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STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: Aug. 11, 2025 Duration: 2:03:54Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, market participants analyze the impact of upcoming CPI reports, geopolitical tensions affecting semiconductor supply chains, and the potential for growth in LNG demand. Strategic partnerships and fundraising efforts are highlighted as key themes, alongside the excitement surrounding new market entrants and IPOs.
Full Transcription
Thank you. How are we doing today, sir?
Evan, I am doing fantastic.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
I'm doing well.
It's an interesting day in the market.
My portfolio is up a little bit, a little green, nothing too crazy.
Obviously, Apple pulling back after a very nice run, which isn't too crazy.
A couple names that were standing out to me, I mean, just some of these big movers.
Tesla has been working well today.
BMNR, the Tom Lee name, TMDX, Eli Lilly is actually not looking horrible today.
Some of the names that aren't working, at least that I own Apple,
and QQQ's down a little.
But overall, it's, you know, I think this feels like a day where, you know,
you have a lot of big event coming up later in this week,
and CPI tomorrow, PPI retail sales, whatever.
I think CPI is really the one we're looking forward to tomorrow
is what I feel like we're seeing a little today.
But obviously, there's the NVIDIA AMD China news.
Now there's this China 90-day tariff extension
that we just got a very headline-driven
last couple hours or so
as we're waiting for what I think
will be the big event for the week CPI tomorrow.
But what's your thoughts?
What are some of these moves
that are standing out to you, Emp?
You know, honestly, nothing is really standing out to me today.
I mean, there's a few names that may be off.
I mean, obviously Tesla made a good, you know,
kind of breakout type of move, but you know,
the day in front of CPI VIX is up.
Markets are completely flat.
We did a little look above and fell.
We've looked below and we're coming right back into the range.
I think you just erase today from your memory,
unless you,
you had a certain name or something that was moving,
but yeah,
the broad market to me,
there's not a whole lot going on here.
I had a CPI later this or tomorrow morning,
by the way,
I kind of love today.
We can't erase today.
That's not nice.
Yeah.
Well,
like I said,
if you,
if you had some kind of winter or something, or if you enjoyed your day.
But Scott, tell me about that a little bit.
Did you have some moves, stuff you were looking at today?
Were you repositioning ahead?
What were you looking at out there?
Well, if you remember last Monday, kind of like we're all kidding around.
But I was like, I really think MSOS is going to go.
You know, I posted that article about, you know, you had Mike Tyson
and a bunch of celebrities kind of forcing the envelope on Trump to do some modifications to
some of the, you know, the wellness I call our cannabis laws and PS, MSOS is up 26%. And I think
it might've been like three and a quarter when I was going over it here. And I just bought
September and October calls. But again, for all the times we tried and it didn't work,
it's hard to be excited when it does work.
But it just shows there's a time and place for everything.
So that's something that I'm selling more than I'm buying today.
But I was buying more than selling it last Monday.
And then on Wednesday, I really tried to be really, really vocal
on the 630 Club when you had a day one in Apple,
a day one in Tesla,
and a day one in Baba. So Baba right now is not doing great, but Tesla, you know,
he reclaimed the 8-day and the 21-day. I talk about those moving averages. I'm like, when
Tesla's above the 8-21-day, he's a genius. When it's below, he's a little wonky out there.
And boom, like we love Tesla. And everyone always talks about it because when it goes it goes
and this was a really big three-day money move where you had a bunch of pivots to buy whether
it was that 312 area whether it took out thursday's high on friday at um like 323 ish and now here you
are 342 to to sell some so it's you, it's basically been a very, everyone's complaining about how
narrow the market is. But when it's narrow, you know, it's our job to find the stocks that are
working and not trying to reinvent things. Every time I've tried to like go out and buy
things and names, I feel like they might rotate to, I just donate money to the markets versus
stick with what's working until it really gives you a way to say, hey, it's not working anymore.
And, you know, stop doing that.
But anyway, you know, today, as far as the indices, you know, look where we were a week ago.
It's been a big move from that Friday low to fill in the gap.
Like a week ago last Monday, what was important also is the spies and accused filled that opening gap from Friday and basically proved that the active bears did
not have power to keep control over everything in the market. And then he had a really good week
of individual action. Now, I do think there's a little risk to tomorrow's CPI. I feel like
there's talk out there that after doing all the revisions to the jobs report, that maybe the CPI
has been calculated a little wrong as far as it's a lot, looks a lot better than it probably is, considering there is a lot of inflation out there that might not be shown.
So I don't know if they're going to do any kind of change up for that.
But there is a chance that after a move that we've seen in the past week into a CPI. If it happens to be a headline hot CPI,
you could see some volatility, you know,
because the Fed now, I think the Fed funds expectations are now 72 basis points worth of cuts.
So if we're really hot tomorrow,
which I'm not saying it will be,
I know gas has been above $3, you know,
in my neighborhood for the past month
and just everything else too.
So I just think that it's definitely a little bit,
if you're super active, not if you're, you know, again,
trading your IRA for the long term
or investing for the next five to 10 years,
but if you trade for a living and it's August 11th
and you just had a big move
and you have to kind of look at some things
that you're committed to or not committed to
and see if there's a way to hedge a little bit
just in case tomorrow is one of those days that could cause a little bit of loose and wide action,
which is what I call it. As far as everything else, it seems like there's nothing. Yeah, I guess
it could be a day in the life. I don know if anybody called google we were i think me and
options mike were really hyper focused on google last week it was trading like 195 it finally got
above 198 friday it hit 202 and change it's only down 39 cents i'm actually i sold some you know
some options into strength on friday so if you want something i'm doing i'm buying some more options
and i don't see why this wouldn't test 207 the all-time high as long as the market doesn't get too shaken up um i am buying dash back down here
you know a lot of my guys played it into earnings and got out pretty well thank goodness it was
above 275 so now it's like 255 so i don't think the story in dash is over i think it's kind of
like in netflix where it just had a huge move into numbers that needed some time to come in, pull back, reset. So I think Dash between $255 and $248 is probably a
good time to rebuy some Dash if you want to just think about an idea. Guys on my alpha team are
talking about, you know, the quantum names today. They're kind of having a day one. I love day ones,
but they do get a little tricky. ionq seems to be stronger than
some of the other ones so maybe if you're looking at something that could go today and if it
continues it needs a daylight today to usually happen so that's ionq and qbts i think qubt might
have numbers so be careful um i haven't done anything really that new today with new positions. I've just traded around
some of them and tried to manage some of the SPY premium. I got caught a little extra short SPY
premium on Friday. So at least I was able to add to that and get some of my money back in my hedges.
And when I did that, I was also... I did today, I also bought Amazon. I bought 225 calls thinking that it was just a 226 as long as we stay in this kind of trend
that we've been in.
You know, they come after that and try and fill a little bit more of that post-earnings
gap.
They were really cheap, like a buck.
But I was also buying Amazon, you know, 216-ish before the move.
So I was, you know, I got smaller.
So that's really, I i think massaging positions sticking with
things i guess that you have conviction with um trying to find some cute other trades um and
trying to find like you know things that turn on um some guys think coin is like a day one but i
still think coin is just troublesome you know bitcoin and ethereum have been fantastic um last
week i think we were
talking about bmnr here when it was like a 33 i had my son biden his robin hood account in it
it's up 50 he thinks i'm pretty smart now but anyway um you know but i've been really focused
on ethereum to play catch up and that's been like a good three-week accumulation and then even you
know bitcoin itself after that initial move from uh you know
106 to 123 it pulled back held 111 and then got back above 116 so there's really a lot to like
if you're not just hyper focused on the narrow narrative that the bears are pointing to where
this isn't going to end well which the bears are pointing to and so far they haven't been able to
keep the spy or the queues below the eight-day for more than a day or two. So until they keep the spies or the queues below the eight-day
or the 21-day for more than a day or two, I'm going to continue to try and be opportunistic.
A few things to unpack there, Scott. I would love to ask you about the...
By the way, quickly, we got a comment down below, by the way, talking... One of the questions was,
do you think BMNR will dilute again in the coming days?
And the answer to that question is probably yes.
That's the name of the game of what that thing is.
Yeah, but they're a little smarter than SBED.
SBED, every time that thing goes up, they freaking announce another deal.
So they're not letting it go.
At least these guys know how to run stocks.
Everyone who's shorting it thinks the deal's going to come. They thought a deal was going to come Friday. I think now it's up another 12. So they're going to it go. At least these guys know how to run stocks. Everyone who's shorting it thinks the deal's going to come.
They thought a deal was going to come Friday.
It didn't, and now it's up another 12.
So they're going to squeeze some of these shorts, thinking the exact same thing until it happens.
But I get it.
At 63, I told him to sell half, even though I think he could hone it for a bunch of years.
And so I told my guys, too, the traders, I'm like, listen, this is a sell half.
And I think people started thinking a deal was coming today,
and they started shorting.
So there's a funny game to play if you're playing for a deal.
You just better know that you could be in a bunch of pain beforehand,
and these guys are professionals.
Tom Lee knows how to run stocks.
Peter knows how to run stocks.
So they're not going to do a deal on the first up day to capture a price.
They're going to squeeze people for two, three days,
so this way they can get a higher price
and take care of their guys in the hole all right what were you gonna say
well actually that was one of the topics i was going to hit on was the ethereum
crypto i mean scott what are your thoughts over there uh i mean risk seems to still be on in the
market if you're using crypto as a barometer there,
obviously the anti-inflationary stuff is still behind it.
But Ethereum made quite the move.
Do you think a lot of this is just like the hype catch up?
Is that where all the eyes are looking next?
Or is there something more there?
Well, if you want to kind of follow my footprint,
because I'm not one of those guys who bought
Bitcoin at $1,500 or believed in it early.
Or, you know, I like to trade sectors that aren't playing hot.
I started playing Bitcoin when I had that breakout above $20,000 a bunch of years ago
and had the initial move.
And then about a year and a half ago, or actually into 2021, I was really spread out.
I was playing Bitcoin, Ethereum.
I was playing all coins everywhere. my coinbase account was through the roof
I was playing almost more more crypto than I was stocks and then after that
Yeah, yeah, I was did you cut out there Scott
yeah yeah did you cut out there scott
maybe we'll see we get scott right back um i have had a phone call or something there
options mike let me ask you on that same topic there are you are you following along much
or never mind we got scott back
scott are you there? Did I lose you?
Yeah, you cut out there for the last
probably 45 seconds or so.
Oh, I'm sorry.
So I was just saying that
I don't know where I cut off,
but I wasn't an early Bitcoin individual.
I came in a little late
and had a great run like most people.
And then that 2021
move lower in in risk small
caps and altcoins taught me a lesson about how you know altcoins could drop 50 percent and then drop
another 40 percent and be down 90 percent and you could think you sold them well and you got hurt
so in the last year i've been very very focused on just coin and ethereum and bitcoin's been
fantastic starting from you know
the the turkey trot that i put on a thing with you know into thanksgiving because everyone's
always talking about bitcoin on thanksgiving etc um and then the move to 100 000 through christmas
and then you know then the rebuild into july 4th and it's still going so about a few months ago a
lot of my friends on the institutional
side is like hey you know like there's a lot of institutional money here and and they're not going
to do anything besides buy bitcoin ethereum and and maybe um uh what's the one that's like three
and a quarter right now um damn it why am i uh transactional which one xrp yeah yeah yeah that one and that was like a buck
and a quarter so i started buying the ethe um etf when it was like 22 ish you know i put it on as a
power play power play options that had that initial move to 31 and then i've been accumulating it into
uh the 29 area that ethe thinking that if if they have all this money that they have to put to work in different ETFs and this and that,
first they're going to go Bitcoin and then they'll go Ethereum and then they're going to try and go down that food chain.
But I'm stopping at Bitcoin and Ethereum. I don't need to go into Sol or any of the other ones that everyone's going to say is going to be a me too.
Because granted, those can go pretty fast, but they can come in even faster.
So I just think that a lot of liquidity, you know, Trump's pro crypto.
Then the news that 401ks can go into Bitcoin, that's a lot more demand.
Pretty much what I said the last two years of Bitcoin, I'm like,
you can put money in every single month or play like a risk asset sector.
When it's above the AIM 21 day.
