Nasdaq is up over 1% as I write this, S&P grinding +0.7%, Dow flat after printing a record close Thursday at 52,900. Quick rewind for anyone who spent the weekend at the lake instead of the terminal: the holiday-shortened week ended mixed. The Dow ripped to all-time highs, the S&P went nowhere, and the Nasdaq bled as semis got hit with two straight days of profit taking. MU dropped 5.5% Thursday, INTC 5.3%, AMD 4.3%. Nothing broke. Valuations got heavy after semis ran 80%+ in the first half and somebody rang the register. That’s it. That’s the whole story of last week.

The macro backdrop didn’t change either. June jobs came in soft, claims printed 215K under estimates, and the market read it the way it always does now: soft enough to keep the Fed parked, strong enough to keep earnings estimates alive. Wall Street is looking for 26% earnings growth this year. Q2 reports start flowing in two weeks. That’s the setup, and it’s a good one.

So the question coming into today was simple. Was Thursday the start of something or was it a flush? Today answered. The two-day chip washout is getting bought back at the ask. Nvidia came out and said the roadmap is intact after that server delay report rattled Asia over the weekend. Foxconn posted stronger than expected quarterly sales, which is direct confirmation AI hardware demand hasn’t blinked. SK Hynix is listing a $29 billion ADR on the Nasdaq today, one of the largest offerings ever, and Samsung reports tomorrow with estimates calling for a profit number that embarrasses their entire 2025. The memory complex is the center of gravity this week, and capital knows it.

And the flow agrees. Loudly. Today’s sheet is one of the heaviest call-side prints we’ve logged in weeks: 31 lines in Calls Bought against 5 in Puts Sold, with the Puts Bought column mostly reading like hedges and pairs rather than outright bear bets. Let’s walk it.

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Welcome back. We are standing at the door of the second half of 2026, and I want you to take a second and appreciate where we just came from. The first half handed us a hot war in Iran, a ceasefire that nobody fully trusts yet, an OpenAI IPO saga, a SaaS repricing that wiped trillions off software, and an AI trade that has gone from “buy everything” to “okay, but at what price.” And through all of that, the indices are still parked near record territory. That tells you something about this tape that I keep coming back to: it does not want to break. It wants to rotate.

Last week was the cleanest example of that we have seen all year. Tech got taken to the woodshed while the rest of the market shrugged and kept grinding higher. And then Monday happened. The dip buyers came charging back, the semis that got crushed last week ripped, and the relief rally was on.

Quick bit of honesty: I am getting this to you a touch later than planned, which actually works in your favor. Instead of guessing at the week ahead, we already have Monday’s tape in hand, and it is telling us a lot. So here is the plan: we break down what happened last week, what Monday just confirmed, what is still coming in this holiday shortened jobs week, walk the index charts, and then for the paid members we get into the flow, the prints, the watchlist (which already started paying us), and exactly where the book sits right now. Take a seat & let’s dive in.

The Tape: Last Week in Review

Here is the scorecard for the week of June 22:

• S&P 500 closed Friday around 7,354, down roughly 2% on the week

• Nasdaq Composite closed near 25,298, down about 4.6% on the week and riding a five session losing streak, its first four day skid since February before Friday made it five

• Dow closed around 51,876, actually up about 0.6% on the week and printing fresh intraday records along the way

• Russell 2000 was the quiet winner again, closing green on the week with small caps catching a real bid

Read those four lines back and the story writes itself. This was not a market falling apart. This was money leaving one room and walking into another. On multiple down days last week, advancing stocks still outnumbered decliners. That is the textbook signature of rotation, not liquidation.

What got hit? Anything with “AI” stapled to it. The semis led the carnage. The SMH chip ETF got smoked roughly 7% in a single Tuesday session as Asian tech cratered overnight, with South Korea’s Kospi tripping a circuit breaker and closing down almost 6%. The catalyst that kept the pressure on all week was a New York Times report that OpenAI is leaning toward pushing its IPO out to 2027, partly because SpaceX has struggled badly since its own June debut and partly because the AI tape has just gotten too choppy. That report did two things: it raised questions about how all this data center spending gets funded if the capital markets window is closing, and it gave every nervous tech holder a reason to hit the bid.

Even good news could not save tech. Micron reported a genuine blowout after the bell Wednesday, adjusted earnings of $25.11 against about $20.78 expected, and the stock ripped 17% on Thursday. And the Nasdaq still closed red Thursday because the money coming out of Apple and Microsoft was bigger than the money chasing Micron. Apple dropped 6% after announcing price hikes on the MacBook and iPad. Microsoft fell over 3% on Xbox price increases, both of them pointing at higher memory costs, which is its own quiet little tell about where the chip cycle is squeezing. Then Friday, Micron itself gave back nearly 7% as traders booked the pop.

Meanwhile, the boring stuff worked. Caterpillar jumped 6% on Thursday. Healthcare, industrials, and financials carried the Dow to records. Eli Lilly soared 7% Friday after the EU backed one of its leukemia therapies. Moderna was the top S&P name Friday on its in vivo CAR-T investor day. Bio-Techne popped 19% on a Merck buyout. The rotation was not subtle.

A couple of macro tailwinds quietly helped the broad market hold. Oil kept falling all week as tankers continued moving through the Strait of Hormuz unimpeded, with Brent sliding back toward pre-war levels near the low $70s. Cheaper oil eased the inflation worry, which matters a lot right now given where the Fed's head is at. And Friday's PCE print came in cooler than feared on the month over month read, which took some of the edge off.

The Headlines

Quick rundown of the stories that set the table over the weekend and ran through Monday’s session, plus the context that still matters going forward:

The Iran ceasefire is back on shaky ground. Over the weekend, President Trump ordered fresh US strikes on Iranian missile and drone sites, saying Tehran violated the cease fire agreement again, and renewed his threats against the regime. Kuwait and Bahrain reported incoming missiles and drones overnight. Here is the tell though: oil did not spike and the market rallied anyway on Monday, because crude is still sliding back toward pre war levels and traders are betting this stays contained. That is a powerful signal of risk appetite, but it is also the kind of complacency that can reprice fast, so keep one eye on crude.

OpenAI’s IPO drama is now a market input. The reporting says Altman was given two options by advisers: wait until 2027 for a trillion dollar valuation, or list sooner at a lower number, and that he called anything under a trillion a nonstarter. Until that resolves, it hangs over the entire AI infrastructure complex, because the whole data center buildout thesis assumes the capital keeps flowing.

The Dow got a facelift, effective today. Alphabet officially joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average this morning, replacing Verizon, and celebrated its first day as a member by climbing more than 4% while Verizon dropped over 5%. It makes the “boring” Dow a little more tech sensitive going forward, even as it prints records.

The Fed independence fight got a ruling. The Supreme Court ruled Monday, 5 to 4, that President Trump cannot remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook for now, keeping her in her seat while her lawsuit plays out. With Kevin Warsh already in the chair and an actual rate hike on the table this cycle, anything touching Fed independence is worth tracking, because it feeds straight into how the bond market prices risk.

M&A and corporate action is picking up. ON Semiconductor agreed to buy Synaptics. Merck is buying Bio-Techne for $11.3 billion. And the one that matters for a lot of you: CrowdStrike’s 4 for 1 stock split takes effect Thursday, July 2. If you are holding or watching CRWD, your share count and strike math are about to change.

What’s Coming: A Holiday Shortened Jobs Week

This is a front loaded, data heavy week that ends early. Markets are closed Friday, July 3 for Independence Day, which means everything gets crammed into four sessions and the big number lands a day earlier than usual.

Here is the calendar that matters:

The whole week builds to Thursday’s jobs report. Consensus is sitting around 172,000 jobs for June, with the unemployment rate expected to hold near 4.3%. Here is why the framing matters more than usual this cycle: the conversation around the Fed has flipped. We spent the first part of the year debating how many cuts we would get. Now, with Kevin Warsh running the Fed and a Bank of America note last week openly floating the risk of rate hikes, the market is pricing the FOMC to hold in July and watching every data point for which direction the next move breaks. A hot jobs number plus any stickiness in wages feeds the hike narrative and pressures the long end. A soft number cools it off and is probably a green light for the small cap and rotation trade that is already working.

So the setup into Thursday is asymmetric in an interesting way. The part of the market that has been leading (small caps, industrials, financials, value) wants to see the economy stay resilient without reigniting the inflation fight. That is a needle to thread.

One more on the radar just past the week: Penguin Solutions (PENG) reports Q3 after the close on Tuesday, July 7. More on that name below, but mark it.

The Charts: SPY, QQQ, IWM, DJI

Let’s walk them. The four charts together tell the rotation story better than I ever could in words. The dip got bought.

(SPY)

SPY closed Monday at 741, a 1.65% pop on the week candle, and we are right back up near the all time high at 749.53. The pullback from the highs found buyers in a hurry, the weekly candle is green (of course), and price is sitting comfortably above every weekly moving average. Immediate support is the shelf at 740.86 to 739.56 we are basically resting on, then a real gap down to 707.39, and below that the 689 to 684 zone where the rising mid term averages live. As long as SPY holds the 740 shelf, the path of least resistance is a retest of 749 and then blue sky above it. This is a strong chart, don’t overthink it.

