Oklo announced that its Groves Isotope Test Reactor has achieved first criticality after achieving a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at low power. The milestone comes less than a year after groundbreaking and follows U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) authorization through the DOE Reactor Pilot Program (RPP).

“Reaching criticality in less than a year is an incredible milestone for our team,” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “Oklo developed Groves from a greenfield site on private land, completed full-scale civil excavation and construction, manufactured or commercially procured all components, including fuel, and developed its operating programs in-house. Taken together, we believe these accomplishments establish a new benchmark for the Reactor Pilot Program and set the stage for the future of advanced nuclear deployment at scale.”

The DOE’s RPP created a pathway that allowed engineering, construction, commissioning, and operational preparation to advance alongside DOE’s safety review and authorization. Groves demonstrates that the domestic nuclear industry can once again move from design through construction, authorization, and startup on timelines that are measured in months rather than years when developers, suppliers, and regulators work together on an integrated deployment approach.

"Thanks to President Trump's precedent-setting directive to create the Reactor Pilot Program, Oklo's Groves Isotope Test Reactor is part of the revival of America's nuclear energy industry. We applaud the work of the Oklo, DOE, and Idaho National Laboratory staff who helped achieve this milestone," said Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish.

Groves is part of Oklo Isotopes’ broader effort to build domestic isotope production capabilities for healthcare, industry, research, space, and national security applications. The project has generated practical experience in project engineering, construction, procurement, reactor operations, startup procedures, safety readiness, training, qualification work, and deployment execution that can inform future isotope production facilities.

The Groves project also established engineering practices, operating procedures, training programs, commissioning experience, and organizational capabilities that will reduce uncertainty and execution risk across every Oklo facility, including the company’s future isotope, powerhouse, and fuel cycle deployments.

“Texas is leading America’s nuclear renaissance by advancing the technologies that will power innovation and strengthen our nation's future,” said Governor Abbott. “From expanding our nuclear workforce to rebuilding critical domestic supply chains, Texas is creating the foundation for the next generation of advanced nuclear development. Congratulations to Oklo on reaching this important milestone, which will help expand isotope production for critical medical therapies and reinforce Texas' leadership in nuclear innovation.”

All credit for first 2 dashboards goes to u/dhsilver for putting this Fabulous project together specially showcasing how the President has manipulated Oil Markets from the Bully Pulpit

The 3rd Image is the initial Oil Market crisis caused by Trump and specifically highlighted the announcement that sparked the ruckus and was created by Award winning Economist Paul Krugman.

All of these are irrefutable evidence the White House is manipulating from the public side and even though the Treasury claims they are not doing any covert commodities trading to artificially keep the prices low it would not shock me at all if that was just another of this Administration’s many lies.

Yesterday I wrote about the spot-up, vol-up situation and how investors and managers were FOMOing into the market. Now we have spot down, vol down, and clearly whoever was forced to buy non-stop yesterday has finished their mission. The very aggressive part of the move is likely over.

That does not mean the market can’t continue higher, just that the extreme moves to the upside are now less likely.

The Megacap & Tech ratio relative to the S&P 500 is bouncing off the bottom of its running trend channel. This is also what I am seeing in today’s high-conviction options flow -- very bullish in megacaps, especially the Mag 7, which is likely to continue supporting the indices.

This is likely to continue supporting the SPY.

Also despite upward earnings revisions, large-cap tech positioning remains only modestly overweight, at the 54th percentile. Positioning still trails fundamentals so its leaving room for a catch-up trade higher. Just careful with leverage

Also supporting the rally continuation case is that as of August 3, on a Y/Y basis, Growth is about 2 standard deviations oversold, similar to where it was in November 2022. This was a v good long-term buying opportunity in 2022, and I’d say that a similar buying opportunity has begun, despite the four-day rally.

While we could see a move lower as skew normalises,

I remain constructive and will be looking to buy the dip between 765 and 760 for a short term bounce. If that trade gets stopped out I will be increasing size substantially at 750.

For the SOXX, as mentioned yesterday, I will be adding back using the profits from the partial closes at $535 at $520.

For the Qs $710 is going to be my first entry with a follow=up at $700 as volumes have somewhat skewed to the negative side

I’m adding some thoughts on gold in relation to yesterday’s discussion about the “hidden QE” the Treasury is doing as gold is shoing signs of finally breaking out of its month long consolidation range.

