“A” Bottom Or “THE” Bottom? Jensen’s Unmitigated Disaster

Boy, is there a lot to cover! And it’s Friday the 13th, to boot. And our emails through Microsoft (MSFT) finally came back up. I saw online that the bars in NYC were packed at 3 pm yesterday because so many companies declared a “snow day”. My daughter thought it was great. As an old guy, I couldn’t understand why companies couldn’t find other things to do. I know we did here. It was kinda nice not to have emails flooding in every few minutes.

Let’s start with the markets, which remain volatile. After the mini-crash, the Nasdaq 100 has done what it’s supposed to do: bounce. Has it bounced enough? Yes. Could it bounce more? Sure. The open question remains whether we saw a bottom or THE bottom last week. The jury remains out, but it would be easier if it were “a” bottom. You will notice at the end an awful lot of trading activity with a selling bias. That was intentional.

With all the selling we have seen in AI and tech, the small caps (below) didn’t even make a new low on mini-crash day. And they have been leading for a month.

If you follow me on X or Facebook, you already know how I felt about Jensen Huang. After the first disclosure about the affair with the Chinese spy, I said he needs to immediately resign or be terminated. That drew quite the ire on social media. First, people laughed and called me names. Then they were angry and nasty. Finally, there were antisemitic remarks and death threats. You can imagine what happened after the second affair came out and my pointed comments. People are nuts on social media. They are also keyboard cowboys.

Nvidia (NVDA) was plunging before the world knew about Jensen’s travails. I have a lot more to say about this, but I will save it in the interest of brevity. Interestingly, they report earnings next week. Also of note, Nvidia was added to the S&P 500 in November 2001, replacing, wait for it, Enron.

For full disclosure, our Unloved Gems portfolio owns a 1.25% (half-sized) position.

Anthropic comes public next week. They are the Claude AI company. Wanna guess my opinion on that IPO? Spoiler alert. It will be the same as SpaceX and Cerebras.

Another crazy busy weekend awaits, like they all are in fall and early winter. UCONN men’s hoops tonight, followed by UCONN football tomorrow with my good buddy from freshman year in college. He and his wife just retired and are heading to warmer climates, so this is their last rodeo. He promised a culinary surprise. On Sunday I head to one of my favorite places in the country, Scottsdale, Arizona, before continuing on to California on Tuesday for the rest of the week. My laptop is loaded up with work, and my iPad has Tulsa King and The Diplomat all ready.

On Wednesday we bought RSYYX, BXHYX, IHIFX, SPYQ, more MQQQ, more QLD, more BKLN, more UBER and more CHWY. We sold PCY and some PAAA. On Thursday we bought XHB, SPY, more IBB, more QLD, more MQQQ and more BXHYX. We sold PAAA, JAAA, XHB, XBI, TLT, RAIL, KRE, IBIT, EMB, some V, some AMZN, some QLD, some MQQQ, some SPHB, and some IYT.