AI Hardware Mania

AI is all that matters.  I see a lot of parallels between 1998-2000 and 2024-2026.  Back in 1998, it was the Asian contagion and LTCM.  In 2025 and 2026, its tariffs and the Iran War.  Those macro events were a distraction from the secular tech bubble that was growing.  

Iran is just a distraction.  For those who think the Strait of Hormuz will be closed for a few more months, then go long oil, not short stocks.  Don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole.  Oil-stock correlations are going back to where they were before the war, which is near zero.  Don't have a strong view on when the Strait opens. But I do know that with the Strait closed, you are probably not going to get investors all in on stocks.  And if investors aren't all in, then you are not going to get a long term top.

The Strait is closed and the SPX continues to go higher, making new all time highs.  Clearly there was pent up demand for AI stocks while investors were worried about the macro implications of the Iran War.  Even without the war ending, they just couldn't hold back the momentum.  The momentum for AI hardware:  CPUs, GPUs, DRAM, storage, optical networking, etc.  It is reminiscent of the dotcom bubble in late 1999/early 2000.  The sharpest up move in the Nasdaq happened at the end of the move in early 2000.  We are seeing sharp up moves in semiconductors and assorted tech hardware names.  Retail is starting to jump on the bandwagon again.  

 

The hottest tickers on Reddit Wall Street Bets are AMD, MU, and SNDK.  There wasn't so much retail buzz in January, when MU and SNDK were exploding higher.  Back in January, WSB was more enamored with gold and silver than AI hardware/semiconductor stocks.  Retail has a knack for getting excited around long term tops.  It happened in bitcoin in summer 2025.  It happened in gold/silver in January.  And its happening now in the AI hardware space.  When long term trends go parabolic, the end is near.  It happened in precious metals in January.  We are likely within 1-2 months of a blowoff top in these AI names.  

Timing the top of this blowoff move is not like trying to short the top of a short squeeze like CAR.  Short squeezes don't last long, because the narrative doesn't have staying power, there is no fundamental basis for the rise.  They collapse quickly.  But there is a fundamental basis for this parabolic move in AI hardware.  So that gives it more staying power, more fuel to keep going higher.  Rather than trying to time the exact top on the frontside of the move, it may be better to short these names on the backside of the move, after the top is clearly in place.  There is lots of room for downside even after these things go down 10% from the top.  

I remain an AI skeptic, as I see no way that there will be a positive return on investment on all this overpriced AI hardware.  

Equity inflows have been heavy for the past few weeks.  

Last week, BofA clients were heavy buyers of stocks.  

 

We are in the last stage of the AI bubble, as the best performers go parabolic, and retail investors get FOMO and pile in.  2026 = 2000.  The last stage is where the biggest gains are made.  So it is dangerous.  Shorting early in the final part of the bubble is deadly.  

How quickly we forget about tariffs.  But a lot of that tariff revenue that was generated over the past 12 months is going to be refunded, providing more government stimulus.  $166B is the estimate.  Importers get to collect the refund, plus the higher prices they passed on to the consumers as a result of the tariffs.  In the end, corporations win, consumers lose.  

 I have been on the sidelines for the past several days, waiting for a good spot to enter shorts.  With May opex coming up, it appears to be a good time to consider a short on any further rallies this week.  The SPX and Nasdaq are getting extended, and it would be normal to see a post opex hangover after the big run up in the tech names.  I don't expect much of a pullback, maybe 3-4% at the most, but it is worthy of at least a small trade.  

SPX Donkey and the Deal Carrot

Geopolitics and the stock market don’t hang around each other for long.  Even with the Strait of Hormuz still closed, the SPX closed at an all time high.  If you had told investors in March that the Strait would be shut into May, almost no one would have guessed all time highs, and definitely not more than 4% above pre war highs!  The half life for a war to affect the stock market seems to be about 2-4 weeks.  That’s about how long it takes to get weak hands to sell (I was one of those weak hands).   

You are now 2 months into the Iran war, with just a ceasefire and no deal, with the Strait still closed.  Yet here we are above 7200 on SPX.  The market has shown its hand.  It wants to go higher.  Its counterintuitive, but the stock market will be more vulnerable to a drop after the Strait is open than before.  Having a shut Strait keeps that carrot in front of the donkey.  That donkey will keep going trying to eat that carrot, just in front of it.  All these Iran deal pumps by Axios are the carrot.  The anticipation of an exciting event is often better than the event itself.  Once the donkey eats that carrot, there is nothing to look forward to.  It relaxes.  It rests.  

I don’t think this market will make a top until after the Strait is open.  The opening of the Strait is a bull catalyst.  Shorting in front of a bull catalyst is dangerous.  Even when the market looks overextended.

This war is a good way to filter out those on Fintwit and the financial media.  Those still talking about the Iran War, oil prices, and supply disruptions affecting the stock market are stuck in the rear view, always looking backwards.  These are likely the ones that you want to fade.  Those who have moved on and realize that the market is focused on other things, mainly the ongoing AI boom, are looking forward.   These are the ones that understand markets better, and are flexible and listen to the market instead of CNBC and Bloomberg.

Last week was filled with big tech earnings and the FOMC, events that could have stopped the uptrend, but ended up being a wall of worry that the market climbed over.  There was nothing new in these earnings reports.  The hyperscalers are still pouring massive amounts into AI capex.  But they are getting less bang for their buck, because of the ridiculously high prices for semiconductors.  At some point, big tech companies will want a return on that investment.  And while they are less price sensitive now, the closer they get to the end of their AI buildout, the more price sensitive they will become.  