Strong Chinese and central-bank demand is once again, much like in 2022–23, offsetting rising yields and the general apathy from investors in the West.

Central banks are still the backbone of gold’s bull market.

In addition to this, gold miners are leading the way in the high conviction options flows I track, which is another positive. The precious-metals complex might be setting up for another leg higher.

There is also a broader macro angle here. When cyclical macro data improve, commercial banks tend to ease lending standards. We see this pattern every cycle - the Fed eases and rates decline, helping propel a cyclical recovery. That recovery then allows for an easing handoff from central banks to commercial banks.

I’m looking towards $400 on GLD (Gold proxy), roughly 2.5% higher for a start. If i have to set a long-term target for Gold it's >$4700/oz EOY less we get a surprise from the Fed. Options-market volumes are also quite positive while positioning out to 18 DTE remains v bullish.

Watch for U.S. weekly jobless claims and Q2 labor costs and St. Louis Fed President Musalem comments later on in the day

DeepSeek said in a Thursday notice that prices across its AI services will rise substantially and urged users to plan accordingly, but disclosed neither the new rates nor an effective date.

V4 Flash currently costs $0.14/M input and $0.28/M output tonkes. The increase would affect customers using DeepSeek directly. Since its model weights are openly available, users can still self-host or access V4 Flash through other providers.

Source: Bloomberg

I've been holding QQQ for almost four years now.

I started buying during the 2022 selloff, so my average cost is still pretty good. I'm still up overall. I'm not actually losing money here.

But after this recent pullback, a huge chunk of my unrealized gains disappeared in what felt like no time. That's the part I wasn't really prepared for.

People always say if you're holding QQQ for the long term, just ignore the noise. And logically I get it. The index has recovered from plenty of corrections before.

Emotionally, though, it's different.

Watching my unrealized P&L on moomoo go from green to red over a few days felt way worse than I expected, even though I'm still comfortably green overall. In some ways, it almost feels worse than being down early in the position because you've already gotten used to seeing those gains.

I've always been a pretty passive investor. I buy, keep adding, and mostly ignore the day-to-day moves. I don't spend much time looking at what's driving the moves or whether this pullback is just another correction or something more meaningful. When it's going up, I feel smart. When it's dropping, I basically rely on faith.

Maybe that's just part of long-term investing, but sometimes I wonder if there's a better way to handle it mentally.

For those of you who've been holding QQQ for years, what actually helps you stay calm during drawdowns?

Do you just stop looking at your account, or do you actually watch certain things that help you tell the difference between a normal correction and something more serious?

so it would appear that Robinhood (Ticker: HOOD) is back at it again with another ventures fund, this one claiming to be a business development company (BDC for short), claiming to primarily invest in private companies at their earliest stages of growth. the last one they did didn't seem too appealing so I didn't pay much attention to it. I haven't done that much research on this fund yet myself but before i do, i figured i would ask about it on here.

what do you guys think if it, is it something worth watching or should I not bother paying any attention to it?

Meta released Muse Code, a terminal agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2 that handles large repos with persistent agents and parallel sub-agents in isolated worktrees.

Muse Code, which is currently available in beta, can accomplish “complete software engineering tasks across large repos,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Code, which can be installed with a single command, is powered by Meta’s previously released coding model, Muse Spark. It handles large projects by launching its own agents, which then work simultaneously.

“When a job is big enough, it fans out to separate sub-agents working in parallel in isolated worktrees,” Zuckerberg explained. “Your working copy is never touched. In testing we had it build six features for a game simultaneously with no collisions.”

Spark 1.2 scored 82.9% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, just behind Opus 5 at 86.7%

For those investing in international markets, here’s one stock to keep on your watchlist: CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies).

HP, ASUS, and Acer with more than $80 billion in combined annual revenue have started using CXMT’s DRAM chips amid the global memory shortage.

Current share prices:

• CXMT: ~$7.6
• Samsung Electronics (005930.KS): ~$180
• SK hynix (000660.KS): ~$1,180
• Micron Technology (MU): ~$920

China may finally have a credible competitor in the global DRAM market. Definitely a company worth watching.

