DHUnplugged Podcast

March is the WORST month for markets in a long time.

International equities getting killed

Dollar Up, Oil Up, Equities Down, Bonds Down

The markets Trump Card no longer works…

PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts!

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Warm-Up

- Trump may have played the wrong cards (Making up stories for markets)

- Oil prices on the move - Monday highest close yet for this cycle ($105)

- For Real ? End of War?

Markets

- WORST month in a long time

- International equities getting killed

- Dollar Up, Oil Up, Equities Down, Bonds Down

Happy Passover and Happy Easter!

- Made a brisket 2 ways!

One Food item and then back to business

- New trend at restaurants: " We do not use any seed oils - no, we use beef tallow.....

- Reaction from crowd and recent FDA

- Sunflower, Canola, Soybean (unsaturated is better....)

Monday Morning Again

- 7:30am Monday Morning - More BS for the markets - Talks going great...

---- Problem is that there was a severe threat that if nothing changes by next week- Iran is going to get pummeled

------Iran strikes several key targets in Middle east - Aluminum prices spike, oil prices moves higher....

- It does not look like Iran is too concerned. (Complacency or Strength?)

- Unfortunate that markets are not reacting well - (Wolf?)

- So we have until the day after Easter?

Tuesday....

- Iran's State Media says Iran's President spoke with EU Council on the phone; says Iran is "prepared to end war" with guarantees against further attacks; EU Council President has confirmed this call -

- Just moments after WTI hit $105... quickly came down to $102+/-

- Everything turned higher - green across the board

More Crazy Records

- BTIG's Jonathan Krinsky added, "At 12:41 ET today, that NYSE TICK Index hit +2329, the highest on record back to 1993. This index measures the number of NYSE securities trading on an uptick minus those trading on a down tick at any given time of day.

- For perspective, there are ~2400 stocks on the NYSE, which means nearly 100% of stocks traded on an uptick, simply unprecedented.

- Prior high was 4/9/2025 when President Trump put a 90-day pause on tarrifs

---- More - S&P was up 9.5% that day and then sold off 6.5% over the next seven days

Hormuz Tolls/Permits

- Ships would have to pay for “safe passage” through the strait

- Fees reported as high as $2 million per vessel for some tankers

- Mandatory clearance and vetting by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

- Escort through a narrow Iranian-controlled corridor, primarily near Larak Island

- Only “non-hostile” vessels would be eligible—a term Iran defines politically

Hedge Funds and Money Managers

- Plans continue - equities coming out to cash

- Hedges applied

- H&C is doing the same thing for portfolios - plans for what/if and action ahead of further breakdown

--- There is discussion that this sets up for a nice reversal (when/if) ceasefire

------- HOWEVER - damage has been done...

More....

- Heavy short sales by hedge funds and disposals by systematic investors have increased the potential for a sharp swing higher for stocks in the event of a de-escalation in the Iran war.

- Hedge funds have cut global equity holdings for a sixth straight week, driven by short sales, with net disposals across all major regions and short exposure in macro products in Europe reaching a 10-year high.

- Some signs of capitulation are starting to emerge among hedge funds, and the systematic community is running out of steam, with CTAs estimated to be buyers in every scenario over the next month.

Capitulation of More To Come?

GS Prime Book

Market Metrics

FRIENDLY REMINDER

- It is Tax season - Tax returns due 4/15

- IRA deposits due by 4/15

Food Deal

- Sysco Corp. is acquiring Jetro Restaurant Depot LLC for $29.1 billion including debt in a deal that will create one of the largest food-service groups in the US.

- Jetro shareholders will receive $21.6 billion in cash and 91.5 million Sysco shares, with the company's existing management team staying in place.

- The deal will give Sysco access to the higher-margin and growing cash-and-carry channel, with the combined company expected to have increased purchasing efficiencies and lower prices for customers.

- This looks like a smart deal - gives Sysco new footprint and distribution

Emerging Markets

- According to Bloomberg: The Middle East war risks ending a run of net credit-rating upgrades across emerging markets and could trigger a new downgrade cycle as it fuels inflation and tightens financial conditions.

- A prolonged Iran conflict could tilt the balance back toward downgrades, reversing the past three years when many emerging markets repaired balance sheets and implemented fiscal reforms.

- The inflation shock and tighter financing conditions will weigh on all countries, according to S&P Global Ratings Director Ravi Bhatia, as higher oil prices boost revenues for exporters and strain importers.

- The shift would mark a reversal from the past three years, when many emerging markets repaired balance sheets, implemented fiscal reforms and regained market access after the pandemic triggered widespread defaults and rating cuts.

- A prolonged Iran conflict could now tilt the balance back toward downgrades.

