The 5 Horsemen of the AI-pocalypse
What a week! We may have peace in the Middle East, SapceX is fighting for its life, and we have a new AI powerhouse trading in the US: Meet the 5th Horseman, SK Hynix I called these stocks the 4 Horsemen of the AI-pocalypse: SanDisk (SNDK) Micron (MU) Western Digital (WDC) Seagate (STX) AI has created unprecedented demand for storage and memory to the point that they comprise 4 of the 5 best S&P 500 stocks this year: And now we may have a new horseman in the form of South Korean memory giant SK Hynix (SKHY), which had a blockbuster US market debut Friday. The $26.5 billion deal priced at $149 per share, and the stock was trading around $169 as of 2:33 pm ET. Pretty solid first day. And CEO Kwak Noh-jung is telling the right story. He told Reuters “We forecast that next year will be the worst year in the industry’s history from the supply perspective.” And he added that demand will exceed supply beyond 2030. Nothing drives momentum like a massive supply-demand imbalance. So I’m making SK Hynix a probationary “5th Horseman of the AI-pocalypse.” Get David Prince’s take on SK Hynix here: Meanwhile, another high-profile IPO is fighting its own battle: SpaceX Fights for $150 We all know the bear case for SpaceX (SPCX). IPO lockup expirations will flood the market with shares. The valuation is outrageous. The Nasdaq 100 addition didn’t help the stock. At the same time, it is stubbornly holding the $150 area: That looks like a major psychological line in the sand. And maybe this situation is as simple as a hard break above or below this level will dictate the next big move. For more on SpaceX, check out this video: And since we’re on the topic of IPOs and AI… Bank Earnings Should Be HUGE This Year This coming week, we get earnings from the big banks like JP Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), and Morgan Stanley (MS). And now that I think about it, maybe the banks are a stealth AI play. Especially the capital markets focused names like Goldman and Morgan Stanley, which are up nicely in 2026: Aside from the massive SpaceX IPO and the prospective OpenAI and Anthropic deals, there’s been a ton of capital markets activity related to AI, like: Alphabet (GOOGL) raising $85 billion in equity Oracle (ORCL) raising $40 billion to help fund its AI buildout Super Micro (SMCI) raising $7 billion to buy components to fill new $39 billion in AI server orders According to Crunchbase, global venture funding hit $510 billion in the first half of 2026. That compares to $440 billion for all of last year. Crunchbase also said that this is the strongest exit market since 2021. All this capital markets activity should mean fat fees for Wall Street banks. Earnings Season Is About to Go BOOM Q1 earnings season was huge, thanks to massive beats in tech, particularly in the semiconductor industry. As noted above, this coming week, Q2 results kick off with the likes of JP Morgan (JPM), Netflix (NFLX), and ASML (ASML). I’d argue ASML is the biggest report of the week since it sells into the AI/Semi giants like Samsung, AMD (AMD), SK Hynix (SKHY), Micron (MU), Intel (INTC), and Taiwan Semi (TSM). Note: Taiwan Semi also reports next week. There’s a whole lotta optimism out there. FactSet data shows that 111 S&P 500 companies issued guidance. 57% issued positive guidance, well above the long-term average of 41%. This is the highest percentage of companies issuing positive guidance since Q3 2021. And tech guidance is at a record high. Analysts are also pumped. They are now estimating 23.3% growth, up from 18.8% on March 31. And looking forward, Q3 growth is forecast at 26.8%, and Q4 is 24.1%. This is bad. Because the bar is very high. Plus, if results come in as expected or better, we are going to be facing some tough year-over-year comparisons next year. But even as companies and analysts are positive, investors and traders show no signs of joy: Sentiment Remains Neutral The AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 36.3% of investors are bullish. This keeps sentiment in neutral territory. And while we’ve had a few positive or negative readings here and there, there hasn’t been a true extreme reading (in either direction) since early 2025. Meanwhile, the CNN Fear & Greed Index is at 47, smack in the middle at neutral. On balance, this is all bullish because it shows little euphoria on the part of market participants.