It could be better than any other name out there, which we see when it moves.
But that's, you know, you don't sometimes have to look into things a little bit more
because crypto and gold, they take on different narratives
depending on what's going on in the world and the market.
But bottom line is when it's acting well, it's acting well.
And if you have a thesis on it and you're adding to it and you're buying it,
then you have to know what your time frame is.
And if you're trading it, you have to just use the same trading rules
you use for Amazon or Tesla or Google or the markets.
And I would say Ethereum is a little extended here.
I would say you should probably trim it versus add to it,
considering where the 8-day is.
But overall, that was a name where institutions feel comfortable enough
to put some money to work because they have money to go into crypto
that has to go to work.
So it was Bitcoin, Ethereum, and I'm not going to say, like,
I know what the next one's going to be because I don't want to even put that out there.
We have an IPO this week.
We have a crypto IPO this week.
It's called Bullish is the name of the company, but BLSH.
They're like upsized the size of their IPO.
Pricing is tomorrow and goes live Wednesday.
Obviously, like the circles in the world and even just like the crypto-related stocks.
And even these IPOs have been going crazy.
That Figma IPO IPO I saw today
was maybe up obviously it was
priced like what 30 something it went up to
100 now we're hanging out in the 80s so I mean
still overall not horrible
I'm kidding how bullish IPO goes this week
BLSH
transparently I put in
on Robinhood for
like a IPO allocation
see if this silly season
continues but we'll see I end up watching more like an IPO allocation. See if this silly season continues.
But we'll see.
I end up watching.
Yeah, listen, I mean, get the IPO.
With the way this week has gone,
that feels like it's going to be a hot theme.
And, you know, I'd rather play it
through these actual NASDAQ listed companies
where, yeah, you still are probably going to see
that a lot of them are going to get destroyed
once we get this pullback.
But I feel a little safer than going into some of these crypto coins personally.
And I could just do it for my brokerage as opposed to another place.
Right.
Overall, I agree with what you're saying on the Bitcoin, Ethereum at the top.
But you could also do the same thing.
You buy IVIT, add your brokerage, or ETHE.
You don't have to go to coinbase or go to some crypto exchange
where you feel like you have to send money to and you may never get it back you know obviously
you know most people who know crypto know that you usually get it back but there's definitely
scams out there as far as different exchanges and different spots where you probably shouldn't
send even coinbase i'd say every other day i get this message that somebody logged into my coinbase
and they try like get me to put information there to steal my money.
So I understand how, you know, people still feel more comfortable.
That's why it supports the thesis of buy Bitcoin and Ethereum because, you know, Merrill Lynch and BlackRock, they're not going out there and buying, you know, Galaga or, you know, or some altcoins.
you know, or some altcoins are going out there and they're buying Ethereum and they're buying
Bitcoin and they're doing it through reliable ETFs that maybe you don't make as much, you know,
in a hot altcoin, but at least you know that they're not stealing your money.
But that, you know, these IPOs, listen, if you can get shares, get them. I had an intern in here
who has a Robinhood account and put it for a fig or whatever you call that, FIG.
He made like $1,200. He's like, this is better than being in counselor camp. I'm like, okay.
Where's options, Mike?
I can't lie.
These guys around?
I wanted one thing quickly. This Firefly Aerospace IPO, I thought it was notable that they didn't give any allocation to Robinhood
and they didn't reach out to retail as well.
That is a theme.
I'm biased probably with it,
but I'm watching a little bit for the companies of these IPOs.
The more they reach out to retail versus not,
versus how they do following it.
They had a good retail presence.
Firefly, not so much.
I wonder what we'll see.
Options mic, though.
Yeah?
In between.
We're going to mic.
Hey, guys.
Hey, Scott.
Michael?
Hey, Em.
What's up, boys?
Yeah, Ben.
Yeah, Scott, I mean, I'm not in Google anymore, but I traded calls on that on Friday.
Really, you know, past week had a real nice trade on that.
I mean, you brought up points.
There's things to do here today if you're an active trader, as you put it.
I traded Tesla today.
That had a real nice move.
I traded AMD a couple of times today.
There was a real nice move in that one.
You know, the market's not going anywhere, but, you know, names are holding up and they're
rotating around.
Coin, I mean, a couple calls on coin now for a couple weeks out here because I think I don't think this move in Bitcoin is over coin.
And, you know, overall, today was just kind of one of those days.
There was nothing bad. NVIDIA came back.
AMD came back. The one I missed today was Micron.
I was away from my desk when they when they got it up and had that big move free market.
But didn't hold in so well either way
mike sorry to interrupt on that there are a couple conferences this week something we haven't had a
lot of so just know like when companies speak at conferences especially when it's the cfo a lot of
times they will update guidance correct there's a couple different companies that have that that
type of thing today one that stood out ariston networks and mercador libre both have something
on wednesday just a couple smaller
companies tomorrow yeah there was a couple events this week and remember Micron reports late they
report almost at the beginning of the next earning cycle right they report about the
late September so for them updating guidance here is like a mid cycle up you know earning cycle
upgrade for them update uh I mean you know I you know i still feel this market's gotten tough you
know last week we gapped up we sold off we gapped down we gapped up and and squeezed and to me that's
systematic of a market that doesn't really want to go anywhere so you're trying to trap people in
the wrong direction overnight and see if you can't hurt them right that's what you're trying to do
uh can i ask you a question long term mike's what you're trying to do. Can I ask you a question? Long-term, Mike.
Mike?
Yeah.
So you're out of Google altogether?
For the moment, yes.
But I do think it's going to all-time highs.
Wouldn't you think to maybe after that move now,
like maybe if you had the 200, 202s, you go out and you roll it higher,
that this is going to test 207, the all-time high this week,
as long as the CPI is not nuts tomorrow.
I think I'm waiting for CPI, Scott.
I'm with you there.
I'm waiting for that.
But I would roll up if I was really – and I would have time on it.
I traded the September 210 calls last week and had just, you know,
real nice trade on that.
You didn't have to be that close to the money on it to work.
Right.
On the size of that move um but yeah i wouldn't
roll out but i i'm i find this market they're really kind of rotating around and just you know
uh they're really chewing up options in this environment you know it's this intraday back
and forth or up one day down or you know whatever we're doing here so you know i'm trying to keep
go ahead no no that that makes a lot of sense.
Like if you've been trading Tesla and Google, you kind of know.
So if you were positioning on Wednesday, Thursday,
and then on the move like 200 and 202.50s for this Friday,
that's what I was doing.
And then the stock got to 201, 202.
You sell your 200s, you sell your 202.50s into that move on the offer.
You get down to half and then you hold halves,
which is what I still have.
And then on this down move today, instead of buying the 200 and 202 50s, you go out another
week and you buy the 205s or the 207s. You saw the same thing on Tesla last week on Wednesday,
it ignited above 312. I think I was in the 325s and 330s. It had to move to 323. You sell half
of those, it pulled into 31919 and then i went out another week
and instead of buying those i bought the 330s and 335s that i sold today and now i'm basically
really light and i got to figure out if we pull in you know do i keep rolling it up or does it rest
so those are good ways to you know sell into strength let it come in let it wear it out buy
something higher if you think it's going to make a higher high you risk less and you stay with the trade but what i do is i'm i'm very active so i'll look for a move up
that looks maybe on a shorter time frame a winter five it's getting an exhaustion area coming into
resistance i'll take mine off at that point and then i'll look for a dip back to vwap or to the
aema on the five that holds and looks strong and try to get him back in there and watch it off of
that i tend to try to laser focus in there and watch it off of that i tend to
try to laser focus in on a couple names a day that i think have the momentum instead of just
trying to watch everything and to keep going back after it's gotta be apple's gotta be on watch
right it is but i kind of felt like we're just not today but no i just kind of run too much into
today even friday i was surprised it took off i just feel like okay it needs a day or two for
everything to catch up you know a couple days of rest here and then we'll see what we get but I think like
you know I had options on Apple and today I did not buy options back so I wasn't sure how many
days it's going to need to consolidate so I actually bought a little bit more into the dip
around you know 226 and then 225 half and I sold a little bit so now I'm just in the shares
I won't buy the options right away just in case after a three-day move like we've seen, you might need some time to hang out here.
And the last thing you want to do is buy options that they take away your premiums on you as you
sit. For Apple, I feel like that real level is like that 213 to 215, which was resistance for a
while. And if you want to see a very bullish,
if it doesn't want to give you that pullback,
that 220 to 221, if it wanted to retest there,
those are two levels that it would still be in a bullish area.
And maybe it does chop around.
One thing with Apple, sorry, I'm getting this here.
We're about a month away from the iPhone event.
And we do like it.
Apple does like a good run up into the iPhone event.
And then it does sell off after.
But we're still in that first month half.
Yeah, and I would just say for you for today, all you know is $224.76.
That's today's low.
You could use that tomorrow as your point of reference.
But you're right.
If it does break $224.76, then it could probe again.
And it wouldn't even be so bad if it did get to $221-ish.
And then you start looking at your retracement rules to see how strong it is.
And I'm still sitting my Apple stock I bought back on that first igniting move it had back about
two months ago, one and a half ago. June 30th? Yeah. So I'm sitting in there. I'm about around
205. I own it at that. I did take some off, but I still have a decent amount.
Yeah, that was a different trade.
That was a great 4-day trade, and then look how long it took before it went again.
That's why this might need to hang here a little bit before you start buying rolled-up calls there.
So I get it.
Palantir, to me, coming in today, I felt a little tired.
It was kind of down a lot pre-market compared to everybody else.
I felt tired coming in today, so i took that off my radar after that four
to day move after earnings that big gap and go hood didn't get into the s p nobody did
that needs to yeah yeah i think i think p ltr is an interesting one because i mean it doesn't
make sense i feel like it probably needs something external if there ever is going to be a shot.
I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's just going to be like a natural, like, we're going to.
Maybe it's an earnings or something.
It pulls a TTD or whatever.
But this does not look like a name you want to get in front of on the downside.
It's so extended from the eighth day.
But also, a lot of people have been saying that for a while.
They've been rolling up shorts and they're getting their ass kicked.
So it did look like today was a good risk reward day to do it.
But again, it's almost like risky being one more shorted.
But if you, I know a lot of guys,
like they actually pinged me today saying they're selling premium in Palantir two weeks out.
They're selling the 195s.
They were selling for like two and a quarter.
I'm like, all right, at least you have some room
and you don't have to overly, overly watch it and get too engaged. It makes sense compared, you know, if you think the
market's kind of stalling here in the last two weeks of August might be choppy to downside,
at least there's a little bit more juice if you short that one, I guess.
I mean, it's not even easy. Like if you tried to short after the close of that five-minute
candle this morning on Palantir, it raced right back up to the high of the day before rolling over slowly and just taking out the low here at 325 in
the afternoon.
They're just not making things easy on that.
That's why I tend to say just leave it deep if it's not in play.
Can I call it another name that if the market continues, obviously there's a big backdrop
here?
AMD.
This kind of, that move it had,
and then this, you know, like we're talking here with Apple,
what can maybe happen here?
This kind of going sideways for a little bit, reabsorbing.
It's been holding at bullish levels.
Not saying it will go higher, but this, you know,
this doesn't look bad on AMD for that next move.
I like AMD.
I don't know what level is, if any of you guys are watching this one.
Yeah, maybe it's like this level we're at right now, the October high from last year.
But AMD is doing some nice sideways chop at this point.
It's looking good.
I'm biased.
Well, that's the other story I wanted to ask Scott and Options Mike, everyone else about,
is the China 15% revenue that AMD and NVIDIA apparently have agreed to pay for exports.
Well, I'll say, you know, it was a non-event.
Yeah.
You know, if it was an event, it would have broke 178, 180
and would have had a huge down there five points
and it would have been out of the play for a while.
Instead, it went green.
It's hanging around here some people like hey pay 15 on 50 billion dollars worth of business
versus not being able to get to 50 billion dollars worth of business right
yeah yeah this is an interesting one because i don't know what we want to call it an export
tariff uh just another tax or something like that like i think
that we kind of knew there was going to be some sort of cost of business on here what what i would
be looking into this and what maybe i don't know if this is real or not because every time i you've
said something like this uh it's it's backfired but if there could be actual clarity here where
in two three months nvidia and amd aren't just going to have these chip cells shut down again
and we have to go through this process again that 15 that you're giving away for just clarity over the next
three years is is very much worth it uh and will lead to more net sales now if we get to the point
in two three months where we have the exact same thing again that is we're just going to play this
game all over again so i don't know i it hard. I think you're playing in that,
that boy who cried wolf game here.
