Rigatoni Capital Podcast

For most of my investing career the market has run on TINA, the idea that there is no alternative to stocks, and that made decisions very easy. With the 10-year hitting a fresh 24-year high near 5.3%, I think we have quietly shifted into what Lance Roberts of realinvestmentadvice.com is calling TIGA, there is a good alternative. I am not telling you to sell your stocks, and I am still a stocks-and...

So is it theoretically possible that Robinhood's new AI agents could eventually run a Kelly Criterion style strategy for you, sizing every trade at a fixed percentage of your bankroll off an algorithm you write yourself? It is a compelling thought for anyone who wants exposure to active trading without sitting in front of charts all day, because the agent runs your scanner and your rules auton...

I break down the "Invest Like the Best" episode with Noah Shin of Instinct, the original personal agent that is invite-only, growing more than 10% a day, and already running $1 billion a year in transaction volume with no app at all, just a text, call, or email. The most important aspect of the entire conversation was the compute problem. Demand is doubling roughly every week, capacity h...

I have said on this show almost every day that the US-Iran war is never going to end, so this is me changing my tune. As of Friday I am starting to sniff a possible exit. The Iranian president went on Fox and Meet the Press claiming he cannot get his money out of China, which tells me the economic blockades are working, and after the summit China signaled it does not want Iran to have a nuclear we...

This week's guest is Marc Rudajev of Learning, Investing, Thriving. The increased purchases of longer dated Treasury bills is something Marc believes is more of a signaling effect and not much more, and it's likely the bond market has sniffed that out fast as we see yields continue to climb to multi-decade highs. From there I thought it was important to discuss equity risk premiums (ERPs),...

I have been living inside Meta Muse for the last few days, and I am convinced it is another ChatGPT moment. It is the same kind of breakthrough where you use it once and something clicks. My bot, Vesper, runs in the background while I sleep, negotiates my bills, triages my Gmail, and digests the 77 podcasts I am subscribed to on Spotify. This is bullish for the whole AI ecosystem, and it is why I...

Yields continue to spike, stocks are selling off, and Monday's big rally is looking more and more like wishful thinking. There was a glimmer of hope for a moment that the US-Iran conflict was coming to an end. A hot PMI has the Fed-hike fears back on the table ahead of PCE on September 30th, and I still do not like the idea of hiking into a supply crunch. My thoughts on the Trump-Xi summit: th...

Adam Parker of Trivariate Research put out a piece called "Buy and Hold Doesn't Work," and Josh Brown and Michael Batnick spent their Tuesday show on it. I took it personally at first, since Rigatoni Capital is built for long-term buy and hold investors, and then I slept on it and woke up realizing something about myself. I am more of an active investor than I like to admit. I recap...

I know dollar cost averaging beats timing the dip. If you already have a 401k with an employer match running in the background, you are dollar cost averaging and you are doing the right thing. But the way I have built wealth over the last ten years is by buying when there was fear and blood on the street, and this episode is about why context still matters for the active investor who follows the m...

Markets are green this morning for one simple reason, oil pulled back, and it is a small glimpse of what a real easing in energy prices could do to this market. With Brent back near $101 and the ten-year easing toward 4.96%, the Nasdaq is up around 1% and Bitcoin broke through resistance near $85,000. My point is that these multi-front wars, US-China on AI and rare earths, the frontier labs pushin...

Tima Kanaan of Red Eye Returns joins the podcast from Lebanon, and her core argument is that the market is complacent, pricing in almost nothing even as two wars run at once. We open on the live US-Iran conflict she keeps insisting people not forget, why she thinks it is nowhere near over, and whether a war can paradoxically look bullish while oil sits above $100. From there we get into the AI tra...

Simeon McMillan of Accrued Interest joins the podcast, and we start where the headlines are, with Wells Fargo's downgrade of Netflix on weak engagement. Simeon makes the contrarian case that engagement is the wrong metric and that Netflix is a misunderstood value stock, where low churn, international growth, advertising, and steady margin expansion set up 20% earnings growth even without break...

Stocks held up after the hawkish hike, congratulations. However, Bank of America's math explains what comes next: the S&P's projected 33% earnings growth this year will not carry the market higher by itself, because a market this expensive needs lower inflation to re-rate, and earnings alone will not deliver that. The clearest path to that relief runs through the US getting out of Iran...

