Rigatoni Capital Podcast

The biggest news yesterday was Meta unveiling its first paid AI model, Muse Spark 1.1, an agentic coding platform that puts them in direct competition with Anthropic and OpenAI. Meta has an advantage here because they own the hardware and the data centers, but the broader read is that frontier models keep getting commoditized and it is a nonstop barrage of competition. My take is that all of it co...

Tech and semiconductors bounced this morning, which has everyone asking whether the great rotation is real. Caitlin McCabe at the Wall Street Journal is pointing to equal weight beating market cap weighted year to date as proof, but the gap is small and I think it is too soon to call a new long term regime. My take is that we are really just consolidating. The Nasdaq 100 is sitting right where it...

Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson is telling clients to get out of chip stocks and rotate into the hyperscalers. This morning I walk through whether this rotation is real or just too soon to call. Semis are getting whacked today with Micron, AMD, Broadcom, and Nvidia all selling off, and even Caterpillar and Lam Research are getting hit after their huge runs. Meanwhile financials, transports, healt...

We are heading into the dog days of summer with the World Cup on and earnings still a few weeks out. I talk about why the current SaaS software selloff reminds me of the 2022 bear market. I also explain why the AI disruption story hits the stock price first and the job cuts come later. I also flag some funky GAAP accounting to watch, where companies like Amazon have to book gains on their private...

Micron reported last night and the stock is swinging hard, which is exactly the kind of summer volatility that gets friends and family texting me asking what to do. My answer this year is simple: buy in June and go away. I bought the QQQ at $687 during the early June flush down and I am not making any more moves. This morning I talk about why the Nasdaq 100 is now my largest holding and why, at ag...

Jim Chanos was on the Monetary Matters podcast this weekend. He is net long AI through the index and short what he calls the financialized middle layer, the NeoCloud plays like CoreWeave that he views as equipment leasing finance companies with mid single digit returns on capital. Own what the chips produce, not where they reside. I also cover Jordi Visser's take on the CapEx air pocket he thi...

Note: My screen was not sharing during today's recording. Apologies to everyone watching on YouTube. Kevin Warsh held his first press conference as Federal Reserve Chair and said a whole lot of nothing. Yes, he used some hawkish language around price stability, yes the dot plot leaned hawkish, and yes he mentioned task forces looking into the inflation target and the federal balance sheet. But...

SpaceX options are open to trade for the first time today and retail is going crazy. I am watching from the sidelines and I am completely comfortable with that. The QQQ will own SpaceX for me at market cap weight without me having to chase it at any price. I also cover the Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the 20VC podcast and his take on why frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are being c...

I added a significant chunk to my Invesco QQQ position during last Tuesday's flush down at $687 a share, and the Nasdaq 100 is now my largest holding for the first time, ahead of Nvidia. I walk through why I think this is the right move at age 42, why I want QQQ to eventually be 50% of my portfolio, and how my allocation philosophy will likely shift again as I get into my 50s. I also cover my...

The Knicks pulled off the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history last night, down 29 points, and I could not help but draw the parallel to long term investing. Staying in the game is the whole ball game. You do not know which dip precedes the run, the same way the Knicks did not know the third quarter was the one where San Antonio went cold. You just keep taking good shots and let the distribution...

I was out for a couple of days but I am back and I bought the dip while I was gone. I added to my QQQ position at around $687 a share, which happened to catch almost exactly the bottom on that flush-out move. I also bought Broadcom on June 4th as a new position. This morning I make the case for why buying the dip is not a trading strategy, it is a long term investor's mindset. If you understan...

The Nasdaq had one of its worst weeks in over a year, semiconductors sold off hard, and I came on over the weekend to tell you exactly what I did and why. On Thursday I bought Broadcom at $409 a share, and then the dip kept dipping. The stock is now trading around $385 and I am down about 6%. I walk through my full thought process on why I bought it, why I think the selloff was overdone, and why t...

Marc Rudajev of the Learning. Investing. Thriving newsletter on Substack is back on the Rigatoni Capital Podcast for round two. This time we cover three big themes: whether American investors are too US-centric in their portfolios, what the SpaceX IPO actually means for the average retail investor, and what Q1 earnings are really telling us heading into summer. On the international question, Marc...

