This Week on Trends with Friends (February 23, 2025)
Welcome Friends,
Here’s an assortment of posts shared this week on Trends with Friends. Let’s dive in…
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
Howard Lindzon is leaning into the Degenerate Economy. He writes,
My friend Joe McCann who joined us on ‘Trends With Friends’ this week, says there is one rule of the internet and that is ‘it can NEVER be satisfied.
How true.
Today, with an AI infused internet and an ‘everyman for himself’ culture all roads lead to the lowest common denominator! What I mean by that (Max Goldstein who runs Stocktwits video content coined this), is we now speed immediately to the most degenerate outcome. We have seen this play out with executive orders flying from our King. The Trump, Melania, Milei and Portnoy memecoins were therefore inevitable and the activity and profits flowing in gambling, vaping and trading are just getting started.
I am reminded of this scene from ‘Field of Dreams’:
‘If you build it they will come’…
In 2025 I would change the name of this movie to ‘Field of Degeneracy’ and ‘if you build it, they will bet parlays’.
THIS WEEK IN AI
Michael Parekh’s AI Summary reviews enterprise AI’s “Success Theater,” Apple’s shift to India from China, Google’s internal headwinds and more.
MAKE YOURSELF HEALTHY AGAIN
Phil Pearlman shares how you can make yourself healthy again. He writes,
Today, there are two movements happening simultaneously in the US. The first is mainstream. The majority of adults in this country are overweight or obese and have poor metabolic health. They are eating nutrient poor foods and they are not moving their bodies enough.
Then, there is this glorious countertrend, this much smaller but growing grassroots movement of people getting healthy and inspiring others to get healthy like Tro and Chris.
It’s an asymmetrical bimodal distribution that looks like this:
Role Modeling is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, though it is grossly undervalued.
INVESTING IN RURAL AMERICA
This week, Ted Merz met with Blue Highway Capital co-founder, Christine Jones.
He learned that Christine and her team are focused on the underserved communities in rural America. Merz mentions,
The case for focusing on rural areas is simple: they are badly underserved.
Christine said the concentration of investments in the states where the money is raised is one of the things that limits what’s available for other opportunities in rural areas.
Blue Highway currently operates a $100 million growth equity fund. The firm provides capital through subordinated debt and preferred equity with 85% of their deals sourced from proprietary relationships.
They currently invest in industries including specialty manufacturing, natural consumer products and business services.
Blue Highway isn’t looking to run the companies. They want to partner with people who “know their business.”
While not explicitly an impact fund, Blue Highway Capital measures job creation and community prosperity alongside financial returns.
THE GODSPEED WEEKLY
Riley Rosebee recently launched a new publication Godspeed focused on the confluence of technologies within AI, Space, Energy, Robots, Mobility, Automation and Digital Infrastructure.
This week, Rosebee reviews Microsoft’s quantum breakthrough, the US military’s autonomous appetite, asteroid mining, household humanoids, GPS technology and more.
Subscribe to Godspeed with one-click.
THIS WEEK IN CHARTS
Charlie Bilello cuts dozens of great charts in his weekly chart review. Here are 3 notable themes to watch this week…
Eggflation Is Back
The price of a dozen eggs in the US spiked to a new record high of $4.95 in January. Over the last 4 years, egg prices have increased 238%, the largest 4-year increase in history.
Here’s a look at the cumulative price increases over the past 4 years in other major categories…
Fed On Hold
Actual inflation continues to drift further away from the Fed’s 2% target, with CPI since the start of 2020 running at a 4.2% annualized rate.
CONFIDENCE AND CREATIVITY
Tadas Viskanta curated podcasts links on confidence and creativity. Here’s a sneak peek…
TRENDS WITH NO FRIENDS
Trends With No Friends sifts through the noise and discovers stocks above $1B market cap with high relative strength and low social following.
The publication shares 52-Week Highs and Lows sorted by followers on Stocktwits.
Why is high relative strength and low social following important?
Stocks that are outperforming tend to continue to outperform. Stocks that have a low social following are, by definition, undiscovered by the crowd. Stocks that have both Relative Strength and Low Social Following can really outperform as more investors discover them.
This week, Trends with No Friends featured…
Charles River Associates ($CRAI), Adeia ($ADEA), Valmont Industries ($VMI), Procore Technologies ($PCOR) and more.
THIS WEEK’S EPISODE
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And in case you missed it… Howard Lindzon and Michael Parekh are joined by Joe McCann to discuss crypto, trading and digital assets on the latest episode of Trends with Friends.
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