Wall Street asset management firm CEO's public holdings: Betting on Nasdaq and BTC, the "middle ground" is the worst choice

Compiled and Translated by: Odaily TechFlow

Guest: Anthony Pompliano, Founder & CEO of Professional Capital Management

Host: John Pompliano, Associate at Pomp Investments

Podcast Source: Anthony Pompliano

Original Title: I Just Revealed My Current Portfolio…

Air Date: June 24, 2026

Key Takeaways

Anthony Pompliano and John Pompliano are back together again, deeply dissecting the brutal sell-off in the Magnificent 7 (Mag 7) stocks, the widespread panic over an AI capital expenditure (CapEx) bubble, and why underlying inflation data is actually much safer and more controlled than the media headlines suggest.

The guest is Anthony Pompliano, Founder & CEO of Professional Capital Management, who has long been active in the crypto investment space. His podcast is one of the most listened-to financial podcasts in North America.

Furthermore, we will comprehensively review Anthony's latest portfolio holdings, exclusively analyze the real political chess game behind new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's interest rate decisions, and deeply deconstruct why, in the long-term march towards the next decade, Bitcoin's "high volatility" is not a risk, but its most core ultimate advantage.

Highlights of Key Insights

The Real Logic Behind the Mag 7 Correction

• "The Mag 7 sell-off is most fundamentally because they are essentially long-duration assets, making them very sensitive to inflation."
• "For the Mag 7, these AI companies won't suddenly explode or go to zero."
• "If inflation falls in Q3 and Q4, the valuation multiples of the Mag 7 are very likely to re-expand."
• "Google is now cheaper than Apple by valuation metrics but is growing faster. Why is that? The core reason is the market's concern over AI CapEx. Now, a great opportunity is emerging to buy some of the world's best companies at a lower valuation."
• "Many value investors have been persistently underperforming because they are too attached to using old frameworks to judge today's companies. You should respect history, but you can't just point to old data and say 'these companies are too expensive' for 15 years straight."
• "A likely scenario is a company says it will spend $10 billion on CapEx over the next two years, but actual spending ends up being only $6 billion. $6 billion is still an extremely high number, but it's 40% less than the market feared. The market is currently too fixated on inflation trends, and I believe this is being mispriced."

Repricing AI CapEx and ROI

• "The real problem right now is Token cost. Go talk to a bunch of CEOs, and everyone is saying the same thing: We're spending too much on Tokens and have no idea where the ROI is."
• "Everyone is starting to converge on the same goal: using fewer Tokens to achieve the same output."
• "What are the bottlenecks limiting the spread of this technology? Electricity, data centers, and chips."
• "I saw a piece of news the other day about a company that shifted its employees' working hours to 1 AM to 10 AM. One reason was they believed calling the model during that time was cheaper, had lower system load, and gave more accurate answers."

Investment Approach: Avoid the Middle Ground

• "If I were to boil down investment methods, I think there are essentially two paths. The first path is buying large indices; investing in broad market indices is a great strategy in itself. The second path is investing in highly asymmetric opportunities. I think the worst place to be is the middle ground. You shouldn't allocate capital to mid-sized companies with only moderate growth and mediocre return profiles."
• "The two most interesting technologies in the world today are Bitcoin and AI."
• "I hold Tesla. I believe if Elon forms a monopoly in humanoid robots and autonomous driving, that could be incredibly valuable."
• "Once he can give hardware the ability to 'see' and 'think' using AI, machine learning, and computer vision, he effectively captures the embodied entry point for 'Physical AI'. I think that will be tremendously valuable."
• "What exposures do I want to have? I will hold some cash long-term, and I will hold Bitcoin."
• "Anduril's model is to let a group of startups first achieve technological breakthroughs. Once a technology is validated, it steps in to acquire these drone companies. It's very good at M&A and has a strong BD team to quickly commercialize the acquired technologies into business contracts. In other words, it's a platform that buys technology and then commercializes it."

