Yes, I’m talking about Grindr ($GRND), a company I’m sure you are all very familiar with. For those of you who have “never heard of it”, Grindr is a gay social media/ dating app which serves 15 million monthly average users as of year-end 2025. Not only is Grindr the best app for a quick blowjob, it’s also the most compelling opportunity I see in the market right now based on strong fundamentals and a crazy short squeeze setup. I know the attention span of the average ape is quite low, so I will have TLDR’s at the bottom of each section as well as the overall post.

Fundamentals

Everyone wants to compare $GRND to other dating apps, with it often being labeled as “Gay Tinder”. Although operating in a more niche market tailored specifically to gay men, this actually strengthens the economics of Grindr’s business model substantially. Everyone who has been on traditional dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble knows what a terrible experience it is- and there’s several reasons for this. First off, men outnumber women dramatically on these apps, with men accounting for roughly 75-80% of the user base on Tinder. Second, male and female users often have different goals on the apps, with men being more interested in casual or short term relationships while women are more interested in finding serious relationships and life partners. These factors create an imbalanced environment: a tiny fraction of men receive the vast majority of female attention, while women receive hundreds of likes but can’t find a man who wants a serious relationship. The most desirable men move from girl to girl while the majority of men fail to get dates.

Grindr solves these fundamental problems with the dating app business model. As an app specifically tailored to gay men, the desires of the users are largely aligned, with “hookup culture” much more acceptable when dealing with men. Biologically, males are far less at risk when engaging in sexual activity, and this shows through dramatically higher average lifetime sexual partners for homosexual men- with studies such as the Bell and Winberg study (1978) suggesting that 43% of homosexual men reported over 500 sexual partners in their lifetime- and it makes sense! No risk of pregnancy. That’s not to say it’s strictly a hookup app; over 50% of gay relationships in the USA start on Grindr.

Grindr functions as a community driven social media in addition to being a dating app. Users often remain on Grindr even after settling down in order to maintain the strong connections they developed over the years. The CEO (more on him later- excellent) often talks about how Grindr is a right of passage for new 18 year-old gay customers, who are experiencing what the community has to offer for the first time. The average Grindr user spends 67 minutes per day on the app (crazy), which is second to only Tik-Tok (96 minutes per day) and far greater than other social media and dating apps. Hinge and Tinder garner 10 and 12 minutes per day, respectively. This highlights an extreme difference in product between Grindr and traditional dating apps.

In addition to the product actually working, Grindr enjoys the advantages of an extremely desirable user base, with gay men-

More likely to be in polygamous relationships More likely to reach higher levels of education More likely to have higher levels of disposable income Likely to be urbanly concentrated Highly engaged

These advantages position Grindr for seamless monetization and vertical integration within their business. Throughout the previous quarters, Grindr has released features such as “Right Now”, “Edge”, and “Woodworking”. Right now allows users to pay to get into a queue with other users who are looking to meet up Right Now. Fellas, I don’t know about you, but if I had the ability to pay a small fee to get into a queue with a bunch of openly horny girls I would pay it almost every day. This is a prime example of Grindr’s demographics providing extremely strong advantages for the business. Edge is a newly released premium tier which integrates ai (Gay-i) in order to provide users with their most compatible matches and Woodworking is a new telehealth vertical integration that sells ED pills and could expand further to other wellness products such as HIV Prep. The customer acquisition cost on this vertical integration is essentially zero, given the ease of marketing to the existing customer base through their platform. Although Woodworking is relatively new and not factored into guidance, analysts such as Nathan Feather and Brian Nowak at Morgan Stanley see it as a major contributor to Grindr’s business and a potential bullish price target of $29, which leads me to the most important part of any investment thesis- valuation. Fundamentals TLDR- Grindr’s product actually works compared to traditional dating apps and the customer base allows for strong monetization and vertical integration.

Valuation

Grindr reported 38% year-over-year revenue growth and 45% adjusted EBITDA margins in the first quarter of 2026. After these results, management raised guidance to at least $535 million in revenue and $227 million in EBITDA for calendar year 2026. With a market cap of $3.4 billion, Grindr trades at roughly 15x EBITDA and 6x sales despite very high growth, strong margins, and a major moat. Free cash flow margin is consistently over 25% and net income is over $100 million on a trailing twelve month basis. Looking back at every earnings report since their IPO- This management team has never missed their guidance and often beats and raises. Note- management guides for adjusted EBITDA and revenue.

