Podcasts about drawdowns

What happens to your retirement portfolio when the next major market downturn arrives? Markets can spend years moving higher, making it easy to forget how quickly conditions can change. Preparing for uncertainty often starts long before volatility returns. In this episode, Robert Curtiss speaks with James St. Aubin, CFA®, CAIA®, Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager at Ocean Park Asset Management, about protecting portfolios during market declines without relying solely on traditional diversification.  They explore trend following strategies, downside risk management, investor psychology, portfolio construction, changing stock and bond correlations, the strengths and limitations of AI investment tools, and why maintaining a disciplined investment process becomes increasingly important as retirement approaches. Key points: How trend following strategies seek to reduce large portfolio drawdowns through disciplined investment rules Why diversification alone may not provide enough protection during certain market environments How retirement timing changes an investor’s ability to recover from significant portfolio losses What recent bond market performance reveals about changing stock and bond correlations Why AI investing tools should support, rather than replace, thoughtful financial decision making And more! Resources: Educational videos (bottom of the page) Connect with James St. Aubin: LinkedIn: James St. Aubin Website: Ocean Park Asset Management Connect with Robert Curtiss: rcurtiss@seia.com (626) 795-2944 About Robert Curtiss  LinkedIn: Robert Curtiss Facebook: Robert Curtiss SEIA LinkedIn: SEIA About Our Guest: James St. Aubin, CFA®, CAIA®, is Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager for Ocean Park Asset Management. He has oversight of all Investment Management department activities, in collaboration with Co-founders David Wright and Kenneth Sleeper. An experienced investment management executive, his career of more than 20 years includes leadership roles in asset allocation, manager research, and portfolio construction. James earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from DePaul University and is a CFA® and CAIA® Charterholder.

Every expert sounds convincing until you realize you've collected ten different "right" answers to the same retirement question. Brad Barrett recently found himself overwhelmed by competing FI strategies—from Cody Garrett's bond ladders to Aubrey Williams' risk-based guardrails—and came to a liberating conclusion: sometimes you just need to pick one and move on. Key Topics Discussed Navigating Conflicting Expert Advice (00:02:15) Ginger and Brad discuss the challenge of choosing between different expert strategies for bonds and withdrawal rates, including bond ladder approaches versus risk-based guardrails. Making Financial Decisions Without Certainty (00:10:30) Brad explores the psychology of decision-making in FI, discussing the 'sleep well at night' test and how to evaluate competing strategies when none are clearly wrong. Brad's Japan Trip: Spontaneity Over Optimization (00:22:45) Brad shares his spontaneous three-week Japan trip, including last-minute concert tickets, the cultural observations that impressed him, and learning to prioritize experience over perfect planning. The Kumano Kodo Trail Experience (00:35:20) Detailed discussion of hiking the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, including logistics, luggage forwarding, trail conditions, and the decision to prioritize wellbeing over completion. Travel Rewards Strategy and Hotel Points (00:48:00) Ginger and Brad tackle practical travel rewards questions about card cancellation, point expiration, and strategies for using co-branded versus transferable points effectively. Notable Quotes Brad Barrett on expert advice overload: "I suspect if we had ten different experts in with ten different vehement opinions, I think you and I could be convinced on any of them which might suggest that I think you just pick one." Brad Barrett on simple withdrawal strategies: "It's very reasonable to just log in every month and say, hey, I need three thousand dollars this month, and you go and sell three thousand dollars worth of funds. There's nothing wrong with that." Ginger on decision paralysis: "How do we ultimately make these decisions? There comes a point when it's like, these all sound great, but I have to choose one." Brad Barrett on travel philosophy: "For me, travel is whatever I want to learn about myself, what I want to learn about what I want my life to look like in the future. And those little micro lessons are pretty useful." Brad Barrett on optimization: "I don't think life is necessarily about optimizing all the time. So I think that led to a much better trip." Key Takeaways Use Notebook LM to compare different expert strategies by inputting source documents from various FI experts you trust and having an AI-assisted conversation to clarify differences Consider consulting a fee-only CFP through services like Hello Nectarine ($175-400/hour) when you're within 1-2 years of retirement for specific guidance on withdrawal strategies Read 'Tax Planning To and Through Early Retirement' by Sean and Cody to better understand tax optimization strategies for early retirement Before canceling a co-branded credit card, verify points have transferred to the loyalty program and check the expiration policy for any free night certificates Calculate your potential tax liability in early retirement using the standard deduction and 0% long-term capital gains bracket to understand how much you can withdraw tax-free Research versatile travel clothing (Merino wool shirts, multi-purpose shorts) that work for both hiking and casual dining to simplify packing Explore Agoda for hotel booking in Asia and compare rates with standard travel rewards redemptions Resources and Links ChooseFI Episode 566 - Risk-Based Guardrails for Drawdown with Aubrey Williams ChooseFI Episode 606 - Target Date Funds with Cody Garrett ChooseFI Episode 594 - Travel Rewards Deep Dive with Noah ChooseFI Episode 601 - Travel Rewards Refresher for 2026 with Devin Gimbel ChooseFI Travel Resources Agoda - Hotel Booking Platform Noteb…

184 Milliarden Dollar Gewinn in nur sechs Monaten. Der norwegische Staatsfonds erzielt 9,4 % Rendite – und zeigt dabei etwas, das viele Trader komplett falsch machen. In dieser Folge schauen wir hinter die beeindruckende Zahl und sprechen darüber, was Trader von einem der größten Investoren der Welt lernen können: Risikomanagement, Geduld, Diversifikation, Drawdowns und warum du nicht jeden Tag gewinnen musst. Denn die entscheidende Frage ist nicht: Wie viel kannst du heute verdienen? Sondern: Wie stellst du sicher, dass du auch in fünf Jahren noch tradest? Eine Folge über Trading, Risiko und den Unterschied zwischen schnellem Gewinn und langfristigem Erfolg.

Here's a game that breaks every mobile rule and prints money doing it: Idle Obelisk Miner looks like a DOS game from 1995, has no tutorial, no ads, and almost no marketing — and it's doing an estimated $100K a day on just 4-5K downloads. One developer, a fanatical community, and unit economics nobody else can touch.We break down Idle Obelisk Miner (by Checkbox Entertainment) — a one-man-hit-wonder in the same family as The Tower and Level Devil. They cover the deliberately old-school design (mono Sound Blaster music, pure text, "here's the game, figure it out, we don't care if you don't"), the deep idle systems (mining, crafting with crit chances, drones, prestige, the obelisk DPS-gate, event automation), why it plays like an "unfolding game" that keeps moving your engagement to new mechanics, and the extraordinary numbers: ~$100K/day IAP on ~4-5K downloads/day, pristine tier-one traffic, ~$13 revenue-per-download (versus ~$3 for Golden Goblins), and an ARPDAU multiples above The Tower — all built on a spend-depth the crew estimates at ~$40-50K. The story behind it: solo developer Alex William Olds in Northern Ireland, an "anti-mobile-game" philosophy (no ads, no pop-ups, purchases quarantined in a dedicated store), a 57K-member Discord and a 14K/40K-weekly Reddit, three years of flatlining before the feature set finally hit and retention went positive, and a steady migration of hardcore players from The Tower. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A one-man-hit-wonder like The Tower — Idle Obelisk Miner02:30 "Here's the game, figure it out" — the no-tutorial design06:15 Mining, crafting, drones & the obelisk DPS gate14:30 The unfolding-game design and why prestige works here16:55 Why an idle game with no ads is the right call17:40 The numbers — $100K/day on 5K downloads24:00 Build it for yourself — the one-man-wonder thesis27:30 The community engine — 57K Discord, stealing Tower playersThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Two Democrats in Congress have proposed a new piece of legislation that would impact earners of more than $400,000 annually and have retirement balances over $10 million. These tax implications have some financial planners worried but it is only a proposal – and it serves as a reminder that even with all the planning, some things are uncertain due to being in the hands of politicians. Welcome to this week's Market Moment where Matt, John, and Isaac answer a listener's question on the “Sell in May, go away” theory, review stock market trends like household names drawdowns, examining gas inflation and energy prices over time, and lastly tackling that proposed piece of legislation that makes Matt's blood boil just a bit… 02:29 A listener question regarding the “Sell in May, go away” theory 06:33 Drawdowns among the big companies 17:52 Consumer spending on energy over time and gas prices adjusted for inflation 21:36 Proposed tax changes on retirement accounts for the wealthy

