I added a filter function to the blog page so that readers wanting to only see, say, pitches can easily access all of them rather than searching through every post. I kind of like the default HTML button appearance so I think I'll keep it that way for now. I may remove the little tag on the bottom right of every post, though, as they've become redundant. Also, the website looks pretty shitty when viewed on a mobile device (or possible anything other than a computer), so that's something else I'll need to work on. That'll definitely be a longer-term project, though. ChatGPT helped a lot with the filter function, almost a scarily impressive amount; it even had little emojis to communicate its delight with helping me.
This is a lot more speculative than my typical pitch, but I got the idea after talking about Musk and Trump's relationship with my parents. Both my parents argue that Elon Musk is rich enough where his relationship with Trump exists purely out of shared ideological beliefs. Okay fair but I'm not believing it. I think Musk, like any other successful businessman, is looking to get something out of the relationship. Sure he might have shared beliefs with Trump and that's alright; I'm just not convinced that he would seek the #1 spotlight in the nation to express those beliefs. You can agree with me or my parents, I don't really mind. However, this trade is based on the idea that the publicity and added voter preference that Musk has given Trump through their public partnerships, I believe Musk will seek more than a black MAGA cap in return.
So, knowing that Trump has openly advertised his distaste for EVs and has launched his own pseudo-Twitter, Truth Social, I think the only major venture of Musk's that Trump could stand to benefit is SpaceX. The easy trade would be to go long on SpaceX stock but it's not traded on public markets. Instead, my pitch is to go long on companies adjacent to SpaceX's supply chain, which I believe will experience an increase in demand in the case that Trump passes favorable legislation for SpaceX launches during his time in office. From some very basic research, I found that Chin-Poon Industrial [2355.TW], Wistron NeWeb Corporation [6285.TW], and Shenmao Technology Incorporated [3305.TW] are all major players in this supply chain.
Again, this is pretty speculative but I can still see it realistically panning out in coming years. Even if Trump doesn't pass any legislation, I'm still bullish on SpaceX because of their ability to manufacture the majority of their componenets in-house and their consistent innovations (including Starlink's upcoming collaboriation with United Airlines). It might be worthwhile to figure out a hedge for this position, especially because the three equities are pretty strongly correlated (based on visuals).
I read a WSJ article about Trump's plan to attain "energy dominance" during his presidency, mainly by destroying Biden's regulations against domestic and off-shore oil rigging processes. He also wants to undo Biden's push for higher EV adoption in the US, which I find interesting considering his collaboration with Elon Musk. I'm sure a) Musk is feeling a bit betrayed or b) Musk never really cared about Tesla during Trump's presidency, and instead wants better business for his other ventures (i.e. SpaceX). Bit of a tangent, sorry. Anyway, with Trump's support of big oil in the coming 4 years, I'm bullish on crude oil futures. However, I should note that I never really learned how futures trading works from the perspective of a retail trader (me). I'll look into that.
Buying crude oil futures is pretty obvious, and the market reflects that. I'm also bullish on Chevron Corporation [$CVX] since they're the largest transporter of oil in the United States. Again, the market has already partially priced the future potential into the stock price, but I believe there's a lot more potential upward movement following Trump's issue of his pro-oil legislation.
Also, there's been talks of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and I read that it's the closest the two forces have come to closing a deal. With some more relative calm in the Middle East, I can see oil production getting ramped up in the next couple of months. If this is the case, Chevron should boost even more.
Brief follow-up to my 12/04/24 post. I've been home for three weeks or so for winter break and I'm loving my time here. BUT I do kind of miss New York. Not really like a "I need to go back" kind of miss it, more like a yearning just to be back in the city. I'm also really excited for recruiting I think it'll be fun and more eventful than my first semester in the city. I'm not super excited for my classes except for Debt Instruments and Markets, mostly because I really enjoyed learning about bonds in Foundations of Finance. Whatever, I guess I'll see how it goes. Looking forward to getting back into swimming too, and I'll have the chance to play guitar again. That's it, just wanted to say I do appreciate living in NYC and it is a very unique opportunity to go to college there.
