I sat down with the CEO and CoFounder of Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, to discuss a variety of topics after Robinhood's Gold Standard event. In the podcast, we discussed the early days of Robinhood and how the company grew, the economics behind Robinhood Gold's new 1% unlimited match on deposits, how Robinhood thinks of the credit market with their new 3% cash back card, international expansion, crypto, and more. This was one of the first long-form podcasts Vlad has sat down for in over 2 years, so was very grateful for him giving the time after one of the busiest weeks in history for the company following their Gold event. I hope you all enjoy and it helps give some more insights into what Robinhood is trying to build!

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Amazon $AMZN posted its best trading day since August, supported by a bullish Morgan Stanley outlook and a major development in its custom AI chip strategy. Morgan Stanley named Amazon its top pick, setting a $350 price target that implies approximately 40% upside, while raising its AWS growth forecasts to 47% and 42% YoY for 2027 and 2028, respectively. Separately, Amazon unveiled TorchNeuron, a new software tool that allows developers to run existing PyTorch AI workloads on Trainium2 and Trainium3 chips with minimal code changes. The development could help reduce one of the biggest barriers to adopting Amazon's custom silicon and strengthen its competitive position against NVIDIA $NVDA, whose CUDA software ecosystem has historically been a major advantage in the AI infrastructure market. 2. ARK Invest updated its 2031 Tesla $TSLA valuation model, projecting a $4,400 base-case share price, representing approximately 12x upside from current levels. The firm expects robotaxis to account for roughly 80% of Tesla’s enterprise value by 2031, forecasting a fleet of 8.1M autonomous vehicles generating $753B in annual ride-hailing revenue, with operating costs potentially 40% below Waymo’s. ARK also sees Optimus humanoid robots emerging as Tesla’s second major growth engine, projecting approximately 1M robots sold externally and $212B in annual revenue by 2031, supported by an estimated $26T addressable robotics market. To support these ambitions, ARK expects Tesla to invest approximately $225B cumulatively in AI infrastructure through 2031, underscoring how heavily its valuation thesis depends on the successful commercialization and scaling of autonomous driving and robotics. 3. Microsoft $MSFT has reportedly withdrawn from a major UK data center agreement with British neocloud provider Nscale, according to The Telegraph, dealing a setback to the startup ahead of its planned $3B IPO. The proposed facility in Loughton, Essex, has faced repeated delays, with authorities reportedly not expecting sufficient power availability until the 2030s. Anthropic is also reportedly in talks to purchase $45B worth of AI computing capacity from Nscale, the NVIDIA-backed data center developer, according to Bloomberg. 4. A potential breakthrough agreement between the United States and Iran could be announced as early as this week, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, citing sources familiar with ongoing mediation efforts. Negotiators are reportedly working to narrow remaining differences and secure mutual concessions aimed at preventing a renewed military escalation between Washington and Tehran. While the reported progress could represent a significant diplomatic development amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, no agreement has been officially confirmed, and negotiations remain ongoing. 5. Anthropic announced the creation of the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, pledging an initial 5% of company equity to support charitable initiatives and address the broader societal impacts of AI, including its effects on employment. Subject to shareholder approval, the company’s board may contribute an additional 2% of shares for every 50% increase in valuation above an undisclosed baseline. Elon Musk also said that next year, he will give every American child one share of $SPCX, which would be worth $10.5B at today's prices. He says this will be the first of many times he gives shares to the public. 6. JPMorgan says the latest October selloff in Korean semiconductor and memory stocks looks materially different from the July correction, with several factors potentially limiting a rebound. Unlike July, retail investors have shown little appetite to buy the dip, while short interest across Korean equities, U.S. memory stocks, semiconductor ETFs such as $SMH, and broader indexes like $SPY remains relatively low. JPM also warned that leveraged ETF exposure has increased since late July, making the market more vulnerable to further selling pressure. Compounding the risks, a combined $40B share buyback program from South Korea's two largest memory manufacturers was accelerated to finish in mid-October, removing a significant source of buying support that helped stabilize the market in recent months. 7. Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly proposed a three-way meeting with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to negotiate a potential end to the war in Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal. Putin reportedly raised the proposal during an October 9 phone call with Trump, with the meeting potentially taking place next month. The proposed summit would bring together the leaders of Russia, the United States, and China in an effort to explore a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, although no meeting or peace agreement has been confirmed. 8. South Korean AI infrastructure company Elice plunged approximately 30% on its stock market debut, despite raising $151M at a $750M valuation in an IPO that was reportedly 400x oversubscribed by retail investors. Elice specializes in GPU cloud rentals and the software infrastructure used to manage AI computing workloads, making its listing a notable test of investor appetite for AI infrastructure companies. The sharp decline came amid a broader selloff in South Korean equities, with the KOSPI falling 4.2% to below its July lows, while Samsung Electronics declined 3% and SK Hynix dropped 6%. If the decline holds through the close, Elice could record the worst IPO debut in South Korean market history, highlighting the growing disconnect between strong investor demand for AI-related offerings and increasingly volatile public market valuations. 9. S&P 500 $SPY put option trading volume surged to a record $3.3T in notional value on Friday, marking an extraordinary increase in downside positioning and hedging activity. The dollar value of S&P 500 puts traded was approximately 330% above the 2024 daily average, compared with typical daily volumes of just $100B–$500B before the 2020 pandemic. Meanwhile, total CBOE put option volume reached 9.6M contracts, the fourth-highest daily reading since 2015. The surge highlights an unprecedented level of activity in downside protection as investors navigate elevated market uncertainty, although record put volume does not necessarily indicate outright bearish positioning, since options are also used for hedging and complex trading strategies. 10. Morgan Stanley strategist Michael Wilson believes the three-month U.S. equity correction may be approaching its final stages, urging investors to prepare for potential buying opportunities rather than assume the broader bull market is ending. Since mid-August, high-quality stocks have gained roughly 6%, while the equal-weight S&P 500 has declined nearly 4% and cyclical stocks have fallen almost 10%, highlighting the growing divergence beneath the index. He believes the correction reflects a transition toward a more selective, mid-cycle market rather than the end of the economic expansion, with investors potentially getting an opportunity to buy the dip as the adjustment concludes. 11. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 3.3M contracts, $TSLA with 2.8M contracts, $AMZN with 1.5M contracts, $AAPL with 1.5M contracts, $MU with 1.4M contracts, $SPCX with 1.0M contracts, $INTC with 816K contracts, $CRWV with 778K contracts, $META with 754K contracts, and $AMD with 743K contracts. 12. JPMorgan significantly raised its AI data center capital expenditure forecasts, now expecting spending to grow 85% YoY in 2026, up from 80%, and 70% in 2027, up from its previous 50% estimate. The firm projects more than $270B in incremental data center spending in 2026 and another record increase of $400B+ in 2027, with total spending across major U.S. hyperscalers and other operators approaching $800B in 2026 and $1.5T in 2027. JPM highlighted Credo $CRDO, Lumentum $LITE, Coherent $COHR, Amphenol $APH, Arista $ANET, Celestica $CLS, Ciena $CIEN, Corning $GLW, and Fabrinet $FN as key beneficiaries of the accelerating infrastructure buildout. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