Broadcom is down 14% after earnings despite reporting 48% year over year revenue growth and guiding for 84% growth next quarter. CrowdStrike dropped 10% on a strong beat that simply was not strong enough given how far the stock had run. This morning I give my honest take on both prints and whether the selloff makes any sense. I also cover my latest Substack post on why the deal makers on Wall Stre...

Oil is back near $97 a barrel as US-Iran tensions flare up again. Palo Alto reported last night and beat on revenue with 31% year over year growth, though a GAAP net loss from non-cash acquisition charges is creating noise in the headlines. Tonight is a big one with Broadcom, CrowdStrike, and Veeva all reporting after the close. I also revisit the Alphabet $80 billion equity raise and why Greg Abe...

Alphabet announced last night it is raising $80 billion in equity to fund its AI CapEx buildout. That includes a $40 billion at the market offering, $30 billion in convertible preferred stock, and a $10 billion private placement with Berkshire Hathaway at a meaningful discount to the closing price. This morning I walk through what this actually means, why the bulk of the proceeds are not going dir...

I spent the weekend researching Eli Lilly and wrote a post on Substack about why I added it to my watchlist. I am not a biotech expert, I cannot read a phase three trial, and this is not my natural habitat as an investor. But when you see a one trillion dollar company growing sales revenue 56% year over year with 45% operating margins that look more like a software business than a pharma company,...

Snowflake reported an extraordinary quarter and the software sector is responding. Palantir was up 10% yesterday, AppLovin crossed $600 a share, Dell surged 30%, and even Salesforce turned green. This morning I ask the question: is this the turning point in the AI Disruption narrative for software stocks, or just a normal bounce in a longer bear market? Snowflake's Cortex Code AI agent and the...

Markets are catching a breather after the unbelievable run in semiconductors. This morning I talk about the people on social media getting filthy rich finding bottleneck plays in memory chips, refined rare earths, and nuclear, and whether that is skill, luck, or a little bit of both. Someone turned $700K into $20 million finding the right bottleneck and putting in the work. I am not dismissing tha...

Micron Technology just became the fastest company in history to go from a $500 billion to a $1 trillion market cap, doing it in roughly 48 days. SK Hynix is now the twelfth largest company on earth. Samsung is eleventh. TSMC is comfortably above $2 trillion. The memory chip super cycle is going parabolic and I have not made a single move since April 10th. This morning I walk through what that mean...

South Korea's KOSPI has rallied about 80% this year and Taiwan is up about 40%, both markets transformed by AI driven semiconductor demand. Samsung, SK Hynix, and TSMC are genuinely reshaping global market cap structure. I open with why I am being cautious on chasing these markets, because nothing goes up in a straight line. But the meat of this morning's conversation is about where I actu...

Nvidia just reported record revenue of $81.6 billion for the quarter, up 85% from a year ago, with Data Center revenue hitting a record $75.2 billion, up 92% year over year. We do a late Friday night Memorial Day weekend special to break it all down. I also cover Walmart's earnings and what the retail and consumer picture is telling us right now, touch briefly on Intuit and Bitcoin, and get in...

Kevin, aka Bagholder, is back on the Rigatoni Capital Podcast for another great conversation. This week we focus on the SpaceX IPO set for June 12th at a valuation between $1.75 and $2 trillion. Kevin walks through his price to sales framework and lands on a multiple of roughly 110 times sales, which is difficult to justify when three quarters of SpaceX revenue comes from Starlink and the AI divis...

CAVA reported last night and the numbers were strong. Revenue grew 32.2% year over year to $438 million, beating estimates, same restaurant sales up 9.7% driven by 6.8% traffic growth, and the company raised full year guidance. Zero debt and $403 million in cash. I walk through the results and use CAVA as a teaching moment for anyone newer to investing. Fast casual restaurant chains like CAVA, Chi...

Semiconductors are pulling back and the dopamine hits from watching the SMH go vertical are slowing down. This morning I talk about why this is completely normal heading into a big earnings week. Nvidia reports Wednesday, Walmart and John Deere Thursday morning, Workday Thursday after close, and Cava tonight. I share my honest take on Walmart now being in the Nasdaq 100 and why I am embracing it....