Holiday Short Squeeze: the trade everyone’s missing
01:23:00 Share

So we are making our list and checking it twice, and we found a holiday trade

They couldn't end up being very nice. It's a trade that we discovered last week. It's a trade that nobody's really talking about. One that our OG viewers will remember us making some good money on in the past. There's a short squeeze play, a viral product play, a social arb play, kind of a dumb money trifecta for you. The product is one that a certain influencer has a lot of influence over, but that doesn't show up in transactional sales data that Wall Street watches have.

So today on Dumb Money, we're going to reveal the product and the stock, and we're going to also check the web data for Black Friday and tell you how we are playing the trade that everyone is missing.

You know what's smart? Enjoying a fresh gourmet meal at home that you didn't have to cook. Meet Factor, your loophole in the laws of mealtime. Chef-crafted meals delivered with a tap, ready in just two minutes. You know what's even smarter? Treating yourself without cheating your goals. Factor is dietician-approved, chef-prepared, and you-plated. Pretty smart, huh? Refresh your routine and eat smart with Factor. Learn more at factormeals.com.

This episode is brought to you by Nerds Gummy Clusters, the sweet treat that always elevates the vibe. With a sweet gummy surrounded with tangy, crunchy nerds, every bite of Nerds Gummy Clusters brings you a whole new world of flavor. Whether it's game night, on the way to a concert, or kicking back with your crew, unleash your senses with Nerds Gummy Clusters. This is Dumb Money Live. Dumb Money Live.

hey there dave here along with chris and jordan we are dumb money welcome to dumb money live reminding you to make markets green again it's been working so far

one of our uh best market days in a long time just make markets green by smashing the like button let the almighty algorithm know that we're on it's a special friday aftermarket uh edition of dumb money so after this stock we're going to stick around and take as many of your questions as we can from the live chat on youtube but first the trade chris jordan this is a stock that we've already revealed on discord dumoney.tv discord which absolutely free to be a part of it there

But Chris, why don't you tell us how you discovered this trade? Well, I don't know. Was it 10 years ago? 12? Jordan, how many years ago was this trade? Was it 10 years ago? No, it wasn't 10 years ago. It was like seven.

has this company even been around that long dude this is every dumb money fan is going to recognize this trade immediately they probably already know what it is one of our favorites got to be one of our top five of all time and it's back it keeps coming back for more it's just like just when i think we're done trading this stock it just keeps coming back and by the way i will go over this one but i just want to tell everyone watching right now

We are like slammed with holiday trades. Dude, I've been pulling data for two days straight. I have like a dozen trades to talk about. Long and short. Long and short, okay? We will rip through a ton of data for you guys. And this is like the good data. This is like the direct checkout page on shopping sites, right? Yeah. This is the expensive data that I pay way too much money for. But also...

I love that we're doing it after market close because, you know, we're not financial advisors. And the last thing we want anyone doing is like just doing the trades because we're doing them. The best part about this is a Friday and you could hear about it and then you could spend the rest of the weekend researching it and figuring out we're crazy or you might like something that we surface. Or you can buy in the after hours. I don't know.

Don't, do not, do not, I'll tell you guys, anything that you hear about today, go do at least two to three hours of research on and make up your own decision. Speak to your financial advisor. I don't like doing this where I'm sharing stuff because I did trade this stuff. I'm going to tell you guys, I will disclose what I actually traded today because I put on a bunch of these retail trades today. But let's start with the one that this episode is about, Elf.

Jeffrey Starr brought us into this trade, I don't know, seven, eight, nine years ago when it was seven bucks a share. Seven bucks a share. Okay. And he talked about the, talked about the, what was it? God, the putty primer. Okay. It was the Jeffrey Starr putty.

Yeah. So it was a putty primer. That's right. That's how it got all the hype started with that one elf putty primer. And then they grew into the company that they are today. They got overheated. The company's come down a lot. There was a short report recently. This is, you know, we got in it like seven, eight, nine years ago. But anyway, short report.

saying that they were screwing with some international delivery data, something about the way that they were counting their inventory or not counting it. The company came out. This is all in the last few weeks. Elf came out and said, no, they're confused. They're using an incomplete data set. They don't really understand what they're talking about, these short guys. So what I did was I immediately went

to the company who issued this short report. Dave, we can look them up on short report elf cosmetics. And I looked at all of their other short reports for the past two years. Muddy Waters, that's the name of this firm. Muddy Waters did a short report, I don't know, November 21st, November 20th. And

The other short reports that I were able to find that they've done over the past like 12 months, 12 months, basically didn't materialize into anything. And in a couple of those cases, the stocks went way up after they did their short report. So it's like, I don't place a lot of confidence in this team that issued this short report on Elf and contributed to the selling pressure on Elf. But I love it because Elf has a 10% short interest, which is pretty meaningful.

So what if Elf was actually doing okay? What if Elf is actually not just doing okay right now, but actually doing pretty good? So I started to research Elf.

I pulled all my data. You know what I do? I watch like 30 or 40 or 50 elf TikTok videos from the last like month. And I read every single comment. I probably read, I don't know, 1500 elf comments of teenage girls talking about elf cosmetics. So I got in really deep on elf and

The story behind Elf is they need a trending product to keep their customer base interested, coming into the store, going to their website to check out that one trending product. And then they end up buying a bunch of other products. But they need to keep...

The brand heat elevated. By the way, we're going to talk about another brand today that is in a similar situation, but not doing a good job keeping that brand heat elevated. Another favorite of ours from past years. But e.l.f. has the Glow Reviver Lip Oil Glimmer.

Specifically in the color Crystal Baller. Okay, so Crystal Baller Glow Reviver Lip Oil Glimmer. Hold on, did you say Crystal Ball? Crystal Baller, baby. Baller. Crystal Baller is the shade of Reviver Lip Oil Glimmer. And let me tell you, this Crystal Baller Lip Filler is hot this holiday season. It might just be, and I'm going to say that it is the hottest season

lip oil in the world right now it's eight dollars and it's driving so much buzz again for elf hold on so did you ask well you you put out on a text thread but didn't um our previous Market expert come back and say that uh it's not that big of a deal

Oh, you're talking about one of our best buddy's daughters? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one teenage girl. She's like, ah, it's not all that. Whatever. But which to her, maybe it's not that big of a deal. And it's not necessarily that this is like some insanely huge, like the biggest product that Elf has ever put out. That's not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is here's Jeffree Star again. This is Jeffree Star. Jeffree Star is back with Elf.

going nuts about how great this product is. And how many views does that video have right now, Dave? Can you tell? It has 150,000 likes. It has 1,600 comments. It has 7,300 saves. It probably has about 3 million views, roughly. What do you say? Two or three million views, I would imagine. And that's just on TikTok. I would have to imagine that Jeffree Star, who is super prominent on YouTube...

I'd assume maybe another couple million there. So you're probably talking about, I don't know, between three and five million. And I don't know, Instagram, you start... We're talking about somewhere between...

let's call it three and 10 million views of Jeffree Star video about this lip glimmer. Listen, all this is doing is bringing people back into the brand that they already love. The comments were amazing. I tell you guys, read a few hundred comments on TikTok videos about this lip filler and you will see that this brand still has it. They have still got it. And not only do they still have it, but

But it's coming at a time when the brand is making some risky moves to go big internationally. Okay. So Elf Cosmetics is not a brand that has been big internationally because it's, let's be honest, it was just basically a drugstore cheapo knockoff brand of cosmetics in the United States that was sold at Walgreens and CVS. And then it got really cool the first time Jeffree Star did that video. And then you have every influencer in the country now for the past seven years talking about Elf.

