Chris Camillo

Most alpha comes from reading TikTok comments

Camillo's contrarian stance: the most important thing in investing isn't valuation or PE, it's new information, and he sources most of his edge from reading TikTok comments.

“The most inherently ground truth thing of investing, the most important thing, the thing that matters more than anything else is I don't look at valuation, I don't look at PE. All I look about is there is new information. I've been reading TikTok comments. That's where I get most of my alpha from.”

Social Arb: enter at info asymmetry, exit at info parity

Chris Camillo's whole method ignores valuation and charts. You surface a real-world change before others, enter when very few know it, and exit the moment other investors catch up to the same information.

“And you know, you enter your position at the point of information asymmetry, right? When, when, when you know that thing and very few others do. And you exit the position at the point of information parity when other investors start to learn about that thing that you uncovered first.”

Steal thisBuy when you know something the market doesn't; sell the instant the crowd learns it, regardless of price.

75% annualized returns audited over 17-18 years

Chris Camillo says his audited returns from his observational investing approach are about 75% annualized on his total portfolio across the 17-18 year period since 2007.

“I've been audited over the past 17 years. I'll be reaudited at the end of this year and I'll fall somewhere around 75% annualized returns total portfolio over the 17 or I think it might be 18-year period now since 2007.”

Shorting Snapple as a teenager off a 7-Eleven shelf change

As a kid, Camillo noticed his 7-Eleven cut Snapple's door space for new competitors. He gave his stockbroker brother ~$300 to short Snapple with puts, and it tripled when Snapple later reported its first bad earnings.

“I think I gave him $300, which is most of the money I had at the time from garage selling. And he tripled the money in the course of about a month. Because Snapple, for the first time in its history, had reported, you know, bad earnings due to inventory building up due to retailers like 7-Eleven giving them less door space.”

Trade hailstorms via Google Trends for 'roof repair'

Camillo tracked Google Trends search volume for 'roof repair' each spring as a real-time hail-damage signal, weeks ahead of the insurance reports Wall Street relied on, then took a large leveraged call position on Beacon Roofing when searches tripled.

“I would simply go and track the number of people that were searching for the words roof damage or roof repair. It's a free data source. Anyone could leverage Google Trends. And what's fascinating about this is when there is a hailstorm, people will immediately start Googling roof repair the day after that hailstorm hits.”

Steal thisUse Google Trends search spikes as a free real-time leading indicator before slow industry reports catch up.

The analyst who asked 'Who's Jeffree Star?' on the e.l.f. trade

Camillo saw beauty influencer Jeffree Star praise e.l.f.'s Primer Putty, watched it sell out at Walgreens, then called the Wall Street analyst covering e.l.f. to gauge info asymmetry. The analyst replied 'Who's Jeffree Star?' confirming the edge; e.l.f. ran from ~$7 to $170.

“So I called this analyst and I said, you know, what do you, what do you think about the Jeffree Star video on, on ELF? You know, has that impacted the way that you're analyzing ELF this quarter? And the analyst said, who's Jeffree Star? And at that moment, I knew everything I needed to know about that trade.”

Trade conversational data, not transactional data

Hedge funds spend millions on credit-card and transactional data, but people talk about purchases before they make them. Camillo argues conversational data (social comments) lets retail measure depth of interest before it shows up in sales, an edge Wall Street won't chase.

“So the data that I am trading is conversational data. Because Wall Street primarily uses transactional data. So they'll use credit card receipts that they spend millions of dollars for, and then they synthesize all this transaction data so that they can kind of figure out what's happening at that company before earnings.”

Steal thisMine social comments for purchase intent before it shows up in the sales data that institutions pay millions for.

TickerTags: institutionalizing comment-mining, sold to Jefferies

Camillo and his partner built TickerTags on Twitter's Decahose, hand-curating ~1.5 million word combinations mapped to public companies to flag anomalies in how people spoke about products. They sold the company to Jefferies.