Continue Reading -->Why SpaceX Stinks to High Heaven
Apply for JR’s Gold Mentorship Program Here We asked 3 traders what they think about SpaceX and they all said the same thing. Hint: nothing good. We go over: Why SpaceX will break the key $147 to $150 area Whether SK Hynix is a major force in the semiconductors The bull case for the semiconductors And more! P.S. Learn about JR’s Gold Signature Mentorship in this video:
Continue Reading -->Big IPOs Are Big Business on Wall Street
I’ll never forget the lessons I learned about Wall Street during the Facebook IPO in May of 2012. I was the newest guy on the desk at a prop trading firm, and it was the summer of the PIIGS Euro debacle and Draghi’s “Whatever it takes” speech. It was a chaotic backdrop for the most anticipated IPO in decades. The FB offering was huge in terms of shares, and one trader on the desk had an allotment of shares in his personal account. The offering price was $38, and in the premarket, it couldn’t hold above $43. The guy with FB shares was an amazing trader with superb instincts. He sold his shares at the open because he didn’t like the way the stock was acting. The stock had a brief spurt higher, then sank the rest of the morning. By mid afternoon, it was approaching the IPO price. We all saw how weak it was. We watched in amazement that there wasn’t any demand to keep the price above the initial offer figure of $38. As the price slowly approached the offering price, more and more volume came on the offer. Massive quantities of shares were being dumped in the most overhyped IPO since the .com era. It seemed to take forever for the price to get down to $38. Penny by penny it sank listlessly. We all knew it was going to break below the figure, and then, out of seemingly nowhere, infinite sized bidding came in at $38. Every single share that was offered was met with an inert floor of demand at $38. Price never went one penny below the initial offer that first day of trading. That was the underwriting syndicate bidding in infinite size for the stock. This is the lesson I learned that day: Wall Street will not allow itself to look bad to the public. By sheer force of will, the money will be found to support shares that need to be supported to keep a proper image in the investing public’s eyes. This is the way in which Wall Street professionals operate. A retail trader like myself can only watch in admiration at the way they handle their business. I’ve never forgotten that day, and I’m reminded of it now as we move beyond the SpaceX IPO and into the IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. I still hold the view that we are in the contraction phase of the economic cycle, but I don’t think the market has a window to move down significantly until after August, and likely not until after the November midterms. Those dates are far into the future, and not our concern for the present. For the moment, Wall Street has at least two more big IPOs to work through, and I am supremely confident that the professionals on the street will make the IPOs a success no matter what. So while I am growing increasingly bearish as we move into the second half of the year, I am still aware of the realities of the business of markets, and it’s bad for business when stock prices go down. I’m still in mostly cash, but you can’t make money if you don’t have a position so I’m looking for some positions that I can work into. I’ve analyzed all my trades for the 1st half of the year, and it’s amazing that March was my only down month considering how disappointing some of my entries and exits have been so far this year. The only reason I’m still in good shape this year is because I stick to a discipline. I intend to keep sticking to what has worked for me so far. My discipline is to only buy two types of setups: technical breakouts in good price structures when the $SPY is above its 8 and 21 day moving averages, and large positions in stocks that I like fundamentally. The breakout trades are tactical, and as such, I keep a constant risk size in those, without letting any position get bigger than about 7.5% of the total account. These trades produce positive cash flow on average and keep me involved in the game to feel how things are developing. These are generally less than a 3 month average holding period. My position trades are different. Those are where the vast majority of my gains come from, can make up 90% of my account, and are generally a 9-18 month average holding period. Since we are not yet in a period where the $SPY is trending nicely above a rising 8 and 21 day moving average, I’m focusing less on breakout trades and more on working slowly into some stocks I think could weather the coming storm later this year. I only feel comfortable holding large positions in stocks that I can analyze as having some compelling value. There’s several stocks I like in this regard. I’ve already shared the pipeline companies I like because their asset base is irreplaceable and should hold value through a downturn, then soar if and when the Fed is forced into yield curve control and inflation breaks out in the years ahead. In keeping with the hard asset theme like pipelines, I’m also looking for companies that own assets and trade around book value. If the assets on their books are priced properly, they should have limited downside in the deflationary event that is my current base case. Here are some stocks I’m stalking to find a small, low risk entry now with a plan to build a much larger position over time if these initial buys don’t get stopped out: $RYN trades at 1.2x book value, and it yields about 5%. But it is tied to housing which I’m not bullish on until rates come down so I’m in no rush to take offers on this one. I’ll place small bids below the market once rates on the 10 year treasury find a good top. $NTR trades at 1.4x
Continue Reading -->How to Trade the SK Hynix Debut
South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix makes its debut on the Nasdaq Friday. David Prince shares his expectations for the listing and how he would trade the name that day: David also covers: How SKHY will impact other names like MU and SNDK Why he’s been trading CCXI The reason he sees new highs ahead for AAPL Why next week will be big with earnings from TSM and ASML His favorite setups right now And more! Join next week’s Inner Circle VIP Open House!
