What a disappointing start to the week on a geopolitical aspect. Last week was the theatre of hope, every investor convinced the peace deal was around the corner, just two signatures from done. This Monday the ink has gone missing: the hostile tone is back, both camps accusing the other. Four months now of contradictory statements, ups and downs, people posing as experts who deliver a line and retract it minutes later. It is a genuinely hard period in which to separate truth from noise, but it has also handed real opportunity and real perspective to certain sectors. A deal will be signed eventually, only God knows when. Our end-of-June timeframe is still on the table.

The big news today has been in the pipeline for a while: Anthropic filed for an IPO this Monday. 2026 is shaping up to be the wildest IPO year in memory, with Anthropic, OpenAI and above all SpaceX all potentially hitting the market this year. This one matters for Anthropic, the proceeds could fund the compute they need to address the token-quota concerns users keep raising.

Even so, Wall Street managed moderate gains, carried by NVIDIA’s announcement of a new PC chip built to unlock more AI power on personal machines. The week’s main event lands Friday, with the jobs report.

Biggest Winner — FLNC +43.8%

Fluence Energy ripped +43.8% on the session, with Taylor Morrison Home (TMHC) following at +22.31%. Energy storage and homebuilding, two unrelated names, both catching a strong bid to open the week.

Biggest Loser — PSNY -17.1%

Polestar (PSNY) dropped 17.1%, with Redwire (RDW) close behind at -15.8%. The EV and space-infrastructure names remain the most violent two-way trades on the board.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Red) — We are running out of superlatives for Apple’s run. We remember it at $174 back in April of last year, when we called a strong buy. That was before we started posting here, but don’t worry, we’ll keep making those calls. Slight drop to open the week. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 312—306.3 (yc) | High: 310.9 | Low: 305.

EL (Red) — First week tracking EL here (we’ve followed it weekly for over a year). The end of the Puig talks gave a lift, and the new CEO’s plan to refocus on key brands and products makes sense, but now it has to be delivered, and bet on the right trends, especially on the marketing and communication side. Solid drop to begin the week. Highest volume at 21:30. Range 88.9—85.5 (yc) | High: 88.4 | Low: 84.7.

ENGI (+1%) — Engie took a solid drop last week with no particular catalyst behind it; we read the stock as being in a phase of distribution for now, and stay confident. It opened this week up a bit less than 1%. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 26.4—26.6 | High: 26.8 | Low: 26.4.

SONY (Green) — Sony extended its losing streak to two weeks, with the price now resting on the weekly envelope baseline at 21.5, the level that decides whether we get a support reaction. Great start to the week though, on an interesting push deeper into the premium TV segment. Range 21.5—22.5 (yc) | High: 22.6 | Low: 22.

DSY (Green) — Tough week for Dassault Systèmes, and let us say one thing: the AI-competition scare around software is overblown. DSY could integrate AI to make its own solutions better, and may be exploring a partnership with Mistral. Strong rebound to open the week. Range 19.78—19.72 | High: 20.2 | Low: 19.4.

RYA (Red) — Ryanair carried some gains last week, not as strong as the week before, but bulls stayed ahead on hope of a peaceful end to the US-Iran conflict. As we keep saying: while that narrative holds it’s good, the moment it breaks the bears return like they never left. With today’s rumours, no surprise to see it back in the red. Range 60.7—59.3 (yc) | High: 59.6 | Low: 58.2.

AF (-2%) — What a week for Air France: +14.4%, and we have the peace hope to thank. Now we’ll see what happens when we go back to stumbling on negative headlines. AF lost 2% to start the week as rumours spread of a possible Iranian exit from talks. For us that’s words more than substance, was either side ever truly in a negotiating mood? When peace comes, the announcement will be quick, even if temporary. Range 11.7—11.4 (yc) | High: 11.7 | Low: 11.2.

NFLX (Flat) — Netflix lost a bit less than 3% last week, left aside by investors after the whole Paramount/WBD saga. We remain 100% bullish: the catalogue, the investment, the live shows, no one beats NFLX in streaming, in our view. Platonic session today. Range 86—85.8 (yc) | High: 87.2 | Low: 85.3.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — Cardano dropped for a 3rd consecutive week. The worry is the absence of support once we hit the 0.24 level; next week is key to see whether bulls return. More decrease to start the week.

