This Week on Trends with Friends (January 5, 2025)
Welcome Friends,
Here’s an assortment of posts shared this week on Trends with Friends. Let’s dive in…
EVERYTHING IS UP FOR GRABS
Howard Lindzon shared “Everything Is Up For Grabs…” highlighting the open field of opportunity that lies ahead. He writes,
If everything is up for grabs…what can I be relatively sure of as an investor?
For one things…all this money will have to be managed.
A second thing I am sure of is building trust will take longer as the noise in markets explodes. Also switching costs have never been lower so be careful with all your new power in the markets as both a creator and distributor and trust agent.
Third, as someone who has been lucky enough to be an investor most of their adult life, I am confident that investing will be a way of life for a much higher percentage of people in the next 20 years – which is already exploding into what I call the ‘degenerate economy’.
Fourth, this mania will be streamed, NOT Televised. If I am correct, we will be closer to an end of this current mania when Netflix launches a 10 pm eastern Squawk Box with nobody on camera over 40 years of age. I intend to be a part of this with Stocktwits and our portfolio companies.
Finally for today, get used to more speculation. While it is very easy to make fun of speculation because it is often done so poorly, actual ‘exploring’ was done poorly before technology improved and lessons from the mistakes made were learned and shared.
Onward to some portfolio companies that are in the eye of these trends…
Read Lindzon’s latest post here.
THIS WEEK IN AI
Michael Parekh previews his 2025 AI predictions, data centers land grab, energy demand and more in this week’s AI Summary.
EASY MONEY HAS BEEN MADE
Joe McCann provides a comprehensive crypto market update. McCann comments,
The easy money has been made.
2024 was a historic year for myriad reasons, but as it relates to crypto, let’s review the performance of some cherry-picked data and why 2025 might not be as easy for my fellow crypto brethren and sistren.
Discarding USDT and USDC, the largest stablecoins by market cap, we observe that the best-performing major in 2024 was not Bitcoin or a Layer 1 protocol, but, yes, again, a memecoin.
No matter how many VCs (including myself) opine that the future of finance is driven by their bags, $DOGE outperformed all the majors.
I’ve written extensively over a year about why and how memecoins will continue to garner the attention of speculators (née gamblers) and financial nihilists.
It turned out to be true, and boy, did memecoins outperform. For example, $PEPE was up over 14x for 2024, and the total market cap of memecoins reached nearly $200B.
Let that sink in.
200 billion dollars worth of value for “assets” written off by academics and traditional finance as “worthless.”
On the other hand, what assets underperformed in the same year that the Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs were launched?
Avid readers of the Asymmetric Market Update will not be surprised to hear my fundamental bearishness on Ethereum and Ethereum-adjacent assets. Beyond a tactical trade here and there, I still see no reason to own much of anything in the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly the failed scaling solution known as Layer 2s.
Ironically, Coinbase’s L2, Base, picked up an enormous amount of activity and interest…yet it doesn’t have a token.
Are L2’s a contrarian play for 2025? I think not.
KILL THE COMFORT ZONE
Larry Thompson shared the meaning behind HostileCharts. He writes,
I often get asked the question: “Why HostileCharts?”
HostileCharts was born from a realization that true growth occurs during times of hostility, not within the safety of our comfort zones. “The quote, “Everything you want in life is on the other side of your comfort zone,” sticks with me daily, especially when my alarm blares at 5:30 a.m. to hit the gym. There, I’m reminded again: muscle grows through the tearing and repair of fibers. It’s a hostile process. Growth is hostile. And the markets? You guessed it—hostile too.
HostileCharts symbolizes the relentless nature of financial markets. Markets don’t care how hard you work, how much you know, or how deeply you believe in your trade. They’re indifferent to your ego, emotions, and expectations. They demand personal refinement—an often hostile process. It’s not personal; it’s just the nature of the game.
See Thompson’s full post here.
Y2K NEW YEAR’S EVE
Ted Merz writes about his Y2K New Year’s Eve experience. Merz mentions,
I spent the turn of the last century sitting in an office waiting for the end of the digital world.
It was New Year’s Eve, and I was the New York Bureau Chief for Bloomberg News.
For those too young to remember, there was an expectation the world’s computers would fail at midnight.
The reason? Because most computer code only included two digits for the year i.e. 97 for 1997. The concern was when we hit 2000 everything would break down.
It was called the “Y2K problem” and it’s hard now to believe just how much anxiety it engendered at the time.
So much in fact that Bloomberg News felt that key offices had to be staffed to deal with the potential fallout.
Brian Rooney, the TOP News editor, had already decided to be there. Over the summer he had been asked to direct news coverage of the event by then Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler.
I didn’t think he should be alone, so I assigned myself to join him.
In part, I felt bad about preventing anyone from “partying like it’s 1999.”
My bigger consideration was that it would look bad to pick someone else.
At that time, Bloomberg had a “lead from the front” culture.
As a manager you didn’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. If people were going to work late, you stayed. If they worked weekends, so did you. Team leaders sat in the middle of the room, eschewing window seats or corner offices.
THE IMPACT OF INTANGIBLES
Tadas Viskanta curated podcast links centered on The Impact of Intangibles. Here’s a sneak peek…
TRENDS WITH NO FRIENDS
Trends With No Friends sifts through the noise and discovers stocks above $1B market cap with high relative strength and low social following.
The publication shares 52-Week Highs and Lows sorted by followers on Stocktwits.
Why is high relative strength and low social following important?
Stocks that are outperforming tend to continue to outperform. Stocks that have a low social following are, by definition, undiscovered by the crowd. Stocks that have both Relative Strength and Low Social Following can really outperform as more investors discover them.
This week, Trends with No Friends featured…
Banco BBVA Argentina ($BBAR), IperionX Limited ($IPX) and the Best of Trends with No Friends (2024).
GET IN TOUCH
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