**Output:** 揭秘Citrini背后“投研之神”：Substack常年霸榜第一，一篇报告让美股蒸发数千亿

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Wenser (@wenser2010 )

In this bull market for US stocks, in addition to the "white-haired stock guru" Serenity, who is active in the public sphere as an individual, another independent investment research firm named Citrini has also attracted considerable attention — consistently ranking first in Substack's finance category, with nearly 250,000 subscribers.

In February this year, Citrini's report, 《The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis》, once triggered a "sell-off wave in US software stocks," heightening the panic surrounding layoffs in Silicon Valley. In April, Analyst#3 from Citrini traveled to the site and wrote the "Hormuz Strait Research Report," which generated strong reactions, using first-hand experience to peel back the layers of fog surrounding this conflict-ridden chokepoint. Most recently, Jukan, a semiconductor analyst at Citrini, accurately predicted the importance of the copper foil industry within the AI and semiconductor sectors, igniting a new wave of investment热潮.

Behind this research institution stands a founder who is not from a traditional financial background: James van Geelen. Holding a dual degree in Biology and Psychology from UCLA, he has worked as a paramedic and founded a medical company before making a mid-career shift into the investment world, now known as the "God of Investment Research." In this edition, Odaily Planet Daily will unveil James's cross-industry legend.

Citrini Founder: The Narrative Master of "Second-Order Thinking"

When talking about Citrini, the crypto circle first noticed this research account, perhaps around May this year, just before the listing of Cerebras (CBRS). He posted about "fund managers conducting price discovery in advance on Trade.xyz (on the Hyperliquid ecosystem)." That tweet was later retweeted and confirmed by Shokun, the founder of Trade.xyz.

Citrini: The "Traditional Finance Whistleblower" for Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz

It's no exaggeration to say that Citrini, as a research account that once published the popular report 《The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis》, has an obvious radiating influence on the traditional financial world.

Furthermore, its high praise for the Hyperliquid ecosystem and Trade.xyz's pre-market pricing of US stocks has truly brought the RWA platforms of the crypto market, US stock pre-market contract platforms, and on-chain US stock trading platforms into the view of a wider audience, to some extent fueling this year's "US stock RWA asset craze."

In a sense, Citrini acts as a barometer, sending a "warning signal" to the traditional financial world — it uses accurate information to warn traditional financial markets that the once-overlooked crypto players are now eyeing the "big cake" of traditional financial markets like barbarians.

Behind Citrini stands a founder who believes in "second-order thinking" and "long-termism" — James van Geelen.

Multiple Labels: Dual Degree in Biology and Psychology, Medical Emergency Practitioner, "AI Panic Whistleblower"

James van Geelen (hereinafter referred to as Geelen), now 33 years old, probably never imagined that a "popular AI discussion post" could trigger the rapid evaporation of hundreds of billions of dollars in market value from the US stock market. Even earlier, his career trajectory had nothing to do with AI.

Public information shows that Geelen graduated from UCLA, a prestigious US university, where he earned a dual degree in Biology and Psychology. He also worked as an emergency medical technician and paramedic in downtown Los Angeles. A background from a top university and experience as a medical emergency practitioner shaped his personality of pursuing efficiency and being good at planning. As he himself said, "If you don't have a plan, you're going to have a bad time." Furthermore, he considers himself a "musical genius," although he doesn't have any notable works to show for it.

According to Geelen's original plan, he was supposed to become a doctor saving lives. However, by a twist of fate, he ended up on an entrepreneurial path: first founding a healthcare company and selling it to a private equity fund, thus successfully breaking out of the "top university-employee-professional manager" cycle. He then founded Citrini.

Another noteworthy point, according to information he personally mentioned during a 2023 Odd Lots podcast, is that he also co-founded one of the earliest medical cannabis dispensaries in Connecticut. Seen from this perspective, he is far from the stereotypical, rigid "straight-laced doctor" in the eyes of most people.

In 2018, with some startup capital, Geelen began his personal investment career under the name Citrinitas Capital, capturing early opportunities in AI (like Nvidia) and GLP-1 weight loss drugs (like Ozempic/Wegovy).

In 2023, Geelen officially founded Citrini Research, dedicated to "cross-asset, multi-dimensional thinking for investment analysis," providing in-depth reports on thematic stock investments and global macro trading. It quickly grew into a top creator in the finance category on the Substack platform. (Odaily Planet Daily Note: It operates with both individual subscription and institutional subscription models.)

On May 31, 2023, the model portfolio Citrindex, built on personal research, was officially launched with an annual subscription fee of $1,250. According to statistics, this portfolio has achieved a cumulative return of over 200%, and its monthly gains have outperformed the S&P 500 multiple times.

