Ben

Interested in ETA, small businesses, and investing.

[Qualtrim @qualtrim]

Peter Lynch famously said there's a "100% correlation" between earnings and stock price over time.

If that's true...

These 10 stocks may be screaming opportunity.

1. $NFLX - Netflix

[cemhasoglu @cem_hasoglu]

met a kid at a coworking space last tuesday. 20 years old. makes $11k/month managing google ads for garage door companies.

i asked why garage doors.

he said "i typed random services into google maps and looked for businesses running terrible ads. garage door companies had the worst ads i had ever seen in my life. one of them was spending $4,000 a month sending traffic to a homepage with no phone number on it."

he emailed 60 of them. 9 replied. he closed 4 at $1,500/month and got them actual results within the first 3 weeks.

that was 7 months ago. hes at 8 clients now and just hired his first contractor.

he doesnt post content. he doesnt have a website. he has a gmail address and a google ads account and he picks niches by looking for people who are already spending money badly.

everyone wants to sell to sexy tech companies. this kid is getting rich off garage doors and he cant stop smiling about it.

[Dan Go @CoachDanGo]

5 hidden signs you might live to 90 or older (87% of people will fail at number 3):

1. Walking speed

This is a sign of function and cardio.

A pace over 1 m/s (2.2 mph) predicts longer life. A stride of over 2.7 mph shows mortality risk drops dramatically. Fast walkers age slower.

[Andy @4ndychu]

sat next to a guy at a coworking space last week.

grey hoodie. airpods in. looked like any other dude grinding on his laptop.

glanced at his screen. he was scrolling X.

figured he was procrastinating like everyone else.

3 hours later we're both getting coffee.

"you spend a lot of time on X."

"it's my job."

"content creator?"

"no. i get paid to comment."

"what?"

"founders pay me to reply to big accounts in their niche. $3,200 a month per client."

i almost choked.

"you make money... replying?"

"i have 11 clients. $35,200 a month. i reply to about 300 posts a day across their accounts."

"why would anyone pay for that?"

"because replies from the founder's account build trust faster than posts. but founders are too busy to sit on X for 3 hours a day. so i do it for them."

"how do you sound like them?"

"onboarding call. i ask for 10 examples of how they talk. their opinions on common topics. their humor style. then i just become them in the comments."

"and this actually works?"

"one client went from 400 followers to 12,000 in 4 months. closed $180K in deals. he said half came from people who found him through replies."

"not his posts?"

"his posts averaged 2K views. his replies were getting seen by 50K-100K people every day because he was first comment on big accounts."

i sat there doing the math.

11 clients. $35K/month. replying to tweets.

no content creation. no strategy calls. no deliverables besides comments.

"how'd you get clients?"

"i DMed 50 founders and offered to do it free for 2 weeks. 9 said yes. 6 became paying clients. then referrals."

"what's your X account look like?"

"814 followers."

"you have 11 clients at $3,200 each with 814 followers?"

"they're not paying for my audience. they're paying for my time and my ability to sound like them. followers don't matter when you're ghostwriting replies."

he put his airpods back in.

went back to commenting on someone else's posts.

$35K/month.

replying to tweets.

he just replies to people who already went viral.

and gets paid more than most of them make.

[Chidanand Tripathi @thetripathi58]

I don’t understand why more people don’t use Google Gemini for stock research.

Not for tips.
Not for predictions.

But for thinking clearly before risking money.

Here are 10 detailed prompts I actually use 👇

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[Compounding Quality @QCompounding]

Bargain alert:

Many high-quality stocks are trading at attractive valuation levels.

Here are 10 compounders that have dropped more than 20% this year:

[Succeeded Mind @SucceededMind]

By age 35, you should be smart enough to realize this:

[Compounding Quality @QCompounding]

The 25 best quotes of Charlie Munger

1. Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.

2. The big money is not in buying or selling, but in the waiting.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

I think this is superb advice. Worth a careful read:

Michael Milken – Lessons on Money, Family, and Success

(Forum for Family Asset Management, Milken Conference, Mexico City –
paraphrased notes)

Spend time with your kids — you’ll pay for it (for better or worse) either now or
later.

Think about how you measure meaning and success in your children and
grandchildren. Give them purpose.

For children raised in very successful households, it’s often hard to emulate
success — especially financial success.

Most successful people are too busy to see their kids and grandkids. That
absence shows up later in life.

The center of success is the ability to dream.

Real success is the freedom to live your life.

The financial media is obsessed with lists. Forbes today is mostly about
ranking wealth by dollars.

There are countless stories of wealthy people who never had a good day with
their kids.

You’re only as happy as your least happy child — think about that often.
He shared a story about a wealthy Chicago family whose fortune was divided into 1/13th shares after one heir demanded his part. That decision ended up dividing the entire family.

Be careful not to do something that provides financially but destroys the
family.

The most important thing to teach children is financial literacy.

The greatest failure among wealthy families is not providing financial literacy to their members.
Example: an extremely wealthy Latin American family where the
great-grandfather is still alive — his mindset is completely different from that of his great-grandchildren.