Oil Pries Factor

- Oil prices closed at the highest levels in 3 year on Monday

Market Metrics

In Stupid News

- Former world number one Tiger Woods was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence after his Land Rover rolled over on a two-lane road near his Jupiter Island home in Florida on Friday afternoon, the Martin County Sheriff's Office said.

- Woods had been overtaking a work truck pulling a trailer at high speed when he clipped the back of it, causing his vehicle to roll onto its driver's side, Sheriff John Budensiek told a press conference.

- Tiger crawled out of the passenger door before law enforcement officers arrived. A breathalyzer test at Martin County Jail returned no trace of alcohol, with investigators believing his impairment was drug or medication-related.

- Woods charged with DUI, property damage and test refusal (Woods refused to submit to a urine test, an offense that carries a separate charge under Florida law. No injuries were reported to Woods or the driver of the other vehicle.)

- Breathalyzer showed no alcohol; impairment believed drug-related

- Woods released after spending eight hours in jail

Private Credit - Now Blaming ... Private Credit

- Private credit industry execs are blaming the industry for not explaining to retail about lock-ups and liquidity.

- That is dumb - clearly easy to understand that you cannot get your money unless allowed by the investment firm

- - Here is the fact - they would have never got $ from most retinal if they told them they could not get their money readily - so they glossed over it.

USPS Surcharge

- The U.S. Postal Service plans to impose its first-ever surcharge on packages to cover the rising cost of fuel and transportation, as the agency looks for ways to stabilize its finances.

- The 8% surcharge will begin on April 26th

Meta Glasses

- Meta announced on Tuesday that it’s launching two Ray-Ban smart glasses that are designed for prescription wearers.

- While many people already use Meta glasses with prescription lenses, the company says these new ones support nearly all prescriptions and are built to better serve people who rely on all-day eyewear.

Wearables

- Whoop, the fitness and health tracking wearable company, has closed a $575 million Series G funding round at a $10.1 billion valuation — nearly triple its last reported valuation of $3.6 billion — in a deal that brings together sovereign wealth funds, major health institutions, and some of the world’s most recognizable athletes.

- The round was led by several VC groups, soverign wealth funds as well as

THEFT

- Cisco has suffered a cyberattack after threat actors used stolen credentials from the recent Trivy supply chain attack to breach its internal development environment and steal source code belonging to the company and its customers.

- A source, who asked to remain anonymous, told BleepingComputer that Cisco's Unified Intelligence Center, CSIRT, and EOC teams contained the breach involving a malicious "GitHub Action plugin" from the recent Trivy compromise.

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JCD BACK IN THE HOUSE!

Correction in some areas and sectors.

Crude oil DROPS after “good” talks and a deal brewing with Iran.

Airports are a mess.

PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts!

Click HERE for Show Notes and Links

DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar.

Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?

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Warm-Up

- JCD BACK IN THE HOUSE

- Need a new CTP

- Airports are a mess

- Not Kosher - Futures moves

Markets

- From the Brink....All is good?

- Correction in some areas and sectors

- US Dollar Rises, Gold, Silver and Bitcoin Drop

- Crude oil DROPS after "good" talks and a deal brewing with Iran - reversing all of the above

JCD UPDATE

- AH waiting by the microphone on a Tuesday in March - - no John... 9pm, 9:05, 9:15pm...

- Health update etc...Can we get the story?

- Thoughts on John S. Dvorak (Mimi on No Agenda) - Family backup!

Market Update

- Small-Caps taking the brunt of the selling

- Russell 2000 small-caps are down 10% from their high - an official correction

-- Interestingly the R2000 is still up this year by about 2%

- Stocks up on Monday after President Trump says intense negotiations over weekend and postpones targeted attacks for 5 days (after giving a 48 hour ultimatum)

Manipulation? Say it ain't so...

- Dateline Monday morning...

- Futures took a leg down pre-market - even after Friday (after close) President Trump said he was looking to wind down the Iran affair

- At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume.

- A similar pattern was observed in oil markets.

- Roughly 15 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump posted a market-moving announcement about Iran on Truth Social.

- Futures on DJ up 1,000 and oil down 89%

--- Were there really conversations and negotiations over the weekend?

A Few Leftovers that need to be discussed

Private Credit Again

- All of a sudden they are admitting there is a problem.....

- Blackstone Inc. approved redemptions of a record 7.9% from its flagship private credit fund, totaling about $3.8 billion.

- Redemption requests have increased across multiple private credit funds in recent quarters.

- Investor unease is being driven by concerns over the private credit asset class, particularly exposure to software companies vulnerable to AI disruption.

- According to Hugh Chung, CIO of Endowus, Blackstone’s experience suggests these concerns are asset-class wide, not limited to a small group of managers.

- Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan warned that a shakeout is coming for private credit firms, driven by rising defaults on loans to software companies.

- Rowan emphasized that the shakeout is unlikely to be short-term, calling it foreseeable and predictable, and underscoring the importance of disciplined underwriting and strong risk management.

- He argued that investors should prefer having credit risk reside within private markets firms, rather than on bank balance sheets backed by government-insured deposits, which can amplify systemic risk.

- LATEST: Apollo is curbing redemptions from one of their biggest Private Credit funds.

Michael Gayed: Private credit default rate just hit 9.2%. That's higher than 2008 bank loan peaks. $1.8 trillion in assets, $100B in secondary liquidity. 18:1 mismatch

PRIVATE CREDIT

More OpenAI Funding

- Amazon invested $50 billion, Nvidia invested $30 billion and SoftBank invested $30 billion in the round, OpenAI said in a release Friday.

- The investment boosts OpenAI to a $730 billion pre-money valuation, which marks a big jump from its $500 billion valuation in a secondary financing in October.

- The will use some of the money to expland and buy more chips and cloud from NVDA and AMZN (? Circular?)

MORE ON THE CIRCULAR SHAM

- OpenAI said it is expanding its existing $38 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services by $100 billion over the next eight years.

-  AWS will also serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI’s enterprise platform Frontier, which it unveiled earlier this month.

AI and Where we stand

- Can we talk about Anthropic? Is the Government going to crush Claude?

- What is our Go-to AI bots?

- What stage are we at right now? LLMs > Infernce>Agentic

- - What comes after Agentic

Netflix OUT

- Last week, Netflix exited the bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery after a competing bidder submitted a superior offer.

- The decision followed pre-planned bidding scenarios, with co CEO Ted Sarandos saying the company knew exactly how to respond once the higher offer emerged.

- Sarandos said the Paramount deal is likely to drive significant cost-cutting, including roughly $16 billion in reductions and thousands of job losses.

- He emphasized that Netflix will continue investing in its business and explore new ways to collaborate with theater owners, rather than pursuing large acquisitions.|

- Stock rose nicely on the news

Tariff Refund Update

- You are screwed....

-- Trump administration seems hell-bent on keeping our money

Airlines

- After a rather bullish commentary from Delta last week....

-  United Airlines is cutting more unprofitable flights over the next two quarters as it prepares for a prolonged period of high jet fuel prices due to the Iran war, even as strong travel demand has allowed U.S. carriers to raise fares.

Chief Executive Scott Kirby said in a staff memo the airline is preparing for oil to rise as high as $175 a barrel and remain above $100 until the end of 2027.

- At those levels, United's annual fuel bill would rise by about $11 billion, more than twice the profit it earned in its "best year ever," he said.

- Ticket prices going up!

Gas Prices

- Have you seen diesel prices?

- > $5 gallon on average across the U.S.

-- Implications beyond

--- Let's discuss the similarities to the 1973 oil embargo. (Barry switching license plates)

- 1973–1974 ? Arab oil embargo (the classic “1970s oil embargo”)

- 1979 ? Second oil shock caused by the Iranian Revolution (not an embargo, but another major supply shock)

Even So - Fedex

- FedEx Corp. raised its full-year profit forecast, with adjusted earnings expected to be $19.30 to $20.10 a share for the fiscal year.

- The company's shares climbed after the announcement, with the stock advancing about 23% this year through Thursday's close.

- FedEx does not expect the war in the Middle East to have a direct material effect on its business, but the broader consequences, including higher energy prices and volatile shipping patterns, are adversely affecting the global economy.

- In fact, company raised its full year outlook.....

--- Not a material effect???

Bad People

- SuperMicro Co-Founder Charged!

- Super Micro shares sank 28% last Friday after U.S. prosecutors charged three people linked with the company, including its co-founder, with helping smuggle billions of dollars worth of AI technology to China. (NVDA chips)

- The U.S. Justice Department charged Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, sales manager Ruei-Tsang Chang, and contractor Ting-Wei Sun with running a scheme to route U.S.-made servers through Taiwan to Southeast Asia.

- The defendants allegedly used a Southeast Asian company as a middleman to place orders for high-end servers containing restricted Nvidia H200 and Blackwell chips. The equipment was then repackaged into unmarked boxes and diverted to China.

- To evade U.S. audits and customs inspections, the individuals allegedly created thousands of "dummy" servers and used a hair dryer to remove and reattach serial number labels from genuine servers to the fake ones.

--- Soooo, only 3 people did all of this?

