YouSaid · the spoken record

James van Geelen

lines on the record: 45
first: 2024-07-12
most recent: 2024-07-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“NVIDIA has pretty much priced in the idea that we need to build out these data centers, and now we have to say, okay, well, what else are we going to do? And, you know, I mean, it doesn't matter if I'm a believer or non-believer. It only matters if the market is.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm always taking money off the table. It's not even a question of, I mean, my job is to invest, not to not invest. And it takes a lot for me to sell something and go to cash, like a lot. I'm a strong believer that there's always an opportunity somewhere that got put to the test in 2022. And there were. There were opportunities in planning places on the long side or the short side. And I think that when Make that decision. I'm not saying do I think that this has reached a peak. I'm saying, do I think that there are better opportunities elsewhere? And sometimes that is just the natural progression of some narrative in the market or just real things happening. I mean,”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, it sounds super familiar, and then you look at electricity demand over the last 20 years, and it's flat. And I think that that's just a natural progression of a new technology. That's something that almost has to happen where you have, you know, if you want to deliver the promise, in certain places it's going to be overstated. And do we need a better electric grid? Yeah, we really need a better electric grid. It's terrible, especially in some places. It's just terrible. Maybe what we need is for data centers to get built in areas where they can just revise the electric grid. But I do think that there are areas where we'll look back and say that was irresponsible CapEx spending.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A trillion dollars of spending on computers, and then there's going to be a trillion dollars of spending on the electric grid. And the electricity demand is going to grow at a 13% kegger for the next two days.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that, yeah, there are certainly areas, and I don't think that we'll know exactly where we say, well, that was irresponsible or where we say, well, that was a great business decision. Because you look at, you know, it obviously is intertwined. You can say, well, I care about the CAPX side, but I don't care about the stock market side. But, you know, the companies can sell equity and fund CapEx with that. And you look at some of the cell side estimates on electricity for example. And I have a great screenshot, or actually it might just be an actual picture because I think this was in 1998. And it's of a cell side report that is talking about the Infoelectric Revolution and the fact that if everyone is going to have a personal computer and every personal computer is going to be connected to the internet, well, you know, that's going to be a billion dollars.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it catapulted forward the human race. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they were responsible about it, right? built too much. They built too fast. They financed capital projects through equity sales at extremely elevated prices. But that doesn't change the fact that during the railway mania, the total route mileage of railways in the UK went from 1,800 miles in 1843 to 6,000 miles in 1850. So 200% increase in seven years. And maybe we have to ask ourselves, sometimes do you need this CapEx bubble in order to progress the technology?”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think. Answer to your question, or at least some color on that question is I don't think that there's ever been a truly revolutionary technology that has not been accompanied by some excess capex, that we look back and we say, well, that was wasteful. Because when we look back, we also have the benefit of seeing which areas get commoditized. And we look at how cheap, you know, whether it's broadband or, you know, you can go all the way back to the railway. The thing is, you know, without steam engines, we wouldn't have trains. And without trains, we wouldn't have planes. And without, you know, and there was this progress that was made.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I stopped myself. You're the one that said it. But it's the idea where nobody can be okay with the water. And there's always been an issue of payers like to see. Things they like to pay for things that they can see, so they like to pay for the roads being fixed or they like to pay for like new things being built, but you don't really see the water. But with social media and the idea that you can make everyone aware of like microplastics and there's so many emerging contaminants out there just from the unabashed capitalist progress and industry. I still think that there will be companies that will make a lot more money because of PFAS. But for now, I have to say, well, I don't know if the risk is worth the reward here. Maybe I'll just wait until these appeals are decided and then the story can progress.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and you know, I still believe that the thesis is fine. I mean, I look at it and I've spoken to attorneys and they say, well, you have these two existing appeals, but this happened before the Chevron Deference rolling, so you have to track those appeals, but that's the only thing that matters. This isn't going to change whatever was going to happen before this ruling. That's what's going to happen now. If those appeals are overturned or upheld, that's what matters. I think that it's still going to work. But the thing is, I was playing the story and I'm playing the fact that, you know, like a week after I wrote about it, it started becoming this like cultural thing. You see these memes on Twitter about microplastics.