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Our next live AMA will be on October 2, 2026 at 4:30 PM ET. Topics can include:
• investment process
• portfolio management
• self development
• audience questions
If you want to leave us questions ahead of time, feel free to fill out this form:
forms.gle/po6f7BGbPSz9JLF5A
Included is a short survey to help us better scope out topics we can cover for you, and please do note that this form will close on September 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET.
Thank you to everyone who has been supporting our monthly AMAs. We'll try to get through as many questions as we can.
Really good. Lots of the points are powerful/subtle. ie: who to compete with, importance of frugality for founder development and what talent to hire. Also love the Bezos anecdote of having a bunch of bets and then “pouring gasoline on the sparks”. 🫡 @davidsenra
Nik Storonsky is one of the most hardcore and competitive founders I’ve ever talked to. He’s the founder of Revolut, a $115 billion company, and wants to be the number one bank in 100 countries.
When someone asked Nik if he was coming for Jamie Dimon's lunch, he said “I’m coming for his dinner.”
“We want to dominate, otherwise what’s the point?”
He removed every VC from his board, and when one investor pushed him too far, he started his own fund to compete with them.
Nik has a lot of ideas on talent, product design, marketing, constraints, and what makes founder-led companies special.
This is a fascinating conversation about competition, speed, and building a machine-like company.
0:00 Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner
2:04 Building the #1 bank in 100 countries
6:12 Why founders beat professional CEOs
8:45 Revolut's biggest mistake
12:47 Why legacy banks can't innovate
17:20 Running a company like a machine
20:28 Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader
23:31 How AI is changing Revolut's team structure
25:23 50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast
29:59 Hiring self-guided missiles
33:31 Too much money makes founders weaker
37:38 What Europe's constraints taught Revolut
41:08 Why VCs are like football cheerleaders
49:28 Starting a fund to compete with VCs
54:28 From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports
1:00:21 Funding moonshots like a global tech company
1:03:58 Building an unstoppable machine
Includes paid partnerships.
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Nik Storonsky is one of the most hardcore and competitive founders I’ve ever talked to. He’s the founder of Revolut, a $115 billion company, and wants to be the number one bank in 100 countries.
When someone asked Nik if he was coming for Jamie Dimon's lunch, he said “I’m coming for his dinner.”
“We want to dominate, otherwise what’s the point?”
He removed every VC from his board, and when one investor pushed him too far, he started his own fund to compete with them.
Nik has a lot of ideas on talent, product design, marketing, constraints, and what makes founder-led companies special.
This is a fascinating conversation about competition, speed, and building a machine-like company.
0:00 Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner
2:04 Building the #1 bank in 100 countries
6:12 Why founders beat professional CEOs
8:45 Revolut's biggest mistake
12:47 Why legacy banks can't innovate
17:20 Running a company like a machine
20:28 Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader
23:31 How AI is changing Revolut's team structure
25:23 50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast
29:59 Hiring self-guided missiles
33:31 Too much money makes founders weaker
37:38 What Europe's constraints taught Revolut
41:08 Why VCs are like football cheerleaders
49:28 Starting a fund to compete with VCs
54:28 From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports
1:00:21 Funding moonshots like a global tech company
1:03:58 Building an unstoppable machine
Includes paid partnerships.
Alix Pasquet retweeted
"My favorite business picture was taken during Hurricane Sandy. It's night time and everything below the park lost power but there's this one building that's totally lit up.
It's Goldman.
And I think that speaks to some deep entrenched value in their DNA. Goldman Sachs does not die.
You can see other banks in that picture. Why weren't they built with generators? There is a cultural difference on display here."
@jeremygiffon (Episode 336, 7/2023)
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Numbers are easy to quantify. Judgment is the edge.
The real opportunity lies in what the numbers can't capture. Position sizing is where that insight pays.
Image from @alixpasquet’s YouTube.
Alix Pasquet retweeted
I am very excited to announce the fourth annual Wharton Investment & Trading Group and Fundamental Edge undergraduate stock pitch competition.
This competition has quickly become, we believe, the most active undergraduate stock pitch competition by submission count. And, each year, we continue to be blown away by the caliber of the submissions & the preparation of the students.
To add a fun wrinkle this year, we will be opening up audience attendance live via a Zoom webinar (link in replies), and the judges panel will take Q&A suggestions from the live audience.
Thank you to our sponsor @AlphaSenseInc for funding the prizes to the winners this year.
Live Zoom event will be Wednesday October 28th at 5:30pm ET. Hope to see you there!
Alix Pasquet retweeted
The flywheel: capital flows through the path of least resistance, in swirls among the same people according to John Kim.
