Rekt Mkts: $90 oil, AI capex and a messy tape

The AI capex numbers remain strong and seems like Korea is finally confirming some of the move we saw in US memory earlier this week. But US futures are lower, WTI is now above $90 and rates are still not helping, so I don't think this is suddenly an easy risk-on setup. My read is still that there are good trades inside a pretty awkward market. I want to be specific rather than just buying everything coz KOSPI had a huge day.

US cash markets were softer yday, with SPX closing 0.14% lower and NDQ down 0.54%. SPX futures are currently down 0.34% from the prior settlement and NDQ futures are down 0.4%. The rate and oil setup still looks dicey to me. 10Y currently at 4.66%, so up about 3bps on the day, while the 30Y was 5.15%. WTI is around $90.07, up 3.7% as the Iran conflict and shipping risk keep escalating. Gold is actually down 1.2% at $4,098, which is a useful reminder I think that the market isn't trading one clean geopolitical story and correlation is still a bit confused. As I keep saying...equities do have the power to ignore higher rates and oil...I mean in the last 5 years we've literally just seen higher rates and higher stocks...but at this point in time I still feel hesitant to pay up for risk especially when strength seems to be getting sold, I still feel like we're going to get a much better buying opportunity in the next two months. Tough to remain patient but patience is key.

Alphabet reported earnings and beat on the quarter while lifting 2026 capex guidance to $195bn-$205bn after cloud revenue grew 82%. That is obviously supportive for the AI infrastructure and memory demand story, although the stock reaction suggests ppl are also asking when all this spend actually produces a return (GOOGL stock currently 4% lower pre-mkt). Tesla was less clean, missing profit expectations and burning cash as AI spending ramped. Big spend is good for suppliers, but not every company writing the cheque automatically wins imo...TSLA down 6% pre mkt. Korea did finally stage a catch-up...KOSPI closed 4.4% higher today, SK Hynix gained 4.9% and Samsung 3.6%. That is much better confirmation than we got yday and makes the memory bounce more interesting. That move has filtered through to US memory stocks with MU up 3% pre mkt and SNDK up 2%. I do think the capex guidance by Alphabet is a very clear positive, does make me rethink the almost flat position in stocks but still going to be patient for now; the technical analysis points to the fact if MU closes above $1K we may be back towards short-term momentum to the upside, so there's potential there for a trade with tight stops.

Crypto is quite interesting here. BTC is currently around $65.7k, down 0.7% from the prior close, with ETH at $1,928 and SOL at $77.51. The CLARITY headlines and ETF inflows got BTC through $67k, but we've sold off after odds of it passing dropped from over 50% to around 35% on Polymarket. What I find interesting is last time the odds were that high, back at the beginning of July, BTC barely flinched. In this situation, we have held onto most of the gains despite the reduction in probability...that tells me there's probably a different technical reason why BTC is strong (like someone buying) and it's one of those where like a slightly bit of positive newsflow sends it higher because of the technical setup...let's see. Robinhood Chain is much uglier today. PONS is around $0.0304 and down 19% over 24H, while CASHCAT is around $0.0492 and down 28%. They have still done roughly $7.4m and $5.7m of volume respectively, so volumes are still pretty decent but someway off the highs for CASHCAT. I took the ballsy decision to rotate all my CASHCAT into PONS today. Here are the bullet points: - PONS currently has $375k (and counting) to deploy in buybacks: @cryptamurai on X that number presumably keeps growing if RH ecosystem keeps expanding (and if you think it doesn't you shouldn't be in RH coins) - as it's more "picks and shovels" than the actual gold itself, it's much easier to hold onto the coin as a proxy for RH activity rather than having to rotate between lots of different memecoins - it has survived attempts from other launchpads to steal market share (Circus from Bonk team, Noxa re-launch etc) - it has an active dev who is posting regularly and seems to be taking good decisions I'm not much of a rotator and my sweet spot has usually been to find something that's good and hold it for a while, I think this one is interesting to slot into that type of trade. Good luck Good luck.