It was another challenging month for my stocks, although the last day in the month saw a big bounce back. I’ve been looking to consolidate down to a lower number of holdings and currently have 12 stocks.
I decided to start adding the YTD point in time returns for each month, rather than show a graph in my videos. This is more accurate, and the graph was for my main brokerage account. I balanced out between brokerages more now, and that of course distorts the graph.
Results,
2024: +146%
2025: +112%
2026: -20% YTD
Cumulative: +317%
YTD point in time results,
JAN +4% YTD
FEB -16% YTD
MAR -20% YTD
Allocations,
AppLovin APP - 16.2%
Astera Labs ALAB - 13.8%
Iren IREN - 11.9%
Figure Technology FIGR - 11.4%
Credo CRDO - 11.1%
Reddit RDDT - 8.5%
XTI Aerospace XTIA - 6.1%
Micron MU - 5.5%
Pattern Group PTRN - 4.9%
Electrovaya ELVA - 4.2%
Ethos Technologies LIFE - 4.0%
Nebius NBIS - 2.5%
Companies bought and sold in the month,
QTI Imaging QTI
Figs Inc FIGS - Medical apparel retailer
Sandisk SNDK
Applied Optoelectronics AAOI
Companies sold this month,
Dave Inc DAVE
BioHarvest Sciences BHST
Accelerant Holdings ARX
Promising new ideas included,
Omada Health OMDA - virtual health platform for weight loss
Bloom Energy BE - fuel cells for power generation of data centers
Ciena CIEN - optical and routing platform with software solutions
Fabrinet FN - contract manufacturer in electronics and optics
Dell Technologies DELL - compute manufacturer with growing AI share
nLIGHT LASR - fiber lasers and beams for defense and aerospace
Plant Labs PL - satellite and imagery provider
Any feedback or questions are welcome here or over on Youtube.
I’m getting started on my mid-season earnings review for my companies now. I’m fairly optimistic about the individual companies I have despite the share price declines.
I had a small position in BHST which I exited several weeks ago. My wife and I both used one of their products (Vinea, I think) for over three months and realized none of the advertized benefits. Granted, the effects of supplements/pharmaceuticals may be statistically validated, but that doesn’t mean that any one particular individual will have that experience. Nevertheless, I decided that even though it was purely anecdotal, it was enough for me to exit what was already a low confidence position. Ironically, I have been regularly receiving YouTube advertisements for this product. In other words, could be that this company is just now ramping their product promotion efforts - so it’s worth keeping an eye on it.
Separately, I too am interested in why you decided to exit DAVE. I still hold a position in this company. It, along with just about everything else has taken a beating, but I am unaware of any fundamental change that would cause me to sell. Was it just a matter of needing money to deploy elsewhere so DAVE became the source of funds? Not that it suddenly looked bad, just not quite as promising as other opportunities?
It mostly came down to looking to consolidate my holdings down to a smaller number of companies. I find myself looking to lower my overall holdings during market downturns. It primarily came down to having a lot of other high confidence picks also getting beat up in share price. On the flip side, I think when the market is generally rising and stocks are hitting new highs I’m more likely to trim positions and be willing to try out positions in newer companies. I don’t think it’s a part of my strategy I have really detailed in a video on my channel before, so maybe worth thinking through the why on this part of my strategy. Basically DAVE would be my 13th stock, but there’s a lot of other names I wanted to add too without having other companies to trim from.
By the way for every sell I make, I also put details of those in the monthly video. The section on DAVE starts at the timestamp 49:55. Other than consolidating my number of holdings down, the main reason was competition. I thought DAVE was primarily competing with Buy Now Pay Later solutions, with their main competitors being Sezzle, Klarna, Affirm, and a couple others. I was surprised to learn in this Wolfe Fintech conference they called out Cash App and Chime as their main competition.
Cash App and Chime are growing slower than Dave in terms of revenue but are also much larger on the amount of revenue. Chime is also GAAP unprofitable still, so I see DAVE as having vastly better unit economics. It could also be Dave’s AI model, or business model more generally is superior. My concern is these larger players like Cash App, Chime, Affirm, and Klarna have a lot of money to throw around gaining customers without needing to be profitable in the near term.
I mentioned in the video it was a tough decision though because there has not been a deterioration in the financials for DAVE. I’m rarely selling a stock before a deterioration in financials happens. Additionally, the P/E ratio has gotten so low it is already making me question if I made the right call, and there is value to be had here.
When I look at the competitive landscape for a few other companies I own its a lot more greenfield. For example, Figure Technology has a ~75% market share of the tokenized real world asset market. Pattern Group is the only brand accelerator that is willing to buy inventory off their customers. Ethos says they have no known competitors in the Direct market for life insurance, and the ones who tried prior failed. Reddit seems like a one of a kind social media platform. Then when I look at DAVE they are competing with lots of heavily funded VC backed platforms for the same customers. It’s always been kind of surprising to me that Buy Now Pay Later could get this type of margins or profit. I guess these newer AI models are able to determine better though who is actually going to pay back their small loan or not.