And sure enough, they have a hot product. The data looks pretty darn good right now. The data that I'm seeing as it relates to web traffic on the Elf website of the checkout page of the Elf website looks pretty good. You sent me a screenshot of it, but it did not yet include the Black Friday data. Can you share your screen? Because I can put that up if you can.

Um, let me, I'm not really supposed to show it that data actually, Dave. So I don't think I can show that data because it's proprietary data that I do not have the ability to openly share, but I can speak to it.

You can describe it to us. You can tell us which direction the line is going on the chart. I will. I will. Let me. All right, fine. Let me let me pull it up. Give me give me a minute here. Now you put me under pressure. So while you're pulling that up, I do have a concern. Yes. And that concern is at least what? Two months out. Wait, no. Hold on. I did throw a month, a little over a month out. So and this concern was brought to us by

uh one of my friends and a and a listener but uh I don't think can I guess what it is can I guess what it is yes is it Paris yeah I guess tariffs right yeah tariffs so like so somewhere so he says and I haven't verified this but somewhere around 90 of their products are sourced from China and so you could be looking at at least from what Trump has said so far like a 10 blanket

tariff on goods coming from China. So they could have an increase in costs.

um coming up you're right so here's here's the way i feel about that jordan one that that's been widely broadcast right and elf makes 80 of their products in china so they're definitely that is definitely a risk factor for elf there's no doubt about it it's a big risk factor for them but it is a risk factor that i would imagine uh the market is aware of at this point and being fact

sure price now elf had just so everyone's aware here elf's margins on their products which is pretty impressive for a discount makeup brand is right around 70 so you have an eight dollar lip filler uh excuse me not lip filler eight dollar lip oil and their margins are 70 so what does that put their cost that guys about 250 roughly is that about right yeah that sounds about right

So if the cost is about $2.50, you add 10% to that, that's a $0.25 increase right to the cost of that product. Yeah, so $2.75. Yeah, so basically, how does that impact their margins? It does impact. It does impact. It impacts it. It's not a game changer. It's something they can certainly work around by just having a slight increase in price if they need to. But it is a net negative on the brand, no doubt about it.

But I also think it's something that's relatively factored in at this point. Jordan, we all kind of know it's happening. We all know it's happening. What everyone's worried about is when you have a short report,

Everyone's concerned. What if they're right? What if they're right? And that's, so I, my job is to go out and figure out, are they right? And if I feel that the brand, even if they technically are right in some ways that are likely not to be fully disclosed because it's, it's a very wishy-washy thing that they're discussing related to inventory and how they count their inventory. If the brand is on fire again, and if they have a big holiday season,

None of that stuff is going to matter, right, at the end of the day. They're basically saying that they overcounted their sales for a number of quarters due to a switch in how they count inventory versus sales. Okay, do you want me to tell you, Dave, what the data looks like here? I pulled it up. Yeah, but I do want to talk about the short report. It looks like it was published on November 20th, and the latest short interest data that was published by –

What is it? The stock exchange itself was on November 15th. So that was before the short report. And it was an increasing short interest of 13.7%. It was around 12% at the end of October. So there is a lot of short interest in the stock, regardless of the short report before the short report was even published.

But do you think that the company coming out and addressing that short report might have had people jump in and cover their shorts? I just think people are short discretionary names coming into maybe a tick up in inflation with Trump coming into office. So I just think broadly names like this will get shorted.

So Dave, the concept is that this company that issued the short report, either them or them and their LPs, people that had access to it would likely be shorting it before the report came out, right, Dave? And then the report comes out and other people that have access to it might continue to short it or not. But certainly being in that double digit range of short interest means we're going to have an increased level of volatility. And in the event that LPs

is in an okay position this holiday season. And that's my thesis, that Elf is going to do pretty darn well. We already saw the report come out of Ulta, right? Ulta had a great earnings report this week. But the one thing that Ulta said was that the one area where they were feeling, I believe,

some pressure was on their luxury cosmetics products. So it looks like, as expected, and it's not that we can debate whether in a recessionary period or not, but certainly people are being pressured to spend less. And that's exactly the sweet spot for e.l.f. So the narrative of where we are economically right now seems to work for e.l.f. International sales, especially for these types of cheaper products, of

appear to be going really well and they're going through an international expansion. They have the brand heat, the brand heat that they've been famous for that has saved this company and propelled them to levels that no one thought would

ever be possible for a company like Elf. They appear to have that brand heat this quarter going into the holidays as much as I've ever seen them. They're kind of in that zone again, which I absolutely love. The data supports it. So I'm looking at the checkout data, okay, for the month of November, and I'm showing it to be roughly up 30%.

year over year, okay? And what's really interesting about that data point is in October, they were only up about 10% year over year. And in September, they were...

down slightly. So they went from being down year over year in September to up slightly in October. But once we got to November, and this is probably partially because of some of these products coming out and the brand heat I'm seeing, they're now showing a massive uptick in the traffic that's going to their checkout page, according to my data. And that is really positive.

So again, it's just one supporting data point. I have a couple other supporting data points. So I'm going to pull right now the swipe data. So this is kind of institutional style credit card swipe data. And I can't discuss it

in a granular level okay but what i can say is this swipe data is currently showing a beat based on consensus estimates uh and they just look at top line revenue in the us this does not include any global revenue but the institutional data that wall street is looking at on elf right now is showing a

to be positive. Again, I can't discuss specifics, but that's pretty good as well. So I like this, guys. So I bought, and you ready for this? This is the best part. Do you guys have the weekly chart on Elf? Because you just got to pull it up, Dave. Unlike Apple or anything, you've got to pull this up. You're not going to believe this. Sometimes you just get lucky, guys. Sometimes you just get lucky.

I was doing this work throughout the weekend, last weekend. And also, I want to apologize here because, no, for Monday, I want to get that one that shows the, like the Apple one, Dave, the Apple one. That's nasty. Can you pull up Apple charts? Okay. That's a weekly. I want a weekly. I want a weekly. That's a one-week chart. It's just. No, that's not. No, that's only showing the daily close. The Apple one actually shows the intraday. Hang on.

I don't know if I can pull up an Apple chart. Give me a second. So we teased this episode last Friday, and I'm sick with myself for not doing it for you guys earlier. It's my fault. I was out doing robot stuff all week. That's on me. Oh, no, Dave, we teased it. Wait, on Monday. We talked about it on Monday. We had a show on Monday. You did not mention the ticker, though. We didn't mention the ticker because I thought we had time. I didn't realize this was going to happen. I did see a handful of people guess the ticker on Monday.

They did guess it on Monday. So this is what's so great. I'm doing this work all weekend long, right? I mean, I'm diving into health data. I'm like, I'm glossed over eyes on Sunday night because I'm reading so many comments

And whenever this happens, I knew I was going to go in heavy on Elf on Monday. I was like, it's going to open up. It's going to open up. And my trade is going to kind of suck because I'm going to have to buy this thing after it already pops open up on Monday. And if you look at the chart, for those of y'all, just pull the Apple chart here for Elf because Dave uses all this sophisticated stuff. But you gave me an actual challenge to see if I could do this. And guess what?

