Front-running order flow is temporary. Front-running understanding is durable. See the future shape of an industry before consensus. Time the entry with technicals. Size the bet with risk management. That's the whole game.
My Top 5 Interconnect stocks ranked:
1. $CRDO (Credo Technology)
The AEC copper pure-play with the best growth rate in the group, 274% YoY revenue growth last quarter. Hyperscalers are choosing copper wherever physics allows, and Credo owns that socket. But they’re not standing still: DustPhotonics ($750M) gives them silicon photonics, Hyperlume gives them microLED, and the optical DSP portfolio (Bluebird, Cardinal) is doubling revenue annually. Credo is building a full-stack interconnect company across all distance tiers. Smaller and higher-growth than Marvell.
2. $AAOI (Applied Optoelectronics)
A transceiver company riding the current 800G/1.6T wave, and riding it well. The capacity story is the bull case: AAOI is building toward 500,000 units/month of combined 800G and 1.6T transceivers by year-end. Raymond James models annualized EPS of $11-12 at that capacity level. The geopolitical angle is underappreciated, AAOI is positioning as the largest U.S.-based producer of AI-focused transceivers. The bear case: they don’t have a visible path into the CPO, microLED, or silicon photonics architectures that will define the next era, but their execution on the present cycle earns them a spot.
3. $MRVL (Marvell)
The most diversified interconnect play in the market. Optical DSP leader (70% interconnect revenue growth this year), CPO scale-up via the $5.5B Celestial AI acquisition (targeting $1B run rate by end of 2028 with Amazon Trainium 4), microLED through the Mojo Vision partnership, and copper connectivity for NVLink Fusion. Jensen Huang called it the next trillion-dollar company. The risk is valuation, 96x trailing P/E prices in a lot of execution.
4. Lumentum ($LITE)
The structural chokepoint. Only supplier shipping 200G-per-lane EMLs at volume, the component everyone needs for 1.6T transceivers. CPO is actually bullish for Lumentum because CPO switches still need external laser sources, and Lumentum just booked its largest CPO laser order ever (hundreds of millions, H1 2027 delivery). NVIDIA has pre-allocated laser capacity so aggressively that lead times stretch past 2027. The risk is concentration — Lumentum is a laser company, and if a competitor qualifies a second source at 200G, pricing power erodes.
5. $TSEM (Tower Semiconductor)
The picks-and-shovels play. Tower is the leading silicon photonics foundry, SiPh revenue grew 70% YoY, with $650M invested to triple capacity by mid-2026. Every CPO optical engine, every silicon photonics transceiver, and most photonic integrated circuits need a foundry, and Tower is where the industry is building. Less sexy than the chip designers, but foundries tend to win regardless of which architecture or end customer dominates. Lower volatility, lower ceiling, but the most technology-agnostic bet on the interconnect buildout.
Honorable mentions:
$ALAB (Astera Labs) would rank if it weren’t trading at a steeper premium with a narrower product focus (PCIe/CXL retimers and fabric switches). Worth watching if valuation pulls back.
$COHR (Coherent Corp) NVIDIA’s named silicon photonics collaborator for Spectrum-X. Coherent plays both sides, laser sources (where CPO is bullish) and transceivers (where CPO is bearish). The bear case is a messy transition where transceiver revenue drops before CPO revenue fills the gap.
A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:
1. Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP, known for its early calls on $BE, $SNDK, and $INTC, disclosed a 5.6% stake in Nebius $NBIS. Aschenbrenner has been a major believer in the neocloud theme, previously building positions in CoreWeave and IREN, and has now added Nebius to the fund as $NBIS hit all-time highs after hours.
2. Starting on July 4, every American newborn will be eligible to receive $1,000 to invest in the stock market, according to The Wall Street Journal. The program would give children an early start in building long-term wealth through market exposure from birth.
3. $META Meta is getting into the AI subscription game, expanding paid subscriptions globally across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp while testing new AI, creator, and business plans under the “Meta One” brand. Consumer plans are expected to start around $2.99 to $3.99 per month, while Meta is also testing AI tiers at $7.99 and $19.99 per month, with the higher tier offering more capacity for complex prompts, deeper reasoning, and increased image and video generation. It looks like Zuckerberg is starting to position subscriptions as Meta’s next major revenue stream beyond advertising.
4. $HOOD Robinhood is officially entering the agentic era, launching Agentic Trading and an Agentic Credit Card that let users connect AI agents to Robinhood through MCP servers so agents can trade or make purchases on their behalf. Agentic Trading will operate through a separate account, meaning the agent only has access to the money users deposit there, with push notifications and real-time activity and P&L tracking. The Agentic Credit Card will let an AI agent spend through a dedicated virtual Robinhood Gold Card with user-set spending limits, optional manual approvals, expense tracking, and 3% cash back.