Happy new year! This year I want to be more involved with the news, including markets as well as general current events. I also want to be healthier, but I say that every year so we'll see. Anyway, being more involved with the news has already given me more perspective about my personal investments and future career. I think surrounding myself with that information for just a week has already had an impact. I'd like to explore investing in bonds sometime soon with all the volatile Fed action recently.
I'm also going to try and write more pitches on the blog since I'm reading more. However, these "pitches" will really just be reflections of the market. In other words, I expect them to be solely based on general market movement, macroeconomics, and/or my own intuition, not fundamental or technical analysis. I've been taking notes on the market in a Google Document to jog my brain too. My first pitch is for Constellation Energy Group [ $CEG], largely due to their recent acquisition of Calpine. CEG already dominated the nuclear energy market, but the deal now put them at a top spot in the natural gas industry. Of course, this is already well priced in, but I'm very long on utilities, power, and infrastructure in the coming years, particularly those adjacent to the AI space. CEG also has a Microsoft data center deal in its pocket that I believe more companies will be following suit in. With climate change becoming even more of an issue now, renewable energies like nuclear power should also see a dramatic rise in demand this year. For these reasons, I think CEG still has a good bit of growth left in the coming months.
For context, I went home to Kentucky last week for (a much needed) Thanksgiving break. It was great, lots of yummy homecooked food and Black Friday shopping. I got a hammock for half off, nothing else. Anyway, I also got to catch up with a couple of my friends who eventually asked me about New York City.
I realized as I answered my friends' questions that NYC is worse than many people make it out to be. Yes, it is arguably the center of the world in terms of finance and culture, but even those things are beginning to spread across the nation (and the world). I mean you can have a very successful career in banking in San Francisco or Chicago and not have to deal with half the stuff that happens in NYC. And there's just so much stuff that happens here. In a way, I love it because it feels like I'm living in a real life simulation – there's really never a dull day. Within my first month of living here I was called a "fucking idiot" while jaywalking, saw a man casually riding a penny farthing, and saw a drunk guy throw an entire cake at a waiter while getting kicked out of a bar. It might not seem like much, but I'm telling you this shit doesn't happen in Louisville. It genuinely feels so bizarre to witness these things in real time.
Back to what I was saying, and in reference to the title of this post, while NYC definitely brings the wow factor, it starts to feel like too much wow after a point. As I told my friends over break, NYC is a lot dirtier than I imagined it to be, even more so in comparison to my time in London. The streets are smeared in literal shit, dog, human, or bird, and every few blocks you'll get a mood-killing whiff of it. Just this morning on the way back from swim I saw a freshly dropped, shmeared poop on the sidewalk outside Washington Mews (my favorite street). I mean this was a SHIT, it had to have been building up for a while. Absolutely bewildering sight, and I'm pretty sure I saw the owner of the shit around the block cussing out some imaginary person in front of him. And I can't even say this was a unique experience; maybe two months ago I saw a guy actively shitting in front of my local Target waving a kitchen knife around to people walking by. Fucking crazy. I guess this city is really just a mixed bag, there's some crazy shit that happens (literally) but I guess that's what keeps it exciting. Kind of like a dice roll or card draw.
Sort of unrelated, but I think this post is a great example of why I wanted to start blogging. I came on here to rant about how shitty NYC was and how much I was starting to hate living here, but as I wrote I realized that it's not entirely bad. It's like a risk premium in finance: there's no good without some bad. Just writing this brief post kind of makes me value living in this city a little more. Which is kind of proof that putting my thoughts on paper (or I guess pixels) kind of helps me work through them.
PICS has finally been developed! I showed Jaia the website and she had (a lot) of criticism, including the fact that I wasn't displaying any of my pictures. So, I committed my night to developing the site. Go take a look! It was also because I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge with my camera and I was pretty proud of the shots. Also got to check out VITAL climbing gym near Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn with Deem and his climber friends. Jaia also said the text color of the website was a little much and that the multicolor theme from the old website was cool – I might have to look into that. Only issue is I think the multicolor looks childish without the right hues, and I'm not very good at finding those hues. I have so far been unsuccessful at creating a custom cursor for the website so those two things will likely be the next developments.