And I a little worried,
but yeah,
my lean is it's,
it's net positive because of clarity that it could maybe give for the
next three years.
Yeah.
I think that's,
I think that was the point though.
The,
if it's X,
X billion in revenue that we were kind of on the fence,
where are we going to get this or not?
And then the pinch limit swung back.
Like, okay, NVIDIA is going to be able to send over there.
We know AMD, we saw that they got their license today.
But, okay, well, 15% of that is, you know, as a whatever tax,
whatever you want to call it, inverse tariff, is still better than zero, right?
Like, okay, we'll get 85 of it so I think maybe
that's just the end of the story there no I don't know if it's the end of the story because I feel
like if it's successful it'll be used to other areas I don't know this is this could be another
whole little game we playing on here I think that I think what we're gonna end up learning here is
anytime we think we have
certainty over the next three years,
we probably don't three years.
you mean of Trump.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying on these,
on these different headlines,
because listen,
we're talking about these export.
If this works well with Nvidia,
it's going to be used for other companies,
just how it's going to go.
And other industries that we,
we deem important.
We're a lot more people joining us up here,
Montev and Wolfie and Stock Talk too, but yeah.
I find this, this Nvidia China news to actually be,
I know the market, they were red yesterday.
AMD's green today.
Nvidia's red now, just barely though.
The market's digesting this pretty well.
I think this is a really interesting
headline though. Can I ask you?
Can we get off that subject for a second? I know there's a lot of fundamental
ASTS people around here and they're reporting after the close.
Ooh, earnings day.
After a move from 60 to the 50 day, what do people think about that? I don't take stock into earnings.
It's just not what I do as a professional trader.
I don't let any of my guys do it or I say, you know, it's just options or risk is premium paid.
But I'm just wondering to see if anybody thinks that they might come out with, you know, their plans, the rollout.
You know, it could be a catalyst because it's not an earnings play.
The earnings will be, you know, nothing, I'm sure.
So it's just a matter of, you know, does it stabilize the stock here at 45 and change or,
you know, does it break it down further? Who's got the pulse on ASTS? So I know it's technically,
you know, it changed over the course of the last like five, six sessions.
Is Shay here
I saw Sam
I saw Sam unmute there at the start
well I don't hear him
we can move on it's no big deal
I'm just you know I
ASTS
basically if they can have
more launches scheduled by end of year
or if they can kind of commit to some sort of rollout
for 26, a consistent launch schedule, then that'll buoy the share price is basically what they're
going to rely on. If there is none, and if it's just like ho-hum, or if the worst case scenario
is if they're behind schedule on the launch stuff, then it should correct to the
downside.
Gotcha.
All right.
The next level I would think is like 41-ish if that happens for tomorrow.
I also think, I look at that one in Rocket Lab.
I feel like they've been trading a lot together.
You know, my comp goes over to the Rocket Lab earnings.
I don't think it really moved too aggressively off of that.
People can actually correct me on that.
I'm not seeing it that much on this chart.
But Sam, we got you back up here.
Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say
as far as the ACS earnings,
I mean, there's really not much
that's going to change or move the meter.
They're still somewhat pre-revenue.
They have collected some revenue,
but it's not like anything of a dramatic move that we'd be seeing in the next couple years
as what we were saying they need a full they need a full array of satellites in outer space to start
serving 100 of the customers from vodafone verizon as well as at&t and until that actually happens
you know they're not gonna they're not gonna actually have any meaningful revenue unless they
sign up or contracts with the government.
I mean, those are probably more sticky contracts than anything.
But the market's really just trying to front run that entire push, probably going to 2026.
I feel like the market has priced a lot of that in already.
Obviously, pre-revenue company on a recurring basis.
company on a recurring basis but you know i mean if you if you're with the story if you're if you're
wholly bullish basically providing unavailable uh cellular service from a satellite perspective
to everyone around the entire world versus limited from where it is right now as far as towers goes
you know then stick with the story but if it's if you're expecting like maybe a double from here
or something like that like your guess is as good as mine.
I mean, there was a point when I was gaming in when it was like mid-20 bucks and then you had the opportunity and then mid-teens.
Obviously, there are a lot of people who got in the single digits, which is great.
Congratulate that community.
But those people are probably not going to sell.
I'm not going to sell.
I'm just going to hold on to it.
This is like one of those
moonshot place my moonshot bucket uh I I have a basket of growth stock or a smaller cap spec of
those stocks that you know I'm not holding for like a 30 or 40 percent I'm holding for like maybe
a 10 bagger an eight bagger or something like that but that's gonna be multiple years I got
a handful of those and some of them have already ran up a little bit including ACS like Nebius
um that's already a triple bagger uh we also have rocket lab that's more than a double bagger but i mean there's a lot
of people got into rocket lab at four bucks they're sitting over here with a thousand plus
gains and that's great thousand percent gains and that's great but you know they're probably not
going to sell i'm not going to sell i mean this story hasn't even played out yet i feel like it's
just the beginning in in my opinion.
But let's be mindful, you know, when you have a lot of the move priced in from a technical perspective, as well as a fundamental perspective, you know, you have to be ready for the stocks
to go down.
You can't buy ASTS here and be like, it's going to continue going up.
You've got to be ready if it goes down.
And if you're going to be ready, if it goes down, you got to be ready to buy more. That's why I always like say,
if you really want to get into a narrative that has already ran, don't go all in on one buy
with the expectations going to keep going up because it will likely pull back. No one is
ever going to call the top and no one's ever going to be able to call the bottom on a consistent
basis. People are always going to miss that top and bottom, but the point is sticking with the story and sticking with conviction.
So if you buy STS here and you're wholly bullish,
the aspect of providing satellite connectivity plus more to government agencies
as well as consumers and users around the entire world,
then stick with the story, right?
Even if it pulls back 30%, which it might.
Stick with the story.
But if you're trading it, you're just as good as mine, man.
I struggle with the pre- But if you're trading it, this is good as my man. I struggle.
I struggle with the pre-revenue companies,
honestly,
meaning I don't buy any,
but I get it.
I get it.
honestly,
I gotta say this,
this,
this stock,
like,
you know,
this stock from June,
you know,
went through like four different levels to get to 54,
had momentum traded.
Great.
It was above the eight day.
Then it even gave you another move when it held the 21 day into the 41s to go back to 60 so now it's just kind of like
feeling like the move from from june down so i was just asking if there was any kind of roadmap
here because you know obviously it's not a revenue company it's a pre-revenue company so
earnings aren't going to be something that is a catalyst it's just about how the story continues
so i guess if they don't
continue the story and come up with an exciting plan, this could be like in the 42s where it
bottomed on July 9th, or maybe even test 39, which is where it peaked out on August 21st.
So those would be the two levels. If they don't say anything exciting with their earnings,
those would be the two spots to probably dip with if you want to play out the story that had a great narrative story and a great technical story, depending on how active you are.
The moat of building rockets and being able to get satellites up into space at a more
competitive area, rather than ASTS of building out these satellites and having contracts,
to me, the Rocket Lab moat is a lot more of one that I'd want to invest behind rather
than an ASTS.
So I'm surprised that there's same market caps and are they?
Similar market caps? You're buying a similar market caps you're buying a logistics business
when you're buying rocket lab rocket lab's a little bigger yeah and they're not pre-revenue
they're already earning revenue they already have government contracts and everything they
have recurring revenue and also they're building the software that a lot of these space platform
space platform companies might be using in the future like i think i think that when i
got into asds when i got into rocket lab i feel like the long-term trajectory like long super
long-term trajectory for asds is probably higher but the probably the possibility and you know
seeing peter back a lot seeing him speak like he's gonna expand the horizontal for this company like he's not gonna
be like well i'm just gonna go with software and rockets and i'm done like no this guy's a visionary
he's gonna make it probably a lot more than we expect i think as far as the surprise that comes
from rocket lab i think that's vast asds they they gave you their playbook they did they told
you exactly what they're gonna do and they're continuing to do it that's what makes it a great play in my opinion a rocket lab is probably
something where it's like i i personally think for a long term from here when it comes to rocket
lab you have something more definitive when you think about asds like you already know the story
you just need to wait it out rocket lab they haven't come out they're supposed to have the
neutron launch by the end of the year and they're supposed to have the neutron launch by the end
of the year and they're gonna have a larger payload rocket coming up i don't know how soon
that's gonna be but they get the electron they got neutron and i forgot the the last one's called
uh but you know how they're going like different atom uh electron electromagnetic activity i forget
exactly what it's called but like you know you got electron neutrons and positrons i forget
proton i think proton yes yes they're gonna have that and that's gonna be like
that's gonna be the bazooka that's basically gonna be the falcon heavy version right that
that is really gonna challenge the entire space logistics system and i think that people who are
in rock lab know that's gonna come and i definitely that's going to be a really fun story to follow.
All right.
I like it.
I wasn't asking for the contrast between the two,
but I think that gives a lot of good clarity.
Rocket Labs also looks better.
I feel like it's one of those ones that gets a pair trade,
at least from the retail.
I think, you know, like the Coke and Pepsi kind of get compared together,
whatever.
I feel like retail puts Rocket Lab and ASCS in the same boat for better for worse don't be don't compete
comparing coca-cola and Pepsi just cuz I'm on the claw and I'm 52 I don't trade
those might go go with like at least Apple and like Netflix versus you know
if you're trying to age me hey real quick the numbers are procter and
gamble and stuff now yeah real quick the uh the launches that they have on
the books are two per month currently and they're expected to get to six per month on asts six six
satellites a month by q3 who are they who are they launching with i think it's rocket lab
and i think it's spacex spacex primarily but i think secondary rocket lab but um six six
satellites a month by q3 q4 um so any kind of hindrance to that six satellite target
or any push out you might get a little wash on the short-term basis the second thing is
i mean scott was talking about how they've doubled since June, but they doubled in like a month.
They do trade in tandem, but they trade one at a time in the last couple of months.
One would rip, the other one would consolidate, then the other one would rip, the other one would consolidate, so on and so forth.
So it could be a tell there.
But then the last thing is if the thing has doubled since June and you've had the position the entire time or longer and you're not cutting your costs or you're not hedged out or you're not reduced or anything like that, it's going to be on you.
Yeah. It gave you a good technical way to sell some at 58 plus. It gave you some signals to sell
up there. So, you know, if you didn't sell above 55 or when it went above 54 and came back below
it to sell here, you know, especially if you're in for the story, that's not the smartest thing.
I was just asking for additional information.
But yeah, I get it. All good points.
Just to jump in on your
question, Evan. ASDS uses
SpaceX exclusively for all of their
launches so far. They're saying
they're going to use Blue Origin in the next
couple of years, but that's only if the new Glenn
rocket actually works, so we'll see.
But yeah, all of ASDS's launches have been with spacex
doctor can i ask i don't know if you have any thoughts on acs but also uh oclo reports rings
after the close you've traded around some of those you know nuclear names is there anything
you're watching for these oclo numbers no i don't own any of the smr plays um i don't
own any of the pre-revenue smr plays i traded smr a ticker smr earlier this year i think they have
earnings later this week yeah i don't own it anymore but yeah i traded it earlier this year
from 18 to 34 i think so for almost a double obviously it went higher after that but i stayed
focused on the revenue producing names the only nuclear names that i'm
focused on right now are centrist and energy fuels which i've owned for a while and um i mean centrist
i have a very deep cost base advantage on at 96 so that's kind of my horse for nuclear i think
that stock goes much much higher in the next five to ten years and i have a big cost base advantage
to hold it so that's where i'm focused as far as the the SMR plays, like Oclo, SMR, NNE, can they keep going higher?
Yeah, if they provide enough gunpowder on their earnings calls as far as product development and roadmaps and partnerships are concerned,
they can keep floating the stock with stuff like that.
like that but eventually you know people are gonna look at these companies and say you know
why are zero revenue SMR companies that are three to five years away from commercialization trading
at 12 billion market caps eventually well listen 10 billion yes the Mars are like a love revenue
and we have five ASTS is at 20 or 15 billion no sorry I keep going back to this. First of all,
I think there's a little bit of a distinction there.