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The judiciary to defer to experts. So if you have an expert in the federal bureaucracy. Yes, exactly. And obviously the campus small government doesn't love this because they view this as unelected technocrats that are kind of driving policy. And what happened with Chevron Deference was for a long time if you had the EPA saying, no, this is bad. They would say, okay, yeah, probably you know more than I do. with this ruling that is not the case anymore”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know that Draken Miller quote I made $120% of my money on the simple obvious ideas and lost 20% on everything else. And that's kind of the way that I viewed these themes where you want this cultural touchstone. You want everyone to realize that, oh, this is going to be big, this is a big deal. And whether that's in a niche area or in a wide-ranging area, that is less important, but it has to have that moment. And when you have something that adds uncertainty, even if you disagree. Right, when it comes to what happened with the Chevron Deference in the simplest possible terms, basically the stated policy has been for”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These microplastics, these forever chemicals. The EPA handed down a law that mandated that you have to control the level of microplastics or as they're, you know, PFAS, right? So I spoke with people in the industry and everyone is really, really If you are in the business of remediation or making sure that the water is clean, you were really excited about this and probably still are. But the thing about thematic investing is that uncertainty is kind of anathema to it. Where people want to buy on a story.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think when the levee breaks is playing in the background, but it's really dramatic, right? Michael Burry, you know, our protagonist, is only investing in one thing, ellipses, water. And, you know, that's the way that this thesis has kind of been presented for Decades where it's this kind of apocalyptic. You have this idea in your head where, I mean, everybody has this, and it's like an evolutionary fear. The water has to be okay. Water quality has to be okay, and there has to be enough of it, or else we can't do anything. It's always been that kind of thing. And I really... Didn't want to just write about water because it's like, well, you know, here's what's going on with water. So I wanted to focus on the non apocalyptic parts. And I don't want to buy anything because of pessimism. And what had happened.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first off, water in the realm of thematic equity. Water is Waterloo, kind of. It's this battle that it's always a good idea to be long water if you think that GDP is going to go up. Unless you're in China where water use has actually declined as GDP has gone up because they've been really serious about efficiency. But the idea is if you buy water, you're never really going to blow up unless it's like global financial crisis. You'll be pretty safe. There's always going to be some doom and gloom about water. So if you get on the phone with an investor, you can say, well, we own water because of, you know, here's this big report from whatever, you know, and it says that, you know, water scarcity and this, that, and the other thing. You ever see, well, you guys.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Respiration hardware, it wasn't a recessionary signal, but there is a great signal to be had in the story of respiration hardware, which is if you own a company and the CEO starts coming on and spends half the earnings call talking about macroeconomics.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right if you, and so when it comes to what I do, there is kind of like a You get kind of deferred in your ability to be like, yeah, called it, you know, because I don't forego security analysis entirely. I make sure that if I'm shorting a company that it's a bad company or if I'm buying a company that it's mispriced and that it has upside. So you never really know for sure. And sometimes even they'll get on the earnings call, especially if it's like a short and you know what or you think you know why it went down. You know, this is like the last time I was on we talked about the Titan stapler. Oh, yeah, right and obviously they eventually started saying well this probably has to do with those weight loss drugs but you know in the beginning when it's going down and when the company's you know seeing decreased revenue sometimes takes them a little bit to like realize what's going on and sometimes they never do you know”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, if you know anyone that's overweight that struggled with their weight, they have these closets full of just various sizes of clothes. So the general idea is... Applying second order thinking to capture a theme in not just the most obvious way because that's going to be the most crowded way and that's like I said before you really want to try to not just have this be story-based trend following.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're buying clothes the whole way down And then there is, in fact, you know, like this is like well documented, there is a rebound effect from GLP1 drugs. If you stop them, you regain a portion of the weight”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One. Well, think about it, right? You don't teleport your weight. If you're 300 pounds and you go down six sizes, first off, you're happy that you're losing weight, right? So you want to show that off, but you're still plus size.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So, like GLP1s might make up 15-20% of the portfolio, but it's not just Lily. And it's not just Novo Nordisk. It's also something like Torid, which is a woman's kind of fashion for plus size clothing.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the way that I view it is, you know, I have diversification at the security level, but I'm very concentrated in these themes.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, of course not. And I think when people kind of look at when I share my portfolio with people, which I know some people are kind of neurotic about that, but I'm not big enough where I think that someone's going to attack me. But when I show my portfolio to people, they are kind of taken aback by how many securities are in there.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's some discretionary aspect where I think that something matters more than, or that investors are paying more attention. I didn't think back in March that this tariff aspect was getting as much attention. I figured that would kind of progress and get more attention as the year went on.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a few other aspects of that basket, but the thing that obviously didn't make me happy because something that I owned went down. But right after that debate, which I think there were a lot of people that were surprised by that. And I guess you could, if you were drawing a chart of like, should I be concerned about Biden's performance in a debate after the State of the Union, maybe you had some moments where he's talking about, you know, where's that lady, and the lady died three weeks ago or something, or there were signs. There were signs, but, you know, I wasn't necessarily surprised by that. And when that happened, the binomics basket, you know, goes down by 5%. And then the Trump basket goes up by 10. And, you know, that's kind of reinforcing where it shows you that you're not just writing beta. You've been.