Boom. Here is the Apple chart. Okay. So back on Monday, it's not as severe now, but back on Monday, there was that V, and that V is actually way more severe. Right here, it looks like on the Apple chart, where's the time? This is different than- 9 a.m., at least central. Yeah, it was 9 a.m. central. It was 9 a.m. 8.55 a.m. was the low point there. Yeah. So I woke up-

Okay. And I was preparing my truck. The stock opened down $8, $8.

And I was like, dude, what is going on? Is this people just continuing to read that short report from a few weeks ago? And there's over the weekend. Now they're shorting it more. I just kind of sat there. I was like, the second this thing goes up, like even 50 cents, I'm going to my trade. And it started to like bottom out and go. I think it was up like 40 cents from the low that day.

And I put on the most irresponsible trade on a makeup company that you had ever seen. I don't know. Maybe I was a little overconfident from how well the prior weekend went. I drilled in with call options that were just after I placed the trade, I was like, this is stupid. I'm going to regret this.

Within an hour, that stock started rocketing back up. It closed the day up $1.80. And then I'm down in Austin doing this robot stuff all week. And I'm literally in the middle of all this. And I check out the quote on Elf. I think it was like Wednesday. I'm like, what is going on with Elf?

It went up so much that I had to sell those options and just like trade up to cheaper stuff. I had a bucket some of those. I had to pull some of the profits out. So I got back into Elf at a higher strike price.

And when all in again, and here we are again. So I feel terrible that I'm sharing something with, with our community that kind of feels like a big bulk of it has already happened, but I'm still in, I like, I have a huge lever position still. I just took profits on the first, uh, the first part of my trade. So anyway, that's the first trade we're talking about. It's elf. Um,

And I like it. I like them for the holiday season. I probably am going to stick with this trade, guys, I think, through the holidays, because unless I see the data reversing, I think they're positioned really well for this economy, for this holiday season. They have the international expansion going. They have a hot product. So I like them. I like them.

Any comments? You guys are in, right? Did you buy in when I say that text on? Yeah, I bought in, but it had already gone up a little, but and I didn't go as aggressive with options. So I was not rolling my options like you were.

I've just got equity. Why don't we talk about another one that I just got in a couple hours ago. Did you guys get into this other one? I didn't buy anything today, so I don't know what you're talking about. Ralph Lauren. We talked about that on Monday, too. We pulled up the chart on that. Okay, but I did some follow-up research on Ralph Lauren. I just can't imagine people actually buying Dillard's Ralph Lauren stuff

Jordan, then you just don't know, man. I don't know. Educate me because I do not understand this one. You know, it's still, I guess this quiet luxury thing is still hot, hot, hot. But it's not just that it's hot. It's also translating to international markets. And Ralph Lauren is, I guess, killing international markets because when I pull my data domestically... People still buy on the huge, like, oversized polo player guy. I mean...

I'm telling you, man, if you're on TikTok, you would know, Jordan. It's a hot brand with the kids right now. I'm on TikTok every day. I've literally never seen anybody hocking polo. Dude, I'm telling you, man. If you go to the Ralph Lauren site and you look at this right now,

This stuff, this is it. Like this, this vibe is very in this new generation. They're hilarious. They are all about wealth. The perception of wealth. It cracks me up. Why do they care? So, I mean, listen, we cared about wealth in the eight, remember the eighties that was like, it feels like that again, but even worse, they're just so into things that make they're all, they just talk about like

what it's like to actually present wealth and talk about being demure so i can't think of a demure brand more than rl style goes this is not it this is jordan you don't know what you're talking about you look great in that jacket this is it and you know what oh it's not for me but it's kind of cool i like it it's not for me go to the top of it go to the top here

You would wear this green plaid sports coat. Did I just not say it's not for me? Look, I don't have a great sense of style these days. I'm too obsessed with robots and stocks right now to focus on my style. I can't imagine wearing a sport coat, especially a polo sport coat. I don't know. Um...

But this sweater's your style, Jordan. Wait, which sweater? This one with the reindeers on it. Yeah, so if you go to like an ugly Christmas sweater costume party, I would wear that maybe once for the party. That's perfect. How many dollars is that? This one with the bear on it? That's only $400. This one? You could get that $400 sweater. That sweater's $400? You know what that says to me?

that's it's a profit for me the bear is wearing a sweater that is a lot of profit in a so so let me just say this let me just say this the street they had a strong earnings already the street is already on to the store you can see it in ralph lauren stock okay here's the thing though when you have a brand

that actually heats up, that also has high prices, a luxury, that is like perfect storm. It's one thing to have a hot brand like e.l.f. that sells $8 cosmetics. They're 70% margin. It might be cheap, but it's even cheaper for them to make.

But when you have a brand like Ralph Lauren, it's actually really interesting, you know, the extent that they are able to monetize that. So listen, I'm not going in ultra, ultra long on Ralph Lauren because the street is already somewhat tied into this. But I did take a long position in Ralph Lauren. Do you buy commons or you buy some options? I think I bought...

I think I bought options, but you know, Jordan, we're just talking about this. When I get options, I don't do out of the money stuff. I don't do crazy stuff. I'm in the money. They're kind of conservative options. So I don't need the stock to move much for those options to pay off. I really don't.

This is the five-year worldwide for Google Trends. Ralph Lauren, we pulled this up last week on the show. And as you see, they have a holiday bump every year. And this year's bump is way, way bigger than any of the past five years. It's, Dave, it's undeniable. It's undeniable. Now, I will say that I literally cannot believe these numbers that people are just shopping for Ralph Lauren polo stuff.

Well, you know who else? I mean, listen, data is data. Now, I will say this. The data on Ralph Lauren web traffic is not nearly as strong. It looks like they had a better Black Friday that was up

a solid 20% year over year. But if we take the entire month of November, it actually appears the checkout page data looks to be down year over year, pretty, you know, almost 20%. So that, you know, the data there is not as convincing. So we have to ask ourselves to what degree are people, does this matter for Ralph Lauren, the e-commerce data that I'm pulling as opposed to,

uh, more of the in-store data and just the general, um, heat on the brand. Okay. I do have another one. So I bought call options today in two retail companies. Okay. I already have my call options in L we all know that I bought, I added two more. One, one was, um,

One was Ralph Lauren, but the other was Birkenstock. Birkenstock. Now, there is... I didn't even tell you guys about this yet. This is... Yeah, so Birkenstock is looking really interesting. And I must admit, I didn't have time to fully dive in and do my social arb narrative research. So I do not have a narrative as to what... Is there a specific style that's going well? Or is it just they're like...

Bark sandal. I just told you, I don't, I don't, I did such limited, I did such limited research on this, but the reason why I went ahead and put in my trade today, sometimes I'm like, you know what? The data is strong enough that I'm just going to throw my money in and I'll research it this weekend. And if I love what I read, I'll go in deeper on Monday. And if I don't like, you know, if I can't find a strong narrative, I'll,

I'll just exit on Monday morning. I need to have a narrative, though. You know this about me. I don't care how good or bad the data is. I do not trade data generally unless there's a narrative that goes along with it, meaning I'm going to have to go watch 50 Birkenstock TikToks tonight when I get home from we're at a big event. And then we have to read 1,000 comments.

