View from the Office.

I met up with Howard Lindzon, co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits and managing partner of the venture capital firm Social Leverage, at the iconic Hotel Del on Coronado Island in San Diego. 

We were back at the Del for the first time since the pandemic at an event Howard has been putting on since 2012 (with a few years off for Covid.)

He invites a couple hundred friends who are passionate about investing, markets, startups, fintech and social media. The event is held in October so he calls it Stocktoberfest. 

For years, Howard invited me but I was never able to make it. I had good reasons. I was too busy sitting in a cubicle in New York. It seemed really far and the agenda was fairly random. 

Eventually, I made the trek and realized the distance and randomness was the point.

You learn so much gathering an eclectic group of passionate people together. 

Stocktoberfest was the first place I heard about crypto and robots and drones and trends like fractionalization that I would later read more about on Bloomberg.

I should have realized earlier in my career that it’s always worth getting out of the office and meeting new people. It expands your perspective in ways that you cannot predict.

Each year Howard shares his perspective and this year was no exception. 

Here are Howard’s 2024 Stocktoberfest rules for investing:

Trade LESS.

Turn off the TV.

Cheer for SVIX 30, be nervous at SVIX 10

If you like a low SVIX, live in Italy the SVIX is always 4 in Tuscany

Do NOT take investment advice from billionaires

Find a mentor… pay for it so you can fire the mentor

If you find good people that share good ideas…be extra nice and leave them alone to focus on what they do best (Great White Sharks)

There is no such thing as Information overload, only filter failure

Find companies whose founders are still leading them

The best stocks have endless TAM, that usually comes from swashbuckling founders and of course stock volatility… the founders like Jensen at Nvidia are not interested in market share but in making markets. Find companies that make markets and not reliant on market size and stealing market share to grow

$NVDA might be the next SNVDA

Howard is easy to find on social media or DM me for a warm intro.

#viewfromoffice