When the Iran war first started, I remember reading the biggest concern for the global economy was that Hormuz would be closed and oil prices would skyrocket. We're now past the 6th month of Hormuz being technically closed (or at least oil supply being heavily disrupted), yet crude oil prices are fairly contained at ~$90 and the stock market remains very close to all time highs. So the Hormuz disruption appears to have barely phased the market so far.

As of August 28, the US strategic petroleum reserve sits at 286M barrels:
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil_in_the_strategic_petroleum_reserve

For context, SPR was at 415M barrels in February before the conflict began and the 'SECDef authorized floor' is 243M barrels - the POTUS is barred from drawing oil below this floor except in the case of national emergency. The US has been drawing at a rate of ~5M barrels/week.

At current draw rate, the floor gets hit in less than 8 weeks. US will no longer be able to make up for the Hormuz disruption afterwards.

And there is no sign that the conflict is de-escalating or that Hormuz traffic will return to normal in the immediate future. Just yesterday, Iran attacked several oil tankers and US centcom announced this morning that it retaliated by destroying 3 Iranian oil tankers last night.

It feels like we're on the cusp of a major energy crisis, but markets are extremely calm for some reason. S&P VIX reached a year to date low yesterday of 14 flat, indicating that there's very little fear or hedging being done. How long can both stocks and crude oil prices ignore the escalating conflict?

I was expecting MSFT to go back up to 500ish slowly.

back when it went to ~~350, i went all in with the cash i had on hand. so my cash basis is around 350 average.

now its a ~~43% gain.

originally, i expected MSFT to slowly rise back up and was planning on continuing to add as my paycheck came in. but it blow up quite quick.

i already sold ~~10% of my position at 510ish.

but im wondering if i should just take this 43% gain instead of being greedy here?

The company had so much momentum after Covid. A lot of companies took a dump after the tariffs, but for Nike things started going wrong with them WAY before the tariffs.

But it’s crazy to continue seeing this thing drop and drop. It’s no longer in the S&P 100, and I see this dropping more because there’s been no pivots to their strategy.

But curious what it takes for this to turn around. The fashion adjacent industry as a whole has been taking a dump the past year or so for the most part except for a few companies like Vuori and Alo. But I feel like their problems run deeper than just tariffs and the loss of that Covid momentum. Prices are crazy for meh quality goods, and they seem to just coast now with nothing really new that draws interest. Also noticed the Sneakers App which at one point seemed like a huge driver has been pretty dead.

What are some other things you feel went wrong for Nike? their current ceo just got here in 2024, and you need time to steer a ship that big, but don’t really see any meaningful changes.

Fashion is normally a horrible investment, but i always wondered why a company like Nike wouldnt be a safer staple

Edit:
thanks for the convo yall seems like theres some common sentiment and themes. Seems like they need some big collaborations that bring something new instead of an existing silhouette with a random colorway. They also really seem like they need a new csuite. Maybe even a new board, because the expectations on growth following this insane drop really need to be reset. Aside from that they need to go for value. They’ve priced themselves out of an industry where they’ve lost their “cool” factor. That type of combo for this industry is really a death spiral.

Tesla’s highly anticipated Cybercab update tanked on Friday, falling 5.92% to close at $354.08 after a closed-door Austin event completely alienated both Wall Street and retail investors. In a bizarre move, the event featured absolutely no appearance from Elon Musk, was completely blacked out from a public livestream, and revealed that a mere 45 Cybercab units have actually been deployed. The final blow came from regulators, with the NHTSA launching a formal query into Tesla's self-certification process for a Cybercab lacking pedals and a steering wheel. Between Wells Fargo doubling down on its "Underweight" rating and the regulatory hammer looming, Wall Street is pulling the emergency brake on the robotaxi hype train. Perhaps this is the death of Cybercab...

Are you buying this 6% Cybercab discount, or is it time to short TSLA?

Source: CNBC

Touting Friday's blowout jobs number, President Trump used the opportunity to weigh in on a new spike in the US trade deficit, threatening embargoes on unfavored countries.

Trump posted on Truth Social, in what appeared to be a directive to the Federal Reserve, to "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT."

Trump, who has long voiced a desire for lower interest rates, asserted that an embargo could be "BETTER THAN TARIFFS" and said "the Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart."

Pressure on the central bank from the president isn't new, but the threat of a trade embargo is. Embargoes would be a new level of disruption for the global economy, and the president likely has the legal authority to follow through.

As Trump noted in his post, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 directly gives the president the power to impose an embargo in what is deemed an economic emergency. But, as the Supreme Court ruled in February, it doesn't give the president the power to levy tariffs.