You can't equalize all
pre-revenue companies. Some pre-revenue
companies have a more immediate
path to commercialization than others.
I would say, in ASDS's
case, they have a more immediate
path to commercialization than some of these
other guys. They also have the ability
to secure multi-year agreements with telecom companies
that can float the market's expectation for revenue.
That's going to be much more difficult to do with the SMR plays.
The problem with the SMR plays is also this.
Everyone's looking for pure play exposure to small modular reactors.
But the problem is that the first commercially viable small modular reactors are very unlikely to come from any of the pure plays.
The first commercially viable small modular reactors will likely come from companies
that are revenue producing, you know, like Westinghouse and BWX technologies. Like
if you're going to build an SMR, it's not it's very, very unlikely to come from New Scale or from Oclo or from these guys.
Now, I'm not knocking people for investing in those names.
If you really, really believe in the management teams and you really understand the technology rollout, which, again, I will reiterate, the vast majority of people who own these stocks have no clue how Nuclear Regulatory Commission works when it comes to these approvals. But if you do understand that process,
and for some reason you're overtly confident about paying $10 billion for a
pre-revenue company in this space, then go for it.
But I'd rather own the revenue producing companies, you know?
I mean, SMR and Oclo trading at $10 billion plus market cap,
Centris Energy, the only nuclear enricher in the United States,
in fact, the only publicly traded nuclear enricher on planet Earth,
is trading at a $4 billion market cap. You tell me which one you'd rather pay for. I know the answer for
me. But, you know, it's you sometimes have to look at industries, even when they're not
working on the same technologies, you kind of sometimes have to look at industries like a
hole like that and say, like, where is if I want to get exposure to the industry, where's the smart
place to get it? And I think the pre-revenue stocks for a lot of these industries are getting long in the tooth.
I mean, Joby Aviation, this has nothing to do with nuclear, but we owned that stock from 950s.
I sold it like two weeks ago at like 17, right?
That stock went higher after I sold it.
It went to like 20 and then came back down to 16 or whatever.
But I didn't sell the top, which I'm fine with.
But I sold it because I was like, okay, it's a $15 billion valuation.
They'll probably have some commercial EV tools, maybe by 27, 28. But like, are they going to be
making boatloads of money? No, not even close, maybe not for another decade. So sometimes I
make that distinction. I just look at the companies. I'm like, all right, dude, this
thing's trading at a 15 billion mark cap. Can it go higher? Yeah, but they make no money. I'd rather
own something else. So for me, getting out of the SM smr plays getting out of joe b getting out of all
these stocks recently has been that it's just been a simple decision of i'm up more than double uh
the the valuations make no sense to me and yes they can go higher but i'd rather own other stuff
and that's kind of been the mode i've been in the last couple weeks and i mean on a day like today
that stock picking is working you know know, market was red today.
We had 10 positions green today.
So, yeah.
I mean, I'll get more into the details after we get past the earnings.
But, yeah, that's kind of my view on the pre-revenue companies right now.
Your mic got a little robot-y towards the end.
Maybe it was just for me, but you might need to, like, disconnect from Wi-Fi or something.
But we heard it.
We heard what you were saying.
Was that just me is the road body for everyone
sounded fine uh he was in an elevator he was fine
all right well then we'll uh amp until you keep us going so I can fix myself.
I do want to hear what Monitive has to diagnose.
Monitive, what's been going on in your world lately?
What stories are you tracking?
Anything that's sticking out?
I know we're pretty far into the earnings season now and you usually track those numbers pretty well.
What's going on in Monitive's world?
Well, we're past 90% of S&P reporting. It's probably closer to 95% of market cap already
reported, 13.2% earnings growth and 6.2% revenue growth. I mean, these are all year-over-year
numbers. It's just fantastic numbers. So backward-looking, things are great.
Guidance starting to get a little bit checked by companies,
so something to watch out.
Again, nothing immediate.
I think the numbers for the rest of the year will probably get adjusted
based on uh you know
how strong the economy has been and how much you know out performance we've seen this quarter
so in that sense pretty much at any level of detail the earnings numbers are very good overall
right i mean there's obviously significant beats and misses on both sides so i won't go into that
significant beats and misses on both sides. So I won't go into that. But just going back,
I want to talk a little bit about this export tariff, right? So it's not a non-event. I think
it's still something that's way too early to understand what's going on. But if you think about it, if this holds, this is not a 15% on profits.
This is 15% of revenue.
And there was some clarification saying, at least for NVIDIA,
it's going to be only a H20.
So even if that is the case, at about 8 billion revenue,
annual revenue,
before this whole thing went south,
before they banned the sale.
This will help get some money out of stock
that's already been manufactured
and it's sitting in the warehouse,
but it's not going to help down the road
in any good sense. These's not going to help down the road in,
you know, any good sense, right? These are not the highest margin products. By most measures, it was supposed to be roughly a 50% margin on China sales of these products. So if you take
15% off revenue, you're talking, you know, 30 or sub 30% margin. So overall margin numbers are going to come down.
But for the initial inventory that's sitting on the books that got written down,
now you're going to recover something versus recovering nothing.
So it's a short-term positive, long-term.
If this sticks, it's certainly a massive negative.
So that's just based on the numbers.
Again, I have no idea, you know, how frequently this will change, you know, before we even get
out of this month, let alone, you know, longer term, but it's, it's, there's no way to spin
this as, as a positive in any sense.
Do you worry about the Pandora's box argument here too, that
they open up and do this
once, that they can do it
for anyone?
Well, technically
according to the Constitution, at least
from what I've seen,
it's illegal to levy export taxes
so this is going to go to court but like i said immediately for at least this one case uh you know
it might it might be you know recovery of something that's already been written down
instead of nothing right so so again uh i i don't think this this doesn't uh i mean
this is going to get challenged uh if it gets expanded then you know then could be a nightmare
situation right i mean what what are we trying to tax our own companies for exporting then how
are we ever going to you know have an honest discussion about uh you know uh trade deficits
are surplus right if we're going to tax it we're just going to reduce demand so so it doesn't make
any sense now on the bottom line for nvidia amd if there was questions that they were going to get the revenue out of China, which then kind of got walked back, but now it's like, okay, well, you're going to get it, but you're going to get 85% of it. Is that a net positive or is that like, you know, still kind of grit the teeth a little bit?
well look they they have let's let's just take nvidia because i know the numbers a little bit
uh they they started reordering you know um inventory to to to to to restart the supply chain
uh you know expecting to produce three to four hundred thousand of these h2 h20s
use three to four hundred thousand of these h2 h20s you know to export to china i'm not sure
where they are with it but again they took a 5.2 billion dollar charge and uh some money will some
of that charge can be reversed now not all of it right because obviously part of that money is going
to go towards the towards the tariff so so some of it will be reversed which is
still a positive because that's that's you know that's a charge they took against their earnings
for a product that's sitting on the shelf and now they can reverse that and you know add it to
earnings without without much of a difficulty as long as you know china wants to buy it which i assume you know based on their uh you know restarting the
supply chain there is still solid demand so assuming that that it gets sold let's say of
that five billion you know let's even say charitably even if this gets messy you know four
three and a half billion gets reversed that's still a one-time you know bump four, three and a half billion gets reversed. That's still a one-time, you know, bump in earnings for NVIDIA.
And what, six, 700 million or whatever AMD took, you know,
let's just say two thirds to, you know, three quarters of that gets reversed.
Those are still one-time wins for both these companies.
And it's better than, you know, aging it out
and definitely losing all value sitting on the shelf.
So, I mean, clearly if they could have sold it to somebody else,
they would have already sold it.
So given that AMD didn't call for any reversal this time,
I'm guessing that they're holding it for China because they have,
you know, delivery schedule already, know discussed with with uh customers there
or they cannot find another alternative buyer for it anyways so i mean look if if this continues
you're going to have a margin cost to this so you know i have been uh you know
So, you know, I have been, you know, upfront saying that we're going to see an 80% overall margin in NVIDIA during the Blackwell cycle.
Maybe, you know, we need to, you know, tune that down a couple of hundred basis points because of this, because overall margins will come down, you know, when you pay this much tax for, for your exports.
Wolfie, I want to get you in the conversation. Do you have any thoughts on, uh, on this, uh, and then we're also four minutes from the
close.
I don't know if you're watching any more of these earnings.
We talked through some of them.
Uh, what specific do you want my thoughts on?
I'm curious about this 15 uh thing uh
export restriction do you think it's something that that gets to end up getting used across
other areas if this is it i mean i agree to your comment if it's something that they view as as
working it'll be weaponized across the board probably used like a hammer that seems to be the mo um you know i just
i don't i don't know at what point so what are other i wonder what some are some of these other
areas of like national importance i guess i mean semiconductors was one of them
materials obviously materials oil etc right Monotip was saying there,
that makes sense too.
Anything that's like, you know,
that's scarce and that we rely on
would be viewed that way in my opinion.
But I would, my thing is more like,
you know, we keep stretching it further and further.
Like it's, you know, the tariffs are the tariffs
and then the's all these extra tack-on costs, basically, that are coming.
And at some point, it doesn't matter until it does.
So that's kind of what I want to pay attention to on that front.
The other thing is, I don't know if you guys mentioned it, but the Intel CEO meeting with Trump.
Kind of curious how that one plays out.
I'm seeing that he
just arrived at the White House via CNBC.
I don't know if you're seeing the reports. No, I'm not
watching it, but yeah, I'd like to
see how that plays out. I think Monitiv and I
talked about it
independent of this space, or
I don't remember where we talked about it, but
it seems like they're trying to
push investment
into Intel, maybe a Taiwan Semi specifically.
Maybe they want it acquired at some point.
I don't know.
So I kind of want to pay attention to how that one plays out.
Um, I, you know, over the weekend, the, the ETH stuff and the crypto stuff kind of reminded
me of like what euphoria looks like before there's some sort of check back just from
an anecdotal point of view, nothing metric wise, not calling for a top none of that,
but just couldn't look at the timeline without, you know, seeing at least, you know, every
other post kind of felt like someone had BMNR.
Yeah.
What a day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then SBET, same thing.
You know, the last time I was on your guys' call was Tuesday, I think.
And I'd taken a long in both of them.
I'm completely out.
I didn't expect the moves to get as aggressive, especially BMNR, the way that they got.
I wasn't looking for anything like that.
I'll take it it's great but i you know i just that candle on bitcoin today um you know some of the anecdotal stuff over the weekend how these things created today
sorry to interrupt before i just did something stupid i did just buy some intel calls 21s this
week let's see bottom of 46 cents yeah i've, I've been buying this thing every time it gets down to this $19, $20 level for the better part of a year.
Better than me.
Give me the Tim Cook move on Intel.
For sure.
So I just, you know, I want to see how that plays out.
Like the crypto stuff seems like it's like at an inflection point, maybe on a short-term basis.
Circle on that note has earnings.
I don't necessarily think the earnings
themselves are going to be material the last thing i don't want to pay attention to is if like they
can get that through the event and they don't sell it off it could be something that i could
see that they rip afterwards uh some of these you know my favorite my favorite spaces are like
these boomer names um i like cisco a lot cisco holy shit. Wow, same time there.
Cisco's getting close to at least the price, not the market cap.
Close to the $22,000.
Yeah, I've liked Cisco a lot.
It's nearing its 25-year spot.
They have earnings coming up.
The last quarter they had was pretty solid.
Their earnings on Wednesday, the 13th.
I think anything kind of material there would spike it, but they would have to have their, you know, Oracle moment from last quarter to do
something like that. But, you know, at these levels, I just think, you know, a lot of things
have worked the last several months. I'm in favor of like lightning and then, you know, awaiting the, you know, awaiting some
sort of reason to continue then to just kind of like lever up up here. So, you know, I've been
lightening up ASTS, we were talking about Rocket Lab, Nebius, you know, you, I lightened up into
earnings, sold off materially since then, you know, just anything that's kind of gone parabolic,
just I've been in the lighten up camp,
and then I'm just kind of waiting for, you know,
the next tip, the next till.