Continue Reading -->Learning Is Not Trading
Apply for JR’s Gold Mentorship Program Here Learning is important. But don’t mistake it for actually trading to earn money in the markets. An aspiring surgeon does not obsess over tools. They obsess over developing the skill of surgery. The same is true of trading. So many newbies obsess over charts but don’t make money. See why: JR explains how finding the right mentor can help you overcome this unique problem. That’s how you get past your bad habits, and build your P&L the right way. And once you’re done with this video, learn about JR’s Mentorship Program Here:
Continue Reading -->The Secret to True Trading Confidence
Apply for JR’s Gold Mentorship Program Here JR Romero shares the #1 secret to building confidence as a trader. And it’s all about the sweet taste of victory: He shares: Where true confidence comes from When your state of change will happen Why you need to consistently study your trades And once you’re done with that, learn about JR’s Mentorship Program Here:
Continue Reading -->How Meta Can Hit $1,000
We’re cruising into the July 4 holiday so let’s take a look at the 5 things you need to know right now. How Meta Can Hit $1,000+ On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Meta (META) is planning a cloud infrastructure business called “Meta Compute” to sell excess compute capacity for AI and other applications. If this is real, it would put Meta in competition with the likes of Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Alphabet (GOOGL). You could argue this a million different ways. The bears will say Meta should not have excess compute capacity, and it’s entering battle with aggressive competitors. Or maybe this gives Meta the potential for a higher valuation because it’s hitching a more direct ride to the growth of AI. But I ask myself, couldn’t Meta make way more money by just selling ads to AI companies? This seems like the easy money instead of rolling the dice with hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure investments. Yes, Meta should use AI for things like improving ad targeting and speeding up code development. Everybody knows that. But it seems far smarter to be the cash register counting up all the ad dollars from OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. Call me crazy. But if Meta backs off from its wildly aggressive AI spending plans, I think it’s going straight to $1,000. Because earnings estimates will go through the roof. The problem is that this could take years. I mean, how long did it take before they realized the Metaverse sucked? Techflation Is Here In 1965, Intel (INTC) co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors in a chip would double about every two years, with the price dropping by half. That was declared “Moore’s Law.” It’s something of an outdated concept for technical reasons. For example, transistors can only get so small. But what if AI, to some degree, has given us Moore’s Law, only upside down? Prices for SSDs, DRAM, CPUs, and even old-school spinning hard drives are going up. This SanDisk (SNDK) SSD drive cost T3 Live $150 in January 2023: Today, it’s going for $280+ on Amazon: News reports indicate that Intel is raising prices for desktop CPUs. These are not super-powered AI chips. But it looks like we have an upward pull on everything related to computers, smartphones, and tablets. If people are paying higher prices for SSD drives, why not everything else too? Recently, Microsoft (MSFT) announced higher prices for its Xbox video-game consoles. It expects storage and memory prices to double by the fall of 2027. And Apple (AAPL) jacked up prices on Macbooks and iPads. Welcome to techflation. Did Warsh and the Jobs Report Shift FOMC Expectations? The Nonfarm Payrolls report was slightly light today. And yesterday Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said inflaation risk are declining. So