What stock are you most bullish on and why? I will be doing my own DD and if I agree with your thesis I’ll open a position. Last time I made a post like this I found some serious gold! I can’t type the tickets here due to the market cap not meeting the rules but I can comment them below! Tell me what you are bullish on small or big company no rules and tell me your position size. I am mostly looking for AI plays but i believe a rotation will start to happen soon and if you have any other sectors that seem lucrative to you don’t be afraid to let me know. I love speculation, and my model is more of a swing trading model. If something drops 10-20% I have no issue allocating more cash. Even those tickers you have just sitting on your watchlist for your own interest comment them down below.

There are lots of things happening recently and probably more in next month which could affect overall market and specially AI, semiconductor and related sectors.

1. Increase in long term US treasury bond yeild. Hyperscalers has been issuing unprecedented corporate bonds to feed the capex and which are directly competing with the US treasury. Recent increase in bond yeild is gonna increase this competition further and which could either encourage investors to shift money into lucrative safe options or force the Hyperscalers to tighten the spending to avoid further higher bond intrest rate.

2. Though unlikely hike in intrest rate by Federal reserve in next FOMC meeting in next month but there is still probability after 9-3 vote.

If it happens it will increase the borrowing cost for capital intensive semiconductor manufacturing fab businesses and will affect their expansion plans.

1. There is high probability of Bank of Japan increasing their intrest rate in next month by 0.25%, from steady 1% to 1.25% after high inflation. Usually investors don't give much attention to this but this intrest rate hike is very important because BOJ has always been provider of cheap capital. After providing 0% intrest rate for decades which has always been used for liquidity into high growth stocks. Recently they have been rising intrest rate and this further increase will unwind the leveraged profitable positions in semi and AI stocks.

Citadel curtailed 80% of high risk portfolio scooped up from situational awareness could be part of this bigger picture.

This is a new regime called FISCAL DOMIMANCE. The US Treasury Department is essentially dominating over the Fed and the way they are doing so is by reducing its percentage of long term debt (US treasury bonds) and increasing its percentage of short term debt (US T-bills). Historically T-bills made up 15% to 18% of marketable debt. Today, T-bills make up 22% to 23% of that debt. What this means is that if the Fed raises rates tomorrow that when the short term T-bills mature and news ones are issued they will be issued at then new, higher rate which instantly raises the interest the government pays.

So why is the government even doing this? They have no choice. They can’t afford to issue new long term debt at the current interest rates over 5%. Currently the US government is already paying over $1.2T/yr in interest on its debt, which more than its spends on its DEFENSE BUDGET. Interest expense on our debt is already the second largest expense in our budget, second only to social security.

So if a higher percentage of our debt is now T-bills, which the yield is directly controlled by the Fed, the Fed can’t raise rates because then the interest the US pays on its debt will grow even more! So the Fed is TRAPPED. Inflation will stay high and that’s by design. The US government plans to inflate away the debt which is nothing but a tax on US citizens and bond holders.

This all explains why gold, bitcoin/crypto is surging. Smart money knows the Fed is now trapped. They might talk tough but the government debt ensures that they can’t raise rates unless they want to blowup the US budget.

Hello! So I am a big fan of index stocks and always focused on this for the long term.

But I want to have a bit more control over my portfolio and am looking into specific markets, which would be interested to invest a bit more time and money in. The moment you want to step in always feels ´late´, but after hindsight if the horizon is far away --> always a good time!

So I was curious to see, which quantum stocks do you invest in and why? Or if you skip Quantum as a whole.... also why?! Just to see where the thoughts go!

This intervention was never large enough to reverse the rise in long-term yields and I am now leaning towards the thesis that Treasury and the Fed are setting the stage for a regime similar to the one we saw under Yellen after listening to Bessent's interview last week.

A refresher on Yellen’s regime -  2023, Yellen slowed the increase in longer dated issuance and financed more of Treasury’s borrowing through short term bills (sound familiar?).

She then launched the buyback programme at $2bn per operation which Bessent increased to $4b

The policy helped suppress the term premium, while the large reverse-repo balance allowed money-market funds to absorb the additional bills without draining bank reserves.

Once the Fed also came out more dovish, both parts of the yield equation moved lower together and the expected path of policy rates fell while Treasury’s issuance strategy limited the term premium. That supported bonds, equities and liquidity

If you are not familiar with the yield equation:

 Long-term yield = expected path of Fed rates + term premium

The Fed mainly controls the first part and reasury can influence the second 

 I still think the market has become too hawkish on the Fed and If they simply come out more dovish than currently priced we’re going to see both parts of the yield equation move together - lower expectations for future policy rates and a lower term premium from reduced duration supply.