(QQQ)

And here is the redemption arc. Last week I flagged the 706 to 695 band as the battleground, the zone that decided whether "rotation" stayed the right word. Here is what the buyers did with it: they did not even wait for the deep end. QQQ showed strength this week at 705.17, right at the top of that zone, held it cold, and ripped back to 724.08, a 2.49% gain on the daily candle, reclaiming the 714.78 and 722.03 levels in a single move. The 695.93 support I had marked underneath never even got tested, which tells you how aggressive the bid was. So now the 705 to 706 shelf is the floor that held, 722 to 724 is the zone we are punching back through, and the recent high up near 740 is the target if this follow through sticks. Lose 714 and then that 705 shelf and we are back to chop, but for now the leader did precisely what a leader is supposed to do off support. Beautiful.

(IWM)

This one has quietly been the tell. While SPY and QQQ were getting sold last week, the Russell showed real relative strength and held green, exactly the kind of small cap leadership you want to see if the rotation is the real deal. This week it is taking a well earned breather while tech plays catch up, and that is perfectly fine. IWM closed 298.97, basically flat on the day (down a hair), still pinned right under the 300 round number that has been the ceiling. The chart is still pristine - price above all of its moving averages (the 8 and 21 week sit at 288.56 and 272.97), riding the rising channel, no damage done at all. This is healthy consolidation at the highs, not weakness. The Russell is coiled right under 300, and if Thursday’s jobs number cooperates, this is the chart that continues to break out. It led when tech was red and it is resting now that tech has bounced. Watch for it to take the baton back.

(DJI)

The Dow does not stop. DJI closed Monday at 52,188, a fresh record, up 0.59% on the week and printing new highs inside a clean rising channel. Above every moving average, with the first real support down at the 50,798 shelf, then 49,224 and the 48,756 breakout level beneath that. Industrials, financials, and healthcare keep doing the heavy lifting, and with Alphabet now in the index there is a little more tech torque under the hood too. Nothing bearish to say here. The trend is your friend until it bends, and it is not bending.

Bottom line on the indices: all four are constructive, and three of them (SPY pressing the highs, QQQ via the bounce, and the record setting Dow) are flashing real strength while the Russell coils under 300. QQQ holding its support up around the 705 to 706 shelf, without ever needing the deeper 695 level, was the whole ballgame, which is exactly why Monday was a buy the dip session and not a breakdown. The semis ripped right along with it (the SMH chip ETF swung from down roughly 3% intraday to up over 3%, with Astera Labs, Applied Materials, and KLA each running more than 11%). The thesis we built last week, that this tape wants to rotate, not break, just got confirmed in real time. Now the only question that matters is whether the bounce has the legs to push through into Thursday’s jobs print, or whether we chop sideways up here until the number drops.

Volux: Something New Is Coming

Quick one before we roll into the members section, because I am genuinely fired up about this.

We have been heads down building Volux, and we just locked in a TradingView partnership that I think is going to change how a lot of you trade alongside this letter. The short version: Volux subscribers are going to get full access to the complete suite of indicators and functions, the same toolset I am using to mark up these index charts every week, integrated so you are not stitching things together across five tabs anymore. Flow, levels, and the charting all in one place among many other tools at your disposal.

I am not going to spoil the whole thing yet. What I will say is to keep your eyes on this space heading into July. That is all I am saying.

Everything below is for paid subscribers. Thanks for being here. This is where the real work is.

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First, congratulations on a strong first half, because this one was earned. The story of 2026 so far has been a leadership change, and the people who saw it early got paid. A new class of leaders carried this market, names out of the semiconductor ecosystem that spent years as afterthoughts and came roaring back. INTC tripled off its lows and printed its first all-time high in a generation. DELL more than doubled. MRVL doubled and tagged fresh records. ARM kept compounding. The whole silicon complex re-rated in front of our eyes. And while the new guard did the heavy lifting, the prior leaders did not break, they built. The megacaps that led the last leg held near their highs and consolidated, digesting the run instead of giving it back. That is what a healthy market looks like, old leadership basing while new leadership runs.

That backdrop is the whole reason we keep our screens pointed where we point them. The semi ecosystem is still where the money is moving, and the flow this week says it has not stopped. Now we protect what we built and we press where the edge is.

This is a heavier read than usual because the week earns it. Fed Wednesday, a fresh AI policy curveball over the weekend, and a tape that wants higher but needs permission. Let’s get into it.

Weekend Headlines

• Anthropic pulled offline. The US Commerce Department issued an emergency export-control directive Friday evening barring foreign-national access to Anthropic’s two most advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Unable to verify nationality in real time, Anthropic disabled both globally. First time Washington has effectively recalled a commercial frontier model. Full breakdown below, it is the headline that matters most for our book.

• Iran peace deal looks close. Trump confirmed planned strikes were called off and a final document could be signed in Europe as soon as this weekend, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting oil sanctions. Crude fell more than 3 percent Friday to an eight-week low in the mid-80s.

• SpaceX debuts and rips. SPCX priced at 135, opened at 150, closed its first session around 161, up roughly 19 percent. Largest IPO in history at a 1.77 trillion valuation. Options listing is the next catalyst and the flow will be loud when it lands.

• Consumer sentiment ticked up. June Michigan came in at 48.9 from 44.8, with year-ahead inflation expectations falling to 4.6 from 4.8. Still near record lows, but the direction is right into a Fed week.

• Oracle got punished. ORCL fell 8.5 percent Thursday after guiding fiscal 2027 capex above estimates. The market is rewarding AI spend discipline and punishing the names that show it spiraling. Remember that everywhere this week.

The Anthropic Story & What Regulations Means

This is the one everybody will be talking about Monday, so this is where we keep our heads while the timeline loses theirs.

Here is what happened. Friday evening, Commerce invoked national security authorities and ordered Anthropic to cut off all foreign-national access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, including foreign nationals inside the US and even Anthropic’s own non-citizen employees. The trigger was a report that the model could be used to find software vulnerabilities, reportedly surfaced to the administration by Amazon. Anthropic says the capability is relatively basic, exists in other public models, and that the whole thing is a misunderstanding they expect to resolve. White House AI adviser David Sacks said the restriction was issued reluctantly and that he hopes it gets fixed so the models return to general release. Their other models including Opus 4.8 were untouched.

Now the bear case making the rounds, and credit where it is due, it is a smart argument that deserves a real answer. The thesis: this bull market is built on AI, the trade prices in continued rapid model advancement plus fast commercialization, and export controls on models plus restrictions on foreign nationals working on them introduce friction to exactly the layer the market assumes moves fastest. A large share of frontier researchers are foreign nationals. Gate the talent and you slow iteration, and if AI progress becomes policy-bound instead of engineering-bound, the multiple expansion behind this whole market gets harder to justify.

Here is my answer, and it is the same thing I said on X this weekend. Regulation is a familiarity in nearly every legal business aspect of the world. It is not a foreign object that breaks the machine, it is a constant the machine has always run inside of. What separates winners from losers is how companies adapt to and benefit from the rules, and that adaptation is exactly how you gauge who carries the next leg. There is always a bull market somewhere. But to the bear’s point, plenty of names that fail to adapt are going to get run over, and that part is true.

The reason I am not flipping defensive on this specific headline comes down to one word: scope. This is a one-company, one-model enforcement action, contested by the company, called reluctant by the White House, framed by everyone involved as something to be resolved rather than a permanent regime. It is not a broad export ban on all frontier AI and it is not a blanket restriction on foreign researchers across the industry. The layer we actually trade, compute and infrastructure, is not where this bites. If anything, a world where access to centralized frontier models becomes a policy football strengthens the case for the picks and shovels underneath, the chips, the memory, the power, the grid, because demand for the buildout does not care which lab is cleared to serve which user this week.

So the read is this. Watch for a Monday open that wants to fade the headline. If the AI complex gaps down and the infrastructure names get dragged with it, that is the dislocation we want, not the breakdown we fear. The risk to respect is real: if this expands from one company into a framework, or the resolution drags, the friction argument starts earning its multiple compression. We watch the scope. Scope is everything here.

The Setup

This is a Fed week, and not a routine one. The FOMC decision lands Wednesday at 2pm and the market is pricing essentially no chance of a move, rates hold at 3.50 to 3.75. That part is settled. Everything around the decision is not. This is Kevin Warsh’s first meeting in the chair, and the reporting going in is that he may start dismantling the forward guidance machinery we have all traded around for years, possibly dropping the dot plot’s rate forecast and stripping the bias language out of the statement. That is the real event Wednesday. Not the rate. The framework.

The backdrop sharpens it. CPI is running near 4.2 percent and the repricing this year has gone one direction: fed funds futures now lean toward a hike as the more likely next move, not a cut. We came into 2026 expecting cuts. That conversation has mostly closed. The risk Wednesday is a hawkish surprise dressed up as a process change. The offset is energy. Oil in the mid-80s and falling on the Iran de-escalation takes pressure off the exact inflation prints keeping the Fed boxed in, and Friday’s Michigan data leaned the right way. So we walk in with a real tailwind and a real two-sided risk sitting on top of it.

The Indices

The whole board tells one story right now and it is a constructive one. We took the hit on June 5, we found the low, and the tape has spent the last week putting in supportive closes right where it needed to. What we want from here is the only thing that matters: hold these closes, carve a higher low, then take out a higher high. That is how a flush becomes a launchpad. One index is already doing it.

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It has been rough sledding through June so far. The nine week win streak that carried us out of spring is likely over, the chip complex gave back over a trillion dollars in market value in two sessions, and the rate cut narrative that powered the whole first half got taken out back by a single jobs print. That is the bad news. The good news is what we are seeing, is pretty typical. We will get to all of it.

