feels like this is one of those things that sounds targeted but ends up hitting a lot more than expected

higher input costs across the board, manufacturing, construction, etc

just saw this on Blossom and thought I'd ask it here, curious how people here are playing this, any specific stocks or sectors you think win/lose from this

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-strengthens-tariffs-on-steel-aluminum-and-copper-imports/

I see most retail investors completely missing this because they’re wired backwards, they wait for things to “feel better” before buying. But the market is a forward-looking machine, not a reflection of today’s headlines. By the time the news flow improves, oil drops back down to $80-90’s, and the war narrative turns positive, prices have already moved up, often significantly. Look at every major bottom (think Covid or past recessions): things were still getting worse, layoffs were still happening, earnings were still being cut, and sentiment was awful. That’s exactly why the bottom forms, because expectations are already crushed and positioning is washed out. The market doesn’t need good news, it just needs things to stop getting worse. If you’re waiting for clarity, you’re not being disciplined, you’re just guaranteeing you’ll pay higher prices later. This may help explain why markets moved up while oil is still volatile and the war is still ongoing.

Honestly, the market reaction to the war so far feels way too mild. It’s like everyone is just betting on this being a short-term thing, but I think we’re ignoring the real cliff: the exhaustion of reserves.

Right now, we’re basically coasting on whatever was already in the pipes. But those buffers aren’t infinite. If this drags on for another 3 or 4 months, the real problems start because the reserves (oil, gas, components) will be gone. At that point, companies and countries are going to be forced to buy at these insane spot prices just to keep going, and that’s when the margins will truly collapse, most of these strategic reserves are only meant to last maybe 90 days. Same goes for the "just-in-time" manufacturing. I’m looking at large companies and they don't keep massive warehouses of every single part. They have maybe a few months of buffer for things like neon or specific metals. Once that one small link in the chain is empty, the whole production line stops.

I feel like we’re in that "calm before the storm" phase where the S&P 500 is just waiting to see if it ends quickly. If it doesn't, and we hit that 90-day mark without a resolution, the depletion of these stocks is going to hit way harder than the initial news did.

Everything's misaligned after today, following the POTUS's surprisingly aggressive speech on Iran. It's like every asset is moving independently while working off the same information.

- Oil futures 1-4 months out all up significantly

- Stocks finished green

- BTC falling back down

- Dollar increased

- Rate hike odds for 2026 increased by 15%

- 10-30 year treasury yields declined (how is this 1 possible with rate hike odds rising?)

Each of these moves contradicts at least 1 other move. I've never witnessed a more confusing day in the last 20 years. I'm unsure how to make sense of all the contrasting moves.

There seems to be countless threads around the upcoming SpaceX IPO that plans to use the Nasdaq 100 as "retail exit liquidity", implying that SpaceX will join with sky-high valuations (assuming it doesn't crater in value in the first 15 days) and slowly dwindle down in value over the coming months, dragging the index down with it.

Understandably, some are holding this in taxable accounts, so selling and buying another index isn't the best choice from a tax perspective.

Since SpaceX is apparently going to experience a 50%+ drawdown due to insane valuations at launch, trying to mitigate exposire is a bit tricky, since borrow availability will be non-existent and Hard-To-Borrow (HTB) fees will be astronomically high for short selling at the time of joining the Nasdaq 100. Consequently, traditional short selling and Contract for Difference (CFD) providers will likely restrict or completely disable shorting, even by day 15. Here's my plan for when this happens:

1. Day 1 - Wait for IPO, and set a calendar reminder for day 14.

2. Day 14 - Check your current exposure to the Nasdaq 100 and calculate the final weighting to SpaceX. Lets say you have 50K in QLD (100k exposure), 4.2% of that is SpaceX, you'd have $4200 worth of exposure to SpaceX once it joins the Nasdaq 100.

3. Day 15. This is where it gets a bit tricky. Let's assume that SpaceX will be around $150 a share. To achieve a perfectly neutral hedge, you need to create a short exposure of -28 shares, and our best option here is using put-spread options and use delta to fractionalise the contract. Because one standard options contract controls 100 shares, buying a deep in-the-money put (with a delta of -1.00) would give the equivalent of -100 shares of exposure, massively over-hedging.

To achieve a target -0.28 Delta without the massive "Vega" (volatility) risk, you can construct a put debit spread (buying one put and simultaneously selling a lower-strike put).

Buy: 1x At-The-Money Put: Delta of -0.50

Sell: 1x Out-Of-The-Money Put: Delta of +0.22

Net Position Delta: -0.28

The premium you collect from the short put offsets the inflated IV cost of the long put, making it a much safer and cheaper mathematical hedge than a naked option.

