Rigatoni Capital Podcast

Colin Santucci

Helping retail investors grow wealth through long-term, buy-and-hold investing in stocks, index funds, and Bitcoin. Subscribe to the Rigatoni Capital Substack newsletter for weekly analysis, market insights, and portfolio updates.

  1. 16h ago

    In Search of the Next Unsexy Compounder

    Markets are a mess pre-market with the Fed announcing today, a US surprise attack in Jordan by Iran sending oil spiking, SK Hynix's weak headline number, and the KOSPI selling off after its huge run. As Marc Rudajev said yesterday, the semiconductor selloff is really a leverage and margin story. For a long term investor the focus should stay on earnings, and you should still hold some financials and industrials rather than being all semis and Nasdaq. Meta, Microsoft and Lam Research report today, with Amazon and Apple tomorrow. Berkshire had a big day up 3.06% on old economy exposure, and if this is a rotation into old economy value that is fine by me. The heart of the episode is my post "23 Unsexy Compounders to Watch," built around the Casey's General Store story where an analyst realized it was really a pizza chain with better margins, not just a gas station C-store. I used Gemini 3.5 and Claude's Fable 5 to generate possible next O'Reilly or Casey's type names, with the caveat that the AI made mistakes and any of these needs real research through the 10-K and tools like fiscal.ai. Names that came up include Comfort Systems, United Rentals, Fastenal, Cintas, Pool Corp, Carrier, Rollins, Tractor Supply and API's fire protection model. I would love to find a smaller cap niche business where one home run does the work. On the roundup, the Nasdaq 100 has pulled back 10% even though the S&P is only 3% off its highs, and semis are sitting on a head and shoulders neckline around 528 on SMH where I would consider adding. On an Eric Balchunas clip about TQQQ being up 41,000% since inception, I agree with Marc that plain QQQ is enough and I would never recommend TQQQ as a buy and hold. My closing advice is to ignore the noise, focus on the mega cap tech earnings from companies you already own, and remember financials remain the cheap setup Marc and I both like, with Travelers and Chubb as the example. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #compounders #Caseys #OReilly #Berkshire #semiconductors #financials #insurance #earnings #Fed #oil #TQQQ #RigatoniCapital $FIX $URI $FAST $CTAS $POOL $CARR $ROL $TSCO $WCN $SITE $CASY $ORLY $WM $BRK.B $NVDA $LRCX $AVGO $SMH $KLAC $BE $AMZN $AAPL $META $MSFT $TRV $CB $QQQ

  2. 1d ago

    The Semiconductor Selloff Was a Leverage Story | Marc Rudajev

    Welcome back Marc Rudajev of Learning.Investing.Thriving to the podcast. We got into the semiconductor selloff, mark to market earnings, sector rotation, financials, international markets, and jobless claims. If you enjoyed the conversation, please consider checking out Marc's newsletter in the link below. China started mass production of DUV lithography equipment, which hit ASML and sent semis, memory chips and AI infrastructure names lower, with the KOSPI halted after a near 10% drop. Marc's read is that this is a leverage story more than a valuation or earnings one, since Samsung and Micron reported blowout numbers while the shares fell, and Korean investors and US leveraged ETFs got margin called on the way down after the same products exaggerated the move up. We got into mark to market distortions in earnings, where Alphabet's roughly $99 billion in unrealized gains on Anthropic and SpaceX inflate the headline while core earnings actually missed slightly, along with Google's first negative free cash flow since going public. On rotation, I made my case that financials and industrials deserve more love, and Marc argued the financials setup is a Goldilocks with strong broad based bank earnings, more big IPOs like Anthropic coming, a steepening yield curve and volatility feeding the trading desks. He also pitched European index funds in general as a way to get nice exposure to financials, and we closed on initial jobless claims hitting 187,000, the lowest in 60 years. Marc framed this as less a booming economy than a frozen hiring and firing stalemate, plus a look at the Fed's tough spot heading into the decision. Read Marc's work at Learning.Investing.Thriving: https://rudajev.substack.com/ Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #semiconductors #financials #banks #jobless #Fed #ASML #Alphabet #Amazon #insurance #Europe #rotation #RudajevLIT #RigatoniCapital $NVDA $QQQ $ASML $MU $GOOGL $AMZN $CAT $LRCX $JPM $GS $MS $C $WFC $BAC $CB $TRV $XLF $SAN $BBVA

  3. 2d ago

    Is China Purposely Commoditizing AI Models?