We are joined by ad monetization guest Katerina to break down Smash Fest and the clone explosion surrounding it. We cover the physics-based cannon core (each ball is a move, run out and buy five more — match-3 logic on a physics engine), the detective work tracing it back to Toon Blast's "Cannon Fest" event (spotted by Game Refinery back in November 2024, and run by Peak as both playables and creatives — someone put two and two together and realized it worked), why Smash Fest was abruptly pulled from Google Play right as it scaled to ~300K downloads/day, and the seven-studio clone wave (Royal Smash by Cypher Games, Carnival Knockdown, Knockout, Knock Fever, Stack Smash by Tripledot, Carnival Blast, and more). Katerina digs into the monetization — Smash Fest's fairly basic setup (one rewarded placement, interstitial every fourth attempt) versus Royal Smash's smarter double-your-coins rewarded flow — with estimates landing around ~$130K/day in ads for Smash Fest, and the crew guessing the true total (IAP plus ads) could push toward ~$1M/day given a reported ~1M DAU. Then the UA reality: Smash Fest scaled ~300K downloads/day on ~50 creatives and essentially one great playable, ~90% AppLovin — while Royal Smash is catching up fast with 10x the creative volume, more channels, better LiveOps, and a monetization edge.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A new physics-puzzle category — and the controversy03:00 The core loop — cannon physics, each ball a move07:00 The detective story — it's Toon Blast's Cannon Fest event10:30 Seven studios clone it in one month12:30 Why Smash Fest got taken down as it scaled16:30 The monetization breakdown — ~$130K/day in ads23:00 A new category: physics puzzlers take over from Angry Birds28:00 The UA reality — 50 creatives vs Royal Smash's 500This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katerina Maliaran, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Northwest Registered Agent: Start Your LLC Today at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/ich Monarch: Use code ICEDCOFFEE at https://monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50! Ethos: Get Your FREE Life Insurance Quote at https://ethos.com/icedcoffee Shopify: Stop waiting for permission to build something. Your next revenue stream starts free at https://shopify.com/ich Follow  @DumbMoneyLive  Here! Chris Camillo Twitter: https://x.com/ChrisCamillo *

One concept is eating the entire Forex creative market right now: a "fat guy" gets slapped, abandoned, or humiliated, then rises to power. It was everywhere last month — this month it's on steroids, and every big Forex game has its own version. The crew runs 123 AI creatives in 30 minutes to map where AI creative is actually heading.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg speed through the month's AI creatives and surface the patterns. Golden Goblins still wins with clever non-AI hooks (power progressions, the tag meme) rather than full AI. King Shot's "no ads" theme has spread through Forex, puzzle, and everywhere else — often paired with the now-ubiquitous slapped-guy power fantasy (complete with a one-to-one "Henry Cavill from Wish" character). Playrix's Township and Gardenscapes are flooding feeds with flower-team and egg-overload AI creatives, one-to-one across the portfolio. The through-line: the concept is an old mafia-boss power fantasy reborn through AI — and it's everywhere because, chaos and all, it seems to be working.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 123 creatives in 30 minutes — buckle up01:55 Golden Goblins — winning with clever non-AI hooks03:00 King Shot and the "no ads" theme everywhere04:10 The "fat guy getting slapped" power fantasy — on steroids07:55 Playrix — Township & Gardenscapes' AI flood14:45 Top Heroes' chaos — poop filters and cratering revenue27:00 Pixel Flow & Meow Doku — AI creatives done right29:50 123 creatives in, Mr. Fat Guy leads the packThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Here's a first: we reviewed the copy, not the original. Colony Flow is an ant-themed "destroy the picture" puzzler that's doing an estimated $150K/day — and it's currently being sued over. The crew digs into the game, the monetization trick underneath it, and what the lawsuit might mean for the entire copycat economy.We break down Colony Flow (by OneSoft/ABI Games) — a sort puzzler in the "destroy the picture" genre where a colony of ants slowly carries colored cubes off a picture into your bench. The standout is the monetization: the ants are deliberately slow, which creates constant friction that the game resolves with a rewarded-video (or premium-currency) speed-up. We cover the standard sort-puzzler feature set , the numbers (~100K downloads/day rising to ~200K in July, ~$150K/day IAP with likely 40-50%+ on top from ads), and the UA (~600 creatives, ~90% AppLovin and Mintegral, zero Facebook — because blended campaigns just don't work there). The through-line: the copy is outscaling debate, the friction mechanic is genuinely smart, and this lawsuit could set a precedent for the whole clone economy.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 We're reviewing the copy — the lawsuit setup02:40 The game — ants destroying the picture04:00 Why the ant pathfinding points to Pixel Flow06:10 Slow on purpose — the friction-into-rewarded-ad mechanic09:00 Blockers, fake "daily rewards," and the feature set13:00 The numbers — $150K/day and the Famfinity lawsuit20:00 The creatives — 600 ads, AppLovin & Mintegral, no Facebook29:30 What the lawsuit means for the copycat economyThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

In this episode we answer emails from Luc, (from Quebec!), Nick, and Isaiah.  We discuss surviving ugly drawdowns and bad decades, building a risk parity portfolio that still grows, momentum funds, avoiding fund hopping, and treating health like a real priority. And THEN we our go through our weekly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at Portfolios | Risk Parity Radio.Links:Father McKenna Center Donation Page (please mention Risk Parity Radio in the comment section with your donation):  Donate - Father McKenna Center Catching Up To FI With Ben Carlson:  Risk & Reward: Stress Testing the Long Term Buy and Hold Strategy | Ben Carlson | 225Portfolio Comparison Starting In 2000:  Portfolio Backtester for ETFs and Asset Allocation | testfolioPortfolio Charts Heat Map Chart:  Heat Map – Portfolio ChartsPortfolio Charts Article:  Minimize Your Miss – Portfolio ChartsBreathless Unedited AI-Bot Summary:Imagine retiring into a market that refuses to cooperate. A listener asks the question most withdrawal rate debates dodge: could you keep taking inflation-adjusted withdrawals while your balance shrinks through a 2000-style lost decade, and what would make you cut spending in real time?We walk through how we think about drawdowns, sequence of returns risk, and why “toughing it out” is easier when the portfolio is built for multiple economic outcomes. That leads to practical stress testing: using historical analysis, TestFol.io, and Portfolio Charts heat maps to compare risk parity portfolios, a 60/40, and classic three-fund approaches under the worst start dates. We also share why Monte Carlo alone can be misleading if it relies on simplified assumptions instead of real historical regimes.Next, we tackle a portfolio construction email that hits a modern dilemma: can you be too diversified in a risk parity setup? We unpack a Golden Ratio-style allocation with US and international equity sleeves, small cap value, momentum funds, long-term Treasuries, gold, managed futures, and cash. We discuss when that mix makes sense for decumulation versus accumulation, how momentum can function as a growth proxy, and the one behavior that reliably breaks good plans: fund hopping.We end with a thoughtful note on the “life portfolio” many investors ignore: health. Exercise, consistency, convenience, and even medical support come up as we talk about aligning money decisions with longevity and day-to-day vitality.If this helped you think more clearly about retirement withdrawals, risk parity investing, and building a plan you can stick with, subscribe, share the show, and leave a review.Support the show

MUSKOKA DRAWDOWN BUCK MILLER AUGUST 1 2026

In this episode of The Derivative, host Jeff Malec welcomes back Standpoint Asset Management founder and CIO Eric Crittenden for his third appearance, diving into what's happened since Standpoint launched in 2019 and why their approach has remained unchanged. Eric explains why he resists the industry's obsession with “constant innovation,” favoring disciplined stability in his trend-following and multi-asset process, and how the past six years, from COVID to fast crashes and energy shocks, have stress-tested both his risk management and investor behavior.Jeff and Eric dig into the “abandonment problem” in advisor portfolios: why investors love managed futures when they're hot but struggle to stick with them, and how combining global equity beta with trend-following in one vehicle can make diversification more holdable. Eric outlines three simple metrics advisors say they want, beat a 60/40, lower volatility, and low equity beta, and reveals how few of the 11,000+ funds available at launch delivered on that promise.The conversation also covers replication, capacity and market selection, correlation myths, and why Eric prefers trend plus cap-weighted equities over bonds for long-term compounding. They close with thoughts on AI, product structures, and how categorization and reporting frameworks can work against good investor outcomes.Chapters:00:00-01:12=Intro01:13-11:41=Stable Strategy in a Chaotic Market: Standpoint's Six-Year Stress Test11:42–17:33 = Replicators vs Originals: The Trade‑Offs of Cloning Managed Futures17:34–31:13 = When Trend and Stocks Both Hurt: Correlation, Drawdowns, and Knowing When It's Broken31:13–49:46 = Beating 60/40 and the Bucket Problem: Why True Diversifiers Are So Rare49:47–57:34 = Buckets, Burritos, and the Sausage Problem: Making Diversification Holdable57:35–01:06:41 = Where Standpoint Fits: Liquid Alts, Multi-Asset Overlay, and Rethinking BondsFrom the episode:Liquid Alternatives - RCM AlternativesPrevious episodes with StandpointBLNDX[ing] Trend Following and Global Equity with Standpoint's Eric Crittenden on The DerivativeTrends, Inflation Protection, & Getting Investors to the Finish Line with Eric Crittenden of StandpointDon't forget to subscribe to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Derivative⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, follow us on Twitter at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@rcmAlts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign-up for our blog digest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, or tax advice. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of RCM Alternatives, their affiliates, or companies featured. Due to industry regulations, participants on this podcast are instructed not to make specific trade recommendations, nor reference past or potential profits. And listeners are reminded that managed futures, commodity trading, and other alternative investments are complex and carry a risk of substantial losses. As such, they are not suitable for all investors. For more information, visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rcmalternatives.com/disclaimer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