You know, I do like, I do like the, it's just redundant,
but I do like the setup and narrative for AEO.
I've mentioned it a couple of times.
Obviously, if you've been on social, you've seen it.
But I think the dividend yield and the buyback yield
also kind of adds the little buying pressure to it.
So when they report here in the next couple of weeks,
if they've got some sort of foresight at the end of the month here when they report,
do they have any sort of foresight about what their partnership is going to
look like?
I think that plus the buyback yield is going to really kind of press the
stock a little bit. So I'm kind of paying attention there,
but on the short run, just lining up and, you know,
being tactical for lack of a better word.
Can I quickly add something on, on, on, uh, so, uh, I, I'm also calling for
Cisco to hit all time high this year.
Not sure if it's going to hit it this, uh, you know, this, uh, on, on,
on this earnings, but, but I do like them.
Um, there's lots of reasons.
Uh, they, it's, It's not that expensive relative to
where the rest of the edge networking stuff is trading, but I don't expect them to have an
article like result. I mean, clearly I was here. If you remember, I compared that to the first or second NVIDIA report after ChatGPT.
That was the level of bullishness of the management.
And you rarely see that.
I don't expect that from Cisco.
But they have a few things going for them.
One, Juniper is going to be stuck in its integration with HPE.
So that's an opening where they can grab back some market share.
They are direct competitors in most of their products.
There's a few others, you know, areas where they can do some catch up growth.
So I like Cisco here. And I think it gets to that 80,
it crosses that 81 something, which was, you know, back in April of March, April of 2000. So
long way off from there. So I think we get there this year, i don't know um if i expect to see that this earnings
right so those what next week but but i do expect it to expect to see it you know very soon so that's
um that's on uh that's on cisco i wanted to add something else i've already
forgotten what i wanted to add but but yeah, I'll leave it there.
We are minutes away from a lot of these names reporting.
Let me double check some times.
Oclo says 430.
Damn.
ASTF says 430 as well.
All right, so maybe we're actually more than I thought away from these stocks reporting earnings,
but the market did close for the day.
Apparently, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares
closed the highest since 2008.
Rumors that or reports that they might be
getting put in the public markets again.
Was there anything that stood out for you on the close i'm seeing a small move on asts but i don't think the numbers are out just yet i haven't seen any uh i haven't seen any numbers yet i mean there's
some de-risking there was some net selling today um the s&p just ahead of the data that we're going to get. I think that's all we really have.
But outside of that, I mean,
the chart's just sideways, honestly.
Sideways to floating higher.
Tech was stronger earlier in the day,
and it got weaker throughout the day.
That was kind of interesting.
That's the only thing I really picked up on.
You had some net sellers.
I mean, VIX popped today,
but that's also because you've got data coming to the market.
Trying to find the earnings.
Give me one of the earnings you're looking at.
Which one are you watching?
I didn't hear him.
No worries.
I'm seeing a NASDAQ end of month open short interest positions.
I need to be able to dig in.
I can't really look at those numbers right now.
All right, stock talk.
There we go.
Stocks, can I get a mic check?
Yeah, we got you.
Yeah, the big three today, Oklo, Archer, ASTS, BBAip. Can I get a mic check? Yeah, we got you. Yeah, the big three today,
Oklo, Archer, ASTS, BBAI.
Sorry, big four.
Very quickly to run you through in a second,
we're expecting,
we have those numbers for Archer out
somewhere around right now.
When we take a look at BBAI,
we're looking for a $1.23 move,
or 17.26%,
up 112% since the last report.
Archer actually did report.
Hey, real quick.
Archer is down.
What's the stat doing?
Yeah.
Oops, come back up, down four, down five.
We'll get to those numbers in a second.
It could take a minute.
Yes, continue.
Oklo, $8.04 implied move, 11.19%.
Since the last report,
Oklo is up 124.76%. And BBAI, Oklo, and I mean,
we got the Archer numbers out already.
A lot of people give me some mentions on BBA.
A lot of people give me mentions of BBAI,
but it's never one that I've actually looked into
if I'm being for real.
Billion dollar market cap,
little tick up there in after hours.
Maybe BBAI is out.
I don't see it though.
We're expecting that one at 430, I believe.
415 or 430.
I'll confirm right now.
A lot of them today.
A lot of them dropped it on the turning side at 430.
Yeah, 415 BBAI. ASTS 430, Archer 405, Oklo 430.
Archer's out.
You just have to go to the website.
No, I saw the report.
Yeah, Stock Talk, were there any headlines or anything that stood out for you today?
Actually, you know, we haven't talked about any analyst reports recently i'm seeing gopro across they've been garbage lately what's
going really you're talking shit about the analysts they've just been garbage reports i
mean this tends to happen in q3 you know i mean you got to think about wall street
south side opinion um kind of just like logically right Like most of your big initiations happen in Q1, right?
Most of your big upgrades happen towards the end of Q2
after you've gone through Q1 and Q2 earnings, right?
And by that juncture, the analyst has either said,
okay, the company has confirmed my outlook
through Q1 and Q2.
And so, you know, this looks great.
I'm going to raise my price target again, going into Q3.
And then, you know, maybe they'll make another comment in Q4.
That's generally how Wall Street works.
So once you get past, like, late Q2, head into Q3,
analyst commentary tends to get pretty bogged down i mean we go over
stuff every morning today today there was nothing for me to touch on so we didn't touch on anything
we go over stuff every morning i mean there's several reports we covered in the last couple
weeks that you know have done very well but i haven't taken any new positions off of any wall
street research in a while so i guess that's the distinction there which is like
is it is the research good enough for me to act on it and the answer is not lately uh i think the
last time i bought something on a report was maybe like a month ago three weeks ago or something um
materion is probably the most recent one that i bought off of a report. There was a key bank report on Materion. So that was probably the most recent sell side buy.
But I mean, I'm down to like 15 positions or 16 positions as of today.
That's down significantly from where I was previously.
But even with that, we had 10 positions green today.
And I did not expect that in a market like today's, right?
I mean, today, a lot of stuff was down.
Markets faded into the close.
So I expected it to be a red day for the portfolio, but it wasn't.
It's kind of like last week when, you know, we had a couple of momentum degrossing days
and I skirted by green.
That, to me, is a reflection of good stock picking.
And so I'm fine with rolling with the punches.
But all my names
reported earnings through the end of last week. So I don't really have anything. I mean, I have
an ASDS position, but it's not a massive position in the portfolio. It's about a 5% weighting.
So I have that position, but I have a very deep cost-based advantage on it around 28.
ASDS is trading whatever in the 40s now, 46. So I don't really feel compelled
to add to that position. But, you know, I don't mind holding it here either with that sort of
cost basis. So other than that, which reports today, everything's reported for me already.
All my core positions did very well on earnings. Centris Energy, Nebius, Robinhood, K kratos the ones that i talk about a lot they all
did very well and those are my four largest positions by waiting those four names so
um we had some losers on earnings obviously also but they were mostly trading positions so
is is pragmatic is pragmatic out it looks like it's down 25%. I did not see those reports.
Let's see.
P-U-B-M.
Pubmatic.
Yeah, I am seeing a 4mate here.
Yeah.
Revenue of 71.1 million.
I don't know what was expected.
And then EPS of non-gap
income looks like $0.05 per year.
You may want to double check that EPS. It can be weird sometimes.
But $71.1 million
on revenue.
Wait, which company, Evan?
Hubmatic.
UBM. That would be a B.
I believe that's a logical name. I'm not sure.
I think it's one of his names.
He's in the audience?
No, he's not.
So he can come talk about it.
Is it a $0.05 or a $0.05?
Their gap net loss was $5 million with a margin of 7%
or negative $0.11 per diluted share in the second quarter
compared to $2 million positive with a margin of 3%
in the same period a year ago.
Revenue guidance is below expectation 61 to 66 versus 70 consensus.
there you go the guided downs you know zooming out on the one year it's still
There you go.
Guided down.
it's still holding a range I mean you know this is a level you wouldn't want
to see a break below but I mean interesting all right problematic moving
lower maybe maybe we'll talk about that one at some point but yeah there's
numbers crossing with the small names reporting today I gotta
change the filter on my earnings calendar onto 1 billion plug power was
also come in life 360 I feel like you should never say that you use life 360
because one day it will be in a hack but but the stock is up 2% on after hours. How does that sound like some
Whole Foods brand?
I don't use Life360.
Whole Foods.
What, Life360?
Yeah.
No, it's an app for like,
it's like a tracking app
for like your family
or like whatever.
Plug Power down 6%.
What did she put?
Not to disrespect any names,
but what an interesting day of earnings. There seems to be a theme
here on a lot of these names.
Plug power, missed EPS, beat revenue.
That one's down.
I mean why do we do 4 4 30 on these early dumb companies report at 4 30 you're
I mean, why do we do
430 on these earnings?
roboting Evan So we're still waiting on Oklo earnings.
We're still waiting on BBAI earnings.
We should have that in about one minute from now.
And ASTS should be one minute from now as well, I believe.
Yeah, that's fine.
We'll start throwing it around right here because I figured here in 42 seconds we'll be getting we don't care about B we don't
care about BBAI if I'm being fully transparent I barely care about ASTS
love you all all right stock talk well what do you want to run through here
you mean it's 10-hour rental interrupt oh yeah I was gonna say I don't know if I
have one up the sleeve today for a 10 hour rant.
I'm surprised this 15% China
tariff, NVIDIA tariff
thingy hasn't sparked some thoughts
there. It feels like something that's going to be
expanded out or
there's going to be some crash and burn. And I found it
very... My mic is terrible right now
apparently. No.
I can hear you fine. It got a lot better
just then. Okay. But yeah, I can hear you fine. It got a lot better just then.
Okay.
But yeah, I feel like this 15% thing is going to be ASTS with a big wick down there. It's going to be expanded out across other stuff.
We talked about some examples where it could maybe be.
Okay.
Yeah, just as I said, all the names did just come out.
Ocklo, ASTS and BBAI did just report.
ASCS down 4%.
We are confirming our fully funded plan to deploy 45 to 60 satellites into orbit by 2026.
I believe that was the number they said.
I don't know.
Something in here probably they don't like.
Oclo.
BBAI expected expected minus six cents,
71 cents.
Minus,
expected minus six cents,
actual minus 71 cents.
Oh my god.
Revenue,
40.58 million.
Actual,
32.47 million.
Terrible miss,
both sides.
Oh yeah,
that thing's gonna get killed.
It's down 17%,
but that should be down 17 but that
should be down more than that it seems like all the good ai tickers got taken by shit companies
right it wasn't like a ticker ai down like 30 today yeah i was at like 26 today c3 ai
and now you have dba i down 20 on earnings it's these guys should These guys should lose the rights to the ticker. In fact,
C3 AI should be
forced to forfeit their ticker to a better
AI company. Give it to Nebius.
Give the AI ticker to Nebius.
No, I don't want those
institutional, unreformed
shorts coming
into that one. No, no, get out of here.
You don't want
the association, right? Yeah, i agree with that probably but yeah
they should be forced they should be forced by the sec to forfeit the ticker they say you can't
you're not living up to the thematic it's like the greatest technological thematic of our time
and these shitty companies are taking the good tickers come on get out of here with that yeah
it's so funny somebody asked me about bbai the other day they're like hey what do you think about
investing in bbai as an ai company and my response was literally like, yeah, if you're an idiot.
That age well, huh?
We got some more crazy numbers. Did you read AST Space Mobile's actual EPS and revenue?
I mean, they're a pre-revenue company.
Oh, dude, listen to this. Expected EPS, minus 22 cents. Actual, minus 41 cents.
Expected revenue, 6.02 million.
Actual revenue, 1.1 million.
Yeah, they're pre-revenue.
But, yeah.
BBAI is not pre-revenue.
That's why that's much worse.
Yeah, that's expected.
That one's been coming up a lot, honestly, with BBAI.
People, like one of those FinTuit ones
they've been getting behind.
ASTS, we were talking,
it's the launches, which we're really looking forward to.
And clearly there's something there.
I don't know.
45 to 60.
There were some people saying that.
BBAI was like a baby Palantir or something.
I remember those people, too.