This grace period for reckless spending on AI is going to end sooner than people think.  It looks like its already ended for META.  Who is the next Mag7 to join that list?  The SMH (semiconductor ETF) has outperformed IGV (software ETF) by over 60% in the past 6 months.  This is dotcom bubble territory for tech divergence.  

 

 

There is a generational short opportunity building up in semiconductors/hardware.  It is loved by the investment community.  The rally is getting parabolic.  Timing the top is the hard part.  If you have a long term view and lots of risk tolerance, you could short now, and profit handsomely a year later.  But if you short now, you may have to sit through a painful rally for the next few months.  The options market isn't showing signs of excessive pricing of calls vs puts, which led to reversals in previous rallies in the SOX index.  

 

You have now seen a return of the call buyers into this market for the past 2+ weeks.  The risk appetite is returning, but its been much less broad, as semiconductors and AI centric energy names have been the outperformers.  The ISEE index is now back towards late 2025/early 2026 levels, so investors are definitely feeling more comfortable speculating on further upside.  

 

Hedge funds have not fully embraced this rally in tech.  They were big sellers of Info Tech from April 17 to April 30.  Hedge funds definitely act differently than they used.  Now they seem to be less trend following and more mean reversion / trend fading in their behavior.  There is less dumb money in the hedge fund space these days, so their positioning information is not as useful as before.  

Bigger picture, you have very high allocations to stocks.  Not a great timing tool, as this level has been elevated for the past 2 years.  But it gives you an idea of how much potential weakness is possible when the bull market tops out.  

We are now 5 weeks into the rally off the March 30 bottom.  These rallies off a capitulation  bottom in a bull market usually last about 4 to 8 weeks, and flatten out and then have a pullback.  So we are now in the timing window where we could get a pullback which will likely be bought.  Both upside and downside are limited during the flattening out phase.  

 

As I write, news of Iranian missiles hitting a US warship near the Strait.  I stick with my view that shorting while the Strait is closed is dangerous.  I see little edge either long or short here, so will likely be on the sidelines for the next few days.  

Iran in the Rearview AI in the Front View

It looks like the stock market detour to worries about the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz is about over.  Yes, the Strait is still closed, but the market has moved on.  The market is forward looking, and there is no way that the Strait stays closed.  It will open at some point, and the market will pop on that event.  So in essence, there is more upside potential with a Strait that is closed than when it is open.  I know there are all the oil barrel counters who say that we'll reach hit tank bottoms if the Strait stays closed for another month, etc.  There are still bears talking about a supply chain related recession due to the war.  The market doesn't care about short term supply chain disruptions.  It could if the war lasts even longer and Iran doesn't give in, but that's lower probability than an opening of the Strait on a continuous ceasefire.  

And higher oil prices doesn't really matter.  On an inflation adjusted basis, crude oil prices are more than 20% lower than 2022 after the start of the Russia/Ukraine war.  So oil prices are really not as high as people think.  And even if oil prices go even higher, high oil prices don't affect the rich, who are the primary buyers of stocks.  The bears say you can't print oil.  Well, they can print money, and last time I checked, US stocks were priced in dollars, not barrels of oil.  If governments react to high oil prices by subsidizing gasoline/diesel, or reducing fuel taxes(very likely, and already done in some nations), that's just more money printing.  If the war continues and the US spends $50B/month bombing Iran to the Stone Age, that $50B is coming from deficit financing, which is essentially money printing.  Money printing is bullish for stocks.  

Its back to AI theme.  A couple of weeks ago, Allbirds, a failed shoe and apparel company, decided to pivot to AI data centers.  You got a couple of other two-bit small caps in random sectors doing a similar pivot right after.  You can't make this stuff up.  Its the kind of nonsense that you saw with the bitcoin treasury companies sprouting from reverse mergers of two-bit small cap tickers in 2025.  Bitcoin and ether just happened to make a huge top last year right after pumpers like Tom Lee came out with ridiculous price targets on ether.  

So that is the backdrop that we are in at the moment, with AI firmly in the center of the hype train.  You see the chase continue in semiconductors/hardware.  Its nothing new.  Its just a continuation of the trend that you saw since the 2nd half of 2025, when the KOSPI doubled in a few months, and RAM prices went bananas.  Semiconductors and AI related energy infrastructure are clearly the favorite sectors for those that come on CNBC.  You are seeing huge inflows into semiconductor ETFs.  The extrapolation years out into the future on this AI boom make these stocks look cheap on a forward P/E basis.  But semiconductors are cyclical, and the price of hardware, in particular memory, is obscene.  These RAM prices are not sustainable for the long term.  People talk about demand destruction in oil.  Well, there is currently demand destruction in RAM.  People will just hold off on upgrading or replacing their PC.  Who is the sucker that is going to pay $250 for 16GB of RAM?  It was $50 just a year ago.  And you can bet that China will be flooding the market within the next few years.  

The ratio of semiconductors to software is approaching the highs in 2000, when the dotcom bubble got everyone excited about a permanently high plateau of demand for semis.  We know how that turned out.   

 

From what I read and hear about the AI capex boom, most are expecting explosive growth out to 2027.  So consensus is expecting AI capex spending to keep growing for the next 18 months.  That is a long time to forecast capex investment, even if the semiconductor companies have locked up purchase contracts until the end of 2027.  If the hyperscalers feel like they have enough, they'll signal it way before the end of 2027, when the contracts expire.  