XLM (Green) — Thank you, Stellar. Up 76.2%, rewarding weeks of patience, but the real reason for our gratitude is movement, development, innovation. We asked for a catalyst; we got one. Some more relief this Monday.

BTC (-3%) — 3rd consecutive week on the drop for Bitcoin. After the rally from late March it’s no surprise, and we called it. The question now is where bulls return; 70K looks like the right psychological level. Down a bit less than 3% to start the week.

ETH (Flat) — Like BTC, ETH is down for a 3rd straight week. We’re near the 2K level now and think it should hold as support. No real movement today.

NIGHT (Green) — 2nd consecutive week in the green for Night. For now 0.03 USDT looks like the support level, and the price is climbing back inside the envelope line, which is the real test. Great start to the week; momentum is trying to brew.

UNI (Red) — More decrease for Uni, gaining from none of last week’s moves. The envelope has now broken and we’re below the 3 level. Can momentum build? We don’t think so. More losses.

CAKE (Red) — PancakeSwap was back in green last week, clawing back a bit more than 6%. Nothing more to add. Down a bit more than 2.4% today.

SOL (Red) — SOL lost a bit more than 3% last week, giving back its progress. Back around the 80 level, which should act as support, but we’re disappointed by the lack of initiative around Solana. Some red again today.

HBAR (Red) — Great week for Hedera, up more than 9%, though we note solid bears at 0.11 USDT. Down a bit more than 3.5% today.

Edition of The Awakened Investor. The peace-deal narrative whipsaws again as the hostile tone returns, end-of-June still our base case. Anthropic files for IPO, opening what may be the biggest IPO year on record alongside OpenAI and SpaceX. NVIDIA’s new PC chip carries the market to modest gains. All eyes on Friday’s jobs report. Subscribe for daily coverage.

The word we choose for today is bet.

Wall Street ended the last session of the week on the rise. In our world, where everything feels like a bet, there’s a market for it on Polymarket: who will sneeze first, who will grab the last cookie at the canteen, which colour will appear first on TV. So investors placed one more bet to close the week, and it’s that a peace deal will be struck between Iran and the USA. As time goes by the probability of a deal gets higher, but we hold to our calendar: end of June, beginning of July.

Now the weekend is ahead of us. Will we get yet another series of contradictory statements and back-and-forth developments that, by the end, leave us feeling like we haven’t moved an inch? We think so.

The stock of the day was DELL, which skyrocketed 30% after raising its full-year forecast. The whole tech sector followed suit, PC makers in particular. We are now on a 9th consecutive week of gains for the S&P. Breathtaking.

The crypto market stayed in the red for a 4th consecutive session.

Biggest Winner — DELL +32.76%

Dell skyrocketed +32.76% after raising its full-year forecast, dragging the whole tech sector up with it and PC makers especially. OKTA (software security) followed with +30.1%. The AI-demand read keeps widening from chips out to the hardware and security names sitting around them.

Biggest Loser — AMBA -21.41%

Ambarella (semiconductors) cratered -21.41% on the session, a reminder that the dispersion inside tech cuts both ways. GAP followed with -15.4%. Same sector as the winners, opposite outcome; the K-shape inside tech stays violent.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — Quite the platonic end to the week for Apple. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 312.5—312 (yc) | High: 315 | Low: 309.5.

EL (Green) — A bit of relief for EL today. Highest volume at red 21:30. Range 90.8—88.9 | High: 90.9 | Low: 88.8.

ENGI (Red) — 3rd consecutive session on the decrease for Engie today. We expect a rebound at the beginning of next week. Highest volume at 09:00, low volume. Range 26.5—26.4 | High: 26.6 | Low: 26.3.

SONY (-0.7%) — Sony ended its trading week down 0.7%; the ENV BL is set for a support test at 21.5. Range 21.6—21.5 | High: 21.7 | Low: 21.5.

