G

Derivative Trader since 2005

[G @neuner9]

@TicTocTick 7755 support 7810 resistance

[G @neuner9]

@TicTocTick So will yields

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

After news of its record $100BN off balance sheet SPV debt deal, Broadcom CDS has gone vertical, hitting a record 122 at the close, with Nvidia also blowing out to a new all time wide.

Credit is cracking

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

"The WSJ reporting that the long-feared “Google Zero” moment — when Google Search largely stops sending traffic to third-party sites — some publications are seeing traffic drops of more than 40% between mid-2025 and mid-2026. Publishers face a choice: allow Google’s multi-purpose crawlers (which feed both traditional search and AI training) or block them and lose search visibility entirely. Several major outlets, including USA Today, Reddit, Politico, Reuters and others, are now openly considering or preparing to restrict Google’s access, while Cloudflare plans to start blocking multi-purpose crawlers by default from mid-September unless site owners opt out. The old model in which publishers had no real alternative to Google’s rules is cracking" - Goldman TMT note

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

1979: fasting glucose over 140 makes you diabetic.
1997: lowered to 126.
Millions of new diabetics. Same blood.

1997: prediabetes starts at 110.
2003: lowered to 100.
A third of American adults, created by a footnote.

1984: high blood pressure is 160/95.
2017: lowered to 130/80.
American hypertension goes from 32 per cent of adults to 46. Thirty-one million new patients in a morning.

2001: the cholesterol target is 130.
2004: lowered to 100, and to 70 for the high risk.
Statin eligibility expands by millions.

Eight of the nine men who wrote that 2004 update were on the payroll of companies selling statins. They disclosed it only when forced.

1994: a WHO panel invents osteopenia. Bone that is not thin enough to break, given a name and a prescription. Half of older women qualify.

Nobody got sicker on any of those dates. A committee sat down and a number moved.

The threshold drops, the market widens, and the drug is already licensed and sitting in the warehouse.

Your grandfather was healthy at 145/92. You are ill at 132/81.

Nothing about the body has changed. Only the paperwork, and who profits from it.

[Max Anderson @MaxAnderson]

As someone who has personally spent $500k / mo+ on Google Ads for years, I can tell you with certainty:

This revenue growth in Search is artificial & extremely unhealthy for Google’s business long term

Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries

Google’s response?

Manufacture revenue growth via short-sighted, highly extractive, customer-hostile tactics. I.e. charge advertisers more for lower quality clicks, including clicks they do not want and explicitly did not approve Google to charge them for

A few examples to illustrate:

For all of its history until recently, Google operated on a 2nd price auction model

I.e. if you bid $5 CPC and the next highest bidder bids $1 CPC, Google charged you $1.01 for the click (one penny more than the 2nd highest bidder) rather than the $5 you bid

This was a genius move by Google early on as it incentivizes advertisers to input their true maximum willingness to pay rather than trying to play the game of bidding low and constantly adjusting to try to stay just ahead of the next highest bidder while still not paying too much

However recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction and began charging advertisers as much as their bid and budget caps allow, regardless of what anyone else is bidding

It’s a short-sighted cash grab at the expense of the long term health of the advertiser ecosystem

Making thing worse, Google also recently nerfed keyword targeting precision

Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on, defined down to the character w/ exact match or phrase match targeting

This was one of the core features that made search advertising magic, enabling advertisers to run extremely precise campaigns based on exactly what their target customer typed

But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact
-match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as “exact match (close variant)”

The definition of “close variant” means whatever they want it to and changes constantly. The result is advertisers get billed for clicks that are totally irrelevant to their business and that their targeting settings explicitly forbid Google from targeting. Google does it anyway and there’s no ability to turn this off

So now exact match is broad match, and broad match is just meaningless spam

This is all very bad for advertisers, but for Google, it allows them to show your ad and bill you for clicks across 1000x more searches that were previously going unmonetized (mainly because they’re garbage queries no one wants)

