To The Moon

No matter the company, stock values don’t go up in a straight line. They’re volatile depending on the market’s mood, comments on conference calls, analyst upgrades or downgrades, and even the weather.

That volatility can be maddening, but we need to keep in mind that the key is buying great companies that can grow for a long time and just hang on for the ride.

For example…

1. $Amazon.com(AMZN)$

Amazon’s growth chart looks like a steady climb up and to the right. And in many ways, it was with growth rates over 20% for most of the last two decades.

But the stock performance was very different. There were drawdowns (the stock price decline from its peak) of as much as 65% and it often took years to get back to previous highs.

2. $Apple(AAPL)$

Apple is seen as one of the best businesses in the world today, and while operations have been up and down at times, this has been a cash flow machine for more than two decades.

But investors have fallen in and out of love with Apple’s stock. Shares fell 45% in 2003, 60% in 2008, 44% in 2014, and so on.

Was Apple a bad company at any of these moments? No. But the market isn’t rational if you’re thinking long-term.

3. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$

Do you think you could have held NVIDIA shares since 2001? If you had, $10,000 would have turned into a whopping $5.9 million!

Over that time, the biggest company in the world today has also lost over 60% of its value four times, and it took nearly a decade to regain that value in two of those instances.

4. $Netflix(NFLX)$

For Netflix, an 80% drawdown isn’t out of the question from time to time.

And this volatility wasn’t because Netflix’s results swung wildly from quarter to quarter. This is a subscription business, after all, and the trajectory was up and to the right.

The takeaway here is that great businesses often come with volatile stock prices. The smooth narrative we tell ourselves in hindsight is chaotic in the moment.

Buying a great company is a simple concept.

Holding through drawdowns and questions about execution or management is not easy. But that’s where the money is made.

The Lows Get Higher

Nothing we’re seeing today is unusual.

The market has always had moments of panic when uncertainty rises.

Today, that uncertainty is around software and artificial intelligence.

In a month, it may be about the economy.

The price you see for a stock at the peak was only a moment in time, and so is this.

What’s important is to get the long-term trend right.

I’m reminded of when I wrote the $Robinhood(HOOD)$ Spotlight on March 30, 2024, when the company had trailing 12-month revenue of $1.87 billion and traded for $20 per share. Now it has revenue of $4.2 billion and looks attractive at $72 per share!!!

It feels terrible to be down 52% from the peak, but remember, we’re up almost 300% from where we started!

The same could be said for $Hims & Hers Health Inc.(HIMS)$ . The Hims & Hers Spotlight was written when the stock was at $15.83, and the company had $959 million in revenue over the past year. Now, shares are at $21.05 (after hours) and the company generated $2.2 billionin revenue over the past year…and is profitable.

It doesn’t feel like it in the moment, but even after big drawdowns some companies can be better buys at higher stock prices than we previously paid. That’s the power of compounding in business.

Focus on Compounding

I’m going to use a few of the companies in the Asymmetric Portfolio as an example here, but “buy compounders” will hold across the market.

5. $SoFi Technologies Inc.(SOFI)$

One of my biggest holdings is SoFi $SOFI ( ▲ 7.19% ), which is now down 40% from its high just a few months ago.

What caused SoFi’s stock to go down?

The company reported its best quarterly revenue in history.

And management guided for 30% revenue growth in 2026 and a 72% increase in net income to an incredible 18% net margin.

The fundamentals are getting better and the stock is going lower…🤷

6. $Uber(UBER)$

Uber’s stock is 25% off its high, but the company keeps reporting quarter after quarter of compounding revenue growth. In Q4 2025, that growth was 20.1% and the company outlined how it was going to add more autonomous vehicle supply in 2026 from multiple suppliers, which will expand the market further.

The market’s reaction?

The stock drops.

7. $Alphabet(GOOGL)$

Alphabet is literally accelerating revenue growth, and the company is spending so much on capital expenditures that most competitors won’t be able to keep up.

And still, the stock goes down.

I focus on fundamentals, and in almost every stock I own across the portfolio, I’m seeing the fundamentals get better. Narratives are changing, but the fundamentals are improving. Ultimately, that’s what matters.

Why I’m Not Worried

Over a long period of time, buying companies that compound revenue consistently and grow their free cash flow is a winning strategy.

I won’t be right on every stock I buy, but as a portfolio, this basket of compounders should do extremely well over a long period of time.

And while it feels better when stocks go up, it’s better to buy stocks when they go down.

The upside is higher if the price we pay is lower.

Even in a short period of time, the Asymmetric Portfolio has been through this before. In February 2025, the portfolio was beating the market by 68% to 23%. That 40 percentage point lead dwindled to 15 percentage points by April. But I bought stocks in April and May, and those buys helped fuel the portfolio to a 102% gain at the peak, to 34% for the S&P 500. The recent decline has collapsed my lead over the market again, but I’ll be buying stocks on the cheap, and in time, I expect to widen my lead over the market again to a measly 18%.

I’m not worried today, and the market might go much lower.

But I’ll be happy to buy phenomenal companies at reasonable (maybe even cheap) prices in the future.

Times of panic when the asymmetric returns are made.