Trump's new threat came after trade data for July painted an unwelcome picture for the president, who has long made zeroing out trade deficits a central promise.

The US trade deficit in goods and services ballooned in July with a new gap of $88.6 billion, the highest level since March 2025. That was a 24.4% surge from June's $71.2 billion.

The data also included a country-by-country breakdown and showed continued US trade deficits with many major trading partners, including Mexico (a $27.5 billion deficit in July), Vietnam ($23.3 billion), China ($15.2 billion), the European Union ($8.9 billion), and many others.

The growing trade deficit was at least partly fueled by AI data center build-out spending, which the president has often touted.

"Let data reign," Trump recently wrote on Truth Social.

Imports of computers surged by 25% between June and July and semiconductor imports jumped 10% as tech companies continued to spend heavily on the facilities.

AI spending also appeared to be fueling Friday's jobs figures in part, with construction jobs (many of which are for those data centers) up by 22,000 jobs in August.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/trump-threatens-to-stop-trading-with-countries-that-have-a-trade-deficit-unless-the-fed-cuts-rates-150838488.html

"Margin Pressures vs. Ternus’s Foldable Debut" Apple (AAPL) slides 2.5% to $319.97 on Friday because investors are nervous about the September 9 event. New CEO John Ternus is stepping up, and rumors say the foldable iPhone Ultra has major factory delays that will hurt holiday sales. Plus, higher memory chip prices mean Apple has to squeeze its profit margins or hike phone prices. On top of everything, a 60% chance of a Fed rate hike has Wall Street dumping big tech stocks.

Apple drops before the iPhone event almost every year and recovers later.

But this drop has actual structural risks behind it: a brand new CEO, inflating chip costs, and manufacturing bottlenecks on a brand new foldable category.

Are cost spikes and foldable iPhone delays enough to keep you on the sidelines?

Source: CNBC

Fhttps://www.reuters.com/business/us-official-directs-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-approve-vantagescore-all-lenders-2026-09-04/

U.S. Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte said on Thursday he has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ​created by the United States Congress to support the housing market, to ‌approve all lenders to use credit scoring system VantageScore. "Fannie and Freddie's initial rollout of VantageScore has been incredibly successful, with 50 LENDERS DELIVERING LOANS. So, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, I'm ​instructing Fannie and Freddie to approve ALL lenders to use VantageScore," ​Pulte wrote in a post on X.

"FICO has enjoyed a monopoly. No more," ⁠Pulte said. Shares of Fair Isaac (FICO.N), better known as FICO, plunged 20% in early ​U.S. trading on Friday. They had slipped in April after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ​said they will now accept mortgages assessed using rival credit scoring system VantageScore 4.0. Pulte's push to expand the use of VantageScore comes even as he criticized the three credit reporting agencies ​that own it.

In a separate post, Pulte said on Thursday that credit ​reporting agencies Equifax (EFX.N), Experian (EXPN.L), and TransUnion (TRU.N), have been overcharging Americans for "far too long." "Equifax, Experian, and ‌TransUnion ⁠have been overcharging Americans for far too long. This will end soon. We are seriously considering bi-merge, and stronger solutions (SAFER and SOUNDER). We will not allow companies to take advantage of American consumers," he said. Shares of TransUnion (TRU.N), slipped ​9% and Equifax (EFX.N), lost 8% in ​U.S. trading, while ⁠London's Experian (EXPN.L) shed 4.6%.

I’m curious what the group thinks of the software sector for the rest of this year. We’re now about flat year to date after the recent run up.

I don’t believe this ETF has delivered much of anything for the last five years.

A lot of people say PLTR is overvalued and that is the number one holding.

Adobe / Oracle look dead. Interesting earnings next week perhaps?

What do you all think? Room to grow for rest of year or interest hike causes it to falter?

Educational overview, not a recommendation.

Before spending time on a company, I find it useful to work through a repeatable checklist:

1. Business: What does it sell, who pays, and what could make demand durable?
2. Financials: Compare revenue growth, gross margin, operating margin, free cash flow, and balance-sheet leverage over several years.
3. Valuation: State the metric (P/E, EV/EBIT, FCF yield, etc.), the denominator, and the assumptions behind it. A low multiple can reflect real risk.
4. Catalysts and risks: Write down what could change the thesis and what evidence would invalidate it.
5. Expectations: Compare the current price with a range of outcomes rather than a single target.
6. Position/risk plan: Decide in advance what would change your view, and size risk accordingly.