Quick framing before we dive in: nothing about the last week changes the structural story. AI infrastructure demand did not get weaker necessarily. Power demand did not shrink because the 10 year backed up. What changed is the price of admission. Multiples compress when yields rise, and positioning that got stretched over nine green weeks needed to reset. That reset is happening now. Our job is to act today in service of where we want to be standing six months from now, and that means respecting the reset without panicking out of theses that remain intact.

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Le Charts

Start with SPY. We printed 760 two weeks ago and we are now trading 725, down 1.6% on the week so far. Here is what matters: price is sitting directly on the 10 week moving average at 726.61, and the rising channel that has defined this entire move from the 2025 lows is fully intact. The 749.53 breakout level is now overhead resistance. Below us sits 699 and the 689.70 shelf, with the 50 week all the way down at 676 and change. A pullback to the 10 week after a nine week run is not a breakdown. It is the most normal thing a bull market does. Lose 689 on a weekly close and we have a different conversation. Until then this is a reset inside an uptrend.

QQQ is the same picture with sharper edges, because tech took the brunt of the selling. We are at 693 after tagging 740, and price is sitting just below the 695.93 shelf with the 10 week at 687 and change just beneath. That 687 to 696 zone is the line. Hold it and the bounce comes from a logical spot. Lose it and 629 is the next real shelf, which would be a much deeper flush than anyone positioned for. Given how fast the selling came and how stretched the RSI was at the highs, a tag of the 10 week here is constructive, not scary.

Now the chart that tells you this is rotation and not liquidation: IWM. Small caps are battling to close green this week, up 0.14% while every large cap index bled. We are at 282 with the highs at 290.87, holding above the 10 week at 279.40. When money flees a market, it does not flee into small caps. When money rotates out of crowded mega cap tech and into the rest of the tape, this is exactly what it looks like. Breadth expanding while the indices pull back is one of the most reliable tells that the underlying bid is alive.

The Dow rounds it out at 49.9k, off the 51,282 record from last week, down 1.9%. The 10 week sits at 49,765 right below price, then 48,756 and 47,752 beneath that. Same structure as SPY: extended, pulling back to the short term mean, channel intact.

Headlines and Headwinds!

The sequence that broke the streak started Thursday June 4. Broadcom reported a beat but left its full year AI chip targets unchanged, with the Q3 AI revenue guide coming in light of what the street wanted. After nine weeks of AI is invincible, that was enough. Chips rolled Thursday and then Friday turned into a rout: the Nasdaq lost over 4% for its worst session since the tariff chaos of April 2025, NVDA briefly gave back the $5 trillion mark, and AMD and INTC both shed double digits.

Friday’s accelerant was the May jobs report. 172,000 payrolls against expectations near 80,000, with unemployment steady at 4.3%. The 10 year spiked toward 4.5% and the market did the math instantly: no June cut, and hike odds for later this year started creeping into the futures. A blowout jobs number used to be good news. In this regime it is a yield shock, and yield shocks hit the longest duration assets hardest, which is exactly why the QQQ wore it.

Then this morning we got May CPI, and the internals matter more than the headline. Headline came in hot at 0.5% on the month and 4.2% year over year, driven by the energy passthrough with Brent still holding above $100 while the US and Iran ceasefire does its uneasy thing. But core printed 0.2% on the month and 2.9% annual, which is cooler than feared. That split is the whole game right now: the oil shock is in the headline numbers, the underlying trend is not accelerating. My fabled ‘Delayed Detonation’ thesis that was never officially released, but discussed in length in discord, spoke of how we flagged the energy passthrough as the slow moving second order effect of the Hormuz disruption. It is now showing up in the official prints, right on schedule. Maybe I’ll release the files.

Next week is the main event. The FOMC meets June 16 and 17, a hold is near certain per the futures, and the real catalyst is how Chair Warsh frames the path with oil above $100 and core behaving. Add the WWDC reception that landed flat for Apple on Monday and you have a market with no shortage of reasons to chop until Wednesday afternoon.

The Environment

So what is the regime? Rates are the tape again. Today’s ‘hot’ / in-line headline CPI is exactly the kind of print that reminds you of that. We hold the thesis and we respect the sensitivity. Both things are true.

The setup into the rest of the week & next week: indices sitting on their 10 week averages, small caps marginally green, breadth improving, core inflation behaving, and a Fed that is almost certainly on hold. That is not a bearish cocktail. It is a market that needed to flush some excess and is doing it in an orderly rotation rather than a liquidation. The caution is real because the FOMC presser is a live grenade and oil above $100 keeps the headline inflation risk alive. The optimism is real because everything that matters dare I say, needed this. This is where futurity earns its keep. If the future you are positioning for requires the AI buildout to continue, the power demand curve to steepen, and rates to eventually normalize, then nothing this week broke your map. Raise cash where conviction is thin, press duration where conviction is fat, and let the headlines belong to people trading the next four hours instead of the next four quarters. Rough sledding so far in June, better weeks ahead if next Wednesday cooperates.

Today’s Flow

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Let’s discuss May.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about May. You could have traded this market blindfolded and still made money. Throw a dart at the board / buy whatever it lands on / hold it a week / sell it green. That is not a shot at anyone. It is just what a melt-up does to a tape. Everything goes up, so everyone wins, and a whole timeline full of people are walking around convinced they are gifted because they bought stocks in the single easiest market in years. Which makes a month as good as the one we just had a little harder to brag about than the screenshots suggest.

May did not slow down. April was the best month of the year and then May walked in and matched it punch for punch, except we did it with nearly double the trade count. Twenty-seven closed positions in April became forty-nine in May, and the win rate did not blink. We closed the month at 81.6 percent, dead even with April’s 81.5, and a full sixteen points clear of where March left us at 65.4. That is the headline. We are not just hitting / we are hitting at volume / and the hit rate is holding while the book gets bigger. We are proud of it. We are also not going to pretend the blindfold had nothing to do with it.

Zoom out and the year tells a clean story. Q1 closed with 82 trades on the board and a strategy that was still finding its footing in a choppy March tape. April flipped the switch. May confirmed it was not a fluke. Two straight months printing better than eight out of ten, on rising size, in the same direction. The trade has been simple all year: read the flow / take the entry / let the winners run / cut the losers small.

The Tape into June

The market did not just hold up in May, it broke out across the board. All four majors closed June 1 pressing record highs. SPY at 758, QQQ at 742, the Dow north of 51,000, and the Russell finally joining the party at 289.

QQQ is leading with the steepest angle off the spring lows, no surprise with the AI names doing the heavy lifting. But the signal that matters is the Russell. Small caps broke out to fresh highs, and that is the breadth confirmation we have been waiting on all year. When the IWM joins the mega caps instead of lagging them, the rally has a wider base under it rather than resting on seven names.

All four are now riding the upper rail of multi-year ascending channels / stretched well above every moving average. That is textbook melt-up structure / beautiful and dangerous in the same breath. The only hesitation worth logging is the Dow printing a tired candle at the highs / the Russell closing slightly red on the day. Minor on their own, but the kind of detail you note when the tape is this extended. More on what that means for our positioning below.

May by the Numbers

• 49 closed positions

• 40 winners / 9 losers

• 81.6% win rate

• Average winner: +127.7%

• Average loser: -27.0%

• Worst single loss: AAOI at -38%

That last line matters more than the win rate. Our worst realized loss of the entire month was 38 percent. The winners ran to 200, 300, 400 percent and the losers all capped under 40. That is the asymmetry we build the whole approach around. You do not need to be right on everything when the math is shaped like that.

The Names that Ran

ARM was the headliner and it was not close. The 250 calls went out at +430 percent, a clean continuation of the same ARM thesis that paid us in March and April. When a name keeps printing, you keep showing up for it. FCEL turned a 15-call into a +365% winner on the fuel cell move, and we caught it twice, the second lot doing the heavy lifting. MSTR 175C ran +332 percent off the bitcoin-treasury tape. GLW was the quiet monster, two lots on the 180 calls closing at +156% and +311% as the optical / AI fiber story finally got priced.

The data center power and AI infrastructure book carried real weight again: MU printed +199% and put up the single biggest dollar move of the month, a 1000 call going from 32.80 to 98.00. NVDA 230C ran +118%, NOW closed two lots at +78% and +144%, AMD 500C did +110%, SMCI +207%, OUST +209% on the lidar pop. NOK surprised everyone with the 13 calls going +308%. ORCL was a machine, three separate lots, three green tickets at +52%, +124%, and +46%. CRWV, NBIS, AMSC, CCJ, MRNA, NET, NVTS, FLNC, TE, AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL puts, TSLA on three of four lots. The breadth was the point. Almost everything we touched worked.

Keeping It Honest

Nine losers, and they tell a real story. AAOI is the one to own. We took the optical name twice and it went red both times, -18 and -38 percent. When a thesis fails twice inside the same month, that is not noise, that is the market telling you the entry was wrong, and we are logging it. INTC 130C gave back -37 on a name that has been a battleground all year. RDDT, MS, USAR on the second lot, AMD on the lone put, all small cuts taken without ego.