Well, if you know, if you remember back to when the fuzzy crock was the big thing, it looks like the fuzzy Birkenstock is now the, at least what they're promoting at the top of their website. But, but, and yeah, and here's the thing, guys. Normally I wouldn't talk about something like this before I had a narrative, but the last time I decided to hold out on our community, the stock went through the roof and

And now I feel bad talking about Elf after five days of it rallying. So I'm just going to throw it out there in real time. This is where my brain is. This is what I'm doing. I'll figure out if there's a good narrative and a reason for this later. But the Birkenstock data, I'm just going to share it with you guys right now. For the month of November is, wow. Guys, it is up 50%.

It's up 50% year over year, the checkout page data. Okay. Okay. That's it's up 50% year over year, unless I'm. Unless is there any like change in methodology or do they change the, the way their website works or something? Cause sometimes you get weird, weird data. No, Dave, generally when it comes to the checkout page data, it's really granular. So we,

The problem with looking at web traffic is the company could be driving a lot more people to the site through promotions, through ads, all kinds of stuff. There could be people that are just curious about something.

Now, by all means, the checkout page data is not an end-all be-all because it still could be the result of them pushing more top of funnel people and spending tons of money to get people to their site to buy more. But at least we're seeing that there is a really nice lift in people that are making purchases on the website. But what's interesting, if I go back to October,

It was still up pretty massively, but only about 30, 35% year over year. If I go to September, it was down year over year. So again, I love these. I love it when the data shows a recency in improvement, right? So it's not like it's been beating it for the past few months. Just very recently, it looks like in the last six weeks, the Birkenstock data has started to take off from

from where it was at the same time a year ago obviously Birkenstock is a summer brand we all know that right but as Dave just showed us yeah they've got they've got a winter fog they're the fuzzy yeah boom uh Dave did we pull a G trend report it might I think their G trends is actually really strong as well right now this is them overlaid with Ralph Lauren just so you can kind of see they're the opposite where we're uh

Ralph Lauren has the winter peak at Christmas. We have Birkenstock doing the summer peaks. But they're on an- Can we just show Birkenstock alone just so we can get a better view of it? That's what I'm pulling up on my own laptop right now. And also, were you showing global? This is the worldwide five years. Okay. So this is interesting. This is interesting. So it peaked last Black Friday at a 59 on the chart.

And this year it peaked at a 74 on Black Friday on Birkenstock. So again, showing a nice winter lift, even on just searches. If fashion is your thing, eBay is it. eBay is where I find all my favorites, from handbags to iconic streetwear, all authenticated. For real. This time, a little Supreme, some Gucci. I even have that vintage Prada on my watch list.

That's why eBay is my go-to for all my go-tos. Yeah, eBay. The place for new, pre-loved, vintage, and rare fashion. eBay. Things people love.

This episode is brought to you by Bank of America. What if your business could see beyond what is and into what can be? And what if you had a partner as visionary as you are? Bank of America gives customers access to trusted experts, real-time insights, and digital tools to make every move matter. What would you like the

power to do. Visit bankofamerica.com slash banking for business. Bank of America is proud to be the official bank sponsor of FIFA World Cup 2026. Yeah, their winter lift normally is nowhere near where it is right now. You can see that there is a little bit of a bump here a couple years ago, a little bigger bump last year. We're way higher than that. I'm reading reports that Birkenstock is pumping

as they say in amateur hour guys i just said this i just said go do your homework okay like see see the problem is guys there's no liquidity in the after hours no so you're paying especially in a name like birkenstock that makes no sense yeah i would i would not i would not spend one dollar on this stock in the after hour that's insane

because you're just artificially paying more. This stock, I can't imagine it's not going to come crashing back down first thing on Monday from whatever that just happened. That's insane. This is going to make me not want to do these episodes until like eight o'clock at night on a Friday now. But look, it was already on a big upswing since November 14th. Yes, it did have a little weird spike here, but-

That that's because one person placed a trade in the after hours and drove the price up. Yeah. Well, hopefully they didn't spend more than like 50 bucks. Cause that's just stupid guys. Okay. Now let's move. Let's move on to the next one. Cause we, we have so much, we have so much, this is so fun. This is like, I love this episode. Dumb money where we just like ramble through stocks and I pull up charts. I love this so much. All right. You ready for this guys?

I bought puts today, not just on one company, but on two. Okay, two retail stocks. So the first one is a company I've been hoping that they would actually have a turnaround. Because I said, if this company has a turnaround, it's going to be one hell of an investment. And I've been keeping an eye on them. And not only am I not seeing a turnaround, but I'm seeing the data get just wild.

horrible, horrible going into the holiday season. And this is a time when the data just can't be getting worse because they need a good holiday season. It is VFC, VF Corp. The two big brands are Vans and the North Face. And the North Face. And so when I pull this data on Vans, I guess I can just, I'm going to, I'll just...

tell you about it here, Han. Where's the North Face business going? Is that going to Patagonia and like Columbia and REI? Jordan, I have no idea. Again, full disclosure, I did not do the narrative work on this to understand what's going on here. But what I thought was interesting is that the stock is

The company is in a turnaround. Okay. So they're attempting a turnaround and investors, Wall Street has given them the benefit of the doubt somewhat that they're going to pull off this turnaround. And so the stock did recover from a low where it was like 13, it popped back up to 20 this year. And I haven't really been keeping up too much with the earnings report. So I really can't speak that intelligently. I'm not that informed about

on on vf corp but historically vans and north face have always been they have a bunch of brands but vans and north face have been two of their kind of driving brands that really drive the momentum or weakness and the stock so i just pulled up the north face and for the month of november which is a pretty important month for the north face okay the web traffic i'm seeing going to that

checkout page oh this is terrible guys this is really bad it it's down like 40 percent year over year who is this for vans this is for the north face for north base yeah this is for north face okay so edward we have a particularly uh you know late to get cold winters this year

You know, that's the thing. Normally, guys, I'm so on top of the weather patterns. I'm so on top of these trades and I have the narrative all baked in to my trade. But I just haven't even had time to keep up with like just the weather patterns the last few weeks. I'm normally trading, you know, Uggs and all that stuff around now, by the way.

Uggs data is like not looking good either. I did not buy puts on Uggs. Okay. But it's not looking great either. I mean, it just now got cold here. You're right. You're right. Sorry. I'm trying to pull, I'm trying to pull the, that Vans data. So yeah, Uggs not looking good. So that's,

I mean, I just didn't have time to trade it. I'm going to have to do some more work there over the weekend. That could be pretty. Now, they still have Hoka. I got to pull the Hoka data. I did not pull Hoka data today. So I don't know that that could always save that brand. Sorry, guys. It takes a while to pull this data. I'm pulling vans as we speak. And I already pulled this data earlier. I know it's pitiful. It's terrible. But I don't have it saved in front of me. So anyway, I bought puts. I bought puts on VFC.

And I feel pretty comfortable holding those puts, I think. Yeah, I like that. I think that pop is just asking to be shorted. Yeah. And I haven't even pulled G-trends. Dave, I don't know if you see anything interesting on G-trends, positive or negative, for the North Face. I would pull just North Face jacket or something, or North Face coat is a word I like looking up on G-trends. Let's see here.