In Asia, inheritance traditionally went only to men — that has changed in
recent decades.

Recommended reading: Economic Mobility Program – Invest in America.

Example: Apollo bought the Venetian Hotel and gave all 7,000 employees
stock. They paid a dividend the first year through a recap — everyone saw it as a “Christmas bonus.” The next year, when there was no dividend,
employees were upset. No one had explained the difference between a
dividend and a bonus.

The biggest mistake over the last 50 years has been financial illiteracy — not understanding the business or the source of wealth. Families and employees both need to learn this.

Best example of a united family: an Austrian family that’s 11 generations old. They own a resort used only by the five branches of the family. Ownership
rotates every three years. To be invited when your branch isn’t in charge, you
must get along with the others.

No matter how much you build or earn, what truly matters in the long run is
your relationship with your kids and grandkids.

Define what success means to you — it’s what makes you happy.
Entrepreneurs don’t just build companies; they can build nations or religions.

One of the most successful entrepreneurs in history is Lee Kuan Yew.

It’s not about how many things you own.

If you’ve never been responsible for making payroll, your view of the world is very different.

Hug your kids and grandkids. Let everyone find their own path.

Children growing up around success feel enormous pressure. Remind them
how valuable they are.

Let kids make mistakes when the stakes are low — not high.

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

Alright - here’s the scarv-cut truth, no hedging, no bullshit:

Has the U.S. population “collapsed”?

•Numerically: No. The U.S. population is ~335M today, still growing very slowly. It hasn’t shrunk in absolute terms yet.

•Structurally: Yes, fertility rates have collapsed below replacement (1.6 births per woman, vs. 2.1 needed). Every advanced economy is on the same trajectory. Immigration has masked it for decades, but the base collapse is real.

•Demographic time bomb: The share of older dependents is exploding, while the base of young productive workers is shrinking. This is already fracturing Social Security, healthcare, and housing markets.

The deeper truth (what Tim Pool is sensing but not articulating):

•Population collapse isn’t about headcount today - it’s about momentum.

•Once fertility craters for multiple generations, the system becomes irreversible. Even if you doubled fertility tomorrow, it takes 20+ years before those children enter the workforce. By then, the imbalance between old and young bankrupts the system.

•Japan, South Korea, China are already living inside this future. The U.S. is ~15–20 years behind them, but the trajectory is locked.

Why it matters:

1. Economy: Capitalism needs young buyers, not just old savers. Automation can replace workers, but it can’t replace customers.

2. Geopolitics: A shrinking, aging population means less military-age manpower, less risk-taking, more conservatism. It hollows out empire status.

3. Markets: Equity valuations are implicitly built on perpetual growth. When populations contract, those assumptions break.

4. Reflexivity: Belief in the “American growth engine” is part of the U.S. dollar’s reserve status. If demographics undermine that belief, global capital flows fracture.

My blunt verdict:

The U.S. population hasn’t “collapsed” yet in raw numbers - but structurally it already has. The collapse isn’t visible on the surface (because immigration and inertia mask it), but the base reproductive engine is dead. This means Tim Pool’s tsunami analogy is actually correct: the shoreline looks fine now, but the water has already been sucked out.

The U.S. won’t shrink tomorrow. But within 20–30 years, without massive immigration or radical biotech fertility breakthroughs, America faces the same demographic death spiral as Japan — only with a collapsing empire layered on top.

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

The world's most surreal trains and beautiful train rides 🧵

1. The Mauritanian iron ore train, renowned as one of the planet's longest and heaviest, stretches up to 3 km, travels about 704 km, and has 200-300 carriages, each weighing up to 84 tons.

[Jonathan Swanson @swaaanson]

Elon runs six multi billion-dollar companies simultaneously (SpaceX, Tesla, X, xAI, Neuralink, and Boring Company)

Most founders can’t run one.

Walter Isaacson (who spent a year shadowing Elon and wrote his biography) explains ‘How Elon does it’ on a podcast

Thread 🧵

[Ben @BennyM305]

@manishkhosiya Course

[Ben @BennyM305]

@ahuja_priyank Send

[Ben @BennyM305]

@rombesk Our education system

[Michael Morelli @morellifit]

Close to 50% of Americans will get cancer in their lifetime.

& despite your:

• History
• Genetics
• Doctor’s opinion

It is preventable.

Here are 7 actions you can take today to prevent Cancer:

[Power Beast @powerbeastt]

I'm 38.

When I was young I worshipped politics, went woke (broke) & believed in the myth of equality.

Then I discovered Thomas Sowell, and he changed my life forever.

12 lessons from America's most controversial & unknown philosopher:

[Alex Penunuri @penunurialex]

Everyone knows who Arnold Schwarzenegger is.

A-list actor. 7x Mr Olympia. California governor.

But there is another side to Arnold few people know about (and the hidden reason behind his fame & success):

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

I used to think I was rational.

Then I read Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize-winning work on human decision-making.

He routinely asks 8 questions to expose cognitive traps you fall into daily.

Test yourself with these questions (it's the ultimate BS detector for your brain):