainly wanna be aware of those factors. But I think all things being equal, as long as the data center developer is being thoughtful and they're not breaking Gaining laws, I don't think there should be any additional things we're doing to try to stop, American companies from, from organically competing in the free market to build compute resources, 'cause I think compute resources will largely be a source of long-term competitive advantage. for, for the country, in addition to, to industries, right? So that, that, that are able to, to leverage intelligence to, to be more competitive. so look, the-- in the short term, we will hear a lot of noise about this stuff. Some of it is politically oriented. some of it is related to elections, right? Some of it is just wanting to signal to the populace that you care about these issues, 'cause you don't wanna be perceived as not caring about these issues. It does tend to add to the broader noise around it, and so it makes it seem like where there's smoke, there's fire. but I don't personally- Put a lot of credence in the idea that there's anything long-term happening here. There are some states that are just broken, right? And those states, they're already broken, so like, it's gonna take a lot to get them back on track, like I wouldn't build data centers there. There's some states where, like, things are mostly just working, and they'll probably continue to work in spite of any sort of short-term volatility around specific, politicians, talking points, whatever. and you, you gotta take all of it seriously in the short term, but as an investor, I'm, I'm mostly zooming out because I think over two or three years, like, there's just a imperative. that these things get built, and to some degree, if you're already had success building them, if there are more challenges to building more in the future, it actually kind of g-gives you an embedded advantage, right? 'Cause data center capacity that's already online is going up in pricing because it turns out that the demand For future capacity is growing faster than our ability to, to build it and, and meet space, right? Ex-expanding digital demand can happen like so, so, You know, easily, right? It can happen without a lot of effort. Expanding the physical footprint required to meet that digital demand, which extends pretty effortlessly, is much harder, right? Like it's much more work and And, and there are many more ba-barriers to, getting that capacity online. so, again, long way of saying I'm not too concerned, right? I, I'm, I'm focused more on which one of these companies, can actually deliver the sites, the, the data centers, which companies can deliver clouds, which companies can generate, you know, profitable revenue, that's growing over long periods of time, can deliver the sites, keep them online, and keep developing and identifying and developing new sites. And I think if you can do that, over time, you'll, you'll build a very valuable business. I don't think, I don't think the politicians will be able to stop that. I think a lot of politicians understand why you need to do it. and there are a lot of municipalities that will take advantage of the other ones, like if, if somebody becomes too restrictive and doesn't actually allow these companies to build what they need to build, they'll just move to another place, right? So, and, and I think the US government, you know, the US government at the federal level, as well as a number of state governments are too smart, to allow that to happen. And, and again, there's a, there's an imperative at the defense level too that supersedes a lot of this stuff that at some point will take priority. If required and, so I, I just think nothing can stop this train basically.

Ryan: Hey, awesome, thank you.

Speaker 14: Anthony, do you wanna, if you're still there, do you wanna, give us your, one of your patented, pep talks?

