Lakespring Investments 🌲🍁 @LakespringCap

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields climbed above 5.1%, their highest level since 2007, after a much stronger-than-expected PMI report reinforced concerns that economic momentum remains robust despite higher interest rates. Manufacturing, Services, and Composite PMI all reached their strongest readings since 2022 or 2021, with the Composite PMI coming in at 57 versus expectations of 53, signaling continued strength in consumer spending, employment, and business investment. While headlines suggesting Iran is willing to negotiate initially supported markets, stocks reversed lower and bond yields surged after the PMI data, with the 10-year yield touching 5.11%. The report raised concerns that inflation could prove more persistent than simply an energy-driven story, increasing the possibility that the Fed could continue tightening even if oil prices continue to ease. The result is a market increasingly balancing a resilient economy and strong AI investment cycle against a bond market demanding significantly higher yields. 2. Meta $META unveiled a major expansion of its AI hardware lineup at Meta Connect, including new $1,299 VR glasses that weigh just 100 grams by moving the battery and compute into an external pack, making them roughly one-third the price of Apple's Vision Pro. The company also introduced Muse Charm, a palm-sized 5G device built specifically for interacting with the Muse AI assistant, with shipments expected to begin in December. Meta refreshed its smart glasses lineup with camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses starting at $349, third-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses starting at $449, and new in-house smart glasses starting at $249, while bringing Muse AI to the entire wearable ecosystem. Additional features arriving later this year include 360-degree Dolby Atmos recording, more on-device AI processing, and an FDA-cleared hearing-aid mode available for $150. Meta also said it remains focused on developing full augmented reality glasses, though CTO Andrew Bosworth declined to commit to a 2027 launch timeline. 3. Microsoft $MSFT plans to invest $10B across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE through 2030 to expand its regional cloud and AI infrastructure. The total includes Microsoft's previously announced $7.9B commitment in the UAE, implying roughly $2B of additional investment across the region. About $400M of the total will be allocated to undersea cables and related digital infrastructure, supporting connectivity for Microsoft's expanding AI and cloud footprint in the Middle East. 4. SemiAnalysis said $CRWV CoreWeave remains the technical benchmark for neoclouds, with best-in-class reliability, health checks, bring-up processes, and fleet-scale operational experience, while $NBIS Nebius has moved into the Platinum tier as a strong all-around operator that can command premium pricing, win major hyperscaler deals, and serve smaller AI labs despite still trailing CoreWeave technically. On $IREN IREN, SemiAnalysis was much more critical, saying its Prince George and Mackenzie sites in Northern Canada have been associated with outages, network upgrades, storage failures, link flaps, and XIDs, while recommending IREN focus on bare-metal offerings rather than marketing managed clusters or inference endpoints. 5. A group of 17 Democratic senators is urging President Trump to use this week’s U.S.–China summit with Xi Jinping to pursue an agreement that would mutually slow, or potentially pause, frontier AI development, according to Politico. The letter, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, calls for the two countries to establish shared guardrails around advanced AI. President Trump has publicly taken a different position, saying the U.S. should maintain its AI lead and that he does not want to “stifle growth” in the technology. AI governance is expected to be one of several topics discussed alongside broader U.S.–China relations during the summit. 6. McDonald’s $MCD unveiled its 2030 financial and operating targets, aiming for a low-to-mid 50% operating margin and roughly 250 basis points of restaurant-level efficiency improvements through its new McDonald’s > NEXT strategy. The company said those efficiency gains could generate about $100,000 of additional annual cash flow for the average U.S. restaurant, with most of the benefit flowing directly to franchisees. McDonald’s also plans to provide about $8.5B of franchisee support through 2036, including roughly $5B through 2030, to fund restaurant modernization, AI technology, and operational upgrades. The strategy includes the rollout of GenAI-powered ArchIQ, targets a 1.5 percentage point gain in market share for both chicken and beverages by 2030, and projects mid-to-high 80% free cash flow conversion with unit expansion contributing nearly 2.5% to systemwide sales growth in 2027. 7. Supermicro $SMCI has begun shipping NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each featuring 72 Rubin GPUs, 36 Vera CPUs, 20.7TB of HBM4 memory, and 216TB/s of NVLink scale-up bandwidth. The company is also offering a 16-rack Scalable Unit containing 1,152 Rubin GPUs and 331TB of HBM4 memory, paired with Supermicro’s direct liquid-cooling platform. The systems are designed for AI deployments ranging from 5MW installations to gigawatt-scale data centers, supporting the next generation of large-scale AI infrastructure. 8. Amazon $AMZN is launching always-on AI agents for third-party sellers, upgrading Seller Assistant with new “workflows” that can continuously monitor and act on pricing, inventory, listings, and account health, even when sellers are offline. Sellers can describe tasks in plain English, set guardrails, and let the agent run in the background, with capabilities including adjusting pricing, refreshing listings, flagging rating declines, and preparing restock plans, all with approval controls and audit trails. Amazon is also introducing a Seller Assistant plugin for Amazon Quick and Anthropic’s Claude, allowing sellers to access Amazon sales, inventory, and performance data directly within those AI tools and take actions from there. Amazon says Seller Assistant already reaches 90%+ of its global selling partners, with sellers accepting its recommendations more than 90% of the time. 9. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $TSLA with 2.7M contracts, $NVDA with 2.3M contracts, $META with 1.7M contracts, $AAPL with 1.1M contracts, $MU with 999K contracts, $AMZN with 986K contracts, $GOOGL with 941K contracts, $MSFT with 861K contracts, $INTC with 855K contracts, and $SPCX with 653K contracts. 10. Speaking before the U.N. Security Council, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could become a risk to humanity if managed poorly, while arguing that Anthropic has the industry's strongest track record for mitigating those risks. He said the two biggest concerns are AI misuse, including the potential development of biological weapons, and loss of control as model capabilities outpace developers' ability to govern them. Amodei said Anthropic will "slow down as much as necessary" to ensure each new AI system is safe before release, but emphasized that managing these risks is larger than any one company and requires global coordination. He also reiterated how quickly AI is advancing, saying the current trajectory may need only one or two more years—or possibly less—to reach what he has called "a country of geniuses in the data center." 11. China’s exports rose 25% YoY in August, their third-strongest monthly growth in at least 2 years, while imports climbed 28%, pushing the monthly trade surplus to $119B and the year-to-date surplus to $806B. At the current pace, China is on track to surpass its record $1.2T trade surplus from 2025. Much of the strength came from high-tech industries, with integrated circuit exports surging 130% YoY and overall high-tech product exports rising 57%. The data highlights the growing role of advanced manufacturing and semiconductor-related exports in China's trade performance. 12. An OpenAI-developed agent reportedly gained unauthorized access to Australia’s public-facing Medicare statistics portal in June while researching medical spending, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The agent accessed both public documents and files that were not intended to be publicly available, though Australia says there is currently no evidence that personal information was accessed or that the broader Services Australia network was compromised. Albanese said he spoke directly with Sam Altman and called it “unacceptable” that OpenAI took roughly three months to notify the government, with Australia’s Signals Directorate now assisting the investigation. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