5. Marvell $MRVL reported Q1’27 revenue of $2.42 billion, beating estimates of $2.40 billion and rising 28% year-over-year, with adjusted EPS of $0.80 versus estimates of $0.79. For Q2, Marvell guided revenue to $2.7 billion versus estimates of $2.6 billion, implying 35% year-over-year growth, with adjusted EPS expected between $0.88 and $0.98 versus estimates of $0.90. The company also raised its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook to nearly $11.5 billion and projected fiscal 2028 revenue of $16.5 billion, driven by strong AI and data center demand.
6. Dell $DELL won a five-year, roughly $9.7 billion Pentagon software agreement to provide Microsoft enterprise software across the U.S. military. The deal covers $MSFT Microsoft 365, cloud subscriptions, and on-prem licensing through a single contract vehicle, with Pentagon officials expecting the consolidation to reduce duplicate software spending and save about $422 million annually.
7. Top 10 options by contracts traded today were $NVDA with 3.4M contracts, $TSLA with 3.1M, $META with 1.0M, $MU with 1.0M, $AAPL with 1.0M, $AMZN with 788K, $IREN with 667K, $MSFT with 541K, $NOK with 511K, and $PLTR with 389K.
8. The U.S. military has reportedly carried out new strikes on an Iranian military site that officials said posed a threat to U.S. forces and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Reuters. U.S. forces also intercepted multiple drones launched from Iran. Faytuks Network reported that the operation took place in Bandar Abbas, with an official saying the U.S. will act to safeguard its regional interests and that the action does not affect the ceasefire.
9. Amazon $AMZN just announced a new deal with Snowflake $SNOW for its agentic computing chips. Snowflake plans to pay Amazon $6 billion over the next five years, while $SNOW shares jumped 30% after hours following a double beat on revenue and EPS.
10. A Google $GOOGL engineer has been charged in a $1.2 million Polymarket case after federal prosecutors alleged that Michele Spagnuolo used confidential Google “Year in Search” data to bet on Google-related prediction markets before the information was public. Prosecutors say he traded under the name “AlphaRaccoon,” accessed internal Year in Search data, and risked about $2.75 million across roughly 25 outcomes, including the most-searched person of 2025. After Google released the results, the account allegedly made about $1.2 million in profit.
11. During President Trump's cabinet meeting today, Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will remain open to everyone, calling it international waters and saying the U.S. will watch over it. On Iran, Trump said he is “not satisfied yet” with the current deal, adding that Iran is “negotiating on fumes” and is intent on reaching an agreement, but that talks are “not there yet.” He also said the U.S. is not discussing sanctions relief, would not be comfortable with Russia or China taking Iranian uranium, and will “keep control of Iran’s money.”
12. Reddit $RDDT is rolling out its native Shopify $SHOP integration globally, letting merchants connect their Shopify storefronts to Reddit Ads with quick setup, codeless Reddit Pixel tracking, and automated product catalog syncing. Reddit says its users are 62% more likely than the average American to be daily shoppers, while TransUnion research found Reddit delivers more than 2x the incremental ROAS of the average media plan in North America, returning $12.52 for every $1 spent.
WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:
1. $CBRS Cerebras opened about 75% above its expected IPO price of $185, giving the AI chip company a roughly $100B market cap despite generating $585M in revenue last year. Ark Invest also bought 105,616 shares just one day after the IPO, adding more attention to the name. The momentum is set to continue with LeverageShares launching a 2x leveraged Cerebras ETF tomorrow morning.
2. President Trump submitted his latest stock purchase and sale disclosures to the White House Office of Ethics, with the filing reportedly spanning more than 100 pages and including thousands of trades. The disclosure is notable because it shows a sitting president actively trading individual securities rather than only holding assets like corporate debt, index funds, or Treasuries. Some of the names listed as purchases include $PLTR, $HOOD, $NVDA, $SOFI, $MSFT, $AAPL, $DIS, $V, $ULTA, $JPM, $COIN, $LYFT, $AMZN, and $RKLB.
3. The U.S. has approved around 10 Chinese companies to purchase Nvidia’s $NVDA H200, the company’s second-most powerful AI chip. Nvidia hit an all time high at $240 today.
4.Figure AI has been livestreaming its humanoid robots performing real warehouse-style package sorting tasks using its Helix-02 AI system. The robots pick up, scan, rotate, and place packages onto conveyor belts autonomously while operating for extremely long periods, including a reported 24/7 run after initially targeting an 8-hour shift. The livestream is meant to prove that humanoid robots can handle repetitive labor reliably and economically, rather than just perform flashy demos. Many viewers see it as one of the first convincing demonstrations of commercially viable humanoid labor, especially for warehouses and logistics. The robot has so far dealt with 34K packages live and has reached parity with a human worker that can do 3 every second.