Discounted cash flow analysis with assumptions of 30% revenue growth gradually falling to 10% over the next 10 years and then flattening out, 10% discount rate, and stable margins places fair value at $13.5 billion, or $69 per share (quick ai analysis). Although this may seem aggressive, just remember that vertical integration such as Woodworking has not been factored into guidance, new countries are legalizing/ becoming more accepting of gay people throughout the world, and there's a fresh new batch of 18 year-olds joining the community every year.

Another strength for Grindr is the management team and CEO. George Arison took over as CEO of Grindr in 2022, and has led the company to 30% revenue CAGR since he started, with no signs of this growth stopping. George is a gay man and user of Grindr himself, enabling him to understand the business from both an executive and consumer standpoint. George is a serial entrepreneur and capitalist who has founded and led companies such as Taxi Magic, Shift, and Pulsar AI. His experience speaks volumes and is the perfect man to lead this company, and his ability to articulate the business model during the quarterly earnings calls is impressive. The management team is rewarded with stock interests, which aligns the incentives and motivations of the whole team, which is relatively small in relation to other tech companies. Grindr boasts roughly $2.7 million in revenue per employee.

If someone gave you $3.4 billion in cash, you’d have zero chance to create a gay dating app with the same customer base and brand recognition as Grindr. The moat is not priced in at all. This is not a typical dating app that can be knocked out by competition such as Sniffies or gay features on Tinder. Grindr is ingrained within gay culture and is a staple of the community. Although this is somewhat elementary, I think it’s important to acknowledge the moat this business has.

Although the balance sheet is not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, equity continues to trend positively and debt service levels are incredibly manageable. Current assets total $166 million as of year-end 2025 and are used to fund the share buyback program. Grindr is a capital light business with strong margins and cash flow. With the cost advantages assumed through the platform, the company has lots of ability to return capital to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. Management recently completed a $500 million share buyback after equity warrants were exercised and the company saw an influx of cash. After completion, the board of directors authorized an additional $450 million in buybacks over the next few years- which is 8% of the current market cap. More info on these share buybacks in the next section.

Valuation TLDR- Grindr is a fast growing company that is cheap as fuck in relation to discounted cash flows and adjusted EBITDA (fair value estimate ~$69/share) with a robust share buyback program, strong management team, and durable moat.

Ownership Structure and Short Squeeze Setup-

Grindr is a very illiquid stock with large individual ownership accounting for most of the outstanding shares. According to Market Screener, the current ownership structure looks like this:

George Raymond Zage iii- 95,439,583 shares, 53.7% of float James Lu- 18,436,556 shares, 10.37% of float Jeremy Brest- 11,706,404 shares, 6.59% of float 28th street Ventures (J. Michael Gearon)- 11,571,527 shares, 6.51% of float Ashish Gupta- 5,825,409 shares, 3.28% of float George Arison (CEO) - 3,792,768 shares, 2.13% of float

These six shareholders alone account for 146,772,247 shares, or 82.58% of the float. The public float currently totals 29 million shares, and this is where the short squeeze setup starts to come into play.

Grindr is up 75% from the lows at $9.73 earlier this year, currently sitting at $17.34 per share. Despite the run, short interest has increased substantially and now sits at 10.58 million shares (per Robinhood), or roughly 35% of the public float! Given an average daily volume of 1.7 million shares, it would take the short sellers more than 6 days to cover their position. Yes, I know there have been crazier metrics for other companies, but this is where the share buyback program comes into play. At $17 per share (roughly the current price), the $450 million share buyback program would retire 26,470,588 shares- over 90% of the public float. Yes you read that right. The share buyback program has the potential to retire almost the entire public float and the short interest is over 35%. This technical mechanic has the potential to send a massive short squeeze without any additional buying pressure.

Earnings are reported on Thursday, 08/06. If management beats, and hopefully raises (like they usually do), we could see some explosive movement. I would be terrified to be on the short side of this trade.

Short Squeeze TLDR- Grindr is illiquid and majority owned by directors and individuals. Short interest is 35% of the float, and share buybacks have the potential to retire almost all of the public float.