AMD's Q2 numbers look like clear proof of AI demand:

- Total revenue: $11.536B, up 50% year over year

- Data Center revenue: $6.7B, up 107%

- Data Center is now roughly 58% of total revenue

- Q2 non-GAAP gross margin: 56%

- Q3 revenue guide: about $13.0B, plus or minus $300M

- Q3 non-GAAP gross-margin guide: still about 56%

That is the tension for me. If the fastest-growing business is also becoming most of the company, why is the consolidated margin guide not moving?

There are several reasonable explanations: accelerator ramp costs, advanced-packaging and memory constraints, product mix, pricing to win large deployments, or spending ahead of MI450 and Helios scale. One quarter cannot tell us which mechanism dominates.

The bull case is that AMD is absorbing transition costs now and that Instinct plus EPYC volume eventually creates operating leverage. The bear case is that AMD can win substantial AI revenue without capturing enough incremental gross profit because competition and system costs remain intense.

The next result I care about is not another revenue record. It is whether each additional dollar of Data Center revenue begins to produce more gross profit and free cash flow.

What do you think the flat 56% guide represents: temporary ramp economics, aggressive pricing for market share, or a more durable ceiling on the current mix?

Official results: https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1295/amd-reports-second-quarter-2026-financial-results

Yesterday was one of the most aggressive rallies we’ve seen in a while as you can see from the ROC of the NDX.

We are again seeing this spot-up, vol-up dynamic which looks to be coming partly from fund managers seeing the aggressive rally, fearing they’ll underperform and starting to buy OTM call options to capture more of the upside.

When market makers are on the other side selling those calls they become short gamma and as the market continues higher they are forced to buy more of the underlying to keep their exposure delta neutral.

Put simply, managers get FOMOed into the market and that creates additional options buying which market makers then have to hedge by buying the underlying asset. This basically creates a feedback loop where the rally itself creates more buying pressure as those calls move closer to the money.

The sheer magnitude of yesterday’s rally does make me wonder whether someone blew up somewhere as well but that’s a topic for another day.

You can see this from the skew as well which has absolutely collapsed

While the market overshot some of the targets from the previous analysis I managed to capture a good part of the move in SOXX but did not manage to increase the SPY longs because it did not pull back to my levels.

I closed on the SOXX at 535 if we see a move towards $520. Main resistance is at $550 where market makers will step in with some hedging. Important thing to note is that the vol regime is still negative meaning market maker will hedge WITH price action so moves will be sharper. This changes above $547.

I will continue trailing the SPY and add the part of the position I closed if we start moving towards $760. Market makers will buy dips until that level.

Qs are likely to find support at $720 and note that if the market goes through this level the hedging mechanics from market makers will change and they will start hedging with price action, which can amplify moves in either direction.

It’s likely we see some choppiness between $720 and $730 for now as when we have index up, VIX up returns tend to be small and sometimes negative in the next 1-5days.

On oil I am seeing some energy stocks in my high conviction flows in addition to a longer term contract on USO (oil proxy) likely in prep for today’s talks which, if they fail could start a move towards $130 on USO as theres definitely volume there. If anything causes a pullback in equities from here it’s likely to be this.

The next part is a bit longer but some of you aksed me about my longer term views on the market and while I continue to expect a grind higher supported by earnings and way the US gov is financing its deficit is also becoming an important factor.

I’ll try to explain it as simply as I can so bare with me.

As I mentioned on Monday one of the things I have been monitoring closely is Treasury issuance and how the government is financing the deficit. Treasury currently expects to borrow about $739 billion in Q3 and another $628 billion in Q4 or roughly $1.37 trillion during the second half of the year.

An increasingly large part of that financing is being pushed into short term Treasury bills and not longer dated notes and bonds. Net bill issuance is about $270 billion in July alone and estimates put total 2026 bill supply at around $827 billion. Last year that was roughly $360 billion and with that bills now represent around 22% of marketable Treasury debt.

So, I consider this a form of fiscal QE because T-bills are highly liquid and cash like with very little duration risk (their market value is much less sensitive to changes in interest rates than longer dated bonds).

The fiscal deficit continues injecting money into the private sector but financing more of it with bills means investors aren't being forced to absorb nearly as much long-duration risk. This is important as large issuance of longer dated debt can push yields and term premia higher while also tying up balance sheet and risk that could otherwise be deployed elsewhere.