Oh, I remember that too oh i remember that one
you remember that one yeah that was pretty bad i remember seeing that it went like super viral
people reposting they're like yeah it is the next palantir well maybe right maybe they still have a
chance who knows um but yeah asds is up i think what slightly it is at its 50 day today it did
sell into its 50 day today so you kind of want to see it hold
uh if you're in like any kind of short-term position on that you want to see it hold this
50 day into tomorrow so a red earnings reaction going into tomorrow would not be great for that
name but it is down slightly here 45.90 is the 50 day it closed 45.92 today literally two pennies
above it so yeah we'll see that should probably decide the course
but a lot of very very negative reactions in some of these meme names pre-revenue names um what did
oclo do you want to see that one uh 4 30 earnings we got 12 minutes oh no i'll close out now they're
out it's out it's out yeah the headlines out. You're talking about the call, yeah.
But yeah, that's down like 2.5%.
That one's surprisingly not getting killed as much as the other ones.
Well, they do have a slide deck that says zero revenue.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of –
There's a lot of –
Have you ever seen –
It's been referenced a lot in here, this Silicon Valley clip or whatever.
It's like, yeah, no, you can't get revenue.
No, once you get revenue, then it's real.
So at this point in time, earnings don't matter for Oclo.
Kodak reported they're probably in that same bucket right now on the pharmaceutical side.
Kodak is, well, what are they doing?
So I don't even think this is worth reporting on.
So we can skip it.
But yeah.
What, they're doing a treasury company?
No, they're doing weird stuff.
Yeah, and they still have their camera business.
They're just doing a bunch of random stuff.
They've always been, like, we're not always, but for the last, like, five years,
they've been trying to get involved in every meme thing, so.
I'm going to be pharmaceuticals on the next thing, I don't know.
They made a bunch of announcements
like back in 2020, 2021
and tried to get things moving.
But I see Kevin joined us up here.
He can probably give some more
productive commentary
than what we're talking about.
Kevin, I have a lot of people
for the first time today,
this VG stock got put on my radar
as something that people are
are watching right now. is this something that you
are aware of venture global i'd never heard of it before but it is a they engage in the development
and construction of lng production establishing rapidly growing company i don't know that's that's
what the robin is saying yeah yeah we talked about it a couple of times here uh i mean it's a very high beta stocks i apologize i
totally i listen every time guys i apologize uh yeah no i mean it's a very high beta stock i mean
there's been a lot of uh excitement around lng you know the thing i get a little bit concerned about
is that you know as we continue to see regulatory approvals coming to market and just the development of the space just in general, as far as these export facilities,
a lot of these companies that have like niches right now, like a Schneer or what have you, could, you know, once again, see a little bit of pressure.
Because right now their exposure is the fact that they have so much capacity themselves, right?
So we're going to be expanding that capacity out.
I think there's also maybe a little bit of a Russia-Ukraine conflict type of resolution situation.
Situation is also getting priced in as well.
You have to be mindful of that, right?
If we do see any type of resolution there, let's say reduction sanctions,
who knows? Could demand for LNG from the United States go down? That could be the case. And then
I'm a firm believer. I like LNG, obviously, but I'm a firm believer that probably, you know,
four years, five years from now, we probably will build out and have over capacity. That's just my two cents on that one.
But this is a very high beta name
and it's also has like legal exposure as well.
So you gotta be very careful with it.
But these moves that we've seen over the last couple of days
is really not surprising.
This thing can move very aggressively, fairly quickly.
So I see Josh has his hands up as well.
So I'll let him kind of talk about
Venture Global. They're doing, I mean, they're expanding. They just have some headwinds. Once
again, it's just a volatile stock. I mean, it just IPO, what, like six months ago, eight months ago,
maybe less than that. So that's what I got. Josh, I'll kick it over to you.
that. So that's what I got. Josh, I'll kick it over to you.
Cool. Sure. Yeah. That was a great summary. I think the stock is down in the immediate term
because of the potential for a ceasefire or peace between Russia and Ukraine. Unfortunately,
I don't think that's very likely, but we've seen a number of different sell-offs in oil
and related equities previously
when there have been similar attempts. And unfortunately, it seems like there's just too
big of a gap in between what Ukraine will accept and what Russia will accept. So I think in the
immediate term, there's that. I think there is this sort of interesting phenomenon for these LNG
exporters. And I wrote about this very extensively.
There's an innovation in how these big facilities get built, where they've switched from custom
building to modular building. So it's like going from developing like a single home with the
contractors all on site, building everything, you know, just using basic construction materials to going to essentially
installing a set of prefab homes, very complicated, but prefab home equivalent, where you're just sort
of connecting the things and connecting them up to various, you know, sources of energy and plumbing
and other stuff like that. So that shift dramatically lowered the cost to build,
which has been to Venture Global's benefit,
but it also hurts them because their existing supply
that isn't contracted now has to compete
with their own new supply
as well as everyone else's new supply.
So for right now, that shouldn't matter so much.
And I think this is just down,
probably just on that sort of short-term news, Russia, Ukraine.
But medium term, I think like four or five years, I agree with Kevin, there's going to be way more of these things built, I think, than the consensus.
And that's great for the companies that build them, but only if they actually have long-term contracts. And for the overall industry, I think the earnings shift is going to go
from the owners of this infrastructure
over to the producers of the commodities
that are getting used in the infrastructure
and their services companies.
So that's my thesis on it.
But it's very interesting to follow
and there's all this legal other stuff too.
And yeah, this move very recently is pretty pretty extreme and over time too once again five years eight years
out um i mean canada is now kind of exporting lng and it looks like it's pretty successful
right so if they double down on that as well um they'll be a competitor for us so i you know i
like the industry itself um you know It's not a recommendation.
I think it's very innovative.
But this sounds like really bad to say this, but it is what it is, right?
The geopolitical risk really gives it a premium.
I find it, one, I'm right there with Josh.
I don't see how Ukraine is actually going to seed a lot of this territory if you follow the ins and outs of this.
It seems like this would be a sweetheart deal for Russia.
I don't think Ukraine, I don't think the EU is going to actually really go
for what's kind of being proposed high level,
which is another reason why crude moving below 65
is really kind of pricing out some of that risk.
And so there might be an upside opportunity there,
especially when you're looking at the options premium,
fairly cheap, but I don't know.
I feel like this conflict probably will continue
in one way, shape or form here,
either overtly or covertly, so yeah.
And VG, once again, if you're looking at,
if you're looking to have LNG exposure
and you don't like high beta, VG is not the one for you. Right, if you're looking to have LNG exposure and you don't like high beta, VG is not the one for you, right?
If you're looking at LNG exposure,
you can look at like a senior that has like a significantly lower beta
to the broader S&P 500 as well as just maybe some of these other names
within the space, a little bit more of a predictable business.
They do very well in the long-term contracts,
do a really phenomenal job when it comes to hedging but they kind of command that space right now and then over time once again
the competition will ramp up not only here in the united states but also in canada in my opinion
which will make it a little bit more difficult so that's where i'm at i know josh i know josh
has a natural gas takes i do gotta jump here for a second i know you got a natural gas take. I do got to jump here for a second. I know you got a natural gas take. I saw you on with Jason from Against All Odds Research. You were spitting some heat there, man. So I don't know if people want to kind of hear some of that or if you have something else. So one thing on LNG I think is important and worth keeping in mind on.
There's this thesis that's been around for a few years now that as soon as there's peace between Russia and Ukraine,
there's going to be an enormous glut of liquefied natural gas because there has been more demand for LNG because of that war
and because of Europe ramping down their consumption of natural gas from Russia.
However, what we've seen is when the price for natural gas goes down, demand skyrockets, especially in the global market.
And so we saw somewhat recently LNG prices fell towards $8 in MCF from right now they're in sort of the $10 to $13 range.
from right now they're in sort of the $10 to $13 range.
When they fell towards $8, all of a sudden you saw,
I think it was Pakistan bought a cargo or two
and they hadn't been active in a few years.
And I think it was Sri Lanka.
There was one other country in that area,
and I apologize for not having that name on hand,
that suddenly bid the cargo
and it looked like there was quite a bit of competition
on that low-priced cargo. And so there seems to be a lot of demand sensitivity to price for liquefied natural gas. And so as you see the narrative on, oh, hey, there's a glut or if there was a peace deal, which, again, I think would be great, unlikely, but great. I think there is a floor to some extent, and that floor supported by enormous
demand at a slightly lower price would be very supportive, I think, for companies like Venture
Global. I don't own it. I'm not recommending it, but I think it's a very interesting dynamic.
The other reason to mention it is if you look at, there have been these fascinating charts on AI
data centers and how big of a portion of U.S. construction activity is getting taken up just by them.
I think they've exceeded recently new office construction.
If you combine AI data centers, which are a consumer of natural gas via burning it for power, either directly on site with generation facilities or indirectly through connecting the grid,
if you combine it with LNG export facilities and the huge amount of money getting spent on that
construction activity, natural gas-oriented construction is becoming a very big part of
the overall US construction makeup, which is a big part of the overall US economy
and employment, even if it shows up as a very small portion of market capitalizations in
the stock market.
And so these things matter a lot for the US economy, even if they don't matter that much
in terms of having a way smaller market cap than like a Mag 7 stock or something like
that.
Yeah, I think we also did see a little bit of a fall off in demand in asia if i'm not
mistaken josh right um for lng yeah it's it's always complicated again it's like price driven
and so you saw like china import a little less uh lng i think they might have even not imported
almost anything they did not here but again a lot But again, a lot of that's price driven.
And so I don't think that's them using less gas.
I think they actually used more gas this year.
And there's also one other factor there, which is sort of like getting into the details.
But China built a pipeline with Russia where they're getting gas directly from Russia.
I forget which one it's called, but they built it,
it's completed, it's online. And so there's a little less demand in the short term as China
grows its natural gas demand for liquefied natural gas, which is relatively expensive,
because they just got this extra gas from the physical land-based pipeline. And so I think
there's going to be a digestion period,
and then you're going to see China back in the market for LNG, either because prices get closer
to that sort of $8 NMCF level, or just over time as China's demand grows and they start importing
LNG again. So yeah, that's true that there was some weakness, but again, I think that was more
price-driven and sort of idiosyncratic
driven by that new pipeline. Yeah, and China has not imported LNG from the U.S. this year at all,
right? But their ability to kind of ramp up imports and drawing on global supply probably
will then probably support prices. It's a very interesting market.
I'm more of the fact that it's not so much like Russia-Ukraine conflict coming to a resolution.
I feel it's not so much the supply side, like, oh, there's going to be a glut.
It's more of the fact that the market's going to look at it that way, right?
Like as traders going to price it that way.
And I think that's probably where you probably can see a pretty decent trade, like a reversal trade of that.
I find it very highly unlikely that Europe is going to go back to the old ways, given the fact that there are risks.
And once again, this deal actually does go through.
It actually puts Europe at more of a risk, right,
when it comes to military exposure.
So it's an interesting trade.
I just kind of go back and say VG, you know,
you know what you're getting with that company,
know that there's going to be a high beta.
Also know that the options trades are fairly
light. Spreads usually are blown out there as well. So if you're trading options on it, you
got to make sure you get that move and just assume that you're going to be trading a little
bit higher than intrinsic, a little bit of premium of intrinsic just because those spreads
actually get pretty wide. So every once in a while, you will see a squeeze on weeklies for BG, both to the upside
and downside. And it's, I don't want to say it's easy to, how do I say this in a way? I don't want
to say like manipulate, but it's easier. It's easy to push the price right now. If you are a major
institution or a big institution that likes to trade options and get exposure to this name,
one way or another, upside or downside, it's easier to push price
because the average retail trader's not trading EG options.
So you'll see these interesting squeezes to the upside,
unlike no news, it's just how the stock is trading right now.
Or even to the downside.
There's one other thing that you were mentioning
that I do wanna talk about just for a minute,
which is on the natural
gas side. So these are companies that export natural gas from the US. On the natural gas
production side, we're in this really interesting spot with where natural gas prices are right now
and where activity is and where production is versus where demand is and where it's going.
And I think there's a good shot we end up with natural gas essentially squeezed
because you need another about four BCF a day every year,
which is just under 4% a year production growth.
And you're not at a price that's incentivizing that much production growth.