A studio in Gaziantep had the idea in November, started building at the end of December, ran a marketability test in January, and by July they're doing an estimated $300K/day. That's the Cube Land story — and we love it!We break down Cube Land Puzzle by RotateLab (Turkey) — a 3D voxel "destroy the picture" blast puzzler where you rotate a pixel-art object (a gummy bear, a Rubik's cube, a piano, a submarine) and blast matching cubes off it into number-tile slots. They cover why the 3D layer makes it a near-perfect iteration on This Is Blast / Pixel Flow (the rotation adds real strategy and satisfaction a flat conveyor can't), the deliberately light-but-solid feature set (standard blockers, Crown Tournament, Skylift, a journey milestone track, ~650 levels), and the numbers: ~$90K/day IAP visible on Sensor Tower (the hosts estimate the true figure at 1.5-2x that, roughly $150K IAP + ads for a likely ~$300K/day total, with a DAU spike toward ~700K and strong Japan traffic). Plus the UA machine: internal playables, ~90% of spend on AppLovin⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The game — Cube Land, a 3D blast puzzler04:00 Gameplay — rotate, aim, blast the picture apart07:30 Blockers, Crown Tournament, Skylift & the 650-level saga12:20 The studio story — RotateLab and the earthquake pivot14:00 Idea to scale in 6 months — the timeline18:20 The numbers — ~$90K/day IAP and the ~$300K estimate24:50 The creatives — 200 in 30 days, internal playables27:40 Why Meta can't compete for hybrid gamesThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Part 4 of our Day after Drawdown series is here, and we join Ed Clarke on site, inside his pub conversion that sold in just 6 days! ▶︎ Website - www.thepropertyfinancecollective.co.uk▶︎ The Host - With a passion for creative finance and the ability to structure deals for Finance, I love helping first time Developers and Investors to get deals packaged for the finance needed to push Property Careers forward, and to date I have raised over £500 million for Developers and Investors. I first got into property at the age of 18 when I got into Conveyancing straight out of school. I then went into Estate Agency, back into Conveyancing and I then got into brokering at the age of 22. I decided a year and a half later that I wanted to work for myself and try and shake up the market place! At the age of 24 I set up The Property Finance Guy and became the youngest owner of a Commercial Finance Brokerage in the Country, and alongside this I now also have a successful Training Company, educating Investor and Developers on how to raise finance, and a successful Podcast.I am a keen public speaker and have delivered training and speeches to over 1000 investors and developers over the past 2 years.Follow Michael:▶︎ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thepropfinguy/▶︎ Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thepropertyfinanceguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▶︎ LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-primrose-886a365b/?originalSubdomain=uk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the Podcast on:▶︎ Apple Podcasts - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-property-finance-podcast/id1448207494⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▶︎ Spotify - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JiDtm7hc0EfSW9LjCXDaO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▶︎ YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/@thepropertyfinanceguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▶︎ Disclaimer - With the market changing so quickly, the content could be out of date at the time of listening.This Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Some months the creative trends are wild. This one, Matej says it straight: it's quieter — everyone's copying the same big 4X and Golden Goblins playbook, AI is everywhere, and studios are scaling down for summer. But the detective work underneath is where it gets good, including a live investigation into who actually spends the most on UA and who really leads on revenue once you account for the money Sensor Tower can't see.We run the month's creatives and end up somewhere more interesting than the creatives themselves. They cover the copy-paste economy (Golden Goblins reskinned with bears and trees as AppQuantum's new Animal Valley; Idle Zombie Miner cloning the original one-to-one), Pantheon's ~9,600 creatives iterating on a single three-year-old winning concept, the "revenue down but DAU up" signal that reveals hidden D2C web-shop money (Raid Rush, Monopoly Go), the sad death of Match Villains (UA turned off, ~30% DAU lost in two months)The honest through-line: the creatives are converging, so the edge is in the data — reading DAU vs revenue, spotting the D2C dark pools, and knowing who's really winning.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 A quieter month — and why that's still worth watching02:40 Top creatives by impression share — how to read the tab05:10 Golden Goblins reskinned — Animal Valley, bears and trees09:40 Pantheon's 9,600 creatives and the D2C revenue tell12:30 Match Villains is dead — UA off, 30% DAU gone16:40 The data detective — who spends the most on UA24:50 The revenue ranking and the D2C "dark pools"31:20 Playrix's AI flood and the Simpsons diminishing returnsThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

This week on Sustainability Now!, we bring you highlights from the Intentional Endowments Network 2026 Virtual Forum. The Closing Keynote on June 2nd was given by Jon Foley, Executive Director of Project Drawdown. Intro by Georges Dyer from the Intentional Endowments Network. Project Drawdown is an independent nonprofit organization driving bold, science-based climate action through intersectional solutions touching all parts of society. Tune in for an inspiring address from Dr. Jonathan Foley, a climate and environmental scientist and the Executive Director of Project Drawdown (https://drawdown.org/). Dr. Foley shares more about Project Drawdown's most recent projects and the urgency of the climate movement as global temperatures continue to rise at an accelerating rate. Learn more at https://www.intentionalendowments.org/ien_2026_virtual_forum_agenda  As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW! Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at https://forwardradio.org

Take Minesweeper. Add Sudoku logic. Put cats on it. Congratulations, you've just made $200,000 a day..We break down Meow Doku by Oakever, the cat-puzzle that came out of nowhere to shake up a category that hadn't changed in a decade. They walk the game (it's Minesweeper crossed with Sudoku — one cat per color, per row, per column, cats can't touch — simpler than Minesweeper and endlessly satisfying), the pure ad monetization (100% ads, no IAP, ~80%+ from interstitials, a clever cooldown timer that tightens the longer you play), and the numbers (~400K downloads/day, 2M+ DAU with huge US and Japan share, an estimated ~$200K/day and climbing). Then the portfolio: Oakever (real name Learnings / Beijing Lexing) is a fully bootstrapped, Singapore-based Chinese giant with a ~200-300 person R&D team, 70M MAU, a billion cumulative downloads, five straight years of 100%+ revenue growth, and a claim to being the #1 Chinese game company by ad revenue on Meta and Google. And the twist that makes the whole thing a masterclass: MeowDoku isn't original — it's a cats reskin of "Queens Master Sudoku," a game that sat dormant making almost nothing for a year and a half until Oakever found it, added cats, and out-executed everyone on UA. Plus, this game is a LINKEDIN GAME!!⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The game we've wanted to cover for 3 years03:30 Minesweeper meets Sudoku — the core rules06:30 Why it's simpler than Minesweeper (and better)10:20 100% ads — the cooldown timer trick14:30 The numbers — 2M DAU, ~$200K/day22:50 Inside Oakever's monster portfolio27:30 The bootstrapped Chinese ad-revenue king36:40 The twist — it's a reskin of Queens Master SudokuThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Are you looking to save time, make money, and start winning with less risk? Then head to https://www.ovtlyr.com.Learn more about OVTLYR: https://youtu.be/TUCbD5KovlcNobody likes talking about losing money... but every serious trader eventually has to face it. Drawdowns are part of the game. The question isn't whether they'll happen... it's what you'll do when they do.This conversation gets into the reality of professional trading. Why even traders who make hundreds of percent in a year still struggle emotionally through drawdowns. Why chasing losses almost always makes things worse. And why the traders who survive aren't the ones who never lose... they're the ones who know exactly how much they're willing to lose before they ever enter a trade.There's a powerful lesson throughout this episode that goes far beyond the charts. Great trading isn't about predicting every move. It's about controlling your emotions, sticking to your rules, reducing risk whenever possible, and trusting a system even when results aren't going your way. The market doesn't owe anyone a win... but discipline gives you a chance to still be standing when the big winners finally arrive.There's also a full portfolio walkthrough covering real trades, Apple option rolls, GameStop, Roblox, Robinhood, Coca-Cola, and Box, plus a deep discussion on position sizing, risk management, trading psychology, and lessons from professional trader Lance Breitstein on handling drawdowns without letting emotions take over.✅ How professional traders handle drawdowns without panicking✅ Trading psychology, emotional discipline, and risk management✅ Apple option rolling strategy and reducing portfolio risk✅ Real trade management with GameStop, Roblox, Robinhood, Box, and more✅ Building a trading plan that survives losing streaksIf you've ever questioned your strategy after a losing streak... or wondered why trading feels more psychological than technical... this episode will probably change the way you think about the markets.Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7DfwJTC_Ow&t=14sSubscribe to OVTLYR for disciplined trading strategies that actually make sense.

