Summary: Long oil and energy stocks: physical crude at $144 vs paper $90 gap must close violently as Hormuz blockage is unsolvable; energy stocks most asymmetric trade.

This is the single most important number in global markets right now:

Paper oil settled at $90 on Friday.

Physical oil traded at $144 two weeks ago.

Let me break this down for you...

Dated Brent (the benchmark for actual barrels changing hands in the real world) hit $144.42 on April 7. That's the highest physical crude price since S&P Global Platts started publishing it in 1987. Higher than 2008.

Morgan Stanley's analysts said buyers are paying "an exceptional premium for secure, refinery-usable barrels available now."

Meanwhile, Brent futures have been trading between $84 and $99, swinging 15% in 48 hours based on whatever Iran's foreign minister says on any given morning.

The physical market is pricing a war. The paper market is pricing a peace deal.

One of them is WRONG.

And here's why the PHYSICAL market is right:

230 loaded oil tankers are trapped inside the Persian Gulf. ADNOC's CEO confirmed it.

Strait of Hormuz traffic has dropped over 90%. The ceasefire expires Wednesday and peace talks collapsed in Pakistan over the weekend.

15 to 20 million barrels per day normally move through Hormuz. The only bypass - Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline and the UAE's ADCOP - together handle roughly 9 million. You cannot close a gap that large with infrastructure that doesn't exist.

But here's what REALLY caught my attention...

Containers are flowing. Oil is not.

Maersk published five operational updates in two weeks building an entirely new shipping map. Containers move from the UAE to Khor Fakkan, get trucked through Oman to Sohar and Salalah, shipped to Jeddah, and reconnected to global routes. Saudi Arabia recorded 94,000 outbound trucks to Gulf land borders in 3 weeks. India's Jawaharlal Nehru Port saw container arrivals surge over 700% from February.

34,000 ships rerouted in 4 weeks.

Anything that fits on a truck has already found a workaround.

But crude oil has no workaround.

You cannot load 15 million barrels per day onto trucks. There is no land bridge for hydrocarbons.

The pipelines are maxed. The tankers are parked.

And it doesn't stop at oil:

QatarEnergy declared force majeure on LNG contracts with China, Italy, Belgium, and South Korea after Iranian missiles hit the Ras Laffan complex in March. They've extended it through mid-June.

Japan (sourcing 70% of its Middle East crude through Hormuz) is releasing strategic reserves.

Maersk builds a new map in two weeks. QatarEnergy calls its lawyers.

That's two completely different wars being fought at the same time - one the global supply chain has already solved, and one it cannot.

And paper oil prices are trading like this distinction doesn't exist.

The EIA's base case has Brent peaking at $115 this quarter - assuming the conflict ends in April. Iran's parliament is now drafting a permanent law banning ships from "hostile" nations and imposing tolls on everyone else.

Energy stocks remain the most asymmetric trade in this market.

When paper catches up to physical (and 45 years of experience tells me it always does) the repricing will be VIOLENT.

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Energy stocks remain the most asymmetric trade in this market


Summary: Short OPEN with $1.50 fair value target; argues 50x earnings vs 20x peers means losses even if turnaround succeeds.

structural marker; pre-classified as canonical yfinance ticker

You would agree that the more you overpay for an asset, the lower the return.

For example, if you pay 50x earnings for a stock when comparable valuations imply a fair price of only 20 earnings, then the odds are high that you will lose money.

That is basically $OPEN

That is why I went short at $7.50

That is why I think fair value is $1.50,

EVEN IF THE TURNAROUND IS SUCCESSFUL!!!

@gnoble79 @Stocktwits @open_army_japan @iamjohnbaiano @CapitanSteveo @APompliano @ericjackson @nejatian @philrosenn @rabois @natbrunell @andrewrsorkin If it doubles revenue, it’s not the same business.

Operating leverage flips the math margins expand, book grows, and “expensive” compresses fast.

Calling checkmate before the model scales is premature.


Summary: Author is bearish on BTC, in contrast to Larry's bullish stance.

Thanks Thomas. I hope so too.

But sadly I do not think that will be the case. Larry has become insanely emotional about his $BTC position and says he wishes to have nothing to do with me.

I have done nothing to deserve such vitriol.

Instead, I have merely expressed my opinion on $BTC - he is bullish, I am bearish. I may well be wrong - it wouldn’t be the first time, nor will it be the last.

But regardless, that is no  reason for Larry to act out with such vicious hate.

This reminds me of partisan identity politics.

It is uncalled for.

It is ugly.

It is just wrong.

I know Larry is a good guy.

I know he is better than this.

I know he was not raised this way.

The matter is out of my hands.

This is all on him.

Perhaps one day Larry will calm down and realize that it is emotions, not anything I have said or done, that is the real problem here.

I will continue to conduct myself with civility and respect in my discourse with Larry. I only ask that Larry would do likewise.

I am only responsible for my words and behavior, not his.

I wish @LawrenceLepard well.

@QTRResearch

@gnoble79 George, I hope you and Larry patch things up.


Summary: Bearish TSLA: earnings collapsed 80%, delivery declines, robotaxi hype undelivered, 15x revenue valuation absurd; fair value ~$50.

The $TSLA earnings call and guidance were an epic disaster.

Earnings estimates have collapsed by 80% over the last three years.

Auto deliveries will decline for a third consecutive year in 2026.

Robotaxis have not received the required state government approvals as Tesla has been unable to achieve level four FSD.

On May 28 the new Texas DMV laws will take effect, putting an end to the loophole by which $TSLA has put a few robotaxis on the road in a publicity stunt. It will be many years before paid robotaxi rides are able to contribute any significant revenue, by which time I expect self driving cars will be commoditized and widely available.

Tesla derives 87% of revenues from autos and auto related services.
(Oh, but it’s not an auto company;))
15x revenues and a market cap of $1.5t more than adequately reflects any possible contributions from unproven fnascent businesses like cybercabs and Optimus.

Over the last four years $TSLA the stock is flat and has massively underperformed the market.

$TSLA is the biggest bubble at scale in stock market history.

Car crash in progress. Fair value is perhaps $50.

Epic wealth destruction coming soon to a theater near you.

Thank you for attention to this matter. @BradMunchen @GordonJohnson19 @RealJimChanos @TeslaBoomerMama @DivesTech @munster_gene @garyblack00


Summary: Short Allbirds/NewBird AI as a fraudulent AI pivot with no real business; long gold and silver as real-value alternatives.

This shoe company just became an AI infrastructure provider overnight.

And the stock went up almost 600%.

Let me explain why this is so ridiculous and concerning:

Allbirds - the wool sneaker brand once worshipped by Silicon Valley - announced it is selling its shoe business for $39 million and rebranding itself as "NewBird AI."

A "fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider."

Those are their words. Not mine.

A company with ZERO experience in semiconductors.

ZERO experience in data centers.

ZERO experience in cloud infrastructure.

ZERO customers.

ZERO GPUs on hand.

The stock closed Tuesday at $2.49. It opened Wednesday and shot up to nearly $22. A 582% move in one session.

The funding? A $50 million convertible from an unnamed institutional investor. Subject to shareholder approval on May 18.

That's it. That's literally the entire transformation.

Sell the shoes for $39 million. Take $50 million from somebody willing to hand it over. Add "AI" to the name. Watch retail traders lose their minds.

This reminds me of an older story:

In December 2017, a beverage company called Long Island Iced Tea Corp. announced it was changing its name to "Long Blockchain Corp." and pivoting to crypto.

The stock jumped nearly 300% in a single day. Trading volume up 1,000%.

But they had no blockchain business. No blockchain employees. No blockchain anything.

14 months later, NASDAQ delisted them. The SEC eventually charged 3 people with insider trading on the name change itself.

The company never filed another financial report. The blockchain business never existed.

It’s the same playbook, only with a different buzzword.

And here is what should worry every serious investor:

Allbirds once traded above $600 a share. It was valued at roughly $4 billion in 2021.

The shoe business they just sold for $39 million.

That is a 99% wipeout of real operating value, from a real company selling real products.

But the moment they stapled "AI" to the shell, retail traders bid the market cap up by $127 million in a single day.

Buying what, exactly?

A press release. A $50 million IOU. A NAME change.

When a dying retailer can create 9 figures of "value" by announcing it will buy GPUs it does not own, from suppliers it has no relationships with, to serve customers it does not have - you are no longer looking at a market.

Hyperscalers are spending $380 billion a year on real AI infrastructure and most of the buyers still cannot measure a return. And now we are pricing a wool sock company as a neocloud.

This is how late-cycle tops feel from the inside. Not with a crash. With absurdity.

Long Blockchain Corp. was not a business. It was a warning.

Allbirds-to-NewBird-AI is the same warning but louder.

Own real cash flow. Own gold. Own silver. Own companies that make things people actually buy.

Not stupid hype.


Summary: Short OPEN (Opendoor Technologies).

@Akhiles82130535 @BitcoinAIGuy @mikealfred SHORT $OPEN

@BitcoinAIGuy What about $OPEN @mikealfred


Summary: Long US utilities (esp. Dominion, Entergy) as picks-and-shovels AI power play; skeptical/bearish on Big Tech hyperscalers facing grid constraints.

XLU is the primary US utilities sector ETF

"The limiting factor for AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power."

That was Elon Musk in a conversation with Larry Fink during his first-ever appearance at Davos.

And it's the most honest thing anyone in Big Tech has said in a while.

Forget the hype about superintelligence and robots.

Forget the promises about productivity gains that CFOs still can't measure.

The bottleneck is power. And that bottleneck is very real.

Here's why & how to position yourself to make the most out of this:

We're producing more chips than we can turn on.

AI chip production is increasing exponentially. US electricity generation is growing 3-4% annually.

The math doesn't work.

US data center power demand is expected to hit 75.8 gigawatts in 2026, up from 61.8 gigawatts in 2025. By 2030, it could reach 134 gigawatts.

The largest US grid operator, PJM, expects to add 31 gigawatts of data center load over the next five years.