His Actual Investment Portfolio

• "In the private market, I hold many software-based AI companies, like Replit, Lovable, and Micro One, which are very strong in their respective verticals. In the public market, I'm more concentrated on Physical AI and robotics."
• "Whether it's public or private, software or hardware, I have a relatively comprehensive AI exposure."
• "I don't hold Tesla for the cars. I hold it because I believe if Elon creates a monopoly in humanoid robots and autonomous driving, it will be extremely valuable."
• "He will eventually merge SpaceX and Tesla, and this will likely happen before 2030. Once that happens, he'll integrate his most important projects into a mega-complex."

Bitcoin Enters a New Phase

• "Unhappiness is essentially the gap between expectations and reality. So you can't set unrealistic expectations for Bitcoin. If you set your expectation at 25% to 30% annualized return, and it does better, you'll be pleasantly surprised."
• "Governments will continue to print money. Bitcoin's core investment thesis hasn't been broken. The change is that it has now entered a different stage of the game."
• "Bitcoin used to be like playing high school basketball, where you were one of the few standout players. Now it's more like playing college basketball. All the players are stronger, the gap isn't as huge as before, but the quality of the game is much higher."
• "Retail is usually more emotional, institutions usually less so. I know sentiment online is bad, but structurally, this is also a common part of the bottoming process."

Mag 7 Sell-off and AI CapEx

Anthony Pompliano:

A lot of people get worried because of Bitcoin's volatility. I think that's completely wrong-headed. I actually like assets I own to go through phases of being disliked. I don't want to hold assets that are perpetually loved. Because if an asset is always the market's darling, it means it's already too popular and crowded, and the returns have usually already been arbitraged away. Conversely, assets that cyclically fall out of favor tend to have stronger asymmetry and higher potential future returns. So volatility itself is important.

In today's episode, John is going to interview me. We'll discuss Kevin Warsh, the Fed, inflation expectations, interest rates, the AI CapEx debate, the Mag 7, the S&P 500, Bitcoin, SpaceX, and many other topics. I'll also lay out my current investment framework for both public and private markets and specifically mention some assets I've already allocated into my portfolio.

John Pompliano: Let's start with the first topic. We've seen a round of selling in the Mag 7 recently. Do you think this is a valuation reassessment, or is the market starting to rethink the entire AI trade thesis?

Anthony Pompliano:

I think the Mag 7 sell-off is most fundamentally because they are essentially long-duration assets, making them very sensitive to inflation. The market previously feared that the war with Iran would push energy prices higher and also worried about inflation re-accelerating, so these assets were sold off first.

I've been repeating two things throughout 2025. First, tariffs will not cause persistent inflation. Second, as long as the war with Iran is not a multi-year prolonged conflict, it only creates short-term price shocks. We've certainly seen this short-term spike on the energy side, but it won't evolve into a long-term inflation problem. The bigger picture is that there are many structural deflationary forces at work in the US economy.

Of course, some people will see inflation nudge back above 3% and scream "inflation is out of control again!" I don't see it that way. Many people's understanding of inflation has been skewed by the extreme situation of over 9% a few years ago, as if high inflation will keep recurring. But if you look back at history, inflation spiking above 9% is an extremely rare event in a person's lifetime. If I recall correctly, the last time US inflation exceeded 9% was in the 1970s, before I was even born. So, it's happened only once in my lifetime.

That high inflation was severe, but it was also easily understandable. Massive money printing and zero interest rates in 2020 made high inflation almost inevitable. But that kind of manipulation is fundamentally different from price disturbances caused by the Iran war and tariffs.

If you look at the Mag 7, the market currently has two layers of concern. First, if inflation continues to rise, these long-duration, rate-sensitive assets will face valuation compression, leading to stock price corrections. That logic makes sense. Second, people are worried about the sheer size of AI CapEx. They fear that after these companies pour huge sums into CapEx, their free cash flow will decline, reducing the cash available to return to shareholders, and thus their valuations should fall.