Anthony: No, I was just gonna talk about what you were just talking on. The more I think about the situation in Texas specifically, and I said this the other night when we were talking. I think it's super bullish for the companies that are publicly traded, right? Like the companies that have the finances behind them, the companies that can do this stuff the right way, if you're looking at like a CYPHER specifically, and we can name a few of them, of course, but it's a big advantage 'cause you're gonna clear the queue of all the junk, they're gonna be the ones first in line because the governor's office is gonna wanna go with companies they know can deliver on things like this. And then it also makes the rest of the existing pipelines even more valuable in the meantime, and that's what I was talking about the other night. Like, Cypress got what, like, four hundred and fifty megawatts, let's say, give or take, of additional capacity between a few other sites right now, out there, that becomes more valuable right now. sites outside of Texas become more valuable right now, in the short term, right? long term, of course, all, all sites are gonna be taken, guys. We're so short compute, that's, that's the funny thing. You see the price action on a daily basis, but going back to the understanding that just knowing what you own, it's so important as an investor, and you can't try to time the market. it's gonna be very hard to invest Successfully, especially in early stage companies trying to time the market. If you think you're gonna get into something today and it's gonna be at the price you want by the end of this year, hey, good luck. I hope you have success, I hope you accomplish what you want, but, you have to have a long term view to be massively successful in investing in smaller companies. And these are smaller companies, so in my opinion, everything that we've seen, literally since the first contract was signed in the, you know, Bitcoin miners going to, let's say, eight AI data center space with a core scientific deal, way back when, what, that was in '24 now, I believe, and we're, wow, we're in '26, gonna be in '27 by time you know it, right? Seeing this transition, the demand has just went up. Nothing has slowed down. It has went up, and the deals have gotten better and better and better. We look at the last month and a half, you look at the Terawolf deal to start that off, then you look at the CleanSpark deal, then you look at, the Riot deal we just got the other day. The numbers just keep getting better, and this is the colocation model, right? I'm talking more so that specifically, the cloud model. I hear a lot of people say "neoclouds," and they throw in Cipher and Wolf, and those aren't neoclouds at this point. They might eventually do some stuff there, but their businesses-- Mike, you were just saying this-- they're very, in my opinion, de-risk businesses. They're very conservative businesses, and I say de-risk because if you're able to start getting this compute online, you're really de-risking But it's a very simple business model. All you're doing is building a data center, someone's paying you rent. The cloud business, it looks very exciting right now. We see the numbers by, Nebia, CoreWeave, the last, you know, few, what, week, week ago, we saw that stuff basically, but Seeing where that's going, that's a whole different animal, so I'm not gonna touch on that, but I think Iron has extreme, potential upside, especially if, you know, things keep going in the direction that they're going. But right now, those businesses aren't the same businesses. So when I hear people just say that, I just wanna make that very clear, they're not NeoClouds, they're different, and if data center demand's there, it's a very conservative business model, might not have the same upside potential, but I think it's a, a very conservative Keep going in the right direction. And right now at this current moment, like I said, from twenty-four, from the first one being signed, to now, it's just one up. So for anyone who's looking at prices day to day and you're getting shaken out of your positions This probably won't be for you, I'm just being honest with you. or you're investing way more than you're willing to lose, so you can't actually have the success that you desire. So just be patient and understand, like I said, what you own and let things play out over time. But right now, I just think it's a great opportunity to accumulate stuff cheap. I've been buying more stuff, as you know, Mike, at these prices. took a few little flyers as well and some smaller ones. but at the end of the day, it's not looking to flip my money overnight. I'm happy to be in these things for the next three, five years if that's what it takes for the full thesis to play out, and that's what's had me have the success that I've had in this space, with you from the early days, just letting the thing play out, knowing who the management teams are, understanding the process of it, and good things will come. But yeah, I just can't stress it enough to all of you guys on these spaces, day-to-day price You're gonna be in for a long, long road, in this investing journey, but I'm excited for everything. I, I think the rest of the year is actually gonna be exciting. I agree with Jeff, I heard his part on the macro. I think the macro will clear up. Why do I think the macro will clear up? I always thought it would clear up, especially towards this part of the year, because of course, midterms, and that's, it's all politics, guys. And if you haven't realized that, I, I don't know what you've been watching Crypto specifically, we'll see what happens with the Clarity Act, but that also could be a massive catalyst, for a lot of these crypto names that have really been beaten up, let's say the last twelve, months, basically eight to twelve months, they've been really beaten up. Look, look at Coinbase, look at some of these companies, they've been beaten pretty damn good, where if Bitcoin starts to move, some of these crypto companies, can also be some really nice plays in a portfolio. So that's kind of what I'm looking at overall, Mike

Mike Alfred: Awesome. I'd love to close with Anthony. Anthony's been one of the more successful investors in this sector over the last three and a half years. He's been right about a lot of stuff. and it's nice to have someone else saying some of the things that I'm saying, so I'm not the only person, but, thanks everyone guys, this was, we've been going for two hours on a Sunday, I wasn't intending on doing a Sunday space, but I've been so inspired by, the people that I've met, over the last three weeks since I started the subscriber group. You know, some people are gonna criticize it 'cause they don't get it, right? And they're gonna think it's like about the money, but I'm gonna be honest with you, like, it's been the most reinvigorating experience for me just interacting directly with folks. I've literally received hundreds of DMs. intentionally, where I opened up the DMs and I asked people to tell me their story, and the stories are exceptional. people have changed their lives through being more thoughtful about how they invest and trying to understand what's happening with this AI and, you know, the, the data center space and, it's really cool to hear all the, and I so I encourage people to keep sending those stories, and I will be doing more, recorded spaces like this in the subscriber group because that's where I'm getting this energy from, and by the way, like pretty much every speaker after I realized that it wasn't a subscriber space, is a subscriber. So like this has been the tone, the last few weeks of all of the subscriber group chats because we've really been getting into some more detailed, stuff and talking about mindset and, I see PG down there earlier. BG asked me a bunch of questions about like portfolio construction, we, we really went deep on that in the last space. so we're gonna do more of this, I'm gonna, I'll do at least one this coming week, maybe two. I'm gonna try to do one to two a week, for subscribers and consider this a bonus for folks who aren't subscribers, 'cause it was completely accidental today that this was, both recorded and open, to the public. And again, because we curated the group. quickly, right at the beginning, like it ended up being the same tonality, right, as, as, as, as any of the spaces I've been doing over the last few weeks. But appreciate everybody, being here. enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and, let's see, what happened? Another interesting week, coming up. And remember you're blessed to be alive to even be able to trade these markets. Talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.