I Invested $182,000 Into This Broken Company

Joseph Carlson After Hours•Jun 17, 2026

Summary

Joseph highlights that market commentators and big investors frequently describe the current market as bifurcated or K-shaped. This means that while AI beneficiaries are pushing the overall market to new all-time highs, numerous other fundamentally sound companies are left behind and trading at cheap valuations. He warns against "recency bias" and "momentum investing," where investors chase recent winners, citing the historical example of ARK Invest's eventual decline after a period of rapid growth. Joseph believes investors are currently making similar mistakes by overlooking excellent companies.

**Meta (META)**: Joseph is strongly bullish on Meta, viewing it as a prime example of a fundamentally strong company being unfairly penalized by the market. He explicitly states he has added $182,000 to his Meta position in the last six months at an average share price of $684, despite currently being down $28,000. He refutes common negative narratives surrounding the company:

**Poor company culture and employee morale**: He dismisses concerns about Meta's culture, citing reports from its CTO about "atrocious" AI reorganizations and low morale, as "pseudoscientific haphazard investing." He argues that perceptions of company culture often correlate with stock price performance, giving examples of Netflix, Shopify, and Google, whose "culture problems" disappeared as their stocks recovered. Joseph believes Meta's core economic engine will overcome any such issues.

**User loss**: Joseph debunks reports of Meta losing 20 million users last quarter. He explains this decline was due to internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp restrictions in Russia, and that without these one-time events, Meta's organic daily active users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are actually growing. He points out that Threads, another Meta property, has reached 500 million monthly active users.

**Regulatory risk and teen content controls**: He views Meta's expansion of content controls for teens, in response to lawsuits, as a positive development. Joseph believes this will make Meta's products more responsible, more attractive to blue-chip advertisers, and increase the company's moat by setting a higher bar for newer social media competitors.

**High capex spend**: Joseph defends Meta's significant capital expenditure, which worries investors, as a "forward-looking" and visionary investment. He argues that this spending is essential for Meta to become a full-stack AI technology company, building its own supercomputing capabilities and controlling its destiny rather than relying on external providers for AI infrastructure. He expects this strategy to be recognized as brilliant in the long term, leading to a wider moat and better future. He predicts that in 5 years, when the stock price is much higher, investors will look back at this capex spend as being forward-looking.

**Valuation and growth**: Joseph highlights Meta's attractive valuation, trading at an 18 forward PE ratio, which is a substantial discount to the S&P 500 (21.5) and the QQQ (27). He stresses that Meta is "cheap by its operating income, by its enterprise value to IBIDA, by its earnings per share estimates, by its historical valuation." Furthermore, he notes Meta's strong revenue growth of around 30%, projected to be 25% in 2026, which is twice as fast as the S&P 500 and faster than many leading tech companies, including Google.

**Snapchat (SNAP)**: Joseph presents Snapchat as the "fail of the week" due to its CEO Evan Spiegel's unveiling of a new $2,000 VR headset. He describes the headset as "incredibly bulky," "goofy," and "the least human normal organic thing," akin to a welding mask. Joseph criticizes the product's flawed design, which he believes occupies the "worst spot possible" between full VR headsets and stylish smart glasses like Meta's Ray-Bans. He finds the CEO's concern about competitors copying the device "delusional" and predicts it will be a commercial failure, stating he doesn't expect it to sell a single unit beyond those bought by Evan Spiegel himself. The stock was down more than 5% on the announcement.

Mentioned Stocks

META

Sentiment: BUYAction: BOUGHT

Reasoning: Joseph is strongly bullish on Meta, viewing it as a fundamentally strong company currently overlooked due to market recency bias. He explicitly states he has added $182,000 to his Meta position in the last six months at an average share price of $684. He refutes common negative narratives, dismissing concerns about poor culture as "pseudoscientific haphazard investing" that often follows stock price (citing Netflix, Shopify, Google as examples). He clarifies that reported user loss was due to specific external events (Iran, Russia) and that organic daily active users across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are actually growing, with Threads reaching 500 million monthly active users. He views the expansion of teen content controls as a positive long-term development for advertisers and the company's moat, and defends the high capex spend as a "forward-looking" investment to establish Meta as a full-stack AI technology company. Joseph highlights Meta's attractive valuation, trading at an 18 forward PE ratio, a substantial discount to the S&P 500 (21.5) and QQQ (27), and its strong revenue growth of around 30% (projected 25% for 2026), which is faster than many leading tech companies. He remains "fully bullish."

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SNAP

Sentiment: SELL

Reasoning: Joseph identifies Snapchat as the "fail of the week," heavily criticizing its CEO Evan Spiegel's new $2,000 VR headset. He describes the headset as "incredibly bulky," "goofy," and having "the worst product development you could have possibly landed on" due to its impractical design, which falls awkwardly between full VR headsets and sleek smart glasses. Joseph dismisses the CEO's concern about competitors copying the product as "delusional," believing that no one would want to replicate such a poorly conceived device. He predicts it will be a commercial failure, stating, "I don't think that they're going to sell a single one of them," and notes the stock was down over 5% on the announcement.

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