Pokémon Champions launched on mobile doing roughly $300-400K/day. Two days later it was collapsing. It's now around $80K/day and falling — a textbook shark fin from the biggest IP on the planet. We cover the wins on this podcast, but we also cover the failures, and this one is genuinely fascinating.We break down what went wrong with Pokémon Champions. The game is essentially Pokémon Stadium (the N64 classic) rebuilt for mobile — a pure battler with no exploration, no gyms, no story, no breeding, no catching Pokémon in the wild. The gacha is neutered into a "pick one of ten" system with no randomness at all. And the killer: Pokémon Home import lets players bring their existing collections straight in from Pokémon Go and other titles, so many players arrived on launch day with everything already unlocked — what Jakub calls "Web3 interoperability in play," and a total economy destroyer. Monetization is cosmetics, a battle pass, and ranch refresh tickets. That's it. The crew also contrasts it with the Pokémon apps that genuinely print money (TCG Pocket at ~$15M/month, Pokémon Sleep at ~$150K/day and ~$150M in three years, Pokémon Go spiking on the 30th anniversary), and picks apart the UA: ~300 creatives that are really about 7 concepts, almost all 15-21 seconds, cut from a year-old trailer.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Why we're covering a failure02:40 It's Pokémon Stadium, rebuilt for mobile07:05 The neutered gacha — pick one of ten11:26 The shallow monetization: cosmetics and a battle pass12:30 Pokémon Home import — the economy killer14:35 The numbers — shark fin, Japan-driven, 16% US17:06 The Pokémon apps that actually print money19:59 The creatives — 300 videos, 7 concepts, all too shortThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

In this episode, Sean discusses what a retirement drawdown strategy is and why having a plan for withdrawing your savings is just as important as building them. He explains how much you may be able to withdraw, which accounts to draw from first, and how strategies like annual withdrawal planning and the bucket strategy can help create reliable retirement income while supporting your long-term financial goals.

Gossip Harbor is now the fourth-highest-grossing game on the planet — behind only Royal Match, Honor of Kings, and Whiteout Survival. The merge category the crew has been covering for years is bigger and more stable than ever, and Century Games just showed exactly how you stack another winner on top of your portfolio.We break down Hotel Legacy by Century Games (of Tasty Travels fame), using it as a lens on the whole merge category. They recap the state of merge (Gossip Harbor at ~$95M/month and still climbing, Tasty Travels, Travel Town, Flambe, Seaside Escape), walk Hotel Legacy's board and its standard-but-polished feature set (three LiveOps systems, bubble offers, generators, the min-max storing loop), and dig into the genuinely puzzling part: the winning My Perfect Hotel / Last Asylum creative concept that's driving installs isn't actually in the game yet. The lesson: you stack merge games by shipping essentially the same game with a new theme, then testing creatives at scale until you find what to build next.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The state of merge — Gossip Harbor is #4 globally05:00 The revenue picture — $95M/month and climbing06:46 Hotel Legacy enters at #15 — 50K/day, all tier-one09:00 The "six merge games" player behavior theory10:06 Walking the board — LiveOps, bubble offers, min-maxing17:00 The mystery — the winning creative isn't in the game17:42 The creatives — My Perfect Hotel, Last Asylum, 500 in 30 days27:16 How to stack a merge game on your portfolioThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Voodoo's Path of Kings looks like Skyrim from the surface. It plays more like Tinder. And underneath the swipe mechanic is one of the more clever fusions of gameplay and monetization we've seen — where the gameplay itself is basically the offer pop-up.We break down Path of Kings, the Voodoo mid-core idle RPG they flagged on the Creative Trends episode. They walk it live — the swipe-to-choose mechanic (swipe right and you go straight into a purchase, swipe left and you skip), the Legend-of-Mushroom-style idle core streamlined for a Western fantasy audience, the ads-as-biggest-upgrade loop, the prestige treadmill that resets the map when content runs out, and a genuinely useful tangent on how to actually price a "remove the interstitials" offer (Felix does the ad-monetization math live). Then the numbers and the bigger picture: Path of Kings is doing ~$30K/day and sits right at the make-or-break threshold early Voodoo games have to clear, while Voodoo overall is doing ~$25M/month in IP revenue off Marble Sort and Castle Clashers/Busters — a real mid-core pivot that has everyone talking IPO. Plus the creatives: ~1,384 in 30 days, 100% AI, and gloriously broken (floating horses, dragons you don't sit on, four art styles per video).This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Starting off July on a Wobble SpaceX added to NAZ100 Oil prices drifting lower – Gas at the pump? JOBS Number – Odd Move Saylor is selling Bitcoin! PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? PayPal.Donation.Button({ env:'production', hosted_button_id:'JJJHP2GDEJC7J', image: { src:'https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif', alt:'Donate with PayPal button', title:'PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!', } }).render('#donate-button'); Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm-Up - JOBS Number - Odd Move - Saylor is selling Bitcoin! - VEGGIE ALERT! - US RESUMES POWERFUL STRIKES ON IRAN (Is this still a ceasefire?) Markets - Starting off July on a Wobble - SpaceX added to NAZ100 - Oil prices drifting lower - Gas at the pump? - Oracle - Canary? World Cup? - USA is out... (Bad goalie move last night) IRAN - Looks like war is back on - at least for tonight - Oil rises about 3% on the news - US revokes Iran's ability to sell oil around the world - Markets don't seem overly concerned - VIX still low at 16 - Odds that this will be more than a quick in and out? --- Could it be that Iran was waiting until after the Funeral? JOBS COOL, FED STILL HOT - June payrolls came in at +57,000, well under the +110,000 estimate. - April and May were revised down by a combined 74,000 jobs. - Unemployment slipped to 4.2%, but not for the best reason: the labor force shrank by 720,000 people. - Labor-force participation fell to 61.5%, the lowest in more than five years. - Leisure and hospitality lost 61,000 jobs, a notable hit to the consumer-service economy. - Average hourly earnings rose $0.13 in June. - Fed setup: weaker hiring argues for patience, but inflation is still above target, so the market is back to parsing every Fed sentence. - - Fed Funds Futures Now only ONE Raise by Year-End DOW RECORD, NASDAQ WOBBLE - The Dow closed at a record 52,900.07 after the soft jobs report cooled near-term rate-hike fear. - S&P 500 finished roughly flat. - Nasdaq fell about 0.8% as chip stocks dragged the tape lower. - The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped more than 5% on July 2. - Apple rose nearly 5% on iPhone launch optimism. - Nvidia and other AI/chip names stayed volatile after a huge first-half run. - Goldman client data showed hedge funds dumped tech hardware and semiconductor exposure for a fourth straight week. - The issue is not "AI is dead"; the issue is when all the AI capex turns into visible returns. TESLA BEATS DELIVERIES, STOCK STILL GETS HIT - Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, a record quarter and above Wall Street expectations. - Production was 451,758 vehicles. - Model 3/Y made up 467,762 deliveries. - Other models were only 12,364. - Energy storage deployments were 13.5 GWh. - Shares fell about 7.5% after the report, the worst one-day drop in roughly a year. - Pressure points: margin worries, price cuts, demand sustainability, and the market questioning whether the EV story is enough at a very rich valuation. - As of Monday afternoon, TSLA was around $420 with a market cap near $1.49 trillion and a trailing P/E around 385. MORE MUSK - TESLA PUTS AI ON A BUDGET - Tesla reportedly capped employee spending on third-party AI tools at $200 per week starting July 6. - Grok was reportedly exempt from the cap. - Setup: Tesla wants employees using AI, but not running up unlimited outside-token bills. - Cost-control angle: AI is becoming a normal operating expense, not a science project. - Funny part: even at Tesla, the AI bill apparently needs a limiter. NVIDIA SERVER DELAY NOISE - Nvidia shares held up despite reports of delays tied to its next AI server architecture. - SemiAnalysis reportedly said Nvidia's Kyber architecture could slip by up to 12 months into 2028. - Nvidia pushed back and said its development roadmap is unchanged. - Mizuho called the delay report "noise" and said it was not a material issue for the stock. - NOTE:  Story is still report-driven, not company-confirmed. ORACLE - CANARY? - Oracle's stock fell 19% this week, the steepest drop since August 2001, the depths of the dot-com bust. - The company's capital expenditures surged 162% in the latest fiscal year, with almost $24 billion in negative free cash flow and $130 billion in debt. - Co-founder Larry Ellison has fallen behind the Google co-founders, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell on the list of the world's richest people. - After the company reached a peak market cap of $900 billion in September, on enthusiasm about Oracle's AI customers, the stock has lost about 55% of its value. - The crux of the problem is that for Oracle to fulfill its AI infrastructure commitment, primarily to OpenAI, it's having to raise record amounts of debt, creating balance sheet risk while focusing on lower-margin offerings. SPACEX ENTERS THE INDEX MACHINE - SpaceX is set to join the Nasdaq-100 on Tuesday after its recent IPO. - The company's valuation is around $2.1 trillion. - Its Nasdaq-100 weight will initially be under 1% because of limited public float. - Index-tracking funds tied to the Nasdaq-100 will need exposure, creating automatic demand. - Key issue: big valuation, small float, forced index buying. - Watch the lockup calendar: index inclusion can create near-term demand, but employee and insider selling later can change the supply picture. - Podcast angle: retail gets "SpaceX exposure" through QQQ, but not necessarily much exposure at first. STRATEGY SELLS BITCOIN TO PAY THE BILLS - Strategy sold 3,588 bitcoin last week for about $216 million. - Proceeds are being used for preferred-stock dividends and dollar reserves. - The company still holds 843,775 bitcoin, valued around $52 billion. - Q2 included an $8.32 billion paper loss tied to bitcoin weakness. - The company's average bitcoin purchase price is around $75,476. - Recent sale prices were around $59,000 to $61,000. - Funny part: the former "never sell" bitcoin treasury poster child is now selling bitcoin to service the capital structure. - Watch for copycats: any company that copied the bitcoin-treasury model may face the same liquidity math if crypto stays weak. MICROSOFT CUTS AGAIN - Microsoft said it will cut about 4,800 jobs. - Shares slipped nearly 1%. - Job cuts landed while investors are still rewarding AI spending. - The message? spend heavy on AI, cut elsewhere. --- Yes, AI is killing jobs... SERVICES HOLD AT 54 - ISM non-manufacturing PMI came in at 54.0. - Result matched expectations. - Reading above 50 means services activity is still expanding. - Market took it as firm enough for growth, not hot enough to force an immediate Fed move. EARNINGS SEASON STARTER - Delta and PepsiCo report this week. - Levi Strauss also reports this week. - Delta is the read on travel, premium demand, fuel, and consumer resilience. - PepsiCo is the read on snack pricing, volume, and lower-income consumer pressure. - Q2 earnings bar is high after the market's strong second-quarter rally. OIL BACK TO PRE-IRAN WAR LEVELS - Brent settled around $71.99. - WTI settled around $68.55. - OPEC+ approved another output-target increase for August, adding 188,000 barrels per day. - Since April, planned increases add up to nearly 800,000 barrels per day. - Crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz are recovering, taking some geopolitical premium out of the market. - Saudi Arabia cut official selling prices, another sign the market is shifting from shortage panic to buyer resistance. - Good for headline inflation if it sticks; bad for energy bulls who were pricing war-premium oil. SPR DRAWDOWN - U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell by 6.2 million barrels. - SPR level is now 319.5 million barrels. - That is the lowest level since April 1983. - Drawdown comes while oil prices are easing and OPEC+ is adding supply. - Energy setup: lower crude helps inflation, but reserve levels are historically thin. MORE OIL - CHINA BUYS THE DIP - China stepped up Middle East oil purchases as prices fell. - Saudi Arabia cut export prices to Asia to a six-year low. - Brent settled at $71.99. - WTI settled at $68.55. - OPEC+ approved another August production increase of 188,000 barrels per day. - Planned OPEC+ supply increases since April now total nearly 800,000 barrels per day. - Lower oil supports disinflation but raises questions about global demand. VEGGIE ALERT Item Status Asparagus ESCALATED Artichokes EXTREME Cantaloupe EXTREME Fennel (Anise) EXTREME Green Leaf / Red Leaf Lettuce ESCALATED Honeydews EXTREME Iceberg Lettuce EXTREME Limes (175's and larger) ESCALATED Green Bell Peppers ESCALATED Romaine Lettuce EXTREME Romaine Hearts EXTREME White Asparagus ESCALATED Snacking Tomatoes (Grape & Cherry) ESCALATED   PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - Conair Recalls Over One Million Cuisinart Grill Brushes Due to Ingestion Hazard - Product: Metal Wire Bristle Grill Brushes - 1 Million or so - BUT none of these are any good..... CHINA NOT MESSING AROUND - A Chinese court handed a rare death sentence to a former official on corruption charges, in a severe punishment underscoring the intensity of President Xi Jinping's anti-graft crackdown. - Yang Youlin, a former vice director of an economic zone in the eastern city of Nanjing, was sentenced to death on Monday for taking more than 2.21 billion yuan ($325 million) of bribes between 2013 and 2023, according to the state broadcaster China Central Television. - Yang was found guilty also of embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering. His crimes were “exceptionally grave” and caused massive losses, warranting the capital sentence, CCTV reported, citing the Changzhou Intermediate People's Court in Jiangsu province. DRONES - Dronemaker AeroVironment reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat on the top and bottom lines. - The company's funded backlog of $1.2 billion was up substantially over last year, but grew only slightly from the $1.1 billion last quarter. - Autonomous systems were a strong point with revenue of $492 million that beat the $402 million StreetAccount expectation.   Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? PayPal.Donation.Button({ env: 'production', hosted_button_id: 'JJJHP2GDEJC7J', image: { src: 'https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif', alt: 'Donate with PayPal button', title: 'PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!' } }).render('#donate-button-2'); THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN for SpaceX (SPCX) Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt!     FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS   See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

