One concentrated frontier-tech portfolio, documented in public., documented in public. The market is back at all-time highs with every reason not to be — and one inflation print on Tuesday decides whether the wall gets taller or we fall off it.
Count the reasons this market should be falling. A hawkish Fed whose own minutes stressed upside inflation risk. A ten-year yield that's climbed eight of the last nine sessions to near a 52-week high. A President who declared the Iran ceasefire "over" at a NATO summit and threatened to hit Tehran again. Chip stocks whipsawing 5% in a session. Odds of a September rate hike sitting at 61%. Any one of those is a classic top-caller's dream.
And the S&P 500 is sitting about forty points from its all-time high. The Nasdaq is up 29% on the year. Why? Because the one thing that actually matters right now is overpowering all of it: AI demand is real and accelerating. SK Hynix just pulled off the biggest foreign listing in the history of the US market — $26.5 billion raised, seven times oversubscribed, popping double digits on debut. Micron's committing $250 billion to US plants. My own Seagate got its target lifted to $1,100. When the cash flow is this loud, the macro worry becomes a wall to climb, not a cliff to fall off.
But walls have a top. Tuesday is the test of where this one is: June CPI, Kevin Warsh's first testimony to Congress, and five big banks — all inside 24 hours. This issue is me standing at the base of that wall, up 69%, deciding to hold my rope rather than guess which way the next handhold goes.
The map before the positions. ● firing ● mixed/watching ● next-wave seed ● headwind.
The tension in one line: the AI trade is strong enough to push the index to new highs while bonds scream caution. That's a market climbing a wall, not standing on solid ground. The resolution comes Tuesday — a cool CPI keeps the climb going, a hot one turns the yield gauge into a real problem for every high-multiple name I own.
Nothing traded. Into an unknowable CPI print, the disciplined move is no move — I'm not front-running the number. Winners running: STX (+61% on the $1,100 upgrade), RKLB (+88%). Watching: SPCX to base and turn (no adds until it does), and the 10-year yield as the real tell on Tuesday. Marks are estimates pending broker reconciliation.
"A hawkish Fed won't end this bull market. Only a demand crack will. And a $26 billion listing that's oversubscribed seven times is the opposite of a demand crack."
The bear case has been the same for months: rates too high, yields climbing, Fed ready to hike, valuations stretched. All true, and all beside the point — because none of it touches the actual engine. This bull market is running on AI infrastructure spending, and that spending is accelerating, not slowing. The proof came this week from the market itself: the largest foreign listing in US history was a memory chipmaker, and it was seven times oversubscribed. Investors aren't fleeing the AI trade. They're stampeding into the picks and shovels of it.
That's why I keep my rope on the wall instead of jumping off every time a yield ticks up. Higher rates compress the multiple I pay — real, annoying, worth respecting. But they don't cancel a signed contract or an oversubscribed order book. The thing that ends this is the day the orders stop, the fabs sit idle, the hyperscaler capex gets cut. I watch for that every week. This week I saw the opposite. Until the demand cracks, a hawkish Fed is a headwind, not an ending — and Tuesday's CPI decides how hard the wind blows, not whether the climb is over.
Two honest notes to square the week. First, the quiet lesson: my best-behaving position right now isn't a rocket or a moonshot — it's Seagate, a hard-drive company, up 61% and freshly upgraded to a $1,100 target. It's the least exciting name in the book and one of the most reliable. Every time I get tempted by the flashy speculative bet, STX is the reminder that the unglamorous infrastructure layer quietly does the compounding while the exciting names do the whipsawing. I should probably own more of the boring stuff and less of the spicy stuff. Noted, again.
Second, the loud one: SPCX is still my only red position, and I'm not going to pretend three flat-to-down weeks is vindication. It stopped bleeding, but it hasn't turned, and I bought it with money from a winner that promptly ripped. The discipline I committed to in 8.1 is holding — no adds, no averaging down, judge it in a month not a candle — but "holding the discipline" isn't the same as "being right." I'll know which it was soon enough, and you'll get it straight either way. The steak keeps looking better than the rocket. I'm sitting with that discomfort on purpose, because the alternative — chasing my Micron back higher out of regret — is how the tape actually gets you.
One hundred four days, an estimated +69%, a marginal new high — and a market at all-time highs with a bond market screaming caution underneath it. The AI-memory trade is loud enough to drown out a hawkish Fed, a re-broken ceasefire, and yields climbing eight of nine days. For now.
The whole week resolves Tuesday: June CPI, Warsh's first testimony, and the banks, all at once. I'm not going to guess it — I'm near highs with a balanced book, MU right-sized, winners running, one red position on a short leash, and cash I've promised to keep dry. The disciplined move into an unknowable binary is no move. Hold the rope, watch the ten-year, let the number come.
What I'll be watching isn't the CPI headline itself — it's whether the demand engine keeps roaring after it. A hawkish Fed makes the climb harder. Only a crack in AI demand makes it a fall, and this week showed the opposite. So I climb, carefully, one honest handhold at a time — and I tell you exactly where my feet are, even when one of them is on a red position I put there myself.
See you next Sunday, buddy. — Alex
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