More Predictions and My Year In Review

Good morning everyone.

I did a lot of writing here on my Beehiiv newsletter in 2024.

Here are some of the numbers they shared with me:

I do not expect to slowdown my writing In 2025. I like what my friend Frank Rotman says about writing:

People ask why I spend so much time writing. The truth is that I’m compelled to write. I simply have to.

Isaac Asimov explains it best:

“Writing to me, is simply thinking through my fingers”

— fintechjunkie (@fintechjunkie)
7:18 PM • Dec 21, 2024

Based on how often I write, my open rate is very good. My email goes out to 20,000 people each day.

I am constantly told I should write less often and focus on one core subject to grow my audience faster.

I just don’t care to change much in my routine. I do not write for a living, I live and I write.

Last year my most popular posts were ‘Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia’ (the stock has doubled since) and ‘I am Back As CEO of Stocktwits’ – What You Can Expect’. The most shared and clicked post was ‘There Is No Nuance – Release The Hostages’.

I am proud that my most read piece this year was about the hostages. It is why I won’t change how I write.

Onward…

People do want predictions, but you can’t make predictions without going back and reviewing the ones you made yourself…

My best ideas of the last year from this newsletter and my ‘Trends With Friends’ podcast were Make My Trip ($MMYT), Solana, $AXON and my ‘degenerate economy’ index (up 60 plus percent). I also liked Gold which worked well.

My personal biggest mistake is being underweight my own ideas and predictions. That will not change because of my high exposure to startups and Social Leverage and now CEO of Stockwtits I am mostly indexed

Last week I started last week sharing some predictions from around the web.

So where are we?

I don’t/won’t make market predictions and to be honest, I have never been more confused as to how to even analyze markets. We have added a new $2 trillion market (crypto) that has what seems like $100 trillion in attention.

Bonds remain in a brutal bear market and rates do not want to back up at all despite rate cuts.

Large venture capitalists are like private equity firms at this point so who knows what happens with IPO’s. Supply of great companies on listed public equity markets may stay low forever with all the cash sloshing around in private markets. If that’s the case, market cap weighted indexing just keeps going up to the right in a steady state until something we don’t see today changes things.

I will never get in a stocks are cheap or expensive argument, but they sure do not seem cheap.

Warren Buffett holds a record amount of cash.

I seem to be the only one without a strong opinion on EVERY subject.

In 2008, liquidity was the big problem as backs sucked the universe dry of cash and capital. In 2025, liquidity is our GOD. It is endless. I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

From 2009-2021 ZIRP, the iPhone, the cloud, the social mobile web and venture funded customer acquisition costs brought us a sea of ‘unicorns’ real and false. I think Fartcoin becoming a unicorn in 2024 puts a stamp on how silly that whole era was. A unicorn means nothing in the era that a Fartcoin market cap equals $1 billion. My gut and hope is the memecoin phenomenon get people back to focusing on building businesses, not just features and silly products.

Fartcoin has also changed my perception of FOMO (the fear of missing out). I now call FOMO by the term FOMF (the fear of missing farts/fartcoin). FOMO is now everywhere and all the time because of crypto, AI, real-time 2.0 and degeneracy. In this new world where everyone can launch a memecoin and act like Goldman Sachs, FOMF is with us 24/7/365. FOMF is a new form of persistent anxiety in markets.

In a post ZIRP, AI, Crypto world where a16z, Elon and Silicon Valley have more influence in The White House than Goldman Sachs, a world where Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are sitting with Trump more than Larry Summers and Lloyd Blankfein, I expect more of a growth attitude but I also expect an increasing amount of misallocated capital. I am not sure if the ‘Unicorn Squid’ (a16z, Elon etc) is better or worse than the ‘Vampire Squid’ (Goldman), but we are now at the mercy of two giant squid like forces. Goldman Sachs might have less influence, but their business has never been better and their moat never more secure.

All that said above…

My focus is still on what I call ‘small is the new big’ and ‘value’ seed investing. That is what we have practiced at Social Leverage for 18 years and will keep practicing. We want to invest in startups that don’t need Goldman Sachs or A16z in their C or D round because they should already be profitable and already attractive as acquisitions.

I believe that the 490 companies that make up the rest of the S&P will be extremely acquisitive – at least they should be – especially in a world where Trump and Silicon Valley runs the White House.

In other words, 2025 offers much opportunity for investors of all sizes and strategies.