This is how you grow revenue atop declining search volumes

Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

And the extra spend is entirely on the garbage keywords Google arbitrarily throws in as “exact match (close variants)” which have no value to our business, but can’t be turned off

Google offers no refunds nor any recourse for overspend or spend on keywords you explicitly did not target

These are not the actions of a healthy business. These are the actions of company whose core business is in decline but desperately needs to pump quarterly earnings so Wall Street will continue to fund insane capex while hopefully looking through their rapidly deteriorating negative free cash flow

Google operated a benevolent monopoly for the better part of 25 yrs

Meaning the value Google captured from Search was but a small fraction of the value it created, and that spread produced a potential energy that justified expectations of high earnings growth far, far into the future

This is now no longer the case

At the alter of AI capex, Google is sacrificing the golden goose

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:

Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.

You won’t.

You won’t because you know what I know. Any one of us, frozen at our worst moment, photographed in our lowest hour, looks like a monster. Looks like a stranger. Looks like someone who deserves to be cast out.

That is not who we are.

My mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Beau, my best friend and my rock. I battled alcoholism. I battled addiction. I chose the coward’s way out more times than I can count.

For years I believed the defining chapters of my life were written by tragedy, loss, and shame.

I no longer believe that.

Pain can shape us. Loss can humble us. Failures can leave scars that never fully fade. But none of them have the authority to define us.

And it sure as hell ain’t the critic that counts.

That authority belongs to us alone-the person in the arena.

Every setback presents a choice. Play the victim, or cut the bullshit and take ownership for who we become next.

Life does not determine our character. It reveals it.

Again and again we are asked the same question. When shit happens, what next?

We are not defined by what happened to us. We are not defined by the worst photo, the worst text, the worst tattoo, the worst night. We are defined by the person we choose to become. And by the courage to choose that person, every single day.

So before you reach for the gavel - show us your laptop.

You won’t.

The whole world saw mine. And I am still here. Still becoming. Still choosing. Still standing.

That is the only definition that matters.

[M Lebon @LongTplexTrader]

Not an EV

[PaxTrader777🇺🇸 @paxtrader777]

Every trader has a story. I think every great trader is a survivor of something very tough and/or tragic times.

[The Fourth Estate. @TicTocTick]

In all of these talking heads, PTJ is the closest you will ever come to an extremely active (and successful) trader.

Back in 1990 he did a video which he promptly had removed from media.

If you can find it, watch the video. There in you will see what an active trader really is.

[The Long View @HayekAndKeynes]

I’m beginning to see a very different version of the future where there are just data providers and there are people easily build their own software on top of it with simple descriptions of what they want to see

[G @neuner9]

@TicTocTick Walk in the woods and in bed by 10 pm sharp

[Dougie Kass @DougKass]

@thestreetpro

BY DOUG KASS · Apr 1, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

GOD ONLY KNOWS

* Or maybe the Sphinx can solve the market riddle...

* If you put a gun to my head I would say we are in a broadening trading range with a negative bias over the intermediate term (measured in months)...

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?"

- Greek Mythology

"I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I'll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I'd be without you
If you should ever leave me
Well, life would still go on, believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
God only knows what I'd be without you..."

- The Beach Boys, God Only Knows 

I have made the case over the last two weeks that equities (especially of a Mag 7-kind) are oversold and buyable — as they arguably represent a more favorable reward vs risk at any time in a while.

The Riddle of the Sphinx, among the most famous riddles in Greek mythology, symbolizes the stages of human life and encapsulates profound themes of humans:
* Crawling on all fours as a baby (morning)

* Walking on two legs as an adult (noon)

* Using a cane in old age (evening)

The Sphinx posed this riddle to travelers and those who could not answer were said to be devoured.

While there are many pretenders who confidently predict the stock market's future, I am often wrong and always in doubt.

Truthfully, it is likely that the Sphinx and God only know if Tuesday's rally foreshadows continued strength.