Lilith just did something genuinely new and genuinely reckless. Clash of Critters fuses the coin-looter/social-casino core with a pachinko machine and an idle RPG into one surprisingly clean package, then runs creatives packed with what can only be described as Pokémon from Wish. The crew breaks down whether the boldest iteration in the genre this year will actually fly.We go deep on Clash of Critters by Lilith (the AFK Arena / Rise of Kingdoms studio). They walk the game live — the pachinko coin-looter core that funnels directly into your XP, the auto-leveling idle RPG creatures, the raid/revenge social-casino mechanic lifted one-to-one from Coin Master and Monopoly Go, the card-album and gacha meta — and assess the iteration itself: a male-skewed, Asian-flavored coin looter built on a mechanic that's never dominated the very Asian markets it's aimed at. Then the creatives: ~4,000 in 30 days, heavy AI, Forex concepts, and a batch of blatantly Pokémon-styled ads that ran in Japan and then quietly went dark right before global launch. The recurring "see you in Tokyo" joke writes itself.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 What is Clash of Critters — Lilith's coin looter RPG02:57 The pachinko machine core and the XP connector05:27 The "Pokémon from Wish" creatures and auto-leveling09:33 The raid mechanic and the coin-looter formula19:43 The verdict — a clean iteration missing a front end22:00 The numbers — $200K/day and the Chinese soft launch29:22 The creatives — 4,000 in 30 days, heavy AI, Forex36:47 The Pokémon problem — "see you in Tokyo"This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

Mobile has a creativity problem — and Steam keeps proving it. In this quarter's Full Steam Ahead, the crew scans the top Q1 Steam releases to find the genre mashups and fresh cores that could translate into mobile's next wave of hits.The throughline: all the creativity got outsourced to Steam. Mobile's job is to figure out how to execute these cores for a wider audience.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Full Steam Ahead — the setup and method04:00 Dialogue — the cyberpunk waifu dial-puzzler08:40 Raccoon coin-pusher roguelike + Screechy Scratch12:00 The proven sims — car co-op, video store, Quarantine Zone16:24 Star Rupture and the factory-building core19:20 Super Battle Golf — real-time PvP chaos22:45 Mewgenics — the Binding of Isaac creators' cat roguelite26:00 Slay the Spire 2 hits $140M — the deck-builder caseThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've actually been on both sides of this industry - game publishers, agencies, and successful exits. They get it.Here's the thing - Potensus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. Not programmatic. Direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax.And they handle everything with their in-house team. PLUS they're partnered with PlayableMaker WINK WINK - so they'll take a brand's YouTube video or a static banner and actually turn it into a playable ad or rewarded video. Proper interactive format, built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming-native creative, publishers getting higher CPMs. Everyone wins.Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio here https://vimeo.com/showcase/12093300?fl=so&fe=fs---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

The whole market is chasing the same thing: one magic creative that lowers your CPI. But this month's creative trends show the real storyWe run through the month's creatives and surface the patterns: AppQuantum/Golden Goblins as the copy-machine the whole market imitates (now with a ~100-person creative team), the onboarding land grab where studios slap My Perfect Hotel, Last Asylum, and other hyper-casual hooks onto match and merge onboarding, the Game of Thrones IP game (Dragonfire) as a test of whether Western IP can punch back against the Chinese creative machine, Voodoo's standout new mid-core game Path of Kings (old-school pixel RPG nostalgia, 60K downloads/day since a May launch), AI creatives flooding every genre (and the hand-movement tell that still gives them away), and several games clearly in troubleThe throughline: copy and execute are two different things. You can copy any creative - but can you actually execute it?⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The full crew and creative trends kickoff02:30 Golden Goblins / AppQuantum — the copy machine09:00 The "getting slapped" hook and Whiteout Survival09:40 Game of Thrones IP vs the Chinese creative machine20:00 Panteon, Raid Rush, and the AI-tower signature22:50 Voodoo's Path of Kings — the standout new game26:30 The onboarding land grab — Match Villains & beyondThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.meIf you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