And then there is DELL… SIGH

DELL is the biggest fumble of the month and very likely the biggest fumble of the entire year. We were in the 300 calls for June around 9.00. We got stopped out at 7.30 for a 23 percent loss on what I will call exactly what it was… a poor judgment on my end. Not a thesis miss. Not a flow miss. A discipline miss. The flow was right. The entry was right. The exit was the mistake. Those calls are now trading north of 160.00. From where we got shaken out, that is a move of more than 1,500 percent. A seventeen-bagger that we watched walk straight out the door. I am not going to dress it up. That one stings, and it is going in the book as the trade I want back more than any other this year. Note to self, trading on a boat drinking tequila - not always the best decisions are made, that’s the scene of the crime!

The Blindfold Comes Off

Here is the part nobody in the timeline wants to say out loud. We are good at this. We are also in a full-blown melt-up bull market, which means right now, so is everyone else. An 81 percent win rate two months running is not purely skill. A lot of it is the blindfold. When everything is bid and breadth is this wide, the hard part is not picking winners / the hard part is staying disciplined while trading with your eyes closed still pays.

Because the blindfold always comes off. It comes off the week the tape rolls over, and the people who never actually learned to see, the ones who confused a melt-up for a gift they earned, are the ones who get carried out. That is when the bill arrives. It gets collected on the names you sized too big because the last ten worked, on the stops you widened because cutting felt dumb in a market that only goes up. We are not going to relitigate a great month by pretending the macro did not do half the lifting. We are going to bank it / stay humble / keep the losers small / keep our eyes open even when blind buying would have paid the same. That is the whole point. Our edge is not that we made money in May. Everyone made money in May. Our edge is that we read the actual flow instead of guessing, so that when the blindfold finally comes off the rest of the market, ours was never on. This is exactly how we nailed the market bottom on March 30th-31st.

Where Today’s Money Went

Before we get into the live book, look at where the premium is actually flowing. The board below is today's top net premium inflows, every name on it cleared over a million dollars in flow.

Net Premium Flow board courtesy of our guy Charles, on X. He is a good friend of ours here at Unusual Flow and a phenomenal follow. If you are not on his feed, fix that.

Read the board and the whole month makes sense. NET sits right on top, and that is the same NET we closed at +125 percent in May, so the institutions are still piling into the exact name we were already riding. Under it the picture is software and AI semis stacked end to end: DDOG, CRM, COHR, STM, NOW, AMD, MCHP, CSCO. Every one of those is a node in the same data center / AI buildout we have been pressing all year. INTC shows up again, which is fitting for a name that has chopped us up and keeps drawing flow anyway. Defense pokes in with RTX, and PLTR lands on the board too, a name we are still holding in the open book (removed EOD for re-eval tomorrow against resistance).

This is the bridge into the paid section. Charles gives us the where. Below, I show you the how: how my own flow reads stacked up against this board, which of these inflows I was already in front of, and where the next entries are setting up. That is the part worth paying for.

Before the book, a quick word for everyone behind the wall. We run a highly active Discord for paid subscribers, and it is where the real-time conversation lives. Closer-quartered banter, faster back-and-forth, and a much cleaner organizational structure for alerts than any feed or inbox can give you. If you want to be in the room while these setups develop instead of reading about them after the close, this is where you do it. Paying subscribers only.

Discord Here.

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Coming Soon - Volux

Here is the thing about everything in this letter. The net premium reads / the divergences flashing in the options before they ever hit price / the repeat flow that tips a move days early / I pulled all of it by hand, across five tabs and a stack of screenshots. That is the work. It is also exactly the work we are about to put in your hands.

Volux is the flow intelligence platform we have been building all year / and the full launch is close. Options flow / breadth / AI-driven research / and real screeners in one place / built for how a trader actually reads a tape instead of how a data vendor wants to sell you one. The same conviction framework behind two straight months north of 81 percent / systematized / so the edge is not locked inside one guy’s daily routine anymore.

The waitlist is open now. Get on it early / be first through the door the day we go live.

Join the Volux waitlist here

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If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord Here

SPX closed Friday at 7,165, a record high. Nasdaq parked at 24,837, also a record. Russell finally showed up at 2,787, and the Dow lagged at 49,231 weighed down by Merck, IBM, and Verizon. VIX bled to 18.71, four-handle compression on the week. Fourth consecutive weekly gain for the S&P, and the tape is squarely in melt-up posture.

On March 31st, we noticed a major shift in the tape of options flow, which ultimately lead us to believe things were changing in a big way, and that we could have major opportunities immediately. This was the turning point & went over looked by many before surging nearly 12% in 3 weeks time.

The driver Friday was Intel. INTC ripped 24% to a record close, the best single day since 1987, on a Q1 print that destroyed estimates ($13.6B revenue, $0.29 non-GAAP EPS vs. $0.01 expected) and a Q2 guide ($13.8B to $14.8B) that came in nearly $1.4B above consensus. Data Center & AI revenue grew 22%, foundry posted 16%, and Lip-Bu Tan said the quiet part loud on the call: the CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era.

On the macro layer: Iran ‘reopened’ (lol) the Strait of Hormuz, peace talks moved to Islamabad with Pakistan mediating, and Trump ‘extended’ the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire by three weeks. Crude is back to $94 and sliding. The fear premium that defined Q1 has fully rotated into AI infra and CPU bid.

The under-the-radar print this week was the DOE issuing its first $1.6B loan to AEP for a five-state grid upgrade, dropped the same week as the Defense Production Act memo on grid infrastructure. That is the project-level catalyst we said to watch for. The framework is operational. This is the trade we want to be early on across multiple legs.

Sentiment & Breadth

NAAIM Exposure Index printed 94.15 for the week ending April 22, jumping from 79.49 the week prior. One of the largest weekly moves of the cycle, pushing active managers into aggressive bullish positioning. Anything above 90 historically flags chase behavior. Not a sell signal on its own, but it tells you who is doing the buying up here: it is professionals who were underexposed and are now playing catchup.

FactSet has 28% of the S&P reported. Q2 to Q4 2026 EPS growth estimates running 20.6%, 22.7%, and 20.4%. Full-year 2026 at 18.6%. Forward P/E at 20.9 (above the 5-year average of 19.9). The earnings tape is doing the heavy lifting. Valuation is full but defensible while EPS keeps printing.

Translation for our positioning: stop adding fresh longs into strength on the names that have already paid, and start letting setups come to you on names that have not. Tighten stops on runners, take size off the closed-out winners, and rotate dry powder into the new themes that are still undervalued by the tape. We do not chase 94 NAAIM readings. We let them mean-revert into us.

April: The Best Month YTD

April is the standout. We caught the CPU renaissance before it was a consensus call. The thesis was simple: the AI buildout was overpriced into GPUs and underpriced into the silicon that runs inference, the orchestration layer, and the agent workloads. INTC and ARM were the two cleanest expressions. The other layer was AI infrastructure pull-through (CRWV, NBIS, DELL), where unusual flow had been screaming for weeks before price followed.

Closed positions for the month, 27 trades, 22 winners, 5 losers, an 81.5% win rate. Multiple INTC 60C 6/18 lots scaled out at 195%, 286%, and 596% as the position ran into earnings. ARM was the bigger fireworks, with 180C 6/18 lots closing at 219%, 434%, and a 903% top tick on the runners. Below is the breakdown:

Five losses, all sized small relative to the winner book. AMD and META were quick cuts taken without ego. NEE was a utility chase on the wrong leg of the curve, lesson booked. TSEM had one win and one loss inside the same name, which is exactly how foundry exposure trades when the Street is split.

VST is the one that deserves a closer look, because it is the difference between an expression failure and a thesis failure. The May 175C got stopped out for -22% on a timing window that closed too tight. That is the trade. The equity position stayed on the book and the underlying thesis stayed alive. We are not relitigating the loss. We are sizing up the thesis. More on that in the next section.

The structural takeaway: high win rate is nice, but the math that wins the year is winners running 200% to 900% while losers cap at 5% to 45%. We do not need to be right more than 60% of the time when the asymmetry is this stark. That ratio is the entire game. Although, we did, and we were right over 80% of the time.

Let’s dive into some new / fresh ideas presenting similar risk reward ratios going forward.

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The dominant headline driver remains the U.S.-Iran conflict, now entering its sixth week. Trump held a press conference this afternoon detailing the rescue of two airmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran, calling it “one of the largest, most complex, most harrowing combat search and rescue missions ever attempted by the military.” He also reiterated his Tuesday 8 PM deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, warning that “the entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” He acknowledged that elevated fuel costs could persist into the summer but drew a hard line: “We’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. And if we have to pay a little extra for fuel for a couple of months, we’ll do that.”

A 45-day ceasefire proposal is floating between mediators, and Trump called it “a significant step,” though he has not signed off. Iran rejected any temporary ceasefire, demanding permanent guarantees. Crude oil jumped from $112 to roughly $114 per barrel during the presser alone, and gas prices are sitting near $4/gallon nationally. The CPI print on Friday looms large as the next macro catalyst, along with Fed minutes on Wednesday and PCE data on Thursday. Raymond James noted that strong early-2026 economic momentum and a backwardated oil curve have prevented a sharper selloff, but the Tuesday deadline is the next major test.

Anyhow, let’s dig into the flow.

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The tape walked in hot this morning and the reason was sitting right there in the headline. Iran’s president came out and said what the market wanted to hear: we’re ready to end the war, but want guarantees. That one sentence flipped the switch on risk appetite across the board and the flow sheet confirmed it before the opening bell even rang. But if you’ve been reading this letter, you know one headline doesn’t close a chapter. It opens a negotiation. And negotiations, especially ones involving the Strait of Hormuz, have a way of dragging out longer than the market’s attention span.