“we actually created a platform called TickerTags in the mid-2010s with Twitter, and we had access to the Twitter Decahose, which is a 10% randomized sample of every tweet in real time. And we hand-curated about 1.5 million word combinations that represented how people were speaking about every product, brand, basically anything that was connected to any publicly traded company”

Sphere's Wizard of Oz was a top 2025 win from 48 hours of comments

Reading audience comments in the first 48 hours after the Sphere's Wizard of Oz show launched, Camillo made a heavily leveraged options bet that became one of his largest wins of 2025.

“so that was so Sphere, the Wizard of Oz Sphere was actually one of my largest wins of 2025. And it came from reading comments of Wizard of Oz the first 48 hours that it was out and essentially making a monstrously big levered bet.”

All-in on Palantir at $30 ignoring its 'insane' valuation

Camillo went heavily leveraged into Palantir at $30 a share despite a stretched valuation, betting a 12-month window where the market would discover its AI positioning. The stock ran to roughly $160-190.

“And my response to that was the valuation is irrelevant to me. I know, and I don't look at valuation, I don't look at PE, I don't look at anything like that. Um, all I look about is there is new information that's about to come online for Palantir that will bring in a whole new group of investors.”

Shorting COVID early, then loading 15 stay-at-home stocks at the bottom

Reading Chinese medical reports via Google Translate, Camillo bought puts on casinos and airlines weekly before the market cracked, losing 30-40% as it lagged. After the bottom he flipped into 15 leveraged stay-at-home plays (Peloton, Shopify, Schwinn bikes), producing ~370% that year.

“So once the markets finally started to, you know, normalize and come back up, I took all the gains from shorting the travel stocks and the market at large and just put them into levered positions in these 15 companies, which is obviously the trade of a lifetime.”

Shorting COVID early, then loading 15 stay-at-home stocks at the bottom

Reading Chinese medical reports via Google Translate, Camillo bought puts on casinos and airlines weekly before the market cracked, losing 30-40% as it lagged. After the bottom he flipped into 15 leveraged stay-at-home plays (Peloton, Shopify, Schwinn bikes), producing ~370% that year.

“So once the markets finally started to, you know, normalize and come back up, I took all the gains from shorting the travel stocks and the market at large and just put them into levered positions in these 15 companies, which is obviously the trade of a lifetime.”

The QSR loss: skipping the Tim Hortons franchisee revolt

Camillo went leveraged on Restaurant Brands (QSR) expecting record earnings from the Impossible Whopper and Popeyes chicken sandwich, but ignored its biggest unit, Tim Hortons. He missed a franchisee revolt at the annual meeting and lost a third of his portfolio, his lesson on never being lazy in due diligence.

“So going back, I learned that, you know, you really have to be comprehensive in your research if you're going to take a levered bet on a thesis that you have. And you can't, you can't be lazy.”

Steal thisBefore a leveraged bet, diligence every major segment, not just the exciting one; the boring unit can sink the thesis.

The 'big money account': fund a risk bucket from frugality

Camillo's wealth-building rule: bucket your money so a high-risk account is separate from savings, and fund it with small frugality trade-offs. Every $5 saved and put in the risk bucket can become $500 at 100x, so cutting small costs is really cutting big future ones.

“So everybody should have a big money account. I talk about this in Laughing at Wall Street. Everyone should have a big money account. And the big money account is the account that, that, yes, you get wealthy quickly with.. And you do that by taking big swings on things that you really believe in.”

Steal thisOpen a separate high-risk 'big money' account funded only by frugality savings, never money stolen from living costs.

Solve the wealth gap by getting everyone into the investor class

Camillo argues the income gap is nearly unsolvable but the wealth gap is solvable by bringing more people into the investor class, the mission behind all his public content.

“My overriding purpose is to inspire every human on Earth to enter the investing class, right? Because I think it's the only way we'll ever solve the wealth gap. So like, there's no way to solve the income gap. The income gap is an exceptionally difficult problem to solve. The wealth gap is a problem that's solvable by bridging more humans into the investor class.”

Private jet sector is a big 'age of abundance' winner

Camillo is launching a private-jet-industry business and says he is ultra long on the sector, predicting travel broadly becomes a larger industry as automation frees up human time and money.

“I am ultra long on the private jet sector, even though myself, I carry too much guilt to fly private. So like, you'll never see me on a private jet. But I'm very bullish on the sector.”