Well, the bad news for neoclouds unfortunately continues. Today, a new company went public in South Korea. The company is called Elice. They raised $151M at a $750M valuation. Retail investors piled in as the offering was oversubscribed by 400 times. Their core business is renting out GPUs and providing the systems that operate them. The stock is down 30% on its debut. KOSPI is down 4.2%, now lower than the July lows, and Samsung is down 3% with SK Hynix down 6%. If this drop holds, it'll be the worst debut ever for a South Korean IPO. $CRWV $NBIS $IREN $APLD $CIFR

ARKK UPDATES THEIR 2031 $TSLA TESLA VALUATION MODEL, SEES BASE CASE OF $4400/SHARE, A 12X FROM TODAY’S PRICES - Robotaxis are expected to drive 80% of Tesla’s enterprise value by 2031, making autonomous transportation the overwhelming driver of ARK’s valuation. ARK projects 8.1 million robotaxis generating $753 billion in annual ride-hailing revenue, supported by operating costs potentially 40% below Waymo’s and a massive expansion of the ride-hailing market through lower prices. - Optimus humanoid robots are emerging as Tesla’s second major growth engine, with ARK forecasting approximately 1 million externally sold robots and $212 billion in annual revenue by 2031. ARK estimates a $26 trillion addressable market for humanoid robotics and expects Tesla to invest approximately $225 billion cumulatively in AI infrastructure by 2031 to support its ambitions. In the base case, Tesla would be worth $18T within the next 4 years.

so Anthropic said they are committed to give away 20% of their company’s shares to the public Elon today said he is ready to give one share of $SPCX to every American child, worth $10B at today’s prices the reason for this is because both feel that AI is going to so transformational, which also means so disruptive to our current economic system, that they probably know a higher tax rate is coming and would rather give their money directly to the public vs having it go through a government agency at the same time, the market is upset because of CoreWeave’s bonds how can Elon and Anthropic think AI is so important that they need to literally give away their shares (Elon today said we will have universal high income) but the market is questioning the entire fabric of the AI trade someone is wrong here

