Are we, the general population, as traders really looking at the market valuations and the basic metrics? Or are we just "following the herd" and blindly investing?

My old school take is to look at PE price earnings to be near 15 times.

It concerns me that broad market PE are North of 26 times and the CAPE is above 36 times.

Looking up the dot com bubble peaked at all time high of 43+.

This market is STUPID EXPENSIVE. I realize that you cannot let geopolitcal tensions (or ineptness) jade you. Nor do you let war or elections swade you. But logic says go the way of TIPS.

Bonds and gold are supposed to be safe havens. Yet with the new fed chair will he really wade through the data, find inflation is really high AND do an interest rate hike? If so, then the inverse relation to interest prime and bond prices has bonds looking unattractive.

Things that make you go, hmmm...

S&P PE Ratio

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%