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âSkate to where the puck is going, not where itâs been.â -Wayne Gretzky
Investing is like hockey.
To win, you need to be thinking multiple moves ahead.
With a strong and consistent core team.
Who can occasionally pull rabbits out of their hat in a spectacular demonstration of Cirque du Soleil on ice.
The stock market equivalent is how I have invested my own money for the last 15 years.
CORE & EXPLORE PORTFOLIO.
80% of my money is invested in large-cap, dividend paying, low risk, boring stocks.
The other 20% is where I have all my fun, investing in high-risk, speculative, small-caps & deals.
Operating on the edge of whatâs possible while constantly re-assessing whatâs probable.
On that note, letâs start 2021 with a bang!
Cruising âMoonshotâ ideas together. Those that could be 5x, 10x or even 100x ideas.
Remember weâre throwing grenades here – not darts!
Big thinking for big returns.
Stretching our minds on the future of LIFE!
1. LIVE: Tiny Homes & Breathing Walls.
During COVID, we spent billions decking out our homes like an episode of MTV Cribs meets Survivor.
Keeping busy and avoiding fights with our significant others meant scented candles & Pelotons.
Home Depot had their best quarter in 20 years with +$38B in sales!
Big numbers, but likely onetime in nature, although I did see a girl on TikTok get a permanent microchip implant in her hand to make opening the front door safer & easier.
Looking a decade out, spending trends I am excited about were recently highlighted in the The Wall Street JournalâHouse of Tomorrowâ article:
– Fridges that restock themselves
– Living and breathing walls
– Green-powered everything
Recent Tweets & headlines also got me thinking about the re-organization of life:
- Manhattan rents plummeting to record lows
- People relocating to Florida and Texas for lifestyle and tax reasons (+7 million over the past 10 years)
But, my jaw really dropped when I saw this:
These tiny $17,500 prefab ‘urban escape pods’ from former Tesla and SpaceX designers are now available to preorder
The insanely low price, beautiful design and near-term availability of March 2021, did it for me.
Remember when flat-screen TVs cost thousands of dollars back in the early 2000s? When only celebrities and your stock broker could afford them.
Now they cost only a few hundred dollars.
This is what I call the âMiniaturization of Luxuryâ.
And, itâs coming to housing.
Given we are in the middle of an affordability crisis, I see a future where the âTiny Homeâ movement really takes off.
Especially given approximately 20 million Americans live in trailer parks.
Even Ikea is getting in the game.
âIkea tiny homes can help fight climate change by giving small footprints a big toeholdâ
And, billionaire Sam Zell is betting on the trend, turning some of his trailer parks into manicured micro-homes.
Another solution to the housing affordability is communal living.
In Sweden, their housing shortage has spawned a co-living craze.
âThe city introduced a waiting list in 1997 â a previous system had been around since 1947 â that now has over 650,000 names in a city of less than a million.â
Since 30-70% of us are never going back to the office, I wonder if the âcommunal/digital-nomad lifestyleâ takes-off beyond the fringe?
2. WORK: AirBnB meets WeWork.
COVID has handed younger generations the ultimate passport.
Live, Work & PlayâŚfrom anywhere at any time.
Mass exodus from every major city has accelerated cool business models to fulfill this new reality.
“The rise of the digital nomads is going to be one of the biggest movements hospitality has ever seen.” -CEO Selina
Take Selina. Itâs AirBnB meets WeWork.
52 locations globally, 70k members and +$1B Valuation.
I could see Silicon Valley “wooing” new talent with “work from anywhere” memberships!
The âFreedom Economyâ also known as Gig or Freelance will continue to flourish.
Itâs worth $300B today but trillions are in its future.
Companies that build tools which mimic the support & services of a traditional job – health & retirement benefits – will be big winners.
And what about the Robots taking our jobs?
According to Nassim Taleb, the international best-selling author âBlack Swanâ robots will replace every job soon enough!
3. LEARN. Hollywood Here we Come!
Imagine a world where you donât pay for your college education upfront.
Instead you agree to share a percent of your future salary.
Itâs called an âincome sharing agreementâ and the Lambda School, backed by Ashton Kutcher and +$100MM in capital, is doing it.
Instead of going into debt, you are selling equity in yourself.
This new model of financing education is a fresh alternative to the +$1.6 trillion in student debt we have shackled our future generations with.
The other archaic model I think will see an overhaul is the delivery & experience of education.
Learning today is physical, passive & generalist. A kind of âput you to sleep webinar.â
Learning tomorrow will be virtual, dynamic and customized. Hello gamification and âHollywoodizationâ of education.
But, given the influencer of government funding, the system seems resistant to change. The opportunity is huge, although itâs still early days and most wonât attempt to disrupt it.
Annual education spending is a $1.6T industry and yet today âEdTechâ (educational technology) represents less than 5%.
COVID has been a clear catalyst here.
EdTech funding is up 30% YoY and is close to all-time highs.
Companies like Outschool, offering dynamic virtual classes, saw their enrolments explode.
In February 2020, Outschool had 80,000 learners; as of August 2020, there were 1.6 million new sign-ups
All-age learning platforms also saw big investments. Corsera raised $130MM and MasterClass raised $100M. Both are billion-dollar companies now.
The beauty with learning is, as the delivery of content improves, our thirst for knowledge grows exponentially!