$LLY broke ground on a $6.5B Houston facility that will produce active ingredients for Foundayo and other medicines, with operations expected by 2030. The site is part of Lilly’s $50B U.S. manufacturing expansion and is expected to create 600+ permanent jobs and 4,000 construction jobs.

MORGAN STANLEY RAISES $TSLA BULL CASE TO $840 FROM $820, MAINTAINS $400 BASE TARGET [9% UPSIDE] $MS says autonomous trucking could deliver 2.3x better utilization, 20% lower cost per mile, and 6x higher profit per truck, with Tesla Semi FSD potentially generating $12-18K per truck per month. Its $840 bull case implies ~130% upside, but the firm remains Equal Weight with a $400 base target.

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MONSTER UPGRADE JPMORGAN UPGRADES $META TO OVERWEIGHT, RAISES PRICE TARGET TO $820 FROM $640 - 25% UPSIDE JPMorgan $JPM sees meaningful upside as Meta begins rolling out frontier AI products beyond advertising, including Muse and Model API access. The firm believes these products could open a new leg of growth as Meta moves deeper into AI-driven consumer and developer platforms.

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BREAKING: August PPI Inflation rises to 5.4%, above expectations of 5.3%. Core PPI Inflation rose to 4.6%, the highest since June 2026. July's headline and core PPI inflation numbers were also revised higher. The odds of rate hikes are rising further on the news.

$GOOGL is rolling out major Search changes in Europe to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, giving more prominence to comparison services like $BKNG Booking and $EXPE Expedia. Google says the changes will degrade search quality, hurt direct traffic to local businesses, and remove useful features such as real-time pricing.

Sam Badawi @Sam_Badawi

a month ago

In this video I broke down the $META $18B settlement, what it means for the stock, and the bigger AI CapEx picture across $AMZN, $GOOGL, $MSFT, and $NVDA. I also went through Meta’s technical setup and what I’m watching next. Watch the full video on YouTube, link in reply.

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IT FINALLY HAPPENED $PLTR has named $NBIS its preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner, bringing Nebius compute and inference directly inside Palantir’s enterprise perimeter. The companies will also work to bring new AI capacity online faster, including modular data centers at sites where power is already available.

