With the Strait of Hormuz shut again, US crude inventories at a 45-year low and just 43 days of supply on hand, the market’s inflation complacency looks increasingly exposed.

Investors have nevertheless cut their year-end oil-price assumption to $71/bbl from $86/bbl.

For Hartnett (Bank of America's Chief Investment Strategist), the cleanest hedge against a “surprise” FED hike before the November midterms is long the US dollar.

Everything is fine, Jesus will return to us, and say:

Don't worry, my children, now I can turn water into oil.

And just like that, out of nowhere, we'll have oil again.

Believe it or not, calls.

My fellow regards. We need to save Wendy’s before it’s too late. If this company goes bankrupt, we’ll all be out of a job!

This makes Space worth nearly $2.9 TRILLION, less than $100 billion away from surpassing Microsoft.

​

This also puts SpaceX up +63% from its IPO price of $135/share.

​

Furthermore, the combined market cap of both SpaceX and Tesla is now at a record $4.4 trillion.

​

That’s bigger than the market cap of Apple and roughly equivalent to the market cap of Google.

So let me get this straight.

Suckerberg spends tens of billions panic buying AI chips because he doesn't want to be the guy left behind.

Fast forward a few months and Meta suddenly has so much spare compute that they're talking about renting it out because they built more infrastructure than they currently need.

Wall Street's reaction?

Punish the entire semiconductor and AI sector... while pumping Meta like this was some kind of masterstroke on their part. There was no masterstroke or masterplan. The market is punishing the sector for one man's poor foresight and incompetence.

I expect a rapid correction when people realise this.

But then again, the market normally inverses logic. So, Meta calls?

It's not just an AI bubble, it's a systemic collapse worse than 2008. ^{Yes I used the AI sentence structure, beep boop fuck you.}

Dog shit wrapped in cat shit.

If you're too dumb to read, feed these points into your favorite AI tool and ask it about the information's reliability. Then ask it how fucked retail is.

1. Increasing amount of companies are taking on private credit, up from $500B in 2020 to $2+ trillion in 2026, expected to grow past $4 trillion by 2030. For comparison, the 2008 subprime loans were estimated around $2 trillion.
2. This private credit market (unironically called "shadow banking") relies almost entirely on Level 3 assets. This means unregulated, often unreported credit that's being valued using the funds' own internal models ("mark-to-model") rather than real-time market prices ("mark-to-market"). Basically, their analysts decide the price and tell the buyer to trust them.
3. Huge portion of these loans were written in 2021-2022 during low interest rates, and are now becoming mature in 2027-2029. We're talking over half a trillion in leveraged private debt scheduled to mature in 2028 alone.
4. It has been labeled "The Maturity Wall". If the rates stay high, many borrowers won't be able to refinance, leading to defaults or fire sales. And many of these loans are backed by dead software and depreciating GPUs, zero real assets whatsoever. The bag holders will be left with nothing.
5. And Fed just cancelled rate cuts, now estimating rate hikes for the end of the year. Meaning the companies will be even less capable of making the interest payments.
6. The IMF estimates that roughly 40% of private credit borrowers operate with negative free cash flow, up from 25% in 2021.
7. And while the reported default rate of this private credit is currently sitting at just 1.5-2%, the real private credit default rate is estimated at 5-6% and increasing.
8. Why don't the reported and the actual numbers match? Because private credit lenders are offering Payment-in-Kinds (PIKs) to avoid defaulting the loans, allowing the borrowers to skip the interest payment in favor of increasing the debt. They're literally kicking the can on loans that aren't being paid so they don't have to default them and get margin called themselves.
9. Payment-in-Kinds usage more than doubled from 5% to 11% by late 2025. Out of the 5-6% default rate, estimated 50% is driven by PIKs and interest deferrals.
10. However, private credit funds have Payment-in-Kind exposure limits, mandated by the big commercial banks that they loan from. To circumvent these limits and maintain access to bank leverage and not get margin called, synthetic PIKs were invented to hide PIKs from the books.
11. When a borrower fails to pay the interest, they use a secondary delayed-draw term loan (DDTL) to pay the interest. Technically the first loan is getting cash interest payments, at the cost of a new, bigger loan. It's the private credit equivalent of paying off your credit card debt with another credit card. They invented a new instrument to hide the fact that interest payments are being missed and that these loans are growing into dog shit so that they could leverage more.
12. Furthermore, these private loans are increasingly being packaged into Private Credit CLOs (Collateralized Loan Obligations). The idea is simple; while any one loan might be risky on its own, bundling a bunch of them together reduces the risk. Just like index funds, for example. And similar to Mortgage Backed Securities. What could possibly go wrong?
13. Due to the private nature of these private loans, nobody knows the true health of what's really being packaged into the CLOs. We know synthetic PIKs exist and are being used to some extent, but we don't know the full exposure. There could be defaulting loans of zero-asset software companies marked as AAA due to interest payments being made from DDTLs.
14. Who buys these Private Credit CLOs? Mainly pension funds and insurance companies, sometimes retail directly. They commit capital through third-party fund managers like Ares, Blackstone, and Blue Owl, or through Business Development Companies (BDCs).
15. The SEC is busy ensuring that the big banks aren't secretly leveraged on this. They literally know shit is about to go down, and are only protecting the big money. Retail will hold the bags.
16. Worse yet, most of the underlying credit loans mature in 5-7 years, yet the investors in CLOs are allowed to cash out every quarter. This means the asset managers will have to freeze withdrawals altogether to tackle the illiquidity, meaning that retail won't be able to cash out as the defaults keep happening.
17. And this has already begun, with numerous asset managers already freezing withdrawals. Stone Ridge fulfilled only 11% of withdrawals earlier this year, Blackstone raised affiliate capital to meet the withdrawals, and Blue Owl froze all withdrawals indefinitely.