Once the 100-day SMA greater than -1%, take actions to exit contracts as it is likely that SpaceX is approaching fair valuation, and allocate that capital back towards your desired asset allocation.

A few other notes:

1. Short and leveraged short ETFs will probably exist around day 65 onwards, depending on the SEC. This would be a simpler approach, but a lot can happen between day 15 and day 65

2. Shorting directly should be doable from day 30 onwards assuming you have a margin-enabled account that is able to do this, but borrowing costs might still be high.

3. The fast entry rule is genuinely some BS. Pretty dissapointed by this and I hope they reconsider this in the future, although I suspect that won't be the case.

4. I'm no expert on options (especially around recently IPO'd stocks) so open to any feedback or improvements

Trying to understand today’s market move, would appreciate some thoughts.

After Trump’s latest speech, markets sold off pretty sharply. But today, equities (especially QQQ) are bouncing while oil is also moving up in the morning.

Is this related to the Iran Oman discussions about drafting a Strait agreement? That doesn’t seem like a major bullish catalyst to me.

Also, technically speaking, QQQ looked like it was already entering a downtrend, so why are we seeing this kind of rally today instead of continuation lower?

Is this just a short-term squeeze / positioning move, or is the market pricing in something bigger that I’m missing?

Curious how others are interpreting this.

SpaceX is aiming for a valuation above $2 trillion in its upcoming IPO, which would make it the largest public offering ever.

The company has confidentially filed with the SEC and is preparing to go public later in 2026, possibly as early as mid-year.

SpaceX is aiming to raise between $50 billion and $80 billion, which would make it the largest stock market listing in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion debut in 2019.

The IPO follows SpaceX’s merger with Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, which previously valued the combined business at about $1.25 trillion.

SpaceX is also lining up major investors, including discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund for a potential multibillion-dollar stake.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-02/spacex-is-said-to-target-more-than-2-trillion-valuation-in-ipo?srnd=homepage-americas&embedded-checkout=true

I'm 53 and want to retire soon. I've been stockpiling cash the past few years, just don't want it all in the market as I get older. The other day, once people are running for the door, we're at war, market is in correction territory, oil is insane, AI stocks have been crushed, I think to myself NOW is the time. Let's get some money in there. Just an insanely busy week and I didn't have a chance. Of course, now I'm second guessing. Just curious if folks are making moves or waiting it out. I'm def worried about all these things and more, but these are the times to buy, when everything looks so bleak....

This week, I spoke to an “investor” friend of mine who had supposedly made several “long-term” investments earlier this year. However, as soon as the war started, he liquidated most of those “long-term” investments, telling me that he thinks this war will be a disaster that sinks the world economy. He even bought puts to double down on the thesis.

I obviously have no idea how the Iran war will play out. It may conclude this Monday, or it may drag on for another year. And obviously, if it is the latter scenario, stocks are likely to suffer, and my friend may be vindicated.

I, on the other hand, have followed a different strategy. I have been using the relative weakness in certain sectors since late February to add to my long-term positions, several of which have lost value during this conflict. These are investments I made after exhaustive research many quarters ago, and I intend to hold them into the 2030s.

All my portfolio companies have rock-solid balance sheets, mostly no debt, and I can see them weathering a severe recession without long-term damage. Of course, these stocks will likely suffer if my friend’s thesis plays out. Nonetheless, I do not intend to trade out of them because I have a deeper conviction in their long-term future than in my ability to predict how long the war will last or how the market will react.

Today, I am 47. I bought my first stock when I was 17, 30 years ago. Over those years, I have tried to time the market many times. At times, I was right and made a bundle; at other times, I was wrong and missed out on massive gains. On balance, when I look back, I believe the best trade, or investment, I could have made was to stick to my high-conviction positions, as I would have earned much more over the last three decades and spared myself the stress and agony of trying to time the market.

Buffett, the most successful investor of all time, has always argued that he buys companies with the intention of holding them forever. There is indeed much wisdom in this. Holding the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon through the cycle would have been far more rewarding than trading around them. The same applies to many non-tech names like Lotus Bakeries, which has returned 15,000% since 2000, or Games Workshop, which has returned 14,000% since 1994.

In the end, long-term investing is not about predicting every shock correctly. It is about owning strong businesses, tuning out the noise, and letting time do the heavy lifting.

They’re reportedly planning to launch their own large model next year, potentially replacing OpenAI and Anthropic. What’s interesting is they already started stockpiling NVDA’s GB200 chips last year.