To get off on the right foot, here are some things that have happened recently. This past weekend Jaia came to visit me; it ended up being the most I've been out in the city since coming to NYU. We walked A LOT but I got to finally visit the Met, we checked out some Christmas markets, and tried so much food. Reflecting on it, Tompkins Square Bagels are very overrated (I'll take Bagel Bob's over that stuff anyday) and Eileen's Special Cheesecake was probably the best food I had. Especially the Cannoli.
Also, I passed my Calculus II outplacement test after studying my ass off. It's crazy to think that the last time I was in a calculus class was 3 years ago. More on this later. Jordan, Katrina, and I also won the Vanguard ETF Challenge which was pretty exciting. We're looking to compete in a few other competitions because I think we work well as a team and honestly they're a lot more fun than I had expected.
Back to the calculus thing. Since failing the Calculus III outplacement exam and passing the Calculus II one, I've come across a few realizations. First, calculus is way more interesting than I remember it being in high school, as awesome as my teacher was. Second, I realized that I retained maybe 15% of the content I learned back then. Third, learning (for me) is a lot easier in a classroom setting than it is on my own.
And from these realizations, I've learned a few lessons. Striving to be ahead of the curve (for me) does not directly translate to increased effort to learn or increased passion for the subject matter. I know some kids who are fiercly competitive and driven by getting ahead, and honestly I respect that trait. It's definitely something that propels you far ahead in business (from what I understand). But I don't think it's in my personality to be driven like that. Relearning calculus and discovering a passion for the content is what's driven me to get better at it. In high school, I was trying to be motivated by the fact that passing AP Calculus BC would look good on a college application (which, admittedly, it must have).
Also, I know I have a tendency to forget things that aren't super relevant to my day-to-day, but I was surprised at the amount of calculus I had difficulty understanding during my study seshes. It was honestly a huge wake up call and made me realize that mathematics (for me) is not a one-and-done deal. Since then, I've reflected and found that I forgot a lot of statistics and linear algebra as well. It's like those horse hoof cleaning videos where the little hole ends up being huge as the guy digs deeper. So I've been refreshing these skills, watching 3Blue1Brown's series on the Essence of Linear Algebra and doing some probability/statistics practice questions in my free time.
Lastly, I feel like I've realized the importance of quality in the classroom a lot. I'll take discrete mathematics as an example rather than calculus to avoid an argument mismatch. In senior year, my discrete math teacher was super cool but was pretty mediocre at teaching the content. To be fair, it was her first time teaching the class. But my point stands: I learned probably a fourth of what I'm learning in my college-level class, putting in the same effort. It also just shows how great a collegiate setting is for education. I wish I could fully enjoy being in an environment where the emphasis is solely to learn and not just to get this internship or that job, but that's a topic for another time (I could write an essay about it honestly). I think I've written enough for today but yeah little life update.
I've finally got around to making my first post! I was really stuck up on making some sort of API that would allow me to post from my phone/without having to edit the HTML, but I decided that was a little bit beyond the scope of what I know to do. I was also really entrenched in making the appearance of the blog super fancy, but judging by the redesign of my website I think it's better that I keep it simple. I'm actually pretty happy with how the design turned out, I think it looks sick and has just enough personality.
Anyway, I want to use this page as a way to post about anything and everything that interests me. This could range from casual photos that I don't want to upload to my PICS page to mock stock pitches that I plan to make in my free time. I think it would be (1) cool to read about my life now, ten years in the future and (2) a good glimpse into who I am for anyone who cares to know more.
Also, I am yet to begin designing the PICS page. I want that one to look pretty cool but still fit within this simplistic theme I've got going on, so it might take a while. Lots of Photoshop mock-ups have been, and will continue to be, made.