Before we dive into the flow, let’s frame what today actually means in the broader context. This is the last trading day of Q1 2026. Everything that happened this quarter, the tariff whipsaws, the AI capex debate, the energy thesis, the VIX staying elevated for weeks on end, all of it culminates in how institutions are positioned heading into the next three months. End-of-quarter flow is always interesting because it captures both the window dressing and the real conviction bets that are being carried forward. Today’s sheet is worth reading closely because it tells you what the smart money believes is coming, not what already happened. Before moving forward, it is important to note that at the time of writing, the JPM Collar has yet to be announced.

If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord Here.

March Performance Recap

Now let’s talk about how we actually performed this month, because the scoreboard is the only thing that doesn’t lie.

March was a battlefield. The macro environment was hostile to overnight holds for most of the month. Tariff headlines whipsawed indices on a daily basis. The VIX stayed elevated. Economic data was mixed at best. And yet, looking at the closed positions for March, we came out the other side in strong shape because we adapted. This was not a month for holding through earnings or riding multi-week swings. This was a month for quick, conviction-based entries and disciplined exits, and the results reflect that approach.

The headliner was ARM, and it wasn’t close. We scaled out of the 145 calls across three separate exits at gains of 178%, 311%, and 770%. That last exit was nearly a nine-bagger on the original cost basis. When a position works that well, you don’t need to hit on everything else. NOW 115C returned 196% in a clean trade that caught the software rally before it stalled. LITE 700P delivered 152% on the downside, proving that the put side can be just as profitable when you read the flow correctly. META 540C doubled. RKLB 75C ran 88%. PLTR 145C closed at 86%. UAL 105C gave us 80% on a name that was tricky to time but rewarded patience. VRT, SPY puts, USO, INTC May calls, RGTI puts, MSFT, VELO, and NFLX puts all contributed winning trades to the ledger.

Were there losers? Of course. INTC April 50C gave back 56% and that one stung because the thesis was right but the timing was early. UUUU dropped 50% as the uranium narrative cooled. SEI lost 49%. BE and COIN both closed red. NVDA had two losing entries, one at negative 24% and another at negative 5%, which is a reminder that even the most liquid name in the market can chop you up when volatility compresses at the wrong time. VG technically closed red as well, but that one deserves a footnote. The trade worked exactly as intended. The entry was clean, the flow confirmed the thesis, and the move came. But broader market volatility created noise that led to a mismanaged exit on my end. That’s not a flow miss, that’s a discipline lesson, and those are the ones that stick with you going into the next quarter.

The final count for March: 17 winners, 8 losers.That’s a win rate above 65% in a market that was actively trying to shake out both sides of the tape every single session. The average winner significantly outpaced the average loser, which is what matters more than the win rate itself. When your best trade returns 770% and your worst loss is 56%, the math works in your favor even if you’re wrong more often than you’d like.

The Flow / Calls Bought

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Today’s first half session was one of the more active flow days we have seen in recent weeks, and the message underneath the surface was loud. The overwhelming majority of activity clustered into near-term expirations, April 2nd through April 24th, with very few positions reaching out beyond May. That is not a coincidence. When uncertainty is this elevated and headlines can move the tape five percent in either direction overnight, traders compress their exposure into the front of the curve. They are ‘renting positions, not buying homes’. Premium at the front end becomes the vehicle of choice because it gives you leverage on a catalyst without forcing you to hold through weeks of headline risk that could render a longer-dated position worthless before the thesis even has time to play out. The fact that this pattern has persisted for weeks now tells you that whales do not see resolution coming soon. They are playing the range, hedging the tails, and keeping their powder accessible.

If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord here.

Here is the full breakdown of today’s first half flow for the subscribers:

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After a few weeks of selling, a market flirting with correction territory across every major index, and a weekend where most of the financial world was bracing for U.S. strikes on Iranian power plants, President Trump posted on Truth Social this morning announcing “very good and productive conversations” with Iran and a five day pause on all military strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. Dow futures ripped over 1,000 points before the open. The S&P, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 are all up north of two percent as I write this. Oil collapsed from above $112 on Friday to the low $100s on Brent and sub-$92 on WTI. Gold was getting hammered, down over three percent after its worst week since 1983. Silver was off even more. Commodities have already reversed that move and are now trading in the green. The VIX is pulling back. This could be the start of the ‘relief rally’.

And yet…

Iran’s FARS news agency immediately denied any direct or indirect contact with the Trump administration. That little detail didn’t stop the tape from running, but it matters. Because this is the exact kind of headline driven, whiplash inducing environment we’ve been living in for the last month, and today’s flow confirms that institutional money is treating it that way. Nobody is making clean directional bets right now. They’re hedging, they’re spreading, and they’re playing both sides of the same names. We saw this type of action last year during this same time frame during the tariffs, tacos, and liberation day.

Let me walk through where we stand.

The Indexes

The S&P 500 closed Friday at 6,506 after shedding 1.5% on the day, its lowest close in over four months, sitting below its 200d moving average. Today it’s ripping back above 6,600 & the 200d. The Dow went out at 45,577 on Friday and is up over a thousand points on the session. The Nasdaq closed at 21,647 and is rallying north of 2%. The Russell 2000 officially entered correction territory on Friday, down over 10% from its 52-week high, but is bouncing nearly 2% today with over 1,700 of its components advancing against fewer than 200 declining. These are massive moves in both directions. The 10-year is hovering near 4.37%, pulling back slightly as the immediate stagflation panic fades.

But make no mistake. This is a headline market. One Truth Social post reversed four weeks of selling. The next post could erase it. The underlying picture has not changed. The Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed. The IEA called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Goldman raised its Brent forecast to $110 for March and April and warned that if Hormuz flows stay at 5% for ten weeks, daily Brent prices could exceed their 2008 record. Iraq declared force majeure on all foreign operated oilfields on Friday. The Fed is still higher for longer.

So what does the flow look like in this environment? Exactly what you’d expect. Messy, two-sided, and loud.

The Flow

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The War & The Strait

The Strait of Hormuz crisis kicked off on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, including the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. By March 2, an IRGC official confirmed the strait was closed, threatening to set ablaze any ship attempting to pass through. We’re now on day 17 of this conflict, and the disruption to global energy flows is unlike anything the modern market has dealt with.

The numbers are staggering. Roughly 27% of the world’s maritime trade in crude oil and petroleum products normally goes through the Strait. Daily transit has collapsed from a historical average of 138 ships per day to no more than five since the war began. The IEA has called it the worst oil disruption in history, estimating the war will cut global supply by about 8 million barrels a day in March. Iran’s IRGC has been defiant, declaring that any vessel linked to the U.S., Israel, or their allies will be considered a legitimate target, and warning the world to expect oil at $200 per barrel.

Saudi Arabia has been diverting oil to its Red Sea port of Yanbu via the East-West pipeline, while the UAE is routing through Fujairah, but combined bypass capacity is only 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day versus the 20 million that normally transits the strait. That math doesn’t work no matter how you slice it.

Oil Prices

Crude has been on a rollercoaster. Prices have surged roughly 40% since the war began, with Brent closing above $100 for the first time in four years last week. Brent topped $106 on Sunday before pulling back Monday when the IEA reserve release news hit. WTI settled at $93.50 on Monday after the 32-country IEA coalition agreed to release 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, the largest coordinated release in IEA history. But today (Tuesday), oil advanced again with Brent back above $100 as traders cast doubt on a U.S.-backed plan to escort tankers through the strait.

Here’s the thing. 400 million barrels sounds massive, but at 105 million barrels per day of global consumption, that covers roughly four days. Compared to the 20 million barrels per day that normally flows through Hormuz, it’s about 20 days of typical strait traffic. It’s a Band-Aid. Wood Mackenzie has warned that with 15 million barrels per day of Gulf supply gone, oil would need to hit $150 for demand destruction to rebalance the market. That $200 Iran threat isn’t as unthinkable as it sounds if this drags on.

U.S. gasoline prices are now up nearly 80 cents from a month ago, and diesel has shot up $1.34 to just under $5 a gallon. This hits the consumer directly and immediately.

The Macro Picture

Here’s where the narrative gets tricky. A lot of people are screaming “stagflation” right now, and the headline data supports that framing on the surface. Q4 2025 GDP was revised sharply down to just 0.7% annualized, a massive step down from the previous estimate of 1.4% and the 4.4% pace in Q3. Core PCE inflation rose to 3.1% year-over-year in January, still a full point above the Fed’s target.

But context matters. That GDP print was significantly distorted by a record-breaking 43-day government shutdown that disrupted data collection and economic activity. It does not reflect the actual trajectory of the economy heading into this crisis.

The reality is the economy was re-accelerating before February 28. February CPI came in at 2.4% headline with core at 2.5%, the lowest core reading since March 2021. Consumer sentiment had risen to its highest level in six months. The Dow broke above 50,000 for the first time. Industrial production rose 0.2% in February with manufacturing and mining both contributing. The AI capex cycle was firing on all cylinders. International markets were outperforming the U.S. for the first time in years. Credit spreads were tight. Goldman had full-year GDP growth penciled at 2.8%. The vibe heading into late February was closer to “soft landing achieved, now re-accelerating” than anything resembling stagflation.

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading tells the story perfectly. The March headline came in at 55.5, but interviews completed before the Iran strikes showed improvement from February. All of those gains were completely erased in the nine days after the military action began. The economy didn’t break on its own. It got hit.