Like, why is North Face doing that? You know, they are expensive, right? So that could be part of the issue. North Face coat is at an all-time, almost all-time high. So I just pulled North Face, and they're down year over year for Black Friday week. That's North Face coat? I think they're like an upper middle price.

I would say the jacket is more reliable, but it's higher than it was last year. Yeah. Yeah. So they're showing a little spike. So I wonder if perhaps there's an interest, but it's not converting to sales, maybe because of the price point, perhaps? Or do people just buy it at REI and at all these different places? They're not buying it on...

Hey, that's definitely possible as well. And just so you're aware, I'm going to pull the credit card swipe data as well for you. I believe it's pretty bad as well. Okay, so just the Vans data just popped up. Are you ready for this, guys? Year over year, November is...

a very important month for Vans this is fascinating so Vans had their big crash last year that's when the company just went so from 2022 to 2023 that that kind of month of November they dropped 30 year over year now ready for this ready for this guys I'm showing another 30 to 35 percent from last year to this year in November

Just spiraling. Spiraling. That's Vans shoes. Yeah. It's just not the style. You know?

It's just not the style. That's a G trend, Dave. That's G trends for the word. No, you can't. You can't use that class. Never use a class. Always use our actual. I tried Van shoes and there was so little traffic on it that it didn't even look like a good chart. You know, there should be plenty of traffic on it. Van shoes. There should be enough. Yeah. So you can kind of see it. You kind of see it there. Nothing. I can see it just going down the toilet. Yeah.

Just so you guys know, the UGG data that I pulled wasn't atrocious or anything, but it wasn't showing growth year over year. So yeah, so I shorted that through puts. And there was one other that I shorted. And this is a company, again, that's in the middle of a turnaround. And I don't know whether investors are giving them the benefit of the doubt.

But we've talked about this stock quite a bit the past few months. I made a ton of money on that last earnings call when I was shorting them a ton. That was back in like, I think it was in June. Nike. So Nike, as you recall, kind of dropped all the way down. Well, they pulled their guidance with the new CEO, didn't they?

They pulled their guidance, but that doesn't matter. They got all the way down to like 70, 71. They popped back up to 89. Now they're kind of in the middle at 78. So the market really doesn't know what to expect from Nike and how long this turnaround is going to take. Yeah. But let me just tell you something, guys. The data looks terrible. It looks terrible for Nike this November. Give me a minute. I'll pull it up.

This is not surprising, right? Like I've seen nothing in the marketplace, but further segment, further fragmentation. We've been talking about the fragmentation in running shoes and the shoe market just generally for years now, for anyone that's been following us, some of our biggest trades over the past five, six years have been online.

on running have been Hoka. That's not a new story, but what we've seen more lately, and we discussed this earlier this year with the Nike trade is it's no longer just on running and Hoka. Now we have Asics. Okay. Now we have new balance. Hey, new, new balance, man, right here, dude. You're wearing new balance. Dude. I wore like, I, my kids convinced me to buy new balance because I guess it's like, they liked them. I tried on like,

a ton of shoes a month ago and my kids like these the best and I kind of I love them too quite honestly and I bought three yeah I run exclusively in New Balance and Hoka um I couldn't even imagine buying a set of Nikes what Nike needs to do is just look at Hoka and look it on and try to figure it out dude but the problem Jordan is become cultural right so basically people

people are all about their brand or running shoe. Now, Oh, I'm an, I'm an Asics girl, or I'm a Hoka girl, or I'm a, you know, an on running, uh, commercial real estate guy. Right. You know, exactly their brand. Oh,

And by the way, I love all my commercial real estate buddies. I love them all. But I make fun of them because I'm like, guys, how is it that... No, the only people I know that we're on running are the trendy ladies. I see the trendy ladies in the... The trendy...

But, Jordan, in affluent areas, the trendy ladies, especially the trendy moms, every trendy mom has a CRE bro husband as well. That's a good point. And they all wear on running. I make fun of my buddies all the time that are CRE bros. I'm like, you guys all wear the on running. Anyway, so... With their vest, right? So here's the thing.

All this stuff is just a big negative for Nike, man. Like every brand in running shoe is hot except for Nike. Like even Adidas as a big brand still is somehow a hot brand. Adidas is because they're like, they're the hot big brand. And so the worst place to be in the shoe world right now feels like Nike or maybe Vans, right? Maybe Vans is the worst place to be. But so if I look at the data on Nike on the checkout page,

So from November of 22 to November of 23, those are the key months. Those are when we see it spike. These are like the most important months for Nike. They were down 10%. And that was the year that crushed Nike. That's how bad that was. But if you look from last November to this November, oh, dude, this is wild. They are down 27%.

from last year so dude this is the disaster for nike

I mean, listen, it's just one data point. And by the way, for everyone watching, these are just single data points. There are so many other data points that investors should be looking at before they make any decisions. We're just sharing. We're focusing in on one, which is web traffic to the checkout page. We're kind of also talking about some search traffic here. I will pull up some generalized credit card swipe data for Nike. I do have a question on a company if you've...

looked into or not.

Before you ask me, Jordan, I just want to tell everyone this swipe data is also showing in North America a miss. I do think the concern for me shorting Nike with these puts is that if they have a lot of strength that's coming out in Asia, that could potentially save their entire quarter. Right. So like that's a risk factor for someone that's looking at U.S. data primarily. Right.

well doesn't nike have like an inventory problem could they just like go blow out a bunch of inventory and then make you know make some revenue numbers i don't know not if no one's but i mean if no one's buying their stuff dude it's really bad it's really bad yeah um oh i just saw another stock that i did not trade but i pulled data i haven't had any time to look into it i i never trade this company

Chewy, the dog company, actually looked, their data is pretty good year over year for November. I don't, again, you have to be careful here because sometimes when you look at foot traffic data, which is what we're discussing today, that doesn't necessarily, in fact, it does not under any condition include traffic.

the price points that that data is coming in at meaning that there could be discounting right so you could see a massive amount of people hitting a checkout page because that brand is running deep promotional discounts that's the type of due diligence that i would normally do as part of these trades that i haven't had a chance to do yet

But these are things that you need to look at. So if you can kind of assess, you know, what was the type of discounting that Nike had a year ago or the brands that we're talking about that appear to be doing well, like Birkenstock, you know, is Birkenstock doing like some deep promotional deal this November and Black Friday that is pushing all this additional web traffic. But if we see.

kind of like a lift in search for Birkenstock, that would indicate an organic increase in interest. So when you see an increase in interest and you accompany that with an increase in web traffic, those two things together are really complementary. And that's what we like to see. The only third thing that we need

or at least a third thing that we need is a narrative as to why. Is it a hot product? Because you have to make sense of this to make sure that you're not

improperly interpreting data to be something that it's not. And then even if you put all that together, you then need to assess what am I missing here? Is this a global company? Is the data point I'm looking at national? So even if it's really bad, but they're doing really well in China, that could screw up your whole trade. If it's really great here, but they're doing bad in China, that could screw up your whole trade. I think you have to, what we've seen is that I think

think China seems to be doing okay right now with retail. So my assumption is always going to be that these brands are doing pretty decent in China. So I'm going to be careful with my short positions. Like I'm not going to, I'm not going to put too much into these short positions because China could end up screwing me if these companies are doing well over there. Let's see what else I got.

