I discussed the Black Monday comparisons, CoreWeave, the AI trade, one group that sticks out and is still acting well that could lead, the overall market, my portfolio, and more here: open.substack.com/pub/zastoc…

$SPCX is in a league of its own compared to OpenAI and Anthropic. The level of differentiation, competitive advantages, and vertical integration puts it on another planet (pun intended). It’s not particularly close either.

24/7 trading, expanded options trading hours, 0DTE options, leveraged ETFs, prediction markets, and easy access to huge leverage. These are all things designed to help you lose more money, not make more.

If this news about a deal is real (still skeptical) the implications are massive. Lower oil prices, lower inflation expectations, lower yields, lower borrowing costs, etc. The stress in credit markets which has been weighing on the AI trade would start to ease as borrowing costs go down and financial conditions loosen. Deal or bust for the market.

The market wants to exhaust you to the point where you stop paying attention or lose interest entirely. Then when your mental and financial capital are completely drained and you’ve finally had enough, it’ll bottom. This is the game.

Black Monday or not this market stinks, at this point maybe that would’ve been the more entertaining outcome. Imagine trading some of these AI stocks down 30% in one day, this app would be cinema.

Whatever happens this week just know we have midterms, big tech earnings, FOMC, and more in the weeks ahead. Surely no volatility to come. Fun stuff on the horizon.

Anytime there’s a bump in the road for this market, the comparisons to the dot com bubble or global financial crisis get louder. Not every correction is the beginning of a historic market collapse. There’s concerns worth discussing but constantly comparing every pullback and period of weakness to two of the worst bear markets in history has a low probability of being correct. The market is allowed to pullback and correct without the entire financial system falling apart.

I discussed the Black Monday comparisons, CoreWeave, the AI trade, one group that sticks out and is still acting well that could lead, the overall market, my portfolio, and more here: open.substack.com/pub/zastoc…

Nobody in real life thinks there’s anything wrong with the market. Everyone’s 401k’s are sitting inches from all time highs. Your average person isn’t a degen buying data center and space stocks on margin. That’s the disconnect. There’s endless individual stocks that have been absolutely decimated from their highs yet the major indices continue to mask the underlying weakness. Two completely different markets depending on what you’re looking at.

The trolls and gremlins with no followings who come out of the woodwork looking for their little “gotcha” moments are some of the most pathetic people on this platform. It’s no wonder almost nobody wants to post ideas or alpha publicly anymore. Every opinion or anything “wrong” gets picked apart by people who contribute absolutely nothing themselves.

The vibes around AI and the AI trade are bad right now. Whether it’s CoreWeave, Oracle, Anthropic’s IPO valuation being lowered, etc. the overall AI trade broadly there’s no shortage of things to worry about. Said it a few times but markets trade on vibes, until a few of these dark clouds clear up we’re likely to be in a tough environment. The good thing is either something likely blows up soon or nothing happens at all, feels like a climactic point is near.

Going to spend the weekend imagining where the market would be right now if we didn’t get into a war with Iran.

Over the past two years we’ve really only had two stretches where the market was consistently tradable. April 2025 to October 2025. April 2026 to June 2026. That’s it. Everything else has been filled with noise, chaos, and chop that makes it difficult to build momentum.

The stuff $TSLA and $SPCX are doing is just insane. When this merger happens it’s going to create the most ambitious and vertically integrated company the world has ever seen. There’s going to be nothing else like it.

There’s too much at stake for not only the economy but America as a whole to let the AI trade blow up right now. Someday maybe. Not yet.

Stop waiting for stocks to explode and have monster runs before getting interested. For some reason people can look at a stock like $SNDK at $50 and have no interest yet wait a year until it’s $2,000 before deciding they want to buy it. Flip this mentality. The potential for multibagger returns is best when you’re buying quality stocks before they go up hundreds or thousands of percent in a short period. Not chasing them after they’ve already gone parabolic and everyone is telling you why it’s a great buy.

The economic data we’ve gotten lately is so bad it just reinforces the idea that the only thing keeping things from feeling grim is the stock market. If the market breaks the economy breaks.

If the AI trade blows up, the economy blows up with it and everything goes south fast. Given how much is riding on AI I’m skeptical they’ll let that happen without doing everything in their power to prevent it.