Cal

Tech, Aerospace & Defense Investor | Analyst for @asymmetricalbets

Nothing I say is financial advice

[Cal @calioncap]

Over the past two years, I've been able to quintuple my portfolio and outperform $SPY by over 10X...

I've joined X as an analyst at @AsymmetricBets_ to share my research and ideas.

Excited to continue my journey and share the multibaggers I come across, documenting my future positions for everyone to see.

I will be as transparent as can be, win or lose 💯

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

365 days ago, I decided to go all in on making content about stocks.

150K+ combined followers later... I thought I'd share my 3 best and 3 worst longs so far.

And once you read my L's, you're going to realize why I chose this path.

👇Based on the date I dropped a bull thesis (YT, IG, substack mix)

Winners:

1) $MU +431%
2) $AAOI +201%
2) $AMD +199%

Losers:

1) $ORBS -88%
2) $FIG -76%
3) $AVEX -44%

Notice how much more money could've been made on the best stocks versus lost on the worst stocks? That's why we play this game.

James Anderson from Bailey Gifford said it best.

“The asymmetric payoff structure, you can make far more if you're right about a stock than you can lose if you're wrong, is the fundamental attraction of investing in equity markets".

It's been a fun ride so far, and we never know where markets will go next.

But massive shoutout to my partner @KawzInvests and new teammates @LanceTeren @calioncap @yvesstocks.

Plus the great traders/friends I now talk to almost everyday @BULLOFBRITAIN @CKCapitalxx @OptimusDelta @PhotonBull @charaninvests

[Cal @calioncap]

@abayarde_eqss It was in the discord and substack

[Cal @calioncap]

I'll be revealing a publicly traded company in this space tomorrow, so far there's very few eyes on them 👀

-> Net profitable
-> +50% gross margins
-> Recently expanded manufacturing capacity
-> Just underwent management changes
-> Sub $500M mc
-> Is one of two pure plays in the subsector

[a16z @a16z]

VC interest in robotics is surging

Charts of the Week: https://t.co/qmjdkZzisp

[Cal @calioncap]

@SamvegPatel Soon to come 😉 stay tuned

[Cal @calioncap]

$NVEC was my first public "official position"...

And today, we're up 50%

I said I would find you guys multibaggers 😉

More to come ♥️

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

$NVEC is up 52% today.

Yet another smashing earnings success from @AsymmetricBets_ small cap coverage following $PENG and $AEHR.

Flowers on this go to our new analyst @calioncap, whose micro cap specialty is on full display.

Still almost no one knows anything about $NVEC and how much upside this profitable small cap gem has in the robotics revolution.

Revenue $11.03M, up 81%
Net income $6.39M, up 79%
EPS $1.32 vs $0.74, up 78%

And the wildest part?

The segment we built the whole thesis around didn’t even show up in this quarter.

New price targets, our profitability model, and the one thing we’re watching into October are all in the update.

https://t.co/gu5fpnG4fN

[Cal @calioncap]

@_Soubiz_ There's no need

[Cal @calioncap]

@LanceTeren Thanks ❤️

[Cal @calioncap]

@GingerNinjaZA Appreciate it 💯

[Cal @calioncap]

@yvesstocks Great work Yves 👏

[Cal @calioncap]

This stock is different from the typical bottleneck stock that's pitched on twitter... especially a physical AI one.

$NVEC has:

- 60% net margins
- 93% institutional ownership
- $450M market cap
- $5M quarterly net income
- $1M debt
- $400M enterprise value

Give it a read

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

NEO's hands are breaking the internet today.

The hand is well known as the biggest bottleneck in building a capable humanoid, so it's not surprising that 1X is getting attention for the insane dexterity shown here.

What's interesting is there's a publicly traded company specifically tied to humanoid hands that no one is citing around the robotics thesis.

The CEO of $NVEC has literally said "some of the places where our sensors get used in robotics is on the end effectors, which are the hands or fingers of the robot."

The reason NVE sits there is physics. Its sensors run on spintronics, the same effect (GMR) IBM put in a hard drive in the 90s to make storage cheap. Instead of pushing electric charge, it reads the electron's spin, so you get extreme precision and barely any power draw in a package small enough to vanish on a fingertip.

And this isn't a pre-revenue story. NVE fabs its own spintronic wafers in house in Minnesota, prints ~79% gross margins with almost no debt, and has been embedded in Abbott pacemakers for 20+ years. The factory just doubled, capex is about to roll off, and management already confirmed its parts are inside humanoid hands today. Currently trading under 30x PE.

$NVEC feels like a stock every robotics investors needs on their watchlist. Solid fundamentals today with a free call option on the humanoid thesis.

We just published a deep dive into spintronics and $NVEC on Substack. Check it out at link in bio or link below.