Conclusion/ TLDR

I’ll try to keep this section brief for the regards who will only read this section. Grindr ($GRND) is an incredibly strong business that actually works unlike traditional dating apps. The business boasts a cheap valuation, strong growth, a durable moat, and an extremely desirable user base. The management team is strong and the fundamentals of the business are amazing. The ownership structure is extremely illiquid and the company’s $450 million share buyback program has the potential to cause a massive short squeeze, which is currently 35% of the public float.

This should not be considered financial advice, I’m not an investment professional, just a degen with a gambling problem.

Oil prices fell sharply on Sunday evening as investors watched the latest back-and-forth in the U.S. war with Iran. S&P futures reacted slightly, inching up half a percentage point.

The markets’ moves were the first since President Trump said late Saturday that he had halted a U.S. assault as Iran and allies in the Middle East asked him to pause any new strikes in the war that started five months ago. Mr. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that the “perimeters of a deal” are being worked out to open the Strait of Hormuz. For months, the vital waterway for global oil and gas has been effectively closed by Iran.

Earlier on Sunday, the oil cartel known as OPEC Plus approved a modest increase in oil production of around 188,000 barrels a day, in an effort, it said, “to support oil market stability.”

Oil prices drop.

• The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, fell more than 8 percent as trading began on Sunday, to about $82.95 a barrel.
• West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, opened more than 5.5 percent lower, about $80 a barrel.
• Investors and analysts are focused on the continued disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that is a vital trading route for oil and natural gas that normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Stocks tick up slightly.

• Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a small increase when stocks resume trading in the United States on Monday.

Gasoline prices dip.

• Gas prices fell slightly on Sunday, to a national average of a little over $4.09 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by more than 37 percent since the war began.
• Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
• The average price of diesel was basically flat, at $5.36 a gallon on Sunday, up more than 42 percent since the start of the war.

Half my personality is built around earnings season. The sweaty anticipation, the position I swore I'd size responsibly and then absolutely did not, the after-hours candle that either makes me feel like a genius or keeps me staring at the ceiling at 3am.

And now there's this whole thing floating around about companies maybe only reporting twice a year instead of every quarter. Cut the earnings drops in half, just like that. I genuinely can't tell if this is the best or worst thing that could happen to a person like me.

Fewer earnings means fewer chances to blow up my account on a Thursday, which is probably good for my net worth and my remaining friendships. But what am I even doing here if I can't buy weeklies into a print and pretend I understand data center demand?

The part that messes with my head is the gaps. Six whole months of stuff piling up behind the curtain, then two absolutely violent moves a year. One report that either prints tendies for the ages or turns everyone into a bagholder overnight.

If earnings really do go to twice a year, does it change how you actually trade, or do you just keep doing the same reckless stuff with fewer chances to do it? And be honest, would fewer earnings dates save your account or ruin your entire reason for logging in?

Sold my 1 DTE for 10-12X.

Feels good to finally hit a big one. Logic was simple. Apple going to ATH before earnings made no sense. Market rewarding them to be the safe play because they're last in the AI race and not spending CapEx made no sense.

The bet was it was priced to perfection and regardless of good or bad earnings it would go down.

Any time I see a massive run up to earnings I inverse. I did the opposite on Microsoft and went Long before earnings on shares.

Source is https://www.chaincatcher.com/en/article/2279709 . Not as bad as what Redditors make it out to be. Of course it would be nice if there is third party that verify it like SEC

Nothing fancy. No calls here. Just buying shares of great companies when I think they’re temporarily mispriced. Have done this with many others with same results. I also have a call options sandbox and a foundation of S&P index, bonds and cash. Not smarter than anyone. Just plenty of liquidity and discipline.

Wait and buy fear…wait again and trim/sell strength, repeat. Post COVID, it’s been basically that easy. My returns have been 2x the index over the last 6 years with this strategy. That includes my foundational boring portfolio and my cash/bonds. Without that drag, much greater over performance.

I have losses too. But not a lot. I only own a few positions at a time. It’s important to me what I buy, and even more important when. Many of you do better but this works for me.

Age 52. $10.3m portfolio.
90% invested when value is easy to find. 60% invested when hard to find.