DSY (Green) — Stop-gap session for Dassault Systèmes, which got hit hard after the Airbus/Mistral deal. We still believe Dassault’s software has its use cases. Range 18.7—18.8 | High: 18.9 | Low: 18.4.

RYA (-1%) — Ryanair ended a very solid week down a little less than 1%. Range 60.9—60.7 | High: 61.4 | Low: 60.1.

AF (+2%) — Air France ended a very good week up 2%. If we get a deal, the 12 PL can break. In the opposite scenario, we give back a solid amount of what’s been gained so far. Range 11.7—11.73 | High: 11.89 | Low: 11.6.

NFLX (Flat) — No real movement for Netflix today. Range 86.2—86 | High: 86.6 | Low: 85.6.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — More decrease for Cardano. The support is yet to be seen, but we still believe it will be triggered.

XLM (Green) — 3rd consecutive session with a fantastic rise for Stellar. We had been calling for a catalyst, some development; Stellar delivered, and has been rewarded — along with us.

BTC (Red hammer) — Bitcoin drew a little red hammer today. Bulls should be back over the weekend.

ETH (Green hammer) — ETH drew a little green hammer today. We note the presence of bears at 2046 USDT.

NIGHT (Red) — A bit of a breaky session for Night today.

UNI (Red) — 6th consecutive session on the drop for UNI. Disappointing.

CAKE (Green hammer) — PancakeSwap drew a little green hammer today.

SOL (Red hammer) — Sol drew a little red hammer today, a sort of doji.

HBAR (Green) — 2nd consecutive session with a very solid increase today.

Edition of The Awakened Investor. Week closes on a bet: a US-Iran deal, which we still calendar for end of June into July. DELL +32% on a raised forecast drags tech higher, and the S&P notches a 9th straight week of gains. Crypto red for a 4th session, though Stellar keeps delivering. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is revisions.

Wall Street ended today’s session with mixed feelings. The macroeconomic indicators of the day told the same tale as the last few months: ramping inflation, lower growth, and the no-hiring-no-firing economy. The PCE for April came in at 1.8%, confirming the increase registered in March. GDP growth came in at 1.6% for Q1, revised down from the 2% of the first estimation. And we saw a little tick up in unemployment registrations to close it out.

What a weird economy and market we are in over in the US. On one hand, we see the cracks forming and inflation creeping toward 4%. On the other, 1.6% growth, which even below the first estimate is still solid, particularly next to the stagnation in Europe. Yes, some would argue this growth is mainly AI investment, and they wouldn’t be wrong. But those are still investments, and investments create a growth cycle.

The crypto market suffered more losses today.

Biggest Winner — N/A

Biggest Loser — N/A

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Green) — A bit more upside for Apple today. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 310.6—312.5 | High: 312.8 | Low: 309.5.

EL (Flat) — Barely any movement for EL today. A transition session, if we can call it that. Highest volume at 17:30. Range 91.2—90.8 | High: 92.3 | Low: 89.6.

ENGI (Red) — Engie stayed on the drop today. Highest volume at 16:00. Range 26.8—26.5 | High: 27 | Low: 26.4.

SONY (Red) — Sony stayed on the drop today. Now we wait to see the interaction with the ENV BL at 21.5. Range 21.8—21.7 (yc) | High: 21.9 | Low: 21.5.

DSY (Red) — Very complex session for Dassault Systèmes after the news of Airbus signing a deal with Mistral. Range 19.6—18.6 | High: 19.9 | Low: 18.3.

RYA (Green) — Very little upside for Ryanair today. Range 61.1—61.2 (yc) | High: 61.3 | Low: 59.5.

AF (Green) — 4th consecutive session on the rise for Air France. The increase is getting smaller; a bit of exhaustion is normal. Range 11.3—11.5 | High: 11.6 | Low: 11.1.

NFLX (-1%) — Netflix lost a little more than 1% today. Range 86.9—86.3 | High: 87 | Low: 85.5.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — 3rd consecutive session on the drop for Cardano.