    Markets are green pre-market on a reversal Monday, with oil dropping after a weekend of war headlines where the US and Iran held off on attacking each other. It is a busy week with the Fed meeting, where I think they should hold, plus heavy earnings. Thursday is the big day with Apple and Amazon, Microsoft and Lam Research report Wednesday afternoon, and I am also watching Waste Management, L3Harris, Strategy and SpaceX. The weekend story bears are calling circular funding is Nvidia in talks to backstop $250 billion in OpenAI data center financing in Ohio, part of a project costing more than $500 billion with power controlled by the US government and funded separately by Japan. It looks like the fulfillment of the old Stargate alliance that had stalled on financing and power, now with Nvidia stepping in. On the open source fight, a member of technical staff at Anthropic mocked Jensen Huang's Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter, and Gavin Baker pushed back that Nvidia is already a leading open source company and the letter never asked closed labs to open their models. On the Fed, I agree with John Roth's Substack piece on why they should not raise next week. There is some non-core inflationary pressure but not enough to panic, and higher rates hurt small business and younger buyers, while the real estate market has stayed flat rather than fallen. Morgan Stanley estimates big tech CapEx rises 11% to $2.9 trillion by 2028, and any sign of that growth tapering would help the hyperscaler story. The main idea I have been reviewing is whether China is commoditizing AI models on purpose to hurt closed labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. US labs monetize the model through subscriptions while China makes money on everything around it, manufacturing, robotics, hardware, cloud, energy and physical deployment, which fits Xi framing AI as moving from the digital world into the physical world where China already has scale. Making the model free dissolves the layer your competitor sells for margin, and export controls that block the latest chips get routed around when anyone can host an open model. There has not been much to buy in a while for a long term buy and hold investor. The last real opportunity was the June flush out around $687 on the QQQ, where leverage was getting taken out. Friday's weakness was more a pullback in semis and momentum than that kind of flush, so at age 42 I am willing to wait rather than add again here. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: ⁠https://rigatonicapital.substack.com⁠Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #AI #openweights #opensource #China #Nvidia #OpenAI #Anthropic #hyperscalers #Fed #CapEx #earnings #JensenHuang #Stargate #RigatoniCapital $NVDA $QQQ $MSFT $LRCX $META $AAPL $AMZN $BA $V $XOM $CVX $WM $LHX $MSTR $AVGO

  4. 4d ago

    Silver Miners at Decade-Low Valuations and the Hyperscaler Margin Question | Bagholder

    Welcome back Kevin aka Bagholder to the podcast. We had a lot to catch up on and I think you will all get a lot of enjoyment and knowledge from Kevin's insights on many subjects that include Silver, Gold, Bitcoin and MSTR, and AI hyperscalers. If you enjoyed what you heard, please consider checking out Kevin's newsletter in the link below. One of the best finance writers on Substack by far. Silver has fallen from a late January peak near $110 to $120 down to around $58, and Kevin reads the fifty year chart as a cup and handle that is simply pulling back to the $50 breakout before its next leg. His bigger point is the divergence between the metal and the miners. Silver is up several times over a decade while the SILJ has basically flatlined, and the same gap shows up in gold, where the miners' cash flows have tripled on average but the GDX has barely tracked the metal. He owns the GDX and leans on central bank and de-dollarization demand as the reason gold keeps grinding higher. On Bitcoin, off roughly half from its highs near $64,000, Kevin pushed back on my worry that Michael Saylor cannot keep the preferred, Bitcoin, and common holders of Strategy happy at once, arguing there is almost always an accretive move like retiring debt below par. He closed with a story about driving a Chinese Hongqi in Iceland and calling it the best car he has ever driven, which fed his view that the old assumption of American quality over Chinese may have flipped. That ties into open weight AI, Jensen Huang's coalition letter signed by names like Microsoft, Meta, and Palantir, and my own take that all of this commoditizes the model layer, which is why I would sell rather than buy an OpenAI or Anthropic IPO. Read Kevin's work at Bagholder: https://bagholder.substack.com/ Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #silver #gold #goldminers #silverminers #preciousmetals #MSTR #Strategy #MichaelSaylor #centralbanks #openweights #AI #China #Nvidia #energy #Bagholder #RigatoniCapital $AG $HL $SILJ $GDX $NEM $AEM $GOLD $AU $FNV $MSTR $NVDA $MSFT $META $PLTR $GOOGL $ET $XLE