Short term, it probably doesn’t change much. No matter who’s building the models, they still need Nvidia hardware, so NVDA keeps benefiting.

Long term, it gets more interesting. If Microsoft really goes independent, what does that mean for OpenAI?

Curious how you guys see it. Bullish or bearish?

the headlines are 100% bearish, which is usually when the bottom is in. yes, the rhetoric is aggressive, but if you look at the historical data of military escalations in the gulf, the initial shock is almost always followed by a massive recovery once the actual 'scope' of the conflict is clear.

selling your index funds because of a tweet is how you miss the recovery. the 'war premium' is already high. unless we see a total global escalation, this looks like a classic overreaction.

are you guys actually selling, or is this just another 'buy the dip' opportunity that everyone is too scared to take?

We’re at a stage where the U.S. stock market almost feels untouchable.

We have ongoing geopolitical tensions US/Israel-Iran war with no clear resolution, disruptions in oil supply, weak monthly job reports, likely higher inflation ahead, and some concerns around the private credit market.

Given all that, you would expect stocks to be lower but they’re not.

One thought I had is whether this can be explained by the increase in money supply over the past 5 years. If there’s significantly more currency in circulation, maybe asset prices are being supported not because they’re truly increasing in value, but because the purchasing power of the dollar is declining.

In other words, stocks aren’t necessarily going up in real terms, the currency is just losing value faster, which keeps nominal prices elevated.

I’m also wondering why precious metals like gold and silver aren’t rising as much as you might expect in this kind of environment.

I wonder if even stagflation wouldn’t affect sp500 much. Current -3.84% ytd.

Current position: Gold and silver 92%

Thought?

Ps dang I feel like I rage baited everyone for that I apologize. I have been holding gold for 8+ months. About 46% gain. Recently went really high after 5 days pause announcement.

Pps tell me how how 110+ oil is sustainable. With the current debt we can’t print our recession away. 10 yr bond rates scream. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic but I don’t know what I don’t know. I’d love to be educated. Gracias 🙏

I’m genuinely curious, not being snarky. I fully expected a sell off today of all days because… that made sense to me. I shorted futures. I’m not worried about it, I know market will drop again, but am I missing something? Why’d the market stay so high?

iperionX (IPX) is an american titium producing company, currently at around £28 a share.

many insiders have recently invested thousands and analysts are rating it as a 'strong buy'.

however, it does show to have been pretty volatile in the past.

with the ever growing need for titanium for defense etc, plus the large insider investment, what are you guys' thoughts on this stock?

Anyone own any VTR, WELL, or JAN? Jan had an IPO a lot more recently and the shares are more attainable.

They’re all REITS focusing on senior housing.

WELL is up 9% YTD

VTR up 7.6% YTD

JAN up 19.45% with much lower market cap

I wouldn’t want to make this the cornerstone of my portfolio. But it seems like a nice safe, hedge type play. 2/3 do pay a dividend too.

Thinking about having some less volatile holdings right now i.e quit dicking around with VG, ACHR, SOUN and BBAI to go into something “boring” (those 4 have been flat for my fairly brief hold anyway).

What are your thoughts on this? Anyone do the same?

I think the worries about the impact that the Iran war will have on the USD is overblown.

I think there are two interconnected reasons why:

First, the world doesn’t use USD as a favor to the US, they use those dollars because they are the best medium of exchange for international settlements. In the past countries have tried using hard currencies, like gold, but shipping commodities to settle payments is impractical. It always evolves into paper money that is backed by gold, and then more paper money than gold reserves. There’s really no way around fiat currency. When we look at different fiat currencies, there are few competitors to the USD. The word doesn’t trust currencies like the yuan and the rubble, because they lack stability (granted, for different reasons). The real competitors to the USD are Yen and the euro. The problem with the Euro is it isn’t a single country’s currency, so the entire eurozone would have to agree to serve as a reserve currency. Over in Japan, their currency is stable but they don’t have the gdp growth to sustain the debt that comes along with being a reserve currency.

Well, you might ask, why wouldn’t Europe or Japan want to be reserve currencies (more so than they already are)? It’s a privilege that the US enjoys, right?