BREAKING: The US economy adds +162,000 jobs in August, well above expectations of +55,000. The unemployment rate was 4.1%, in-line with expectations of 4.1%. July's job number was also revised up by +43,000 jobs and is now positive for the month. The US job market nearly TRIPLED expectations.

We are at the end of the 2nd month of Q3. We have seen a historic tech momentum unwind with Situational Awareness. 10Y yields are closing with their largest QTD rise since 2024 with 30Y yields hitting their highest level since 2007 with a 67% chance of Sept rate hike. Here is the QTD performance as of now. SPX ~2%, NDX ~-3%, Gold ~11%, BTC ~34%, ETH ~57%. AI agents are being released by the millions as we speak and nobody owns the rails they need to transact. 2026 was the birth of agents and 2027 is when they start to spend. Be ready

CANADA: GROWING OUT OF DEBT President Trump wants Canadian companies serving America to bring more production, sourcing and fulfillment into the U.S. to avoid higher tariff costs. 1. $SHOP Shopify remains headquartered in Ottawa, but its software model has far less direct exposure to physical goods tariffs. 2. $BB BlackBerry remains based in Waterloo, but its software business similarly limits direct exposure to physical goods tariffs. 3. $LULU lululemon expects roughly a $240M gross profit hit, with about two thirds of U.S. ecommerce orders previously fulfilled from Canada. Moving more fulfillment into America becomes increasingly attractive. 4. $QSR Restaurant Brands is Canadian incorporated, but its principal executive offices are already in Miami. Burger King, Popeyes and Firehouse Subs are also headquartered in the U.S. So the plan? Well, make serving America from Canada more expensive while making building and operating inside America more attractive. Grow America. Grow out of debt.

Sam Badawi @Sam_Badawi

4 weeks ago

President Trump said all Canadian companies doing business with America should move to the U.S. immediately, arguing that relocating would allow them to avoid tariffs. He says Canadian businesses are already moving south and expects more manufacturing to follow.

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Trump's updated portfolio is basically a bet that America wins the AI race. (Save this) His largest position is $NVDA at 10.0%, followed by $TSLA at 9.0% and $APPL at 8.5%. Other notable names: $BA: 7.5% $XOM: 7.0% $JPM: 6.5% $PLTR: 6.0% $DELL: 5.5% $GS: 5.0% $INTC: 5.0% Every major position is either an AI play, a US financial giant or a domestic industrial. Use the link below to see exactly what our PRO analysts hold.

Milk Road Stocks @MilkRoadStocks

4 weeks ago

Warren Buffett's biggest position: $APPL Gavin Baker's biggest position: $SPCX Two of the sharpest investors alive yet they have completely different bets on where value lives. (Save this) Here is the Q2 2026 comparison: Buffett: AAPL: 22.04% AXP: 17.14% GOOGL: 12.62% KO:

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Canada stopped compounding productivity and started compounding population, housing, and consumption. 2015 is roughly where several forces began lining up. First, the 2014 to 2016 oil collapse hit Canada much harder than the U.S. Energy investment got crushed, especially in Alberta. That mattered because resource investment had been one of Canada’s major productivity and capital-formation engines. Then the replacement growth model was weaker. Capital increasingly flowed into housing instead of productive business investment. Nonresidential investment lagged. Productivity growth stayed poor. Regulatory friction and permitting constraints made large projects harder. Canadian firms invested less per worker than U.S. firms, and the economy became increasingly dependent on real estate, government spending, consumption, and population growth. Meanwhile the U.S. went the other direction. The U.S. had the giant tech complex, deeper capital markets, stronger business formation, enormous software and cloud investment, later the AI capex boom, shale, and much stronger productivity in high-value sectors. Then Canada made the denominator problem much worse. Population growth accelerated dramatically, especially after 2021. More people absolutely increase total GDP, but if capital stock, housing, infrastructure, and productive investment do not grow at the same pace, GDP per person falls or stagnates. That is exactly what happened. Canada could report respectable headline GDP while individual Canadians got economically poorer relative to Americans. So I would describe the arc as: commodity shock → weak productive reinvestment → housing absorbs capital → productivity stagnates → population outruns capital deepening. The post-2020 immigration surge then turned a slow divergence into something much more visible. And there is a vicious loop inside it. Rapid population growth pushes housing demand higher. Higher housing prices attract more capital into real estate. Capital that could finance productive businesses gets trapped in land and housing. Housing costs rise. Workers demand higher nominal wages just to stand still. Businesses become less competitive. Productivity remains weak. Then government leans on more population growth to keep aggregate GDP rising. You can keep the headline economy looking alive while GDP per capita quietly rots. That is why this chart is so striking. 2015 was probably not one single event. It was the point where Canada’s old resource-and-investment engine weakened and the replacement model never generated comparable productivity. The U.S. kept building increasingly valuable things. Canada increasingly built expensive claims on the same land.