Its simple.  If you believe that this AI boom goes on for a long time, longer than expectations, than you should be bullish the SPX/NDX.  If you believe that this AI boom ends soon, shorter than expectations, than you should be bearish SPX/NDX.  

It has been almost 4 weeks since the market bottomed in late March.  Often these rallies off a panicky bottom last for 4 to 8 weeks before you get a consolidation/pullback.  So we are getting closer to the window where the rally could flatten out and give back a bit of the gains.  I don't expect a big pullback if it does happen, perhaps 3-4%.  But timing the top of this rally will be the difficult part, as this rally has been powerful, and confounded quite a few investors who were very cautious due to the war.  I covered shorts for a loss last week, and don't want to short again until I see more signs of complacency or a bigger move up.  Probably need the Strait to open for the all clear to get short.  I would rather be a little late to short than to be too early.  Its a tough market to get long, but that's probably the higher probability play than to be short over the next 2 weeks.  Watching and waiting for a better opportunity.  

Strait Saga

The Strait went from being open to then being closed.  The market is looking past it, as this gap down is tiny compared to all of the gains in the past 3 weeks.  This market wants to go up.  The news is a distraction which often tricks traders into getting into positions at the wrong time.  Yes, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.  But those who were worried about geopolitics and higher oil prices have already sold.  Some may have bought back in, but a lot have not.  

We've replaced a lot of weak hands with stronger hands in the stock, bond, and commodities market.  That makes the market much less vulnerable to liquidation waves like we saw throughout March.  Once these pod shops and hedge funds liquidate their positions, they don't all come back with the same size when markets go back up.  They get back in with 30, 50% position sizes which makes them much less likely to get stopped out.  It is a self reinforcing volatility crush.  Less size means less market impact from stop losses.  

The stairs down, elevator up phenomena is a recent one.  It is clear that the market has more FOMO (fear of missing out) than FOLM (fear of losing more).  That manifests itself in choppy down moves that take a month to get to the bottom, but a relentless surge higher every day that takes much lesser time to recover the losses.   

The options market is definitely trading differently than the cash market.  Options traders are fast money.  Cash traders/investors are slower money.  The options market has entered all in bull mode.  On Friday, total options volume was 99.4M, 47% higher than the recent average.  Call volume was 61.5M, which is the highest number that I can recall seeing in a long time.  The put/call ratio was just 0.61.  The ISEE index also shows the rapid increase in opening call transactions vs. puts last week.  We are now back to levels seen near the highs in late 2025.  

There is still time for this rally to go even higher as the cash traders/investors catch up with the options traders and enter all in bull mode.  Given the FOMO out there, it probably will be done within the next 2 weeks.  

The first group that the fast money have clamored to are the semiconductors.  Their favorite group is still AI hardware.  April is only halfway done and the semiconductor ETF inflows are the biggest ever.  The March outflows that took the whole month, which was the biggest outflow in history, was only half as big as the inflow so far in April.  The fast money doesn't wait for the all clear sign from news headlines.  They are already piling in to the highest beta sector in the market.  

The SPX COT shows asset managers back towards the highs for net long positions.  But small speculators, who tend to lag the asset manager positions, have still not gotten even close to their previous big net long positions.  

SPX Asset Managers Net Position

 

SPX Small Speculator Net Position 

 

The VIX closed at 17.48 on Friday.  Normally after such a strong rally, the VIX would be under 15.  The options market is pricing in a higher volatility environment even after big rallies like it did in 2000, 2007, and 2021.  If the VIX sustains below 16 for a few weeks, then I will admit that we've entered back into a boring, grinding higher market.  But I suspect that we'll keep this higher volatility environment for the rest of the year, with realized vol catching up with implied vol, with less dispersion as correlations increase with all risk assets acting like one.  The positioning is just too big in equities for there not to be a true panic on the way down later this year, not this stair step down, elevator up price action we've seen so far.  

Entered in a premature short position last week.  Will look to get out sometime this week, as it was only meant to be a short term trade.  It was a bad entry point.  There will be much better spots to enter shorts in May.  Any Iran war related weakness will not last for long, as this market is clearly back in full bull mode.  Do not fight it until you see the uptrend flatten out and worries about the war are over.  The war could end, or it could not.  But the worries about it will eventually fade way regardless, just like Russia/Ukraine.  I only want to put on long term shorts after the crowd is no longer looking at Hormuz traffic or discussing the war. 

Blockading the Blockade

Here we go again.  The markets thought we were on the cusp of a deal and then Trump flips over the negotiating table.  If you think this blockade will last, then you haven’t learned a thing over the past 6 weeks.  Trump keeps bluffing like a loose aggressive maniac at the poker table.  He thinks everyone will believe him, even after all those TACOs.  And he keeps doing it because the market reacts like its not a bluff.  This time, he’s using the George Costanza strategy of doing the opposite of what he wants, with a full US blockade of the Strait.  Trump is treating this war like a made for TV drama. 

As the drama continues, the global oil inventories go down 13M barrels a day, take another step closer to the breaking point where demand destruction pricing is necessary to ration oil.  Time is on Iran’s side.  The longer this drags out, the worse it is for Trump, and the global economy.  I did not expect Trump to score on his own goal.  People still expect Trump to act rationally,  which is the basis for the lingering hopes that this war will end soon.  Because its so bad politically for him.  However, second term Trump has a different reaction function than first term Trump.  He can’t get re-elected, so he does what he wants, and cares less about public opinion.  Its hard to explain, as he's acting more like the President of Israel than the President of the United States.  The conspiracy theory about Israel blackmailing Trump with the Epstein files seems plausible now.  