XLM (Green) — Very good session for Stellar, carrying on yesterday’s momentum from the tokenization announcement.

BTC (-1%) — Bitcoin lost a little more than 1% today.

ETH (Red hammer) — ETH drew a little red hammer today.

NIGHT (Green hammer) — Small green hammer for Night today.

UNI (Red) — More decrease for Uni, with zero support on the horizon.

CAKE (Red) — 3rd consecutive session on the drop for PancakeSwap today.

SOL (Red hammer) — Sol drew a little red hammer today.

HBAR (Green) — Very good session for Hedera today.

Edition of The Awakened Investor. April PCE at 1.8% and Q1 GDP revised down to 1.6% confirm the thesis: inflation sticky, growth softening, the no-hire-no-fire economy grinding on. AI investment still carrying the growth cycle. Crypto back on the drop. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

A reader-requested piece | The Awakened Investor | May 2026

A few months ago, the words rare earth did not ring much of a bell to most readers. Our planet has scarcity. Why does this particular kind of scarcity now sit at the centre of the biggest power negotiation in the world?

Let us walk through it.

The starting point: Trump’s tariff war

The story begins on Liberation Day, April 2, 2025, when the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The headline figure: a peak rate of 145 percent on Chinese imports, with reciprocal duties affecting nearly every US trading partner.

Note that on February 20, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. The IEEPA tariffs terminated on February 24, 2026. The administration has since shifted to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and to industry-specific Section 232 measures (steel, aluminium, autos), which remain in place.

But before the Supreme Court ruling, between April 2025 and February 2026, the trade war ran its course. And China’s response is what produced the most consequential industrial-policy moment of the decade.

China’s response: not tariffs, licences

Rather than respond symmetrically, China targeted one specific industry: rare earths.

The numbers matter. China mines roughly 70 percent of the world’s rare earth elements. More importantly, China processes roughly 90 percent of global rare earth output. The mining share matters. The processing share is the lever.

In April 2025, China introduced export controls on seven rare earth elements: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium. On October 9, 2025, five more were added: holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium. Twelve of the seventeen rare earth elements on the periodic table are now under Chinese export licensing.

The mechanism Beijing chose is the strategic detail. Tariffs are blunt and reversible. Licences are bureaucratic and persistent. A licensing regime, embedded in national-security frameworks, creates institutional dependencies that outlast diplomatic cycles. China did not impose a counter-tariff. China transformed a trade dispute instrument into a permanent regulatory feature of global commerce.

The October 2025 escalation went further. Beijing extended the licensing regime to refining technologies, equipment, and any products with components that contain more than 0.1 percent rare earths from China. That is not a tariff. That is a structural rewrite of the supply chain.

Why rare earths are the central lever

Rare earths sit inside almost every piece of advanced hardware shipped in the modern economy.

Lithium, nickel, and cobalt are in the batteries powering electric vehicles, smartphones, and laptops. Neodymium and dysprosium are in the permanent magnets that make EV motors, wind turbines, and precision-guided weapons function. Yttrium is in the catalysts, ceramics, electronics, lasers, metallurgy, and phosphors used across the semiconductor industry. The United States is 100 percent import-reliant on yttrium, with 93 percent of its supply coming from China.

For AI infrastructure, the dependency runs deep. The data centres powering frontier AI need cooling systems, power conditioning, and high-density storage. All three require rare earth inputs at scale. For EVs, the dependency is even sharper. US automakers have already curbed production owing to rare earth shortages.

This is what makes the rare earth lever uniquely effective. It is upstream of almost every industrial decision the US has identified as strategically critical for the next decade.

The two diplomatic resets

Two important reset moments deserve to be flagged.

After the most intense exchange in October 2025 (China escalating, Trump threatening an additional 100 percent tariff, the S&P 500 erasing $2 trillion of value in two days), both sides pulled back. Markets had been the indirect target as much as the manufacturers. A short truce held.

The second reset came around the Trump-Xi APEC meeting at the end of October 2025. The headline takeaway of that meeting, in our view, was the rare earth agreement. The fact that this was the takeaway, more than any of the other negotiating axes, showcased exactly how central these elements have become to the bilateral relationship.