H/t @alixpasquet for 2nd image 🤣
drive.google.com/file/u/0/d/…
Alix Pasquet retweeted
The stock market feels different right now because it is different. Winners keep winning, losers get pounded, earnings reactions are increasingly unpredictable and larger.
The tremendous growth in passive investing combined with the fact that HFT, retail, and short-duration capital dominate trading volumes has meaningfully changed "price discovery" in the short term.
This creates short-term risk and volatility, but it also creates some interesting opportunities for those who can identity value, assist with narrative and drive improvements.
The October 2026 AMA is up on YouTube. Thank you to everyone who joined live and asked thoughtful questions. One of the things I continue to enjoy about these sessions is that the discussion is shaped by what you're curious about, and the quality of the questions always pushes my own thinking further.
If you missed it, we've already posted the full AMA. We also put together a Key Insights version around a few selected topics: adapting to changing market structure, using mental models to improve judgment, thinking about AI as a tool rather than a replacement, developing intuition, using industry maps to strengthen research, and building content as a long-term competitive advantage.
AMA livestream: youtube.com/watch?v=lcBhD7H2…
Key insights: youtube.com/watch?v=VV0DkMtv…
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Self-destructive psychosis through financial markets seems to be a thing.
I was talking to a friend who had a long and successful career in advertising about people who had destroyed themselves along the way in his industry (advertising) and mine (finance).
Drinking - to the point of self-destruction - was a problem in both industries but more-so in finance. But my industry seemed to be laced with other problems.
I know a few suicides. But I also know people who committed crimes where being caught was inevitable. These were not crimes motivated by greed as much as crimes motivated by psychosis. They were objectively just insane. The path was self-destruction.
There is a story that went around the world about a finance guy with a good career who got a ten month suspended sentence for fare evasion on London transport. He was also banned from his profession.
This was after a former MD at Black Rock Asset Management settled for GBP43000 for systematic fare evasion in london. That also cost him his career.
This is just dumb. It is a form of psychotic self-destructive behaviour rather than systematic rational greed.
There have been half a dozen people in Fintwit who have gone to prison. Some were people who were just psychopathic crims - people who view financial markets as a way of ripping off innocent dupes. [I feel no sympathy for those people.]
But some of these were ordinary people who drifted into simple (and easy to detect) crimes through the sort of bad psychology that financial markets seem to induce. [I feel some sympathy for those. I will long-term Fintwitters decide who was in which camp...]
Self destruction is common enough that if you have a long career in finance like me you will wind up knowing several people who ruin their lives along the way. Proper and near total to total self-destruction is a thing.
It is not helped by having gone to a good high-pressure school. I keep a rough list of financial criminals who have gone to Wharton for instance. These fall into both camps of crims.
I put this up simply because I wish I knew how to advise young people - and also people in finance who are suffering the sort of (abnormal) stress this career puts on some people.
This is a very long running bull market - and I predict we will see a lot of this sort of thing as the bull market unwinds.
And whilst I am looking forward to the end of the bull market I am not looking forward to that part.
Alix Pasquet retweeted
You have to match the personality of the analyst with the industry they cover.
Let’s say you have a stock earning $1 in 2026 with consensus at $1.20 in 2027 and $1.35 in 2028.
Analyst A does work and says I think 2028 can be $2
Analyst B does work and says I think 2028 can be $1.50
As 2027 unfolds, analyst B gets more bullish and raises their 28 estimate to $1.60. Analyst A gets a little more realistic and tightens their number to $1.80. This happens after the stock was already up 50 and it was full size for analyst A and half size for analyst B.
Ultimately the stock is up 2.5x between mid 26 and early 28 and ends up printing $1.70. The stock traded at $20 or 20x $1 and now trades at 30x $1.70.
Analyst A went from $2 to 1.80 to 1.70. Analyst B went from 1.50 to 1.60 to 1.70.
Which one would you rather have covering the stock? In the beginning you want Analyst A and in the end you want Analyst B. It’s the PMs job to possess the skills of both even if only one of them is covering the stock for you.
I think if an analyst “gets it” and can really see the thesis but just models too conservatively you have to teach them how to make them see that if their narrative is right their numbers will be wrong and to size it correctly the numbers have to match the narrative. If their numbers are right and they just don’t want to take risk tell them that’s fine you won’t pay them or penalize them on the money made or less. You will keep it all. If they are timid in another way it might be more of a red flag that they’re not gonna make it.
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Professional poker player Phil Ivey won $9.6 million at the Borgata. The casino paid him, then sued to get it back. At London’s Crockfords, he won another £7.7 million. They refused to pay.
In the video below, Ivey says his job is to play the game, find a weakness in the casino and use it to win. He calls the casino his opponent and points out that it spends millions of dollars protecting its games.
He wanted a specific brand of cards, a Cantonese-speaking dealer and the same decks reused. The casinos agreed. His playing partner, Cheung Yin Sun, asked the dealer to rotate certain cards, presenting it as a matter of luck.