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came into this year all prepared, right? Here's how the basket is going to look. The thing that really made me the most satisfied about this, I mean, the basket has done quite well because Trump odds went from 20% of being the nominee to 63% of being the president. And the performances tracked that pretty well.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incongruous kind of correlation. So names like Axon or Geo group or Corcivic, those will probably benefit. I had kind of a fun one that was a company that makes the storefront glass for retail stores because I figured no matter who wins this election, there's going to be people that are angry.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That But that was when I was kind of looking at this. That, I think, was the first place that I start is basically sell-side research, just to see what is being said. And there were a lot of kind of, well, here's how, you know, these equities performed when Trump was president. Here's how they performed when Biden was president. And if you go into anything like that with that kind of thinking where you're just overfitting to like two periods of time, I mean, when Biden was elected, if you had that kind of thinking, you would have went long, clean energy and short oil, and you would have gotten destroyed. Because like, no matter who's the president, there are going to be beer forces at work. So you really have to try to specify and get rid of as much.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, that was big on electrification and infrastructure spending and generally fading the idea that we could have a recession when fiscal policy is spending like a drunken sailor. And we said, okay, well, now we need some kind of offsetting beta here. We need some Trump beta. And there are these orphan equities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And I looked at the story and I said, I don't think that that's going to happen. He didn't do it the first time, but it doesn't matter. Because it's a story, so people are going to take action based on that story. Then looking at things like private prisons and law enforcement. I remember.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do a lot of business when it comes to China, and that's a lot of their input costs and tariffs really would affect them. And that's your short side. And then you say, okay, well, who is going to be all right here? And that comes down to pricing power. You know, if consumers start consolidating their spending because of tariffs, who can kind of keep that pricing power regardless and like Costco, Walmart, some of the automotive parts like O'Reilly, that's your longside. So that makes up one component of the basket. And then move on. Okay. And the thing is, for the past three years, one of my exposures to a theme has been Bidenomics.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I constructed a basket that kind of played on a few different themes. Tariffs was a big one of them, right? So you look at how much comes from China. First, you look at Trump's, what he says, right? 100% tariffs, 60% tariffs. And the thing is protectionism from China trade, that's not a partisan issue anymore, right? There are no China doves in the government. But Trump is certainly a unique brand of that when it comes to the trade policy. So that seemed like the most asymmetric way to kind of capture that. So you look at five below, for example, restoration hardware, florin decor, best buy, these companies that really...”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depending on what the theme is, I create either a long, short basket to kind of gain exposure because I don't ever want that kind of idiosyncratic single name equity risk where a company ends up doing really well and it has nothing to do with my actual thesis.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, some people really are. I mean, it's one of those things where I think it's like when you're a kid and you touch the stove and you get burned and you're, well, I'm not doing that again. That's how I think the 2020 election was for me. As soon as I saw that the year was an election year, I started kind of preparing for this. This was back in January when the odds of Trump even being a nominee or like being the Republican nominee were like 20%. It was relatively easy back then to look at these very kind of exposed equities and say This is a swap, I guess, on Trump being a nominee”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So if the question, how do you start preparing? Early, early, you start preparing early, right? I don't think that. You know, was anyone surprised that we have an election this year?”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were plenty of themes in 2022 when everything else was going down. I mean, tech going down was a theme. You know, the interest rate hikes, the inflation for the first time, that, you know, that's a theme. That's a story that grabs people's attention and makes them go to their terminal and execute a trade. And same thing with energy and the war in Ukraine. I try my hardest to, it's super cliche, but think a few months ahead at least.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And that kind of replacement cycle drives that new picks and shovels thesis where you're looking at all these kind of system on chip names. And that's where I see this theme that everyone is talking about going. But the thing about the Matic equity is that if you let it, it just becomes momentum investing. Because themes are stories and stories translate into momentum very easily. And when people... Do an association with momentum. They're always thinking about kind of momentum in a bull market, like what we've been seeing. And that's not the case at all.