As a bonus for all the chaos he creates, him and his family and friends are making a killing with insider trading.  Yet the exchanges still can’t figure out who did the suspicious trades ahead of his “Truths” throughout this war.  The CME zealously goes after small time "spoofers" who are harmless, yet can't seem to track who did those giant, suspicious trades a few minutes ahead of Trump's Truth bombs.  The system is completely corrupt.  The grift is done in plain daylight and the cops on the beat are acting like nothing happened.  

Before the weekend events, the market made an emphatic statement.  It stated that you can’t hold back this bull.  They say that the stock market takes the stairs up, and the elevator down.  Well, that's flipped for this market.  It takes the stairs down, and the elevator up.  That is why its dangerous at this stage of the cycle to position for a bear market.  The bull market has lasted for so long, and with so many staunch believers, that its going to take time to transition to a bear market.  The FOMO is so deeply entrenched that stocks actually go up faster than they go down!  It won’t last forever, and the longer this market goes sideways, the more explosive the move will be afterwards.

 It is amazing that in a choppy market that has trended mostly lower in 2026, we've seen over $500B in US Listed ETF inflows YTD.  This dwarfs the inflows from any of the previous 5 years, and those were some very big inflow years.  Investors can say they are bearish in the sentiment polls, but their actions are completely opposite.  There are a lot of fully invested bears out there.  

 

When stocks are in an uptrend, investors either chase stocks at higher and higher prices or get left behind holding cash, underperforming the index and their fully invested neighbors.  This relentless uptrend reinforces investor behavior to buy stocks as soon as they receive their paycheck.  The sooner they buy, the better the entry price.   It rewards aggressive allocations to high beta stocks.   It rewards use of leverage:  the more they buy, using margin or call options, the more they make.  All of these psychologically reinforced behaviors have taken stock valuations to excess.  It leads to investor saturation.  It appears we've reached that point in the cycle.  

Once you get to the saturation point, the uptrend transitions into a choppy, range bound market.  It started in October 2025.  As the stock market chops violently at the top, you change the psychology of stock investors, who are very heavily invested in stocks as a percentage of their net worth.  Instead of greed, you introduce fear into the equation, as more and more investors are underwater on their stocks.  Instead of getting rewarded for buying as soon as they get their paycheck, they sometimes get punished.  And they really get punished for buying call options and buying stocks on margin.  And to make matters worse, their favorite, high beta names which all their buddies have crowded into underperform. Popular leaders, like the Mag7, as well as retail favorite stocks like PLTR have lagged badly.  

The psychology slowly changes from FOMO to sell the rips to have cash to buy the dips.  With the market chopping sideways, it rewards patience and waiting to buy lower, rather than chasing at the highs.  And when the market gives you more opportunity to buy at lower prices, it reduces the urge to buy when the market is going up.  This reinforces the chop pattern.  Out of this sideways chop pattern, you get a new trend, either up or down.  Based on all the long term indicators showing a very overvalued, aging bull market, odds are high that a bear market emerges once the chop phase is complete.  A rough estimate is that we are 75% through the chop phase of this market.  

Retail behavior is changing, as Citadel notes in their retail trading report. 

Retail cash flows into equities went from very high for January to negative by early April.    

Vanda Research confirms the much lower retail flows.

Just like the dotcom bubble, this bubble is driven by retail investors.  It is their fervor for stocks which has kept the bull market going.  When they become less eager to buy stocks, watch out.   

CTA exposure to equities has plummeted.  This is a bullish thing, as you can see that the markets rallied strongly after each of these purges, except in 2022, when the selling pressure was so intense that positioning didn't matter.  

 

The DIX from Squeeze Metrics has once again proven to be a great indicator for spotting bottoms.  The bottom on Monday, March 30 was the bottom of the downtrend, at SPX 6343.  The DIX hit a 52 week low at 39.3% on that day.  Since then, the SPX is up 480 points in less than 2 weeks, and the DIX on Friday, April 10 closed at 47.6%, the upper end of the range for 2026.  

 

There has been a lot of put buying (opening transactions) since the war started in early March.  Traders are very well hedged with puts, and not doing much call speculation.  You did finally start to see more call buying on Friday, as ISEE went up to 124. The ISEE index 10 day moving average has plunged down towards 100, which is equal amounts of puts and calls opened.

Sold remaining longs last Wednesday.  Holding cash waiting for a dip to buy, around SPX 6600, or waiting a few weeks to short around all time highs if it goes there.  Don't see a compelling trade at this point.  Given how much CTAs and hedge funds have de-risked over the past month, I would lean towards the market grinding higher in the coming weeks.  Seasonally, its a strong time of year, from now until mid June.  I am only interested in the short side after investors put this war behind them, which will probably take weeks to months from now.  I expect a lasting TACO soon, even with the latest threat of a Naval blockade.  Those betting on escalation are betting against TACO, which is usually a bad bet.  

Trust the Plan?

Things are not going according to plan.  At the start, the war was supposed to take 4 weeks.  Its been 5 weeks.  The war continues, even as traders keep trying to anticipate its end.  Trump is doing his part to keep the hope alive, that the war will be over soon.  He's been saying that the war is almost over for the past 3 weeks.  Trying to keep oil prices down, stock prices up.  After listening to his Wednesday night speech, it didn't seem like a person looking to end the war soon.  And the US keeps sending more soldiers to the Middle East.  I would actually be surprised if the war ended in 2 weeks.  But who knows? Trump flip flops regularly.  