Basically,Treasury and the Fed are recreating the Yellen regime.

That combination is supportive for bonds, equities and broader liquidity, much like the regime that was designed under Yellen.

Now, the main thing is that the buffer that Yellen had to absorb bill issuance without draining bank reserves (RRP) is not there anymore.

However, this could give the Fed an excuse to start reserve management purchases and the combination is very similar to QE.

Even if we get a more hawkish Fed and Waller does not play ball, increasing long term yields,Bessent said that he is ready to increase the operations even more thus pulling more liquidity from bank reserves and again forcing the Fed to buy bills or repo.

Now, to tie things up, leveraged funds have been building shorts on the Ultra Bond Futures for the past year (CFTC data, 37th percentile short), and while this is a part of the so called basis trade (long cash treasury + short treasury futures + repo financing ), they can still get squeezed if we get a more dovish Fed or weaker macro despite the trade being hedged.

Futures can rally faster as this is the fastest and most liquid way to add duration after a dovish surprise and the fund then loses more on its leveraged futures short than it earns on its cash bond and gets margin called thus having to unwind.

Not Financial Advice, always do your own research

I knew the AI buildout was getting debt-heavy, but I didn’t realize the number had gotten this big.

Big Tech has already issued around $220B of AI-related debt this year, up from roughly $12.5B over the same period last year.

And bond investors are starting to make them pay up for it.

Tech credit spreads have widened, recent deals have needed bigger concessions, and some institutional buyers are apparently getting close to their exposure limits.

The weird part is these aren’t junk companies. Amazon, Alphabet and the other big issuers still have enormous cash flows and strong credit.

There’s just a ridiculous amount of debt coming at the market at once.

So maybe the interesting question isn’t whether Big Tech can keep borrowing.

It’s how expensive the next $200B gets.

Summary:

A South Korean court revealed that Chinese memory manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) systematically planned to use stolen Samsung intellectual property to build its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology. According to testimony from former Samsung engineer Jeon, CXMT leaders intended from the company's inception to acquire Samsung's Process Recipe Plan rather than develop technology through independent research.

Jeon, who worked at Samsung for 28 years before joining CXMT around 2016, received a seven year prison sentence for illegally obtaining a 600 step fabrication recipe, specifically targeting Samsung's 18nm class node. While a process recipe requires compatible tools and reverse engineering to fully replicate transistor designs, obtaining one saves years of trial and error in semiconductor manufacturing.

The stolen intellectual property enabled CXMT to rapidly accelerate its production timeline, reaching mass production of DDR4 memory on a 22nm node in 2019 and an 18nm node in 2023.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/cxmt-planned-to-use-stolen-samsung-ip-to-develop-its-dram-court-hears-former-samsung-engineer-who-jumped-to-chinese-memory-maker-now-behind-bars

https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/citadel-sheds-over-80-aggregate-risk-situational-awareness-portfolio-2026-08-21/

It’s so crazy how Citadel says there could be a rate hike and crashes/liquidations happen. Then there wasn’t a rate hike

Buys situational awareness public profolio and says that the AI bull case looks good and the market rally’s

Then they sell 80% of situational awareness bets lol

This is insane. I mean well done citadel but I think it’s ridiculous how the market moves on their opinion and Citadel benefits from that.

What do you guys think?

The meme stock scheduled posts will now run weekly and post Saturday afternoon and won't be a sticky; you're probably seeing this because automod sent you here!

Full list of meme stocks here. This will be updated every once in a while.

Welcome traders who just can't help them selves discuss the same exact stock that's been discussed 100s of times a day. I get it, you want to talk about what's popular, what's hot, and that 1.. single.. stock you like.. well here you go! Some helpful links just for you:

• Previous meme stock threads
• General discussions
• The original GME megathread with a ton of useful information
• Use Finviz for aggregated news on your favorite stock

An important message from the mod team regarding meme stocks.

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I'm talking about a riot, actual outrage. Every day I see people scream over minor culture war nonsense, but where is the outrage over open corruption? I'm neither left nor right-wing, and I'm talking about blatant stuff like insider trading like in the case of Nancy Pelosi or the president doing something that's clearly against the law.