Amazon Phone

- Amazon's new phone project codenamed 'Transformer'

- Focus on AI integration, Alexa features, and mobile personalization

- Here is what we know:

-------It is a smartphone, not a wearable or accessory

- It is AI-centric, with Alexa deeply integrated

- It is meant to act as a personalized, always-on gateway into Amazon’s ecosystem (shopping, Prime Video, Prime Music, services like Grubhub)

- It is being built inside Amazon’s Devices & Services group by a skunkworks team called ZeroOne, led by former Xbox architect J Allard

OpenClaw

- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says OpenClaw could be the next ChatGPT as AI shifts from answering questions to taking action.

- Jensen said : Nvidia is building security around the technology with NemoClaw to enable safe and scalable adoption of AI agents.

- Project OpenClaw: “It is now the largest, most popular, the most successful open-sourced project in the history of humanity,”

- OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI agent platform that goes beyond traditional chatbots.

-----Instead of answering questions, these agents can complete tasks, make decisions, and take actions with minimal input from users.

- Use case: Prompt to study images of a kitchen, learn design tools, iterate ideas to learn how to design a kitchen

------- Jensen says: “Every carpenter can now be an architect. Every plumber will become an architect. We are going to elevate the capabilities of everyone”

---- What happens to the architects?

Something....

- One of the hardest hit countries in all of this mess has been South Korea

- ~70% of South Korea’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East - Most of that oil transits the Strait of Hormuz

- Margin calls kicked in as high margin debt with heavy retail participation

- Won weakened sharply (17-year low)

- Korea economy is dependent on global demand and stable energy prices

- South Korea often leads sell-offs as it is the purest RISK ON market in Asia

---- SOOOOO, if this thing ends quickly, there is a potential of EWY to move up again....

 

 

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Exploring Bogus oil prices

Hold cow – look at what Gemini and JSD can do…

Markets needed good news – Correlation high

Fed on hold?

PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts!

Click HERE for Show Notes and Links

DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar.

Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?

Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter

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Warm-Up

- Bogus Oil Prices

- Look at what Gemini and JSD can do...

- Markets needed good news - Correlation high

- Fed on hold?

- JCD LIMERICK!

Markets

- Did we just correct?

- Inflation - Eco that matters

- Manipulation in Oil - Land?

John Dvorak Jr. - Guest 

- UPDATE ON JCD

- AH Spoke with JCD Saturday....

Oil Prices - Bogus?

- The price of oil in the middle east is at $140 for its land-locked price, but ocean traveling oil is at $100.

- Sort, of, opposite of what you'd expect?

- But, then there's been active conversation and warning about manipulating oil futures to manage the situation.

- Oil in Backwardation across the spectrum. (Current price of oil contract is $95 and December contract is $75)

Oil Prices may be BOGUS - But What About Gas?

Gas Prices

More Manipulation

- The Trump administration has discussed trading in the oil futures market as a strategy to help curb surging crude prices amid the war in Iran, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said.

- US would just sell future contracts and then deliver at those prices at the end of the contract date. (SPR/Venezuela?)

- Not sure how markets will take an intervention like that.

- Remember when short selling was banned on Financials back in the 2008

----Stock prices continued to fall during the ban and tended to stabilize only after it was lifted, suggesting the ban did not stop the decline.

------ Seems that when government intervenes in free markets they can set off more panic as the optics make it look even worse.

---- AND- Russian Oil sanctions partially removed

Inflation and ECO

- PCE Prices stay elevated

- GDP rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of just 0.7% in the fourth quarter, according to a Commerce Department revision Friday.

- The first revision of the GDP reading was a sharp step down from the previous estimate of 1.4% and well below the Dow Jones consensus forecast for 1.5%.

- The core PCE inflation rose 0.4% in January and 3.1% on a 12-month basis. The ex-food and energy reading was 0.1 percentage point higher than December.

Eco Table

Oil Models...Very Cool

- JSD - Explain

- https://gemini.google.com/share/d1427a61a804

Department of Defense, err War, is hiring

- The Pentagon is hiring financial 'defense', or is that a financial warfare unit?

- This may mean we're beginning to really adopt "Unrestricted Warfare (???)

----- ie: The Chinese strategy where the warfare model is extended to include social engineering, illicit trade, and finance operations.

- Isn't this already in play? Tariffs, Straits of Hormuz, Asset Seizure (Russian Yachts), Venezuelan Oil????

--- This is why Quantum is in play too...(offense and defense)

Did you know?

- 30% of Helium production comes from Qatar

- Qatar helium production stopped back on March 2nd, and is ~30% of all helium globally

- South Korea depends almost entirely on helium from the strait of Hormuz, with 65% from Qatar specifically

-  Semiconductor manufacturing

- - Wafer/equipment cooling — High thermal conductivity removes heat fast during lithography, etching, deposition, and other steps; critical for precise temp control and smaller chip nodes (no good substitutes).