[Cal @calioncap]

Don't fade Asymmetrical Bets

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

I literally sent our intern to Sun Valley for the alpha.

And you're bearish Asymmetrical Bets?

[Cal @calioncap]

@KawzInvests Agentic AI theme could get its spotlight soon

[KawzInvests @KawzInvests]

While the neocloud trade gets torched, $DOCN went the other way and ripped 10% today on record preliminary Q2 numbers.

$DOCN DigitalOcean doesn't just rent you the raw GPUs, it runs a full five-layer stack on top of them, infrastructure, core cloud, inference, data, and managed agents inside one platform, then steers customers up into the higher layers.

CEO Paddy Srinivasan said they "continue to extend our software advantage and further separate ourselves from bare-metal GPU rental companies."

A neocloud like $CRWV or $NBIS rents you the chip and leaves the wiring to you, so a customer who needs more than compute has nowhere to go but out.

$DOCN keeps them. RPO crossed $800M, up more than 10x year over year, and average contract life stretched from 1.6 years to over 3. AI ARR now comes primarily from managed services, not bare-metal rental, the layers a renter can't easily walk away from.

Bit salty they dropped this today, not gonna lie. Had the full breakdown queued up.

$DOCN has committed to over $1.9B in data center obligations, and gross margin already slipped from 61% to 56% as capex ran ahead of revenue. That only reverses when the new capacity fills.

If it fills, a platform where every agent consumes the whole stack instead of one rented layer collects a far bigger toll on each token.

Full deep dive breaking down the whole thesis is in the comments and pinned on my Substack in bio.
$DOCN $CRWV $NBIS

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

$20M trade update.

I just updated my "Photonics Is Next" AI infra portfolio on @joinautopilot followed by 3300+ U.S. retail investors and $21.9M in connected assets as of 7/6.

This portfolio, which is also overseen by my partner @KawzInvests, has been a major part of the rise in my profile as an investor.

On 6/2, my optical basket peaked at 123.5% all-time returns, achieving those gains in under 6 months, as computed by Autopilot's software. For context, the fund achieved this return holding a diverse basket of stocks, an incredible outcome for retail investors passively following.

I'm extremely proud of our work on this product. There exists no optical ETF currently for retail investors despite a rush by issuers to cash in on the hype. My picks were launched back in February, providing retail investors a 6 month window to front run the category and get staked into the next AI bottleneck without the complexity of individual stock picking.

Despite the recent sell off, the portfolio is still up 45% year to date, roughly 4.5x the S&P 500.

$LAZR and $LYTE are two ETFs going to launch soon by major players, which should attract billions in AUM. However, I believe my allocations are superior and that my picks will outperform them with lower fees.

So where are we now? Recently, the optical sector has gotten slammed based in my view mainly on sentiment, institutional profit taking, and disputed rumors from a well-known research firm on delays to next-gen architecture. Photonics Is Next is down 29.6% in the last month and 16.8% in just the last week.

That's why I think it's the perfect time to re-balance, add more weight to higher conviction positions, and add one brand new position I missed earlier on.

This rebalance today adds Corning ($GLW) as a new 10.00% position. Down 13% in five days. Now anchored by three hyperscale relationships (a 10x-capacity NVIDIA partnership, a Meta deal worth up to $6B, and a multi billion dollar Amazon agreement).

Three names get boosted: AAOI (12.30%→15.00%), LITE (14.75%→15.00%), and AEHR (4.26%→5.00%).

Six positions are trimmed: TSEM (11.11%→10.00%), COHR (16.07%→15.00%), AXTI (8.58%→5.00%), CIEN (11.39%→10.00%), MRVL (11.11%→5.00%), and VIAV (10.43%→10.00%).

For catalysts that could create upside, I'm watching:

- Hyperscale Capex Guides In Upcoming Earnings
- Earnings From All Optical Names In The Basket Particularly $COHR $LITE $AAOI
- The launch of mainstream optical ETFs $LAZR and $LYTE

$GLW $AAOI $LITE $AEHR $TSEM $COHR $AXTI $CIEN $MRVL $VIAV

--
See link in comments to follow the portfolio using the Autopilot app. Pay attention to disclaimers on the image of this post and the Autopilot app.

[Cal @calioncap]

@michaelsikand @joinautopilot @KawzInvests Photonics is next 🐂

[Cal @calioncap]

@yvesstocks 🤣

[KawzInvests @KawzInvests]

The defense trade just reignited...

Last night, $AVAV had a monster quarter, beating revenue by 15% and EPS by 24%.

WSJ also put out an article last night titled "America Needs More Weapons. JPMorgan Wants to Add Its Firepower."