But only 28 gigawatts of new generation capacity is planned.

The deficit is already here.

Residential electricity rates near data centers have jumped as much as 267% compared to five years ago. Regular Americans are subsidizing Silicon Valley's power consumption.

Whether AI delivers on its big promises or not, the electricity bills are coming due right now.

Elon made another point that deserves attention:

China is solving the energy problem while America talks about AI miracles.

He noted China's solar deployment is "tremendous."

And that's an understatement.

I verified the numbers. They're insane:

China installed 275 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first 11 months of 2025. That's more than the ENTIRE installed solar capacity of the United States.

In May 2025 alone, China added 93 gigawatts. Roughly 100 panels every second.

For the first time in history, a single country surpassed 1,000 gigawatts of total solar capacity.

China added more solar in one month than America has built in its entire history...

But this ISN'T about climate policy. It's about strategic positioning.

China understands something Wall Street is ignoring: whoever controls the energy infrastructure controls the next era of computing.

While American investors chase the latest AI stock, China is building the power grid that will actually run the technology.

My take:

The data center buildout will fall short of expectations.

Big Tech wants trillions in infrastructure. The grid can't deliver it. Not at this pace. Not with 3-4% annual electricity growth against exponential demand projections.

Something has to give.

Either the buildout slows dramatically, or electricity prices spike to levels that destroy the economics of the entire AI story.

The AI trade has been built on the assumption that infrastructure will materialize to meet demand. That assumption is looking increasingly shaky.

BUT the companies selling power to Big Tech win either way.

Scarcity means pricing power. Utilities don't need AI to cure cancer. They just need hyperscalers to keep signing power agreements. And they are.

Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet spent ~$350B in 2025 on data centers. That money flows to utilities and grid infrastructure whether AI changes the world or not.

US utilities are forecasting a ~6% jump in capital expenditures to $228B in 2026. Cumulative utility capex is expected to surpass $1.1T through 2029.

Dominion Energy is investing $50B through 2029, projecting 5-7% annual earnings growth. Entergy plans $41B between 2026 and 2029, targeting more than 8% compound annual earnings growth.

These aren't speculative bets on AI changing everything...

They're regulated utilities with contracted demand and predictable cash flows.

So beware the AI story.

The productivity miracle remains unproven. The physical constraints are becoming impossible to ignore.

But the picks-and-shovels play? THAT'S where the smart money is looking.

The hyperscalers have to pay their electricity bills. I'd rather own the companies collecting them.

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Dominion Energy is investing $50B through 2029, projecting 5-7% annual earnings growth


Entergy plans $41B between 2026 and 2029, targeting more than 8% compound annual earnings growth

Entergy Corporation trades as ETR on NYSE


Summary: Bearish private credit/PE sector and key players (Blue Owl, KKR, Blackstone, Apollo) as redemption halts signal systemic stress akin to 2007 subprime early dominoes.

Remember this scene in The Big Short?

Jamie Shipley and Charlie Geller have bet everything against the housing market.

They've been bleeding for months, wondering if they're wrong.

Then they flip on CNN and see it: New Century Financial - the second-largest subprime lender in America - has filed for bankruptcy.

"It's starting."

That was April 2, 2007. New Century wasn't the crisis. It was 1% of the problem. But it was the first domino.

4 months later, BNP Paribas froze 3 funds citing "complete evaporation of liquidity." 18 months after that, Lehman was dead.

I'd encourage you to watch that scene today. Because we JUST got our New Century moment in private credit:

Blue Owl Capital - $307 billion in assets under management - just permanently halted investor redemptions at its retail private credit fund, OBDC II.

Investors will NEVER AGAIN redeem shares from this fund.

On January 25th, I wrote that private credit was showing cracks at the exact moment Wall Street wanted to open it up to your 401(k).

3 weeks later, here we are.

The timeline follows a pattern anyone who's been around markets long enough recognizes:

Through the first 9 months of 2025, OBDC II investors withdrew $150 million - up 20% year over year.

Meanwhile, Blue Owl execs publicly assured investors there was "no meaningful pressure" on their asset base.

But there was. And they're now facing a federal class-action lawsuit for saying otherwise.

In November, they attempted a merger that would have forced OBDC II investors into a publicly traded fund trading at a 20% discount to NAV. Effectively confiscating a fifth of their capital.

Blue Owl's own CFO conceded investors "could take a potential haircut." The stock dropped 11% in 8 days. They killed the deal.

Now they've abandoned the pretense entirely. PERMANENT halt. Fire-selling $1.4 billion in loans across three funds.

Investors get roughly 30% of NAV back through quarterly distributions - on Blue Owl's schedule, not theirs.

One delightful detail:

Blue Owl's co-CEOs have pledged $1.9 billion of their OWN company shares as collateral for personal loans - proceeds used, in part, to acquire the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The stock is down 33% this year. That collateral has literally shed $260 million since January.

Founders leveraging company stock for hockey teams while retail investors queue up for their own money. Wall Street's version of noblesse oblige.

But here's what matters:

This isn't about Blue Owl.

Blue Owl is a symptom.

The disease is a $3.4 TRILLION private credit industry built on opacity, conflicts of interest, and the polite fiction that illiquid assets can offer liquid redemptions.

Morningstar DBRS reports the trailing default rate has risen to 4%, up from 2.8% a year ago.

Downgrades outpacing upgrades. Outlook negative. UBS warns defaults could reach 13% if AI disrupts the software companies making up 17% of BDC loan portfolios.

Payment-in-kind loans (where borrowers can't pay cash interest and simply pile it onto the debt) have surged past 11% of BDC income.

When your borrowers are paying you with IOUs, the word "income" deserves quotation marks.

And the government's response?

Open YOUR 401(k) to private credit.

Trump's executive order directed regulators to do exactly that.

They want to "democratize" an asset class whose flagship retail product just permanently locked investors out.

The KKRs. The Blackstones. The Apollos. Everyone loaded up on private credit is exposed.

When the tide goes out, you find out who's swimming naked.

In April 2007, New Century went bankrupt.

Most of the financial world shrugged. 17 months later, Lehman made the point impossible to ignore.

And Blue Owl permanently halted redemptions TODAY.

AVOID PRIVATE CREDIT

AVOID PRIVATE EQUITY

Because it's starting...

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I will short more on any pop in the stock price. I expect the numbers to significantly undershoot consensus expectations. I believe the odds favor a poor January for $TSLA stock.

Summary: Short TSLA: plans to add shorts on pops, expects Q4 deliveries to undershoot consensus, and sees poor January ahead.

Do not be surprised if $TSLA announces the launching of paid (driverless) robotaxis in Texas in the company days. However, I anticipate this will be a completely staged event should it occur. I will short more on any pop in the stock price.

I would expect the number of rides offered to be minimal.
The photo op may involve a celebrity or employees. This will be a complete Fugazi, as $TSLA has yet to demonstrate the required level 4 autonomy to the Texas regulator and is not legally allowed to operate paid driverless robotaxis without such.
$TSLA will be subject to enormous legal liability if a serious accident occurs.

The motivation for @elonmusk to pull such a stunt is simple - that way he can make the hollow claim that he made good on his promise of paid driverless robotaxis by year end. But he has a long history of faking events!

Looking beyond this, $TSLA will be announcing 4q deliveries in early January. I expect the numbers to significantly undershoot consensus expectations. I would also anticipate that some investors will take profits in the new year, having delayed making any sale owing to tax considerations.
While I normally refrain from making short term calls, I believe the odds favor a poor January for $TSLA stock.

I may well be wrong - this is just idle speculation on my part. DYOR.

@BradMunchen @GordonJohnson19

https://t.co/DVVyFzR9BL…

Please sign up for my substack as I will be posting more value added content there.

THE ENDLESS LIES OF @elonmusk
$TSLA

But hey, wait until next year!


I am short from $7.5. Fair value is MUCH lower. The stock remains grossly overvalued. I believe the stock will go much lower in the coming months. $OPEN fair value is $1.50 IMHO.

Summary: Short OPEN from $7.5 with $1.50 fair value target; grossly overvalued, loss-making, low-margin house flipper on 18x adjusted revenues.

I have no special insight about the upcoming OPEN earnings release, nor do I really care - I am short from $7.5.
Fair value is MUCH lower. The stock remains grossly overvalued. $OPEN has lost every year since inception and remains a low margin, asset heavy house flipper selling on 18x adjusted revenues.

@nejatian will undoubtedly try to spin things as much as possible.
Any “beat” should be discounted as they set a very low bar for sales and earnings.
Let’s see if he reveals anything new of substance.

So many haters told me I had to cover

- when the warrants were issued

- when 3q earnings were released

- when the short interest was high

- when various new management        appointments were announced

- when @ericjackson hyped his  $82 price target on the following shows:

@cvpayne
@APompliano
@natbrunell
@philrosenn
@Downtown
@baystreetamber
@AnnBerry_NYC
@KyleReidhead
@carlquintanilla
@YahooFinance
@CNBC

WRONG WRONG AND WRONG

To all of media friends, why do you platform Eric? He is guilty of analytical malpractice and unethical, reckless promotion. He has hurt countless individual investors.

Why do you aid and abet such irresponsible behavior?

Shame on you.

I believe the stock will go much lower in the coming months. $OPEN fair value is
$1.50 IMHO.

@DougKass @m3_melody @dayetweets @RealJimChanos

@gnoble79 What do you think for $OPEN tomorrow after earnings?


Summary: Debasement trade intact; buy gold/silver after leverage flush completes, with miners offering better risk/reward than physical metals.

Friday's 26% crash in silver and 9% drop in gold has everyone asking if the debasement trade is dead.

It's not even close.

The selling continued today. Gold fell to $4,544. Silver dropped to $76.

Total damage from Thursday's highs: Gold down about $1,060 (≈19%) from $5,608. Silver down about 37% from $121.

The algorithms sold on a name: Kevin Warsh.

Wall Street's narrative was simple. Warsh is a "lifetime hawk." Hawks raise rates. Hawks defend the dollar. Hawks kill gold.