- - Inert purging & atmospheres — Chemically inert; flushes systems, prevents unwanted reactions in annealing, deposition, or vacuum chambers.

-- - Plasma processes — Acts as carrier, diluent, or purge gas in plasma etching for precise circuit patterning.

- - Leak detection — Tiny atoms detect micro-leaks in tools, pipelines, and vacuum systems to ensure reliability.

- - Backside wafer cooling — Delivers stable cooling to silicon wafers in advanced fabs.

INDIA! Running out of Gas

- Does it matter?

- India maintains only a 25 day reserve of oil

- Good news for them that they use coal for electricity generation, and only use oil for transportation

- BUT BUT BUT, What about getting goods from one place to another in India?

-- FWIW - coal prices up 19% YTD in India

Back to this...

- AI not causing job losses

- WHAT ABOUT META?

- Meta’s stock climbed after Reuters reported the social media giant is planning to lay off over 20% of its 79,000 employees to balance AI-related spending.

Drone Warfare

- New Warfare fought like games

- Ender's Game Movie

- Length: 3.5 meters (about 11.5 feet)

Wingspan: 2.5 meters (about 8.2 feet)

Weight (total takeoff/mass): Approximately 200 kg (around 440 pounds)

Warhead/payload: Typically 40–50 kg explosive (some variants up to 90 kg with reduced fuel/range)

--- Usage ~ 2,000 per day in Iran an peak of 10,000 per day in Ukraine/Russia

Gaming Industry

- DOA? See above - no wonder why - it is IRL now

- Q1 continues sharp decline in video game sales

- Older gamers: new AAA titles heavily cannibalized by old games

- Gen Z & Alpha mostly play only Roblox (144M DAU), Fortnite (60M DAU), or Minecraft (11M DAU)

- Young gamers rarely buy new AAA titles or consoles

- Industry “growth” driven purely by subscriptions & upsells — no real sales increase

- Hardware far below peaks: PS2 sold 160M, Nintendo DS 154M vs Switch 2 only 17M (original Switch lifetime 114M)

- AI failing to cut costs for big studios — Roblox capturing all the upside

- Roblox launches Incubator & Jumpstart programs for kids using AI “vibe-coding” to chase millionaire status

INTERACTIVE BROKERS

Check this out and find out more at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/

Target Earnings

- Target posted another quarter of falling revenue and customer traffic at its stores, though its shares rose as the retailer’s earnings beat estimates and it said it is poised to end its sales slump.

-  Earnings per share: $2.44 adjusted vs. $2.16 expected

- Revenue: $30.45 billion vs. $30.48 billion expected

- Target said it expects full-year adjusted earnings per share to range from $7.50 to $8.50. Its adjusted earnings per share for the most recent full year were $7.57.

- Shares up 7% in a piss poor tape

 

 

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FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS

There is a tech pundit whose name be John,

Whose sharp takes went late into dawn.

He hit pause for some care,

But with grit (and repair),

Soon he'll be back oh so steady and strong.

See this week’s stock picks HERE

Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter

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WAR IS COMPLETE!

Oil Screaming higher

Euro Nat Gas up 60%

An update on JCD

PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts!

Click HERE for Show Notes and Links

DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar.

Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?

Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter

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INTERACTIVE BROKERS

Warm-Up

- The CTP for Caterpillar - We have a winner!

- A tech earnings BLOWOUT

- A seminal moment with AI and Employment trends

- An update on JCD - from JSD

- A Limerick for JCD

Markets

- WAR FOOTING - Buyers are still there...

- Oil Screaming higher (Sunday night wow!)

- Euro Nat Gas up 60%

- Anyone wondering why markets keep going up?

John Dvorak Jr. - Guest 

- UPDATE ON JCD

JSD:

- Tell us what you are doing these days...

- What was it like growing up around constant tech commentary and skepticism?

- How did that environment shape the way you look at innovation and hype?

- Where do you most disagree with your father’s views on technology today?

- Is AI making people smarter—or more dependent?

- How should younger professionals think about job security when automation is accelerating?

War and Oil

- Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz, per a Reuters report.

- About a third of the world’s seaborne oil exports passed through the Strait in 2025.

- Threatening to BURN any ship that attempts to go through

- The Strait of Hormuz is a critical, narrow chokepoint about 90–104 miles (145–167 km) long and 21–60 miles (33–95 km) wide. At its narrowest, it is only 21 miles (33 km) across, with shipping lanes in each direction restricted to just two miles wide to accommodate massive oil tanker traffic, representing about one-fifth of global oil consumption

- Meanwhile - lots of production halts - Oil screamed to $115 on Sunday night before cooler heads prevailed AND SPR talk hit the tape.

- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

Just in...

- President Trump says "I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the financial security of all maritime trade, especially energy, traveling through the Gulf. This will be available to all shipping lines. If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible"

- BUT, who would even want to take the chance of moving through that area - even if there is insurance?

Meanwhile LNG

-Daily charter rates for LNG tankers in the Atlantic Basin have surged to over $200,000 per day.

- Rates are roughly double levels seen less than a day earlier.

- The spike followed Qatar’s shutdown of LNG production as the conflict with Iran spread across the region.

- The new offer levels are at least three times higher than the most recent assessed LNG tanker rate of $61,500, according to Spark Commodities earlier Monday.

- Despite the elevated asking prices, no transactions have yet been confirmed at these levels.

You thought that was BAD?

- Europe in bad shape with Nat Gas after Qatar halted production (accounts for 20% of global LNG supply)

Euro Nat Gas

Amazon Data Loss - HEY WHAT ABOUT THIS?

- Amazon Web Services said late Monday two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes, taking the facilities offline.

- “In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” AWS said. “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”

- This is an interesting twist on cyber-warfare - WHAT IF?

- JSD: How does this impact AI and the world tech flow?

Why do/did markets keep climbing?

- Global debt climbed to a record $348 trillion at the end of 2025, after nearly $29 trillion was added over the year in the fastest yearly build-up since the pandemic surge

- The increase was driven primarily by governments, which accounted for more than $10 trillion of the rise, with the United States, China and the euro area responsible for roughly three-quarters of the jump

- Also, margin debt up 30% in 2025 - so there is that...

- No wonder there is resilience in these markets...

Berkshire News

- Earnings from operations totaled $10.2 billion in Q4. That’s down more than 29% from $14.56 billion in the year-earlier period.

- Insurance underwriting profits dropped 54% to $1.56 billion from $3.41 billion a year prior. Insurance investment income slid nearly 25% from to $3.1 billion from $4.088 billion.

- This was the final quarter under Warren Buffett as CEO, who announced he was stepping down at the annual shareholders meeting last May.

- Full year overall earnings, meanwhile, fell to $66.97 billion from $89 billion a year prior.

- NO Buybacks, bit they still have more that $350B is cash

INTERACTIVE BROKERS

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Irritating

- UBS’ top equity strategist dialed back his view on U.S. stocks, citing mounting risks from a weakening dollar, stretched valuations and policy turbulence in Washington.

- Andrew Garthwaite, head of global equity strategy at the investment bank, downgraded American equities to “benchmark” in a fully invested global equity portfolio, arguing that the factors that powered years of outperformance are starting to fade.

- Market weight - no risk for this guy on the call. Can't lose as will just perform with the benchmark - DUMB

Dell Earnings BLOWOUT (Follow up)

- Dell reported adjusted earnings of $3.89 per share, exceeding the $3.53 per share expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG.

- The company posted $33.38 billion in revenue for the quarter, topping a forecast of $31.73 billion.

- Stock up 22% on the news and followed through on Monday

- Dell cut quote time to less that a week (prices expire)

- Dell expects revenue for its artificial intelligence servers to hit $50 billion in 2027, more than double the year prior.

- Much different story from HP that was complaining about input pricing.... Obviously Dell is much smarter at pass-though management of pricing.

Jack on the Attack

- Financial technology firm Block (XYZ), run by Jack Dorsey began slashing more than 40% of its workforce (4k people) on Thursday, saying in a letter to shareholders that AI tools "have changed what it means to build and run a company."

- The AI layoffs came as the Square payment system and Cash App operator matched fourth-quarter earnings estimates, yet Block shares surged after hours.

- Evercore ISI analyst Adam Frisch called the layoffs "the seminal moment to date in the AI narrative and how it could transform companies as we know it going forward."

- SOOOOOO - AI is responsible for job cuts?

---- SOOOOOO - AI can replace humans and as productivity is enhanced?

Duolingo

- Duolingo forecast first-quarter and 2026 bookings below expectations on Thursday as it shifts strategy toward faster user growth, a move it said will weigh on bookings growth and profitability this year, sending the company's shares down more 23% after hours last week.

- The company plans to roll out more AI-driven speaking tools to free users, reducing friction that previously nudged learners toward paid plans

- Poster child of how AI can kill your business?

- However, earnings/financials looked pretty good and there is a strategy there that may be beneficial

 

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There is a tech pundit whose name be John,

Whose sharp takes went late into dawn.

He hit pause for some care,

But with grit (and repair),

Soon he'll be back oh so steady and strong.