The World Cup is here, and three football games are quietly printing money — but in completely different ways. eFootball is doing $45M a month after nearly a decade of straight-line growth, and almost nobody in the industry is talking about it.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg break down the three realistic football giants — Dream League Soccer, Konami's eFootball, and EA Sports FC Mobile (the game formerly known as FIFA Mobile). They get into the wildly different country mixes (Dream League at 25% US revenue, eFootball at 43% from Japan, EA FC pulling 20% from China and 16% from Korea), the radically different ad strategies (eFootball at just 0.65% ad revenue, EA FC around 15-25%, Dream League a remarkable 68% ad-driven), the gacha and card-collection monetization, the FIFA licensing divorce that freed EA from a reported nine-figure annual fee, and the UA reality: all-real-gameplay creatives, great CPIs for the genre, and the curious fact that none of them are on AppLovin despite Dream League being a perfect blended-ROAS candidate.The throughline: same sport, same core gameplay, three completely different businesses underneath.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 The numbers — eFootball at $45M/month01:30 Three games, big structural nuances05:30 Ad revenue split — 0.65% vs 15% vs 68%06:50 The country mix that changes everything11:00 Inside the games — gameplay and gacha17:30 The FIFA license divorce and EA's escape26:30 The ad stacks and what they get wrong35:30 UA reality — real gameplay, cheap CPIs, no AppLovin--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Podcast: Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SAChapters---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

This month's playable trends are the kind you only catch when you're staring at hundreds of creatives in a row: the dress-up "please your boyfriend's mom" hook quietly flooding match-3 UA, and the Playrix templated-playable machine that turns one build into an entire portfolio.Matej Lančarič and Ondrej Mosberger are joined by Robin Kuyer, who leads Unity PlayWorks (formerly Luna Labs) and has been building playables for five years. They break down the fashion/dress-up template appearing across Crazy Labs, Kinetic, and others (often with identical assets) and why it's really a match-3 onboarding wrapper, the Playrix masterclass of strongly templated playables reused across Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes, and the single most underused tactic in the industry: taking one winning playable build and squeezing everything out of it with asset swaps, camera-angle changes, and different cut points. They also dig into long playables (and why 3 minutes can pre-qualify your best payers), the authentic-vs-non-authentic debate (where CTR can double but ROAS stays close), network approval chaos, and where AI playable production is genuinely heading — plus why "make a playable that performs well" will never be a working prompt.The throughline, straight from Robin: production speed means nothing without the foundation. Knowing what a good hook, reward loop, and progression actually look like is the part too many studios skip.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Game designers on playable team?03:35 The fashion / dress-up playable pattern08:00 Why it's really match-3 in disguise16:14 The Playrix templated-playable masterclass20:35 One build, many ads — asset swaps and camera angles27:00 Long playables and pre-qualifying payers36:46 Authentic vs non-authentic playables40:00 Can AI vibe-code a winning playable?--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Trend following investors are constantly searching for ways to improve performance, but not every improvement survives contact with reality. Rob Carver joins Niels Kaastrup-Larsen to explore whether investors should chase the strongest trends, how different asset classes contribute to returns across market cycles, and why overfitting remains one of the biggest dangers in systematic investing. They also discuss the rise of AI generated trading strategies, the debate around perpetual futures, the changing role of economic data, and what diversification really means when markets become driven by a handful of dominant forces.-----50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE-----Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.IT's TRUE ? – most CIO's read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.Send your questions to info@toptradersunplugged.comAnd please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.Follow Rob on Twitter.Episode TimeStamps:00:00 - Introduction and summer optimism in the UK02:10 - Middle East developments, SpaceX and the new Fed Chair06:13 - Concerns about economic data and market transparency10:38 - Trend following performance and current market positioning14:39 - How Rob evaluates strategies and portfolio construction19:57 - The factor zoo and true sources of return22:37 - What trend following adds beyond traditional risk premia29:54 - The rise of perpetual futures and exchange concerns42:35 - Quantica research on trend performance across asset classes55:01 - Why commodities have become a dominant source of trend returns56:06 - AI generated trading strategies and the risk of overfitting01:05:48 - Drawdowns, diversification and lessons from recent researchCopyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved----PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score One of the things I'm really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here3. Other Resources that can help youAnd if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click HerePrivacy PolicyDisclaimer

Supercell rebooted MoCo, their monster-hunting RPG, with a big relaunch update - new weapons, new abilities, redesigned portals, daily jobs. The hype cycle lit up. And after playing it, the verdict is brutal: it's still dead on arrival.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg dig into the MoCo relaunch and why it doesn't fix the game's core problem. MoCo launched in March 2025 with a download spike, hit a hard shark fin, and the relaunch pumped it back up to roughly 230K DAU — but only around $14K/day in revenue and ~$5M lifetime (about one peak day of Brawl Stars). Jakub's diagnosis as a hardcore RPG player: the game has no depth, no chase items, no endgame, just farming stat-cores and a cosmetics shop. The relaunch added "depth-ish" — a little bit of depth sprinkled into the depth — but lightweight RPGs don't exist, and Supercell's broad-and-accessible business model is fundamentally incompatible with what makes RPGs work.The conclusion the hosts land on is uncomfortable: in its current state, MoCo is essentially unsalvageable as an RPG. Either pivot it into a MOBA, or kill it and go back to strategy games — the thing Supercell is genuinely great at.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Cold open — what does this mean for Supercell?02:19 The relaunch and the search for one positive sign03:30 The numbers — shark fin, 230K DAU, $14K/day07:40 The core problem — no depth, no chase items12:50 "Gen Z slop": why the RPG genre rejects this16:00 The endgame problem — stat-cores and cosmetics26:00 MoCo vs Diablo Immortal vs Path of Exile30:45 The verdict — kill it or pivot to MOBA--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Podcast: Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Discover planet-warming gases left out of official reports – indirect Greenhouse Gases with Lead Author Ilissa Ocko. “Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home”. Inspiration from Drawdown author and climate trainer Dr. Katherine Wilkinson. Wrap it with scientist/activist Peter Kalmus:  …

If your pension is approaching or has passed €2 million, the question is no longer just how to grow it, it's how to generate income without handing a significant portion to Revenue unnecessarily. The Standard Fund Threshold in Ireland rose to €2.2 million in January 2026, and the decisions you make in the next few years will determine how much of that headroom you actually use. In this episode, Paddy covers the income strategies that matter most at the SFT level. If your pension is approaching €1.5 million or more, this episode is for you. • Why timing your Benefit Crystallisation Events can shelter up to €500,000 from Chargeable Excess Tax • How the lump sum offset mechanism reduces your CET exposure — and what the effective SFT really is in 2026 • What the imputed distribution rules mean when your ARF exceeds €2 million • How to manage income through the standard rate tax band efficiently • Why spousal pension planning is one of the most underused strategies at this level  

In this episode, Cam and Joel go deeper into the force behind the Gap and Go strategy: momentum.Cam breaks down what momentum actually means in the market, why stocks can get repriced violently when institutions realize they were wrong, and how that repricing shows up through gaps, volume, and continuation. Using examples like AGL and HWM, they walk through why some stocks keep running long after most traders would have taken profits.The conversation also digs into the data behind momentum trading, including R multiples, maximum favorable excursion, Monte Carlo testing, and why a small percentage of trades can account for the majority of returns.They also cover one of the hardest questions in trading: when do you take profits, and when do you let the trade keep working?Later in the episode, Cam explains how he's using AI, backtesting, and his own trade history to study momentum, refine his process, and better understand where rules end and human judgment begins.⚠️ Best experienced on Spotify or YouTube - Cam is sharing charts throughout the episode.

