Gooaye Podcast EP677 Notes: Stay Away From Leverage, Don't Predict the Bear — and My Two Shifts This Half-Year

Don’t mind the rain drumming through the leaves —
why not stroll on, humming, at ease.
I look back on the bleak and battered road:
I go home — no storm now, and no clear sky either.
— Su Shi, “Calming the Waves” (Northern Song dynasty, 1082); translation mine

These are my personal notes from Gooaye (股癌) Podcast EP677 (published 2026-07-08). This is not a transcript and not official content. If you want the full thing, please support the original show. Below I’ve combined what the episode sparked for me with my own reflections.

What the episode is about (one line)

How ruinous the new-generation “max out the leverage” style is; Taiwan’s small-cap wobble may be tied to Korea deleveraging; research-firm noise over AI-server delays got amplified, but the long-term AI trend hasn’t changed. For me, the truly valuable part isn’t any single stock — it’s the passages on risk and the low points.

The points I took

• Stay away from extreme leverage; think about the downside. It’s now fashionable to lever 5-6x with credit lines, single-stock futures, and options, rolling endlessly. That “only look at the upside” style gets wiped to zero on one or two limit-down days — and can drag a whole family into debt. The core line: slow is fast.
• Taiwan’s pullback may be tied to Korea deleveraging. Korea’s market is speculative and heavily levered; when retail can’t hold a drawdown they’re forced to dump, and Taiwan’s small-caps may be going through similar deleveraging.
• Amplified noise ≠ a broken industry. Reports on CPO / 800G / NVL144 delays triggered selling, but those are mostly short-term headwinds of the R&D path (pathfinding). NVL144’s backplane material is still being tested (a PTFE/Megtron mix, stuck on heat and cost); delays are normal — the market simply stacked expectations too high.
• Hardware-to-software rotation. The AI narrative shifted from “it takes jobs” to “it creates more jobs,” and SaaS names like security have strong revenue and price action. Not every hardware name wins; when hardware runs hot and weakens, money may rotate to software.
• Watch groups that can absorb big money. Power components are strong but small-cap — institutions can’t park size there; passive components, CCL, and wafer names that hold above the quarterly line are where big money can sit.
• Don’t predict the top or a bear market too early. The index is up nearly 50% in the first half; facing the unknown, don’t fantasize about a crash all day — take it as it comes, and interpret only after the real thing happens.

My extension

My own basket leans software (infrastructure, security, application software are a big chunk), so “hardware runs hot, money rotates to software” isn’t someone else’s story — it’s what I need to watch. But I remind myself: rotation is a result, not a reason. I can’t chase just because “they say it’ll rotate”; I still have to come back to each company’s bookings, moat, and valuation, and whether those actually changed.

The other part I felt strongly: “amplified noise.” It’s the same logic as a discipline I keep practicing — when a price craters, my first reflex shouldn’t be to rewrite the conclusion, but to ask “did the industry actually break, or did sentiment stack short-term noise too high?” Delays, pathfinding, materials still in testing — those are process, not destruction. Telling noise from signal is what keeps you from selling something good on the floor on the most fearful day.

How my views shifted recently

Honestly, my biggest shift this half-year is retreating from “catch the direction, predict it” back to “split alpha/beta first, then decide whether to act.”

I used to rush to find a script and rewrite my thesis the moment the market sold off. Now I ask first: is this an index-wide beta sell-off (the kind where high-beta drops hardest), or did this company’s fundamentals actually break? If it’s beta, the thesis stays put — a -7% day isn’t a kill switch; I only move when it hits the structural exit conditions I wrote in advance. This episode’s “amplified noise” is just another version of the same thing.

The second shift is admitting the execution layer can break even when the structural story holds. For some names I like, I still believe the long-term structural reasons today — but the price has cut through all my original take-profit / stop points, forcing me to separate “why am I still holding” from “how I originally planned to enter and exit,” instead of waving it away with “I’m bullish.”

How my inner state shifted

This part is more personal. The heaviest lesson of the past year is how to be with myself inside a deep drawdown.

A few of my positions are deep underwater. I used to, without noticing, treat the paper number as a grade on myself — the more I was down, the more I wondered if I just can’t invest. The host’s line — “in a low point, don’t think you’re worthless; first protect your assets, shrink the position, and rebuild confidence in small sizes” — landed hard. Holding on matters more than being proven right.

The more fundamental shift: I’ve come to see clearly that investing shouldn’t be a performance to prove “I’m sharp” — it’s a long game to be walked over years. My returns were always lumpy; a good year doesn’t repeat on schedule. What actually gives me security has never been getting one call right, but laying the foundation of life first (stable passive income), then letting the research slowly grow into something that can stand on its own. Once that clicked, drawdowns stopped knocking me over so easily — because I no longer need them to prove anything.

A whole life in a straw cloak, through the misty rain. Looking back at the bleak places — no storm now, and no clear sky either.

References

• Gooaye Podcast (original show): EP677 — please listen in full on Gooaye’s official podcast platform and support the creator.
• To make “split alpha/beta before the story” a habit, the best drill is: on any big down day, write down “is this beta or the stock?” before you read the news, not the other way around.

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This post is a personal, educational set of notes and reflections from listening to a podcast. It is not official Gooaye content, and it is not investment advice — no target prices, no recommendations, no calls on current names. Companies mentioned are episode content or concept illustrations only. Investing carries risk; do your own research or consult a qualified professional before any decision.

Raw Markdown

This article is an educational discussion of investment method. It is not advice to buy or sell any individual security, offers no target prices, and does not analyze any current holding. Investing carries risk; make your own decisions or consult a qualified professional.