The worst mid year update you'll read

June -8.5%, YTD -10%

First, my performance sucks and my portfolio has become a 2 stock YOLO which tbh feels absolutely retarded and tells you you should unsubscribe or only look at me as a contra. I know I should have never let this happen, but here we are. Of course I am still expecting praying for this to ultimately go well, but the risk I am taking is immense and I am afraid I will not be adequately rewarded for it.

Second, nothing really changed except that SOC 0.00%↑ blew up in my face in June (down 24% or so) and is still engaged in 3 critical lawsuits, with somewhat unclear prospects and timelines. When I supersized SOC, I thought we’d be selling oil by now, instead I sit on a drawdown, a position that is WAY to big and spend my days researching random Santa Barbara judges and their likely stance on oil and CeQA. This new legal challenge is a fucking nightmare. SOC has a huge downside if shit goes badly, and boy, recently we’ve been marching down crap avenue in large strides…

A few things that went into the right direction were the fact that NextNav silently crept upwards. While I’d like to think that’s because the market anticipates NPRM action in July or August, I assume it’s probably just beta and completely meaningless. Having said that, I am anxiously anticipating the next tentative FCC meeting agenda which should drop this Thursday or next Monday. NN as well has immense theoretical downside but not over the next 3 months, I think, due to all the upcoming FCC meetings each of which could act as a huge catalyst / derisking event for the stock.

Another thing that went right, in the sense that I avoided disaster was that I luckily sidestepped the INMB 0.00%↑ clusterfuck. I spent all of Friday in the car driving with my wife. I drove 90% of the time, but fate had it that we switched for an hour or so and that just happened to be the hour when the stock suddenly got halted and the equity offering was announced. I almost got a heart attack on the passenger seat and immediately sold the entire position at $8. The stock is at $2 now, so I feel very, very lucky that I saw this at just the right moment.

Besides this, I really have nothing to report except that I throw up every time I open my portfolio and see that I am not a shrewd investor but a YOLO bagholder of the most hated equity in all of California. Do I feel like it will go right in the end? Yes (but probably only because the trade is an extension of my political views and I believe those are reasonable and “reason” will prevail in the end … even though I have learned many times that the world does not work this way…). Do I feel like I have a sound understanding of how exactly it will play out? Well, no. Sadly not. I used to think so, but that has been shown to be a complete misjudgement. Do I have a feeling for the timeline? No. Do I know how a delay of the timeline affects SOC’s debt refinancing? Not really. It’s all a big nightmare at this point and I just sit here paralysed and pray to God it goes well. Would I initiate the position now? No. Still, I have 30% of my net worth in it. Fuck me, just writing this makes me want to slap myself across the face over and over again. I know the sane thing would be to reduce the position and just sell 80%, wait for it to play out and then buy (maybe) 50% higher. If I was a better investor, I would do that. But instead I find myself rolling dice with unknown probabilities with huge downside risk. Stupid.

Why is taking a loss and declaring defeat so difficult? The answer, which I don’t want to hear but know is true, is: Well, it isn’t. I just suck as an investor.

I completely fucked up 2025 to date. Having been levered long into April with no prior experience of margin trading in my PA and then selling at the bottom cost me so fucking much. Here is a wonderful selection of 3-8% positions I sold in April to buy SOC (in which I am down):

ISSC at $6. Today’s price $13.88

NBIS at $22. Today’s price $55.33

ZOMD at $0.6. Today’s price $1.49

AERG at $0.86. Today’s price $2.10

FNMA at $6.50. Today’s price $9.49

Thanks for reading. Now do yourself a favour and unsubscribe before you comment: “duhhhh, never let your politics influence your investing, n00b. Also don’t invest levered long after 2 years of 25% SP500 returns. Best to simply sell your portfolio and just buy some ETFs. You are not an investor, you are gambler.”

If I somehow survive this year, I really look forward to calmer waters with smaller position sizes in stocks with way more margin of safety than the reckless shit show I have now. If…

Here’s the portfolio,

Hope y’all are not as stupid as I am,

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