Now, sitting in May 2026, where do we stand. China has paused some of the October escalation. The export licensing regime introduced on April 4, 2025 remains fully in effect. The structural dependency is unchanged.

Will the interdependency last?

Not for long, in our view.

Both countries are racing to diversify.

China is opening its markets to other partners and securing new export channels for its rare earth output. The licensing regime serves a dual purpose: it pressures the United States while quietly building Chinese commercial relationships with the rest of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The United States is exploring three structural alternatives. The first is domestic capacity. MP Materials has reopened US rare earth mining at Mountain Pass and is building a magnet manufacturing plant in Texas. Lynas Rare Earths, Australian, is building processing capacity in Texas with US Department of Defense funding. The second is Australia, which holds the largest non-Chinese reserves and is a treaty ally. The third is Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo (cobalt) and Zambia (copper), and Ukraine, which has significant lithium and rare earth deposits that have entered the geopolitical conversation since 2024.

The honest read on the timeline is that the US can rebuild rare earth refining capacity in five to seven years. That is fast for a national industrial-policy build, slow for a market that needs the supply now. The next three to four years will be characterised by a careful diplomatic dance where neither side wants the other to weaponize its position fully, while both sides race to build redundancy.

Why this matters for the investor

Rare earths will define the industrial-policy backdrop of the next decade. There is no AI rally, no EV rally, no defence reindustrialization that is independent of this question. Capital that understands the supply-chain mechanics will be positioned ahead of capital that reads only the geopolitical headlines.

There are multiple exposure paths.

The first is the mining layer. The companies that hold rare earth deposits outside China. MP Materials in the US. Lynas in Australia. Iluka Resources in Australia. Energy Fuels in the US.

The second is the processing layer. This is, in our view, the segment with the greatest structural mispricing right now, because processing capacity is the actual bottleneck. China has 90 percent. Anyone building the alternative will receive policy support, government contracts, and customer commitments well above normal market dynamics.

The third is the end-buyer layer. The magnet manufacturers, the semiconductor names, the EV makers with vertically integrated supply chains. These are the names that benefit indirectly from supply security, by retaining margin when their competitors get squeezed.

If readers are interested in a specific stock list on these three layers with our current positioning, send us a note and we will share it.

Where we land

Rare earths are not a passing topic. They are the upstream variable of the modern economy, and the country that controls them controls more than the trade balance. The licensing regime China built in 2025 will outlast the IEEPA tariff debate, will outlast the current administration, and will likely outlast the next one too. It is the most strategically significant industrial-policy move of the past decade, and it has been executed quietly, without the headline volatility that the tariff war attracted.

For the investor, the takeaway is simple: get exposure to the diversification, not to the dependency. The market that builds the alternative to China’s processing capacity will be one of the largest secular industrial trades of the next ten years.

We will keep following this on the daily editions, and any reader-requested deep-dives are welcome.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is announcement.

Wall Street ended the mid-week session on the increase. During the whole day it felt like investors were waiting for an announcement coming from the Middle East. We had Trump doing a press point after the US denied the information coming from Iran that an MOU had been agreed on ending the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Later on, Trump said he was not satisfied with the Iranian proposal.

This sequence encapsulates what has been going on for four months now. Both camps giving contradictory information, leaving us in the fog. It is the defining texture of this conflict: not escalation, not resolution, but a sustained ambiguity that neither side seems in a hurry to clear.

In other news, the $1T market cap club has a new member: SK Hynix, another winner of the semiconductor craze of 2026 so far. The DRAM and memory names are having the kind of year that the AI infrastructure trade has been promising for two years, and the memory shortage is the engine.

The crypto market went for more drops today.

Biggest Winner — DY +25.8%

DY (contract services) posted a strong +25.8% session, with LUNR (space infrastructure) following at +15.7%. The dispersion pattern holds: capital rewarding specific operational names across uncorrelated sectors, with space infrastructure joining the picks-and-shovels rotation that has defined the month.