You can't think rationally about this war.  So many analysts are trying to get inside Trump's head, assuming that a very unpopular war, with no real purpose, leading to higher gas prices would mean he would end it quickly.  But it seems he has some deep hatred for Iran.  He's attacked them 3 separate times.  One in 2020, one in 2025, and one in 2026.  This time, he's trying to send them to the Stone Age.  I doubt he'll get the deal he wants, so it looks like boots on the ground soon.  Polymarket shows how the odds have been rising for boots on the ground in Iran, as of April 3.  

Big change in trend this week for stocks, bonds, and metals.  It was mostly a one way train down from the end of February until the end of March.  Now its a different ballgame.  The market feels like it wants to rally.  A big gap down after Trump's war hawk speech was bought up ravenously after the cash open, even with oil up big.  Bonds also recovered all of their pre-Trump speech losses on Thursday.  Perhaps we've built up a big short base and they didn't want to be short ahead of the 3 day weekend, with the possibility of a Trump pump.  We have now shaken out a lot of weak hands, so you are no longer seeing sustained selling.  At the same time, with war uncertainty still high, you are likely to see some chop as there aren't many willing to buy at higher levels.  

You have purged a lot of speculative long positions.  Some of the more aggressive funds have gotten short.  The biggest trend following ETF, DBMF, is short a sizeable amount of SPX futures.  I've tracked this fund over the years, and it is rarely short SPX futures.  

GS Prime Book shows a massive amount of selling at funds in March.  Similar levels to the selling around Liberation Day in March/April 2025.  

BofA fund flows also show lots of selling in the last week of March.  The 4 week avg. for total flows is -$2.2B, compared to the 52 week avg. of -$0.4B.  Most of the selling has come from hedge funds and institutions.  Retail continues to HODL.

We saw a lot of put buying this week.  The put/call ratios have consistently stayed high, even with 2 big up days this week.  The ISEE index has plunged lower, and stayed low even with the big rally this week.  

The Iran war has scared a lot of investors.  You can see it in the flows and in the options data.  The main talking points I hear are that higher oil prices will weaken consumer spending, cause the Fed to be more hawkish, leading to weaker growth and thus a weaker stock market.  That hypothesis has a lot of holes.  The stock market isn't driven by the lower end of the K.  Its the upper end of the K that drives asset prices.  And higher prices for food and energy aren't going to change their behavior.  Only much lower asset prices will.  The SPX being 6% down from all time highs won't do it.   

As for the Fed.  I don't see the Fed doing anything but being mealy mouth and trying to support the stock and bond markets while not sounding cavalier about the coming higher inflation readings.  They won't say transitory, but they'll use other words to describe their view is that the higher inflation will be transitory.  So if the Fed is on hold and higher food and energy prices don't affect the upper end, then it shouldn't hurt economic growth.  The lower end will feel a bit of a squeeze from higher inflation, but they don't matter to asset markets.  The fiscal stimulus from the OBBA should keep the economy afloat for the next few months.  

Reduced my longs after the rally this week.  Mostly in cash.  The funds have heavily de-grossed in March.  That sets up a stock market where downside will be limited.  But the upside is also limited, due to high valuations, SPX down just 6% from all time highs, and equities at a historically high percentage of financial assets among households.  

It also looks like the Mag7 trade is over, as AI seems to be the boondoggle that the Big Tech CEOs are obsessed with, even if it means taking down their stocks.  Eventually they'll face reality and cut AI capex.  Reduced AI capex means lower growth, taking down the biggest stock in the world NVDA, leading to a cascading domino in the AI space, which would signal the end of the AI bubble, like the end of the dotcom bubble in 2000.  

Markets were choppier with more W bottoms than V bottoms back in the day.  You still have a lot of old school technicians who have been left behind who can't adjust to the new environment, and need to see a retest of bottoms for confirmation.  I don't want to be that guy, the retester, but I am hoping for a retest to get more aggressive on the long side.  @RealStockCats with a nice illustration:

  

Short term, I expect a choppy market, where dips down towards SPX 6300-6400 will be buyable.  It could keep going higher towards SPX 6800, but I would rather miss the train than chase it here and bleed out if the war in Iran drags on for longer.  Not interested in shorting in this environment due to the reduced fund positioning, heavy put activity, and a more resilient tape.  Optionality is valuable in this environment.  I would continue to fade Trump pumps.  Having dry powder to take advantage of short term dislocations is essential here. 

Don Tzu

We are entering the retail capitulation phase of the stock selloff.   Retail investors have been buyers of this dip, believing in TACO, believing that there is a Trump put.  That belief is eroding day by day.   Trump’s attempts at pumping the stock and bond market, and dumping the oil market are losing their effect.  The half life of the Trump pumps are getting shorter.  The lies are becoming obvious.  He is losing credibility.   The pumps used to last 48 hours,  Then it went down to 24 hours.  Then 12 hours.  Then 4 hours.   Now, everyone has caught up to the game.  That these pumps are selling opportunities.  Now the pumps don’t even last 5 minutes.  

 

With each day that passes with the Strait of Hormuz closed, it just adds more fuel to the parabolic oil rally.  And its not just oil.  Its LNG, fertilizer, helium, sulfur, etc.  We are getting closer to the point where oil prices need to get to demand destruction / hoarding levels, which would be $200+ for oil.  It probably takes another month of the Strait being closed for this to happen.  But like bankruptcy, it happens gradually and then suddenly.  The market is sensing this danger.  And losing patience as a result.  