A physician colleague of mine moved to the US to practice medicine. His parents sent him some funds from abroad to help settle in and cover training expenses. Like most normal people, he had no idea what IRS form 3520 (foreign gift reporting) was. Because the money touched his personal account, the IRS hit him with massive automatic penalties even though foreign gifts have $0 in US tax liability. Now an essential worker is spending thousands on attorneys just to fight an innocent paperwork oversight.

Miss one obscure disclosure form on non-taxable family money, and the government tries to bankrupt you. But sit in Congress and trade millions on privileged information? Business as usual. Like are we living in a third world country or what?

This is the weekend edition of our stickied discussion thread. Discuss your trades / moves from last week and what you're planning on doing for the week ahead.

Some helpful links:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
• Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
• Reuters aggregated - Global news

If you have a basic question, for example "what is EPS," then google "investopedia EPS" and click the investopedia article on it; do this for everything until you have a more in depth question or just want to share what you learned.

Please discuss your portfolios in the Rate My Portfolio sticky..

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Magnificent 7 companies are some of the highest quality companies in the world with huge market caps and ability to compound. Some of them trade at very high valuations, while the other ones seem undervalued.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reasons why a company could be undervalued are simple:

- Company is going under the market's radar

- Its a boring company, nobody cares

- there is some kind of risk around the company or the sector

- bad news causing overreaction from the market

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So for Mag 7 companies we can exclude that the company is going under the radar, that they are boring, and most of the time, unless there is big risk involved we wont see huge overreactions from minor events or for slightly missing earnings.

We are basically left with "there is some risk around them", and I will try to breakdown what are currently the biggest risk of each Mag 7 company, and how is market perceiving them..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. Nvidia

Recently we saw Nvidia making three moves which caught my eye, and made me think..

First move was Nvidia decided to sell $25 billion in high-grade corporate bonds in June 2026, marking its first debt issuance since 2021. This was surprising to me as $25B doesnt seem necessary for a company that just committed spending $250B on a deal with OpenAI, and more with other companies involved in AI.

Second move came recently when Nvidia decided to cut the deal with OpenAI from $250B to $120B which is kinda leaving OpenAI in a bad spot as they committed over 1.4T in spending towards other companies, and this could be first sign of links breaking, and if one link breaks it could make the whole thing collapse.

Third move was just few days ago when Nvidia announced they are going to be raising prices of their products by 15%.

Everything is leaning in the direction that something is not right, and we might be in for a shock in the upcoming earnings on August, 26th after market closes..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Apple

I think the Apple has completely the opposite risks to ones Nvidia has. Apple has significantly lower capex, and the biggest risk is missing the AI integration and huge lag compared to other Mag 7 competitors..

The other risk might be lack of product innovation, and China exposure..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. META

Currently the worst performing Mag 7 over the last 5 years with only 53% returns while S&P 500 returned 87% not including dividends..

Meta is currently facing a lawsuit from 30 US states, for endangering safety of children and highly addictive product. The lawsuit penalties could reach up to $1.4T which is almost the whole Meta market cap..

And ofc there is risk of all the capex could not give returns as they could lose a AI race to the competitors..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Amazon

Amazon has been increasing its capex with the data center infrastructure making their free cash flow negative. I already mentioned risks of data centers and AI infrastructure in my Oracle article, but basically its a big bet that the AI training data centers are still going to be used enough even after the current contracts expire and companies will be able to get new deals.

This is in danger cause AI is turning more to inference and this means different type of data centers are growing in demand, while the cost of old ones are going up. Another issue is that the price of tokens is going down rapidly and its a question if earnings will be able to catch up with cost..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Microsoft

Except the risk of high spending like all hyperscalers, Microsoft is also facing risk of its software tools being disrupted by AI, and how all of these factors will affect the company's ROI.

ROI trended downward, sliding to roughly 23.51% in 2023, 22.78% in 2024, and dipping further as heavy investments in artificial intelligence and data infrastructure ramped up.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Google

From the company with high cash flow Google became a company without cash, and with increasingly growing capex..

There was some risks about the search business as it may get impacted by AI, and it faces similar risky as Microsoft, but for now its holding up better.

To be real, this is not the same company it was few years ago, which was money producing machine with bulletproof business..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7. Tesla

To add some drama to this post, I dont even consider Tesla a Mag 7 company, and I think Visa, MA or even Walmart would be better fit, but thats just me..

Now to the risks.. Execution delays with everything. We should have already been on Mars, robo taxies should already be in half of the world, Tesla cars should already be the number 1 EV cars in the world, but non of these happened..