Biggest Loser — ZS -31.5%

ZS (Zscaler, cybersecurity software) cratered 31.5% in the session, with WOLF (Wolfspeed, semiconductors) following at -13.9%. A brutal reminder that the dispersion cuts both ways. Even inside the favored AI-adjacent tech complex, names that miss on guidance or growth expectations are being repriced violently. ZS losing nearly a third of its value in one session is the kind of move that defines the current market’s intolerance for any crack in the growth story.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (+1%) — Apple came back on the increase this Wednesday, up by a bit less than 1%. The latest figures confirm Apple’s domination of smartphone sales. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 308.3—310.8 | High: 313.2 | Low: 308.3.

EL (+5.31%) — For our second day of daily tracking, Estée Lauder was up 5.31%. A strong early confirmation of the move to bring EL into daily coverage. The stock is finding momentum, and our $95 PT for the year looks well-placed at this level. Highest volume at 16:30. Range 88.3—91.2 | High: 92.2 | Low: 88.3.

ENGI (Red) — Engie was back on the drop today, with the envelope baseline acting as resistance at 27.3. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 27.3—26.8 | High: 27.3 | Low: 26.6.

SONY (-1%) — Sony lost a bit more than 1% today. Range 22—21.8 (yc) | High: 22 | Low: 21.8.

DSY (-1%) — Dassault Systèmes came back to the drop today. Range 20.5—20.3 | High: 20.6 | Low: 20.3.

RYA (Green) — More increase for Ryanair today. Hope is still on. Range 60.2—61.1 | High: 62.1 | Low: 61.

AF (Green) — Air France is fully enjoying the positive momentum, or we should say the hope momentum. Range 11—11.4 | High: 11.64 | Low: 11.1.

NFLX (Flat) — No real movement for Netflix today. Range 87.6—87.3 (yc) | High: 88.5 | Low: 86.6.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — More decrease for ADA today. Still pushing to find support.

XLM (Green) — Fantastic day for Stellar on the back of the DTCC announcement on tokenisation. Finally some movement.

BTC (Red) — Second consecutive session on the drop for BTC.

ETH (Red) — Akin to BTC, ETH remained on the drop today.

NIGHT (+5%) — Great day for Night, up by a bit more than 5%.

UNI (Red) — Fourth consecutive session on the drop for UNI.

CAKE (Red) — More drops for PancakeSwap.

SOL (Red) — SOL dropped further today. We could go back to test the $80 price line for support.

HBAR (Red) — Fourth consecutive session on the drop for Hedera.

Edition 31 of The Awakened Investor. The information fog over the Middle East continues, with both camps giving contradictory signals on the Strait of Hormuz. SK Hynix joins the $1T club on the memory shortage. Estée Lauder, our new daily-tracked pick, delivered +5.31% on day two. Stellar finally breaks out on the DTCC tokenisation news. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

We are back. After a three-day break (and to reassure you, dear readers, we were still working over the weekend, as the Substack showcased) due to Memorial Day, the stock market opened the week. We believe it is important to start the week by giving a quick roundup of the developments over the weekend.

We had the biggest breakthrough yet on the peace talks. Both camps said that progress had been made, and the most important signal for us was the Iranian side confirming there is progress. Throughout this entire sequence, we have never seen any positive talk from the Iranian camp on the conflict, so this is definitely something to note.

However, we had a here we go again moment after the USA struck Iranian missile bases on Monday night. The US military said those were defensive measures, while the Iranians accused the US of violating the ceasefire. It does put question marks back on the peace talks, but we still believe a deal has been made. As we said in the previous analysis, Trump cannot afford to remain in this war for too long. There is the World Cup, Independence Day, and more importantly the midterms around the corner.

Now that the earnings season is pretty much done, geopolitics will be back on the forefront, even if it never really left investors’ minds. The AI trade remains the key for investors, but the bond market tensions will be, for us, the main point to watch in the weeks to come.

The main news for us today was MicroTech reaching the $1T market cap, carried by the DRAM shortage and the scoring of new contracts by the firm from hyperscalers. In the semiconductor industry, we also learned that Qualcomm secured an agreement with TikTok for millions of chips, a good move to diversify revenue.