The Fed delivered a hawkish hike yesterday, and I dig into why I think raising a quarter point does nothing for the inflation people feel at the grocery store. My argument is that this is a supply problem, from El Niño-hit crops to the rare-earth and energy crunch, and tightening into a supply shortage does not fix it. I also call out Fed Chair Kevin Warsh for talking out of both sides of his mout...

The Fed decides at 2pm today, and I still have lingering doubts about whether they hike, even with the market convinced. The defense theme is front and center after the Pentagon's first Iran-war inspector general report, which found that heavy munitions use during Operation Epic Fury left strategic inventory shortfalls and exposed industrial-base bottlenecks in restocking. To me that validates...

We get into the equity risk premium (ERP), shout out to Fulcrum, which presents that this has flipped negative for the first time since the dot-com bubble. This is where the ten-year sits at 5% above the market's forward earnings yield of roughly 4.5%. On this particular metric, it makes stocks the most expensive they have been relative to bonds in decades, and I explain my thoughts at the end...

AI stocks are selling off hard this morning after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's weekend essay calling to pace the frontier and slow AI capability gains, a view Sam Altman and Elon Musk echoed. Nvidia, Caterpillar, and Lam Research, all top holdings of mine, are getting whacked on this news. My take is that the AI slowdown narrative is fake news for a long-term investor, and selling your AI infr...

August CPI landed with the headline in line at 3.4% year over year but core a tick hot at 0.3% on the month, sending next week's rate-hike odds to around 90% and pushing the ten-year to the edge of 5%. I break it down live, from Rick Santelli's CPI read to why I still think the Fed could hold and lean on PCE to stall, along with Scott Bessent on the bond market, Oracle and Adobe earnings,...

PPI came in line this morning, up 0.4% for the month but still a tad hot at 5.4% year over year on an energy spike. Rate-hike odds firmed toward roughly two thirds for next week, and I admit that if Friday's CPI runs hot too, I will finally concede the hold call I have held all along. It does not change how I invest either way, and I even walk through why a hike could paradoxically pull long-t...

Brent crude topping $100 for the first time since July is the backdrop this morning, with the US-Iran conflict pushing oil higher, the ten-year near 4.81%, and stocks lower. Bitcoin and gold are catching a bid, which I read as a liquidity story tied to speculation that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will expand long-dated bond buybacks to as much as $5 to $6 billion per operation. None of it cha...

Coming off the long weekend, I use this one to reset what the show is about. It is not a show for day-trading and it's not a news program. I make the case that most of the headlines you will see between now and the Fed meeting, from CPI to Brent crude flirting with $100 on the Iran conflict, do not change anything for a long-term investor. This podcast is for the professional buy-the-dipper, w...

Jobs report day delivered a hot number, with August payrolls coming in at 162,000 against a 53,000 estimate and unemployment steady at 4.1%. It does not change my view that the Fed holds in September, and I revisit the debate between Fed Governor Christopher Waller's more dovish lean this week and former senior trader Joseph Wang's conviction that a hike is coming. Away from the data, I spend time...

Broadcom reported an incredible quarter, with revenue up 86% year over year to $29.6 billion, but the stock is selling off on its fourth quarter guidance. I break down the AI chip growth trajectory, the $115 billion and $230 billion outlooks, why gross margins are expected to dilute, and whether this is actually a buy the dip opportunity. I also get into Snowflake's strong earnings, the softwa...

Yields down a touch this morning, but yes, a ten-year pushing toward 5% tends to rattle folks, though history says buyers have often stepped in there like in 2023. September odds of a rate hike are now at 65%, and I explain why this shaky, headline-heavy month is textbook seasonality. On earnings, Dell steals the show last night with a very impressive quarter, booking a record $60.9 billion in AI...

A global bond sell-off is the story this morning, with the US ten-year near 4.79%, its highest since January 2025, and Japan's ten-year hitting 3% for the first time since the 1990s. Rate-hike bets keep climbing, now around two thirds for September, but I hold my contrarian line that the Fed stays put and that this yield spike, tied to oil above $92 and Middle East tensions, looks more tempora...