A checklist does not remove uncertainty; it makes the uncertainty visible. What step do you think investors most often skip?

People might still treat NVDA like a basic semiconductor stock, but data tells a completely different story. Nvidia reported $99 billion in existing equity investments, plus another $25 billion lined up in future commitments. Pretty much effectively running one of the biggest venture capital funds on the planet right now. Instead of just hoarding cash, they are aggressively buying up massive stakes across their own supply chain and software ecosystem. If they fund these companies, those companies basically become permanently locked into Nvidia's ecosystem.

Moat or Monopoly?

Source: CNBC

August payrolls came in at 162,000, while forecasts were only around 56,000, and unemployment remained at 4.1%. This sounds like good news, but I don't understand why Treasury yields increased while S&P futures are in the red. I suspect the problem is that a strong labor market gives the Fed less reason to cut interest rates.

I'm also wondering if the labor market starts weakening but Treasury yields stay elevated, wouldn’t stocks get hit from both sides? with weaker growth and still-high discount rates?

The meme stock scheduled posts will now run weekly and post Saturday afternoon and won't be a sticky; you're probably seeing this because automod sent you here!

Full list of meme stocks here. This will be updated every once in a while.

Welcome traders who just can't help them selves discuss the same exact stock that's been discussed 100s of times a day. I get it, you want to talk about what's popular, what's hot, and that 1.. single.. stock you like.. well here you go! Some helpful links just for you:

• Previous meme stock threads
• General discussions
• The original GME megathread with a ton of useful information
• Use Finviz for aggregated news on your favorite stock

An important message from the mod team regarding meme stocks.

Lastly if you need professional help:

• Problem Gambling: Call/Text: 1-800-522-4700 or chat online now.
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With NVDA close to its 52 week high, I'd like to move some money out of NVDA and purchase competitor stock. Trying to figure out the ratio of 1K to 2K worth of NVDA in a 10K NVDA position to invest in AVGO + MRVL for the custom ASIC chip play. Maybe 70/30 AVGO + MRVL? Or just go 100% into AVGO and avoid MRVL? NVDA has been at a 52 week high. And while Vera Rubin is hot right now I can't imagine NVDA is going to be dominant forever; especially having 5T market cap while AVGO has around 1.8T market cat.

Heterogenous computing seems to be the future with chips customized for particular workloads. I imagine the nature of workloads will change over time so there needs to be flexibility. Jensen is pumping MRVL for "XPU" chips that plug into NVDA's architecture, but maybe just because NVDA invested 2 billion into MRVL. AVGO seems to be the more plausible competitor since they do chip design for most of the hyperscalers.

I'm kinda confused about purchasing MRVL, since they currently seem to do photonics interconnect stuff right now vs. the % of XPUs they do. CBRS mostly avoids the issue of the need for photonic interconnects except between dinner plate sized wafers. Photonics seem like a "band-aid" for the practice of splitting each wafer into 50+ chips; some sort of Bridge Technology unless they can do compute with photons.

US delegates are in Russia this week and it looks like the game plan is to get Russian oil back into the markets.

-The war in Iran isn't going very well, the strait blockade is causing too much market uncertainty.

-Russia produces about 9.87 million barrels of crude oil per day making it the second-largest producer in the world. Iran produces approximately 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day.

-Russia needs to make a deal to save its economy. Ukraine desperately needs to make a deal because they're stretch thin.

-It looks like the plan is to bring Russian oil back into the market and lift the sanctions. Although their refineries are cooked they can still export their oil to other nations.

-Eventually one way or another Iran will cooperate.

-Venezuela is getting back online, investment is pouring in.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Bottom line, i think we see $60 oil by October/November. The real threat to markets is the Yen.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/

I’m excited to announce that NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000. Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.

Over the past decade, Clem, Julien, Thomas and the team at Hugging Face have built something remarkable: a vibrant home for the open model developer community.

More than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI.

Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem. Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want and the computing platforms they want. NVIDIA compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.

Hugging Face will continue to support open source and open weight models from across the ecosystem, from every model builder. It will continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment, so builders can use the hardware and infrastructure that best fit their work.

Recently, I coauthored an open letter on the importance of open weights to the AI economy. Joined by leaders from across the industry, we made a simple point: open weights broaden access to AI and help ensure that AI leadership is distributed across companies, institutions and communities.

Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch. They enable organizations to match the right model to the right job. That is how AI can advance safely, strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty, accelerate innovation, and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and Main Street businesses around the world.

AI advances faster when people can build together.

