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Our first trivia game 🧠Which stock was the best performer of 2023? | |
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Let's start with a simple question.
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What's the one number that can change the direction of trillions of dollars in under five minutes? |
It's not earnings.
It's not GDP.
It's not even jobs. |
It's inflation. |
Because inflation decides what the Fed does.
And what the Fed does decides what everything else does.
This morning's CPI report wasn't dramatic. On paper, that looks ordinary. |
But context matters. |
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January has developed a reputation. |
Over the last few years, it's been the month where companies quietly reset price lists, and inflation re-accelerates just when everyone starts to feel comfortable.
Economists know it.
Traders know it.
Seasonal adjustments have struggled with it. |
So when this January CPI hit the tape at 0.2% headline and 0.3% core, it was… unexpected in its restraint. |
→ Not soft enough to justify immediate rate-cut bets.
→ Not hot enough to reignite inflation panic. |
Just controlled. |
Layer in the strong jobs report earlier this week — payroll growth surprised to the upside, unemployment ticked lower — and the broader picture becomes clearer. The economy isn't cracking. |
And that's what caught people off guard. |
Going into this number, the concern wasn't recession. It was persistence — inflation that refuses to cool. Instead, we got stability. |
Which leaves the market in an unfamiliar spot. |
Growth looks intact. Inflation isn't accelerating. The Fed isn't boxed in.
So if inflation isn't flaring… and growth isn't rolling over… where did risk appetite reshuffled today? |
Here's where the flow went.
Below is a list of the trending tickers today ⇩ |
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How Mitt Romney Turned $450K Into Up to $100 Million (Tax-Free)
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It wasn't stocks. It wasn't real estate. It was a little-known investment vehicle that turned Mitt Romney's $450,000 into as much as $100 million and Peter Thiel used to turn $2,000 into $5 billion within two decades. Now, thanks to a new executive order, regular Americans can access the same type of investment.
Get more details here >> |
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From Hangover to Stabilization? |
 | source: Robinhood |
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MRNA ( ▲ 5.36% ) has been treated like a "post-COVID hangover" stock for two years.
Revenue down. Pipeline uncertain. FDA noise around the flu filing earlier this week. |
Not exactly a momentum setup. |
So expectations going into this print were already low — which is usually where interesting trades start. |
Here's what they delivered: |
• Loss per share: -$2.11 vs -$2.54 expected
• Revenue: $678M vs ~$635–660M expected |
Revenue is still down roughly 30% year-over-year. The COVID tailwind is fading exactly the way everyone expected. |
But here's what changed the tone. |
Expenses are coming down fast: |
• R&D down 31%
• SG&A down 12% |
Operating discipline is showing up. |
That's the shift. Moderna is no longer trading like a pandemic lottery ticket. It's trading like a biotech trying to prove it deserves a second act. |
Guidance calls for ~10% revenue growth in 2026 and $5.5–6B in cash by year-end. Translation: they've got time. And in biotech, time is oxygen. |
The real swing factors remain the same — norovirus data later this year and the personalized cancer program with Merck. But today wasn't about pipeline hype. |
It was about survival looking manageable. |
When a stock has been priced for decay and simply proves it isn't collapsing, that's enough for a sharp move. |
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Congress to feature Trump on $100 Bill?
A shocking new plan was just introduced in Washington. The idea is to celebrate Trump's new "golden age" by placing him on the $100 bill.
As you'll see, it has little to do with the new Crypto Reserve…
Or Trump's ambitious plan for Artificial Intelligence…
Former Presidential Advisor, Jim Rickards says, "Trump's crowning achievement will be much, much bigger."
In the months ahead, he predicts, the government will release a massive multi-trillion-dollar asset which it has held back for more than a century. And this will give ordinary investors a chance to strike it rich.
Click here to see the full details.
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From Survival… to Acceleration |
 | source: robinhood |
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If Moderna was about survival looking manageable… |
Applied Materials AMAT ( ▲ 8.1% ) was about acceleration looking real. |
For most of this year, semicap stocks have been stuck in an awkward in-between. |
→ Yes, AI demand is massive.
→ Yes, Nvidia is printing money. |
But the question hanging over the equipment names was simpler: |
Is this a one-company boom — or a full supply-chain cycle? |
Which brings us to today. |
After the close yesterday, Applied Materials reported what analysts quickly labeled a "narrative-changing quarter." |
Not just a beat. A tone shift. |
✓ Revenue beat.
✓ EPS beat.
✓ Q2 guidance above expectations. |
But numbers alone don't send a stock up nearly 8–10% in a session. |
Conviction does. |
Management sounded different. Orders accelerated. Advanced packaging — especially high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — showed real momentum. |
And HBM is the oxygen for AI systems. As models get larger and GPUs get faster, memory becomes the choke point. And Applied Materials sits in the middle of that transition — HBM3e to HBM4 and beyond. |
It was trending because it signaled that the AI buildout is spreading beyond Nvidia and into the infrastructure of chipmaking itself. |
And when six major banks lift price targets in the same morning — some by triple digits — that's a positioning shifting. |
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Moving… to Friction. |
 | source: robinhood |
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And why Pinterest was among the Trending tickers today? |
Pinterest was the reminder that not every corner of tech is riding the same wave. |
PINS ( ▼ 16.91% ) and ▼ 18% premarket didn't implode because the quarter was awful. |
→ Revenue grew 14% to $1.32B — roughly in line.
→ EPS came in just a hair below expectations at $0.67 vs $0.69. |
That's not a disaster. The problem was forward motion. |
Q1 revenue guidance landed between $951M and $971M, below the ~$980M analysts were modeling. |
In isolation, that's a small gap.
In a market obsessed with durability, it's not small at all. |
Management pointed to retailers pulling back on ad spend — a quiet but important signal. When margins get pressured or visibility narrows, marketing budgets are the first thing trimmed. |
They flow to platforms with scale and conversion power — TikTok, Instagram, Meta. |
Pinterest, despite improving engagement and leaning harder into AI tools, doesn't command that same pricing power. |
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It just signed a deal to get its tech in Apple's iPhone until 2040! Online commenters are debating if this brand-new company will be the 7th trillion dollar stock.
Details on the controversy here. |
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Here's the funny thing about markets. |
When everything feels dramatic, nobody knows what matters. |
When nothing feels dramatic… that's when everything matters. |
This week didn't hand us a crisis. |
Not "buy the dip" choices.
Not "hide in cash" choices. |
And when macro stops yelling, fundamentals start whispering — and that whisper moves money. |
Enjoy the weekend! |
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