✔️ Good timing, compounds.✔️ Descending broadening wedge breakout and retest✔️ Tracking the NVDA vs BTC fractal✔️ Bitcoin Gaussian Channel Turning Green✔️ Bitcoin Cycle Compass ✔️ I'm not betting against a chart like this.✔️ The recurring 2013, 2017 & 2021 pattern signals a $300K BTC pump✔️ The harsher the Bitcoin drawdown, the stronger the pump.✔️ This big move is still on the table✔️ Bullish divergence with higher highs and higher lows.✔️ We're already 35 weeks into this bear market.✔️ Jack Mallers from the audience asks Michael Saylor to clarify his real definition of mNAV.✔️ Someone on Reddit built a game where you ride a dirt bike on top of any company's stock chart.✔️ Sources:► https://x.com/maxpain_crypto/status/2064669806360502326► https://x.com/superbitcoinbro/status/2064743754041618780► https://x.com/superbitcoinbro/status/2064430005954941303► https://x.com/washigorira/status/2064775019440623743► https://x.com/washigorira/status/2064710606389903560► https://x.com/killaxbt/status/2064801402048684240► https://x.com/trendingbitcoin/status/2064589124959379850► https://x.com/bitcoinnewscom/status/2064677294870765589► https://x.com/assetsnorris/status/2064710927283556689► https://x.com/caffesatoshi/status/2064624456106914046► https://x.com/cryptojellenl/status/2064636026925072664► https://x.com/bitcoinnewscom/status/2064749611227459608► https://x.com/bitcoinnewscom/status/2064808723747348731► https://x.com/BitcoinNewsCom/status/2064758322125770885► https://x.com/hrdktwt/status/2064675373955342622► stonkrider.com► DONATE TO HELP KEONNE AND BILL https://www.change.org/p/stand-up-for-freedom-pardon-the-innocent-coders-jailed-for-building-privacy-tools✔️ Check out Our Bitcoin Only Sponsors!► https://archemp.co/Discover the pinnacle of precision engineering. Our very first product, the bitcoin logo wall clock, is meticulously machined in Maine from a solid block of aerospace-grade aluminum, ensuring unparalleled durability and performance. We don't compromise on quality – no castings, just solid, high-grade material. Our state-of-the-art CNC machining center achieves tolerances of 1/1000th of an inch, guaranteeing a perfect fit and finish every time. Invest in a product built to last, with the exacting standards you deserve.► Join Our telegram: https://t.me/theplebunderground#Bitcoin #crypto #cryptocurrency #dailybitcoinnews #memecoinsThe information provided by Pleb Underground ("we," "us," or "our") on Youtube.com (the "Site") our show is for general informational purposes only. All information on the show is provided in good faith, however we make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness of any information on the Site. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE SHALL WE HAVE ANY LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND INCURRED AS A RESULT OF THE USE OF THE SHOW OR RELIANCE ON ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THE SHOW. YOUR USE OF THE SHOW AND YOUR RELIANCE ON ANY INFORMATION ON THE SHOW IS SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

AI creatives just hit a new level and the most surprising convert is Playrix. After years of holding back, they've gone all-in on AI across Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes. Matej, Jakub, Felix (and Freddie the robot) review 100+ AI creatives to figure out what's actually working right now.The episode is a guided tour through the current AI creative landscape: AppQuantum's Golden Goblins running AI influencers from a creative team scaling toward 100 people, Playrix's full-AI pivot with the recurring "there are no ads in Township" concept (and Felix's repeated insistence that ads are coming anyway), the "getting slapped" husband concept that has spread across the entire 4X category in a single month, freezing-families intros rendered at near-Pixar quality, the pajama guy who quietly took over Last War / Dark War creatives, and the broader collapse of creative production timelines from a week to a single day. It's the clearest snapshot yet of how fast AI creative production is moving — and how quickly a single winning concept now propagates across an entire genre.The throughline: this isn't about whether AI creatives work anymore. It's about who's iterating fastest.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Cold open — Freddie the robot judges the AI creatives02:30 AppQuantum's Golden Goblins and the 100-person creative team04:00 Century portfolio downscaling AI (and near-Pixar quality)07:30 Playrix goes full AI across all three games08:00 "There are no ads in Township" — the recurring concept16:30 Freezing Families gets the full AI intro treatment22:20 The "getting slapped" concept takes over all of Forex33:30 Top Heroes, anime quality, and where this is heading━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━-PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Katharine Wilkinson has a Ph.D. in geography and the environment, is well known for being a co-author of the book Drawdown and co-founder of The All We Can Save Project. She joins the Newscast this week to discuss her latest book Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home. As a journalist, it's unhelpful for me to divorce myself from the topic of this interview, as I have experienced, time and again, the sense of "murky overwhelm" this book is specifically designed to address. But Wilkinson didn't just write this book for journalists like myself who cover ecological crises for a living. She wrote it for readers and listeners like you. "I think we're all in our own ways grappling with this increasingly mapless time, right? And that is quite literally true," Wilkinson says. "'Is there hope?' and 'What can I do?' I think these are fundamentally navigational questions as much as they are questions of action." What Climate Wayfinding does that I think is unique is it directly addresses the reader and takes them through a process of self-examination. Of sitting with the uncomfortable emotions one feels about our ecological crises, without judgment. And from that self-compassion, asking the reader to imagine the world they want to see instead and encouraging them to map out how they see themselves working to achieve it. Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Thumbnail image: Climate Wayfinding with a design background. Image by Amerpsand, courtesy of Katharine Wilkinson. —— Timecodes (00:00) Facing our increasingly 'mapless' time (09:43) Following our emotions (15:07) "I don't feel hopeful today" (18:22) Possibilities that become reality (25:32) Culture as an accelerator for change (35:17) A crisis of leadership (41:40) To love something instead of fixing something

Block Out by Grand Games is scaling to $300K/day — and it doesn't even have an Android version yet. It's about to become Grand Games' biggest title, overtaking Magic Sword, and the whole thing is a masterclass in perfect execution over original innovation.Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg break down Block Out, the deterministic sort puzzler that's quietly become one of the most aggressive scalers in mobile. The conversation covers how Block Out's iteration is now out-earning the game it borrowed from (Color Block Jam), the level-design difference that makes it more casual and more approachable, the UA upgrade that Jakub estimates at 500%+ over Grand's earlier games, the iOS-only / US-only / single-AppLovin-campaign soft launch playbook (the same one Pixel Flow used), the blended-ROAS interstitial strategy driving 32-36% ad revenue, and the 1,000+ creatives and 260 playables now powering the scale. Plus the bigger Grand Games story: a $70M raise, $105M+ total funding, and a template machine that takes proven concepts and executes them better than anyone.The thesis, straight from the episode: Grand Games doesn't do giant innovation. They do perfect execution.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 the 500% UA upgrade03:50 The numbers — $300K/day, 140K downloads/day, iOS only06:40 The Grand Games template — perfect execution, not innovation10:25 What a deterministic sort puzzler actually is13:25 Block Out vs Color Block Jam — the level design difference20:50 The soft launch playbook — one AppLovin campaign, US only21:45 The ad question — blended ROAS and 32-36% ad revenue26:30 The UA breakdown — Mintegral, 1,000 creatives, 260 playables--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.Today's conversation provides a fascinating window into the world of how one of the industry's largest wealth managers approaches private markets.We sat down with the man who holds the keys to the kingdom.Mark Sutterlin is the Head of Alternative Investments within the Investment Solutions Group at Bank of America. He leads the firm's strategy and platform development across hedge funds, private credit, private equity, physical precious metals, and real estate, delivering a broad spectrum of institutional-grade investment solutions to advisors and their clients.Mark brings the advisor's perspective to bear as he builds the alternative investments menu for Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank and helps educate advisors and clients on how and where to thoughtfully and appropriately include private markets in portfolios.Mark and I had a fascinating discussion. We covered:How GPs can work with private banks.What one of the largest private wealth allocators looks for in GPs.How Merrill approaches different product structures to deliver solutions across the wealth client spectrum.What constitutes a manager's edge.I loved this conversation with Mark, who takes such a thoughtful approach and brings a true passion to helping clients and advisors build and protect wealth.Thanks Mark for sharing your expertise, wisdom, and passion on private markets and private wealth.Show Notes00:00 Investor Edge Beyond Returns00:32 Sponsor Message from Ultimus01:41 Meet Mark Sutterlin04:15 Advisor Trust and Responsibility04:24 Penetration Across Wealth Tiers04:38 Scaling Alts Across Books04:49 Evergreen to Drawdown Spectrum05:12 Building the Shelf Challenge05:32 Evergreen Role in Portfolios05:42 Serving Broad Client Needs06:06 Optionality Not One Product06:20 Diligence as Core Identity06:48 Nuance in Private Credit07:27 Long-Term Themes Overlay07:56 Core and Satellite Question08:28 Drawdown vs Evergreen Tradeoffs08:48 Advisor Client Feedback Loop09:25 Evergreens Now Dominate Flows09:49 Evergreen Growing Pains10:14 Education and Expectations10:42 Rotation Within Evergreens11:11 Who Can Run Evergreens Well11:35 Scale Deal Flow Allocation Policy12:29 Post Sale Servicing Matters12:52 How Managers Should Service13:23 Transparency Builds Loyalty14:03 Vetting Managers for Private Banks14:45 Investor Skill Is Table Stakes15:22 Thousand Funds Deep Diligence16:07 Unpacking Firm DNA16:23 Private Wealth Is High Touch16:53 Eyes Wide Open Expectations17:14 Best GPs Listen and Adapt18:12 Customization Versus Scale19:13 Specialists and Custom Funds19:57 Proposal Tools for Advisors20:43 Menu Design From Client Needs21:25 Differentiation in UHNW22:31 Co-Invest and Capacity Access24:43 Tech DLT and Streamlining25:38 Biggest Blocker Education Gap26:45 Misconception Complexity27:52 Alts Invitationals Bootcamp29:45 Where Advisors Are Today30:16 What Why How Framework31:32 Implementation Needs Support31:51 Scaling the Alts Business32:45 Open Architecture Platform33:01 Lifecycle Ops Risk Controls33:40 Where to Invest Next33:53 Infrastructure and DLT Readiness34:42 Future Growth Sources35:37 Advisors Yet to Adopt36:00 Balanced Growth Outlook36:58 Client Sentiment Today38:11 Patience and Long-Term Adoption38:51 Next Gen Investor Mindset40:43 Defining a Manager's Edge41:23 Specialization and Storytelling42:31 Building a Menu of Edges42:47 Business Plan Plus Open Mind43:44 Advice for GPs Pitching Merrill44:39 Platform Differentiation and Exclusivity46:47 What Worries Mark Today48:19 Excited About AI and Infrastructure50:42 Wrap Up and ThanksA Word from Our Sponsor, UltimusThis episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus, the full-service fund administrator and transfer agent powering asset managers in private and public markets. As alts go mainstream, you need real expertise to handle complex fund structures, connect with key distribution partners, and handle sophisticated compliance, reporting, and transparency demands.That's Ultimus: high-tech, high-touch solutions for over 450 clients and 2,500 funds with $775B in assets under administration. Backed by an expert team of over 1,200 employees, they place client service at the core of their business, helping you navigate complexity during your fund structuring or launch and then supporting you through every stage of growth. Whether you're already in the market or thinking about entering private wealth, you can trust their team's deep expertise in retail alternatives to help you reach your goals.Learn more at ultimusfundsolutions.com or email info@ultimusfundsolutions.com.We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