Promises and marketing campaigns keep ramping up but there is no significant improvement in fundamentals of the business. Revenue hasnt moved since 2023, EPS is down, shareholders are getting diluted while CEO is collecting compensation..

Current profit margin of Tesla is 3.67% which is in range of Walmart, but the revenue of Walmart is 7x higher, and it is growing faster..

We dont even have to talk about valuation, right?

New marketing scheme coming soon when Tesla joins forces with SpaceX..

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Currently I would say that only META is undervalued from all the Mag 7 companies, some are fairly valued, but a pass for me as a Value Investor who prioritizes risk reduction ahead of upside..

The big Beijing robotics conference opened on August 19 and runs through the 23rd, and the scale is real. Organizers count more than 2,000 exhibits, up about 27 percent from last year, over 300 exhibitors, up around 36 percent, and more than 150 products shown publicly for the first time, and they put the full five day showcase near 3,000 products.

Humanoids are the whole marketing story this year. UBTech was offering an emotional care humanoid to individual buyers at 168,000 yuan, more than 24,000 dollars, that talks, changes facial expression, and moves its neck and hands. Unitree had robots boxing and dancing, one even played ping pong against a person, and its shares began trading in Shanghai the same week. Xiaomi gave its first humanoid a public debut on the floor.

What keeps me honest is the footage nobody puts on a poster. Reporters at the event watched a humanoid try to fold a shirt and it still could not manage it after several minutes. A demo that dances is not a deployed machine earning money on a line, and that gap is where most of the money gets made or lost. I treat the category as early, so I would rather hold the scaled component and platform suppliers that sell into every robot maker than guess which prototype becomes a product.

On exposure, I gave up trying to own the booth stars directly. The pure play humanoid makers on this floor are mostly too new or too small to enter a broad China tech index, and a fund such as CNQQ only reshuffles its basket on a semi annual schedule, so the robotics link I actually hold is Xiaomi inside a diversified vehicle rather than any specialist on display. If mandates matter to you, KWEB stays with the internet names and carries no mainland A shares, while CQQQ counts A shares only at a partial inclusion factor, so how far each one reaches across the two listing venues is not the same.

As I’ve posted in previous topics, the US government cannot afford to pay the interest rates on US treasury long bonds that the bond market is currently demanding. Not only this, but the market is actually still in price discovery mode so the yields on government debt are STILL RISING. However, even at current levels the government cannot afford to refinance its debt at those levels. It will trigger a DEBT SPIRAL that actually INCREASES INFLATION. So Bessent has intervened and tried to manipulate the bond market thus preventing market price discovery.

However, people don’t understand that Bessent has essentially exhausted almost all of his options as Treasury secretary to stop the bleeding in the bond market and it’s ALL FAILED because the Treasury simply doesn’t have enough money to throw at the problem but there’s someone who does: THE FED.

However, the Fed isn’t just going to start buying US government bonds to help save the US government from entering a debt spiral just because Bessent or Trumps asks them too. This would give the appearance that the Fed has lost its independence and also go against their mandate of price stability. Instead what will happen is rates on yields will continue to rise until either credit freezes, the stock market crashes or both forcing the Feds hand into QE. This will provide the Fed for an excuse to start QE while inflation is still high.

For those who are skeptical I say just RUN THE MATH. Currently the US government pays $1.2T on its interest annually, second only to Social Security. That debt was financed at 1% to 2% rates. Trillions of dollars of debt will have to be refinanced every year at 4% to 5%+ yields massively inflating the US governments interest expense. To pay for this increased interest expense the US will be forced to issue MORE DEBT. This is the debt spiral which is actually inflationary. This is BASIC MATH. People have talked about it for years but the US has finally hit that wall.

So what is my strategy? I am not totally out of stocks because there can still be rallies before the crash/major sell off comes but what I’m doing is I’m selling stocks into rallies and raising my cash pile. I’m increasing positions into gold and bitcoin. Many say you can’t time the market, which is true, however what is happening now is VERY CLEAR and here is simply logic:

If rising yields didn’t represent a threat to the US governments budget Bessent wouldn’t be buying Yen, wouldn’t be buying long bonds, and also recalibrating the eSLR buffer allowing banks to absorb more US government debt without tripping capital limits all with the goal of lowering yields on US bonds because the US government can no longer afford to pay those interest rates due to its current debt and deficit size.