have FOMC rate hike expectations shifted lower? Nope. The CME’s FedWatch tool shows that markets are pricing in a 79% chance of higher rates by year-end. This compares to 83.1% yesterday and 80.8% a week ago. So nothing’s changed on that front. And the expectation of higher rates is boosting this name: Robinhood Rockets! Sami Abusaad has been super bullish on Robinhood (HOOD). And it’s been on a tear: One reason is the expectation of higher interest rates. Higher rates means bigger profits on margin loans. And margin loans have been at record levels. Plus, based on Interactive Brokers’ (IBKR) June 2026 numbers, we can assume Robinhood is seeing heavy trading volumes. And if the crypto market can turn the corner, that would give Robinhood even more rocket fuel. Crypto revenue has been a sore spot for Robinhood, so if that reverses, it could be off to the races at an even faster pace. FYI: IBKR is one of my biggest positions. Wait. Are Investors and Traders Bearish? The AAII Sentiment Survey shows that investors flipped back to bearish this week. Just 31.4% of investors are bullish on stocks for the next 6 months, a substantial drop from last week’s 44.9%. This is the sixth bearish reading in the last seven weeks. It seems like folks are still worried about the economy, the direction of the FOMC, and the sustainability of the AI/semi boom. Meanwhile, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index is at just 31, indicating moderate fear. Plus, the CBOE’s equity put-call ratio is at 0.69, which is in the neighborhood of neutral. No sentiment indicator can help you nail the market every time. But rampant euphoria often coincides with market tops. And we are nowhere near that.
Continue Reading -->5 Elements of a Master Swing Trader
You can’t make money off Candlesticks alone. And in this lesson, you’ll see the 5 elements you must master to cash in, along with 13 swing trading case studies. JR takes you through: 1. STRUCTURE: Where are we in the Wyckoff Cycle? Accumulation, Mark Up, Distribution, or Mark Down? JR has been a Wyckoff student for decades, and this is where JR figures out where we are in the cycle. Forget the indicators. Price tells you where the bids and offers are, and what we might see going forward. 2. PRICE ACTION: Within the context of Market Structure: Is price Breaking Out, Forming Channels, or Forming Ranges? Are making higher highs and higher lows, or lower highs and lower lows? If we are seeing lower lows, we don’t look for bull flags and pennants. 3. PATTERNS: Within the context of Price Action: What kinds of patterns are forming? We have to know if we are looking at Accumulation Patterns, Distribution Patterns, or Continuation Patterns. Because that tells is where capital is moving. If we see Continuation Patterns, we have to get more aggressively long. 4. ORDER FLOW: With Patterns, Price Action and Market Structure combined: Are there any signal bars or important candlestick patterns to give us an entry? We need a reason to pull the trigger. You want to see the Order Flow beneath the surface to support your thesis. 5. TAPE READING: Combined with Order Flow: Does the tape confirm the setup? Do we have proof we are on the right track? So where do we go from here? JR layers on his “Adoption Diffusion Model” Because uptrends, distributions, and downtrends happen in stages. Ideally, we want to be the Innovators that get in the early stage of an uptrend (not so easy) but as long as we are in before the Early Majority, we are good. For a more realistic look at this concept, we look at the Wyckoff Cycle: Want to see how JR’s community used this exact framework to nail stocks like UnitedHealth (UNH), Caterpillar (CAT), Unusual Machines (UMAC), American Semiconductor (AMSC), Pan American Silver (PAAS), and more? Scroll up to the video above if you haven’t already and hit the play button. He walks you through all the setups at the 9:45 mark.