People seem in our Discord community. By the way, all of this stuff I've shared with our Discord community earlier today, which is completely free. We never charge a dime. We'll never take money from anybody. But we just do it because it's our community and we share ideas. And actually, I get a lot of our best ideas come from community members, not from us. But in the Trade Research channel is where I share this data. And a few of the people in there have been asking a lot about

Coach or TPR. That stock has been on a run since the ruling came out that they cannot purchase Michael Kors. I hated the Michael Kors deal. I hated it. So I should have went all in on TPR when that deal fell apart because the stock has been on a run since. So people are looking at Google Trend data for Coach Bag, and I guess it's up like a lot.

So I was expecting to see really solid, solid checkout web page data on Coach Outlet and Coach, but I didn't see that today. So I'm really confused. I don't feel comfortable taking a position in TPR, but the community seems to be really long on it, primarily because of the Google search data. I just am not.

I like to see all my data points lined up before I get really excited about a trade. And I want to have a narrative. And I do not have the narrative yet on that company. But just throwing that out there. Hold on, I'm pulling more stuff today. Oh, another company that looks to be down year over year. Again, I did no research, is Williams-Sonoma. The web traffic at Williams-Sonoma checkout page is down year over year. For November, that is.

see what else i got lululemon just crushed earnings crushed them but oddly

Their U.S. web traffic data does not look awesome in the month of November. Now, the month of November was not necessarily reflected in those earnings. But where Lululemon is doing best, from what I understand, is their international growth. So, again, it's a bit tougher to really, you know, extract high quality international data. So I'm just going to leave that one alone. I'm not messing around with Lulu anymore.

right now. Yeah, I was just wondering if there was a read-through to Athleta on that. People want me to pull Shark Ninja. I don't know. Let me see if I can pull Shark Ninja, guys, real quick. Do you know what the primary website is, Jordan? You follow Shark Ninja, don't you? Yeah. Do you know what that is? They've got a corporate Shark Ninja site, but they also have a dark clean and... Where's the site where they sell stuff? Yeah, Shark Clean is the Shark...

Shark Clean. It is amazing. Ninja Kitchen. Oh, then you have the Ninja Kitchen stuff. That's right. I'll pull both of them and just see. Because I know for some reason people love this company. I just...

I never really traded it. Maybe that's my fault. Yeah, I'm not in it right now. I also love Shark Ninja. I've done well in it. But this is the time of year that they need to crush it. This is Shark Ninja season. This is when they sell all their products.

So I think it's worth me spending a minute just to kind of pull it and look at the year, the triple year over year. Oh, man, we're just rolling things. Is anyone in the comments? Almost more than 2,500 people still watching despite just basically reading data. Well, I mean, it's expensive data. I want to share it.

uh again i can't get too so we're just reading it to you because we can't actually show it 280 uh okay so like shark clean dude is down the checkout pager is down like five percent year over year so nothing great but nothing yeah like what about the ninja okay so what's this other one because ninja's like ninja's more of like the gift that you would give somebody right you'd give them ninja why i need a domain what i need a domain name ninja kitchen

Okay, Ninja Kitchen. Look at the checkout, see how they're converting. I mean, these guys do so much marketing too. That's why like the top line website data is almost irrelevant. Yeah. But I think the checkout page is pretty interesting.

So a lot of times people want to know what my process is. My process can start one of two ways. It could start on TikTok with comment data that's building a narrative first. And then I go back after I have a narrative and I pull all the data sources to see if the data supports a narrative. A lot of times I like working backwards and I will just go through like I have the last few days and I will just pull data on every single company. And anything that is like out of whack, that is like weirdly high or weirdly low,

Then I go search for a narrative to see if there's a narrative actually driving that. So this looks way better, way, way, way better, actually. So this, Jordan, is up 50% year over year. And what makes that actually really interesting is

is that that data last year was actually down 10% year over year. So they went from November, and November is, nope, December's the peak month last year. So we'll have to see, keep an eye on this, and see how it develops over the next few weeks. So community, remind me to get back on this, but they're up big, Jordan. So again, if we see data that looks like this,

Now we have to ask why. Like, what the hell are they buying? I can dive deeper into this data set to see what exactly people are buying. And then I'll look. Yeah, so they're buying the creamy and they're buying the air fryer. Air fryer? Yeah. I feel like air fryer has been trending now for like five years. It's still trending, Jordan? Yeah.

So when I look when I try to look on Google Trends now, guys, I would never look at the Shark Ninja air fryer because it's kind of irrelevant. If air fryer is trending, they're benefiting. Would you not agree that they're like a top air fryer brand? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're the they're they're going to be the Honda of.

air fryer right yeah air fryer search traffic is up year over year for black friday week so air fryers are still hot evidently crazy so hot um we we use ours i like them it's amazing when you see a trend like this use one i've never used one uh i we bought one but i never i've never used it i i used it one time as an experiment to see how it worked and see if i i liked it it's not really for me

Well, I, if you have the same, the super expensive speed oven that we have, that's like an air fryer, but like,

with with higher quality everything yeah we never use that it's too complicated so you know what we use dave we we have a small appliance like toast a nice toaster oven that just sits on the so we have like a three we me and dave have like this four thousand five thousand i don't know how much we bought that ridiculous it steams it me like roasts it it convections it's

It's like some one of those, is it Melee or one of those brands, right? And we never use it. But now I have like a $300, $400 toaster oven that is also an air fryer. That's what we use every day. Yeah, I don't use that either other than using it as a microwave, which it does. But then we also have a second microwave that when we're like,

We usually just use the cheap one that we bought at Target and not the $4,000 one that's built into the kitchen. Oh, you use a microwave? We don't even use a microwave. We use oven and we use the stove and we use our sous vide. No, popcorn. Like, that's the only thing you use microwave for. Dave, Dave, we're one worse than you. We have them stacked. Underneath that, if you recall, we have a steam oven by the same brand. Yeah, I did not buy the steam oven. And it is like incredible.

equally expensive. You almost talked me into that. In the 12 years... Because that was right after we bought it. Hold on, how does this steam? Do you have to pour water into it? Jordan, when you use it, it's amazing. I don't know why we don't use it. We've used it like five times in 12 years. And there's no...

When you use it, it actually really is amazing. We went down to like the Miele Center. I remember when you bought it because you were like showing me the steam functionality. Do you plumb it in or do you like pour water in it? What do you do? No, ours is not plumbed in. There's like a thing that comes out of the wall and it's very simple and you just fill it with, or maybe it is plugged in. I don't even know. It's been like eight years since I've used it. Yeah.

It could have been broken for the past five years and you would have no idea. That's right. But it looks great. I don't know if there's a way that we can pull up a firm's because a firm just appears on everyone's checkout page. But if you look at their, well, their stock chart,

That thing has been going straight up. A firm, yeah. Yeah, I'm seeing a firm everywhere now. Even on things that you wouldn't think you would need to buy with payments. And I don't understand it either. Sometimes it's like 0% financing, and sometimes it's like 60% financing. I don't understand. It kind of depends on the product, I think. Is that it? Yeah. Or the risk of the person doing it sometimes if you're buying a risky product. Oh, jeez.

