Nine of eighteen Fed officials penciled in a hike. We penciled in getting paid either way.
SGOV reinforced across every tier — the bill ladder and the 0.5% cash buffer keep collecting 4%+ while the committee argues toward July 28. IAU held; 4% inflation is precisely what it’s there for, even on a $74 down day. Long duration stays avoided — a 10-year at 4.567% under a hawkish committee is a promise we don’t need. We don’t rotate a portfolio on one set of minutes; we do stop reaching. And if you’re CalSTRS or CalPERS, your pension already does the duration work — your portfolio doesn’t have to.
Hormuz traffic “essentially stopped.” Our energy insurance just earned its premium — again.
Rystad says tanker traffic through the corridor for ~20% of the world’s oil has essentially stopped. WTI +4.4% to $73.52, Brent +5.2% to $78.02 — on a day U.S. inventories actually rose, which tells you it’s a risk premium, not a shortage yet. The SPR fell to 319.5 million barrels, the Kremlin banned diesel exports, diesel futures jumped 11% in a day (+72% YTD), and Marathon (MPC) and Valero (VLO) closed at 52-week highs.
Chevron (CVX), Exxon (XOM) and ConocoPhillips (COP) stay reinforced, and the toll-takers behind them — Kinder Morgan (KMI), Williams (WMB), Texas Pacific Land (TPL) — keep collecting whether the strait opens Tuesday or Christmas. MPC and VLO go on the watch bench, with respect: buying a refiner at a 52-week high on war news is buying a beach house during the hurricane. Spike days are for rebalancing into the plan, not out of it.
Apple handed Broadcom $30 billion. We already owned the guy getting paid.
Apple (AAPL) committed $30 billion-plus over five years to Broadcom (AVGO) — 15 billion radio and RF chips, built in Fort Collins — and AVGO rose 4.8%. Same paper, money side: first-half M&A hit a record $3 trillion, up 44%, six deals over $50 billion, and JPMorgan (JPM) is standing up an entire small-cap deals team because the pipeline runs that deep.
AVGO reinforced — a signed, multi-year Apple commitment is revenue you can underwrite, which is the whole test. TSM reinforced with it; the foundry gets paid on every one of those 15 billion chips. And Goldman Sachs (GS) goes into the tactical book at 1% next to JPM and MS: a record deal wave is a fee wave, and we’d rather own the toll booth than admire the traffic.
The memory trade looks absurdly cheap. That’s exactly why we’re only watching.
SK Hynix prices its $28 billion U.S. listing this week at roughly six times forward earnings; Samsung guided to a 19-fold profit jump and fell 6.9% anyway; Micron (MU) trades at the same suspicious discount. Memory investors have seen this movie — boom, glut, apology, repeat — and valuations run lowest exactly when profits run hottest.
MU stays on the watch bench, and we watch Friday’s SK Hynix debut from the stands. The trigger to upgrade is an underwritable contract — a signed multi-year buyer, U.S.-plan money, something you can take to a committee. Until then, our memory exposure rides inside the sleeve we already own: AVGO, TSM and NVDA, which get paid whichever memory maker wins the food fight.
The 28% health-insurance letter is coming. We don’t own the companies sending it.
Centene (CNC) is asking 28% in Washington state on top of last year’s 35%; Blue Cross of Illinois wants 15% on top of 28%; Cigna (CI) is leaving the exchanges; enrollment has shrunk from 22.1 million to 19.2 million. Fewer, sicker enrollees; higher asks; repeat.
CNC, CI and Elevance (ELV) stay off the buy list — a death spiral is not a moat, and managed care carries policy risk in both directions with a midterm cycle coming. Our lone name, UnitedHealth (UNH), stays a hold, sized like the regulatory hostage it is. If you’re retiring before 65, this is your bridge-insurance bill — model the line, manage the subsidy cliffs, and treat the HSA as the bridge asset it is.
The Costco cashier with a million-dollar 401(k) just retired the argument.
Tony Barzar, 60, forty years at the same Tucson Costco (COST), $32.90 an hour — and a seven-figure 401(k) built from deferrals that started in 1993 and never stopped: not in 1987, 2000, 2008, 2020 or 2022. Costco’s CFO says “many thousands” of hourly workers have done the same.
On the stock, discipline: COST is a wonderful compounder priced like everyone already read this story, so it sits on the watch list for a fatter pitch. On the plan, action: find the old accounts, consolidate them, automate the deferral, and never switch it off — the pause during a scary headline is the part that costs you. Tony’s edge wasn’t the market. It’s that he never stopped.
An $800 price target walks into a bar.
SpaceX’s underwriters published: Goldman (GS) $205, Morgan Stanley (MS) $300, UBS $210 — and Raymond James $800, which would value a money-losing rocket company at $10 trillion. It closed Wednesday at $148.30. Trivariate’s data: wide target dispersion historically underperforms. Oracle (ORCL) would need +80% just to reach its average target, and Nvidia’s (NVDA) targets have politely chased its price the whole way up.
SpaceX stays on the watch bench — $165-to-$800 isn’t a forecast, it’s a food fight with a research header. NVDA stays a core hold on its own signed demand, not on anyone’s target. Targets follow prices; portfolios shouldn’t follow targets. When a price target makes you feel something, that’s marketing, not math.
Underwriter targets on SpaceX: Goldman $205, Morgan Stanley $300, UBS $210 — and Raymond James $800, which would value a money-losing rocket company at $10 trillion. It closed Wednesday at $148.30, and Trivariate’s data says wide target dispersion historically underperforms.
Destroy the replay booth: VAR is ruining the World Cup.
They retired. Then they opened the business.
A golf club built a secret 20-foot seawall. Rhode Island noticed.