The post What Serious Investors Know About Drawdowns That Most Bettors Were Never Taught appeared first on FTS Income.

What if the climate crisis was also humanity's greatest wake-up call? Tune in for an empowering discussion with Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson on her new book Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home.Moments with Marianne Radio Show airs in the Southern California area on KMET1490AM & 98.1 FM, an ABC Talk News Radio Affiliate! https://www.kmet1490am.comDr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is a human on Earth. As a writer, teacher, and creator, she has inspired hundreds of thousands of climate journeys through transformational projects that shift our cultural narratives about what's possible and nurture engagement in renewing our world. Her publications include the bestselling anthology All We Can Save, the podcast A Matter of Degrees, and the New York Times bestseller Drawdown. Dr. Wilkinson co-founded and leads The All We Can Save Project, where she shaped the much-beloved programs All We Can Save Circles and Climate Wayfinding. She holds a DPhil in geography and environment from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in religion from Sewanee: The University of the South. In 2019, Time magazine named her one of fifteen "women who will save the world.” https://www.kkwilkinson.comOrder on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0jcEoBYxTo learn more about the show and interview opportunities contact us at: https://www.mariannepestana.com

Gordon Hamilton, Senior Managing Director for Kayne Anderson, Portfolio Manager for the Kayne Anderson Energy Infrastructure fund, says that there will be a big call on U.S. energy infrastructure companies to meet global demand for propane, butane, crude oil and natural gas as the world gets through the current energy crisis created by war in Iran. Coupled with an energy "supercycle" driven by artificial-intelligence needs, it is creating a positive long-term demand picture where infrastructure should be able to have persistent performance even if current events or A.I. expectations add concerns to the market.

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: First up — the U.S. and Iran are still officially negotiating peace… while simultaneously exchanging drones, missiles, and retaliatory strikes for the second time in less than a week. We'll have the latest on the growing tensions near the Strait of Hormuz and why President Trump now says Iran is “negotiating on fumes.” Later in the show — new reports say the Pentagon plans to sharply reduce America's combat commitments to NATO as President Trump pushes European allies to shoulder more of their own defense burden. The proposed cuts could reportedly impact fighter jets, warships, and strategic bombers available to the alliance during a future crisis. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.  YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Blocktrust: Move your retirement into the next generation of assets, go to https://mikebakercrypto.com now to claim your $2,500 Bitcoin bonus. QUO: Make this the season where no opportunity slips away. Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://Quo.com/PDB Chapter: Compare every medicare plan call 915-671-5252 today! Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan's contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don't directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact https://Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports on a bipartisan grilling about the Iran war for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill.

AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports several Republican lawmakers are pushing back against President Trump's treatment of traditional U.S. allies.

Your Pain ain't Random… it's carrying your Promotion. See, most people try to escape the pressure, but pressure is where the transformation happens. GOD ain't punishing you, He positioning you. Every loss, every setback, every moment where it feel like you getting stretched… that's preparation for a level you asked for. You can't pray for elevation and then fold when the weight show up. The market teach you that same lesson. Drawdown builds discipline. Losses build awareness. It's sharpening you, not breaking you. What hurt you is actually building the capacity you gonna need when it's time to handle more. So instead of asking “why me,” you gotta start asking “what is this shaping me into?” Because your pain is training your mindset, refining your spirit, and developing the version of you that can actually sustain the promotion when it arrives.Your Pain is Carrying Your Promotion | Wallstreet Trapper (Episode 192) Trappin Tuesdays⚖

Robin Lustig and Alex von Tunzelmann discuss the American troop drawdown in Germany and Mark Carney joining a summit of the European Political Community in Yerevan. Plus: Joe Luc Barnes’s book, ‘Farewell to Russia’See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Simon's live update for Matt Frei's Saturday morning programme on the UK's LBC.

Markets rarely offer clarity when it matters most. In this episode, together with Katy Kaminski and Harry Moore, we reflect on a first quarter defined by sharp reversals, energy shocks, and rising dispersion across strategies. They explain how trend following adapted as leadership flipped across asset classes, and why results varied more than many expected. The conversation moves beyond performance to examine portfolio construction, from market selection and speed to the growing relevance of portable alpha. Along the way, they revisit periods of drawdown, investor behavior, and the role of liquidity in crisis environments, offering a grounded perspective on how systematic strategies respond when conditions change quickly.-----50 YEARS OF TREND FOLLOWING BOOK AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS - CLICK HERE-----Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.IT's TRUE ? – most CIO's read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written here.And you can get a free copy of my latest book “Ten Reasons to Add Trend Following to Your Portfolio” here.Learn more about the Trend Barometer here.Send your questions to info@toptradersunplugged.comAnd please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on iTunes or Spotify so more people can discover the podcast.Follow Katy on LinkedIn.Follow Harry on LinkedIn.Episode TimeStamps:00:00 - Introduction and episode framing01:38 - Market backdrop and Q1 volatility07:29 - Trend following performance through Q109:36 - Diversification vs equities and bonds11:21 - Dispersion across managers explained14:32 - Trend vs non trend strategies18:40 - A month that tested every component of trend21:17 - Optimal market mix and research insights30:00 - Macro factors and what trend captures35:57 - Portable alpha and cash efficiency42:23 - Risks in portable alpha construction49:04 - Drawdowns and investor behavior53:37 - Why trend recovers after shocks01:00:51 - Measuring alpha in macro strategies01:06:51 - Geopolitics and future opportunitiesCopyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved----PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey:1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. Click Here2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score One of the things I'm really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! Click Here3. Other Resources that can help youAnd if you are hungry for more useful resources from the trend following world...check out some precious resources that I have found over the years to be really valuable. Click HerePrivacy PolicyDisclaimer

White House Border Czar Tom Homan says 700 federal agents will be leaving Minnesota after months of aggressive immigration enforcement, protests, and the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds most Americans now say ICE has gone too far, as the Trump administration shifts its tone on immigration enforcement.And the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, the New START Treaty, is set to expire, raising new fears about unconstrained nuclear competition.Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Eric Westervelt, Dana Farrington, Robbie Griffiths, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia DumasOur Director is Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Our deputy Executive Producer is Kelley Dickens.(0:00) Introduction(01:58) Partial Drawdown in Minnesota(05:36) NPR Poll: Trump and ICE(09:18) Nuclear Treaty ExpiresLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The search for missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie enters day five as Savannah Guthrie makes a direct plea to the abductor. Border Czar Tom Homan announces an immediate drawdown of 700 federal personnel in Minneapolis, citing increased local cooperation with immigration enforcement. Two major U.S. medical organizations reverse course and say permanent gender-transition surgeries for minors should be delayed until adulthood, citing insufficient evidence and potential harms. Attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh is sentenced to life in prison, with his attorney immediately signaling plans to appeal.  Done with Debt: https://www.DoneWithDebt.com & tell them Megyn Kelly sent you! All Family Pharmacy: Order now at https://allfamilypharmacy.com/MEGYN and save 10% with code MEGYN10 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.