There is a small piece of good news in the gloom and doom.  The stock, bond, and precious metals markets are diverging.  During the post FOMC liquidation from March 18 to March 23, stocks, bonds, and metals all sold off in unison, the correlation going to 1.  After Trump’s pump last Monday, markets started to diverge.  Stocks and bonds continued to trade weak, but gold traded stronger, post FOMC liqudiation.  And on Friday, while oil was going higher, and stocks were getting pummelled, the short end was rallying, steepening the yield curve.  And gold went up signficantly as stocks sold off.  Cross asset correlations are going down, as the market is now rightfully pricing in economic weakness due to stock market weakness.  The bid is returning for short duration bonds and gold.  

This is the first sign that hedge funds have degrossed significantly, enough that they are no longer panic selling their non equity positions when the SPX is going down.  According to latest GS Prime Book data, equities were heavily net sold and net leverage has gone down significantly.  

 

We are finally seeing some dark pool selling (sign of retail selling), with DIX getting down to 41.5% on Friday.  

 

The fast money has left the emerging markets this month.  Huge foreign investor outflows from Asian equities.  

Bigger picture, its still grim.  The charts for retail investor favorites, like the Mag 7 look horrible.  The Mag 7 has underperformed SPX by 10% over the past 6 months.  There is a ton of overhead supply now filled with retail bagholders in big cap tech as well as speculative small cap tech.  

 

 

 Investor cash levels are historically low.  Lots of room to sell.  

From a fundamental economic perspective, investors are overreacting to the effect of higher oil/LNG prices.  To the extent that higher oil prices make central banks more hawkish, it is a negative.  But I can't imagine the Fed hiking rates into spiking oil prices with the labor market this weak.  So there is a floor to how much they can selloff bonds here.  The lower end consumers getting squeezed by higher gas prices don't really matter for the stock market.  Its the high end consumer which matters.  It is the one that's been driving the spending over the past 3 years.  High end consumers don't really care about gas prices.  They care about stock prices. With the OBBA stimulus, extra defense spending, and tariff refunds flowing through the economy in 2026, it will take a lot to weaken the US economy.  I would only expect a noticeable economic slowdown if stocks enter a bear market.  The US is a financialized economy, and oil prices don't matter that much if the Fed doesn't react to it.  They can jawbone to try to sound tough on inflation, but I doubt they'll actually raise rates to fight inflation.  They just don't have the balls to do it with a soft jobs market. 

 

I am noticing a very different tone in investors' views on the market.  There were quite a few hopeful bulls before last week, expecting a quick TACO and an end to the war.  But that hope has been dissipating as all the Trump pumps have gotten sold, with no tangible changes.  For longs, its good to finally see the base case going from quick TACO to boots on the ground and a longer than expected war.  So less downside if the worst case scenario happens, and more upside if there is a TACO.  No one knows what's going to happen.  But if the market gives you good odds for a positive outcome, its worth making a bet.   

 

With so much put protection in the market, and an overpriced VIX, its difficult to get a IV spike led selloff (vanna selloff) because people are well hedged.  Stocks are overvalued and overowned, so the dark cloud of uncertainty over the war is enough to keep the selloff going.  But at SPX under 6400, you are getting close to levels where a strong technical bounce can happen out of the blue.  And it has been a month since the start of the war, so the selloff is very mature.  Unless you are in the middle of a bear market (not the start of one), selloffs that extend beyond 1 month without a strong bounce are rare.  

 

Hedge fund positioning has been pared down and bonds are no longer selling off with stocks.  It feels like you are getting close to a tradable bottom.  Added to longs last week, but have dry powder to buy lower.  The risk/reward favors longs here.  But we may need to go a bit lower before you get the reversal.  With the Easter holiday coming up, its possible the last remaining weak hands sell stocks this week, ahead of the long weekend, making a bottom.  Looking to buy slowly on the way down.  

Degrossing

Trump has repeatedly tried to pump the markets, to push down oil prices with "war is almost over" tweets in a number of different variations, and people keep falling for it.  They did that again in afterhours on Friday, hoping that Trump was looking to finish up the war.  It took less than 24 hours for Trump to contradict himself.  After the past few weeks, if you still believe what politicians say, in particular Trump and MAGA, you are hopeless. 

People hate admitting that they are wrong.  Traders don't like taking losses.  So euphemisms are popular.  Instead of saying I took a loss, they say "stopped out".  Instead of saying I am selling, likely for a loss or a much reduced profit, they say I am deleveraging, or degrossing.  What you saw last week was a lot of degrossing.  A more apt term would be liquidation.  We are in the liquidation phase of the selloff.  The final phase.  This is the scariest part of the selloff, as investors who have tried to hang on, to wait out the storm, reach their pain threshold, and eject.  Since many of these funds have strict loss limits and try to control drawdowns, it means forced selling based on risk management, not fundamentals.  

The FOMC meeting last Wednesday was an aha moment for the markets.  The last bit of hope that the Fed would remain dovish and look through higher oil prices was gone.  Precious metals, bonds, and stocks all fell together in a vicious move from Wednesday to Friday.  Just by looking at the synchronous and rapid drop, it felt like a bunch of pod shops and hedgies had hit their loss limits and liquidated all at the same time.  The move in rates has been notable, and this will have lasting reverberations for stocks if it isn't reversed.  The SOFR curve was pricing in 3 rate cuts over the next 12 months before the war.  Now its pricing in a slight chance of a rate hike at the next 2 meetings, and no rate cuts for 2026.