Interesting, I was also trying their different consumer products from the tea, the chewable, and the electrolyte mix. If I’m investing in a stock that has a fairly priced consumer product I will almost always try the product out.
There was a thread when I brought up BioHarvest initially about how scientific their claims are. I looked up one of their papers about the grape-based compound and found the scientific paper to look legitimate. I also thought it lined up with the mediterranean diet theory that either grapes or reasonable amounts of wine are providing some health benefit. I found the chewable to have a similar effect to a cup of black tea, but it could have just been a placebo effect; it was hard to say definitively.
These BioHarvest studies were also in contrast to when I looked up the scientific studies for Celsius when I was investing there. In that case, the studies Celsius produced seemed to be a pure marketing ploy. They compared their drink in the study with 3x caffeine to a can of Coke, and concluded the Celsius drink would make you lose more weight. Somehow it worked for them though to be able to gain a ton of marketshare in the energy drink market on this shaky foundation.
I was surprised to see the company growth hit a wall basically as they are now projecting flat revenue through the course of 2026. Just six months ago it sounded like the business was taking off dramatically. I guess their management team was just way overhyping the potential currently, or maybe their own marketing is not working for the consumer products.
I now see some of their statements as misleading. They had said they were the supply chain disruptor for a Nasdaq listed bio-tech but they couldn’t say the specific details just yet because of a NDA. I later got to thinking they never mentioned a market cap for the company they are talking about, and there are plenty of tiny market cap NASDAQ listed biotechs. Basically they never gave us any concrete numbers on their manufacturing business, and now say it’s 4-6M of CDMO specific manufacturing revenue for all of 2026. I also thought it was a huge screw up by their investor relations to pre-announce earnings as the very bottom of the press release of their deal with that Saffron Tech company. At a minimum this should have been two separate press releases, and my trust in the management team went way down after that.
I read through it a little bit. They mentioned Nerd Drone make $100M in 2024 so I’m wondering how they managed to acquire the company cheaper than what Nerd Drone can make a year earlier.
Also, the company is growing through acquisitions rather than organic growth. What’s your thoughts on this aspect? I’d like to here your opinion on this. Thank you!
On FIGR, I’m quite surprised that YLDS price fluctuates, I thought it supposed to be like a stable coin, tied to USD 1:1 ?
I was also wondering on that point of XTIA acquiring Drone Nerds for 40M when they are doing 100M of revenue and growing. From what I have been able to gather there are two main reasons,
Drone Nerds is a distributor and service provider of Drones. Typically these types of businesses carry lower margins. However, the recent filing showed gross margins of 23% which is quite strong for this type of business, along strong net income margin for this type of business.
The regulatory environment looked to be shifting against Drone Nerds so they may have been looking for an exit. It turned out the recent regulations actually benefit them though and accelerate demand, as the government prioritized off the shelf drones rather than R&D funded projects.
Overall, this is by far the most speculative stock in my portfolio. The acquisition is fully closed now so I don’t believe there is any realistic way the deal could go sour from seller’s remorse. With any acquisition, it needs to be weighed against the price paid, and the synergies of the resulting business. I believe this combination of businesses makes sense where they have a distributor in Drone Nerds for off the shelf drones, and a more R&D based business for future electric aircraft.
This townhall presentation the company posted did a good job explaining the deal and the two businesses,
The price of YLDS is not fluctuating as it stays 1:1 with USD and paying a ~4% interest rate. It is the number of YLDS in circulation which is changing though and can potentially go down. This is because the YLDS token is used as a payment rail in the system to fund loans, and when loans get funded the tokens may then be drained from the pool. Basically lenders are depositing YLDS to fund loan originations, but once the loans are funded the exit the pool. To be fair, I don’t understand how every aspect of these mechanisms work.
Their is a recent press release from Figure with their latest operating data,
The YLDS in circulation going from February to March went from 588M to 598M, not a very big increase at all. However, on YLDS.com it shows the current balance up to 620M already meaning the pool is filling up again. The quarterly numbers look a bit stronger as well with Q4 2025 ending having YLDS in circulation as 328M, going to the Q1 2026 ending circulation number of 598M.
I have been on the verge of a speculative entry based on recent metrics bur remain on the sidelines considering.”XTI Aerospace (XTIA) has experienced extreme shareholder dilution, with shares outstanding increasing by over 13,900% in the past year. The company has heavily diluted shares by 669% in the past year to raise capital, alongside executing major reverse splits—1-for-100 in March 2024 and 1-for-250 in January 2025—to maintain Nasdaq compliance.” Another post suggested the total dilution of shares has totaled 800,000 to 1.