But did anyone actually listen to what Warsh has been saying?

In his Fox News interview with Larry Kudlow - the one that likely got him the job - Warsh said this:

"Why can't we take the target rate from 4 to 2? So we can lower interest rates a lot, and in so doing, get 30-year fixed-rate mortgages so they're affordable."

Read that again. The "hawk" wants to slash rates by 200 basis points into a "booming" economy.

That's not hawkish. That's pouring gasoline on a bonfire.

He also said the Fed needs to "take their balance sheet down and redeploy that money to Main Street."

Mechanically, that's incoherent.

 äYou can't shrink the balance sheet AND redirect that money. The money gets destroyed in quantitative tightening.

The bond market noticed the contradiction.

The 2-year Treasury yield FELL after the Warsh announcement. If traders believed he'd be hawkish, yields would have RISEN.

Instead, futures priced in MORE rate cuts.

The bond market thinks Warsh will cut aggressively. And why wouldn't he?

He just watched the DOJ serve Powell with grand jury subpoenas. Criminal investigation. All because Powell wouldn't cut rates fast enough.

Warsh's worst nightmare is Trump turning on him the same way.

More rate cuts + sticky inflation = the debasement trade accelerating, not ending

Now let's put the carnage in perspective:

Silver's crash - the worst since 1980 - took prices back to mid-January.

Gold's plunge? Back to January 22nd. Ten days of gains.

The rally was so extreme that this bone-jarring drop barely scratched the surface.

The structural accelerants are everywhere.

China suspended trading on five commodity funds. The premium on one silver fund had hit 60% over NAV. The CME hiked gold margins to 8% and silver to 15% - effective today.

When the exchange demands more collateral, forced selling begins.

This was leverage unwinding. Hot money getting flushed. Tourists carried out on stretchers.

The structural case hasn't changed.

The US borrowed $602 billion in just the first three months of fiscal 2026. $7 billion per day.

Interest on the debt hit $1.2 trillion annually.

Central banks see what's coming. Global official gold reserves now exceed foreign holdings of Treasuries for the first time since the 1990s.

The debasement trade isn't about who chairs the Fed.

IT'S ABOUT MATH

And if Warsh actually executes the plan he outlined on Fox News - slashing rates to 2% - gold at $4,500 is going to look like the bargain of the century.

But don't rush to buy the dip.

The metals got way overbought. Recent momentum buyers who piled in with leverage may still be forced to puke. No telling how far down this goes.

Let the market tell you where the bottom is. Then buy.

And when you do - favor the equities over the metals. The miners have lagged badly and offer better risk/reward from here.

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Let the market tell you where the bottom is. Then buy


favor the equities over the metals. The miners have lagged badly and offer better risk/reward from here


Extremely bearish is more like it. 418k deliveries 4q 2025 represents a decline of 15% from 4q 2024. Tesla is now x growth. I expect deliveries to fall again in 2026.

Summary: Bearish TSLA: deliveries down 15% YOY in Q4, growth story over, expects further delivery declines in 2026.

@Gfilche @Tesla Extremely bearish is more like it.
418k deliveries 4q 2025 represents a decline of 15% from 4q 2024. YOY is the proper way to measure progress.
Tesla is now x growth.
I expect deliveries to fall again in 2026. https://t.co/jdYvUAJaUJ

extremely bullish print on Q4 deliveries from @Tesla ⚡

418K cars

far higher than Q1 or Q2 of this year. will make $TSLA comfortably profitable

additionally, energy deployed set another record, will continue to drive meaningful earnings growth 🦾 https://t.co/nQHRzRGzmb


Summary: Sum-of-parts analysis values TSLA at ~$80/share vs $438 close; calls current price wildly overvalued across auto, robotaxi, Optimus, and energy segments.

About that $TSLA sum of the parts valuation…

Boston Dynamics is estimated to be worth $5B. Figure AI recently raised money at a valuation of $39B.

Both are far ahead of $TSLA in the development of robots.

Generously imputing the Figure AI valuation to Optimus would imply a value of $12 per $TSLA share.

Waymo is rumored to be going public at a $100B valuation. Imputing a similar valuation to robotaxis would imply a value of $30 per $TSLA share.

Looking at comparables, the declining $TSLA automotive business is worth maybe $60B, or $18 per $TSLA share.

Again looking at comparables, energy
is worth perhaps $20 per share.

All in that sums to a total valuation
of $80 per $TSLA share. The stock
closed at $438.07 on Friday.

While not precise, this back of the envelope calculation is far more realistic than the fanciful/irresponsible figures cited by the narrative promoting $TSLA momentum investors who worship at the alter of price.

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

Ben Graham, please call your office.

@FredLambert @BradMunchen @GordonJohnson19 @DougKass @zerohedge @unusual_whales @WallStreetApes @wallstreetbets @WallStreetMav @JG_Nuke @RealDanODowd @HedgeyeIndstrls
@SawyerMerritt @Teslaconomics
@mayemusk @teslaownersSV

PS - I was once a waiter. I do tip generously.

@gnoble79 @BradMunchen Are you purposely ignoring Optimus? If you think it's genuinely only worth 1.4 trillion you are undervaluing labor by a huge factor. I bet you never tip


Summary: SPR release won't fix structural Hormuz-driven supply gap; go long oil, energy stocks, gold, and silver as the smart-money play for the next 90+ days.

THE G7 IS ABOUT TO MAKE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE IN ENERGY MARKET HISTORY

This morning, G7 finance ministers are holding an emergency call to discuss dumping 300-400 million barrels from strategic petroleum reserves onto the market.

They think this will fix $108 oil.

But it won't. Let me explain why:

Let's do the math that nobody on CNBC will do for you.

Global oil consumption runs approximately 103 million barrels per day. The Strait of Hormuz closure has removed somewhere between 4 and 6 million barrels per day from available supply.

That's happening RIGHT NOW.

Iraq has already cut 1.5 million barrels per day because it literally ran out of storage space. Kuwait is cutting production. Bahrain declared force majeure.

So take 400 million barrels - the high end of what they're discussing - and divide it by the daily supply gap.

You get roughly 67 to 100 days of coverage.

Two to three months.

That's it. That's the whole plan.

And then what?

You can't release reserves you've already released.

The market figured this out in about 4 hours.

Oil spiked over 20% overnight, the G7 leak hit the wires, and prices pulled back to... still up 12-15%.

Traders looked at the arithmetic and said: "Thanks, but that doesn't solve anything."

And they're right.

Here's the part that should terrify you:

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve sits at roughly 411 million barrels.

That sounds like a lot until you remember it held 727 million barrels at its peak.

The previous administration drained 180 million barrels in 2022 to fight $90 oil. That release bought consumers about 18 cents per gallon of relief.

THIS disruption is structurally larger, geographically more dangerous, and has no visible end date.

In 2022, the threat was Russian supply being redirected. Tankers still moved. Alternatives existed. The Strait of Hormuz was wide open.

Today, the world's most critical energy chokepoint is effectively closed. And that not by a naval blockade but by insurance companies refusing to cover ships transiting it.

And the political situation just got worse, not better.

The conditions for oil to return to pre-war levels require the Strait to reopen, Iraqi production to restore, and Gulf shipping insurance to normalize.

NONE of those conditions are achievable through reserve releases. They require the conflict to end or dramatically de-escalate.

Nothing happening right now suggests either outcome.

For 45 years I've watched governments try to solve structural supply problems with temporary demand-side gimmicks. It never works.

It didn't work in the 1970s when Nixon tried price controls. It didn't work in 2022 when Biden drained the SPR. And it won't work now.

Strategic reserves exist for genuine emergencies.

This IS a genuine emergency. But using 25-30% of the world's total strategic stockpile (roughly a third of the entire 1.2 billion barrel IEA reserve) when the underlying crisis has no resolution in sight isn't strategy...

It's PANIC.

The smart money isn't waiting for G7 announcements.

They're looking at what happens in 90 days when the reserves are depleted, the Strait is still closed, and the new Supreme Leader is still in power:

Energy stocks. Gold. Silver. Real assets that don't depend on politicians solving a military conflict with a spreadsheet.

The G7 can release every barrel they have. It doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It doesn't bring stability to Iran. It doesn't fix a 4-6 million barrel per day supply gap that grows wider every week.

Arithmetic doesn't care about press conferences.

And neither should you.

---

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Energy stocks. Gold. Silver. Real assets that don't depend on politicians solving a military conflict with a spreadsheet

XLE is the primary US energy equity sector ETF


Summary: Bearish IREN on significant upcoming share dilution.

@JG_Nuke @RealJimChanos @daChartLife @davevermilion @MichaelMOTTCM @OHare888 @LynAldenContact @APompliano Well played! While you picked the wrong company, the judges declare that you have the right idea.

The answer is shares outstanding of $IREN !

No small matter that there will be a ton of more shares forthcoming.

@gnoble79 @RealJimChanos @daChartLife @davevermilion @MichaelMOTTCM @OHare888 @LynAldenContact @APompliano $MSTR shares outstanding?


Summary: Confirms active short position in Tesla.

@gnoble79 Then short Tesla if you're truly convinced.


Summary: OPEN is very overvalued at 6x book and 20x revenues; bearish fundamental verdict.

@6zapdos6 $OPEN is very overvalued.
6x book value and 20x revenues!!!


Nobody explained why a company with shrinking revenue deserves a $1.5 trillion market cap. Nobody made the case for 300x earnings on a business that just discontinued two of its flagship vehicles. And every great bubble in financial history has looked exactly like this in its final innings.

Summary: Bearish TSLA: shrinking revenue, 300x earnings, $1.5T cap unjustified, compares to historic bubbles in their final innings.

More than 800 comments.

Plenty of people agreeing and bringing up even more points.

But look at the ones disagreeing.

Not one argument. Not one number. Not one counter-thesis.

Just insults and recycled claims I literally debunk in the post.

That's the entire case for Tesla in 2026.