Continue Reading -->Micron Put Apple to the Test
What a week! Micron (MU) dropped a blockbuster earnings, report, Apple (AAPL) raised prices, and oil came crashing down. Let’s talk about what’s going on in this fun-filled market: This Really Is the 90’s Era All Over Again It’s been hard out there for the AI hyperscalers like Meta (META), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT), who are spending ungodly amounts of cash on hardware like memory, storage, and networking equipment. That means they are transferring their cash flow to companies like SanDisk (SNDK), Intel (INTC), Western Digital (WDC), and this week’s earnings superstar Micron (MU). So it’s no shocker that the 2026 S&P 500 leaderboard looks like this: Virtually all of these companies cashed in by selling picks and shovels in the 1990’s Internet boom. Now it’s rinse and repeat with AI. Instead of Pets.com and Ask Jeeves and American Online, the end application is Claude or ChatGPT! Just look at Micron’s monster earnings report on Wednesday. They beat revenue expectations by 16%. SanDisk beat by 26% in its last quarter. These picks and shovels (DRAM, flash memory, and even freaking old-school hard drives) are getting so expensive that Apple (AAPL) just raised prices on MacBooks and iPads. And that means… Apple Is Being Put to the Test Apple has an affluent user base that is willing to pay premium prices for a superior user experience. And this MacBook/iPad price hike feels like a test for something even bigger: iPhone price increases. Last quarter, Mac and iPad sales accounted for just 14% of total sales. So when Apple drops its next earnings report (about one month from now), we’ll see how much customers are willing to pay up for the brand. I suspect Apple will do fine because its devices are more or less consumer staples. Some people will choose cheaper models. But who’s going to give up their screens in 2026? Or even worse – switch to Windows/Android? I’m in the market for a new phone myself, and I’d rather pay an extra $100 to $300 to Apple than deal with an inferior user experience. I’m an Apple shareholder, so I won’t pretend I’m unbiased. SpaceX Plays Great Defense I sold my SpaceX (SPCX). And I might have screwed up. Because this stock has been doing a great job of holding that $150 area: We all know the issues with this company. It’s overvalued. A ton of shares will hit the market when lockups expire. We might not see a data center in space for many years. But the buyers keep stepping up This could be a situation where the bear case is way too obvious to be right. At least for now. Because those lockup expirations will pack a big punch. Are We Getting the Fed Wrong? The market continues to brace for higher rates. The CME’s FedWatch Tool shows that the market is pricing in a 77% chance of higher rates by year-end. This hasn’t changed much over the past month. But it is a pretty big sea change from earlier in the year, when we were debating how many cuts we’d see. Though interestingly, this chart from Apollo has been making the rounds: The market is almost always wrong about what the Fed will do, per Apollo: pic.twitter.com/yluOOKYynD — unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) June 26, 2026 Apollo argues the market is usually wrong in sniffing out Fed policy. Which makes sense because the Fed itself isn’t very good at predicting anything. Remember when inflation was “transitory” for about 98 straight years? So maybe, just maybe the smart move is to bet on lower rates? Sentiment Suddenly Flips Bullish. Sort Of. The AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 44.9% of investors are bullish on stocks. This is a big jump from 36.9% last week. And it’s the first above-average bullish reading since May 13. The market peaked on June 2 at SPX 7620, so it took a few weeks for the mood to catch up. And during that time, the market’s slipped a bit. On balance, it would be better to have less bullish sentiment, because it implies there are still doubters on the sidelines. However, this is still far from euphoric sentiment, which we haven’t had in quite some time. Meanwhile, CNN’s Fear and Greed Index is at just 25, in the extreme fear category. Keep in mind Fear and Greed is calculated by market indicators, while AAII is determined by an actual survey, reflecting people’s actual feelings. Add it up and investors/traders are ‘sorta’ bullish.