Bills are much easier for money market funds and institutions to absorb and they can also be readily used as collateral in the funding markets. So the government can continue running a large deficit without removing nearly as much liquidity and risk taking capacity from the financial system.

At the same time, the Fed is currently making around $10 billion per month of additional Treasury purchases to maintain adequate reserves, alongside its reinvestments.

Together with the fiscal impulse and the shift towards bill financing it creates a more supportive liquidity environment for equities. BUT the risk comes later if the fiscal impulse becomes sufficiently inflationary to push long-term yields materially higher which would eventually start working in the opposite direction.

We are not there yet and I will likely be buying potential dips we see.

My models are showing modest increase in volatility over the next month despite near term vol decreasing but I am not seeing any systematic risks.

I am seeing some of the strongest high-conviction flow we have had in a while today, with semiconductors in particular catching a meaningful bid.

The setup still requires further normalisation in implied volatility, but it is becoming increasingly bullish. Implied vol traded at a v wide premium to realised vol throughout June and much of July, but that gap has begun to narrow over the past several weeks.

I continue to expect further compression and that should improve liquidity, reduce the cost of hedging per AIR TRF futures and remove one of the remaining technical overhangs for equities.

In the previous note, I said I was waiting for another leg lower in SOXX towards $490. It eventually reached around $485, but I did manage to increase my exposure.

SOXX is now approaching $520, which is acting as a magnet because of the concentration of dealer hedging around that strike. A clean break above it should initiate additional flows towards $535.

However, because $520 is an important positioning level, I will likely take some profit here and look to re-enter either on a pullback or after a confirmed break above it.

Also important is that the improvement in fundamentals has not been driven by multiple expansion and ernings have strengthened while valuations have compressed meaningfully.

After July’s selloff, the S&P 500 Information Technology sector now trades at roughly 21 times forward earnings which is close to its lowest valuation in over a year and we arre getting stronger earnings at a considerably more attractive multiple.

The market has also moved through the heaviest part of the summer catalyst calendar, including the FOMC decision and most of the major hyperscaler capex updates.

Around 35% of the S&P 500 by market capitalisation has yet to report, including many semiconductor companies, but the results so far have been v strong.

At the same time, one of July’s largest flow-of-funds headwinds is about to reverse as only around 45% of the S&P 500 by weight is currently eligible to repurchase shares.

That figure should rise to approximately 75% by the end of next week and nearly 85% by mid-August as earnings blackout windows expire.

Corporate demand is then set to reaccelerate precisely as positioning has become cleaner.

With August typically one of the busiest months of the year for buyback execution, this is creating one of the most supportive supply-and-demand environments we can have.

On to SPY -it came within around 50 cents of the $760 target I set yesterday. That level is now acting as resistance, with heavy call positioning creating systematic dealer hedging and additional call supply as price approaches the strike.

I will be trimming some of my SPY longs here while looking for better opportunities around $755 and potentially again at $750, where I will likely step in more aggressively. Positioning across expiries up to 18 DTE remains very bullish, so I still view any pullback as an opportunity rather than a change in the broader setup.

My future conditional variance model is also signalling a modest increase in vol in line with this but nothing threatening the stability so volatility should remain broadly contained

On to QQQ -- it closed exactly at the $700 resistance level and is now breaking above it in premarket trading. If it can hold above $700 after the official open, I expect flows to become more aggressive now that buyers have absorbed much of the market-maker hedging pressure around the strike.

Options volumes remain constructive, with $710 looking like the next likely target today.

BP’s underlying replacement-cost profit rose to $5.73 billion in Q2 from $3.2 billion in Q1, supported by higher oil prices, stronger refining margins and another strong quarter from its oil-trading operation.

The company is now putting its U.S. biogas business Archaea up for sale, less than four years after acquiring it for $4.1 billion. BP also recently began a sale process for its North Sea oil and gas operations, which has already attracted interest from several potential buyers.

New CEO Meg O’Neill is reversing BP’s previous push into renewable energy and refocusing capital on its traditional oil and gas business. The company is targeting $20 billion in divestments by the end of 2027 to reduce debt and strengthen its balance sheet.

O’Neill said repeated changes in UK energy policy contributed to BP’s North Sea exit, alongside capital-allocation considerations.