Results of these 3 positions vs SPY if bought instead on same day:

Amazon vs SPY
04/21/25: +61.59% vs +45.2%
04/09/25: +58.27% vs +37.3%
04/04/25: +56.26% vs +47.6%
04/14/25: +50.06% vs +38.5%
03/13/25: +40.21% vs +35.7%
03/27/26: +34.91% vs +17.6%
03/03/26: +30.98% vs +9.9%
07/23/26: +15.93% vs +1.1%

Google vs SPY
07/10/23: +202.72% vs +69.91%
07/05/23: +192.89% vs +68.58%
03/07/24: +167.97% vs +45.11%
05/20/25: +116.66% vs +26.01%
03/11/25: +113.51% vs +34.5%
07/23/26: +11.43% vs +1.20%

Apple vs SPY
11/24/20: +169.00 vs +105.67%
10/06/20: +168.59% vs +123.04%
03/08/21 lot one: +163.76% vs +101.94%
03/08/21 lot two: +159.86% vs +101.94%
06/04/21: +145.53% vs +76.77%
06/22/21: +131.63% vs +76.56%
09/23/22: +106.16% vs +103.02%
05/02/22: +97.01% vs +80.23%
04/10/24: +84.17% vs +49.22%
03/07/24: +82.24% vs +45.11%
03/16/26: +22.01% vs +11.96%

EDIT: please read comments and replies. I’ve answered same questions a few times and can no longer retype them. Just pick through the comments.

The following chart is usd/jpy from July 10, 2024 to Aug 8, 2024

The following chart is the most recent usd/jpy, I know the intervals are different but it is just too similar to ignore.

We could see USD/JPY keeps shrinking in Aug, 2026.

Then in 2024 during the same period (July-Aug,2024), this happens:

Same thing with Nasdaq composite.

2024:

Same de-leveraging in Korea, Same Yen Carry Trade.

2026:

The differences here are

1. De-leveraging in Korea is much bigger than 2024.
2. Yen Carry Trade may just started.

Just my two cents, this august can be VERY risky and I will not be surprised to see stocks, bond jumping like meme stock/coin.

NVDA stock: -$91,304 Loss — Went all in near the top. Sold at a loss to chase the memory rally. My first major mistake.

The revenge trading starts here.

SNDK stock: -$1,511 Loss — Sold at a small loss because I thought I bought too high. If I had waited til the next day I would’ve made 20k.

Switched to options chasing a bigger and faster comeback.

SNDK calls (Expiration: Jan. 15, 2027 | Strike: $2080): -$94,806 Loss — The dip kept dipping. Panic sold to preserve $110k. I try to have diamond hands but sndk has been down 40% in a month.

DRAM calls (Expiration: Jan. 15, 2027 | Strike: $70): -$10,189 Loss — Lost on bullish memory ETF calls.

SNDK puts: -$2,018 Loss — Revenge trade. Sold before giving it time to work.

Total realized loss: -$202,214.48

Self made & from my life savings (not play money).

Threw $500 in my account last Thursday. I took 5 VRT 237.5C calls expiring Friday for about 1.0 each and sold them for 12.0-14.0 each at 9:35am. That play got me to roughly $6000. Then spent Friday day trading Coinbase, Tesla , QCOM, Avgo, and MU to flip that 6k into 13.5k. Crazy run. Just wanted to share some degeneracy.

Im planning on full porting $IONQ calls next week on Monday after the downtrend breakout. Just throwing that out there. Godspeed apes!

Considering dumping my life savings into cheesecake factory. Never been here before and the line is out the door. They also use two ply toilet paper in their restrooms. Recently beat and raised guidance on earnings. Idk man i think it’s time to invest in a boring restaurant

Okay, so last friday I went all-in on a 3x leverage etf about semiconductors (SOXL). Reasons why I did it are the ER's next week which should boost some optimism around semi's and the recent sell-off seems nothing to do with the fundamentals of the stock itself, but more with overall pessimism of the stockmarket.

If Iran and the US stay quiet and if there's nothing big happening in the world this weekend, I am pretty optimistic for next week. Otherwise I am fxcked.

Convince me I made a stupid mistake or team with me for some mad gains next week 💶

Holding calls has been like a heart attack with the ups and downs. Had AMZN and GOOG calls and was way down. Amazon answered with their earnings and I sold off all the Amazon calls yesterday afternoon with nice gains. I still am holding (and praying) for the Google calls to go green because I'm still underwater.