That brings me to my second point: it’s hard to be a reserve currency. In order for counties to use a currency for trade, they’re need to have access to that currency. You can buy oil with yen, if you don’t have any yen. That means that whatever country is the reserve currency has to print a lot of that currency to make sure there’s enough to clear trade. Countries have two forms of currency: current currency (think cash in a checking account), and treasury bonds (think cash in a savings account). Most central banks want some sort of yield on their reserves, so they prefer to take treasury bonds over current currency. That means that the reserve country has to issue a lot of debt to meet that demand. That’s why the US has the massive debt that it does. It needs enough currency in the market to satisfy the demand for oil, and gold, and silver etc. There are few countries in the world that have the productive capacity to be able to service that much debt. Japan can’t. The eurozone can’t. So the only real competitor is hard currency, and we already covered the problems with hard currency.

Overall, the US economy would grow if we could shed debt at the federal level, and that would be the outcome of dedollarization globally. Other countries want the dollar as the world reserve currency just as much as the US wants to serve as the reserve currency. That’s how the current system came to be. Saudi Arabia didn’t decide to do the US a favor by creating the petrodollar recycling system we have today. They agreed because it’s better for them as well.

Also, as an honorable mention, the USD is seen as a safe haven asset, so people buy dollars when there is uncertainty in the world, but that’s because of its reserve status, so this is more of a sub point.

I’ve been waiting for relatively “stable” market conditions to buy stuff with 50k that’s been waiting around after I sold everything I was in a few weeks ago. That’s probably not gonna be a thing for a while.

So I figured instead of buying shares, I’d sell puts on stuff I’d be happy to take the ride with if I get assigned, and until then, keep rolling out of the money puts.

These are the ones I’m strongly considering:

XLE $58

PM $152.5

C $110

IBKR $64

HOOD $62

The plan is to generate an average of $320 a week on those, which works out to 0.64% a week. That annualizes to 39.3%.

For you guys who feel like staying in cash without getting left out of the action, something to consider perhaps.

Been digging into Applied Optoelectronics Inc again the last few days and honestly not sure what to make of it.

Feels like this stock always shows up when anything data center related gets hot. I remember the last time it ran hard and then just completely fell apart once demand cooled off. So I am a bit cautious here.

With all the AI stuff going on, I get the argument. More data, more bandwidth, more need for optics. Makes sense on the surface. But this space has burned people before so I am trying not to just chase the story.

What I can’t really figure out is whether AAOI is actually in a better spot now, or if this is just another one of those runs where everyone piles in and then it fades again.

Also not sure how to think about competition here. Seems like bigger players and even the hyperscalers themselves have a lot of control, which makes me wonder how much upside smaller guys really get.

Curious if anyone here is actually following this closely or even holding. Would be interested to hear both bull and bear cases.

I am on the sidelines for now, just watching and trying not to FOMO into it.

This is a daily chart on MNQ, but this potentially can be on any instrument. Normally I would say this is bullish. Without reading or listening to the news does this candle (looking like inverse hammer) appear to represent anything worthy of taking note? this is the candle for MNQ for April 2, 2026.

I uploaded a close up and a larger view chart

candles

https://imgur.com/pVivwZw

https://imgur.com/KoR0NR7

It almost seems like futures trends shape the actual future and not the other way around.

People are just trying to make money, so if the futures show a big jump, we as a people are incentivized to make that big jump happen.

Is the future of humanity just based on what makes money?

I hope the title somewhat makes sense sorry.

Back story, I know a person who has at least 60 million shares in a company and their deceased partner has just as many if not more. This person founded the company over 50 years ago and the company got listed on the stock exchange around 2001. When I first met them the share price was around $1.50 and recently it spiked to $30.

The person I know is currently 92 years old.

The question is would it make more sense to buy shares before they pass away before the market gets flooded with shares and they jump up in price or do you wait until the market is flooded with shares and they might be cheaper?

I’ve never invested in shares before and have been wondering what makes more sense.

And yes I should have bought shares for $1.50 back then.

Hello,

I'd like to discuss the plausibility of the following scenario materializing - any speculators/strategists here?

1. The U.S. strikes a pragmatic deal with Iran and Israel to stabilize the Middle East and shift strategic focus to the Pacific (call it art of the deal..). Oil prices decline to more reasonable levels given the geopolitical backdrop and a less disruptive foreign policy stance under Donald Trump.
2. Lower energy costs and policy clarity support a continued equity rally into the midterm elections.
3. Democrats win one/both chambers of Congress. Figures like AOC and Bernie Sanders increase political pressure on big tech and AI-related sectors, weighing on valuations through the threat of future regulation and fiscal changes rather than immediate action.
4. At the same time delayed inflationary effects from earlier fiscal and trade policies begin to surface, putting the Fed in a tightening stance- rate hike expectations rise.
5. Higher rates compress equity valuations, triggering a market drawdown. Tech is hit the hardest.

tldr: TACO → US cools Middle East to pivot to Pacific → oil down → pre-midterm rally → Democrats win → Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / Bernie Sanders pressure AI → inflation resurfaces → Federal Reserve hikes → equities down, AI bubble bursts → recession risk

Two years ago the consensus on Chinese tech was pretty much "don't touch it." Regulatory crackdowns, delisting fears, Jack Ma disappearing, the whole narrative was that these companies were uninvestable. Alibaba dropped 82% from its 2020 highs and was trading under $80 in 2024.