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DOD – Disrupter Disrupters

China markets reopening after Lunar New Year

Mexico Cartel Wars

Refunds requested for the illegal tariffs

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Warm-Up

- The CTP for Caterpillar announced

- DOD - Disrupter Disrupters

- China markets reopening after Lunar New Year

- Mexico Cartel Wars (Jalisco)

Markets

- Mortgage Rates - looking good!

- Tariffs found illegal - that is not stopping anything

- Refunds requested for the illegal tariffs

- Monday's big drop and AI taking a bite out of stock prices

Tariffs

- First, who actually knows what is going on. 100% chaos

- Supreme court ruled illegal (6-3)

- 10% flat across all countries immediately added

- Wait a day and make that 15%

- FedEx seeks refund for illegal IEEPA tariffs imposed by Trump after the Supreme Court ruled Trump's tariffs exceeded authority

- Numerous lawsuits expected for IEEPA tariff refunds

- Apple has spent more than $3 billion on tariffs since President Donald Trump enacted his trade policies. What about that? (HOW TO FIGURE OUT WHO GETS THE REFUND)

--- Estimate that $175B tariffs have been collected alreay

- A group of 22 U.S. Senate Democrats on Monday introduced legislation that would require President Donald Trump's administration to fully refund within 180 days all of the revenue, with interest, collected from tariffs struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

- The legislation would require the Customs and Border Protection agency, which collects tariffs at U.S. ports of entry, to prioritize small businesses.

- The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said it will halt collections of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act at 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT) on Tuesday

Stop The Presses

- After years of JCD's rants.......

- Apple will soon introduce MacBooks with touch screens

- Apple Inc.'s initial touch Macs will have the Dynamic Island at the center top of the display and OLED screen technology.

The new MacBook Pro models will have a refreshed, dynamic user interface that can shift between being optimized for touch or point-and-click input.

Europe Reacts

- "The current situation is not conducive to delivering 'fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial' transatlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides" in the joint statement setting out the terms of last year's trade agreement, the Commission said. "A deal is a deal."

- All active discussions are halted on any USA/Europe trade deal

The Potential Winners

- Brazil and China may be the winners here

- Chinese President Xi Jinping has a boost in bargaining power after the US Supreme Court invalidated Donald Trump's broad emergency tariffs, a key point of leverage over China.

- The removal of tariff threats will make it harder for Trump to press Xi for larger purchases of certain products and leaves him without a key weapon to strike back if Chinese negotiators make fresh demands.

- Xi's team will likely push harder for access to advanced semiconductors, the removal of trade restrictions on Chinese companies, and reduced US support for self-ruled Taiwan, according to Wu Xinbo, director at Fudan University's Center for American Studies.

NVDA Earnings

- NVIDIA drops its fiscal Q4 2026 (ended Jan 2025) results tomorrow—another make-or-break moment for the AI trade.

- The bar is sky-high after years of blowout beats, but whispers of "peak AI" and slowing growth momentum have investors on edge.

--- Consensus Expectations :

----Revenue: ~$65.6–$66.1 billion (up ~67–68% YoY from last year's ~$39B; guided $65B ±2% in prior report)

------EPS (adjusted/non-GAAP): ~$1.50–$1.53 (up ~70–72% YoY from $0.89).

--------Gross margins: Targeting ~75% non-GAAP (holding strong despite supply chain noise).

-----------Key driver: Data Center segment expected to crush ~$58–$60B, fueled by Blackwell ramp and hyperscaler spend.

Home Depot Earnings

- The home-improvement retailer gained 2.7% after posting fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.72 per share on revenues of $38.20 billion.

- That exceeded the per-share earnings of $2.54 on revenues of $38.12 billion expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

AMD News

- The semiconductor maker rose about 11% after it inked a multiyear deal with Meta to lend up to 6 gigawatts of its graphics processing units to artificial intelligence data centers.

- The cost of the deal is unclear, but the companies’ agreement includes a a performance-based warrant that could amount to up to 160 million of AMD shares, according to a statement dated Tuesday.

- Meta has committed to deploying up to 6 gigawatts (GW) of AMD's Instinct GPUs (high-end graphics processing units optimized for AI workloads) to power its massive AI data centers.

- Analysts estimate the GPU portion alone could be worth $60–$100+ billion over 5+ years

Mortgage Rates

- The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 5.99% on Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily, matching its lowest levels since 2022.

- Last year at this time the rate was 6.89%.

- A buyer putting 20% down on the median priced home, about $400,000 according to the National Association of Realtors, would have a monthly payment of $1,916 for the principal and interest. One year ago, that payment would have been $2,105, a difference of $189.

Life Insurance Record

- Manulife Financial Corp. sold a $300 million life insurance policy in Singapore, topping what Guinness World Records certified as the most valuable policy ever issued.