In March 2024, he boldly predicted that Trump would win the election. In July 2025, amid the turmoil surrounding former Fed Chair Powell's downfall, he advised over 50,000 subscribers to "buy 2-year US Treasury bonds and short 10-year US Treasury bonds" to hedge against policy risks.

In December 2025, according to PitchBook information, Citrini completed a seed funding round of approximately $5.05 million. The firm has only about 10 employees and remains privately held.

Then, time came to February this year, when he co-authored with Alap Shah, who has a traditional finance background, the report 《The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis》 that shook the US stock market. Although he repeatedly emphasized that the report was merely a "thought experiment" and a hypothetical scenario rather than a predictive analysis, the phenomena it mentioned — "mass white-collar unemployment, declining consumer spending, economic contraction (Ghost GDP)" — still triggered panic and concern in the capital markets, leading to a sharp decline in delivery, payment, and software stocks. Among them, IBM's stock price on February 23 recorded its largest single-day drop since 2025. American Express and Blackstone Group both fell over 8%. The entire software sector dropped nearly 5%. Companies like DoorDash, Uber, Mastercard, Visa, Capital One, and Apollo Global Management Inc. saw their stock prices fall by 3% at one point. Multiple sectors of the US stock market were swept up in the sell-off, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling over 800 points at one point. Alap Shah later publicly stated that his investment stance was "bearish long," meaning shorting companies they believed would be disrupted by AI while holding semiconductor tech stocks that benefit from AI.

It's no exaggeration to say that Citrini's report caused a loss of hundreds of billions in market value for US stocks with just one report, directly leading to a "bloodbath" in the US stock market, with trillions of dollars in market value evaporating overnight, triggering follow-up coverage by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and other overseas media.

On April 6 this year, Citrini's team "Analyst #3" personally visited the Strait of Hormuz — a critical chokepoint in the US-Iran conflict — for research, disclosing many little-known first-hand observations. They uncovered the specific operating model of Iran's "toll booth" in the strait and provided a series of counterintuitive conclusions, such as: Regardless of how the situation develops, shipping volume through the strait will gradually increase; Iran does not actually want to close the Strait of Hormuz. First, shipping volume will continue to increase. Second, the diplomatic "toll booth" – surprisingly, the traffic order in the strait is actually very orderly. Third, the paradoxical escalation – even if ground operations commence, shipping volume through the strait might still increase. Fourth, geopolitical restructuring, not a winner-takes-all battle. This conflict is not a simple "two-sided confrontation" but a multi-party game. Geographical disputes amidst the game of great powers are also a key topic within Citrini's "range of research."

When asked why the company was named "citrinitas," Geelen replied: "The inspiration for this name comes from Soros's 'The Alchemy of Finance'. It's actually a stage in alchemy, but what most people don't know is that during this transitional phase, lead begins to transform into gold, but hasn't completely turned into gold yet." This is also his favorite "time of action" — seeing the birth of "gold" before others notice the change in the lead.

Investment Style: Second-Order Thinking, Narrative-Driven, Reverse Scenario

As for Citrini's investment style, thanks to its founder's cross-industry experience and multiple labels, it strongly advocates for "second-order thinking."

As Geelen himself said: "Most investors only focus on the ball itself, but I focus more on where the ball will bounce next."

Based on Citrini's past content and public information, this research institution focuses on long-term "megatrends" such as AI, robotics, energy demand, fiscal policy, geopolitics, and modern warfare. Additionally, it aims to provide executable "basket investment references" and tactical macro trading ideas, with judgments leaning towards long-term structural changes rather than short-term trading. In the introduction on its Substack homepage, we can see its emphasis on practice, which states: "You (the reader) will no longer have to ask 'What is the trade?'"

Furthermore, Citrini often uses "scenario hypotheses" to help readers understand second/third-order effects. Geelen once mentioned: "Don't always think about what you think will happen. Instead, think about the things that are inevitable. How will the market's reaction change the reality? What will be the secondary effects? What are the obstacles preventing a certain trend from continuing? And where will the money flow to overcome these obstacles?" Previously, in March 2023, when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, he boldly bought overnight financing rate call options, effortlessly yielding nearly 50x returns. In December last year, before the US launched a military operation in Venezuela, he shared his views on the investment opportunity in Venezuelan sovereign bonds.

Since the beginning of this year, Citrini has absorbed several independent analysts, including macro analyst Nick Reece, Korean semiconductor industry analyst @jukan05, and AI chip industry analyst @zephyr_z9, to some extent filling the gaps in areas like industry details, technical processes, and changes in industry trends.Currently, this research institution still maintains a production model driven by the founder, supported by an anonymous, elite team.