And for a number of the producers, not all of them,
but for a number of the producers, not all of them, but for a number of their producers, they're actually experiencing lower productivity on their wells relative to
their capital spending than they did last year and the year before and so on. And that's been
the general trend that U.S. natural gas wells have been less productive on a perfect basis over time
over the last four years. And so we're in an interesting situation, I think, for natural gas,
where these companies like Venture Global have been so successful
in building these facilities and bringing them on early
and bringing them on bigger than people expected.
And that's drawing more supply at the same time
as some of these producers are not quite delivering as much as people expected. And even
as more rigs are coming on to drill for natural gas, we may end up with a squeeze where you have
more rigs running and more demand and not quite enough supply. And we saw something similar to
that in 2021, where you saw natural gas prices reset from $2 in MCF up to close to, I think,
$9 in MCF was the high in 2022.
And there was lots of other stuff going on then. But fundamentally, you saw a similar sort of
step up in demand as LNG facilities turned on. And you didn't see an accompanying step up in
supply for a year and a half until those high prices got so many rigs running that you got
more supply running.
So we're set up with something sort of similar.
So I'm really excited about the producers and the services companies, especially the
smaller ones at low valuations, because I think they could benefit from it.
The flip side is there is a scenario where some of the spot cargos for liquefied natural gas might not run if you got in a situation where
global lng prices were temporarily low for some reason and you had the price domestically here in
the us relatively high due to a shortfall and so you could end up with that market balancing
in a way that would be quite negative to the LMG infrastructure companies, the liquefaction companies, if the spread between U.S. and Asia or U.S. and Europe falls too much.
And so I know that sounds sort of wonky, but there's sort of a risk for leadership and for economics to shift from these infrastructure guys, especially the uncontracted ones,
over the producers and services companies almost entirely.
And so I don't know that it will happen for sure,
but there is elevated risk of that, I'd say, right now.
And you're seeing the industry start to respond to it,
but I'm not sure you've seen enough rigs come on to be able to offset this risk.
Last thing about Natty, also, market probably is
going to be preparing as far as when you're trading futures, getting prepared for the draw
season. So usually like the last week, last two weeks of August, last week of August,
going into September is usually when we start seeing prices kind of picking up a little bit.
And there's a pretty decent dispersion between the October and the November contract when you're looking at the spread.
So that's also something too. If you're not experiencing trading natural gas futures,
I probably wouldn't recommend it. But there's the big contracts, you have the micro. But if you
look at UNG, which has been a proxy for a lot of those that have, you know, that trade equities like to trade it. If you look at it, UNG,
not a recommendation. If you look at UNG and you kind of go out,
look at, look at maybe some of the added money in time, you know,
two months, three months out there,
there might be an interesting trade there that some institutions might be
trying to get exposure to just given the environment of injection season kind of ending and then draw season taking place in the middle of October.
It's been a it's been a weird summer, though, right, because the it was cool last week and you ended up with lower, lower draws than I think people expected for summer demand.
And so we've ended up with a little more gas and storage than I think people were expecting, which was suppress the current price.
But that doesn't really mean a whole lot considering the potential demand from winter plus this elevated LNG exports.
potential demand from winter plus this elevated LNG exports.
And so there's a lot of potential volatility.
And I don't recommend any of this stuff,
but I would highlight there was this phenomenal video
that came out a few years ago from this guy
that would recommend shorting calls unhedged.
And he completely blew up people's accounts.
And actually, I think he was managing
separate accounts. And so he created a huge amount of liability for his clients in addition to losing
all the money they gave to him to invest like this. And it was from selling calls on natural gas.
And then I can't remember if it was like a winter storm or there was some weather event and weather
events happen. And so the real volatility for natural gas can be phenomenal.
And it's one of those weird things where the producers, the smart ones, actually monetize that because they'll sell calls against some of their position, pocket the huge volatility, but they're physically hedged.
So they're fine to do that and they just take that premium some of them and just make extra money um but uh
people unfortunately do that in their personal accounts sometimes with no physical hedge and um
there's just enormous risk like kevin was saying if you don't know what you're doing with that stuff
stay far far away yeah like if you look at the who's what's the guy's name do you remember i forever got i know who you're talking
about though um it's optionsellers.com yeah yeah which again it's super ironic that they blew up
by selling options but it's just stupid like you just don't uh i don't know uh i wrote an article
about something similar to this where there were all these people that were buying calls on game
stop and shorting it uh right at the start of that whole meme thing. And I was just like, it's just
stupid. Like all of this is stupid. Don't buy it. Don't sell it. Just stay away. I remember
recommending, I think I told people like go buy sandwich or like two bucks a share or something
and went up to like 25 from there or whatever. But it was just so stupid. Like all these people
wanted to speculate on nonsense and i knew
people that lost a ton of money in both directions people who were short of the stock or who shorted
calls on gamestop and then you know people that were like long calls at crazy premiums and some
of this stuff is just you know if you don't if you're not an expert in it just it makes sense
to to just stay away from a lot of that stuff because there's so much risk and so little reward if you
make one little mistake on it. Yeah, kind of going back to the UNG thing. I mean, UNG 13 calls right
now, which are pretty much at the money. Let's say on the ask, $1.50 right now. So if you go back on
those charts, you're looking at around 11 11 implied move which sounds like a lot but not
really for natural gas and that he can move two percent three percent a day easily um but once
again kind of an interesting uh structure when i look at the these like usos or if you look at the
ungs uso does actually a lot better. Like they pad those premiums pretty aggressively.
So you really have to get a move,
but for UNG, for whatever market makers don't price those moves very well.
So it's not a recommendation,
but it's a way to kind of play the exposure there.
And I kind of go back and I always look at it
every single year, right around this time,
August, middle August or so,
and start seeing the positioning and the flows and the preparation and the anticipation for that
October, right? Now, once again, if you're looking at the futures contracts, I think
Dees is trading at, what, 345 right now. So there's definitely a disconnect from front month
to what you're seeing in the December contract, which is really kind of pricing in those winter
events. And Josh, you're right, inventory levels have been high here in the December contract, which is really kind of pricing in those winter events. And Josh, you're right. Inventory levels have been high here in the United States,
less of a draw here in Europe as well. I believe last time that I checked,
it's probably up to you right now, but European natural gas levels are sitting at like 70-ish
percent, give or take. So they're kind of on track to getting to around what, 92, 93% potentially,
if they kind of keep on with this pace. But the winter season, what I find very interesting is,
and energy traders do this all the time, right? We try to predict what's the winter going to bring.
And usually, I mean, no one knows, right? And usually what you'll look for is just like these
one-off events. Like is the probability of an Arctic blast event in the United States,
is it highly probable that we might see one of those this winter?
Maybe, maybe not, maybe, right?
I mean, we see them.
It seems like we see them every year.
And so when you're trying to trade these things,
like you can't predict the weather.
You got to follow the weather, but like you can't predict it.
But if you're looking at far enough out and you see that there's a price dispersion, I
wouldn't call it an arbitrage because an arbitrage is a dispersion between prices of one thing
compared to another.
But if you look at a potential underpricing of potential risk, those are the times that
you get opportunities in this market, no matter if you're trading commodities, whatever you're
trading, right?
Commodities, especially. So I don't know if anybody wants to hear us talk
about Natty anymore, but Josh, I'll give you back over to you. I'll give you back over
to Evan. It's a really good discussion. And I go back and I just want to say, I want to
kind of shout out, once again, check out that Against All Odds research and Josh's interview
there. I was in Chicago last week
and heading to the airport and listening to it.
And Josh and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things
or some things, right, when it comes to the energy markets,
but I always value your opinion.
I think it's really nice that you get somebody
that's out there that's willing to provide their insights.
And if they're right, they're right, right?
And he gives a justification if he's wrong or he perceived that he was wrong for a particular call. He also provides his insights
as to what may have changed for that dynamic. And that's very rare in this industry where people
just pump shit every day. Excuse my language, pump stuff every day. All they have is winners
and no losers. But I like to hear the mechanics coming from Josh as far as his thought processes
as to why he got to a thesis. So I would recommend that. I'm going to put the link below. And I'm
not even in the bad boy. I'm going to put the link below too. So if you guys are listening to this,
you guys watch it. It's a really nice video. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, I did that because these
guys put out a chart that was just phenomenal. So there's lots of different theories in markets about different correlations
and forward indicators to try to give you an edge.
And they took a common indicator, which is a gold to oil indicator,
and they added copper to it.
And when you look at gold, copper, and oil together,
it makes a lot of intuitive sense because mining is a huge demand center for oil.
And it also makes a lot of sense because if you think about the things that drive gold in the short term, money printing and other devaluation of currencies that drive either expected or actual, that drive gold prices higher,
are things that do eventually affect other commodities. It just takes longer because the other commodities also have supply-demand impacts and other factors beyond just serving
as pure inflation hedges. And so it turns out that from their research, and it's sort of intuitive,
hedges. And so it turns out that from their research, and it's sort of intuitive, gold moves
first, then copper, then oil. And again, if you think about how diesel intensive and broadly oil
intensive mining is, it would make sense that if gold prices went up a huge percent and then copper
prices went up a huge percent, that you'd have a lot more mining activity and that mining activity doesn't take care of itself.
And even if you look at electrified mines where there are some that have electric trucks, which are expensive and fire risks and have other issues.
But there are some of those not common, but some even those use a lot of oil as they have these giant trucks with enormous oil-based tires and various other oil-based
equipment, and you still need oil for all kinds of other stuff.
But the reality is most of the mining industry is still very, very heavily dependent on oil.
So we talked about that.
It's pretty interesting, I think, to look at that sort of indicator.
And I'm very fundamentally oriented.
But what I liked about it so much is that you could basically take these guys who were
extremely chart oriented and technical analysts and fundamental analysts and sit in a room
and essentially agree about how this sort of forward indicator would give you a very
strong signal.
I don't know exactly when, but sort of directional signal that after experiencing the sort of boom like we saw in gold and that we were
seeing in copper that it's very likely but again not guaranteed or assured or whatever that you
would see a significant boom in oil as you have every time this sort of set of things has happened
in the last 50 plus years.
I think with that, I'll hand it back over to you guys.
Commodity Corner, I guess, is over.
Thanks for the mic, and always good to chat with you guys.
Yeah, appreciate you guys for joining.
Always enjoy doing those type of conversations every once in a while. I think it is very valuable.
I appreciate you guys.
You should make sure you're following all the speakers up here if you aren't following them already.
Intel up 1.1% on After Hours, but who's watching anyway?
We'll see tomorrow.
Stock talk.
We've got about 12 minutes left on this one.
My guess is normally on Monday there is going to be a hard stop.
We couldn't throw your way.
We couldn't throw your way.
I wanted to get your thoughts.
I wanted to get your thoughts.
It seems like a geopolitical heavy day, given this kind of U.S., China, NVIDIA chip sale thing.
And then we also have this Putin-Trump meeting coming up on Friday.
I know you like to talk about that every once in a while.
Is there anything happening to the geopolitical world that's interesting you the most?
Any moves that are playing?
No, really.
I mean, I didn't think today was particularly interesting to you.
I mean, the China
chip export thing,
I mean,
obviously it's kind of annoying just because
it's hard to get visibility on
where that's going to end up, but
I mean,
we did another 90-day delay today
with China, or some people say it's
the same 90-day delay that was already talked about,
and now there's another article on it.
I mean, who knows?
But the reality is that China and us are both stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trade negotiations.
China needs us.
We need them.
And there's critical industries that we need each other in that we can leverage against each other.
And so it makes it really complicated to play hardball with China.
And I think that's why we've had more...
The commentary from the White House has been more aggressive
than the actual trade policy towards China.
That's just a fact.
And I think the gap there is a consequence of the Chinese having legitimate leverage.
Like, why are rare earth metals one of the hottest thematics in the market this year?
Because there's been a lot of signal in that direction, right?
Like, we are not currently prepared to replace China in any meaningful capacity when it comes to a lot of critical rare earths and for things that are important too like semiconductors and the aerospace and defense industry and robotics and all of these
like new and upcoming thematics we are you know very reliant on china for for the rare earths
necessary to enable uh mission critical applications in all those industries so
china knows that too china's not stupid china knows China knows that. And so I don't,
I'm not behind the scenes in those trade negotiations, but you have to imagine that
that's being leveraged by the Chinese where they're sort of laughing at the idea that we
could take a hardball stance against them. They're like, okay, well, you guys still need rare earths,
don't you? And I think the compliance we've seen on the H20 chips, the sort of reversal in position there, where Trump today said, well, they're older chips.