- The policy surpasses the previous record of $250 million, set by HSBC Life in Hong Kong in 2024. Manulife said in a statement Tuesday that the deal reflects growing demand from ultra-wealthy clients to preserve their assets.

- In Singapore over the past 12 months, Manulife has issued 25 individual policies each worth more than $50 million.

Bitcoin Rout

- Gemini said it was axing as much as a quarter of its staff and exiting the UK, European Union and Australia entirely.

- This week, it parted with its chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chief legal officer, all in a single day.

- Its stock has fallen more than 80% from a post-listing high last year, collapsing its market value from a peak of almost $4 billion to under $700 million.

Over the Greenland

- USA sending a "hospital ship" over

- Trump's post on the ship came hours after Denmark's Joint Arctic Command said it had evacuated a crew member who required urgent medical treatment from a U.S. submarine in Greenlandic waters, seven nautical miles outside of Greenland's capital, Nuuk.

- Greenland said thanks but no thanks

So Long!

- U.S. investors are pulling money out of their own stock market at the fastest pace in at least 16 years as Big Tech returns fade and better-performing overseas markets look more attractive.

- In the last six months, U.S.-domiciled investors have pulled some $75 billion from U.S. equity products, with $52 billion flowing out since the start of 2026 alone, the most in the first eight weeks of the year since at least 2010

AI Disruption - DOD (Disruption of Disrupters)

- CrowdStrike -9.8% and other cybersecurity names under heavy pressure again as AI disruption fears build following Anthropic’s Claude Code release

- - Cybersecurity stocks are under broad pressure today, extending recent weakness following Friday's launch of Claude Code Security by Anthropic. Claude Code Security scans codebases for vulnerabilities and suggests software patches for human review, fueling a narrative that AI platforms may be moving more quickly into parts of the security workflow than investors had previously expected.

For cybersecurity, that raises concern around the forward demand outlook and competitive positioning, particularly in areas tied to application security, cloud security, identity workflows, and security operations automation, where AI-native tools could start to narrow perceived differentiation.

- The move suggests investors are still sorting through the implications for product overlap, pricing power, and competitive positioning as AI capabilities evolve quickly.

- IBM shares dropping toward lows of the session; attributed to news that Claude can automate cobol modernization

COBOL

(Common Business-Oriented Language) is a high-level, English-like programming language created in 1959 for business, finance, and administrative data processing. It is renowned for its verbosity, readability, and reliability, processing massive amounts of transactions on mainframe systems,, notes NetCom Learning and IBM. Despite being decades old, it remains critical in banking, insurance, and government sectors.

- It is estimated that 70-80% of the world's business transactions are processed by COBOL

Grok's Prediction about Future of OpenAi/ChatGPT

Scenario
Likelihood (My Estimate)
Key Factors
Outcome for OpenAI/ChatGPT

Thriving Leader
Medium (40%)
Sustained breakthroughs, partnerships (e.g., Microsoft), regulatory wins
OpenAI as AI giant; ChatGPT as ecosystem hub for agents/robots

Evolved Survivor
High (50%)
Adaptation to agents/hardware; mergers
Exists but rebranded; ChatGPT integrated into daily life tools

Decline/Acquisition
Low (10%)
Overcompetition, funding collapse
Absorbed or legacy; ChatGPT commoditized or obsolete

Quick check on Europe Shares

- European company earnings growth is picking up this reporting season against a tentatively improving economic backdrop, but wary investors are demanding more than solid results to justify sky-high valuations.

- Companies representing 57% of Europe's market capitalization have reported so far, achieving average earnings growth of 3.9% in the fourth quarter, ahead of estimates for a final result of a contraction of 1.1%

--- That is a big differential.... +3.9 vs -1.1

Iran Talks

- News over the weekend that Iran will look to discuss a variety of items and potentially get a deal.... energy, mining and aircraft

- Best guess: Iran will string us along like Russia is doing and we will say we have some kind of bogus deal.

--- There is some talk of US "going in" as we are building military presence. Supposedly there are some saying it could be a multi-week incursion.

- What is the plan - Regime change?

What is this?

- A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Americans can’t sue the U.S. Postal Service, even when employees deliberately refuse to deliver mail.

- By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled against a Texas landlord, Lebene Konan, who alleges her mail was intentionally withheld for two years. Konan, who is Black, claims racial prejudice played a role in postal employees’ actions.

- Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a majority of five conservative justices, said the federal law that generally shields the Postal Service from lawsuits over missing, lost and undelivered mail includes “the intentional nondelivery of mail.”

- So can ballots just be thrown in garbage for mail-ins for one party that will throw out another party's?

 

 

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See this week’s stock picks HERE

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