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What a week. We came in off the Supreme Court tariff ruling, rode a two-day rally into NVIDIA earnings, and watched it all unravel by Friday as hot PPI data and AI skepticism sent mark…

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What a week. I mean that. If you stepped away from the screens for even a few hours this week, you probably came back to a completely different market narrative than the one you left behind. That’s the kind of environment we’ve been living in, and honestly, it’s the kind of environment where flow analysis becomes the most valuable tool in the toolkit. Price action tells you what happened. Flow tells you what people were thinking when it happened, and more importantly, what they’re positioning for next.

We came into this shortened holiday week relatively concerned but as noted in last wek’s letter, rather optimistic after last week’s broad selloff, which saw the S&P post its worst week since November while the Nasdaq notched its fifth consecutive weekly decline. AI disruption fears had been spreading like wildfire across sectors that most people hadn’t even considered vulnerable. Insurance brokers, wealth managers, real estate services, logistics companies. The Magnificent Seven were under siege with Amazon alone shedding over $450 billion in market cap across a historic 9-day losing streak. Defensive sectors were catching all the love. Utilities, materials, and real estate were the only places to hide, while tech, financials, and communication services were getting absolutely hammered. Individual investor bullish sentiment had cratered to 12-week lows, and the fear was palpable.

The question heading into this week was simple: is this a dip worth buying (we thought so), or the start of something uglier?

Four sessions later, I think the answer the market gave us is... both. And the flow proved it in real time. Let me walk you through it.

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The Big Picture

Last week was ugly. The S&P 500 closed Friday at ~6,836 after flirting with its 100-day moving average, a level it hasn’t settled below in nearly a year. The Nasdaq posted back-to-back weekly losses. But here’s what matters: the selling wasn’t about fundamentals. It was about fear.

AI disruption anxiety spread like wildfire last week. What started as a software selloff turned into a full-blown rotation out of anything Wall Street decided could be “disrupted” / trucking stocks (C.H. Robinson and RXO each dropped 20%+), real estate (CBRE -16%), wealth management (Schwab -10%), even media names like Netflix. JPMorgan’s trading desk summed it up perfectly:

“The market is struggling to understand the full scope of what AI can do.”

Meanwhile, underneath the noise, the macro picture actually improved. January CPI came in at +2.4% year-over-year, the lowest since May 2021. Core CPI was in line. Treasury yields dropped across the curve, with the 10-year falling to 4.05%. This should have been bullish. It wasn’t. That disconnect tells you something about the current market psychology: fear is driving the tape, not data.

The Fed rate cut timeline shifted after a strong jobs report / March probability dropped to just 10%, June is now the base case at ~85%. Kevin Warsh, nominated to replace Powell in May, has adopted a more pragmatic tone, suggesting the Fed should “look through” tariff-driven price spikes. That’s a dovish tilt from a known hawk.

Earnings season is 74% complete. 76% of S&P 500 companies have beaten on the bottom line, with blended EPS growth tracking at +13.2% - a fifth straight quarter of double-digit gains. The fundamentals are fine. The question is whether sentiment catches up.

This Week’s Earnings Calendar / The Names That Matter

This is one of the most consequential earnings weeks of the season. Here’s your day-by-day breakdown of the reports that could move markets:

Tuesday

PANW: Cybersecurity bellwether reporting after close. Stock is down 10%+ from 50-day MA. Watch ARR growth, billings guidance, and commentary on the Chronosphere + potential CyberArk acquisition closings. DA Davidson cut PT to $210 but kept Buy. A guidance raise could spark a mean-reversion rally.

CEG: Power generation trade still alive. Nuclear/AI data center narrative is the story here. Watch for updated guidance on power purchase agreements and capacity expansion.

MDT: Healthcare bellwether. Steady but watch for any medical device AI integration commentary.

CDNS: EDA/chip design software. In the AI disruption crosshairs / could bounce or get hit further depending on guidance.

ET: MLP/energy infrastructure play. Dividend and distribution guidance is the focus.

Wednesday

CVNA: THE event of the week. See deep dive below. Binary outcome - short squeeze or breakdown. Options pricing a ~15.5% move. Reporting after close.

BKNG: Travel demand bellwether. After Airbnb's upbeat outlook, expectations are elevated. Watch international booking trends and AI-powered travel tool commentary.

DASH: Delivery/gig economy. After DraftKings' guidance disaster (-17%), the consumer discretionary/platform space is under scrutiny.

EBAY: E-commerce turnaround story. AI-powered listing tools driving engagement.

ADI: Semis. Industrial and automotive end-market demand signals matter here.

OXY: Energy. Watch production guidance and Permian Basin commentary.

Thursday

WMT: Consumer spending bellwether #1. Last quarter was strong (+5.9% YoY revenue, e-commerce +27%). Guidance for FY27 is the focus / any tariff impact commentary will move the tape broadly. This is the single most important macro read of the week.

BABA: China + AI narrative. DeepSeek reverberations continue. Watch cloud revenue growth and AI infrastructure spend.

DE: Agriculture/industrial cycle read. Tariff impact on farming equipment demand.

NEM: Gold miner. Gold at $5,035/oz / watch production costs and reserve updates.

SO: Utility/power. AI data center power demand narrative.

Good bit of Economic Data this week to focus on as well…

Key Points:

The FOMC minutes on Wednesday and PCE data on Friday are the two macro landmines this week. If PCE comes in hot at 3.1%+ on the core, it pushes the June cut narrative into question and could trigger another leg down in growth stocks. If it’s softer, we get relief.

I want to talk about Carvana as the asset has been under heavy selling pressure as of late with a ton of negative press including short reports, and growing narrative of delinquencies etc. so let’s dive in shall we?

The Binary Bet of the Week…

The Setup: CVNA hit an all-time high of $486.89 on January 22. Since then, it’s crashed ~29% to ~$367 after Gotham City Research published a devastating short report alleging $1B+ in overstated earnings through undisclosed related-party transactions with DriveTime/Bridgecrest (both controlled by CEO’s father). Multiple law firms (Block & Leviton, Pomerantz, Bragar Eagel) have opened securities fraud investigations. Insider selling has been massive, the CEO has dumped over $1.4 billion in shares since April 2024.

What the Bulls Need: A clean 10-K filing on time. Beat-and-raise on Q4 numbers (consensus: $1.10 EPS, ~$5.2B revenue). Explicit management commentary addressing the Gotham allegations with data. If all three happen, shorts (11.4% SI) get squeezed and the stock could rip 15-20%+ in a single session.

What the Bears Need: Any delay in the 10-K filing. Auditor (Grant Thornton) issues or qualifications. Weak Q4 numbers or soft guidance. If the 10-K doesn’t file or the auditor flags anything, this stock could revisit sub-$200.

The Flow: Bearish options flow has been building for two weeks. Options are pricing a ~15.5% move. This is a pure event-driven, binary trade. Not for the faint of heart.

Carvana operates in the online used vehicle retail industry, running a vertically integrated e-commerce platform for buying, selling, financing, and delivering used cars across the U.S. In Q3 2025, the company sold a record 155,941 retail units (up 44% YoY) and posted record revenue of $5.65B (up 55% YoY). Yahoo Finance

The company also operates wholesale auction sites through its ADESA acquisition. Primary competitors include KMX (CarMax), LAD (Lithia Motors), AN (AutoNation), CARG (CarGurus), and ACVA (ACV Auctions). Analysts project EPS to climb ~428% YoY to $5.39 in FY2025 and grow another 37% to $7.39 in FY2026. Yahoo Finance

Carvana's competitive moat lies in its technology-driven, asset-light digital platform, proprietary logistics/reconditioning network, and data advantages that traditional dealerships cannot replicate at scale. The company was added to the S&P 500 in December 2025, a massive validation event. What makes CVNA unique is the dramatic turnaround, it rose over 12,000% from 2022 lows near $3.56 to highs of ~$486. However, a short-seller report from Gotham City Research in January 2026 alleging $1B+ in overstated earnings has created significant near-term uncertainty ahead of the February 18 earnings release.

The used auto retail sector has been weak overall, pressured by higher interest rates impacting consumer affordability. However, CVNA has been the worst performer in the group over the last month due to idiosyncratic risk (Gotham report). Over 12 months, CVNA still dramatically outperforms all peers (+93% vs KMX -52%).

Analyst Price Targets for the most part still reside higher, ranging from $460 - $530 with some even calling the sell-off as a buying opportunity (where I sit as well).

TLDR Bull / Bear:

BULL CASE:

• If Q4 earnings beat and 10-K files clean on Feb 18, shorts get squeezed hard (11.4% short interest)

• JPMorgan expects “solid beat and raise” / consensus Q4 EPS of $1.10 (+96% YoY)

• Used car demand tailwind as new car prices stay elevated (~$50K avg)

• S&P 500 inclusion ensures ongoing passive fund demand

• Consensus PT of ~$462-498 implies 25-35% upside from current levels

BEAR CASE:

• If 10-K is delayed or auditor raises concerns, the stock could revisit sub-$200

• Massive insider selling is a red flag that’s hard to ignore

• Gotham City allegations on related-party transactions are serious and not yet fully addressed

• Valuation still rich at ~78x PE despite pullback

• Multiple securities fraud investigations now open

• Operating cash flow declining (slipped to $606M from $858M YoY through Q3)

In summary, this week we have earnings, macro data, and Fed signals all converging. The markets are nervous but not quite broken. With the S&P stuck in a range this week’s data could determine which side breaks first. Our watchlist this week is considerably lengthy between Friday’s piece and today’s piece discussing the upcoming earnings & econ data. While I don’t anticipate trading everything we have discussed, it’s still important to watch them for reactions as a gauge on future bets / money flows from a sector stance.