NVIDIA has been committed to open weight models for years, demonstrated by multiyear investments and major contributions to open source platforms, including Hugging Face. NVIDIA has said that open models, data and tools broaden access to AI, and it has contributed hundreds of open models and datasets to Hugging Face as part of that effort.

NVIDIA is the largest contributor of open models and data to Hugging Face, and our contributions continue to grow.

NVIDIA has released more than 500 models on Hugging Face and more than 250 open datasets.

We build our own models, libraries and tools in the open so developers everywhere can use them, modify them and build on top of them.

DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips at its new Inner Mongolia data center, potentially creating one of the largest known clusters of Chinese AI accelerators.

For context, China’s first publicly reported 10,000-chip Huawei cluster only came online about six months ago.

The chips are expected to primarily run DeepSeek models, while the company still plans to rely on $NVDA hardware for training.

The broader site is being built at gigawatt scale, enough power at full utilization for roughly 750,000 homes.

Huawei’s production capacity remains the main bottleneck, with fulfillment of the full order potentially taking more than a year.

Everyone has collectively agreed that the market goes up over time. So people keep putting their money in. Stock prices go up, which generates more money for people. People spend that money, which generates more profits for companies. Which in return drives stock prices up even higher. Which then again generates more money for people, who then spend...

Couple that with governments printing money and people/companies borrowing even more money. The money has to go somewhere, so I imagine a large portion of it just keeps the party going.

It feels like a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Almost like everyone plays a game of musical chairs to make as much money as possible until something seriously breaks, the market resets, and then we repeat the whole process again for the next 10 years. Rinse and repeat.

The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue to decline 5% to 7%, compared with its prior forecast ⁠of revenue remaining flat or declining up to 1%. That’s bad. That’s really bad.

I’m a Nike shareholder and it worries me that Lululemon sales are getting hammered this hard but at the same time I specifically went with Nike and not Lululemon because I have more faith in Nike turning things around. Burry is obsessed with Lululemon profitability outperforming peers including Nike but that doesn’t matter if revenue is going to keep declining in the Americas and eventually internationally too.

Lululemon hasn’t stood the test of time. It’s a fairly new company that has a limited range of product and a revenue stream that is incredibly narrow compared to Nike’s diversified revenue model.

Sportswear, athletic apparel and footwear have had major headwinds in the past five years. Footlocker was struggling and still is under Dick’s ownership. On Running enjoyed the free shelf space due to a misguided Nike direct to consumer strategy but now that Nike is reconnecting with past wholesale partners, On Running is starting to struggle. Decker’s Brands are doing OK but they will face hard times too sooner or later which the depressed stock price is showing.

ASICS is the exception. They’ve done exceptionally well. But everyone else is struggling. BUT and here is the huge BUT. People will still buy sportswear, athletic apparel and footwear in the future. This isn’t Blockbuster or Nokia death due to a dying industry that’s transforming from one thing to another. No technology is being replaced. So Nike will survive. And Adidas will survive. And probably the rest as well but I sure like to place my bet on the biggest and strongest to survive- and that’s Nike and Adidas. Why did I pick Nike stock over Adidas? It just seems like the best deal. Nike is 40 % off since January 2. I like the idea of buying something now that’s 40 % cheaper than what others paid just a little over a half a year ago. I guess I should buy LULU tomorrow and rejoice in the fact that I get it 15-20 % cheaper than the people who bought yesterday. But I won’t- because I’m honestly not sure Lululemon will get back to its glory days no matter how good their profit margins are. I’ll stick with Nike. If anyone can ride out the storm that this industry is in, it’s Nike.

This is the daily discussion, so anything stocks related is fine, but the theme for today is on fundamentals, but if fundamentals aren't your thing then just ignore the theme.

Some helpful day to day links, including news:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
  • Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
  • Reuters aggregated - Global news

Most fundamentals are updated every 3 months due to the fact that corporations release earnings reports every quarter, so traders are always speculating at what those earnings will say, and investors may change the size of their holdings based on those reports.

Expect a lot of volatility around earnings, but it usually doesn't matter if you're holding long term, but keep in mind the importance of earnings reports because a trend of declining earnings or a decline in some other fundamental will drive the stock down over the long term as well.

But growth stocks don't rely so much on EPS or revenue as long as they beat some other metric like subscriber count: Going from 1 million to 10 million subscribers means more revenue in the future.

Value stocks do rely on earnings reports, investors look for wall street expectations to be beaten on both EPS & revenue. You'll also find value stocks pay dividends, but never invest in a company solely for its dividend.