It's such a good business. I'm not seeing anything in the top line data for a firm that is particularly interesting on web traffic, but I'm, I also, I don't really understand what page I would want to track on a firm. Do they have a checkout page? Do they go to a firm or do you, does it have like on Amazon? I'm guessing it all just happens on Amazon.

So Jordan, do you have to log into a firm to pay your stuff back? I've never used it. Or like it redirects you to like PayPal, but it's a firm kind of thing. Yeah, but like this is a firm's login. No, Jordan, the Affirm website gets a huge amount of traffic. We're talking 17 million visitors a month. So I think they are pinging the website. Okay. So this data should be relatively representative, I think, for Affirm.

Can you do the sign-in page? Yeah, I can try. Can you tell me what words are on the sign-in? Affirm.com slash user slash sign-in. One word. Sign-in. Is there a dash in sign-in? No. One word, no dash. Okay.

Yeah, I can pull that on. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast.

Terms and conditions apply. Make this summer count with Harvard Summer School. With Harvard's free college programs, high school students gain confidence and insight into what college is all about, challenge themselves, and discover new friends. There are over 200 courses to choose from, including college credit courses, so it's the ideal way for students to learn something new, but most importantly, have fun. Visit info.summer.harvard.edu slash spotify to learn more.

Oh, yeah. That's like a big chunk of their website traffic is sign-in. Affirm. Let me just mark this. Okay. It's pulling. Sorry, guys. I'm all over my laptop, so I'm not seeing any comments. But I'll pop back into comments in a minute. Dude, 270. Man, people are... Thumbs up again, man. I hadn't seen that many thumbs up in forever. Thank you, guys. Appreciate...

You acknowledging the show? All right, here we go. So November, let's just put just as a baseline. I like looking at the prior year over year. So back from 22. So from 22 to 23, the month of November, it actually was down about 12 ish percent. And then this year in November, a firm who it's up like 25 percent. That's pretty strong.

That's actually pretty strong. Is the stock up? The stock is up. Yeah, the stock's up for sure. Somebody knows something. Now I got to look into a firm this weekend. Oh, man, damn, that stock is up. How am I not been tracking this? This annoys me. There's too much going on. I better make a lot of money off of robots because it's distracting all my other stock trading right now.

Yeah, if you had played a firm right, you could have been up 200% just since of summer. Remember summer when they were teetering on bankruptcy because we were afraid that we were going into a recession? Yeah, yeah. And now all of a sudden...

For some reason, no recession, but people still can't afford to buy anything, so they have to make four years of payments through a firm to buy. No, but their payments are like, aren't they all pretty short term? They're like, you pay every two weeks or something? I think so. It's four weeks or something. Yeah. Still, that's crazy. Sorry, guys. I'm pulling some other...

random stuff you know the one thing that's interesting i would expect robin hood i pulled the robin hood app data and it's like i just thought it would be higher it's just kind of like flatlining to down and i'm kind of curious as to why the robin hood app data isn't stronger right now with as many people that are trading and trading crypto and equity it's hard robin hood app data is down

for for Apple yeah the iOS data is it's like kind of like trending down but it's been trending down since like 22 and like kind of like flat lines it came down a bunch and I guess it comes down every May well it's start it is starting it's starting to climb again but it's I would I would have expected it to be higher from everything I'm seeing at Robinhood

I'm going to pull Coinbase and see what that looks like. Yeah, that app data, is that a little confusing because people, once you've downloaded the app, you don't have to download it again, so you're not going to the app page? No, no, Dave, no. I'm looking at usage, engagement in the iOS app itself. So I'm not looking at downloads.

i'm looking at actual engagement so so like coinbase started going up massively in march kind of hit its peak in august and has been dipping down since august which again is it's kind of weird when you consider how hot crypto is right now but it only my app data only goes through october so i'm not even showing anything that happened or didn't happen in november so that could be that could be part of the issue

I'm not sure. Is there anything else that anyone thinks is particularly interesting that we should just pull live on the show? Uh, but by the way, guys, yes, Palantir is pretty good. I do want to talk about Tesla for a minute, guys. I think this is obviously a huge week for us and Tesla. Um, you know,

We had the big Tesla episode, the big call. That was Monday's episode, right? And it was Tesla forced our hand. This is not the optimist trade. And Tesla forced our hand because of the amazing job they did on V13 of FSD. So I put the massive trade on Tesla. I don't want to say I put 100% of my trade on Tesla.

But I would say I put probably 50% of the trade that I ultimately wish I would put on Tesla if I had high conviction that the market was starting to recognize Optimus. And 50% of a ridiculous trade is still a ridiculous trade. I'm telling you, I'm so long in lever Tesla, it's obnoxious. Now, I do want to say-

Yes, and that's what I'm doing right now. But I want to clarify a tweet I put out this week. I said the age of Optimus has begun, and I want to get to what I meant by that. So there was a Bank of America analyst note that came out on Wednesday. Is that right? Came out on Wednesday. And to my knowledge, it was the first analyst note that ever fully started to acknowledge Optimus's financial impact.

But it was the oddest analyst note. Number one, the note was based on nothing but old information. It's like they aggregated information from Elon tweets. There was nothing new that was included in that analyst note. Okay. And the stock... It's like the analyst woke up, read yesterday's news, read...

the last year of, of traction and then summarize. Just like slapped a $400 price target on Tesla. Correct. And based on old news, that was like, okay, so they're going to, Elon's going to put going to put a thousand bots on the line. That was, that came from like an Elon tweet, I believe, where he was like, yeah, a thousand, maybe two. I mean, he wasn't even really thinking about it. And that was an old tweet, an old tweet.

It doesn't make any sense that someone would include that in an analyst report. And what's most fascinating about this analyst report is that if you actually were going to do a write-up on Optimus doing actual factory work, you would think that the analyst report would be all about the impact of Optimus on the world and the valuation that should bring to a company that's making Optimus. Instead, this analyst chose to focus on Optimus

the degree it would help optimize Tesla's manufacturing line, which is the dumbest, literally the dumbest thing I had ever seen in my entire life. I was like, if this is actually doing productive work at scale at a manufacturing facility, if you believe that, you think the greatest impact of Tesla stock would be the money that they're saving on that line as opposed to the, I don't know,

Tens of billions of dollars they could generate from leasing that to every manufacturer, warehouse, logistics facility. The list goes on and on at $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a year, which are the economics of the embodied AI humanoid sector for anyone that spends like four hours to do their research. Like, didn't make any sense to me at all. But you know what? Here's what was important about it.

is that they wrote about it. Even if what they wrote was ridiculous, even if it was off the mark, the fact that we are finally starting to see the first analyst notes that are touching optimists to revenue or optimist evaluation in some way means that they...

The ball is now rolling. The ball is rolling. So I don't know when the next analyst report is going to come out that will hopefully be better and actually talk about something more meaningful to Tesla as it relates to Optimus. But we know it's now coming. We're going to start to see these, whether we see them every few weeks or every few months doesn't matter. The age of Optimus has begun. And what I mean by that is Wall Street has started to recognize that Optimus is real and

and it's going to have meaningful impacts for Tesla. So yeah, well, now they just need to realize what the actual use case is.