“You don’t get rich by diversifying into 50 mediocre assets. You get rich by finding 2 or 3 asymmetric home runs.” — Stanley Druckenmiller

Absolutely insane. Nvidia, $NVDA, just guided $108 BILLION in revenue for Q3 alone. And, this guidance assumes ZERO data center compute revenue from China. This builds on the record $96.2 billion in revenue posted for last quarter for a projected total of $204.2 billion in 6 months. We now have a $5+ trillion company is seeing +106% year-over-year revenue growth. There has never been anything like what we are seeing right now with AI. This is arguably the biggest technological revolution of all time.

PCE comes in slightly hotter than expectation. ECONOMIC DATA (JULY) PCE (MoM): Act. 0.2% | Est. 0.1% PCE (YoY): Act. 3.7% | Est. 3.6% Core PCE (MoM): Act. 0.2% | Est. 0.2% Core PCE (YoY): Act. 3.3% | Est. 3.3%

Nancy Pelosi just disclosed buying up to $12M of $BE.

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No. Canada's economy is roughly 1/12 the size of the US. About 70-75% of Canadian goods exports go south, equal to ~16-20% of Canadian GDP. US exposure is a fraction of that. Tariffs inflict far larger relative GDP and job losses on Canada. Energy leverage exists but cutting it would crater Canadian revenues first. Diversification is too slow to change the math.

Nebius will be the first neocloud to hit $1 trillion dollar company and here is exactly why (Save this). As dylan patel says Jensen Huang absolutely hates a world where the hyperscalers have all the power. A world where Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are the only ones building compute is a world where Nvidia is slowly being squeezed by a handful of customers all simultaneously developing custom chips to replace Nvidia GPUs entirely. Google's TPU, Amazon's Trainium and Microsoft's Maia all exist for one reason, to cut Nvidia out of the stack and Jensen knows it so he is playing a long game most investors haven't registered yet. By funding NeoClouds and NeoLabs at scale, Jensen is deliberately engineering a multipolar compute world where no single hyperscaler can dictate terms and where Nvidia hardware remains the default infrastructure layer regardless of which model or platform ultimately wins. Nvidia has deployed roughly $40 billion in AI ecosystem investments across OpenAI, Anthropic, CoreWeave, Nebius, xAI, and dozens of infrastructure companies, all running almost exclusively on Nvidia chips, cementing GPU dependency across the entire AI stack.sedaily Every neocloud that survives and scales becomes a permanent Nvidia GPU customer structurally opposed to the hyperscalers building custom silicon expanding Nvidia's market while simultaneously weakening its biggest competitive threat. Dylan Patel described the neocloud ecosystem as throwing bait into the water and letting the best fish survive, warning that many heavily-backed teams will fail, but the ones that emerge will pull hundreds of millions in ARR right out of the gate. Nebius is that fish because it's the only neocloud operating at hyperscaler scale while remaining fully purpose-engineered for AI workloads from silicon to software. The numbers confirm Nebius has already cleared the survival bar that will eliminate most of the 200+ neoclouds competing right now. Revenue hit $399 million in Q1 2026, up 684% year-over-year, backed by $46 billion in contracted backlog, 3.5 GW of contracted power across seven site and a target of $7–$9 billion in annualized revenue by year-end. When Google approached neoclouds about deploying TPUs, Nebius said no, its Chief Revenue Officer noting that demand is 99% for Nvidia GPUs and that TPU interest comes almost entirely from former Google employees rather than the actual market. That alignment with Nvidia's ecosystem, at this scale, with this backlog, and this level of strategic backing is why Nebius sits in a category of one among the neocloud field. Patel framed the broader play correctly, every neocloud that survives makes Google's TPU and Amazon's Trainium structurally weaker simply by existing and five years from now, the winners will have reshaped the entire compute landscape in Nvidia's favor. Nebius is already hundreds of millions in ARR ahead of the competition while most of the field is still treading water. Milk Road subscribers are already up massively on the Nebius trade, and we are tracking the neocloud buildout as Nvidia works to reshape the entire compute market. If you enjoyed reading this post and have been thinking about joining Milk Road Pro, now is your last chance to lock in the current price before it goes up next week, use the link below to join.

FUN FACT 🚨: Since 1990, the S&P 500 has dropped at least 7% from August to October in every midterm year, except 2006 📉📉

BofA estimates $MU Micron could generate $55.7B in FCF this year and grow that to $188.6B by 2030 under $SNDK Sandisk-like assumptions. To put that into perspective, about 450 of the 500 companies in the $SPY S&P 500 are worth less than Micron's projected 2030 annual free cash flow. Wild.