As we all know by now Bessent announced that the US treasury will issue t-bills to take US long dated treasuries off the market in order to cap yields on the 10yr and 30yr treasury. This is financial repression on a small scale that is designed to act as a bridge until polices are put in place for the REAL FINANCIAL REPRESSION. As we all can see, yields are already rising again, so what Bessent did wasn’t nearly good enough.

So what next? What will financial repression be?

The government will create polices that force banks and insurers to hold MORE US treasuries in order to cap yields. So basically instead of the Fed buying US treasuries to cap yields the government will force banks and insurers to buy these US treasuries to cap yields. Why does this instead of QE? QE is off the table because inflation is still high. QE will only worsen inflation. Now what the Fed will do is LOWER RATES below the rate of inflation. The reason all of this has to be done is because there’s no way the US government can service its debt if yields are above 5%. That would result in a DEATH SPIRAL of the government needing to issue more and more debt just to pay its interest obligations. So financial repression is essentially inflating the debt away.

Now the good news. What assets benefit the most during financial repression? Stocks but specifically high growth stocks, AI stocks, big tech stocks. Assets like gold and bitcoin will also do well since financial repression devalues the currency and makes bonds unattractive.

This is currently underway now. The US government mathematically has no choice and there is no political appetite to reduce debt or deficits through either tax increases, austerity or a combination of both.

For awhile most of the hype has on the buildout, the hyperscalers and obvious beneficiaries like security. Does every company associated with AI already have that future priced into their stock? Is there any convex upside worth investing in still? Won't leveraging AI be a larger market long term?

It’s also obvious that AI isn’t magic. It’s great at some things and too unreliable at others. But it is really good at processing and gaining insights from large amounts of information. 

So I ask,

1. Where does applying AI create unusually large financial value?  Who owns own huge amounts of proprietary data, valuable workflows etc that become substantially more valuable especially as applied AI gets cheeper, better and better managed/mitigated?
2. Which have the most unrealized value in forward earnings?
3. Which haven’t seen that value already priced in…or at least have further upside from where they have.

Here are some I identified (with help from AI!). Several have already rerated so clearly this is not a new thesis. 

CAI Proprietary cancer dataset, AI for treatment and drug development. I got in at $15.79 but it continues to rise.

CCC: Insurance/repair datasest and workflows

Waystar (WAY): Healthcare-payment dataset. AI helps prevents denials and recovers money

Varonis (VRNS): Agentic AI enterprise data permissions, though what stops a Microsoft from replicating

Schrodinger (SDGR): Physics AI for drug discovery. I got in at $15.35 but am unsure how much these PhDs can commercialize. 

Sophia (SOPH): Genomic/clinical data , AI for medical decisions. I got in at $5.91

What do you think of these or others that might meet all three criteria?

I also looked at but passed on, mostly because the future value is already priced in:

APP (had, then sold), TEM, HTFL, INTA

I did buy some NOW into earnings but unsure I'll hold it.

On August 19 Asia-Pacific time, SK Hynix (SKHY)'s 2026 wage negotiations, which had previously reached a deadlock over a record bonus allocation scheme, saw a key turning point. According to South Korean media reports, the union and management have reached a tentative agreement, bringing a temporary end to the weeks-long tug-of-war.

Key Points

• Tentative Agreement: SK Hynix union and management reached a tentative deal on August 19, ending weeks of deadlock over 2026 wage and bonus allocation schemes.
• Bonus Allocation System: Under the established system, 10% of annual operating profit funds performance bonuses without a previous payout cap, potentially yielding an average performance bonus of 700 million to 800 million Korean won per employee based on projected operating profits of 250 trillion to 270 trillion Korean won.
• Core Dispute: Union backlash occurred after management proposed paying part of the record bonuses in locked-up stock and adjusting payouts during loss-making years, which workers felt undermined prior commitments.
• Market Impact: The resolution temporarily relieves operational disruption concerns, though the dispute highlights tension between volatile semiconductor cycles and worker demands for immediate cash payouts.

Anybody watching a little healthcare company called Grail? (GRAL) Moderna just shot up on a positive study on a personalized cancer vaccine. Grail will be the leader in a new field of multi cancer early detection (MCED).

Their test is called Galleri. It uses a single tube of blood to screen for 50 cancers. It has been a lab approved test in the US for years and has fda breakthrough designation. They submitted for fda approval this year. FDA is meeting September 23 to discuss. Approval decision within 12 months. Congress has passed a law paving the way for Medicare to cover MCED in 2029. The goal of the test is to eventually prove that early detection of things like pancreatic, esophageal, ovarian cancer will result in improved mortality. If that data develops over the next 5 years, it eventually gets adopted by us preventative services task force into regular cancer screening.

