The Pomp Podcast · Oct 12, 2026 · 45m · 37m saved
With Chris Camillo, Founder, Dumb Money Live
Photo via Business Insider
Chris Camillo made $10 million in a single day trading Amazon earnings options, a trade people called "degenerate" because of its leverage.
What they didn't see was the hundreds of hours of research behind it, or that his most recent Amazon trade actually opened with an $8 million loss before it turned into a net profit.
"I was down 8 million and I made 11 million." — Chris Camillo
Chris, founder of Dumb Money Live and a self-taught pioneer of "social arbitrage" investing, has targeted 50 to 80% annualized returns in his primary account for 18 straight years. He told Anthony Pompliano on The Pomp Podcast how he builds the conviction to run that kind of leverage, and when he's learned to walk away instead.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 45 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 principles that matter.
Key Takeaways
Camillo made $10 million in one day trading Amazon earnings options, a trade people called "degenerate" without seeing the research behind it
His most recent Amazon trade swung from an $8 million loss to an $11 million net profit
He runs with no institutional framework, which lets him pivot freely into roughly 180 early-stage bets, including heavily into AI and robotics
A corrupted Google Trends dataset burned his Lululemon trade after ChatGPT began inflating search-query volume
He exited at a loss and wrote publicly about the corruption; he says "no one believed me"
His primary account has targeted 50 to 80% annualized returns for 18 straight years, run on leverage as high as 100%+ through options
He says he's comfortable with a 70% drawdown, including one this past summer
He's not worried about robots turning on humanity but is "exceptionally concerned" about bad actors using AI-enabled drones and autonomous warfare
He tells Wall Street that retail investors are smarter and better capitalized than assumed, crediting an anonymous network of researchers for more than half his biggest trades
1. No Framework, No Box
Anthony Pompliano asks whether Camillo's public reputation for "social arbitrage" — spotting real-world behavior change before Wall Street notices — connects to his newer, heavily personal-capital bet on robotics. Camillo says his entire approach is purely opportunistic.
He has no sector box to stay inside
"I don't have a framework... I have complete and utter freedom to chase the opportunity that's in front of us." — Chris Camillo
Unlike an analyst boxed into one sector, he can pivot entirely; research shows he's invested in roughly 180 early-stage companies. On robotics specifically, he cautions against the hype, despite calling himself "probably deeper in this space than anyone in the world of finance."
Generalized humanoid deployment is further away than people think
"Deployment is an exceptionally difficult thing to achieve when it comes to generalized robotics. It's never been done before." — Chris Camillo
He compares the likely pace to how autonomous cars progressed much slower than even Elon Musk and Tesla predicted, but says that when humanoid robotics does arrive, it will be bigger than anything humanity has seen.