I spent 45 years on Wall Street. I worked as Peter Lynch's assistant at Fidelity. I ran the #1 mutual fund in the country in 1984. I founded two hedge funds that each crossed a billion dollars. I've watched the Nifty Fifty, the 1987 crash, the Japan bubble, the dot-com mania, and 2008 play out in real time.

And the most sophisticated response the Tesla cult can bring up is a slur.

But what NO ONE did in these comments:

Nobody challenged a delivery number. Nobody defended the 50,000 vehicle inventory gap. Nobody explained why a company with shrinking revenue deserves a $1.5 trillion market cap. Nobody addressed the 38% sequential collapse in energy storage deployments. Nobody made the case for 300x earnings on a business that just discontinued two of its flagship vehicles.

And none of the dozens of other arguments.

BECAUSE THEY CAN'T

They don't own Tesla because they ran a DCF. They own it because a billionaire on social media told them to.

This is nothing more than a fan club with a brokerage account.

And every great bubble in financial history has looked exactly like this in its final innings.

Tulip traders didn't debate horticulture. Pets .com shareholders didn't model unit economics. Bear Stearns clients didn't stress-test the mortgage book.

They got angry at anyone who asked questions. They called the skeptics names. They treated doubt as heresy.

Then the math showed up like it ALWAYS DOES.

I don't need anyone in my replies to agree with me. I'm writing down what I see and letting the scoreboard do the talking.

Energy up 24% this year. Gold at all-time highs. Since I called Valaris and Tidewater on December 24, VAL is up 65% and TDW is up 50%.

The unglamorous, "boring", cash-generating corners of the market have been DESTROYING the crowded narrative trades.

Meanwhile the people screaming at me are down 14% YTD and holding.

Who's the delusional one here?

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the https://t.co/f0V8Za3yri


Summary: Short OPEN from $7.5; stock grossly overvalued at 18x adj. revenues with no profits; PT $1.50 in coming months.

I have no special insight about the upcoming OPEN earnings release, nor do I really care - I am short from $7.5.
Fair value is MUCH lower. The stock remains grossly overvalued. $OPEN has lost every year since inception and remains a low margin, asset heavy home flipper selling on 18x adjusted revenues.

@nejatian will undoubtedly try to spin things as much as possible.
Any “beat” should be discounted as they set a very low bar for sales and earnings.
Let’s see if he reveals anything new of substance.

So many haters told me I had to cover

- when the warrants were issued

- when 3q earnings were released

- when the short interest was high

- when various new management        appointments were announced

- when @ericjackson hyped his  $82 price target on on the following shows:

@cvpayne
@APompliano
@natbrunell
@philrosenn
@Downtown
@baystreetamber
@AnnBerry_NYC
@KyleReidhead
@carlquintanilla
@YahooFinance
@CNBC

WRONG WRONG AND WRONG

To all of media friends, why do you platform Eric?
He is guilty of analytical malpractice and unethical, reckless promotion.
He has hurt countless individual investors. Why do you aid and abet such irresponsible behavior?
Shame on you.

I believe the stock will go much lower in the coming months. $OPEN fair value is
$1.50 IMHO.

@DougKass @m3_melody @dayetweets @RealJimChanos

@gnoble79 What do you think for $OPEN tomorrow after earnings?


$BTC bro. You are done. Cooked. Toast. EL finito. You can't defend the valuation. Nobody can.

Summary: Decisive bearish call on BTC: run is over, no defensible valuation, momentum gone, hype-driven narrative exhausted.

$BTC bro.

You are done.

Cooked.

Toast.

EL finito.

You had a hell of a run - well played.

But now it is game over.

It always was based on hype, not fundamentals.

Now that the mo is gone, all you are left with is the chart and narrative.

You can’t defend the valuation. Nobody can.

Four year cycle, stock to flow, digital gold - what is the next BS narrative?

I can’t wait for the haters to go nuts in their responses to this post.

The ad hominem attacks, the profanity, the hate - that is the way you roll.

Are you capable of fact based, civil discourse? Most unlikely.

Or will you just embarrass yourselves because you can’t be polite.

It will be my pleasure to block every single one of you.

The X audience will delight in your display of hate and ignorance

This will be glorious.

Well, that escalated quickly.

Number no go up no more.

Digital gold they said.

Store of value they said.

Medium of exchange they said.

So much for the stock to flow model.

It always about narrative and momentum.

You were warned.

Have fun getting poor.  $BTC #Bitcoin https://t.co/MOMbWWoZEL


Summary: Still bearish OPEN despite 40% decline; calls it wildly overvalued and advises to exit.

You got bagged by @ericjackson .You are still in denial.
$OPEN has already declined by 40% but still remains wildly overvalued. My invaluable investment advice remains to desert from the $OPEN army. I am sure you soul agree that it is important to call out bad actors and charlatans. @ericjackson is an odious, opportunistic, financially illiterate carnival barker who belongs in jail. Your ire should more properly be directed  at him.

@gnoble79 @rabois I’ll say it again... It’s really disturbing how you want to see the downfall of such a transformational company.. Instead of supporting them, potentially sharing invaluable advice from your investment years, you glee and hope for a bad demise.. It’s borderline evil!..


New year, same story. You know what to do.

Summary: Endorses bearish thesis on quantum computing stocks; implies these names should be sold/shorted given physics constraints on scaling.

Another gem from Sabine Hossenfelder - breaking down why several leading researchers and physicists argue that quantum computers may never actually work at scale.

$IONQ $RGTI $QBTS $QUBT

But sure, ignore the physics and take your favourite X account’s word for it.

For


$BTC - game over IMHO. Over the last year gold soared and risk assets performed well. Nevertheless, Bitcoin tanked. That is a "tell."

Summary: Bearish BTC: institutionalization killed volatility/returns, performance lagged gold/risk assets over past year — author calls it game over.

As I have been saying, the institutionalization of $BTC is a negative, not a positive as it results in lower volatility.

As a wholly  captured tradfi asset, the returns going forward will be much lower than in the past.

Thus my description of $BTC as the Facebook of speculative assets.
Like Facebook, $BTC is for boomers.

This is a very fundamental change that $BTC acolytes refuse to address.

Instead they respond with vulgarity and hostility.

Over the last year gold soared and risk assets performed well. Nevertheless, Bitcoin tanked.

That is a “tell.”

$BTC bro, denial  is not the name of a river in Egypt.

$BTC - game over IMHO.

I am interested to hear thoughtful rebuttals. However, replies with personal attacks, insults or profanity will earn an automatic block.

@LawrenceLepard @MoneyPrinter @LukeGromen @Convertbond @biancoresearch


Summary: Expects TSLA to meaningfully miss Q4 delivery consensus, citing Troy Teslike's 406k forecast; bearish into the print.

Troy Teslike has consistently been the most accurate forecaster of $TSLA deliveries. His most recent prediction is for only 406k in 4q. I expect $TSLA will meaningfully undershoot the lowered consensus number. @SawyerMerritt @zerohedge @elonmusk @jasondebolt @DougKass

This is highly unusual for $TSLA to send out a press release with quarterly consensus delivery estimates. Interestingly, Bloomberg consensus, which tends to be stale since it is depends on analysts updating their estimates in a timely manner, shows a 4Q delivery consensus of


Summary: Bearish TSLA; fundamentals imploding per author's podcast thesis.

New podcast is out!

Revealing the truth behind Tesla - and why the fundamentals are IMPLODING.

I don’t see many people talking about this.

Check it out:
https://t.co/AEabv65tqq


Summary: Author values TSLA at $50 fair value, implying significant downside from current levels.

@OldBull58322044 @thedave2006 You misunderstood.
Zero refers to robotaxis.
$50 would be fair value for the stock.

@gnoble79 @thedave2006 Have fun
..you may get 200 points from 475
..'great trade'...but hardly a short to zero...you are a complete idiot to think that. I today's markets
..50% to 75% 'swings' happen in even very large cap stocks without the underlying equity being 'indefensible' or 'fake'
..look at


Summary: TSLA is a core short; author urges pressing the short position, endorsing the ~$52/share intrinsic value thesis.

YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.

$TSLA remains a core short for me.
PRESS IT!

Why are $TSLA bears celebrating this? Assuming ALL OF $TSLA's biz segs are the best in the world (WHICH IS NOT TRUE) currently, the stock is worth ~$52.34/shr, meaning the market is still giving $TSLA an additional ~$1.197T in value for a robotaxi biz that doesn't exist! https://t.co/DquHtXcsIX


I'm here to tell you the thesis hasn't changed. Not one bit. If you look at gold relative to inflation, money supply, or GDP, numbers like $6,000, $8,000, even $10,000 aren't fantasy.

Summary: Still bullish gold to $6K-$10K on fiscal deterioration; gold miners compelling at 10x earnings with $3K+/oz margins and retail not yet arrived.

In May 2025 I went on a show and said "you cannot be bullish enough on gold."

Gold was $3,300.

Today it's knocking on $5,000.

That's 50% in nine months.

The gold miners ETF finished 2025 up 155%. Junior miners up 178%.

But I'm not here to gloat.

I'm here to tell you the thesis hasn't changed. Not one bit.

People keep asking me: "George, when are you turning bearish on gold?"

I'll turn bearish on gold when I can turn bullish on the value of money.

I'll turn bearish on gold when governments start running sensible monetary policy.

I'll turn bearish on gold when the US budget deficit isn't running at nearly 7% of GDP.

Show me any of those things happening right now.

YOU CAN'T

The price of gold isn't going up. The value of money is going down. Gold is just the mirror.

And here's what still gets me excited:

Gold miners are realizing prices near $5,000 an ounce with all-in sustaining costs around $1,600.

That's $3,000+ per ounce in margin.

The earnings surprises coming out of the next few quarters are going to be massive. Major gold stocks are trading at 10x earnings.

Meanwhile, American retail investors still haven't shown up.

ETF holdings are lower than they were years ago.

This entire rally has been driven by central banks and institutions.

When US retail finally arrives, that's when it gets really interesting.