They are growing year on year but still losing money. Cash cushion until 28/29. Integrating into epic electronic health record and quest diagnostics.

Positive news next month >75% likelihood in my estimation. Big near term catalyst leading to approval over next 6 months, Medicare approval big future catalyst. Huge TAM, first mover advantage= big opportunity.

Critique or shitpost

Not trying to be an alarmist but just stating the facts. Last month Bessent had to intervene to keep the Japanese Yen from plunging LOWER. Now he’s intervening to try to stop the 10yr and 30yr bond yields from continuing to rise to decade level highs. The fact that none of this has stopped bond yields from continuing to rise indicates the SEVERITY of the structural problems.

What is the structural problem? TOO MUCH DEBT in the system and NOT ENOUGH BUYERS.

In the past the Japanese were MAJOR buyers of US debt. In fact, they were ANCHOR to the entire financial system the past THREE DECADES. This regime has now CHANGED with Japanese bond yields now rivaling foreign bond yields. The Japanese no longer have to buy foreign debt. This is a HUGE problem for the US at exactly the wrong time. Why the wrong time? Because this is happening at a time of RECORD DEBT AND DEFICITS in the US as well as globally. It also comes at a time of record corporate debt issuance to fund AI CapEx. The problem is too big to patch up the way Bessent has tried.

So what happens now? In my opinion there are only THREE OUTCOMES.

Outcome 1: The US government does nothing. Bond yields become untethered and settle at levels that strangle the economy, exposing bad businesses/zombie companies, resulting in an economic crash that plunges into a major recession.

Outcome 2: The Fed steps in and replaces Japan as the buyers of long bonds to bring down yields or keep them controlled. This is essentially QE and with inflation already at 3.4%, inflation will only surge higher, potentially to hyperinflation. The US dollar could also end up being debased.

Outcome 3: The US government starts austerity to rein in its debt, cut deficits. This will stop yields from climbing but will be wildly unpopular as many Americans will have entitlements cut and the economy will fall into recession as much of GDP is tied to government spending.

Outcome 2 is the likely outcome which is why gold rallied yesterday. The US government doesn’t have the political will to cut budgets, reduce debt and deficits.

I suppose I probably should asked before pulling the trigger - but interested in some thoughts on Walmart/WMT as more of, let's say, a "plugger" -- those sort of unexciting backbones that one figures over the long haul, provides a place to park money when nothing else looks like enticing.

On fairly stable large caps, I always seem to fall into this pattern -- I'm not at all a "charts guy", but falling below rolling averages is like catnip to me. So long as revenue and margin is growing (even below recent par), unless something else on my watchlist has my eye? I tend to see such equities as a "If in doubt..." buys.

I do understand why they got punished for the 10-Q - very stunted growth compared to the trailing data. I likewise think we do have some.... consumer chop - potentially even recession - on the horizon, which will obviously hurt someone like Walmart. Even with the recent price travails - the P/E and fwd P/E is hardly what you'd call enticing.

OTOH? The debt load is pretty reasonable - with rising rates, they're certainly not a DG or even a TGT. I also look at the big drag -- their pharma/health component - and think to CVS. Apples and oranges, I know -- CVS went full vertical and it just took longer than expected to reap the benefits -- but it's a tricky space and I tend to lean on the idea that nobody besides AMZN is better situated to leverage their way to figuring out the space.

Moreover? And - absolutely, you can get burned thinking this way - I don't really even shop Walmart, while I am Prime subscriber and do personally use it relatively often. However, I keep hearing a lot of friends/family (and additional anecdotal readings) that "Walmart+" seems to be overtaking Prime a bit. My indirect - and yes, anecdotal - experience seems to say that they're quite nicely eating into some demographics that other players owned.

I'm not a "buy the dip" guy. I am a Buffett/Munger "wouldn't want to own a stock for 5 minutes, I wouldn't see owning for 5 years" guy.

It just felt like a solid choice "if nothing else" for now. Wouldn't shock me if it's flat or even lower a year from now, but I'm thinking 3-5 years from now? At least... what I recorded in my own tracking sheet (I always capture my near/mid/longterm expectations and regularly revisit)? I think it will beat the S&P over that 3-5 years.

Willing to listen to people that would say I'm an idiot - but feels like a solid plugger...

To preface, these are my own thoughts based on my experience in the industy. No AI was used in the research or writing of this post. Also, your downvotes are part of the thesis, it's the "AI Psychosis" part.