AMAZON HAS ITS BEST DAY SINCE AUGUST: - Morgan Stanley named Amazon their topic pick, sees 40% upside with a PT to $350 - Amazon announced TorchNeuron, a new software tool designed to make it easier for developers to run existing PyTorch AI workloads on its Trainium2 and Trainium3 chips with minimal code changes, reducing a major barrier to adoption and helping Amazon compete with Nvidia $NVDA, whose CUDA software ecosystem has historically been a key competitive advantage. - AWS projections increased to 47% and 42% YoY growth through 2027-2028 by Morgan Stanley Amazon has underperformed the Nasdaq $QQQ over the past 5 years, with the Nasdaq up 94% and Amazon up 50%. It feels like the consensus view is that 2027 will be the year of Amazon...but that consensus view has also been similar over the past 2 years. If 2027 is the year for Amazon, it would be based on AWS + Trainium inflecting along with inflows in general beginning to rotate from Semis to Mag 7. $AMZN +5%

The question is not if we will have a bear market, the question is if this administration can afford to let us have a bear market. - AI Capex is 50% of GDP. If it stops or slows down, GDP growth goes down the drain. No GDP growth = recession. Mainstreet gets hit the worst as the labor market will collapse. - 90% of consumer spending is done by the top 10%. They are levered against their assets that allow them to keep spending because their stocks keep going up. Stocks go down? Goodbye to consumer spending as we enter an actual recession given normal consumers already are borrowing from credit cards to pay for everything. - Social security will be wrecked over the coming 10 years. Why do you think we got the Trump Accounts? Because the administration believes in financial literacy? No, they need a replacement and having kids compound in the stock market to basically build their retirement account from birth could replace social security. That means stocks have to go up for those accounts to be worth anything and actually compound. Most 401Ks in this country are basically seen as retirement accounts. If the admin lets the market crash, people will not be able to afford retirement when social security benefits get cut into 2032. - We are $40T in debt. Bond yields continue to go higher which means the interest expense on our debt is approaching a significant part of our overall spending. The literal only way to solve this is cut spending or grow. Repubs or Dems will not cut spending…so growth is the only answer. If the market crashes, the chances of sustained growth in the greatest tech buildout we have ever seen will be impossible and ultimately make our debt situation even worse. We have to grow. Not saying we can’t get into some horrible bear market, but given how levered the entire economy is to AI, which is basically the entire stock market, I do think this admin will try very hard to make sure we don’t have some horrible, ugly crash. If they let it happen, everything goes down the drain and the difference between now and dotcom is that demand for GPUs is very real (no oversupply) and the difference between now and 2008 is that the potential credit issue is not in housing and banks, it’s within GPUs and there is so much demand that the hyperscalers + Nvidia + the admin could come in to make sure things don’t get as bad as then. Maybe we could have some epic crash, but this administration really cannot afford to let that happen.

wanna know the worst thing about today’s price action? the stock market falling should be causing yields to fall because people would be rotating to bonds… but yields are up, meaning people are selling stocks AND bonds which is *literally* the worst case scenario in this macro last time this happened was April 2025 and once SPY fell 30% and the 10-yr peaked at 4.8%, Trump pulled back the tariffs if the market falling can’t help bonds, at that point the only thing left is for Trump to step in

about to speak to a group of 150 high school seniors about the importance of investing given the state of the equity markets today, gonna tell them all that its just a scam

$TSLA We just witnessed history folks.

it still really doesn’t make sense that all of this was started because of $CRWV bonds or even Anthropic’s numbers not being as strong obviously the hot CPI and PPI didn’t help but for $SMH to take an 11% drawdown in a week pushing most high beta growth down 30-40% feels like there’s a deeper story maybe it’s regular midterm volatility as well but still many questions with no answers as to why we flipped this aggressively

dip has been bought. $7500 in my solo 401k...idea here was to buy semis that are really getting hurt or names that I don't mind holding for a decade and are near their 52-week lows semis getting hurt bad: $SMCI $TSM $AVGO $NBIS out of these 4, SMCI is the one I like the least but it's also touching the 3month low and DELL has taken enough of a beating for SMCI to get a rebound if there is any bounce within server racks the two large cap semis like $TSM and $AVGO I can see myself holding for a very long time as they are relatively safe and have real moats, $NBIS should bounce here but maybe more neocloud fears hurt it...the diversification of their business is some hedge to the pure GPU licensing business the other 3 $TSLA $RKLB $SOFI i can imagine holding for a long time and 40% drawdowns feel like enough pain but I believe they all 3 will be fine in the long term, Tesla's short term catalyst is the roadster event, Rocketlab is down aggressively from $150 so I see that being a spot where some buyers step in even with the neutron delays, and $SOFI should benefit if yields come down but obviously rate hikes are an issue for them and every bank didn't do much in my regular brokerage...bought most of the SaaS dips months ago with $PLTR $ZETA $SHOP $RDDT and have not been playing semis outside of $NVDA and $AVGO really...still holding the $DRAM $INTC and $BE position I bought in August which are either slightly up/flat since then maybe we are headed another leg lower before the midterms but time will tell now 🤷‍♂️