If you look at gold relative to inflation, money supply, or GDP, numbers like $6,000, $8,000, even $10,000 aren't fantasy.

You don't need to believe in a Banana Republic scenario to own gold miners.

You just need to believe the fiscal trajectory of every major government is unsustainable.

---

https://t.co/BbM6Eki4Tr


Gold miners are realizing prices near $5,000 an ounce with all-in sustaining costs around $1,600. That's $3,000+ per ounce in margin. The earnings surprises coming out of the next few quarters are going to be massive. Major gold stocks are trading at 10x earnings.


Summary: BTC in a bear market until proven otherwise; explicit sell call.

Total nonsense. Andy’s post. $BTC  is in a bear market until proven otherwise. SELL is not a four letter word.


Summary: Strongly bullish precious metals from here; forward-looking conviction despite past gains.

GLTR tracks broad precious metals basket

Neither your view nor mine is new or unique. I do not like taking victory laps. As my former mentor Peter Lynch would always say, “Mr. Market does not know know or care about your cost basis.”  The more important issue is where do we go from here? I believe precious metals are going MUCH higher.

@gnoble79 Ah George, it’s been in play for awhile. Remember my whole “dollar debasement, devaluation, devaluation” thesis when you interviewed me last year?

And that METALS ARE THE NEW OIL™

And that labor market was way weak under surface setting up for RECESSION INTO ALL TIME HIGHS™


Summary: High-conviction short on TSLA, disagreeing with Burry's non-short stance.

$TSLA is a high conviction short for me. I may be wrong (wouldn��t be the first time) DYOR.

Michael Burry says he’s not shorting Tesla.


STAY SHORT $TSLA ... I am short at an average price of $473. 2026 may well be the year that $TSLA collapses as sales and earnings plummet

Summary: Short TSLA at avg $473; expects 2026 collapse on declining unit sales, loss of EV credits, robotaxi delays, and earnings implosion.

STAY SHORT $TSLA

The $TSLA chart is now rolling over, last sale $436. $TSLA acolytes that worship at the alter of momentum may now be inclined to head for the exits. The 200 day moving average is 360. Will fundamentals and valuation finally prevail over narrative?

I believe that unit sales will decline in 2026 for a third consecutive year.
EV credits will also go away - $TSLA earned an estimated $1.9b from this source in 2025.
The company may well lose money this year.
I expect Musk to continue to move the goal posts on robotaxis as he has done for the last 10 years. Most all experts agree that it ain’t happening without LIDAR.

As disclosed previously, I am short at an average price of $473.
2026 may way well be the year that $TSLA collapses as sales and earnings plummet and the market tires of the lies of @elonmusk

PS - Just to be clear, these are my own thoughts and not the result of a confidential conversation!

@DougKass @TommyThornton @BradMunchen @GordonJohnson19 @zerohedge

Do not be surprised if $TSLA announces the launching of paid (driverless) robotaxis in Texas in the company days. However, I anticipate this will be a completely staged event should it occur. I will short more on any pop in the stock price.

I would expect the number of rides


Small and mid-caps are trading near decade lows relative to Big Tech while earnings growth is only marginally lower. The smart money is rotating into sectors where valuations actually reflect fundamentals.

Summary: Trim Magnificent 7 AI-infrastructure exposure; rotate into small/mid-caps trading near decade lows vs Big Tech.

IWM small-cap, IJH mid-cap US equity ETFs

OPENAI IS FALLING APART IN REAL TIME

I've watched companies implode for decades.

This one has all the warning signs.

OpenAI declared "Code Red" in December.

Altman sent an internal memo telling employees to drop everything because Google's Gemini 3 is eating their lunch. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff publicly ditched ChatGPT for Gemini after using it for two hours.

ChatGPT traffic fell in November. Second month-over-month decline of 2025. Meanwhile Gemini jumped to 650 million monthly active users.

The company that was supposed to build AGI can't keep its chatbot competitive.

But the real story is the money...

OpenAI lost $12 BILLION in a single quarter according to Microsoft's own fiscal disclosures.

Deutsche Bank estimates $143 billion in cumulative negative cash flow before the company turns profitable.

Their analysts put it bluntly: "No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale."

They're burning $15 million per day on Sora alone.

$5 billion annually to generate copyright-infringing memes.

Even Sora's lead engineer admitted the "economics are currently completely unsustainable."

Here's the big math problem nobody wants to discuss:

It's going to cost 5x the energy and money to make these models 2x better.

The low-hanging fruit is gone.

Every incremental improvement now requires exponentially more compute, more data centers, more power.

Reports suggest OpenAI's large training runs in 2025 failed to produce models better than prior versions.

GPT-5 launched to widespread disappointment. Users called it "underwhelming" and "horrible." OpenAI had to restore GPT-4o within 24 hours because users preferred the old model.

Altman had promised GPT-5 would make GPT-4 feel "mildly embarrassing." Instead, users complained it was worse at basic math and geography.

They've released GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2 since.

Same complaints each time: too corporate, too safe, robotic, boring.

The talent exodus makes this even worse:

CTO Mira Murati. Gone.
Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew. Gone.
Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Gone.
President Greg Brockman. Gone.

Half the AI safety team departed. Multiple executives reportedly cited "psychological abuse" under Altman's leadership.

And now Elon Musk is suing for up to $134 billion.

A federal judge just ruled the case goes to jury trial in April. There's "plenty of evidence" that OpenAI's leaders promised to maintain the nonprofit structure that Musk funded.

Musk provided $38 million in early funding based on those assurances. Now he wants his share of the $500 billion valuation.

OpenAI called it "harassment." But the judge disagreed.

Here's what I think happens next:

The AI hype cycle is peaking.

The diminishing returns are becoming impossible to hide.

Competitors are catching up.

The lawsuits are piling up.

OpenAI needs to generate $200 billion in annual revenue by 2030 to justify their projections.

That's 15x growth in five years while costs keep exploding.

Even Sam Altman admitted investors are "overexcited" about AI.

His exact words: "Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money."

If I were running an AI startup with good traction right now, I'd be looking for an exit. Sell into the hype before the music stops.

My positioning:

I'm not touching OpenAI-adjacent plays at these valuations. The risk profile is astronomical.

If you're exposed to the Magnificent 7 through AI infrastructure bets, consider trimming. The gap between promised revolution and delivered reality has never been wider.

The smart money is rotating into sectors where valuations actually reflect fundamentals.

Small and mid-caps are trading near decade lows relative to Big Tech while earnings growth is only marginally lower.

Markets can price risk. But they can't price chaos.

And OpenAI is chaos dressed up in a $500 billion valuation.

---

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Focus is on actionable ideas, both long and short. No endless talk about the Fed and the economy.
Making money will be the objective.

Join below:

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it is totally ludicrous to own shares in $OPEN. The company is guiding for losses again in 2026. What is beyond dispute is that the valuation is very expensive on present metrics.

Summary: Bearish OPEN: guiding for losses in 2026, valuation expensive on current metrics, no rational basis to own it.

On that basis then it is totally ludicrous to own shares in $OPEN
The company is guiding for losses again in 2026.
What is beyond dispute is that the valuation is very expensive on present metrics.
By your own logic therefore to own the stock based on a narrative of profits way out in the future…

@gnoble79 I don't think anyone can see 3 years into the future.


Summary: Claims Oracle will go bust if OpenAI can't pay $75B/yr Stargate contract; strongly bearish ORCL.

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ THIS

$ORCL will go bust.

Premium Newsletter: OpenAI needs to raise or make $852 billion through 2030 to pay for its compute costs, and must pay $75bn a year for Oracle's 7.1GW of Stargate data centers, or Oracle will collapse, destroying its share price and Ellison's empire.
https://t.co/fmxKU8v0bi


Summary: Bearish TSLA: calls it the biggest bubble in market history at obscene valuation, predicting an 80% crash.

I would hate myself if I ignored the obscene valuation and owned the biggest bubble at scale in market history, only to see it crash 80% - TESLA. $TSLA

There, I fixed it.

@BradMunchen

@gnoble79 I would hate myself if I worried about valuations and didn’t own and participate with one of the greatest founders and companies in American history.


Do you know that $OPEN remains an asset heavy, low margin, house flipper? ... cumulative losses to date are approaching $4B ... $OPEN expects to lose money again in 2026 ... the stock is up 13x from the lows of last summer ... $OPEN is presently valued at 6x book value ... valued at 20x EV/sales

Summary: Bearish OPEN: perennial losses, $4B cumulative deficit, expects loss in 2026, trading at 20x EV/sales and 6x book after 13x rally from lows.

Opendoor Army,

It was only a few months ago that the momentum was powerful and the FOMO was palpable.

It was a glorious time. “Number go up” they said. $82 was inevitable and then onward to $500. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, your general has deserted you.

He deceived you.
He committed analytical malpractice.
He sold you a bill of goods.
Quite candidly, he bagged you.

Now you are on your own.
Do you really know what you own?

Do you own $OPEN because of careful study or FOMO?

Do you know that that $OPEN remains an asset heavy, low margin, house flipper?

Do you know that house flipping is a fiercely competitive industry where profits are scarce because of information asymmetry?

Do you know that $OPEN has lost money every single year since its founding in 2014?
EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.

Do you know that cumulative losses to date are approaching $4B?

Do you know that cofounders
@rabois and @ericwu01 (who have just returned) were responsible for 90% of those losses?

Do you know that @nejatian ,
while undoubtedly a smart guy,
knows little about real estate.

Do you know that most tech bro
have struggled or failed in real estate
as tech is vastly different from tech?

Do you know that $OPEN trailing 12 month revenues (or what they call gross profits) are only $378mm but that the enterprise value is $7.5B?

Do you know that $OPEN expects to lose money again in 2026?

Did you know that any turnaround will take years but that the stock is up 13x from the lows of last summer?

Do you know that $OPEN is presently valued at 6x book value? (1.5x book would be generous if profitable)

Do you know that $OPEN is valued at 20x EV/sales?

Do you know that the leading real estate broker $COMP is valued at .9x
EV/sales?