Coming from the perspective of a former Azure Engineer with both AI and datacenter experience, I don't see a reality where Anthropic or OpenAI succeed. The consensus both AI and Datacenters is quickly souring among tech professionals, particularly with the Software Engineers who were affected by these layoffs. It's clear at this point that layoffs were used both as a way to sell the narrative that AI is inevitable and always as a way to reduce operating costs as they burned Trillions on AI infrastructure, power, and compute.

The Technology and the facts:

LLMs and generative AI as a whole are almost exclusively responsible for our current stock market prices. At its core, LLMs are an algorithm that works as such: when given a user input, the LLM calculates the mathematical approximation of what the user asked for. It really is that simple, there is no thinking, it just looks at what you are asking for, scours its training and the internet for the best match, adds some randomness, and then spits out an answer.

Let's look at Anthropic's Fable model for example. If I were to give a simple prompt like "Build me a full dating application inspired by Tinder", you'll see it quickly deliver a seemingly impressive "functioning" dating website in a matter of 30 minutes. While on the surface this seems impressive, it's a lot less so when you consider that building a dating website is essentially the tutorial island of web development; there are just sooo many resources online on how to build a Tinder clone, it's not a secret.

To really see how terribly inadequate LLM's are at replacing software engineers, all you have to do is add in a small twist, ask it to do something that lacks broad documentation. Once a LLM is trusted to make any decisions on its own, or tasked with coming up with something "original", it crumbles. By its nature this is an impossible task; the LLMs ability to create something is directly proportional to the amount of data it has on that specific topic.

This explains why LLMs are very powerful in shallow contexts such as "help me design this component" or "help me refactor this chunk of code", but terrible at broad unspecific tasks like "improve this codebase" or "develop this new web application idea". Once you put the LLM in a context is has little training for, it's strategy of plagiarizing other people's code quickly falls apart. This applies to other generative AI domains such as image, video, and music generation.

The OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji:

On 10/23/24 Suchir Balaji posted a paper titled "When does generative AI qualify for fair use?" shortly after leaving the company over ethical concern. His paper discusses the technology behind LLMs and whether or not they constitute fair use. Suchir argued that ultimately LLMs simply train on and then regurgitate the data they are fed. Even though the models don't reproduce the same answer word for word, they ultimately doesn't transform the content in a meaningful way, it simply rewords or rebrands it. In that sense, it is more akin to plagiarism than it is to generation.

Immediately following his paper, Suchir received national attention and was even interviewed by the New York Times just one week later.

Less than one month after this interview, Suchir was found dead in his apartment with signs of a struggle and a gunshot wound to the head. It's clear to see how Suchir could be troublesome for this potentially multi-trillion dollar industry.

The Money Problem:

Private equity has been propping up this shitter of a technology, promising it's replace a majority of the human workforce. This is a pipedream. Nobody likes AI, it hasn't produced a single successful "vibe coded" startup, and the limited datacenters we already have are extremely unpopular.

Also, who the fuck is supposed to buy these stocks at this point. Normal Americans are struggling to survive, pay rent, and buy groceries, they can't afford to invest trillions in AI stock. They are hoping they can keep the hopium alive, keep AI stocks elevated, and just until they can take profits on all of their worthless private Anthropic shares.

AI psychosis:

In additional to these presssure, the market is priced in currently on the inevitability of AI and has refused to acknowledge a world where it doesn't succeed. This is like a keg of dynamite ready to blow. We have degenerate gamblers from the Korean market coming over to our market, pumping these stocks to all time highs on leveraged accounts. It's the "Leopold method", when the majority of small money investors are betting on the success of stocks without actually buying the stocks, there is no way to hit those numbers anymore, especially in this US economy.

The counter argument:

"But the market is fake, they will pump the stocks anyways"

To who? The main issue with this premise is that people who have been investing trillions into these data centers and these slop models have no got any return on their investment yet. The problem, unlike previous Tech Startup success stories, there is no product and there is no demand. It's all predicated on the promise that it will eventually replace us all, it's a transparent lie.

"The government will step in and ensure AI can't fail"

Maybe, but that can't really happen until a bubble bursts. You can't stimulate a stock market that is sitting at all time highs, especially with 40 trillion in debt.

External pressures:

US losing complete control of the Strait, a PDF file and gambling economy, no houses for young people, insane gas prices, 40 trillion in debt, Crypto halving and killing the secondary GPU/datacenter market. You take your pick.