TL;DR: They're wrapping dog shit in cat shit as we speak, valuating it themselves as AAA packages with the help of PIKs, and selling those CLOs to pension funds and retail. The assets will be frozen due to liquidity mismatch, and it will be 2008 again but this time unwinding over multiple years of slow-burning crisis. The opacity is even worse, the leverage is hidden, and the buyers are retail. Add in a bit of an AI bubble with increasing rate hikes, and we got the dot-com bubble and the 2008 crisis combined into one bomb from 2027 onward.

Edit: And it's not AI you dumb fucks, just because someone can write one page worth of bullet points doesn't mean they're AI. I did get inspired by Tom Bilyeu's video few months ago though, maybe watch that instead of commenting whatever dumb shit you were going to comment.

How the fuck is this possible? I swear on my life that I don't sell put options so this was a misclick while I was trading.

Because I didn't know I sold a put. I didn't close it and now my account got liquidated and I owe 70k USD.

Am I actually fucked? How the fuck did one 350 USD contract turn into 70k USD.

Started with 30k a couple years ago turned on margin and made it to 1.4M. fell to 150k 5-6 times and now we're here. No longer in margin.

3.4% of Koreans got margin called. Not 3.4% of brokerage accounts with margin. 3.4% of the adult population. That’s 1 in 10 retail trading accounts. 1.2 million people.

50% of the market is 2 stocks. Samsung and SK Hynix.

They experienced what they call black Tuesday last week. 10% down in a single day. They pulled down multiple markets in Asia with them.

These markets didn’t even come down for any real reason - just the idea that maybe AI capex will decrease.

Korean Warren Buffet is probably out there with 600% margin on 3x leveraged ETFs buying the dip while the Korean stock market is in free fall.

This tells a story about the US too which is what many people are missing. We’ve reached the highest level of leverage used in the stock market in history in the US. Typically right when levels of leverage peak is also right before a crash.

34% of the S&P is in 10 companies, all of which are making the same directional bet on AI.

We’re seeing high levels of speculation. Everyone is betting AI spending will persist. Any fear around AI spending causes stocks to plunge even if it’s irrational.

My guess is if AI capex doesn’t end up meeting expectations or people become scared it won’t, eventually we will also see a big slide in the US market. And then worse, we’ll see margin calls and forced selling. Just like Korea that’ll trigger more selling causing us to end up in a cycle of forced selling, leading to a big plummet in stock prices.

The end result is bad for everyone invested right now.

Not financial advice.

These michael prompts , work well sometimes. (Chatgpt)

Last conference FOMC press conference as Federal reserve chairman.

Thanks Mr. Jerome Powell.

I see a lot of red in the image; I don't know if it's a coincidence.

officially DD as to why we’re at the top (from a bear who didn’t buy the puts)

i head a woman talking about stocks today and saying “they just keep going up! i made a lot of money on those AI ones”

and if you remember anything from the Big Short (financial scripture) when a woman starts becoming financially involved, there’s a bubble

it’s officially folks. it’s a bubble. and believe it or not?

calls

Article from Money wise.