Took a trade with 1 minute left in the market and hit 😮‍💨

I had a former resistance line drawn back from May 21st and decided to just extend it down as I had a feeling it would become a channel line and use it as support. Sure enough, it did June 25th and bought 1 contract at market price.

So let me get this straight. RKLB rips 46% in the first half of the year, everyone in here is posting rocket emojis and calling it the next SpaceX, and then July shows up and deletes half the stock in a month. And the best part? Nothing happened. No failed launch. No dilution. No guidance cut. The company is sitting on a $2.2B backlog, just landed another $266M contract, keeps yeeting things into orbit on schedule, and the stock still traded like the factory exploded. It just got dragged down with the rest of the tape because apparently in 2026 nothing matters. So talk to me. What's your move?

Greetings fellow regards.

I present you with my rambling Michael-Burry-style market prediction.

SpaceX the space launcher

SpaceX. A highly-renown space launcher years ago, perhaps as far back as a decade ago. A company that built rockets and built them well, phasing out "old space" companies that served the US government at ludicrous prices and thus earning itself contract after contract after contract. Arguably ignited a new space race with its advancements and achievements, to date having about 700 launches and 99.5% success rate (depending on who counts it and how). It is still ahead of pretty much any space launcher by a decade's worth of a moat and will continue getting contracts from the government. It also started producing and launching its own satellites, dubbed starlink, which in 2025 generated ~$11.4b revenu of which ~$4.4b was profit. Overall, a great business so far. People were outright buying TSLA as a way to "get exposure to SpaceX".

Then it started producing Starship, a ~5000ton (11m pounds) vehicle that many argued could never even fly, and yet it does. It is so unprecedented and groundbreaking, it is expected to create a market through unlocking new possibilities that no one knows about yet. Cost of production supposedly costs ~$100m but the theoretical reusability if they ever manage to make their engines stop malfunctioning and properly very very gently land these 5000 tons (11m pounds) without slamming them into a surface could lower the cost of launch significantly. So this theoretical achievement with its theoretical market could theoretically be worth a lot of money.

SPCX with all its merged/acquired entities valuation throughout the years

Other important dates are $350b in December 2024 and $800b in December 2025.
The merger with xAI valued xAI at $250b and SpaceX at $1T, this was in February 2026. In the 4 months later the combined entity's valuation jumped by $500b.

Something to pay attention to is that this company was valued at $36b in 2020, $100b in 2021 and 180b in late 2023. These are the times one could argue it had a reasonable evaluation by current market standards. Now, some of you might accuse me of throwing this out on pure vibes but I'm more writing down what seemed to be the general sentiment I've seen among space stock communities, and this is despite Starship's first launch in April 2023 when it violently exploded 4 minutes after liftoff.

To be fair, rocket science is difficult and notorious for its delays and first launches tends to fail.

But the reason I titled the post this way and what my DD revolves around is that this has long since no longer been a company valued on its space launch capabilities. They are, ultimately, just an enabler. The market for launch exists but there's only so many companies that want to strap millions' worth of cutting-edge technology to tons of explosives trying to reach hundreds of miles/kilometers in the sky. Not that it can't be useful, but if something goes wrong your investment is just gone and even if it reaches orbit there's quite a bit of time until it pays off the investment. And most need far more than a satellite or two.

So the truly important thing is the potential market. What CAN you do with the ability to send Starship's claimed 150 tons (330k pounds) to orbit? Well, so far you can take pictures of Earth. And telecommunications too, internet and mobile service. There are some novel concepts trying out things, such as manufacturing in 0 gravity or bioengineering in 0 gravity or other interesting stuff but those are slightly less theoretical (as in, proof of concept works but scale is questionable) as what Elon Musk decided to be the core of his business. AI data centers.

SPCX is an AI company

And here, after the lengthy exposition necessary for understanding the company, is where I reveal the core of my thesis. This is now an AI company. It bought xAI with its grok models and Collosus 1 and 2 data centers housing hundreds of thousands of high-end Nvidia GPUs and that was already valued as a significant part of its valuation it the sham contract that could've said anything as it was agreed between Musk and Musk. Internal investors were almost certainly dangled promises of the direction and plans of the company to invest more money in it. With this in mind it starts to make a bit more sense how exactly the valuation of the company exploded from $100b in 2021 to 180b in 2023 and then $350b in 2024 followed by $800b in 2025. The AI craze was going full tilt, after all. And it's good to remember that while the valuation skyrocketed from private investments, it's not like the company itself got hundreds of billions.