  5. 5d ago

    The Wartime Economy Shows Up in the Backlogs

    Markets are rebounding slightly with Intel bouncing after earnings and Brent Crude back under $100, but this is the dog days of summer and I do not expect a strong Friday. Traders are not going to want to hold into the weekend with the US now thirteen days into striking Iran and talk of a much larger attack. Nobody wants to write about industrials, which is fine by me. Lockheed Martin, RTX, Union Pacific and Northrop Grumman all reported, Caterpillar is still two weeks out, and when you do find coverage it is AI slop scraped off the transcript. My focus on Substack stays on tech, financials and industrials. The Kimi K3 fear from last Friday washed out fast. Tae Kim was one of the first to explain why open weights are good for AI infrastructure, since Kimi K3 needs full chip racks that only Nvidia here and Huawei over there can supply, and downloading an open weight to your own hard drive offline undercuts the whole IP theft argument. A clip from Tae Kim goes further, saying OpenAI and Anthropic extend their lead into next year with better models they have not released, plus recursive self improvement where the agents build on the models themselves. That makes me willing to step back and say my call that the frontier labs were getting commoditized may have been wrong. My post last night covered how the wartime economy shows up in the backlogs. Lockheed and RTX did not have blowout quarters year over year and there were plenty of asterisks, but RTX is sitting on a $289 billion backlog and Lockheed on $230 billion, and that plus forward guidance is why those stocks had follow through. The Defense Production Act, reshoring rare earths, depleted missiles and the data center build out all feed the same story. Transports are near all time highs, and jobless claims at 187,000 say the economy may be running hot. QQQ is trading around 686, which is below the $687 I bought on the June flush down when I got lucky calling that bottom. Micron and semis keep selling off, Broadcom is back to $382, Nvidia has been consolidating. The Nasdaq 100 is my largest position and I have no dry powder, so I do not need to buy this dip. Alphabet is finding buyers near its 200 day and I expect more around $310. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #industrials #financials #defensestocks #earnings #backlog #AI #openweights #Nvidia #TaeKim #Alphabet #wartimeeconomy #transports #railroads #aerospace #Iran #oil #RigatoniCapital $INTC $LMT $RTX $UNP $NOC $NSC $CAT $NVDA $AVGO $MU $GOOGL $TDG $GE $AXP $GS $QQQ $TRV $CB $JPM $BRK.B $IMAX $DLR $NOW

  6. 6d ago

    Industrials Week and Why Google Is No Longer the Cool Kid

    Markets are selling off pre-market after Yemen declared a naval blockade targeting Saudi shipping and struck two tankers in the Red Sea, with oil spiking and Trump saying Iran will be held responsible. This is industrials week for me. Chubb and Northrop Grumman both reported strong earnings earlier and I wrote them up on Substack, with Lockheed Martin, RTX and Blackstone landing today. GM's defense subsidiary is a leading contender to build a large infantry squad vehicle to replace the Humvee, with the Army planning to buy 10,000 trucks and 1,200 already ordered in a deal worth more than $1 billion. That ties back to what Shyam Sankar at Palantir keeps saying about needing to build weapons faster and moving toward a wartime economy, which is bullish for industrials. Using 80% tech as an example, if that is how your portfolio looks, you should have some allocation to financials and industrials alongside it. My own build is roughly 70% tech with the rest in financials and industrials, because those are the sectors that can actually lead a bull market. Consumer staples cannot, and I doubt energy can over a long duration. That is the whole point of my July 21st post, "Stop Being All Tech: Why Your Watchlist Needs Financials and Industrials." Initial jobless claims collapsed to 187,000, the lowest since 1969, which says the economy is running hot and gives the Fed another reason to consider raising rates. The 10 year sits at 4.7 and the two year at 4.35. A Jensen Huang clip covers why Wall Street misunderstood DeepSeek and is misunderstanding Kimi K3 the same way, since great open models drive more usage, more Nvidia computers, more data centers and more diffusion into industries. That is exactly what my Substack argued last week about open weights helping the hyperscalers and AI infrastructure. ServiceNow's GAAP margin drop came almost entirely from $7.4 billion in acquisitions including Armis, with non-GAAP gross margin at 78%, and this earnings season is full of asterisks like that. Alphabet trades around 24 times forward earnings and is sitting on its 200 day near $322. I missed the big run up in Google, and don't own it directly. Rather than trying to pick the next hyperscaler, my suggestion is to buy the Nasdaq 100 on pullbacks, which is where I got lucky buying around $687. Nobody knew Micron would carry that index, and nobody knew Alphabet would go from hottest frontier lab to losing engineers to Anthropic and OpenAI. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #industrials #financials #defensestocks #earnings #AI #openweights #opensource #JensenHuang #Nvidia #Alphabet #ServiceNow #joblessclaims #Fed #oil #RedSea #Iran #sectorrotation #RigatoniCapital $GM $NOC $LMT $RTX $CB $BX $UNP $ITA $NVDA $GOOGL $NOW $MU $QQQ $CAVA $CRWV $NBIS