Thanks for tuning in & supporting the Unusual Flow substack. As always, likes and comments are greatly appreciated as well as shares / restacks. See you guys tomorrow for the flows and I hope you guys enjoyed the long weekend.

Cheers,

Jersace

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If you felt like the market was pulling you in two directions at once, that’s because it literally was. The Dow ripped through 50,000 for the first time ever last Friday. Up 1,207 points in a single session. A 2.5% move on the week fueled by a hard rotation into cyclicals and value. Caterpillar, GE Aerospace, Boeing, the airlines, all caught serious bids. Then this week, that momentum hit a wall. Thursday brought a 669-point reversal in the Dow as AI disruption fears spread beyond software into networking (Cisco down 12% [Thursday] on weak guidance), wealth management, and legal services. This week, the S&P closed at 6,836, down 1.4%. Nasdaq got hit hard as well, losing 1.27%. Dow Jones also negative on the week losing 1.23%.

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- SPY Daily

I see a lot of folks mentioning hedges and flipping short etc. but what remains curious to me is why they would position in such a way today, versus three days ago at range highs? Why short support, range lows, and below the channel? I understand the reasoning of it closing below moving average’s and such but when you frame it the way I have above, it feels more panicky than tactical. I have highlighted the last 3 instances in which we closed/wicked below this channel and in each instance we have snapped back into the range within the following two sessions. While there is no guarantee of the similar reaction, it is likely. Just something to note and always check multiple time frames before making rash decisions. If you check the weekly, we remain above the 20wk which has been acting as our floor lately. Times have been whippy as we will touch into more in depth below.

- QQQ Daily/Weekly

More of the same here yet slightly uglier.

Going to display the weekly for this one as well as you can see that we are still compressed in the middle of this channel although below the weekly averages. Of course we have the longer weekend where being in positions carries more risk especially with ongoing Middle East conflicts - though nothing has materialized the past few instances. Personally still in the camp of “nothing ever happens” & that we ultimately resolve higher once the continued unwind of AI complex fears / capex / collateral collapse settle. I do not have a crystal ball and cannot firmly say with the utmost confidence of when that would happen, although I will remain course and buy dips where I see value.

- IWM Daily

Still the YTD leader and showing similar signs as of late in regards to market chop, but holding up well. Not too much else to comment on here other than the looming rotation back into quality (Mag-7 / undervalued key assets).

- DJI Daily

The story of the week, really the story of 2026 so far, is what traders at Jefferies are calling the “SaaSpocalypse.” Bloomberg reported that Anthropic’s product releases triggered a nearly $1 trillion selloff in enterprise software stocks. The iShares Tech-Software ETF (IGV) is now 30% below its recent high. Officially deep in bear market territory. Atlassian cratered 35% in a single week back in early February. Salesforce is down 40%+ over the past 12 months. Workday, same story. Even Palantir, one of 2025’s biggest winners, has given back 27% year-to-date.

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The fear is straightforward. If an AI agent can do the work of 10 humans, why would a company pay for 10 software seats? The per-seat SaaS model that minted millionaires for two decades is getting repriced in real time.

But here’s where it gets interesting for us.

The market is painting with a broad brush right now. Selling everything that touches software, buying anything that touches AI infrastructure. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is up 10% year-to-date while the software ETF is down 18%. That divergence is the widest it’s been in years, and divergences like this don’t last forever. Some of these software names are getting unfairly lumped in with commodity SaaS that honestly deserves to get disrupted. The companies actually building the orchestration layer for AI agents, the platforms that make agentic AI work in production with real governance and security, those are getting thrown out with the bathwater. And that’s where the opportunity is.

On the macro side, the delayed January jobs report finally dropped Wednesday showing 130K jobs added, well above the 53K consensus. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3% from 4.4%. Consumer sentiment ticked up. CPI dropped this morning at 2.4% year over year, coming in below the 2.5% consensus. Good news on the surface, but core CPI still ticked up to 0.3% month over month so it’s not all clear skies. The Fed is still on hold and markets are pricing roughly a coin-flip on a June cut. The government shutdown that ended February 3rd delayed a lot of this economic data so we’re just now getting caught up on the full picture.

The rotation is real though. Value and cyclicals are leading. Small caps (Russell 2000 up 7% YTD) are outperforming large-cap tech for the first time in a while. The Dow hitting 50K while the Nasdaq struggles tells you exactly where institutional money is flowing.

So how do we play this?

The SaaSpocalypse isn’t the end of software. It’s the market sorting winners from losers in real time. And when the market sorts this aggressively, it creates dislocations. Dislocations are where alpha lives.

That’s exactly what this week’s deep dive is about. The same AI agent technology that’s destroying commodity SaaS stocks is creating an entirely new investable theme. One that spans agentic orchestration platforms, humanoid robotics, edge AI components, and the infrastructure that powers all of it. The companies building the tools that make AI agents actually work in the real world, not just demo well on X, those are setting up to be the next cycle’s biggest winners.

We’re breaking down the full AI Agents & Robotics theme. The layers of the stack, the key players, the timelines, and a tiered watchlist from high-conviction infrastructure plays down to speculative robotics bets. This is the kind of theme that starts with institutional flow, builds into retail narrative, and eventually becomes consensus. We want to be positioned before that happens.

Let’s get into it.

The Big Picture

If 2025 was the year AI proved it could think, 2026 is the year AI starts doing. The narrative is shifting hard from model capabilities to agentic execution, autonomous systems that can plan, act, and complete multi-step workflows with minimal human oversight. Simultaneously, humanoid robotics is crossing the chasm from science-fair demos to factory-floor deployments. These two themes are converging into what could be the defining investment cycle of the next decade.

This is not theoretical anymore. Goldman Sachs expects hyperscalers to pour over $500 billion in capex this year. KPMG found that 67% of business leaders say they will maintain AI spending even in a recession. And at CES 2026, Boston Dynamics put its Atlas robot to work sorting car parts in a Hyundai factory, not doing backflips for cameras. The money is real, the deployments are starting, and the investable surface area is expanding fast.

Part 1: The Agentic AI Revolution

What Changed

The shift from chatbots and copilots to autonomous agents represents a fundamental change in how enterprises consume AI. Instead of answering questions, AI agents are now executing tasks: processing invoices, resolving IT tickets, orchestrating supply chains, and managing complex workflows across departments. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will integrate task-specific AI agents by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025.

The agentic AI market is projected to expand from roughly $7.3 billion in 2025 to $88 billion by 2032, a 42.8% CAGR. But the more telling stat comes from Bessemer Venture Partners: the real competitive advantage in 2026 will not be in building the best model, but in data governance, agent orchestration, and observability platforms, the middleware that makes agents work reliably in production.

Why It Matters for Markets

Wall Street is repricing the entire software stack. Again, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF is down 19% year-to-date while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF is up 12%. The fear is that frontier AI models can now replicate what traditional SaaS companies charge subscription fees for. But this creates a massive dislocation, and dislocations create opportunities.

The companies that survive and thrive are those embedding AI agents into mission-critical workflows where switching costs are high and governance matters. The companies getting killed are commodity SaaS plays with thin moats. This is a stock-picker’s market, not a rising-tide market.

The Investable Layers

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Busy day on the flow desk with some real conviction trades showing up. Let’s break it down.

The Headline Stuff

The monster of the day was that AMZN sweep. Over 10,600 contracts on the 250 calls dated all the way out to August, filled at $10.76. That’s north of $11M parked into a single name with a six-month runway. That’s not a hedge, that’s a thesis. When you see that kind of size on a mega cap reaching out that far, someone has serious conviction AMZN hasn’t topped out.

On the other side, IWM saw nearly 19,000 puts bought at the 254 strike for March. This is worth paying attention to because small caps have been on a tear. The Russell 2000 is up over 8% on the year, hitting all-time highs, while the S&P is only up about 2%. Someone is saying this small cap run is overextended and hedging accordingly. Pair that with the ARKK 70 puts (10,850 contracts) and you’re getting a pretty clear read: protection is being bought against the more speculative end of the market heading into March. The flow is there.

INTC continues to show up. Over 15,600 calls on the 55 strike out to April. That name just keeps attracting interest, and if you’ve been following us, you know how we feel about that one already.

ORCL was active with 13,000+ contracts on the 170 calls expiring this week. ORCL ripped nearly 10% yesterday on a sell-side upgrade and the broader software bounce, so this is someone chasing that momentum with a short-dated, aggressive bet.

Now the PLTR puts caught my eye. 3,500 contracts on the 130 strike expiring 2/27. PLTR just crushed Q4 earnings last week, beat top and bottom line, guided FY26 revenue to $7.19B (61% growth, absolutely lapped consensus), and Alex Karp called it the best results in tech in the last decade. Stock popped hard on the print. But it’s still down about 20% on the year, and someone is positioning for a post-earnings fade or hedging a long. That’s a name to watch closely over the next couple weeks as the dust settles.

For the puts sold column, which is where a lot of the smart money likes to hide: RIG had over 20,000 puts sold at the 5 strike out to May. That’s someone saying “I will happily own this at $5 or collect premium trying.” UBER saw nearly 15,000 puts sold at 65, and SCHW had over 10,000 puts sold at the 90 strike. That cluster of institutional put selling tells you where the floor bids are.