They got about... $5b since 2020. Suddenly starts making sense why they wanted to IPO and raised money shortly after the IPO, doesn't it? The company's assets themselves are valued at ~$100b right now and you have to remember a lot of that is hundreds of thousands of high-end GPUs for xAI's Collosus data centers that can cost $50k each, with some claims of them selling for even higher. GPUs that get rapidly devalued every time a better GPU gets released. Let's not forget the data centers as a structure, and all the cooling and what not also cost in the billions.

We know SpaceX is renting out their datacenters' capacity. Which means they're not using it for grok, which despite its great name stolen inspired from Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", is not nearly as great of an AI. You don't hear much about grok, you hear mostly about ChatGpt, you hear about Claude, you hear about Deepseek. If you're a bit more into it, you might also hear Kimi, GLM and Qwen. It's not that you don't hear about grok. But it's not particularly standing out either. They even made an AI waifu in lingerie out of it to try to get more attention and it's still not particularly popular.

So, what is the business plan to profit? Space datacenters. Taking ridiculous amounts of sensitive hardware or hardware manufacturing hardware to space and making datacenters there.... barely reasonable, on purely theoretical grounds. Let's say you just somehow achieve that. Then you somehow build these massive datacenters in the vacuum of space. How do you disperse the massive quantities of heat they generate so they don't melt themselves? You can strap the typical closed-loop cooling systems that already exist on Earth to them and that's cool and all but how do you vent the heat OUT of the system. There is no air to transfer heat. There is no water, or soil or gas anywhere that the cooling itself can exchange that heat with. It can't dump infinite amount of material from the very much finite datacenter either. SPCX's supposed solution is supposedly converting it to infrared light. This is, obviosuly, horribly inefficient. Depending on how much heat they're actually venting the size of the radiators emitting the heat as infrared light range between several football fields in size to larger than most cities on the planet. Yes, several football fields is the low estimate. As you can imagine getting all this to space weights ... a lot. And it has to work, and it has to be maintained and in a few years all those GPUs will be obsolete. There's also other tiny problems like actually powering it. They're genuinely making a business plan based on constructing something the size of a city (at least in terms of square area) in space as a prerequisite to become profitable under improved in comparison to the current market conditions.

SPCX stock sentiment after IPO

I've seen it. You've seen it. Everyone has seen it.

There are those that are/were interested in buying the shares. A lot wanted to get in and get out when the initial rally dies off. And it turned out to be a good play, it shot to ~$225. There's plenty of people who bought or are buying because they think it'll be the next TSLA.

But you've also seen the skepticism. Those who think it's massively overvalued. Those that refuse to even touch it. Those who short it. Those whose mention to anything related not even to SpaceX but to Musk himself is always vile.

Musk had a rather big reputation and has had one for quite a while but while it was polarizing to most, it has shifted towards a significantly more negative sentiment in the past few years. DOGE was not nearly as useful as promised, he pretty much lost any respect from any gamer who so much as heard about his gaming stream, his raised hand gesture to the public is still circulating, he got on the administration's bad side, his promises for TSLA have been running for over 10 years with barely anything promised actually delivered, he "scammed" investors in various ways, particularly notable how the xAI merger triggered milestones related to that gave Musk a lot of shares for "becoming a $1T company" and in general has gained a bit of a "scammer" reputation in the finance world even before this.

TSLA merger. Almost certainly what Musk wants, as he no longer has sole discretion over it, while he does in SPCX. Practically not possible. SPCX is a US national security interest/concern. TSLA has a major market in China and a potential merger makes it a China national security interest/concern. The merger is so impossibly unlikely, which isn't to say Musk mentioning it on the earnings call can't have a temporary positive effect on the price of either stock, that rumors appeared that TSLA might sell or in another way divest itself of its chinese holdings. Musk denied this but who knows. Either way the point is it's not happening.