Do you know that very few fundamentally oriented institutions or hedge funds own $OPEN ?
The only large holders are quant shops and trading firms.

Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

PS - Please sign up for my substack as I will be posting higher value added content there.

The focus will be on actionable ideas, both long and short. No endless talk about the Fed and the economy. Making money will be the objective.

I will be phasing out my posts on X.

https://t.co/0z4XWvrm4l…


Summary: Author reiterates bearish OPEN call: still wildly overvalued, advises exiting despite 40% prior decline.

You got bagged by @ericjackson .You are still in denial about that.
$OPEN has already declined by 40% since I first sounded the alarm but still remains wildly overvalued. My invaluable investment advice remains to desert from the $OPEN army. I am sure you would agree that it is important to call out bad actors and charlatans. @ericjackson is an odious, opportunistic, financially illiterate carnival barker who belongs in jail. Your ire should more properly be directed  at him.

@gnoble79 @rabois I’ll say it again... It’s really disturbing how you want to see the downfall of such a transformational company.. Instead of supporting them, potentially sharing invaluable advice from your investment years, you glee and hope for a bad demise.. It’s borderline evil!..


Summary: Bearish AI infrastructure stack: NVDA analog to Cisco 2000 collapse, ORCL below pre-OpenAI-deal price, Blue Owl and Fermi already down sharply; capital misallocation dwarfs dotcom bubble.

I just learned something that should terrify every AI investor:

Six major large language models were tested on real freelance work - the kind actual humans get paid to do on Upwork.

Not homework. Not summaries. Real commercial tasks that generate real revenue.

Building video games. Creating presentations from rough notes. Architectural schematics.

The BEST performing AI completed tasks well enough to get paid 2.5% of the time.

The worst? 0.3%.

Think about that.

If you were an Uber driver who completed 2.5% of your rides, you'd be kicked off the platform in a week.

This comes from academic research published in the Remote Labor Index - not some anti-AI hit piece.

They eliminated jobs requiring physical work or heavy human interaction and focused purely on digital deliverables where AI should theoretically excel.

And it failed 97.5% of the time.

Meanwhile, US tech companies are spending $380 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025-2026.

Data centers using the power of 619 houses per GPU stack.

Oracle's shares are now BELOW where they were before announcing their massive OpenAI partnership.

Blue Owl Capital (AI infrastructure funder): down 40%

Fermi (data center REIT): down 60%

The funding markets are already getting more discerning.

And we haven't even hit the real reckoning yet.

AI is excellent at correlation. But correlation isn't how the world works.

It can regurgitate answers to questions it's been trained on.

But ask it to actually BUILD something, execute a complex task, or operate in the real world where correlations don't hold?

It falls apart.

Scam Altman showed Operator - OpenAI's agent that's supposed to act like a CEO's assistant.

19 minutes into the demo, they revealed it worked 34% of the time.

On their own metrics. Their own homework. That THEY graded.

34%.

And that's in a controlled demo environment.

In the real world with actual commercial deliverables it's 2.5%.

The capital misallocation is 17 times larger than the dotcom bubble.

Nvidia's receivables are up 770% in 33 months (Cisco's were up 140% before they collapsed).

Every part of the AI stack is losing money except Nvidia - and they're the ones extending vendor financing to keep the whole thing afloat.

This isn't a technology that's "almost there."

This is a technology with fundamental architectural limits that can't be overcome by just adding more compute.

I sat down with Julian Garran - one of the sharpest macro strategists I know - and he walked through why AI was "built to fail" from day one.

The full conversation covers:

- Why the economics of data centers guarantee losses
- The Cisco 2000 playbook playing out in real time
- What happens when the funding dries up
- Where smart money is rotating (hint: it's not tech)

This is a career-defining inflection point in markets.

And most investors are still positioned for a productivity revolution that isn't coming.

The full interview is in the comment below.

---

Watch the full interview for free:

https://t.co/vLmATab9fY


Summary: Short TSLA; Q1 2026 financials were dressed up via accounting levers masking near-zero underlying business growth.

SHORT $TSLA
@GordonJohnson19
@BradMunchen
@StanphylCap

“Let’s call this what it is: Tesla made every possible move to present Q1 2026 in the best possible light during a quarter where the actual business showed almost no growth.
The company released warranty reserves, booked tariff refund windfalls, stretched supplier payments by 10 days, took on billions in new debt, and then presented the results through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock compensation. None of this is illegal — it’s all standard corporate finance. But the cumulative effect is a set of financials designed to tell a story that the underlying operations don’t support.”

Tesla (TSLA) pulled questionable levers to make Q1 2026 financials look good https://t.co/rNQuvduuwf by @fredlambert


Summary: Reiterates long gold and gold miners now: geopolitical risk, Fed boxed in, central bank buying, dollar weakness, phenomenal chart structure.

On April 23, 2025, gold was trading around $3,300.

I went on the Schwab Network and said something very simple:

"If you actually look at the chart of gold over a long period of time, it's only just now broken out in inflation-adjusted terms."

Gold is now trading above $5,300.

That's a 60%+ move in less than a year.

At the time, everyone was still debating whether to buy the Mag 7 or QQQ. I said gold was widely under-owned. That central banks were buying hand over fist. That the longer-term chart structure was phenomenal.

I also said something that's worth repeating today:

"What do you call a market that doesn't let you in?"

A bull market.

That's EXACTLY what happened.

Gold blew through $4,000. Then $4,500. Then $5,000. Hit an all-time high near $5,600 in January. It never gave you a clean entry. It never gave you a 20% pullback to wait for. It just kept going.

And the miners?

I said on that same interview:

"The gold miners have been catching up with a vengeance. Their costs are well under control. Energy is a major component of their cost structure. Their profit margins are exploding."

GDX returned 185% over the past year. All-in sustaining costs stayed around $1,600/oz while gold nearly doubled. Average miner margins blew past $2,500/oz.

The thesis hasn't changed:

Gold is insurance against irresponsible policies from central bankers and government officials. It protects you against the falling dollar. And it's an asset that isn't somebody else's liability.

That last point matters more today than it did in April.

With Middle East tensions escalating, the Fed boxed into a corner on rates, and geopolitical risk at levels we haven't seen in DECADES, gold is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

The best calls are never the complicated ones.

Sometimes it's as simple as: the chart structure is phenomenal, it's widely under-owned, and central banks are buying hand over fist.

Buy GLD. Buy GDX. I said it then. I'M SAYING IT NOW.

---

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Global Liquidity is starting to slow... the cycle is turning against crypto... When Global Liquidity peaks and crypto flatlines... There's a serious problem

Summary: Bearish BTC on peaking global liquidity, Chinese crypto ban, and failed hedge narrative; bullish gold on BRICS/central bank demand and new monetary architecture.

BITCOIN'S "DIGITAL GOLD" NARRATIVE JUST FAILED ITS BIGGEST TEST

While gold surged past $5,000 and silver hit record after record...

Bitcoin dropped 6% in 2025.

Silver is up 138%.

Bitcoin? Down 30% from its October high.

The "digital gold" thesis is collapsing.

But here's what most people are getting wrong about WHY...

My good friend Michael Howell at @crossbordercap nailed it:

This isn't a "Great Debasement" trade.

If it were, Bitcoin would be celebrating and bonds would be in freefall.

Neither is happening.

THE REAL DRIVER: CHINA

The People's Bank of China has added $1.1T to Chinese money markets over the past year.

And they'll likely do the same again this year.

This aggressive monetary debasement is pushing Chinese residents into gold as an inflation hedge.

You see, Chinese residents are big gold buyers but NOT big Bitcoin buyers.

Why?

The PBoC banned cryptocurrencies onshore.

So when China prints money, it flows into gold, not crypto.

And because the Yuan is stable against the dollar (capital controls and trade surplus), changes in the Yuan gold price transmit virtually 1:1 into the US dollar gold price.

Bitcoin gets none of this flow.

THE LIQUIDITY PROBLEM

Michael's research shows something critical:

Cryptocurrencies are the most liquidity-sensitive assets on the planet.

And Global Liquidity is starting to slow.

During the last liquidity downswing from late 2021 through 2022, Bitcoin fell from $65k to under $20k.

In the next upswing, it gained over $100k.

Now liquidity is peaking again.

Bond term premia have stopped rising.

Bitcoin is flatlining.

The correlation between Global Liquidity and Bitcoin is ironclad.

And the cycle is turning against crypto.

THE OCTOBER CRASH EXPOSED EVERYTHING

On October 10, 2025, Trump's 100% China tariff threat triggered the largest single-day liquidation in crypto history.

$19B wiped out in 24 hours.

1.6M accounts blown up.

Bitcoin plunged from $126,000 to below $105,000.

Order book depth collapsed 98%.

This was a stress test

And Bitcoin failed.

THE "HEDGE" THAT ISN'T

During recent geopolitical tensions over Greenland:

Gold rose 8.6%.

Bitcoin dropped 6.6%.

NYDIG found that Bitcoin behaves like an "ATM" during crises.

Investors sell it first to raise cash.

That's not a hedge.

That's a liquidity source.

Meanwhile, central banks are buying gold at record levels.

They're not touching Bitcoin.

THE MINING DEATH SPIRAL

Hashprice - the key profitability metric - fell to $35-36 per PH/s/day in November.

Below breakeven for most operations.

2025 was the "harshest margin environment of all time."

ROI on new mining rigs? 1,000 days.

In 2017? Same equipment paid for itself in 3-6 months.

AI data centers are outbidding miners for cheap electricity.

The squeeze is structural.

WHERE THIS IS HEADING

Paolo Ardoino, Tether's CEO, said it himself last week:

"There are foreign countries buying a lot of gold, and we believe these countries will soon launch tokenized versions of gold as a competitive currency to the US dollar."

Gold is being repositioned as foundational collateral beneath a fragmented digital monetary landscape.

The BRICS are building gold-backed currencies to accelerate dedollarization.

And ironically, the US will use gold-backed stablecoins to DEFEND the dollar's dominance.