My greatest concerns are that the war in Iran (which eventually will be "resolved") will have knock-on consequences to economic growth (weaker), inflation (stronger and more persistent), tighter-than-expected (Fed) monetary policy (so interest rates will be "higher for longer") and produce something of a supply shock (for a vast array of critical materials and products).

The bottom and the middle of the K-shaped U.S. economy are bound to be even more pressured in the months ahead as general affordability is materially threatened by a weakening jobs market and stubbornly higher costs (and inflation).

Importantly, corporate profit growth expectations (of about +15% year over year) will have to be ratcheted down despite protestations from the cabal of (ostrich-like) perma-bulls:

Who in his/her right mind thinks that the prospects for 2026-7 S&P EPS gains are now higher than before the Iranian conflict (and after the rapid increase in energy and other related costs - which will impede demand and raise the costs of goods, adversely impacting margins)?…— Dougie Kass (@DougKass) March 31, 2026

With interest rates staying above consensus expectations and S&P profits below elevated consensus forecasts — the equity risk discount will grow ever larger — providing a backdrop for future greater-than-expected valuation contraction.

I also remain concerned about U.S. foreign policy and what it means for our alliances (trade and political).

These above factors are not valuation friendly and, at the very least will likely constrain the enthusiasm and upside that was demonstrated Tuesday.

My Strategy

I remain modestly net long in exposure but I start Wednesday much less long than I started Tuesday — given the rapidly changing reward vs. risk prospects, which are an outgrowth of a +3% advance.

That reduced reward/risk ratio is clear to me given the outsized gain in tech stocks over the last 24 hours.

Bottom Line

"God Only Knows" is among the finest ever sung by The Beach Boys and has been praised critically as among the greatest songs of all time. From their innovative 1966 album Pet Sounds, it was written by Brian Wilson. It is a baroque-style love song featuring harmonic innovation and complexity, unique instrumentation which upended typical popular music conventions both musically and lyrically.

While I may assign my own probabilities to market scenarios (based on dutiful analysis), given all the possible economic and geopolitical outcomes, many of them negative — the Sphinx and God may only know what lies ahead for the markets.

And, to be sure, I am not and will not pretend to be God.

My investment strategy will be stay vigilant and to be flexible and opportunistic.

If you put a gun to my head I would say we are in a broadening trading range with a negative bias over the intermediate term (measured in months).

I continue to see 2026 as a negative year for the broad averages— with most rally attempts failing or being constrained by persistent inflation, moderating corporate profit expectations, relatively tight Fed policy (and higher than longer interest rates), inconsistent and poorly framed U.S. leadership/policy and declining valuations.

BY Doug Kass · Apr 1, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT @SquawkCNBC @business @cnbcfastmoney @HalftimeReport @andrewrsorkin @saraeisen @BeckyQuick @ScottWapnerCNBC @carlquintanilla @jimcramer @tomkeene @lisaabramowicz1 @ferrotv @guyadami @pboockvar @gnoble79 @KeithMcCullough @SamofAmerica @HedgeyeDJ @RPKent @WhitneyTilson @LizAnnSonders @V_arrell @thedalesreport

[Live Monitor @amlivemon]

Well tech is all made overseas except for maybe 15 pct of it. And then we get the power bill which is really a tax and we lose jobs on top of that

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Record Liquidations: Institutions Just Sold The Most S&P Futures Ever https://t.co/vwmBbc4XCj

[The Long View @HayekAndKeynes]

The Middle East is on the verge of blowing itself to pieces and while it will be expensive for households, the US will become the most dominant energy player on the planet and potentially a manufacturing powerhouse (especially with the revival of the EPCA which prevents the export of US oil).

[Sal the Agorist @SallyMayweather]

The good news is republicans are going to lose the midterms.

The bad news is democrats are going to win the midterms.

[Billy Baldwin @BillyBaldwin]

With great actors… you never see the work.
Like a watch… you never want to take off the back and see the spinning wheels.
That never, ever happened with Robert Duvall.

Of all the actors from his generation… he was the most real.
Power, emotion… truth.