However, I believe two things will happen next. First, inflation will not be as severe as the market anticipates. We can already see signs. In the latest inflation data, 60% of the increase came from energy. That means energy prices are the primary driver pushing the numbers up. As soon as energy prices fall, inflation will naturally follow. Oil prices have already dropped below $80. If they go back to $60, what do you think happens to inflation? I'm not ready to call "inflation has peaked" with 100% certainty, but I think we are very close. Whether it has already peaked or will peak in the May or June data, my judgment is that inflation in Q3 and Q4 will be lower than in Q2. If this judgment holds, then the valuation multiples of the Mag 7 will re-expand.

The other part is AI CapEx. In my view, this comes down to two key questions. First, does the demand we anticipate actually exist? Second, will these capital expenditures eventually yield a return? If demand exists, returns are certainly possible because someone will use this infrastructure. So, does the demand exist? Simple: Are you using AI more frequently today than you were a year ago? Of course, it's higher.

But recently, the market and media have started discussing something else: Is the way we currently use AI Tokens efficient enough? Is the computing power and energy consumed by companies to call models really worth it? I've felt this myself. Many people know we are building a product called CFO Sylvia. During this process, we started to encounter a real problem: costs were going up. Because users can generate their own queries, if you don't have an intelligent enough Token management system, spending is theoretically unlimited.

Initially, the team's main focus was "just build the product." Once the product was running, you realize the real problem is Token cost. What to do? You have to start improving Token usage efficiency.

We made many specific adjustments at the time. For instance, on certain pages, the system would re-call the model every time a user refreshed. That was completely unnecessary. We stopped it, and Token consumption dropped immediately. Some features periodically called the model continuously—they looked cool but were the main consumers of Tokens. So, we cut those features and waited for user complaints. No one complained, so we didn't reinstate them. That saved a massive number of Tokens again.

Later, we adjusted the architecture further and started paying closer attention to the actual cash cost. At first, I thought this was just our problem, thinking I needed to fix our company's issues. But then I talked to a group of CEOs and found that everyone was saying the same thing: We're spending too much on Tokens and have no idea where the ROI is.

So, everyone is shifting towards the same goal: using fewer Tokens to achieve the same output. This is why I was saying on Twitter that the phase of blindly pursuing Token usage, creating leaderboards for "who calls the model the most" within companies, won't last long. The world will inevitably return to metrics that actually matter: efficiency, effectiveness, and ROI.

And this is precisely where I am most optimistic about private model companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Grok. You will see clients like CFO Sylvia, or any enterprise client, demanding, "I want to use fewer Tokens but get the same results." That means individual clients are becoming more efficient. However, simultaneously, the total addressable market is expanding, and product adoption is rising. So, the total revenue for these model companies could still be very high. To me, this is a sign that the products have found product-market fit. As long as open-source models haven't completely eaten their lunch, these companies are running a great business right now.

The next question becomes: What are the bottlenecks limiting the spread of this technology? Electricity, data centers, and chips. You'll find the constraints are in these areas. I saw a piece of news the other day about a company that shifted its employees' working hours to 1 AM to 10 AM. One reason was they believed calling the model during that time was cheaper, had lower system load, and gave more accurate answers. I don't think most companies will do this, but it shows people are beginning to think very seriously about model call efficiency.

If demand for this technology is persistent, it means we still don't have enough data centers, electricity, and chips. It means the bidding war for resources in this direction will continue.

So, those worried about the ROI of AI CapEx can certainly pose a long-term question: Will there be overbuilding in the future? Yes, any cycle can eventually lead to overbuilding—it's a historical pattern and hard to control precisely. But, at least in the short term, I don't see this problem at all. What I see is strong demand for software, strong demand for specialized workflows, and strong demand for data centers, electricity, and chips—so strong that companies are even discussing building orbital data centers.

Therefore, I think the market's anxiety about this is somewhat misplaced. Especially regarding the Mag 7, many people are fixated on how much companies "plan to spend," but plans are not reality. Just as projected revenue doesn't equal recognized revenue, projected CapEx doesn't mean it will actually be spent.

A likely scenario is a company says it will spend $10 billion on CapEx over the next two years, but actual spending ends up being only $6 billion.