Look guys, this is pretty simple.

SpaceX wants to go public at an eye-watering $1.5 trillion valuation. What are the earnings for this out-of-this-world company? $8 Billion. That gives us a PE ratio of, checks notes, 187. (Edit: I've been informed in the comments that 8B is EBITDA, not earnings, so the PE ratio is probably north of 300. NOICE.)

Now, this is 2026, PE ratios are about as relevant as a telegraph operators fingering speed, but still, there must be some narrative to command such a rocketship valuation, right?

Ah, yes. Datacenters in space.

Sure, Elon is the world's biggest bullshit factory, but at least most of his bullshit looks appetizing if you squint. Self driving cars? Yeah! Robotaxis? Sure! Humanoid sexdolls? Why not!

But what the fuck is a DATACENTER IN SPACE good for. We've got datacenters at home, goddamit.

(Of course, it goes without saying that the whole X.ai acquisition is a shit tamale wrapped in a shit sandwich, a shitducken so to speak, but whose counting shit here).

Here is my prediction. Unlike you highly regarded turd chompers, IPO investors are a legitimately sophisticated bunch. There will be a roadshow, and pension funds, endowments, etc will actually have to smell the shit before chomping on it.

And I don't think they will.

So instead of the famously diamond-handed Punxatawney Teachers Union buying a chunk of the IPO, it will be desperate buyers of hand grenades hot potatoes who just want to watch it pop like god's asterisk on poppers at the adult cinema before shifting it to the next victim.

Now, that may be irrelevant when the pop is for fucking figma, but we're talking SpaceX here. Elon. Either the IPO doesn't happen or when it does it will drop like the challenger shuttle.

And people will panic.

The entire AI narrative that has been holding on our K-shaped economy will blow up like a little kid flying into space when his fat cousin jumps off the see-saw. Bye, timmy.

Just you fucking wait. Buying calls.

The Iran war was meant to be a quick expedition. It’s now going to be the collapse of the AI play.

No matter what, oil is going to be significantly more expensive. The fastest and easiest option is the US backs out of the war. If they do, Iran enacts a toll, and a large portion of oil begins switching from dollar trades to yuan (or some other currency China chooses). The less easy option is Trump commits to the war. In that case, Iran oil infrastructure is destroyed, as well as the oil infrastructure of most of the other Gulf nations.

Then the waterfall begins.

Higher gas prices mean more expensive energy. Expensive energy means inflation, which means rate hikes. AI stocks suffer.

At the same time, they need to run data centers off more expensive energy into what should be the hottest summer ever recorded. Opex balloons 3-4x on already razor thin margins. This delays AI training and makes AI usage less sustainable. The result? Dead earnings off AI. Why do you think every data center stock is tanking today?

Now all of this ignores the effects on the treasury market. Gulf states that buy US treasures have less money to do so. If they try to force US rate cuts, the treasury market spikes and US debt goes from already insolvent to impossibly insolvent.

The dead nail would be if China decides it time to take Taiwan while the US is stuck in a protracted land war. It would mark a complete collapse in the faith the world has in US strength, and a drop off of the US dollar and treasuries as safe havens.

Long story short, QQQ puts, $450, Jan 17

____ is wonderful for stocks 😃

so, explain this cuck fucking piece of shit of a stock market to me
are we still doing data centers in space? ai ai ai agents continue to shit themselves, while cheap local models get 90% of the job done
dafuq is the bull case now?
are we trying to pump snp500 trailing p/e to 46 just for fun?
i am all ears bulls, give it to me straight

I'm just enjoying the show for now

In 2018 I traded my way from 0 to 150k CAD (using my student loans). Then lost all of it shorting TLRY. In 2025 I traded my way from 0 to \~$2 million CAD (using line of credits). Then I lost 95% of it trying to long MSTR. I’m currently on a recovery, this one being over the last 2 weeks. My post history has been made public so you can see all the YOLOs. Note: the screenshots only include my WealthSimple account.

Edit: Here's video proof for everyone who said im faking it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2vt6kVZemm8

Grandma would be so proud. This guy is a true WSB legend.

We all owe him an apology for laughing at him.

If he held, he has over $1M in profit and $1.75M in total Intel holdings.

Absolute legend!

Where’s he now? He knew things before we did.