Continue Reading -->American Assets Worth Owning
250 years ago, 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their honor to each other that they would support a common cause. Of all the men that signed the Declaration of Independence, not one of them died with nearly as much wealth as they had when they signed. They pledged their fortunes in support of freedom and meant it. They were all wealthy men when they signed but sold down their vast fortunes to support the war against the greatest military power the world had ever seen, and each of them died poor with their fortunes scattered but their honor intact. From the period in between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, the citizens of the newly formed country needed convincing to form a government after they had just lost a great deal of blood and treasure to abolish the old one. Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in accomplishing this task when he expressed the rationale for the Constitution, line by line, in the publication of the Federalist Papers. Most of the text of the Federalist Papers is devoted to explaining how a central government would allow for a prosperous nation. Hamilton’s chief rationale was that money needed to be raised to build a navy. It was only a navy that would protect commerce. The States were incredibly productive and produced far more than the citizens of the US could purchase. They needed to sell their goods overseas, and a navy was a necessity to protect the merchant ships from their former colonizers and the largest naval power in the world. From the beginning, this country was formed with the idea that commerce leads to prosperity. Commerce has been and always will be an undertaking uniquely suited to the American experience. A notable change in the direction of that commerce is under way and under the radar. In March, the US Gulf Coast region, PADD 3, exported more petroleum products to the rest of the world than at any point in history. The flow of commerce has been a one way trip for 50 years: our wealth flows out, and Middle East oil flows in. Thanks to the vast energy fortress the USA now possesses, as a result of generational capital contributed by our ancestors over the past 170 years of oil exploration in this country that incrementally built an energy dynamo, the flow of commerce is reversing. The rest of the world’s wealth is coming in, and refined energy products are going out. In addition to possessing 46 billion barrels of proven reserves, the US also possesses the world’s most robust and redundant energy infrastructure: 140 refineries capable of processing any crude grade on earth, millions of miles of pipelines, coastal export terminals, and hundreds of thousands of wildcatters and independent oil producers. In its totality, our energy infrastructure is a national treasure. It is our heritage, and it is an asset bequeathed to us by past generations. The American spirit is one of risk taking. It was the risk taking spirit that built the energy infrastructure we now possess. The spirit of risk is still evident, most readily observable in the investment preferences, between Americans and our European cousins. While other western cultures prefer to place their savings in bonds, Americans have historically chosen a riskier, but ultimately more profitable path. We buy stocks. We always have, and we always will. There’s has been and will be more stock market crashes, but the risk taking spirit will always work its way back to the forefront of the American people’s consciousness. While the energy infrastructure this country possesses is priceless, individual assets have a price and are for sale every day on the American stock exchanges. These are assets that I want to own. Most stocks I want to rent, but not these. One asset I’ve owned for over a decade is $EPD. It’s the Cadillac of MLPs. It briefly went below my cost basis in the 2020 crash, and I only doubled my position. It’s one of my largest regrets that I didn’t 3x or 4x my size for the few days out of 10 years I was red on the position. But I think we’re going to get another chance this year to load up on these energy assets that we can keep forever. That chance is going to come because a wave of deflation is already on us, and I don’t think market participants are positioned for falling commodity prices. Over the course of this summer, as global tensions ease, millions of barrels of oil will find their way back into storage. This is likely the reason the major integrated oil companies have let storage run low: they know how much oil is about to come to market after the Iran conflict winds down. If they had topped up storage in the crisis, all that oil coming to market from behind the Strait of Hormuz would crash the spot price, and that is good for no one in the oil industry. As this oil fills storage, and the oil doomers loose their bull case, I suspect the energy names will get sold by all the traders that bought for the “war premium.” Further exacerbating the energy longs later this year should be reduced demand as the full effects of this credit bubble ending weighs on the economy. It’s still my view that we are in the contraction phase of the business cycle, and that means we will get one chance to buy up the energy infrastructure assets that we can keep as permanent assets in our attempt to exit the working class and become part of the investor class in this country. It’s only this country that affords opportunity to the average guy looking to make a better life for himself and his family. If this stock market offers that opportunity to me this year in an energy sell off, I plan on taking it. I’ve learned
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