And but I think the ball, like the wheels are spinning, right? The wheels are spinning. And again, probably the most interesting aspect of the humanoid trade, whether you're trading a publicly traded company like Tesla or if you have a way to get into any of the privates, is that it's really difficult to prove the thesis wrong.

over the next couple of years because the next couple of years is not about scaling out millions of bots or even tens of thousands of bots it's about having controlled bots doing repetitive work in real environments safely um and durably over a long period of time uh

I have high confidence that the three leading bot companies, Tesla Laptronic and Figure AI, are going to be able to pull that off. And then it just becomes a question of, can they actually execute and scale this to the tens of thousands, to the hundreds of thousands, to the millions, to the tens of millions, the hundreds of millions, the billions, right? And that's all theoretical at that point. Once you show that,

a piece of machinery that has become embodied AI that can move on its own and has flexibility to do numerous tasks, and it could accomplish those tasks to essentially represent the future of infinite physical labor in our world. Once you've proven that,

Wall Street will start crunching numbers on what that looks like if and when it scales. Right. And there could be a debate as to how long it will take for it to scale. But if there's one thing that we've learned over the past five years is financial markets in this modern day loves to pull forward revenue. We'd love to do that now.

So the revenue should get pulled forward and represented in the valuation of these companies. And then it will be a couple years, two, three, four years before we really are able to determine, are they able to scale? Are there bumps in the road? Are we a little bit too early here? Is it going to be more complicated? Will there be more competition that will maybe impact their margins a little bit more than we anticipated? Those are all valid questions that we're going to have to answer over the next five years. Okay.

But before any of those questions get answered, I think we're going to see the capital pull forward as soon as we realize this is real. And that analyst note, that was it. Like that was the first of what I feel will be many. And they're only going to get bigger and bolder, right, over the next year. So everyone asks me like, is this the moment? The moment isn't one moment. The moment is like, I believe the moment's going to be a series of things. It could be

It could be live video, video footage that Tesla releases, figure, optronic. It could be analyst notes. It could be testimonials. It could be large announcements of mega large contracts with companies that could be in the billions, tens of billions of dollars. It's it's it's.

It's a body of things that are going to happen that collectively the world will start to believe that this is real. Like that video with Kim Kardashian, that was not like the moment. That was one little thing in a hundred things that are going to happen over the next six months that make it more believable. They get the conversation going amongst people within capital markets, both the sell side, the buy side, retail investors, right?

So stop trying to figure out, is this the video, Chris? Is this the moment? It's not going to be like that black and white. And I realize that, which is why I have to get on. I'm just going to take a risk and put my trade on at least partially in a meaningful way, which I did. And I'm going to have to live with the fact that there are things that could happen before it is fully baked in that could kill Tesla stock.

Elon doing something bad numbers on automotive sales coming out of China, right. Or even here in the U S I mean, that's just, that's just a risk I have to live with now, but that that's the Tesla tricks everyone's asking about. So that's how I feel next. What do we got guys? Is there anything else? Because I do, I do have a final one when, when you're ready for your last question. What do you got? I saw someone is asking you, uh, this on some, you college football. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel strongly that... Winner, winner, just a fan bet. Oh, did they see my bet? Is that the deal?

I have a bet on, I have, I've had a bet on SMU to win the college football championship. Does it mean that they're going to win? It doesn't mean that I necessarily think they're going to win. What it means is that I feel that SMU has about a 20% chance to win the championship. That's a one in five chance and they're paying 40 to one odds. So anytime that I, if I think that there's a one in five shot at winning 40 to one, I'm going to take it.

It's simple as that. So I'm not like saying, hey, SMU is going to win the championship. I do think SMU has a team that is capable of beating any single team in college football right now. I do. I firmly believe. I've watched every single game. I think people are confused by the early in the season game that they played against BYU where we did not have the correct quarterback starting. So you just have to discount that whole game. That's a different team that played back then.

Since that game, when we started playing Jennings, who I think is, I agree, is the most underrated quarterback in college football. Since that moment in time, I think SMU has had one of the best teams in college football, period. Full stop. I think they can go up against anyone. Does it mean that they're going to beat every team in the playoffs? Not necessarily, but I think they can. If they have a good day, I think they can. So we'll see. Dave, are you going to watch a game tomorrow? Where are you watching it? Milo's? Milo's? I don't know.

I hadn't really made a plan for that, but yeah, Milo's seems like the place to watch it. If I watch it any place, I'm going to go to Milo's, which is our bar, guys. But I might just watch it at home because I just want to be focused on it. No noise, no distractions. Jordan, by the way, sorry about how it ended for you this year at A&M.

New coach, eight wins, it's fine. All right. You're an optimist. And honestly, that's kind of how I look at it too. I thought A&M, all things considered, good year. Okay, just one more chart to look up. Yeah, what do you got? Aritzia.

I already pulled it. The Google Trends chart is at an all-time high just for the brand term Aritzia. I pulled it. I shared it. And I'm just looking through the Discord right now to see where it is. It was not... I don't think it was awesome. I feel like Aritzia was just kind of like flat. And again, I think the issue with Aritzia...

I think the issue with the Ritzia guys here, I'm pulling it right now. That's flat. It's flat year over year in November. The issue is they do most of their business at retail. I believe I could be wrong about that, but I believe most of their business is in store. So, but yeah, they're, they're flat year over year. And by the way, though, a Ritzia was down slightly year over year last year. So they went from being down year over year to being roughly flat. They might be down slightly, but,

You're over here in November this year, too. So I'm just I love it when I have a strong narrative and all the data aligns. The search data is exceptional. The Web traffic data is exceptional. The credit card swipe data is exceptional. Right. My social data feeds are just validating the thesis over and over again via comment data.

um when a company has sales out of the country i kind of pull data through various sources in china it's not great but you can get a feel for it there also if a company sells products on amazon i like to specifically pull how it's doing on amazon i like to go to the stores and talk to the clerks and talk to the store managers and just get their feelings on how things are going what foot traffic looks like you know if they've been working there for more than a year

I love asking just like people who work in the local store. It's nice to live in a market that's representative like Dallas, where we live. How does it feel to you this year as opposed to like last holiday season? And what are people buying? I just have I go and converse with store clerks all the time. And when every single data point is aligned and there's a strong narrative,

And Wall Street does not appear to be knowledgeable on that piece of information that we're trading. And there's nothing else happening with that particular stock that could be more important than the piece of information. That's when you have a high conviction social arb trade. It doesn't happen very often. They said the G trends on what Aritzia is crazy. Yeah. Guys, I'm going to keep pulling the data and see if it starts to reflect in the web stats, but...

like i said i'm just not seeing it on the checkout page at least so that's it hey guys i do have to

It's time to go have dinner. Yeah. Yeah. And I gotta go. Hey guys, seriously, two episodes in a week. This is awesome. That deserves a big thumbs up on the old like button. Yeah. You, you get, you guys have been great in the community. Honestly, anyone that wants to go hang out in the, uh, uh, research channel of our discord, domini.tv forward slash discord. It's all free. No one should ever charge you money for anything in our world. Um, have an awesome weekend. Uh, S S M U.

Tomorrow, let's go. ACC champion. It's exciting. We'll be there.