Broader context matters here too. Dow just crossed 50,000 for the first time last week. Retail sales came in flat today, missing expectations, which pushed bonds higher and is now getting the market to price in the possibility of a third Fed cut this year. Jobs data hits Wednesday (delayed from the funding lapse), CPI tomorrow as well. It's a loaded week, and the flow is reflecting that.

What the flow is really telling us, how we’re positioned, and what we’re watching next... as well as a deep dive on one of our newest equity positions.

🔒 The full breakdown, including the highlighted names, and the setups we’re tracking into this week’s data, is for paid subscribers only.

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If you’ve been sitting on the fence, today’s a good day to hop off it.

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You got the full week ahead last night. Today’s about what actually happened and where the money went. Just a quick read and recap of what I am seeing in regards to the flow pull from todays session.

The Tape

Strong reversal day. Opened red, closed green across the board.

S&P 500: 6,979.41 (+0.58%) Dow: 49,420.53 (+1.08%) Nasdaq: 25,744.51 (+0.75%) Russell 2000: +1.01% (small cap rotation continues, for now) VIX: 16.43 (-5.79%)

The metals liquidation from Friday appears to be exhausting itself. Risk-on sentiment returned. Dollar held gains (DXY 97.65, +0.53%).

Disney beat this morning. $1.63 EPS vs $1.57 expected, $26B revenue. Experiences crossed $10B for the first time. Stock still sold off 6%.

Oracle popped on plans to raise $50B for cloud infrastructure. Nvidia fell 2% after WSJ reported the OpenAI investment has stalled.

Palantir reports tonight. AMD tomorrow.

The Flow

Let me walk you through what stood out to me, & what we’re currently positioned in below. As always, yellow indicates that the trade interests me personally, purple indicates earnings, orange is a repeat hit.

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Hope you all had a solid weekend, because last week was a ride and this week isn’t going to slow down. Let’s dive in.

LAST WEEK IN REVIEW

January closed out on a positive note overall, but Friday reminded us that things can get ugly fast. For the month:

• S&P 500 finished around 6,939, up 1.4% for January

• Dow closed near 48,892, up 1.7% for the month

• Nasdaq ended at 25,552, gaining about 1.27% for January

• Russell 2000 was the quiet winner, jumping over 5% on the month as small caps caught a bid

But let’s be clear, Friday was brutal. The S&P dropped 0.43%, Dow fell 0.36%, and the Nasdaq got hit for nearly 1%. Tech led the selling, and risk assets across the board got whacked. VIX crept back up near 17.5.

Sector rotation was the story of January, and it wasn’t subtle.

Energy absolutely dominated, up over 13% for the period. Materials followed at nearly 11%. Industrials, Consumer Staples, and Comm Services all posted solid gains in the 6% range. Meanwhile, the laggards tell you everything about the rotation: Info Tech down 0.36%, Healthcare down 0.75%, and Financials bringing up the rear at negative 2.33%.

This is a clear “risk-on but not in mega cap tech” setup. Money rotated hard into cyclicals and commodity-sensitive names while the Mag 7 trade took a breather. Healthcare got wrecked by that Medicare Advantage news, and Financials never recovered from the early-month weakness.

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Indices

- SPY Daily

Touched 7,000 briefly on Tuesday, which was a new intraday high, before pulling back. The index is sitting right above the 10/20d MA after Friday's action. Breadth has since faded from the January highs when many names were above their 50-day.

- QQQ Daily

Tech weakness dragged it down, especially on Friday. The Nasdaq underperformed all week as rate sensitivity weighed on growth names. Earlier in the week it appeared as though money had been rotating back into tech, yet we are left wondering if that was a head fake after the first half of earnings came around.

- DJI Daily

Held up relatively better thanks to some of the value and industrial names. Caterpillar gained over 3% on earnings. Verizon ripped 12% on guidance. But Visa and American Express weighed on the index.

- IWM Daily

Small caps had been quietly outperforming all month. The 5%+ January gain was notable, though Friday gave some of that back. Still worth watching if the ‘rotation’ trade continues.

Here's something worth keeping in mind. The Dow just posted its 9th consecutive positive month. That's rare.

Going back to 1927, there have only been 12 instances of this happening. The forward returns are overwhelmingly positive. Average 1-month gain of 4.57%, 3-month gain of 8.50%, and 12-month gain of 27.54%. Over 91% of the time, the market was higher one month later.

Now, past performance isn’t a guarantee, and we’re dealing with a different macro backdrop than most of these historical periods. But the takeaway is clear, momentum tends to beget momentum. Extended winning streaks historically don’t just suddenly reverse. Something has to break the trend, and right now, the data isn’t showing that.

Positioning Data: Where the Smart Money is Leaning

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Before we dive in, I have to take a moment.

Last week, Unusual Flows officially hit bestseller status. That doesn’t happen without you. Every share, every referral, every conversation you’ve had telling a friend or colleague about what we’re building here. This community has grown into something real, and I don’t take that lightly.

We’re just getting started. More tools, more data, more alpha coming your way. Thank you for believing in what we’re doing.

Now let’s get to work.

The Tape

What a session. Let’s take a peak at the charts first.

- SPY Daily

- QQQ Daily

- IWM Daily

- DXY Weekly

Price says calm. Rotation says chaos.

S&P 500 pushed to fresh all time highs, settling at 6,978.59, up 0.41%. We’re 22 points from the psychological 7,000 level. Nasdaq finished at 25,939.75, up 0.88%, as mega cap tech continued positioning into this week’s reports. Microsoft gained 2.19%, Apple added 1.12%.

But if you’re only watching the indices, you’re missing the real story.

The Dow got absolutely torched. Down 0.83% to 49,003.41, dragged into the red by a healthcare sector that can only be described as a bloodbath.

$80 billion in market cap evaporated from managed care in a single session.

UnitedHealth cratered 19.61% to $282.70 after dropping 2026 guidance and confirming what everyone feared: the first annual revenue decline in three decades. They’re calling it “right sizing across the enterprise.” The market called it something else.

But UNH wasn’t alone. CMS dropped a bomb, proposing a 0.09% increase to Medicare Advantage payments for 2027. Wall Street was expecting 4 to 6%. Dr. Oz and the Trump administration clearly have different plans for managed care.

Humana fell 21.13% to $207.93. CVS shed 14.15% to $72. Elevance dropped 10.2% to $338.51. That’s not a selloff. That’s a policy induced reset.

On the other side of the tape, CoreWeave ripped 10.73% to $108.86 after Nvidia announced a fresh $2 billion investment to build out five gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. Jensen went on camera to reaffirm the partnership. The flow reflected the enthusiasm.

Silver saw one of the wildest sessions in recent memory. SLV closed at $101.59, up 3.3% after experiencing massive intraday volatility. Over 100 million shares traded on the session. First time an ETF other than SPY has topped that list since we started tracking in 2012. Wild.

VIX at 16.32. Remarkable complacency given the headline risk this week.

The Headlines

CMS Medicare Advantage Bomb

This is the story. CMS proposed 0.09% payment increases for 2027 when the Street expected 4 to 6%. That delta is enormous for companies where margins are already thin. UNH, HUM, CVS, ELV all got taken to the woodshed. The April final notice will be the next catalyst. Either they soften the blow or managed care has a serious problem.

Nvidia Doubles Down on CoreWeave

$2 billion fresh investment. Five gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. Jensen Huang went on camera personally. When Nvidia writes checks like this, pay attention. CRWV ripped 10%+ and the flow was aggressive all session.

Fed Wednesday

FOMC decision at 2pm ET. No change expected. Powell presser at 2:30. Given the ongoing political drama, the tone will matter more than the decision itself.

Earnings Avalanche

Wednesday after close: Microsoft, Meta, Tesla. Thursday after close: Apple. This is the week that determines whether mega cap tech leads or lags in Q1.

In case you missed it, we recently opened up a discord server for the paid subscribers to make it easily accessible to find any missed information, trade ideas, charts, and filter through discussions with ease given their advanced search feature vs the classic “ctrl + F” function on substack chat. While this is reserved for paid only members, I realize discord is not for everyone, and I will continue to post trades on substack as we always have. This is just an added feature for those who enjoy it.

We are also still working on developing a new website client for your use that will be granted upon a new tiered subscription in the future once finalized. I have dropped a few teasers here and there within chats. Features include:

• Historical options database

• Portfolio / basket tracking

• Market AI Chatbot

• Market News updated throughout the day & filtered ticker search

• Stock allocation & performance tracking

Among many other features to come.

What’s Buzzing

CoreWeave (CRWV)

The AI infrastructure name of the moment. Nvidia’s $2 billion investment validates the thesis. $56 billion backlog is real. Debt load is real too. But in this tape, growth gets funded. Stock closed at $108.86, up 10.73% on massive volume. The flow was relentless all day.

Managed Care Wreckage

UNH down 20%, HUM down 21%, CVS down 14% in a single session. This is what policy risk looks like. The question now is whether April’s final CMS notice softens the blow or confirms the damage. Some contrarian flow showed up in HUM calls late in the session. Someone’s betting on a bounce.

Silver (SLV)

Most traded security of the day. Over 100 million shares. Massive intraday swings. Safe haven flows, inflation hedging, short squeezes, take your pick. The metals trade is alive and well.

Options Flow Breakdown

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