Before this mass degrossing, stocks were probably the best buy the dip candidate among the major assets.  Now, with precious metals and bonds going down significantly last week, it presents other assets to buy on the dip here.  With a labor market that's too weak to get the Fed to hike rates, these levels are looking attractive for at least a short term bounce in bonds and metals.  

All of this is happening as leveraged loan spreads are widening to near Liberation Day levels, with the SPX only 6% below all time highs.  

The cat is out of the bag for private credit and private equity.  The pensions, endowments, and high net worth individuals already have a big allocation, and are looking to reduce it.  At the same time, they are trying to sucker in mom and pops to buy into private equity and credit, trying to give easy access to private equity and credit via 401k's.  One of the reasons that you had so few IPOs over the years was because of all the money going into private equity.  Companies didn't need to go public to access capital.  It looks like that's going to change.  Now they will need to go public to continue accessing capital, which should increase the number of IPOs, which already had a full calendar with giants like Space X, Open AI, and Anthropic scheduled to go public in 2026.  With more IPOs, it will exacerbate the supply/demand mismatch when investors begin to sour on stocks.   

Just as there appears to be a deluge of IPOs waiting in the wings, looking to suck up risk capital, the Nasdaq and Russell index bosses are suddenly loosening requirements for index inclusion, making it easy for recent IPOs to go straight into the index.  Just a coincidence, right?

Because of the war, and "weekend risk", you've seen a pattern since the start of March.  Selling on Thursdays and Fridays, ahead of the weekend, to avoid weekend risk (trying to avoid a Monday gap down).  With fast money traders having de-risked ahead of the weekend, they go back in and try to catch the bottom by buying on Monday and Tuesdays.  Wednesdays are the turning point, and then you get the selloff in earnest on Thursday and Friday.  That's happened 3 weeks in a row.  We all have reptilian brains, we expect that pattern to repeat.  The continuation of the war is a good excuse to keep believing in that pattern.  Trump tried to break that pattern with a last minute tweet just before the Friday close, that the war is almost over, and traders jumped on the bait, squeezing stocks into the final minutes of Friday, and into after hours.  It was faded in weekend markets, just 24 hours later.

It is fascinating that traders keep believing, hoping that these Trump tweets are actually true.  He's had several of these tweets, trying to push oil prices down, and stock prices up, with variations of the war is almost over, mission almost accomplished, etc.  With his diminishing credibility, the half life of these artificial rallies are shorter and shorter.  But it keeps the hope alive.  That the war will be over soon.  That Trump can stop the war at anytime, at his choosing, that he's the one calling the shots.  But maybe its Israel that's calling the shots, and they seem to want a much more protracted war than the US.  Didn't Rubio say that Israel was going to attack Iran, and that's the reason the US joined in?  If it was just Trump who controlled whether to keep the war going or to stop, the TACO thesis is valid.  But if its Israel that's really the one in control, then the TACO thesis should be thrown in the trash bin. 

Trump's words have been counter to his action.  The bombings continue.  The US are now sending Marines and battleships to the Middle East.  There are barely any ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.  I would fade any optimistic Trump tweets, as they seem to just be war propaganda and attempts at pumping up the markets.  One of these days, he'll actually be tweeting the truth, but betting on that has just meant buying local highs and bleeding down to lower lows.  

Nothing significant in the COT data for indices, small speculators were buyers of the dip, and increased their net long from March 10 to March 17.  Not seeing any panic in the options market, as the put/call ratios remain elevated, but not spiky.  It looks like investors are tired of buying puts into weakness, only to see the market bounce and their premiums melt away.  Puts have not been paying off, even with the downtrend.  Options remain overpriced, and holding options for more than a few hours is fighting an uphill battle.  

Looking at dark pool data, we still haven't seen the low DIX readings that would show that retail investors are throwing in the towel.  They keep buying the dip, and don't even seem to be afraid of the weekend or the war.  They are all in on TACO.   The market continues down the slope of hope. 

Its been a choppy market will lots of short term rallies since the war started.  Yet here we are, with the SPX futures trading under SPX 6500 cash levels, in overnight hours.  I have a small long, but mostly in cash looking for a better level to add.  I've definitely been too nonchalant about the selloff, but thanks to the tax refunds and the buy the dip crowd has kept losses small.  But those tax refunds and inflows aren't going to last forever.  The bulk of the tax refunds have already been issued, and likely deployed.  Correlations are rising among asset classes and within the stock market itself, so things are feeling panicky.  We are very close to a bottom, so I will stay long, but want to see a bit lower to add.  Post opex often have flush out moves, especially when Fridays are weak.  If we get more weakness on Monday/Tuesday, will look to add to longs.  

Commander in Chief Donnochio

We are in a fog of war where the realities of the war are being hidden.  There have been a lot of lies coming from the White House.  All the good news tweets coming from Trump have just been short term rallies to sell into.  Last Monday, as oil was going parabolic, Trump put out a tweet that the war would end soon causing a huge rally at the close.  That just set up disappointment all week as the market dripped lower from Tuesday to the Friday close.  It was controlled selling without any panic.  Going down the slope of hope.