  7. Jul 21

    Stop Being All Tech: Why Your Watchlist Needs Financials and Industrials

    Trump is reportedly considering banning Chinese open weight AI models in the US, and my take is that the argument it is unsafe to run CCP open weight is fake news, since open weight can be downloaded to your own hard drive and built on locally. It is a head-scratcher that China is embracing open source at all given its history against open code, Bitcoin, and free speech. A clip from Jacob Robinson's podcast with free speech lawyer Preston Brin covers the First Amendment angle, where a future open source model rivaling Fable or Mythos could become a fight over publication as an expressive act. The bigger message for long term investors is not to be shy about AI infrastructure, CapEx, and the hyperscalers, since renting compute is an international story, though a taper in CapEx or backlogs that stop growing, like Alphabet's RPOs on Wednesday, is the real risk that could look like a bubble popping. Most of my AI exposure is passive through the Nasdaq 100 and SMH, with Nvidia as my second largest holding. My main suggestion is to stop being all tech and semis and build a watchlist with financials and industrials for the next pullback, something like 60% tech, 20% industrials such as GE Aerospace, TransDigm, Lockheed and RTX, and 20% financials such as JPMorgan, Chubb, Travelers, Berkshire and Goldman. Boeing landing a Dreamliner order from Philippine Airlines is a picks and shovels win for GE Aerospace, which was down on the day. Netflix is off around 50% from its highs, typical volatility for the name as it shifts from growth to value. Charles Schwab reported clients holding just 9% of assets in cash, the lowest since 2020, and Trump is nearing a fork in Iran between a ceasefire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or a joint campaign with Israel. Northrop Grumman sold off on weak net income, and defense names like RTX, Lockheed and Northrop should be putting up better numbers than this. Chubb reports tonight and I will write it up on Substack. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #AI #openweights #opensource #China #semiconductors #hyperscalers #defensestocks #industrials #financials #Netflix #Iran #earnings #GEAerospace #Boeing #sectorrotation #RigatoniCapital $NVDA $AVGO $QQQ $SMH $ORCL $NFLX $SCHW $NOC $RTX $LMT $GE $BA $CB $CAT $LRCX $GOOGL $TSLA $GEV $TXN $INTC $UNP $BX $NEE $TDG $JPM $GS $TRV $BRK.B $AXP $ITA

  8. Jul 20

    The AI Bubble Is in the Model Layer, Not the Infrastructure

    I get into Kimi K3 from Moonshot, another so called DeepSeek moment, and why I think open weights are good for the hyperscalers and AI infrastructure. I explain that the selloff in semiconductors started before Kimi K3, tied to margin calls in South Korea and AI infrastructure taking a breather, and I use Lam Research and Caterpillar as picks and shovels names that trade in sync at around the same market cap. I break down my Friday post on why Travelers stock is ripping, which I tie mostly to a lack of large storms in North America and higher yields as old low yielding bonds roll off, not AI, and I note Progressive did not have a good quarter. I talk Databricks running out of GPUs, whether it threatens Palantir's moat, and why I think its valuation is more realistic than the frontier labs. I also hit Big Food blaming GLP-1s for weak sales, and I close on Netflix trading around 22 times forward earnings once you strip out the Warner Brothers walk away payment. Rigatoni Capital is a daily morning podcast for long term, buy and hold investors. This is not a show for short term traders or people looking for quick wins. Every morning I go through the most important headlines in finance, markets, and macro, and call out fake narratives in the financial media so you know what actually deserves your attention and what to ignore. Subscribe to Rigatoni Capital on Substack: https://rigatonicapital.substack.com Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All opinions are my own, and I am not a financial advisor. The information provided reflects my personal views and is intended to encourage discussion and thought among readers. Investments involve risk, including the loss of principal, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. #investing #stocks #finance #wallstreet #stockmarket #investor #wealth #money #financialfreedom #passiveincome #dividends #compounding #longterminvesting #buyandhold #valueinvesting #portfoliomanagement #bitcoin #crypto #macro #Nasdaq #SPY #QQQ #SP500 #AI #artificialintelligence #semiconductors #openweights #Moonshot #Kimi #hyperscalers #Databricks #Palantir #Netflix #GLP1 #insurance #RigatoniCapital $LRCX $CAT $MU $SNDK $QQQ $TRV $CB $PGR $PLTR $NFLX $KHC

Ratings & Reviews

5
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Helping retail investors grow wealth through long-term, buy-and-hold investing in stocks, index funds, and Bitcoin. Subscribe to the Rigatoni Capital Substack newsletter for weekly analysis, market insights, and portfolio updates.