Jamie Dimon is reportedly pushing JPMorgan more aggressively toward its existing $10B investment plan, targeting companies tied to U.S. national security and economic resilience.

This is arguably the most important wall street figure giving a nod to the defense long.

We're calling the bottom on defense stocks now, you can read our article breaking down our research thesis and picks in the comments or in bio.

[Cal @calioncap]

@yvesstocks 🐐

[Cal @calioncap]

The drone dominance trade makes itself clearer and clearer every day...

On Friday, I began building positions in $AVEX and $AVAV, while already having a position in $EOS.AX

There are other good drone plays like $ONDS and $KTOS, but I'm looking at five different metrics to determine my favorites:

- 2027 estimated revenue and YoY growth
- 2026 revenue and YoY growth
- Backlog & backlog growth
- EV/EBITDA
- Current forward EV/revenue multiple

A lot of defense stocks have gotten crushed since January, with sentiment at a current low.

That is likely because of two things:

Perceived deescalation in the Middle East:

However, regardless of deescalation or not, procurement of drone and counter drone systems likely isn't going to slow down.

Memory stole the show:

A lot of money rotated out of defense and into AI infrastructure like memory. Once money starts rotation again, defense could catch a bid with it now at relatively low multiples comparatively.

[Cal @calioncap]

Ukraine’s Growing Drone Armada Is Overwhelming Russia’s Air Defenses

Ukrainian drones have knocked more than 20% of Russia's oil refining capacity offline, hitting 8 of the country's 10 biggest refineries since March.

The IEA stated:

"This level of disruption is unprecedented in the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict."

And the damage being done by Ukraineis reaching the pump...

As of late June, 55 of Russia's 83 regions were reporting fuel restrictions.

Kyiv plans to build 7 million military drones this year, up from roughly 4 million in 2025.

A few hundred dollar FPV drone destroys a vehicle worth millions, and waves of them saturate air defenses that track only a handful of targets at once.

Something that's very clear:

Cheap attack is beating expensive defense. That pulls capital into the drones and the systems built to stop them.

Three stocks I like for Ukraine's exponential drone dominance:

$AVEX (AEVEX) IPO'd on the NYSE in April. It builds the Phoenix Ghost loitering munition and has shipped more than 5,000 attack drones to Ukraine, more than any US rival. Revenue hit $433M in 2025, Q1 came in at $217M, and it guides $600M+ this year against an $8B pipeline.

$AVAV bought BlueHalo for $4.1B, bolting counter-drone, directed energy and electronic warfare onto its Switchblade line. Its last reported quarter grew 143%. Next print lands June 29.

$KTOS builds jet-powered attritable drones like the Valkyrie alongside a counter-UAS line. Revenue grew 23% last quarter, backlog sits near $2B, and it just landed a $447M Space Force award.

$AVEX $AVAV $KTOS Ukraine’s Growing Drone Armada Is Overwhelming Russia’s Air Defenses

[Cal @calioncap]

@michaelsikand Ukraine was the underdog, but drones are putting them on top

[Cal @calioncap]

@yvesstocks Agreed, I've started scaling in 💯

[Cal @calioncap]

Ukraine’s Growing Drone Armada Is Overwhelming Russia’s Air Defenses

Ukrainian drones have knocked more than 20% of Russia's oil refining capacity offline, hitting 8 of the country's 10 biggest refineries since March.

The IEA stated:

"This level of disruption is unprecedented in the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict."

And the damage being done by Ukraineis reaching the pump...

As of late June, 55 of Russia's 83 regions were reporting fuel restrictions.

Kyiv plans to build 7 million military drones this year, up from roughly 4 million in 2025.

A few hundred dollar FPV drone destroys a vehicle worth millions, and waves of them saturate air defenses that track only a handful of targets at once.

Something that's very clear:

Cheap attack is beating expensive defense. That pulls capital into the drones and the systems built to stop them.

Three stocks I like for Ukraine's exponential drone dominance:

$AVEX (AEVEX) IPO'd on the NYSE in April. It builds the Phoenix Ghost loitering munition and has shipped more than 5,000 attack drones to Ukraine, more than any US rival. Revenue hit $433M in 2025, Q1 came in at $217M, and it guides $600M+ this year against an $8B pipeline.

$AVAV bought BlueHalo for $4.1B, bolting counter-drone, directed energy and electronic warfare onto its Switchblade line. Its last reported quarter grew 143%. Next print lands June 29.

$KTOS builds jet-powered attritable drones like the Valkyrie alongside a counter-UAS line. Revenue grew 23% last quarter, backlog sits near $2B, and it just landed a $447M Space Force award.

$AVEX $AVAV $KTOS Ukraine’s Growing Drone Armada Is Overwhelming Russia’s Air Defenses