China already has them. But Trump and the White House knew that when they first instituted that policy.
Right. They already knew that China already had them and that they were an older generation of chips.
But they brought that reasoning back today.
I think in reality, probably what happened around the chip export is that Jensen Wong has been to
the white house now several times on that issue,
probably went to Trump and was like, Hey man, like, you know,
we are not going to lead in AI if everyone's not building on our hardware,
yada, yada, yada. And made the pitch to him and Trump, you know,
was somewhat amenable, obviously, considering the announcement that was made.
But on the other hand, the Chinese probably said, look, if you're going to cut us out outright
from advanced ships and suffocate us when it comes to having any sort of AI enabling
compute, then we're going to suffocate you when it comes to air airs.
And you know that you can't survive that.
And neither can we and so there's i think the united states and taiwan sort of have this ai
industry you think leverage over china china has rare earth leverage over us and that creates a
situation that's sort of frozen and that's why we keep getting delays and no actual tear like
these 40 percent tariffs we've been hearing of have never actually gone
into effect for this exact reason um and for the fact that they would freeze trade and probably
crash the economy that's probably another reason too but um yeah i just think that that dynamic is
going to be really hard to be like a patient observer of because it's going to take a long
time to resolve and it'll probably come with a lot of exceptions and probably will not be nearly
as harsh as people anticipated it to be but who knows i also say i can't say that for certain
because who knows maybe we do i thought it was stock talk yeah i wonder did you see there was
a couple headlines from i think it was chinese state media that saying like the nvidia h20 chips
are like not safe to use in china and it felt felt kind of linked to, that was coming out before this news came out,
so I guess maybe they were unrelated.
But to me, it felt kind of linked.
Yeah, maybe it was linked in a way.
I mean, there's like a handful of super important industries right now,
and chips and rare earths happen to be two critical requirements to enable almost all of these next gen industries.
So it's like they have one piece of the puzzle.
We have one piece of the puzzle.
I mean, there's obviously a lot of other.
I'm not just saying the trade between the United States and China comes down to those two things.
And a lot of instances, actually, the rare earth supplies are niche markets.
Like for some of the rare earths,
you know, they're $1.1 billion global markets. It's not a big market, but they're strategically
important. They're necessary for very specific high tech applications. And so even though,
like, you know, collectively, it is a massive market, there are some part, like there's some
metals that aren't that important in and of
themselves. But collectively, China can exert that leverage and say, you guys need this. And
if you're not going to provide us what we need, then we're not going to provide you what you need.
And it creates a stalemate. And that's what you've seen. I mean, is anyone surprised we've seen like
690, I mean, not six, but what, 390-day quote-unquote extensions now?
So it's like, I don't know.
I don't know when it's going to stop.
So I try not to think about that.
Do I think it's a risk?
Yeah, it's a risk if it resolves poorly.
But, like, I can't anticipate that risk.
I can't be like, you know what?
This is going to end in 40% tariffs for everyone.
I can't say that personally.
I can't make that judgment call because the the law the
the logical guy in me doesn't want to believe that that's going to happen because that would
destroy the global economy if china and the us put 40 tariffs on each other and just crossed their
arms and said you know you we're not doing business with you like that would be a disastrous
outcome so i'm just choosing to not believe that that's going to be the outcome obviously if, if that is the outcome, that's going to be terrible for stocks and the economy and
everything else. But I'm just choosing to not believe that we're going to go there. And maybe
that's a naive thing to do. But I don't know. It doesn't seem to me like the administration really
wants to do that either. They're using every exit ramp they can get for anything. Like we went from we went from saying like, oh, we want
all trade to be reciprocal to accepting investments to buy down tariffs. And now we're accepting
companies making, quote unquote, commitments to buy down tariffs.
Did anyone watch like the Apple meeting in the White House? They literally asked Tim Cook.
They're like, hey, so can you build an iPhone in the US? And Tim like, basically said,
no. He's like, we're building the screens. But yeah, like, we're final assemblies happening
elsewhere and will be for a while. And then Trump butts in and says, Oh, yeah, they're making the
screen here, though. And so it's like, the concessions are blatant, right? Like, it's not
you don't need to be like a genius to find the concessions. They've been blatant, right? Like it's not, you don't need to be like a genius to find the concessions.
They've been blatant, right?
And as has been the sort of softness on actual execution of the tariffs.
Like every time we come to a deadline, what happens?
Like even when we came to the August 1st deadline, they go, oh, well, they don't actually go into effect until August 9th.
And then as we get to the August 9th deadline, then we get 90 day extensions all over the place.
Then with the Brazil tariffs, everyone's like, oh, what's going to happen to aircraft parts
and orange juice?
Well, surprise, surprise, orange juice and aircraft parts are exempt.
Then the semiconductor tariff headline comes out.
Everyone freaks out.
And then the White House comes out and says, oh, well, anyone making U.S.
investments is exempt.
Then Bank of America comes out the next day and says, well, that means everyone's exempt.
Like, so I don't know.
I'm trying to be apolitical about this. I try to be neutral. things i've given trump credit for there's things i've criticized them up i just think this
whole like tariff trade has been like just silliness and i think the market to an extent
in the last two months has shrugged it off like dude like what the hell is going on just tell us
what's happening the market's not even buying it anymore if the market if the market thought were gonna get 40% tariffs come on we wouldn't be trading at all-time highs
like so the market doesn't believe it markets calling bullshit on it too so I don't know I
don't know I don't all that rant is to say I don't I don't know I'm just like uh you know
in the same observer I can't project what's going to happen with tariffs.
Stock talk, it felt like a couple
weeks ago, maybe there was a chance some clarity
might be close to being reached, and
we've continuously realized that's not the case.
Yeah, exactly. I feel like that's not going to be the case
for the next couple weeks. Every time we come to this
sort of culmination
point where these tariffs are really supposed
to go into effect, and 30%, 40% tariffs,
we just don't get there. Like, the leash gets gets pulled a little and then we start falling into 90 day
extensions then we start falling into companies making commitments for exemptions if all the
biggest companies secure exemptions through quote-unquote loose mou style commitments and all
of the biggest industries that we trade with, like with Brazil for orange juice and aircraft parts, get directly exempt out of recognition of their significance.
Then what are the tariffs even for?
If all the high volume industries get exempt, all the biggest companies get exempt, all of our trading partners make these loose commitments and get exempt or get reduced tariffs.
make these loose commitments and get exempt or get reduced tariffs?
Like, why not just say, okay, 10% tariffs on everyone, call it a day, move on?
Because that's effectively what's going, seems like it's going to happen.
10 to 15% tariffs on everyone or almost everyone with a very few exceptions.
And then that's it.
That seems like what's going to happen.
Contrary to an April 2nd where it was like 30 to 40 to 50 percent plus for everyone. So yeah, I think
due to multiple factors over the last three months, for whatever reason, the White House has said,
okay, whether it's whether you think the market pressured them to do it, or whether you think
internally there were conversations, or whether you think a new advisor who hadn't spoken up
started speaking up, or I mean, it could be it could be all of those things but over the course since April 2nd since liberation
day the administration has objectively token take chosen to take a softer sands on tariffs
now the reason you assign to that that's up to you to speculate on but that's what has effectively
happened if you just pay attention to the data, if you just pay attention to how the numbers have changed,
how the statements have changed,
that to me would be the conclusion,
that they have taken a softer stance.
And if I had to guess, and again, I'm guessing,
that's where it's going to resolve.
Everyone gets 10% to 15% tariffs.
Most big industries are exempt,
and most big trading partners are exempt
on all the important stuff.
That's what it's been so far. So i don't know why it would change from that but i mean i'm happy to hear somebody else's opinion kevin if you have another opinion on that yeah
no just real quick i know you guys have a hard stop look uh go back to trump 1.0 this is the
same playbook uh in fact i think that you actually get closer to a china deal because he's now
bringing up soybeans again like no one wants to talk about soybeans, but that's one of the bigger, I don't want to say bigger
hurdles. It's one of the easier hurdles for him. And so once he starts going down that route,
just like he did the first time, he's going to get a purchase commitment for these purchases
for soybeans. And then once again, these commitments are going to be three years,
four years out. As far as the completion of them, there's going to be no accountability.
And that's the last thing too. Do you notice no one has accountability for any of the commitments
of these investments that I suspect that 50% to 60% of these investments that are being announced
by these companies are not going to go through. I mean, if it were me, I would announce some major investment deal.
And then, you know, your biggest gamble is I wait him out four years.
And then hopefully the next person that's in line, no matter Republican or Democrat, kind of just backs off of this and moves forward.
Right. Like that's pretty much probably what Tim Cook is doing.
NVIDIA is doing. A lot of these companies are doing the same.
I don't think that they're really trying to put these dollars to work.
Yeah, they might go in.
They might buy some land.
They might even break ground.
But actually completing a lot of these investments, I feel like is far fresh.
Even if you're looking at Apple's, Apple's is going to spend $600 billion technically.
They're going to squeeze a lot of that money coming from suppliers.
But when you look at the dollar amount of these investments and compare it to other financials, none of this stuff really adds up at the end of the day.
But I go back to say he's starting to bring up soybeans.
At this time in Trump 1.0, when he starts bringing up the agricultural businesses, it makes it a little bit easier for China to commit to orders.
And they can always back out of orders.
People do it all the time, right?
They can easily commit.
And I think that's once again an olive branch.
And that might be a signal that this China deal probably, this probably will be the last
extension for the China tariffs.
I think that they probably will have a deal in the next 90 days, especially once again,
talking about soybeans and stuff of that nature.
They're going to quadruple.
He wants them to quadruple orders orders which ain't going to be possible they don't have the consumption
capacity to do so but they can make an overture uh they could have it printed in usda data right
when it comes to the orders because we get that every week and i think that's probably the route
that they're going to go i feel like we're probably closer to the end here but you're right i think
they just want the numbers they want the optics optics right now. The administration does, and no one's going to follow up. And that's exactly what
happened the first time. And the market's okay with market was okay with that the first
time around. They're probably going to be okay with that the second time around. Who's
going to go back and say, Hey, four years from now, you guys didn't commit. We're onto
the next story. So that's what I got there.
Appreciate you.
By the way, Trump just put out a comment about his meeting with the Intel CEO.
Went well, basically.
His cabinet, Mr. Tan and my cabinet are going to meet, spend time,
and bring suggestions to me for the next week. During the next week.
All right, we'll see.
What are we doing?
It's a command economy, dude.
You know exactly what this is.
I'm not even joking.
The stuff, the semiconductors, with the semiconductor thing, with NVIDIA and AMD, any other president that would pull this stuff off
would be impeached at this point.
And I'm not trying to be a Trump hater.
It's just that he doesn't have any guardrails at this point.
It's a shakedown.
I mean, even the suggestion, oh, we might even let them have black whales if we dumb them down.
I mean, he's open.
You got enough money, he's willing to make deals.
he's willing to make deals. And that's just the environment that we're in.
And that's just the environment that we're in.
Given that environment, the market's paying up a premium for companies that are willing to
play that game. So kind of continue to look at those companies that are willing to
go to the White House, right? Announce some type of grandiose investment that they're probably not
going to do. And those are the companies that are catching bids right now. This is just the new environment.
I don't even mind the investment commitments.
To me, what I don't like is the idea
of a presidential cabinet meeting with a board
of a company.
I don't like that.
I don't know. That bugs me.
Maybe I'm just...
It feels...
Icky?
It feels improper.
That's, I think, a Improper. Feels. That's it.
I think it's a soft way of putting it,
but yeah,
I don't know.
I know we have a hard cut off guys.
Yeah.
Sorry to cut in.
Great combo.
Make sure you follow all the speakers.
And of course the host of these spaces.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Power hour,
3 PM.
Eastern.
Big shout out to the whole crew.
We'll see you guys tomorrow.
I'm jumping over to Wolf right now to open up stock picks for the week Thank you.