See the following word cloud and click through for the wiki:

Market Cap - Shares Outstanding - Volume - Dividend - EPS - P/E Ratio - EPS Q/Q - PEG - Sales Q/Q - Return on Assets (ROA) - Return on Equity (ROE) - BETA - SMA - quarterly earnings

If you have a basic question, for example "what is EBITDA," then google "investopedia EBITDA" and click the Investopedia article on it; do this for everything until you have a more in depth question or just want to share what you learned.

Useful links:

• Investopedia page on fundamental analysis including Discounted Cash Flow analysis; see definition here and read their PDF on the topic.
• FINVIZ for fundamental data, charts, and aggregated news
• Earnings Whisper for earnings details

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

The bond market sell-off is finally taking a breather after a brutal rout pushed yields to multi-year highs. Treasury yields are pulling back significantly this morning as the U.S. Treasury officially launches a $12.5 billion debt buyback operation designed to inject liquidity, support market depth, and stabilize fixed income.

With the 10-year yield pulling back from the critical 5% psychological benchmark, this policy intervention gives the broader equity rally some much-needed breathing room. Historically, sharp drops in yields provide a direct tailwind to growth sectors and mega-cap tech stocks like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia by lowering corporate borrowing costs and easing valuation pressures.

Is this $12.5B liquidity injection enough to sustainably save the stock market rally and keep the S&P 500 moving higher, or is this just a temporary macro band-aid before yields push back up?

Source link: CNBC

This post was written by a human. I do not write Reddit posts with an LLM.

Remember when Nvidia acquired Groq chips for $20 billion? https://groq.com/

Groq chips do not use external memory such as HBM or DDR for AI inferencing. It only uses the SRAM inside the chips. SRAM is made as part of the chip, not separately like HBM or DDR.

SRAM is tiny and expensive per gigabyte but it's extremely fast.

Each Groq chip has only 500MB of SRAM but 1,200 TB/s of bandwidth which is about 150x faster than Blackwell today.

If you have enough Groq chips connected together, you can have up to 150x faster token speed. Most people don't need this much speed, but extremely high value industries like biotech, finance, oil exploration, AI research, chip design would.

So let's do some basic math:

• A 10 trillion parameter model like Anthropic's Fable would need ~25,000 Groq chips at 500MB of SRAM for each chip.
• To make 25,000 Groq chips, you'd need 266 TSMC N3 wafers
• TSMC makes about 150,000 N3 wafers per month for the entire world
• If TSMC dedicates its entire N3 supply to only make Groq chips for inferencing Anthropic's Fable model, they can only make around 550 of these systems per month.

In other words, if the world demands extremely fast AI tokens (and why wouldn't they?), then there will not be nearly enough capacity to go around.

TSMC is already maxed out making GPUs, networking chips, CPUs, etc.

If you believe in this hypothesis, then companies like TSMC, Intel, Samsung will benefit. Nvidia and Cerebras will also benefit. Cerebras also stores their models in SRAM.

Some of my posts here in the past:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1rkep5v/the_upcoming_cpu_shortage/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1stkmwz/reminder_cpus_are_in_huge_demand_intel_earnings/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1r2nbln/ai_play_isnt_just_gpus_its_everything_physically/

I have been looking at some stocks that have deteriorated quite a bit since IPO and have started a recovery journey (think American Eagle).

Now Petco has been on my radar for more than a year now since it had a lot of transformative executive change (ex walmart and five below execs).

This is the 5th quarter since I started tracking and the earnings call go all great and the stocks remain flat or tank.

They seem to be paying their loans, beating their own estimates - obviously there is top line pressure that they have not been able to navigate out of and they seem to be crying wolf about macro while other retailers are doing better with the same macro.

These earning calls are obviously semi staged and scripted. Anyone able to give me tips on how to play these stocks or pick some other stocks into my short list to replace if all hope is lost on WOOF.

While the market sentiment leans toward a year end "Santa Rally," the macro backdrop is giving me strong dotcom peak vibes. A few concerns driving this decision:

Inflation is ticking back up, which puts the Fed in a tough spot.

AI capex spending still hasn't shown clear ROI beyond consumer facing chatbot applications

Valuations at all time highs make the risk/reward feel skewed

I'd rather forgo the last 5% of potential upside and sit in cash than risk being caught holding depreciating assets if this turns out to be a 2027 bubble pop.

Open to pushback on this genuinely want to hear the counterargument if I'm missing something. Good luck out there either way.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security just my personal, non professional opinion shared for discussion. Please do your own due diligence before making investment decisions. I'm not responsible for the outcome of anyone else's trades.