⚪ The AI Trade Is One Stock, Not A Sector NEW

Since June 1, 69% of US semiconductor stocks have fallen more than 40%. That's the deepest bear market of any group in the Russell 3000, while the S&P sits near a record. The index isn't pricing AI. It's pricing a handful of names.

Oct 9

🟢 Seven Diesel Moves And Still One Refinery Short NEW

In two weeks Washington tried seven fixes for diesel. Only one targets refining capacity, and it works on a clock measured in years while a hurricane bears down on Louisiana's refineries.

Oct 9

⚪ OpenAI Came Up $20bn Short On Revenue NEW

The FT reports OpenAI's annualised revenue is $20bn below what it had signalled. That came one day after the WSJ reported Broadcom is arranging more than $50bn of financing for OpenAI's custom chip. The circular financing behind the AI buildout cracked first on the revenue side, not the funding side: the customer the chain is lending against earns less than the chain assumed.

Oct 8

🟢 Broadcom Said It Didn't Finance Customers, Then Did NEW

Four weeks before agreeing to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion, Broadcom management said third party partners, not Broadcom, provide the direct financing for customer deals. The balance sheet can carry it. The concentration is the question: Anthropic is expected to be Broadcom's largest custom chip customer in 2027, and now it would also be a major borrower.

Oct 5

⚪ This Looks More Like 1999 Than 2008 NEW

The 10 year just hit a 24 year high and tech rallied anyway. A strategist explained it this way: if AI's benefits are essentially infinite, so what if borrowing costs more? That argument has been made before, almost word for word, in 1999. The comparison that fits this market isn't the 2008 crash. It's the year before the 2000 top.

Oct 5

🟢 The Breadth Data Confirms It Independently NEW

Three separate sources now show the same split. About 75% of S&P 500 stocks fell in September, fewer than half sit above their 200 day average, and the equal weight index is on track for a losing streak seen only twice before, in 2002 and 2022.

Oct 4

🟡 CoreWeave's Bonds Show The Funding Cost Rising NEW

In April, investors paid 102 cents on the dollar for CoreWeave's 9.75% bonds due 2031. By Oct 1 they traded near 86.6 cents, yielding about 13.5%. The most direct credit bet on AI infrastructure is now priced like distressed debt while Nvidia hits records.

Oct 4

🟡 Both Ends Of The Saudi Workaround Under Fire NEW

Saudi Arabia got its East West pipeline back to close to 6mb/d, routing oil around Hormuz to the Red Sea. Over one weekend, a third tanker was struck in Hormuz, explosions were reported near a tanker on the Red Sea route out of Yanbu, and the Houthis claimed strikes on Aramco sites in Riyadh and Khurais.

Oct 4

⚪ France Is Losing Its Buyers NEW

A Japanese asset manager just sold every French government bond it owned, a French insurer is diversifying away from its own government's debt, and France plans to sell a record amount of new bonds next year. The spread over Germany is back at 2011 levels, and the first sign of spillover showed up in Italy this week.

Oct 4

⚪ What Stops The Bond Vigilantes NEW

The US 10 year just touched its highest yield since 2002, UK 30 year gilts crossed 6% for the first time since 1998, and France's spread over Germany is back at 2011 levels. Positioning is about as short as it gets. History says these selloffs don't end on oversold readings. They end when something changes, and right now nothing has.

Oct 3

🟡 The Navy Opened Hormuz, Then A Tanker Burned NEW

On Oct 2 a White House adviser said the Navy had opened the Strait of Hormuz and crude was coming through. About two hours later, a tanker was struck by a projectile on its way out of the strait. It was the second confirmed strike in two days.

Oct 2

⚪ The Jobs Report Broke. The Long Bond Read The President. NEW

September payrolls came in at 29,000 and the market priced out the Fed's next hike within minutes. The long bond refused to rally and finished the day lower. The same week, the President said inflation could pay down the national debt "very rapidly" — and the two ends of the curve are now trading two different things.

Oct 2

🟢 The S&P Isn't Ignoring Rates. Four Stocks Are. NEW

The 10-year rose 85bp in Q3 and the S&P still gained about 2%, so the story became that stocks don't care about rates. They do. Four megacaps added about 300 index points while the rest of the S&P subtracted about 150 — the typical stock priced the rate shock, and four companies that don't need to borrow covered it up.

Oct 2

⚪ A $380 Million Factory Plan Erased $50 Billion NEW

Toshiba said it will double its hard-drive capacity, and Seagate and Western Digital each lost about 13% in a day — roughly $50 billion of market value for an investment of about $380 million. SanDisk fell 4% and memory barely moved. The market just showed how much of the AI storage rally was a bet that supply stays tight, and which kinds of scarcity it thinks can be ended.

Oct 2

🟢 Now The Fed Names AI As An Inflation Driver NEW

Two weeks after Warsh named the AI capex surge as a driver of bond yields, Vice Chair Jefferson named it as a driver of inflation — attributing rising core goods prices to AI-related production costs. The headlines traded the October skip. The substance is a second Fed leader putting AI inside the inflation problem.

Oct 1

🟢 The Chip Seller Became The Lender At 5.3% NEW

Anthropic's IPO filing shows Broadcom lending it up to $42bn to lease Broadcom's own chips, while AWS raises GPU rental prices for a fourth straight quarter. Compute costs are rising, the buyer's revenue can't cover its obligations, and the gap is being funded by the seller and by public markets at the highest 10-year yield since 2002. Three layers of the framework are showing up in one deal.

Oct 1

⚪ The Fed Got The Inflation Print It Wanted And Bonds Sold Off Anyway NEW

Core PCE came in at 3.0% — below every one of 51 analyst forecasts. Three-month momentum is running at 2%. Odds of an October hike collapsed from 70% to 31%.

Sep 30

⚪ Oracle Just Walked Away From A 2.45 Gigawatt Promise NEW

Oracle sent a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter — the New Mexico data center built for Stargate — to avoid payments if the site slips past 2028.

Sep 24

🟢 The Diesel Ban Moves The Shortage Instead Of Fixing It NEW

Washington is preparing a 90-day ban on diesel exports. Within minutes US diesel futures fell more than 7% while European diesel rose more than 7%.

Sep 23

🟡 The Workaround Closed So Saudi Used The Strait NEW

With the pipeline bypass shut, Saudi Arabia sent its crude straight through Hormuz — 14 million barrels onto seven supertankers in a single day. Flows through the strait have roughly quadrupled from August and crude fell on it. Nobody has said how the passage was secured.

Sep 21