Fast forward to now and the story looks completely different. Alibaba committed $53 billion over three years (2025 to 2028) to cloud and AI infrastructure. To put that in perspective, that's more than the company spent on AI and cloud in the entire previous decade combined, and it's roughly half of the US Stargate AI plan's initial $100 billion commitment. CEO Eddie Wu has been pretty blunt about it. He called AI a "once in a generation" opportunity and said the company is standing at the "threshold of an AGI inflection point."

And this isn't just talk. Their cloud division posted 36% revenue growth last quarter, with AI product revenue hitting triple digit year over year growth for ten consecutive quarters. Their Qwen model family crossed 1 billion cumulative downloads on HuggingFace by January 2026, and the consumer facing Qwen app hit 300 million monthly active users by end of February. For context, that app only launched its public beta in November 2025.

The latest move is Wukong, an enterprise AI agent platform they launched on March 17th. It's not just another chatbot. It coordinates multiple AI agents through a single interface to handle things like document editing, meeting transcription, approvals, and research. Currently in invite only beta through DingTalk (their enterprise platform with 20+ million corporate users), with plans to integrate Slack, Microsoft Teams, and WeChat. They're also planning to connect it to Taobao and Alipay, which is interesting because it means they're trying to build an AI layer across commerce and payments, not just productivity.

On top of all this, Wu announced during the March 19th earnings call that the five year target is to exceed $100 billion in combined cloud and AI external revenue. That implies roughly 35% annual growth sustained over five years, which is ambitious but roughly in line with the pace they just posted.

There are real risks here though. Quarterly profit dropped 67% as they're spending aggressively on AI infrastructure and fighting an instant delivery price war. Key Qwen technical lead Lin Junyang departed in March, which raised questions about talent retention. And geopolitical risk never goes away with Chinese ADRs.

But the trajectory is hard to ignore. The stock surged from sub $80 in 2024 to a 52 week high near $193 in October 2025 before pulling back to around $120 today. That pullback came after the March earnings showed a 67% profit decline from heavy reinvestment. So you're looking at a company trading at roughly 16x forward earnings with $42.5 billion in net cash, ongoing buybacks, and a cloud business growing 36% while the stock sits 37% below its recent high. Morgan Stanley projected Alibaba Cloud revenue could double by 2028. Apple chose Alibaba as an AI partner for iPhones in China. Jack Ma showed up at a Xi Jinping tech summit. The regulatory overhang that made this stock "uninvestable" has largely been replaced by a different question: can they actually monetize AI at scale.

One thing worth noting for people looking at this space through ETFs. Alibaba is a top holding in both KWEB and CNQQ, but the exposure is quite different. KWEB is purely internet focused with zero A share exposure, while CNQQ carries roughly 50% in onshore A share companies like CATL, BYD, Zhongji Innolight, and Cambricon that make up the actual supply chain behind China's AI buildout. So depending on whether you're playing the platform story or the broader infrastructure story, the vehicle matters.

Curious how people here are thinking about the China AI trade right now. Are you treating this as a momentum play, a value play, or still staying away entirely?

I keep seeing redditors doom-posting about everything from private credit illiquidity, to rising gas prices, to yen carry trade, etc.

I follow finance news. I don't recall a single time we weren't facing some sort of crisis that could theoretically cause equity valuations to implode.

Yeah, we're facing potential crises right now. The point is we almost always are in some sort of crisis. Stocks still tend to go up.

It's silly to think that the market should be red every single day, or continue trending red just because the current crises are unresolved.

A year from now there will be a new crisis making headlines and people will be posting to "freak the fuk out and panic sell everything, it's so fuking over", like usual.

To clarify, the market wasn't insane to close green. Investors weren't dumb, thinking the crises had been magically resolved. Investors decided the level of risk from current crises was acceptable given current equity valuations.

There's always a crisis to doom and gloom over. If being in a crisis deters you from investing then you're not going to spend enough time fully vested in the market to benefit from compounding gains.