With unprecedented investor demand for the largest IPO in history (SpaceX), it's worth remembering a simple lesson:
A great company doesn't always make for a great investment at any price.
The median major IPO lost 31% in its first year & suffered a 53% drawdown along the way.
*OPENAI MULLS SIGNIFICANT CUTS TO WHAT IT CHARGES FOR TOKENS:WSJ
OpenAI cutting token prices to try to take market share back from Anthropic. In response, Anthropic will eventually of course have to cut token prices to stay competitive with OpenAI.
The commoditization of AI is happening before our eyes
"US large cap Tech recently outperformed the S&P 500 by +6 standard deviations over the prior 50 days. No other rally since 2015 comes anywhere close."
@DataTrekMB
Broadcom is backstopping a massive $36 billion private credit SPV with Apollo and Blackstone which will help Anthropic buy Google chips made by Broadcom, even as Google is renting compute from SpaceX while Morgan Stanley, which is arranging the deal, lends money to investors
So is $GOOG compute constrained as the deal w/SpaceX implied, but not so constrained that they can sell $35B of their chips to their biggest competitor (Anthropic)…?!
Market leverage in Asian markets is through the roof:
Assets under management (AUM) in leveraged South Korean and Taiwanese ETFs are up to a record $65 billion.
Since the start of 2026, total leveraged ETF AUM has surged +490%.
This comes as 16 new single-stock leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung and SK Hynix were launched in South Korea two weeks ago.
By comparison, AUM in US leveraged ETFs stands near a record ~$180 billion.
Meanwhile, the SK Hynix 2x long Leveraged ETF surged +50% on Monday despite a -7.7% decline in SK Hynix shares, posting a rare divergence.
This fund should have declined -15% under normal tracking conditions.
Other single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking SK Hynix ended the session within normal ranges.
Investors are taking on more leverage than at any point in history.
DeepSeek is becoming more popular among US enterprises as companies look for cheaper alternatives to Anthropic and OpenAI
“DeepSeek takes top spot on 'trending' list as companies look for alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic, spending tracker's report says Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek took the top spot on a major US business spending index in June, surging as more companies swap out expensive American options like OpenAI and Anthropic in favour of more affordable alternatives.”
Nothing to see here
US Retailers who have reported so far like $RL $WSM and $TGT have seen strongly accelerating US comparable sales last quarter.
The “weak consumer” narrative is in shambles.
Never underestimate the American shopper.
Stanley Druckenmiller:
"So, I’ll never forget it. January of 2000 I go into Soros’s office and I say I’m selling all the tech stocks, selling everything. This is crazy…at 104 times earnings. This is nuts.
Just kind of as I explained earlier, we’re going to step aside, wait for the next fat pitch. I didn’t fire the two gunslingers. They didn’t have enough money to really hurt the fund, but they started making 3 percent a day and I’m out. It is driving me nuts.
I mean their little account is like up 50 percent on the year. I think Quantum was up seven. It’s just sitting there.
So like around March I could feel it coming. I just, I had to play. I couldn’t help myself. And three times the same week I pick up a, don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Anyway, I pick up the phone finally. I think I missed the top by an hour. I bought $6 billion worth of tech stocks, and in six weeks I had left Soros and I had lost $3 billion in that one play.
You asked me what I learned. I didn’t learn anything. I already knew that I wasn’t supposed to do that. I was just an emotional basket case and couldn’t help myself. So, maybe I learned not to do it again, but I already knew that."