A record Dow, a 19-fold profit — we read the fever chart so you don’t catch it.
Taiwan Semi (TSM, +$17.63 to $451.79) and Broadcom (AVGO, $373.90) stay in the reinforce column across all four Aggressive tiers — the toll collectors get paid whichever memory maker wins the sprint. Micron (MU) is held at its tactical target and not added to at $984 — we bought the cycle, we’re not buying the encore; same rule for SNDK, WDC and the LRCX tooling leg. Korea stays index-only: foreign investors pulled $100 billion out in the first half while a 2x Hynix wrapper became the largest leveraged single-stock ETF on earth. Nothing in our book gets owned through a 2x wrapper. Nothing.
Four giant banks circle Fiserv’s network — for the loophole, not the plumbing.
JPMorgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC $59.90), Wells Fargo (WFC $87.45) and PNC ($253.18) held early talks to buy a debit network from Fiserv (FI, $51.78, down ~70% in a year) — owning a network exempts a bank from the Durbin cap on debit fees, the play Capital One (COF) ran with its $50.6 billion Discover deal.
JPM, GS and MS stay reinforced in the financials sleeve — KBW banks +1.88% led Monday’s whole tape, with Goldman (GS) +$34.29 to $1,055.29, Morgan Stanley (MS) +$8.17 and JPM +$4.75 to $337.72. Fiserv (FI) goes on the watch bench as a takeover-interest situation, not a holding: distress plus a fee loophole is a very specific kind of bid, and we let the banks pay to find out. Even the A-hed agrees — the Fifth Third (FITB)–Comerica (CMA) merger’s hardest fight is whether chili has beans. The fee machine underneath is fine.
Microsoft cuts 3,200 Xbox jobs — “our business today is not healthy.”
Microsoft (MSFT, $386.74, one of the few red tickets on a record day at −$3.75) is cutting about a fifth of Xbox — 1,600 now, 1,250 more this fiscal year, four studios gone. Game Pass was planned for 77 million subscribers; it has about 30 million, on a 3% margin. That’s not a business, that’s a hobby with a badge.
MSFT stays a core holding in the Fundamentals Core tiers — held, watched, not added to today. A company willing to say “not healthy” out loud is protecting the margins that fund the AI build-out, which is also why the book owns Dell (DELL, +$17.48 to $411.80) and the power names underneath it. Core compounder: watched, not worshipped — and note Samsung’s 19x quarter is now Xbox’s bill of materials.
Jet fuel fell 40%. Your fare didn’t — and the airlines say so with a straight face.
Fuel is down 40% from the April war spike, but carriers raised fares eight times since it began; the average domestic round-trip hit $628 in May, up nearly $100 in a year. Delta (DAL $91.68) and United (UAL $132.50) sit at records, American (AAL $17.75) is +30% in a month, Southwest (LUV $50.81) is smiling, and easyJet jumped 10% on a $7.3 billion Castlelake bid. The cause has a name: Spirit is dead, and its cheap seats died with it.
We own zero airlines and Monday didn’t change that — DAL, UAL, AAL and LUV go on the watch list as a pricing-power case study, not a position. Cyclicals with wings get bought in recessions, not at records. The trait we’re actually screening for — pricing power that outlives its excuse — already lives in the book, more politely dressed, in AVGO and TSM.
Toyota spends $3.6 billion to bring the Tacoma home.
Toyota (TM, +$5.21 to $179.80) will move Tacoma production from Mexico to San Antonio by 2030 — roughly 2,000 jobs and 150,000 trucks a year — after tariffs handed it an $8.5 billion bill. The tariff tax, it turns out, becomes somebody’s factory. Meanwhile Walmart (WMT $110.65) cut prices on thousands of items; the consumer gets a rebate, the builders get a decade.
Quanta Services (PWR, $674.04) stays reinforced in the infrastructure sleeve — the crews that wire the plant and the grid behind it get paid whether the factory builds trucks, chips or chatbots — with Caterpillar (CAT, +$6.39 to $969.92) selling the yellow iron next door, on the watch list. TM goes on the watch bench too: we admire the discipline, but we own the reshoring trade through the companies that get paid first.
Strategy sells the bitcoin it swore it never would — and raises “Stretch” to 12%.
Strategy (MSTR, $100.77, down 75% in a year) sold 3,588 bitcoins for $216 million after years of “never sell,” authorized up to $1.25 billion more, and raised its STRC preferred coupon to 12%. The cash buffer covers about 17 months of interest and preferred dividends. That’s not a cushion; that’s a countdown with a marketing department.
Down 75% in a year, Strategy sold 3,588 bitcoins for $216 million after years of “never sell” and raised its STRC preferred coupon to 12% — with a cash buffer covering about 17 months. When a company must sell its one asset to pay the dividends on the paper it sold to buy that asset, the machine is running backward.
MSTR is a hard avoid in every tier, alongside every leveraged crypto wrapper wearing an income costume — when a company must sell its one asset to pay the dividends on the paper it sold to buy that asset, the machine is running backward. If a “passive income” pitch in your feed leads with a 12% yield this week, you now know the mechanism underneath it.
The student-loan rulebook just got rewritten — check your caps before your IRA.
As of July 1, Parent PLUS borrowing is capped at $20,000 a year and $65,000 per child — it used to run to the full cost of attendance — and new borrowers pick from two repayment plans instead of seven. Grad students capped at $100,000, professional degrees $200,000, lifetime ceiling $257,500. “We’ll borrow the difference” just stopped being a plan.
Tuition money with a date on it goes to the short-Treasury sleeve — SGOV pays 4%+ with the 2-year at 4.124%, where a Kospi-style fever can’t touch it. Retirement first, tuition second: your student can borrow for school, and nobody will lend you a dime for being 70. College-bound kid or grandkid in the family? This is the week to re-run the numbers.
Kids move home, parents need moving: the re-bundled American household.
$9 gas on a $1,483 Social Security check — Alaska’s energy squeeze.
