Samy Sriram

Occupation: Markets Analyst, Stake

Location: Sydney

Hobbies: House music, chess, investing

Investment approach: High-risk

First up, what keeps you busy outside the markets?

Outside of work, I’m constantly going on side quests. That can mean a deep house music festival in an off-grid country or learning the lesser-known things about the world from a book or Reddit deep dive.

Lately, I’ve been getting into chess and it’s given me an interesting perspective on many things, including investing. I’ve learned you need to take strategic risks to get into a winning position, think three moves ahead and look for patterns before others see them.

What first pulled you into the markets?

My first trade was Ethereum, back in March 2020. I had gone down the crypto rabbit hole and was incredibly optimistic about the technology. I think riding out my first few crypto bear markets has conditioned me to be more tolerant of market downturns.

Describe your investing style

My investing style is definitely higher risk and more aggressive. Even as a long-term investor, I’m not a fan of over-diversifying my portfolio. I believe in making high-conviction bets on a smaller pool of stocks to grow my wealth over time.

That also means being disciplined with taking profits when a particular position has hit a certain level, even if that comes at the cost of missing out on further upside.

What's currently in your portfolio?

Nvidia ($NVDA), Micron ($MU), Nebius ($NBIS) and ServiceNow ($NOW). There are other positions in other stocks I’ve bought and sold over time, but these seem to be the more permanent fixtures for now.

I invest almost exclusively in U.S. tech stocks. In my view, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way these companies are growing because of the AI boom. This might not be the case forever, so I’m getting in on the opportunity now while I believe there’s still money to be made along the way.

Which stock has been in your portfolio the longest?

Nvidia. It’s the AI bellwether stock that I’m adding more to when I have anything extra I want to put into the market. The market has high expectations of Nvidia, but after consecutive quarters of beating earnings and a trillion-dollar product pipeline that’s sold out into 2027, it’s hard to make a case against this growth story.

Which stock has been your biggest winner?

Nebius. I got in at US$70 after some research on what neoclouds were bringing to the table amid the AI buildout. In many ways the biggest risk I saw for Nebius was also the highest conviction factor. The risk was its customer concentration in Meta and Microsoft, but to me that was also validation that two megacap tech companies trusted Nebius to execute on their infrastructure needs.

What about your biggest loser?

Alibaba ($BABA). Given the AI arms race between the U.S. and China, I was a big believer that Alibaba’s AI cloud growth and new models would drive value. That didn’t quite pan out in share price, and eventually I decided to sell my entire position around 20% below my cost basis. 

Name three stocks on your watchlist

I’m watching Reddit ($RDDT). I think it’s fairly valued here after a massive drawdown in 2026. The transition period as it looks to wean off Google dependency for traffic is ugly, but its data licensing segment grew 24% YoY to US$43M last quarter. It had over 60% revenue growth for eight straight quarters, and its free cash flow sits above US$860M.

I’ve been watching Applied Optoelectronics ($AAOI) for a while. And it’s one of those names I’ve felt a lot of FOMO about because I had a feeling the photonics theme would take off before it did, and then regretted not getting in sooner. Now I’m in the process of working out whether it’s run too much already, or if I feel comfortable getting in at this price level.

Bloom Energy ($BE). I’ve had it on the watchlist for a while, but I’m more bullish on the outlook after its first quarter reporting over US$1B in revenue. It’s had more insider sells than buys over the last 12 months, and has been trading in a volatile zone despite good news, which is what’s keeping me more hesitant to add a position.

How do you search for new investment opportunities?

I'm fortunate enough to have 'searching for new opportunities' be a part of my job. This means I aim to always be on the pulse of the U.S. market and am constantly researching new themes driving retail investor sentiment.

I'm big on fundamental analysis and I think that’s still important. Quick checks: is this company profitable? Does it have good margins? Positive free cash flow? No significant debt?

Outside of checking headlines, I’ll go deep on a particular ticker on X or Reddit. It’s because I think the way the market behaves today has changed a lot since the days when value investing prevailed. This means that momentum and retail sentiment moves stocks more than fundamental value alone. So I always want to know where the crowd is at when it comes to a particular stock.

Another thing I look at is short interest. As a retail investor you’re always trading against bigger institutions with more firepower. So if the percentage of a company’s float is above a certain threshold, I’d steer clear.

Does anyone inspire your investment decisions?

13F drops are my favourite time of year. I get to see what the bigger hedge funds have bought and sold and what calls they’ve made in the previous quarter. I think it’s interesting to compare against my own portfolio, and I’ll check out any stocks on their list that haven’t made it to my radar yet. 

That being said, I think I’ve gotten to a place where I’m not overly inspired by one particular investor because everyone has different philosophies around how they want to build their portfolio. A lot of big-name investors have earned their status by making some bold calls that they’ve gotten right. But I really believe the best investors are the ones no one has heard of yet, quietly doing their thing with no one watching. 

Inspiration is a great thing when you’re starting out, but figuring out who you are as an investor is an important journey everyone should go on for themselves.

What are you investing towards?

I’m investing towards more financial freedom and independence. I believe we’re on the cusp of a new technology (AI) transforming the way we exist as a society. For a lot of us, there’s a lot of uncertainty as to what comes next. I think growing your net worth and consistently investing in yourself along the way is the best way to prepare for an unknown future.

What advice would you give a new investor?

It’s actually something our Chief Marketing Officer said to me: 'Everything you want in life is on the other side of fear.'

I think it applies to everything that intimidates you really, and I know for a lot of people, getting started with investing can feel daunting at first.

But you learn more from losing and making mistakes than you do from not trying. And your future self will be grateful you decided to go for it.

Finally, what's your outlook on the current market?

I'm quite optimistic about the current market. I think we’re at the start of an extraordinary cycle that will create real wealth for the future. I was too young to be investing during the Dotcom bubble, but all of the research I’ve done about that time in history points to the fact that most companies weren’t generating any real revenue and were just bid up on hype.

I think today’s AI boom is quite different from that time. There’s real revenue coming in, with real risk too in the form of inflated capex spending. Still, if we’re comparing the AI boom to the internet’s first era, it’s worth remembering the companies that were born from that time: Amazon, Google, Meta and even Nvidia. They are still driving the U.S. market today.

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The personal views in this article do not reflect the views of Stake and do not constitute financial advice, nor a recommendation to invest in the securities listed. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. As always, do your own research and consider seeking financial, legal and taxation advice before investing.