4. HEALTH: Biohacking & FitnessTech.
âIf you are going to compete with your peers, wait until they are in their 70s, they are easy to take down.â
If we donât have our health, we donât have anything.
Luckily, humankind has made leaps and bounds in improving quality of life.
We no longer run from cheetahs on the Great Plains of Africa. Instead we run from ourselvesâŚgetting old.
It started off innocent enough with plant-based juices, intermittent fasting & facelifts.
Now, itâs designer drugs, biohacking and microchip implants.
The cyborg transformation has begun.
From a moonshot-meets-reality perspective I think the best investment theme here is plant-based food.
Itâs great for the environment and can add years to your life. Checkout my newsletter on it HERE.
âAvoiding meat and dairy is âsingle biggest wayâ to reduce your impact on EarthâŚ.livestock provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland.â
But, fascinatingly, the quickest way to turn back the clock (at least physically) is already here.
Itâs called face putty. If you donât know what it is, google it.
Youâll never be the same again. Literally.
In all seriousness, though, I think FitnessTech has a bright future.
No, I am not buying Peloton. I canât get my head around the valuation and lack of long-term moat.
But, I do think these technologies have tapped into our brain chemistry, creating a perfect potion of addiction.
With gamification and socialization, working out will never be the same again!
And the devil is in the detail.
The average gym member goes twice a month. But the average Peloton user is significantly more addicted:
5. PLAY.
Digital Marriage.
Generation Zs are born with a smart phone strapped to their bodies.
“Weâre already a cyborg. You have a digital version of yourself, in the form of your emails, your social media, and all the things that you do.” -Elon Musk
Your phone records everything:
Trips youâve taken.
Whether you pay your bills on time.
How social â or not â you are.
How you deal with conflict (eventually our fights will even be recorded & analyzed!)
Online dating is about to get weird.
From a Neanderthal-like âswipe rightâ exercise. To an elaborate AI matching system of our digital histories.
Stacy and George share a love for biking, Game of Thrones and Super Tuscan wines. Both are democrats, FICO scores of +700 and are lazy but social. Sheâs anxious. Heâs avoidant. Both looking to settle down.
A match made in digital heaven.
At +$65B, the dating and wedding industry is ripe for an entertaining disruption.
Watch-out for the highly anticipated IPO of Bumble in 2021. And for new innovative fund products like this:
Digital Bouncers.
“As trust goes up, speed goes up and cost goes downâ
Imagine a âwhale clubâ but only for bitcoin holders who can prove they own $1B worth of BTC.
Or a sneaker club but only for those who own limited-edition Air Jordans.
Or a deal club but only for accredited investors who invest a minimum of $100k on private placements.
Many clubs like this exist on Facebook or Discord. But none have a true gatekeeping component.
The future of online socializing will be authenticated via a âdigital bouncerâ checking IDs and asset holdings instantaneously.
From your LinkedIn to your JP Morgan bank account – and everything in between Robinhood, StockX etc!
Vacation on Mars.
I once took a helicopter from Nice to Monaco. It cost +$250 euros for 7 mins of bliss.
Iâve been chasing that âaspirational highâ ever since.
Thankfully, due to a raging bull market financing every âback-of-a-napkinâ business idea and technology getting cheaper, travelling like a billionaire is about to get a lot more affordable.
Blade Urban Air Mobility, the the Uber for helicopters & private jets, is going public via a SPAC.
âBlade provides short-distance aviation trips for just under $1,000.â
Now you are just one day trade away from flying like Buffet ; )
Plus you could feel good about your high-flying moves.
By 2025, Blade expects its entire fleet to be green, becoming the first public company to offer electric vehicles in the air.
Former Fed Chair âHelicopter Benâ is literally the best influencer for this:
Helicopters are cool. But have you ever ridden 100 mph in an airless tube through the Nevada desert?
In November, that fantasy became a reality. With the first human passenger Hyperloop ride.
Within 10 years, we will be able to go from New York to Los Angeles in under 35 mins at the same cost of flying commercial.
But the trillion dollar question is: when are we going to Mars?
A month ago, SpaceX had its most successful flight ever, a big family office called me and said they were looking to buy $500k worth of SpaceX pre-IPO stock immediately!
Although it is ridiculous that people are building valuation upsides on AirBnB including a Mars expansion, we canât ignore that SpaceX is now a $100B company.
Investing in inter-galactic real estate could literally be the moonshot investment of a lifetime!
This weekâs edition on Moonshot investing was meant to stretch our thinking. Now letâs get more specific on tangible investment ideas!
Howâs Grit Playing it?
As promised, here is the list of the top 15 small-cap positions that I currently own. All companies are less than $5B market cap (except Bitcoin). They are not all âMoonshotâ ideas. Many are real businesses with strong upside. Warning, I own these stocks today but I may trim, completely sell or buy more at any point in time. Do your own due diligence and always consult your financial advisor.
Until next time. Always Yours. Incessantly Chasing ROI,
-Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA
P.S Remember âif youâre selling Bitcoin, youâre not âtaking profitâ. Youâre taking fiatâ
What else we Grittinâ On:
Agflation. âCommodities just poked their head out of a 12-year resistanceâ
Celebrity Money. NFLâs Russell Okung to Get 50% of His $13 Million Salary in Bitcoin
IPO Bonanza. 2020 was the busiest year for IPOs since the dot-com bubble. Could it be repeated in 2021? Upcoming IPOs: Coinbase, Robinhood, Roblox, Bumble.