The market is quite conditioned to believe that Trump can switch things on and off at a whim, like he could with tariffs.  So you had many hoping that last Monday's tweet was a sign that he would back off and end the war.  But the war rolls on, without any change. Those optimistic Trump tweets meant to pump up the market are starting to lose credibility.  Many are underestimating Iran, who have to eat the TACO for it be valid.  At this point, the Iran leadership probably feels like they need to inflict more pain to get a good deal, and for future deterrance.  Unless they are game theory idiots, the last thing they want to do is look weak and surrender quickly, like they did in April 2024 and June 2025.  Their previous weakness is what invited this US/Israel attack.  

I am hearing some comparisons to the current situation with Covid in early 2020.  This feels nothing like early 2020.  Those were scary times.  In hindsight, people say that the market overreacted.  But Covid was killing off lots of the elderly.  There was a lot of uncertainty.  The service economy was cratering.  This feels like a walk in the park in comparison.  I'll take a temporary oil and LNG supply shock over the spread of a new, potentially deadly virus any day of the week.  

Bonds had another bad week as the war continues.  The misheld belief that bonds are a flight to safety vehicle is being de-bunked.  Some investors clamor for bonds because the war seems "scary".  And anything that seems "scary" should be good for bonds.  It led to disaster if you bought bonds because of the Russia Ukraine war in February 2022.  And those that bought bonds right after the start of this Iran war have suffered losses.  The two main factors that affect bonds are central bank actions and inflation.  And war is inflationary, which is bad for bonds.  

As oil prices keep going higher, the market is starting to price in a stagflationary scenario where stock-bond correlations remain high, like 2022 and 2023.  The OBBA is doing a lot of heavy lifting so far in 2026.  With the flood of tax refunds hitting bank accounts in February and so far in March, retail investors have been aggressively buying the dip, keeping the selloff contained to just a few percent.  It is these tax refunds which made me bullish the past few weeks, that is before you had this bond market weakness and oil market madness. 

It feels like the market naturally wants to go lower, but Trump is trying to artificially keep the market higher with positive tweets while the media continues to release headlines trying to push oil lower.  In those cases, I prefer to be on the side with the natural movement, rather than the headline dependent artificial movements.  

You continue to get bad news in private credit.  People are trying to cash out of some of their private credit funds and the funds are saying no.  That's never a good sign.

There has been a lot of malinvestment over the past 15 years as private equity and private credit received lots of inflows as investors reached for yield in the ZIRP era.  As the pool of legitimate investments shrank, so did the quality of the funds' portfolios.  When you are receiving 2% annual fees, you can't just hold cash.  You have to buy something with the money that's pouring in.  Anecdotally, I heard about private equity trying to buy out mom and pop businesses like roofing/landscaping, car washes, veterinary clinics, etc.  They were scraping the bottom of the barrel to put their cash hoard to work.  At current interest rates with this K-shaped economy, a lot of those LBOs and private loans are going sour.  Its nothing like the massive real estate bubble in the early to mid 2000s, but it will slow lending for private companies, and that shrinks the liquidity flowing through the economy.  Private credit is a much smaller market than real estate, so any private credit crunch will be minor compared to 2008, but it will contribute to the economy slowing.   

Retail investors seemingly put their tax refunds quickly to work as they were aggressively buying stocks into the weakness in February.  The STAX index is now higher than any monthly level in 2024 or 2025.  

But that February buying surge looks to have stalled in March.  Equity ETF flows for the week ending March 6 showed outflows.  Investors have been aggressively buying equity ETFs since last October, and it seems the war has finally changed investor behavior.  We got our first weekly equity ETF outflow since April 2025.  

While investors have been aggressively buying stocks and ETFs up until the start of the war, they have been hedging a lot with overpriced puts.  SKEW has remained high since the start of the war, which is unusual when the market is selling off.  You finally did see SKEW go lower on Thursday.  A small positive sign.  

As for retail traders, they haven't thrown in the towel.  The dark pool DIX reading remains stubbornly high relative to other pullbacks. 

There were some big changes in the SPX COT positions as of March 10.  Asset managers and small speculators both made big reductions in net longs.  

 

The speculators are slowly de-risking as the war drags on.  No signs of panic.  There hasn't been a big spike higher in the put/call ratio.  I would say we are in the 7th inning of this selloff, but the last 2 innings are usually the most painful for longs.  Need to see lower DIX, lower SKEW, higher put/call.  NDX is starting to outperform SPX, even in a down market, which is a small positive in the gloomy environment.  

The up moves feel artificial and headline driven, and the down moves feel natural.  Those looking to buy would want to see a string of negative headlines to get investors less hopeful about an end to the war, along with a flush down towards SPX 6500-6540.  Until that happens, it is a treacherous environment for dip buying.  Its also getting risky to hold short positions, as the spring is starting to get coiled up for a rebound.  

The big triple witching opex is coming this Friday.  With so much put volume and hedging tied to that expiry, it could panic some investors that they will soon lose their put protection.  Puts have been very expensive, so they aren't paying off with the slow drip lower.  So fund managers will have to make a decision:  roll over expiring puts to buy more longer expiry overpriced puts, or reduce some positions.  I think quite a few will opt to just reduce positions rather than buy more overpriced puts that haven't been performing even in a down tape.  That could contribute to the last leg lower of this selloff.  

Opex weeks are not necessarily bullish.  They often coincide with short term tops or bottoms, usually from Wednesday to Friday of opex week.  Gut feel is that we make a bottom after FOMC meeting is behind us on Thursday or Friday.  With the overpricing of IV in the current environment, it may be better to short VIX rather than go long SPX.  Sold underwater longs last week.  Waiting for a better spot to go long and/or short VIX.