The cards had tiny differences along their backs. Once high-value cards faced one way and the others faced the opposite way, those differences helped identify what was coming next.
Ivey never marked the cards. The dealer handled them. But the casino didn’t understand what those requests were doing to the odds.
He called it an advantage. The casinos called it cheating. In 2017, the UK Supreme Court ruled against him: persuading the dealer to arrange the cards crossed the line.
The casino had approved his requests while expecting to win. Ivey knew something about its own cards that it didn’t.
Was he cheating, or should a casino know its own game before accepting someone’s money?
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Peter Thiel on how you should think about your future:
"What you end up doing when you think of the future as indefinite is you pick a job that you think will look good on your resume, because it will lead to a different job later on. There's even a credentialing version where you go to grad school, you get a consulting job, and you think of it as this branching tree diagram where you never really do something that you want to do.
You can think of the future on three horizons. Very short-term is: are you going to be happy, and will you be learning a lot? Medium-term is: how good is it on your resume? And very long-term is: are you working on something important or meaningful? We're in a skewed world where we overweight the medium-term and underweight some combination of the short-term and the long-term. I would recalibrate to focus on the short-term and the long-term, and forget about the medium-term."
Alix Pasquet retweeted
Start with the undeniable fact that the core unit of production of a l/s hedge fund is l/s spread.
Everything else is opinion but that is fact.
There are two types of spread you can capture - intra sector or inter sector.
If you care most about idio footprint you are dialed into intra sector spread. If you try to capture spread in a kelly green sector you will almost assuredly lose a lot of absolute dollars on your shorts and get squeezed most on yellow to green or darkening green shifts. If you try to capture spread in amber red, you get the point. Pretending every sector is always yellow and always prime for spread is a fallacy. The first step is to decide if the sector is yellow and if so then hunt for spread.
Accepting exposure to non fundamental risks is required to capture the most abundant spread - the inter sector spread. The best way to capture that spread is to identify the color of every sector and what the second derivative change in colors is, either absolute or just the changing intensity of color.
A portfolio should have a few longs and shorts perfectly balanced in yellow sectors and several longs along a continuum of lessening red to darkening green sectors, and the opposite for shorts.
At times you will also have great shorts in dark green sectors as an obvious loser emerges and sometimes a great long in an obvious darkening red sector. But that is less abundant.
My most strongly held investing belief is the way to make the most money is to capture the best long idea in the best accelerating sectors/categories and the inverse for shorts. Sounds obvious but requires real structure and process.
My joke with LPs, sell side analysts, teammates, basically whoever will listen for almost three decades has been I wish I had a killer application that monitored, real time, all information collected by the best sector experts ingested into a shared brain, compiled and analyzed by what I think is most important and then visualized real time with a color coded labeling system flashing green, yellow or red delivered via a web based app like a Bloomberg screen. I’d call it the CIO Brain. There would be 3 columns. Consensus in print, Consensus in chatter and Inside view.
The cynical response to this is bruh that’s just a revisions visual. But it’s not. Some information moves numbers and some moves multiple. Muse is multiple moving for Meta waaaay before it can be quantified in numbers. Getting in front of the multiple move ahead of the number move is where more money lives nowadays than ever before.
If someone builds this no need to send me royalty checks, just send me sign in credentials.
Metternich on Napoleon: “In whatever time he had appeared he would have played a prominent part, but the epoch when he first entered on his career was particularly fitted to facilitate his elevation.”
Alix Pasquet retweeted
I strongly strongly recommend being a serial specialist which means become a generalist one sector at a time not one stock at a time and the way you determine the next sector to learn is by its adjacency to the last sector you learned
Starting this one late. 445pm
Our next live AMA will be on October 2, 2026 at 4:30 PM ET. Topics can include:
• investment process
• portfolio management
• self development
• audience questions
If you want to leave us questions ahead of time, feel free to fill out this form:
forms.gle/po6f7BGbPSz9JLF5A
Included is a short survey to help us better scope out topics we can cover for you, and please do note that this form will close on September 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET.
Thank you to everyone who has been supporting our monthly AMAs. We'll try to get through as many questions as we can.
Well done @altcap, AVF and AK. Great example to us all on the value that investors can create when they dedicate their investment intellectual capital to policy. Another example is @altcap pushing for Calcium CT scans, low cost and high value add. Well done!
More than 60 million American children under age 18 have been automatically enrolled in Trump Accounts, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said Thursday in an announcement exclusively provided to CNBC.
The Treasury proposed regulations on Tuesday to begin the auto-enrollment process for millions of children this week. By Thursday, the process had been completed, according to the agency.
Read the full story: cnb.cx/4xT8Dza
