Reddit Beat Revenue by $73 Million. The Calls Expired at One Cent.

Take at look at this stack of papers covered in black marker:

What you're looking at are the 750 White House files President Trump quietly "redacted" behind closed doors.

But what happened next was even more peculiar…

You see, directly after deleting federal files that had been in place since Jimmy Carter was in office…

President Donald Trump wrote a $300 million check to a controversial company located in Foothill Ranch, California.

Strangely enough, he didn't utter a single word about it to the cameras. Even more fascinating, it turns out, Trump's not acting alone…

If you follow the money trail…

Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates… even an up-and-coming tech titan who the late Charlie Munger referred to as, "the new emperor of the world"… have all poured billions into the same area.

Click here for the full story, including the name of the company Trump just invested $300 million in — absolutely free.

LOSS OF THE DAY 🏆

Every day we crown one person who made the worst financial decision on the internet.

Today's winner didn't make a reckless bet. He made a patient one. And it still didn't matter.

Here's the setup. An Ethereum whale bought 7,323 ETH between February 2022 and March 2023. Average price: $2,723 per coin. Total cost basis: just under $20 million.

He staked it. For over two years. Did everything the long-term crypto thesis tells you to do.

Then on August 8, he dumped all 7,323 ETH for $13.96 million. That's $1,907 per coin.

Total cumulative loss: $6 million. After three years of holding and staking.

The staking rewards he earned over two years? Roughly $200,000 in additional ETH. Against a $6 million hole, that's a 3% consolation prize.

Translation: two years of patience earned him enough to cover one month of the loss.

Here's the thing about staking for non-crypto people: staking means locking up your coins to help validate the blockchain in exchange for yield — usually 3-5% per year. The problem is that yield is paid in the same asset. If the asset drops 30%, your 5% staking reward doesn't come close to making up the difference.

Sometimes the best trade is the one you don't make. And sometimes the second-best trade is selling a year earlier.

Not everybody can be Loss of the Day. But these two gave it a real shot. Let's run through the tape.

There's a moment in every earnings play where confidence turns into confusion. For u/community_calls, that moment lasted about four minutes.

He bought 500 weekly $PLSB $185 calls at $1.75 each. Total position: $87,500. The thesis was simple. The company was growing. Revenue would beat. The stock would pop.

Revenue did beat. By $73 million.

One problem: US daily active users came in at 53.2 million. The Street expected 54 million. An 800,000-user miss on a platform with 54 million expected daily users.

The stock dropped 21% overnight. The calls went to $0.01.

Loss: $87,000. He bought the right company. Beat on the right metric. And still lost everything because one line item was 1.5% light

That's options in one sentence. You can be right about the company and still lose every dollar.

Quick note on weekly options for non-options people: weekly calls expire in days, not months. They're cheap because they have almost no time value left. If the stock doesn't move in your direction fast, they go to zero. Buying them before earnings is essentially a coin flip with 99% downside.

This one's quick. Two days quick.

u/macro_master_fx went short EUR/USD at 1.1390 with his entire $41,600 account. The thesis: dollar strength. The Fed was hawkish. CPI was sticky. The trade made sense on paper.

One problem: the euro didn't read his analysis. EUR/USD rallied 200 pips over two sessions.

He was using 50x leverage. A 2% move in the wrong direction is a 100% wipe.

Loss: $41,600. His entire account. Gone in 48 hours.

For context: without leverage, a 2% forex move would have cost him $832. With 50x, it cost him everything. That's the part worth understanding.

We track the data because the data is funnier than anything we could make up.

The gap between patience and stubbornness is about $6 million.

We've seen this pattern all year. The people who hold the longest aren't always rewarded. Sometimes they just lose the most slowly.

See you. The numbers will be different. The behavior won't be.