Gold, forever the bane of the dollar's existence, is being resurrected as its savior.

A new monetary age is coming.

And Bitcoin isn't part of it.

MY TAKE

My good friend Michael is right:

Monetary debasement is a long-term investment strategy, not a short-term trade.

But Bitcoin's cycle is no longer a simple 4 year halving cycle based on supply.

It's a complex demand cycle driven by Global Liquidity.

And that liquidity is peaking.

When Chinese liquidity floods into gold while Bitcoin sits banned on the mainland...

When Global Liquidity peaks and crypto flatlines...

When the asset fails every stress test thrown at it...

There's a serious problem.


Gold is being repositioned as foundational collateral beneath a fragmented digital monetary landscape... Gold, forever the bane of the dollar's existence, is being resurrected as its savior

Gold commodity; GLD is standard ETF proxy


Summary: Confirms active short position in OPEN, still holding.

@Akhiles82130535 @BullsOnX @rabois I am short. I am WINNING. I will destroy you.

@gnoble79 @BullsOnX @rabois What’s going on with $OPEN today 🚀🚀 hope you are still shorting it 😅


$OPEN is obscenely expensive at 14x revenues and 5x book. Even if you believe in the turnaround story, 5x sales and 1.5x book would be more realistic. That would imply a present stock price of $1.50. The stock price is way ahead of any improvement in the fundamentals. Fade the hype.

Summary: Short OPEN: obscenely overvalued at 14x revenues/5x book; fair value ~$1.50 even on turnaround assumptions; stock well ahead of fundamentals.

House flipping is just fundamentally an awful business.

Even worse is that $OPEN is obscenely expensive at 14x revenues (include only net sales) and 5x book.

Even if you believe in the turnaround story, 5x sales and 1.5x book would be more realistic.

That would imply a present stock price
of $1.50.

The stock price is way ahead of any improvement in the fundamentals.

Math ultimately prevails over fundamentals.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Fade the hype.

@gnoble79 Any constructive suggestions to improve the business then?


Summary: Disagrees with the $400 TSLA floor call; betting TSLA goes below $400.

@gnoble79 No matter what $tsla Post for the year, it won't matter much.
The stock will never go below $400 again!


$MSTR has fallen from $543 to roughly $123. Down 77% from its all-time high... This guy is a desperate fraud who has NO CLUE what he's talking about... The assets don't cover the liabilities. Period.

Summary: Bearish MSTR: leveraged Bitcoin strategy is insolvent in a 90% drawdown scenario, negative operating cash flow, $8B debt exceeds collateral value.

@saylor just went on CNBC and said that if Bitcoin drops 90%, he'll simply "refinance the debt" and "roll it forward."

This guy is a desperate fraud who has NO CLUE what he's talking about.

Let's actually look at what "rolling it forward" means in reality:

Strategy holds 714,644 Bitcoin purchased at an average cost of $76,056 per coin. Total acquisition cost: $54.35 billion.

Bitcoin is trading around $68,000. Already below their cost basis.

The company carries over $8 billion in debt. 100% of its convertible notes are now out of the money.

Now imagine Saylor's own scenario.

Bitcoin drops 90%. That takes it to roughly $6,800.

Strategy's 714,644 Bitcoin would be worth approximately $4.9 billion.

Against $8 billion in debt.

The assets don't cover the liabilities. Period.

And he thinks banks are going to refinance that? On what collateral? On what cash flow?

Because Strategy's operating cash flow was negative $138 million in 2025. Down from negative $53 million the year before.

The trajectory is going the wrong direction.

When asked: "You think banks would lend to you at that point?"

Saylor just laughed it off.

But here's who's not laughing:

11 state pension funds that bought MSTR as a "regulated proxy" for Bitcoin exposure. CalPERS. New York State. Florida. Wisconsin. New Jersey. Teachers. Firefighters. Police officers.

Together they hold 1.8 million shares. Their original investment: $577 million. Current value: $240 million.

That's $337 million in paper losses. Most funds are down 60%.

CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the country, bought 448,000 shares for $144 million. That position has been cut nearly in half.

These aren't hedge fund cowboys who can stomach a drawdown. These are retirement systems with fiduciary obligations to millions of public workers.

Meanwhile $MSTR has fallen from $543 to roughly $123. Down 77% from its all-time high.

Saylor says he'll buy Bitcoin "every quarter forever" and will never sell.

But that's not how debt works.

You don't get to choose when your creditors come calling. You don't get to "roll forward" $8 billion in debt when your only asset has collapsed and your operating business generates negative cash flow.

The people who say "we'll just refinance" are always the ones who can't.

The question isn't whether Saylor believes in Bitcoin.

The question is whether pension funds managing trillions in retirement savings should be exposed to a leveraged single-asset bet run by a man who laughs off a 90% drawdown scenario on national tv.

Teachers. Firefighters. State employees. Their retirement savings are sitting inside a company that just posted a $12.4 billion loss and whose chairman's contingency plan is "we'll figure it out."

That's STUPID.

And the people who'll pay the price aren't on CNBC.

They're counting on those pensions to be there when they retire.


Summary: TSLA is the most overvalued bubble in financial market history; decisive bearish stance.

@GrindeOptions $TSLA is the most overvalued bubble at scale in financial market history.

If you’re a $TSLA shareholder or supporter of the company, leave your mark on this post below.

Let’s get the Tesla community fired up! 💪 https://t.co/PnZS8cJby7


Summary: TSLA wildly overvalued on any reasonable valuation approach.

@stwboerse Yes, do your own math.
Any reasonable approach concludes that $TSLA is wildly overvalued.

My recommendation to all $TSLA shareholders: Do your own math.


Summary: Rotate out of Mag 7 (overvalued on AI hype, 2-3yr expectation gap) into small caps / Russell 2000 (decade-low valuations, rotation just starting).

Magnificent 7 = basket of the seven mega-cap US tech equities

industry='Internet Content & Information'

I've been saying it for months: The AI hype will die.

And I'm watching it happen in real time.

Let me tell you something about market cycles after 45 years on Wall Strett:

When everyone believes the same story, when valuations price in perfection, when "this time is different" becomes consensus...

That's when the trade is OVER.

The Mag 7 spent $380 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025.

CFOs across America can't point to measurable returns.

No productivity gains. No labor savings. No revenue acceleration.

Just massive capex and promises of transformation "coming soon."

I've seen this play out before.

Dotcom 2000. Everyone knew the internet would change everything.

They were RIGHT about the technology.

They were WRONG about the timing and the valuations.

The companies that survived took 15 years to make new highs.

Here's what's happening now:

The Mag 7 has already started underperforming.

Since October 2025, the S&P 493 is outperforming the Magnificent 7.

Small caps are waking up.

The Russell 2000 is finally showing signs of life after years of underperformance.

This is the rotation I predicted.

And it's just getting started.

Why small caps now?

Because they're trading at decade-low valuations relative to Big Tech.

The P/E spread is 10+ points.

But earnings growth is only 5 points lower.

You're getting 95% of the growth at 50% of the valuation.

The Mag 7 is priced for AI transformation happening NOW.

But Goldman says measurable GDP impact doesn't start until 2027.

That's a 2-3 year gap between expectations and reality.

Markets don't wait politely when they realize they're wrong.

I ran the #1 mutual fund in the country at Fidelity and worked under Peter Lynch.

And I'm telling you: This is what a market top in a narrow leadership group looks like.

Not a crash. Not a crisis.

Just a slow realization that the future takes longer to arrive than the stock price assumed.

Meanwhile, small and mid-caps are trading like it's 2008.

Except we're not in a financial crisis.

We're in a market where everyone is crowded into seven stocks and ignoring 2,500 others.

That doesn't last.

The AI infrastructure build is real.

But infrastructure builders get paid first.

Productivity beneficiaries get paid later.

Much later.

And the market is finally starting to figure that out.

---

Go watch the full interview here
https://t.co/dGIJRpD0c5


Summary: Maintains short TSLA following what author calls a disastrous earnings call.

@DougKass nails it.
The $TSLA call was an unmitigated disaster. Stay short $TSLA.

$TSLA traded +$12 (to $404) from the close (in the after market) following its EPS release.
It is now -$20  (at $384) from the peak after market print.
At 5PM, on @CNBCFastMoney panelists mostly praised the company (and endorsed the stock)... even though they didnt have time to


Summary: Expects Tesla Q4 2025 deliveries to come in below the 422,850-vehicle analyst consensus; implied bearish on the print.

NEWS: For the first time, Tesla has officially added their company compiled delivery consensus to their investor relations website.

Analysts expect Tesla to deliver 422,850 vehicles in Q4 2025, and deploy 13.4GWh of energy storage this quarter.

This is a great move by Tesla. https://t.co/RLh5Osi7pD


Summary: OPEN is overvalued — current price already bakes in all plausible 3-year upside, implying downside from here.

@InversorNovato_ @VolaarRide @LloydReeves13B @Anderson_2155 @nejatian And the $OPEN stock price already excessively reflects any potential improvement that can reasonably be expected in the next 3 years.

@gnoble79 @VolaarRide @LloydReeves13B @Anderson_2155 @nejatian Anyone investing here based on the current fundamentals, I don’t think knows what they’re doing.

First, there need to be changes in management and in the business.

Then that will be reflected in the company’s balance sheet.


Summary: Bullish uranium to $200/lb by 2027-28 on 30k-ton annual deficit, depleted utility inventories, Kazakhstan redirecting supply, and Russian enrichment risk.

Everyone's focused on oil right now.

And I get it. Brent above $100, the Strait of Hormuz shut down, tankers stranded.

But there's an energy crisis hiding in plain sight that could be even MORE consequential:

Uranium.

Here are the numbers you should know:

Global uranium demand is roughly 90,000 tons per year. Global production is 60,000 tons. That's a 30,000-ton annual DEFICIT.

So how has the market survived so far?

Utilities have been burning through their inventories.

After Fukushima, Japan shut its reactors. Sweden pulled back. Germany closed its fleet entirely. Those utilities had 12 to 15 years of uranium stockpiled.