5. The most traded stocks in the options market today were $NVDA with 5.0M contracts, $TSLA with 2.5M, $NOK with 889K, $F with 860K, $ONDS with 849K, $INTC with 814K, $AAPL with 752K, $MSFT with 736K, $MSTR with 670K, and $MU with 644K.
6. Semiconductor leverage flows surged, with $SOXL, the 3x long semiconductor ETF, taking in a record $1.03B on Tuesday. At the same time, $SOXS, the 3x short semiconductor ETF, saw $230M of outflows, its largest daily withdrawal since late March. $TQQQ also added $161M, its biggest inflow since March 31, but $SOXL inflows were more than 6x larger as traders concentrated bullish exposure in semiconductors. Since the March 30 bottom, $SOXL is up 354%, its strongest 31-day gain since launching in 2010, while the $SOX semiconductor index is up 68%, its third-best 31-day run on record.
7. Retail investors are buying stocks at one of the fastest paces in years. Year-to-date retail equity inflows are ahead of every comparable period over the last seven years except 2021, and after slowing briefly in March, retail buying jumped sharply in April. The week ending May 1 ranked in the top 2% of weekly retail inflows since 2019, and at the current pace, individual investor purchases could surpass the 2021 record as soon as July. Retail options activity is also elevated, with average daily volume now at 1.57x January 2024 levels, the highest since the October 2025 peak.
8. SpaceX could release its IPO prospectus as soon as next week, according to CNBC, after confidentially filing in April. The company’s roadshow is expected to start June 8, with SpaceX reportedly targeting one of the largest public offerings ever following its merger with xAI at a combined $1.25T valuation. The IPO could raise around $70B-$75B, which would be more than twice the size of Saudi Aramco’s record 2019 listing.
9. AI data center demand is putting pressure on power costs across PJM, the largest U.S. grid, which serves 67M people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Wholesale power prices averaged $136.53/MWh in Q1 2026, up 75.5% from $77.78/MWh a year ago. Capacity costs rose 398.1% year-over-year, while congestion costs increased 300.4% to $2B.
10. Tech layoffs have now passed 100,000 in 2026, with TNW reporting cuts across roughly 250 events this year. LinkedIn is reducing headcount by about 5% despite 12% revenue growth, while Cloudflare is cutting more than 1,100 roles, or about 20% of its workforce. AI is becoming a major driver of the reset, with Challenger citing it as the top reason for job cuts in both March and April and linking AI to 49,135 announced layoffs so far this year.
11. President Trump said President Xi told him China will not supply military equipment to Iran and supports a peace agreement. Trump also said Xi offered to help mediate the situation and work toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for global oil flows.
12. The CLARITY Act advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee today in a 15-9 bipartisan vote. The bill would create clearer federal rules for crypto, including when tokens are treated as securities versus commodities. Crypto stocks rallied on the news, including Coinbase, as investors viewed it as a major step toward regulatory certainty. The bill still is not law and needs full Senate approval, House reconciliation, and final passage. The main fights now are over stablecoin rewards, anti-money-laundering rules, and ethics concerns tied to political figures profiting from crypto. $BTC Bitcoin passed $81,000.
WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
Look guys, it's actually really straightforward, a bunch of people staked their ETH on the Ethereum blockchain to earn yield, except they didn't want their capital to be locked up, so they actually staked with a liquid staking protocol called Lido who provided them a liquid staking receipt token called stETH, except they decided to juice their yield further by depositing their stETH receipt tokens into a restaking protocol called Eigenlayer, except they didn't want to lock up their capital, so they actually restaked with a liquid restaking protocol called KelpDAO who provided them with a liquid restaking receipt token called rsETH, except they decided to juice their yield further by depositing their rsETH tokens into a lending protocol called Aave so that they could open a leveraged looping position that borrows ETH against the rsETH collateral and restakes the ETH into rsETH which is then deposited as collateral, except it turns out rsETH used a cross-chain bridge called LayerZero that was hacked by north koreans causing rsETH to become undercollateralized and now these looping positions are stuck and unprofitable, and everyone is pointing fingers at each other, and also DeFi is a very serious industry
@grok Meta can't feed private chats into Muse Spark "by design." That's technically true IF the encryption is implemented without a backdoor. But the entire lawsuit alleges the implementation HAS a backdoor. If employees and Accenture contractors can read messages, then the plaintext exists somewhere accessible. And if plaintext is accessible, it can be fed into training pipelines.
We don't know if Meta actually did this. But the capability allegedly existed. And Meta's incentive to use the richest private communication dataset on earth for AI training is enormous, especially when they're spending $135B and their models keep falling behind.
@grok@elonmusk@grok So is it impossible or jus their policy says they can't because Meta credibility is not the strongest from past like Cambridge Analytica and making products intentionally addictive.