so…is anyone buying the dip lol

BRAD GERSTNER: - WE HAVE SOLD ALL OUR $CRWV COREWEAVE, DON'T OWN ANY OF IT TODAY - WE'VE TAKEN EXPOSURE DOWN OVER THE LAST 3 MONTHS, WE FELT AI HAD OVERSHOT AND WOULD LEAD TO A PERIOD OF CONSOLIDATION - MOVED 10% OF OUR BOOK INTO $META AND $TSLA as of the last 13f filing on 8/14, which accounts for all trades up until 6/30, Altimeter reported a stake of 6M shares in which they added 1.5M shares in Q2 since then, they seemed to have liquidated the entire position and rotated

$NVDA JENSEN ON IF AI REVENUES ARE ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY CAPEX: "Compute spend is only going higher. Nvidia has many different partners we work with. Honestly, we are putting too much emphasis with one or two companies. They will be great, but so will many others."

JENSEN: - COREWEAVE'S STRENGTH IS IMPROVING EVERY DAY - NVIDIA DOESN'T NEED TO BACKSTOP THEM - COREWEAVE'S COST OF CAPITAL IS ACTUALLY DECREASING Jensen single handedly helping the semis find some level of recovery right now... $NVDA $CRWV

SEPTEMBER PPI: - Headline 6.3% vs 5.3% expected - Core 5% vs 4.4% expected yeah this is disgustingly bad 😂

KOSPI just hit below the July lows when we had a massive deleveraging event. Samsung & SK Hynix are both down 7%. Is this all because of CoreWeave’s debt and Anthropic’s light Q3 revenues…or is there another fund blowing up?

FINANCIAL TIMES: - ANTHROPIC Q3 REVENUE COMES IN AT $16.8B - Q2 REVENUE WAS $11.5B, REVENUE GREW 46% QoQ Well, Nasdaq Futures are getting hammered after hours and the Semis continue their downslide because it seems like Wall Street is not impressed…especially if these are the numbers for a $2T IPO.

if you're wondering why the 10-year is down today even though CPI had a horrible print...which should be causing yields to go up because that means we have a higher chance of a rate hike due to more inflation... i *think* it's because the bond market wants to see the stock market go down. and not just stocks, but AI/semi/capex stocks in particular. the theory i've had over the past couple of weeks is that as we see more issuance of corporate debt in order to fuel capex...that is obviously competing with the long end of the curve for US treasuries i mean, one can even argue that bond yields we're going to go up regardless of the oil issues because those yields simply couldn't stay at 4% if meta/google/amzn/msft were offering 6-7% on their corporate debt so the obvious answer now could be for there to be LESS competition with the US 10-year...but the only way for that to happen is for their to be lower-yielding debt from the hyperscalers that are issuing bonds to fuel their capex spend well...the only way that happens is if the capex stops, slows down, or the cost to build these datacenters drop so that the borrowing costs drop which is why we have seen yields RISE every day over the past few weeks when semis go up and we are seeing them go down when semis go down...it's like the credit market is saying "we will only buy bonds if you guys stop buying semis" this doesn't mean that stocks writ-large have to go down, but it does mean that the credit markets are asking for something to break in the equity markets and its like they want semis to be the main culprit. if semis keep going to the moon, cool, but then so will yields and then maybe a 6% 10-year is what breaks everything? not sure if this theory is right but the objectively true part is the competition between US corp debt and treasuries, if all that corp debt is going to buy semis then when semis go down, it makes sense for treasuries to go up the easiest way to get SOME relief here is for Trump to end the war so gas/energy comes down and puts relief on inflation...but today's CPI showed the opposite and yields STILL went down because semis got hit it's a very, very weird time to understand how the bond market is navigating the AI trade

i wonder if Jensen comes out and says something about $CRWV it’s almost like overnight, the credit markets have become EXTREMELY worried about a credit event happening with this company yields up to 15%, stock is down 16% on the day the issue is this is Nvidia’s preferred neocloud…they have a very long history working with Nvidia and Jensen even gave them a $6B “put” to buy back their unused capacity by 2032 if needed $CRWV has been at the top of SemiAnalysis’s ClusterMax rankings for the longest time if they are feeling this type of credit fears…it doesn’t seem to be great for any of the neoclouds even if they have less debt because any new debt they try to take on will be at much higher rates, not to mention inflation going up which means the Fed might make the situation worse so the question is…does Jensen step in and either give cheap capital to CoreWeave or issue a statement to calm down the credit markets from continuing to sell of their bonds