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're a public equity investor, you might not really get to the use cases that you can invest in are those five stocks and combine that with everything else. And like you said, the uncertainty when there's uncertainty, people tend to crowd into things that they know are going to work. I think that really the picks and shovels thing will probably play out again. But when it comes to edge AI and doing inference on device and kind of, I mean, This is probably a controversial statement, but I think that we might see the first real true replacement cycle, like real replacement cycle where Apple comes out with a new phone and it has all these productivity gains and it has all this new hardware and it can do these things. And if you don't have that phone, you can't do it. And it becomes kind of like that sci-fi movie Gatta. Where's”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the next kind of picks and shovels idea, the thing is everyone's always, well, what are we going to invest in that's doing the use cases? And then those same people will come around and say, why are these five stocks driving the entire market? And the thing is, the latency between a company starting and becoming successful and doing an IPO has gotten a lot longer in the past like two decades.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the productivity gains from your phone doing inference and inferring what it knows about you from that data. That's huge.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I have a thesis that just got destroyed, so I don't really want to talk about that one, and can you text Joe and let him know too? And then can you look at my calendar? When am I available? You can be walking down the street.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, AI has two sides training and inference, right? And you can train on all this data that you've already given up to the faceless kind of entity that controls the world. What AI brings about is in real time drawing conclusions from that data. And it's two-sided. There's convenience and then there's privacy concerns. And I agree with you that convenience definitely outweighs privacy concerns when it comes to the consumer. But when you have this ecosystem that Apple has created with this walled garden, and then you kind of alleviate the privacy concerns and you have this constant inference that's going on, and there will come a time where you'll be walking down the street and you'll say, I just called Tracy a week ago. What did we talk about? And when did we say we're going to meet? Okay, can you text Tracy and tell her.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That information combined with Apple's trust in the consumer trust and the idea that they place a high premium on privacy, you can't have this AI assistant that knows everything about you if you think that it's going to be stored on a server in Cubertino. It needs to be on your phone. So the next thing is how do we start having these big models that are trained in these very big data centers and all this CapEx that's spent on that now we have to, just like every other technological trend, we have to miniaturize it, right? And we have to basically have your phone doing inference, sending to those models, but also these smaller models.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I said about two months ago was that the company that was going to make this really happen, it's not going to be Microsoft with ChatGPT and OpenAI. I think it's going to be Apple. And if any company can get it done, it's going to be Apple. And you have this kind of dynamic where you need something to happen that forces people to use it. Right. It's kind of like Facebook, right? Or social media in general, where there's only so long you could go without being connected to everything and everyone. Have you ever texted someone like, hey, I'm coming over? And then you get in the car. If it connects to CarPlay, it'll give you a notification that says directions to Joe's house. Yeah. Your phone knows everything about you. And your phone knows who you are, it knows what you're doing, it knows what you want to do, it knows who your mom is”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, you can say, What is AI going to look like five years out? And you'll get five different answers from five different people. And I started from a place of, you know, which became consensus very quickly, the picks and shovels, right? And then the picks and shovels of the picks and shovels. And then you get this thing where, you know, during the Gold Rush, it wasn't just everyone showing up to sell picks and shovels, just everyone waiting there until the So we have to kind of look now for this controversial thing of does AI have use cases right and I think it's pretty clear that it does if you're looking for it but in terms of like monitoring the way that it's going to progress I think the biggest component here is going to be going from B2B to B2C and”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, and that's one of the risks of doing this kind of investing. You know, there's a great quote from Robert Schiller. Nobody has ever made a decision based on a number. They always need a story. I don't know if that's the exact quote, but another one of my favorites is Kyle Harrison said that Price is a number today multiplied by a story tomorrow. And the way that I view investing is it's always going to prioritize a good story and a good narrative. And that's what has the making of a theme because you need people to make the decision to execute a trade and move price. And then you also need on the other side something to actually happen in the real economy. And as far as artificial intelligence, this kind of fast moving, innovative theme that we don't really”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, you know, AI obviously is a huge theme in the market. I've heard of it. Yeah. Have you really? Yeah. It's this little thing. But I think that Most important way to basically track this theme is it's one of those technologically innovation driven kind of themes. And the way that I view thematic investing is along this spectrum of you have disruption or continuation and then you have macro drivers or micro drivers. And I'm not talking about necessarily macro in the sense of macroeconomics, but, you know, demographic shifts, even like consumer attitudes, the Overton window shifting just big things changing versus big things staying the same. So over the past 12 months, there have been probably 10 or 12 themes that I think have really made themselves known in the market and the way that assets move. And right now, there have been a few that I've probably overstayed my welcome in. I think that some of them are getting a little bit frothy.”
2024-07-12 · Odd Lots · James van Geelen on Thematic Investing Right Now · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source