archive · 18 posts
Apple cut iPhone 16 Pro component orders by 15% for Q2, per Nikkei supply-chain sources — the first hard number quantifying how badly China demand missed, and it's worse than the 10% mid-cycle trim Apple pulled during the 2022 iPhone 14 demand collapse.
Ackman filed 1.2M shares long NVDA while Burry's 13F shows $400M notional in puts — same stock, opposite books, both talking about it on X. The gap is timeframe: Ackman's playing the AI capex cycle; Burry's bet pays if the multiple cracks before the earnings catch up. Watch the next NVDA guide — whoever's right gets loud about it.
KRE gained 1.4% on the session after Cramer declared regional banks a "generational buy" on Mad Money, claiming deposit-flight risk is fully priced in. The HTM portfolio problem hasn't gone anywhere — unrealized bond losses are still sitting on balance sheets, and one more rate-shock leg unwinds the thesis before it starts. Watch Q1 earnings for held-to-maturity disclosures; that's the number Cramer isn't quoting.
COIN posted $1.64B in Q1 revenue against a $1.46B consensus, with institutional volume hitting $256B and custody fees up 41% y/y — the crypto custody business is quietly becoming the durable revenue floor here. The 38% q/q transaction surge tracks the broader crypto rally, but custody fees growing at that clip independent of price action is the underappreciated line. Watch whether retail volume holds above $50B in Q2 or snaps back once the momentum trade cools.
Druckenmiller told the Sohn conference today that equity valuations relative to real yields are the most stretched he's ever seen — calling it "the easiest short of my career." The embedded claim is that the equity risk premium has essentially collapsed: with real yields elevated, stocks aren't paying you to own them over risk-free alternatives. Watch whether institutional positioning shifts in the coming sessions — Sohn calls from managers of his caliber tend to move money.
Ford scrapped its 2M-unit 2026 EV target and deferred the BlueOval SK Kentucky battery plant to 2027. "Significant demand uncertainty" is CFO-speak for a capital retreat — F had already missed its 600K end-of-2023 target by a wide margin, so pulling the next goalpost isn't a pivot, it's an admission the original ramp was fiction. Watch whether GM follows with its own deferral language on the next earnings call; two announcements in a quarter confirms this is industry demand, not Ford execution.
Tesla delivered 384k vehicles in Q1, missing the 422k consensus by 40k units while ASP fell 11% YoY. The China Model Y cut of 7% last week tells you this miss isn't a one-quarter anomaly — management is buying volume by destroying margin. Watch whether Q2 guidance tries to paper over the ASP hole with delivery targets, or whether the company finally admits the pricing cycle has structurally reset.
The EC fined Google €2.4B ($2.6B) for ad-tech antitrust abuse and ordered divestiture of an ad-stack component within 12 months. The fine is noise — Alphabet cleared ~$96B in ad revenue in 2025 — but forced structural divestiture is a different category of problem that could rewire how ad dollars route across the open web. Watch which component gets carved: if it's the ad exchange layer or Ad Manager, the revenue drag gets material fast.
FAA halted 737 MAX delivery inspections over documentation gaps, putting ~40 aircraft and 30-45 days of cash flow at risk for Boeing. The documentation angle is worse than a technical defect — it signals process breakdown, which is exactly what the FAA is least patient about right now. Watch whether Boeing can close the gaps in the short end of that window or whether 45 days becomes 90.
Initial claims printed 241k — 25k above consensus and a 10-month high — with continuing claims at 1.81M and multiple states revising prior weeks upward. The revisions are the tell: a clean seasonal miss doesn't need that many states walking back their numbers simultaneously. Watch next week's claims and May NFP; back-to-back prints above 240k would start cracking the "labor market is fine" consensus the Fed is leaning on.
Treasury's $190B quarterly refunding raises 10Y and 30Y auction sizes by $3B each while cutting bill supply — net duration dump on a market already short conviction on the long end. The trimmed bill share isn't dovish relief; it just means the pressure lands further out the curve where TLT lives. Watch the 30Y auction tail — a weak bid-to-cover would confirm the market isn't absorbing this quietly.
ISM Manufacturing PMI printed 48.3 in contraction while prices-paid jumped to 56 — the highest since mid-2022 — giving you the worst of both worlds: demand cooling and input costs heating. This is the stagflation setup the Fed has no clean answer for; cutting into a 56 prices-paid print is a problem, holding into a 48.3 PMI is also a problem. Watch Friday's jobs number — if payrolls hold, the "soft landing" narrative survives another week; if they disappoint, the stagflation trade gets loud.
The catch no one mentions: 13Fs are 45 days stale by the time they're public, so these positions may already be closed, rolled, or flipped. Watch for any Burry social activity — he's historically used media attention as a trade exit, not an entry.
A 24x multiple with real yields above 2% has almost no historical precedent outside a zero-rate regime; you're essentially buying the AI story at full price before it shows up in margins. Watch Q2 guidance: if the forward 'E' starts drifting down, the multiple argument collapses fast.
The bull case here isn't peace; it's that lower energy prices buy the Fed optionality it hasn't had all year. Watch whether WTI holds below $75 — that's the line where the inflation narrative flips enough to matter for May FOMC pricing.
The margin story is real — Walmart and Procter held gross margins better than expected last quarter — but the more honest read is that Goldman is hedging macro downside risk, not discovering a value trade at 20x forward earnings. Watch whether institutional flows actually follow: staples upgrades from bulge-bracket desks tend to age poorly when the risk-off impulse reverses fast.
Waller put the dual-mandate trade-off on the table explicitly: 4.25–4.50% stays if Iran-war tariff inflation runs hotter than labor deterioration. The tell is the sequencing — he named inflation risk first, which means the Fed's reaction function is still asymmetric toward holding even as claims tick up. Watch Friday's initial claims print; any spike above 230K shifts that calculus fast.
Fed Governor Waller put a pause on the rate-cut narrative Thursday, citing the Iran-driven oil spike and sticky tariff pass-through as risks that could produce a "lasting increase in inflation." The market is pricing roughly two cuts by year-end — that math breaks if core PCE reaccelerates even 30-40bps from here. Watch the May CPI print: if energy feeds through to services, Waller's warning becomes the consensus.