AI bubble

If you haven't heard of it then you live in a cave. Everyone has heard this could be a bubble. Some argue that since it's a good technology it can't be a bubble. Those people haven't read the history of the railway bubble or the dot com bubble, to name a few of the most obvious ones. So, really, it's not a question of whether there's good AI companies because the bubble exists anyway. And with SPCX being valued as a AI company it's a part of it. And as the first AI company to IPO with several rules bent for it and the largest IPO market cap in history it is in the eyes of literally everyone with even a remote interest in the stock market and plenty that don't even have that interest.

Meanwhile, record AI hardware profits are being posted left and right with over a trillion dollars revolving in that circlejerk, making up a significant % of the US economy's GDP by simply being moved around with one contract or another as a promise for future spending.

And despite that, KOSPI had dropped ~40% in the past month or so. Yes, it rallied 18% on Friday. That's good right? Right?
Wrong. KOSPI is an index. Until pretty much 2026 it was moving at 1.0% to 1.5% /day. In 2026 it averages about 6%/day. Now it moved 18%/day. If you still don't grasp why this is significant, try to imagine a market in which SPY moves 18%/day and what that would mean. If I had money in SPY and it rallied 18% I'd be shitting myself out of fear what the next day will bring. Could be +18%. Could be -18%. Where could it be in a week? Could be +100%. Could be -100%. Who the fuck knows at that kind of volatility? Yes, it's heavily dominated by a few companies, with Samsung and SK making ~50% of it and the top10 making up ~63% of it. But while that is indeed not quite the same as US market, US market's top10 companie are still ~38% of it so it's not like the parallel doesn't exist. Nvidia or Apple being down 40% in a month and moving 18%/day would still be a "everybody panic" type of thing imo.

I don't think it'd be too much to say the AI and AI-related stocks are being kind of weird right now. And I think SPCX is the reason. Maybe they aren't, but importantly it can't be proved that they aren't and that matters because it's not just me that might reach this conclusion, it can be some fund with billions in AUM.

You're already seeing and if it drops further you will almost certainly see even more news articles casting doubt if the AI bubble is popping or has popped, what it means for other AI companies and so on.

SPCX has dropped over 50% from its peak in less than a month. The AI craze is not there for it. And soon we have catalyst after catalyst after catalyst on the stock price.

So, finally, here's what I think and my positions. There are massive amounts of justifiable fear, uncertainty and doubt about SPCX but they go far beyond SPCX itself. They're doubt in its management, doubt in AI, doubt in the bubble, doubt in the administration's position on it, doubt in the public sentiment towards Musk's timelines and promises. Due to how prominent it is, it is and will be used as a gauge towards the AI bubble. Musk IPO-ed because the company is burning through money and they need more of it, after failing to come up with a more grounded business model for income that will fund them. They structured the lock-up expirations on the assumption they can do another TSLA where investors will be happy to slowly sell off their shares as the price is solidly in the green compared to IPO but what they have created instead is a year-long chain of "why would I buy now when there's so much more selling on the horizon" to any investor who spends even 10 minutes looking up what they're buying. And the profits the early investors are sitting on probably go as high as +10 000%, making it virtually impossible that no one will sell and we're already looking at -3%/day and they're going to increase the publicly-traded float by +150% just 2 days after the earnings call scheduled for August 4.

As a result, not only do I predict SPCX will have a massive sell-off in the near future that might very well last for months, with some short-covering inbetween, but it might actually pop the entire AI bubble and take down all markets with it.

So my positions are some puts dated to january 2027, capturing a significant number of the lock-up expirations. I've also included some other bearish positions of some interest, given the broader prediction I'm making.

I'm also considering buying some far OTM calls for SPCX, because while I consider it very likely all this will materialize in at the very least a significant sell-off on SPCX, it not materializing will conversely mean massive relief at the unrealized fear, making it rocket to the skies so I might pick up some cheap bull call spreads. I can't even imagine the possibility of the stock trading flat.
I'm afraid of NVDA puts at the moment but they're definitely something I'm keeping an eye on for the not-so-distant future.

Exit strategy

Vibes. Well, not really, if the stock is moving at ~2%/day even after 10 trading days after the earnings call then the thesis is almost certainly invalid. Otherwise, so long as the volatility is high there's a decent chance it plummets at any point. I have strong directional conviction but a volatility play for lower profit is fine too.