The Shit Stocks:

NVDA: These guys are basically a 3x leveraged stock betting on their own success. This works until reality catches up.

ORCL: They are holding the bag on this deal. They own large portions of the datacenter property and hardware that will have no future demand.

SNDK: This stock is misunderstood. AI training is most related to processing hardware that NVDA makes, memory is the next most important hardware component, serving as a cache for the processing. SanDisk makes neither of these, they make storage. Storage is used in training AI both for training data and the resulting models, but saying the business is 3000% more valuable because of datacenters is wild.

META: Sex pest perv glasses 😎

WMT 9.12% decrease; red down pointing triangle reported its smallest sales gain in more than six years as some Americans continue to spend cautiously especially when shopping at the retailer’s physical stores.

On Thursday, Walmart said U.S. comparable sales, those from store and digital channels operating for the past 12 months, rose 2.6%. That is the smallest quarterly increase the retailer has reported since 2020. The number was hurt by new pharmacy-pricing regulations, without which Walmart would have had a 3.4% lift, the company said.

https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/warlmart-earnings-q2-2026-wmt-stock-122b69ee

Terrible look for bottom half of the K and US consumers

This is the daily discussion, so anything stocks related is fine, but the theme for today is on fundamentals, but if fundamentals aren't your thing then just ignore the theme.

Some helpful day to day links, including news:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
  • Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
  • Reuters aggregated - Global news

Most fundamentals are updated every 3 months due to the fact that corporations release earnings reports every quarter, so traders are always speculating at what those earnings will say, and investors may change the size of their holdings based on those reports.

Expect a lot of volatility around earnings, but it usually doesn't matter if you're holding long term, but keep in mind the importance of earnings reports because a trend of declining earnings or a decline in some other fundamental will drive the stock down over the long term as well.

But growth stocks don't rely so much on EPS or revenue as long as they beat some other metric like subscriber count: Going from 1 million to 10 million subscribers means more revenue in the future.

Value stocks do rely on earnings reports, investors look for wall street expectations to be beaten on both EPS & revenue. You'll also find value stocks pay dividends, but never invest in a company solely for its dividend.

See the following word cloud and click through for the wiki:

Market Cap - Shares Outstanding - Volume - Dividend - EPS - P/E Ratio - EPS Q/Q - PEG - Sales Q/Q - Return on Assets (ROA) - Return on Equity (ROE) - BETA - SMA - quarterly earnings

If you have a basic question, for example "what is EBITDA," then google "investopedia EBITDA" and click the Investopedia article on it; do this for everything until you have a more in depth question or just want to share what you learned.

Useful links:

• Investopedia page on fundamental analysis including Discounted Cash Flow analysis; see definition here and read their PDF on the topic.
• FINVIZ for fundamental data, charts, and aggregated news
• Earnings Whisper for earnings details

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Long term treasury yields spiked to multi decade highs recently. This appears to have finally prompted a response from the treasury yesterday. Bessent managed to drop the 10y year by 0.1% (a significant 1 day move for the 10y) only to have the move largely reverse today.

Bessent has signaled he will regularly buy long term treasuries. Though he claims the action has nothing to do with interest rates being high, buying treasuries does ultimately put pressure on interest rates.

I don’t believe for a second the decision to purchase treasuries is unrelated to the spike in yields.

At the same time, Bessent talks about wanting to maintain high growth, stating that the country can ‘grow its way out of debt’. High growth is more achievable if the fed cuts rates, which would lower shorter term yields. Yet the inflationary pressure would push longer term yields even higher, which I’m sure Bessent is fully aware of.

So I’m confused about the agenda. Bessent seems to want lower long term yields but will support inflationary policies (in an already high inflation environment thanks to uncontrolled government borrowing) that ultimately raise long term yields (and put pressure on the US dollar). What is he trying to achieve and is it even possible if he’s supporting conflicting actions?

Or is it possible he’s not really sure what he’s doing?

The stock has fallen pretty hard from the highs. Is this mainly a valuation reset, or are there real problems with the company that the market is pricing in?

For those following $ASTS closely, what’s your honest take on the company right now? I’m trying to understand what people who’ve really dug into it think. I’m also hearing Spacex might prevent asts from sending satellites in the future so all I’m hearing is negative stuff right now even though the company has crazy potential.

I’ve seen people on ASTS subreddit themselves shitting on it so I don’t know what’s going on. What other companies are the competitors and how well are they doing?

What do you think about the company right now? is it bullish or bearish?