JUST IN: The Strait of Hormuz is open. It has been open every day since February 28. The IRGC never closed it. What the IRGC did is convert 21 miles of international waterway into a permissioned gate with a toll booth, a vetting process, and a guest list. Traffic has collapsed 70 to 80 percent. But the handful of tankers that transit each day do so with IRGC clearance, paid in yuan or USDT, at $2 million to $4 million per vessel.
The process is now documented. A tanker operator contacts an IRGC-linked intermediary. The operator submits vessel ownership, flag state, cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and AIS transponder data. The IRGC runs background checks: no US-linked ownership, no Israeli cargo, no flagging to aggressor states. If approved, a toll is negotiated. Payment is executed in cash, Chinese yuan, or USDT on the Tron network. The IRGC issues VHF radio clearance with a specific time window and route through Iranian territorial waters near Larak Island, where IRGC Navy performs visual confirmation. The vessel transits. No physical escort is provided. The “protection” is the removal of the interdiction threat. You are safe because the entity that would attack you has decided not to.
China passes. India passes. Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Iraq, Bangladesh pass. Shadow fleet operators aligned with Russia pass. Not all pay the full toll. Some receive exemptions through government-to-government arrangements. Some pay reduced rates. Some pay nothing because the geopolitical alignment is payment enough. The system is not a blockade. It is a membership club with a cover charge denominated in currencies that are not the US dollar.
And here is what nobody is covering. Lloyd’s of London and the international insurance market have withdrawn standard hull and machinery coverage for Hormuz transits. War-risk policies now carry premiums of up to 5 percent of vessel value, $5 million for a $100 million tanker, per voyage. But the actuarial models that price those premiums now incorporate IRGC vetting status as a risk-reduction variable. If a vessel can prove it has paid the toll and received VHF clearance, the probability of loss drops from above 20 percent to below 5 percent. The same models that price hurricane risk and earthquake exposure are now pricing IRGC compliance as a safety factor.
The insurance industry has done something no government intended: it has formalised IRGC authority over the strait in actuarial mathematics. A tanker that pays the toll is insurable. A tanker that does not is stranded. Dozens of vessels sit outside the strait right now, unable to transit because no underwriter will cover them. The insurance withdrawal is not a market reaction. It is a structural enforcement mechanism that makes IRGC permission the prerequisite for commercial shipping.
Every toll paid in yuan is a barrel that settled outside the dollar system. Every USDT transaction on Tron is a 3-second settlement bypassing SWIFT and sanctions. Iran’s parliament is drafting legislation to formalise the toll as “security compensation.” If that bill passes, ad-hoc extortion becomes sovereign law, and the precedent for chokepoint monetisation enters the international legal framework.
Gold watches from the side. Spot prices muted at $5,000 to $5,400 by dollar strength and rising yields, while central banks in China, Russia, and India quietly accumulate on every dip. The short-term safe-haven has not fired. The long-term de-dollarization trade is loading.
The strait is open. The molecules move. But only for those who pay the toll, in the currency the toll booth accepts, after the vetting the toll booth requires. The rest wait. The clocks tick. Saturday arrives.
https://t.co/iFmUcarGdV
Apple is actually the AI distribution monopoly because the device controls which model gets called, and the model is commoditizing because Apple proved they can just license Gemini for $1B, which means the value hierarchy is devices > chips > cloud > models. Long aapl short msft
14/
What I'm tracking monthly to confirm or deny all of this:
NVIDIA margins (above 60% = thesis intact)
Solana stablecoin volume (https://t.co/holsOFLoSY)
Agentic GDP (https://t.co/Kar1SeYUNW / https://t.co/vOL6nqeYbx)
x402 protocol volume (Artemis / Dune Analytics)
Behind-the-meter power projects announced
Live commerce GMV growth (TikTok Shop, Whatnot)
USDC supply on Solana vs Ethereum
If these metrics keep compounding, the thesis is working. If they plateau, time to reassess.
The data does the talking. Not the narrative.
The AI Infrastructure Map Nobody's Talking About
A Thread 🧵
1/
Every AI thesis I explore — agent economy, behind-the-meter energy, live commerce, open source models, embodied AI — keeps pointing to the same 5-6 names.
At first I thought I was confirmation biasing myself. Then I realized: when every line of analysis converges on the same answer, that's not bias. That's concentration of value creation.
Here's the full map. 👇
13/
The most important insight: every new thesis I explore — behind-the-meter energy, agent payments, live commerce, open source AI, embodied robotics — points back to the same infrastructure.
That's not confirmation bias. That's how concentrated the real value creation is when a new general-purpose technology reshapes the economy.
The alpha isn't in finding the 50th name. It's in recognizing the convergence and sizing accordingly.