Today, the average inventory level is just TWO YEARS.

The cushion is gone.

And demand is about to explode.

There are roughly 200 new reactors planned globally by 2040. Each reactor consumes about 160 tons of raw uranium per year. That's 32,000 tons of additional annual demand.

Half of one year's current production. Just from new reactors.

And where does the supply come from?

Well... it doesn't.

Kazakhstan produces 45% of the world's uranium. Starting in 2028, Kazakhstan plans to dedicate 100% of its supply to China and Russia. Already 80% goes to those two countries.

But that remaining 20% disappearing from the open market will tighten an already desperate situation.

There aren't enough new mine projects to fill the gap. Mining is hard. Permitting takes years. And the world hasn't invested seriously in new uranium production for over a decade.

But here's the part that's REALLY scary:

Enriched uranium.

Raw uranium is useless for a reactor. It has to be enriched. And 60% of the world's enrichment capacity sits in Russia.

If Putin decided to embargo enriched uranium exports, it would be devastating for Western utilities. And strategically, it would cost Russia almost nothing.

Russia's enrichment business generates roughly $6 billion a year. That's what Russia earns from ONE WEEK of oil sales.

Why Putin hasn't pulled this lever yet is a mystery. But the vulnerability is real and every Western utility executive knows it.

This is why we're bullish on uranium.

Uranium spot prices are around $87 per pound. $200 per pound by 2027 or 2028 is entirely achievable given the supply-demand math.

The oil trade gets the headlines. But people overlook uranium.

A 30,000-ton annual deficit. Utility inventories at two years. Kazakhstan redirecting supply to China. Russia controlling 60% of enrichment. And 200 new reactors coming online.

THE MATH DOESN'T LIE

---

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BlackRock stock dropped 7%... When the WORLD'S LARGEST ASSET MANAGER starts blocking investors from getting their money back, that's not 'noise'. That's an alarm. Get out before the exit gets more crowded.

Summary: Bearish on private credit sector and major alt-asset managers (BLK, KKR, APO, OWL, BX); redemption gates, rising defaults, and $162B maturity wall signal systemic unwind ahead.

We're watching a financial crisis unfold in real time.

The last time funds started blocking investors from getting their money back, Bear Stearns collapsed six months later.

In 2007, BNP Paribas froze €1.6 billion in funds.

Bear Stearns declared 2 funds "essentially worthless" and gated a third.

Everyone said it was "contained."

6 months later the entire financial system nearly went under.

I'm not saying we're there YET...

But I am saying the pattern is rhyming.

BlackRock just capped withdrawals from its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund after investors demanded 9.3% of their shares back - nearly DOUBLE the fund's 5% quarterly limit.

Investors wanted $1.2 billion out. BlackRock gave them $620 million and said no to the rest.

BlackRock stock dropped 7%. KKR, Ares, Apollo, Blue Owl - all down 5-6% on the same day. The financial sector ETF is off 9% in a month.

This is the same BlackRock that just slashed a $25 million private credit loan from 100 to ZERO in 3 months. Full value one quarter. Worthless the next.

And they'd already done the exact same thing months earlier with Renovo Home Partners.

But this isn't just a BlackRock problem.

Look at the dominoes:

Last summer, Tricolor and First Brands went unexpectedly bankrupt. $10-15 billion in combined liabilities. Write-offs hit JPMorgan, UBS, and Jefferies.

Then a UK lender called Market Financial Solutions collapsed with a £2.4 billion loan book.

Fraud allegations. Double-pledged collateral. Barclays exposed for £500 million. Apollo, Elliott, Santander - all caught in the wreckage.

Then Blue Owl permanently halted redemptions. Stock cut in HALF.

Then Blackstone's $82 billion flagship fund got hit with $3.8 billion in redemption requests. They had to pump in $400 million of their own money just to meet demands.

Now BlackRock is literally blocking the exits.

Even Apollo's own CEO warned a shakeout is coming.

When EVERYONE at the top is waving red flags - pay attention.

UBS raised its worst-case default forecast to 15%. Defaults sit at 3-5% today. The trajectory is ugly.

Here's the structural problem:

After 2008, regulations pushed risky lending OUT of banks and INTO private credit.

The sector ballooned to $3 trillion. But these funds make 5-7 year loans while promising investors quarterly liquidity.

That works until everyone wants out at once. Which is exactly what's happening.

40% of sponsor-backed loans are tied to the software industry - the same sector AI is threatening to destroy.

The Fed pumped 40% more money into the system after Covid and kept rates at zero.

That easy money funded garbage underwriting. And now there's a $162 billion maturity wall hitting THIS YEAR.

I've been warning about private credit for weeks. The story is always the same:

Opaque valuations. Illiquid assets. Limited transparency. And the false promise of steady returns with no volatility.

The whole sales pitch was equity-like returns with bond-like stability. But you can't eliminate volatility - you can only HIDE it...

Until you can't.

When the WORLD'S LARGEST ASSET MANAGER starts blocking investors from getting their money back, that's not "noise".

That's an alarm.

Get out before the exit gets more crowded.

---

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Blue Owl permanently halted redemptions. Stock cut in HALF.


Summary: Long gold: every pullback has been a buying opportunity; structural case (debasement, CB accumulation, sovereign debt collapse) accelerating as private credit unwinds forces more money printing.

Private credit returns 11.5% on loans that yield 9.5%.

Nobody asks how.

I'll tell you how:

Leverage.

They take a portfolio of loans yielding 9.5%, lever it 2x, and the gross return doubles to 19%. Subtract financing costs and fees, hand the client 11.5%, and show them a chart with a line so smooth it would make Madoff jealous.

That's the product Wall Street has been selling to pensions, endowments, insurance companies, and now your 401(k).

They even gave it a nice name. "Private credit."

There's a better name for it: volatility laundering.

The returns aren't smooth because the risk is low. They're smooth because nobody is marking anything to market. The same people making the loans are the ones deciding what they're worth.

When everything's going up, that's a feature. When it turns? It's a trapdoor.

And we're watching the trapdoor open right now.

Funds are gating redemptions across the industry. Loans are going from 100 cents on the dollar to zero in a single quarter. The biggest asset managers on earth are telling investors: "Sorry, you can't have your money back."

And none of this should surprise anyone who's been paying attention. Every cycle produces the SAME SCHEME wearing a different outfit.

Junk bonds in the 80s. Mortgage-backed securities in 2007. Both sold the identical promise - equity-like returns with bond-like stability. Both ended the same way.

Private credit is the 2020s version. Bigger numbers. Fancier packaging. Same math.

The leverage is the tell. Any time someone shows you returns that look too good for the underlying asset, there's leverage hiding somewhere in the structure. And leverage doesn't create returns...

It amplifies outcomes - in both directions.

What pisses me off is that the people running this know exactly what they're doing.

The risk disclosures are 400 pages long. The gates are buried in footnotes. It's not technically illegal. But doing something because you can get away with it - not because it's right - is a special kind of rotten.

After 2008, NOBODY went to jail. Banks paid fines that amounted to rounding errors on their balance sheets. The message was clear: heads you win, tails the taxpayer covers it.

So of course they did it again. Why wouldn't they?

And here's where the realist in me takes over from the idealist:

They're not going to let this blow up cleanly. They NEVER do...

The playbook is extend, pretend, and print. Special vehicles. Special accommodations. More liquidity injected into a system that's already drowning in it.

Every time they paper over a crisis, they confirm the only trade that matters.

Gold pulled back hard this week - from $5,000 to around $4,575. Every shakeout over the past two years has been a buying opportunity.

The structural case (debasement, central bank accumulation, collapsing confidence in sovereign debt) hasn't weakened. It's accelerated.

The worse private credit gets, the more they'll have to print. And the more they print, the HIGHER gold goes.

It's not complicated. It's just math that most people don't want to accept.

---

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$OPEN is wildly overvalued. That would still yield a wildly overvalued stock. Maybe $2.5 if using mid cycle.

Summary: Short OPEN; even mid-cycle valuation yields only ~$2.50, making current price wildly overvalued.

That would still yield a wildly overvalued stock. Maybe $2.5 if using mid cycle.
The conclusion remains the same.

$OPEN is wildly overvalued.

 About those prices targets of 82 and 500;)

@APompliano @ericjackson @nejatian
@philrosenn @rabois @natbrunell
@andrewrsorkin @gnoble79 @saraeisen @SullyCNBC @ScottWapnerCNBC @carlquintanilla @cnbcfastmoney @HalftimeReport @SamofAmerica @guyadami @tomkeene @business @ferrotv @lisaabramowicz1 @APompliano @cvpayne @Downtown @baystreetamber @FoxBusiness @JonErlichman @twistartups @CNBC @TheCompoundNews @podcasts @davidlin_TV @YahooFinance @juleshyman @opinion @TheStalwart @brewmarkets @THERUNDOWN

@gnoble79 You’re valuing trough cycle numbers.
$OPEN is cyclical  plus asset backed. When housing normalizes, revenue scales fast.
Run the model on mid-cycle, not panic lows.
@Stocktwits @open_army_japan @iamjohnbaiano @CapitanSteveo


Summary: Strongly bearish TSLA at $387: broken FSD promises, GAAP P/E 700x, $25B capex vs ~$6B FCF, sum-of-parts ~$65-70/share; predicts epic crash.

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD."

He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation.

Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.

BUT IT DIDN'T

Those promises are now officially broken.

The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4.

Not a refund or a free upgrade...
A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.

Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.

But that's not even the worst part.

Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.

What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe.

How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.

Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating:

Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?

WRONG

Dig into the actual filing:

The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs."

They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation.

GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.

Let me put that in perspective:

3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings.

All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet...

3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year.

So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion.

The math doesn't work.

They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.

The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time:

Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again).

They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought.

Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year.

Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline.

And here's what really kills the bull case...

The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it:

Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.

That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion.

And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.

Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15.

Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not.

The stock is $387.

So what exactly are you paying for?

You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.

I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981.

And I am telling you:

Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.

THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

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