Lastly, we wanted to get a word in on the new Ferrari EV. What a backlash. The new design did not make many fans, and we have to say that it is one of the worst designs we have seen in years coming from Ferrari. A real shocker. It is also quite funny to see Jony Ive arguing now that cars need more buttons, when he was the one responsible, alongside Steve Jobs, for the evolution of phones to an all-touchscreen model that killed the BlackBerry. How times change.

The crypto market was in red to start the week.

Biggest Winner — BRAI +74.2%

BRAI (agriculture analytics services) posted a remarkable +74.2% session, with TE (electrical equipment) following at +29.3%. The risk-on dispersion is back at full strength after the holiday weekend, with capital rotating into specific operational picks-and-shovels names across uncorrelated sectors, the same pattern that has defined the entire month.

Biggest Loser — OCTVV -18.1%

OCTVV (software) led the losers list at -18.1%, with EMAT following at -10.8%. The flip side of the dispersion: capital being pulled away from generalist software names with no clear AI hook, in favor of the BRAI / TE category of specific operational plays.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — Apple began the four-day trading week without much movement. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 309.5—308.3 | High: 311.8 | Low: 307.6.

EL (-2%) — Estée Lauder is the stock that replaces Klarna in our daily tracking. We have been following EL on a weekly basis for some time now, and the move to daily tracking comes at the right moment. We learned at the end of last week that the merger talks with Puig were called off. We believe the new CEO has impeded a great plan. Our PT for the year is $95. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 88.3—86.6 (yc) | High: 88.8 | Low: 86.

ENGIE (Flat) — Not a strong movement for Engie today. Highest volume at 14:00. Range 27.3—27.4 | High: 27.58 | Low: 27.2.

SONY (Flat) — Sony stayed at bay today. Range 22.1—22.2 (yc) | High: 22.4 | Low: 22.

DSY (-1%) — Dassault Systèmes came back to the drop today. Range 20.5—20.3 | High: 20.6 | Low: 20.3.

RYA (Green) — Ryanair remained on the increase today. Hope is still on regarding the Iran-US war. Range 59.6—60.2 | High: 61.8 | Low: 60.1.

AF (Green) — More increase for Air France. We are in the scenario expected. Positivity around the war ends, less pressure on crude oil, equals increase. Range 11—11.1 | High: 11.2 | Low: 10.9.

NFLX (-1%) — Netflix lost roughly 1% today. Range 88—87.6 | High: 88.7 | Low: 87.2.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Slight drop) — The $0.24 price line is still being tested for support. Little break today but we still think the $0.24 PL will hold.

XLM (Red) — Back on the drop for Stellar today.

BTC (-2%) — Bitcoin lost a bit less than 2% today.

ETH (-2%) — ETH was down by a bit less than 2% this Tuesday.

NIGHT (+1%) — Night bounced back by a bit more than 1% today.

UNI (Red) — Third consecutive session on the drop for UNI.

CAKE (-2%) — PancakeSwap lost a bit more than 2%.

SOL (-1.5%) — SOL lost an extra 1.5% this Tuesday.

HBAR (-1.8%) — Hedera was down by a bit less than 1.8% today.

Edition 30 of The Awakened Investor. Estée Lauder takes Klarna’s daily tracking slot, with our $95 PT for the year, after the Puig merger talks collapsed. MicroTech hits $1T on the DRAM shortage. Peace talks progress, then a missile strike puts question marks back on the ceasefire. The Ferrari EV is the design disappointment of the year so far. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

This is the point.

The Ordinary, launched in 2016 as the flagship brand of Toronto-based Deciem, has done in ten years what very few skincare brands accomplish in fifty: it built a globally recognised brand identity using almost none of the conventional tools of beauty marketing. No celebrity ambassadors. No fragrance launches. No designer packaging. No advertising spend at industry scale. Just clinical white bottles, ingredient names printed where the brand name usually sits, prices an order of magnitude below the prestige tier, and a parent company called Deciem — The Abnormal Beauty Company.

The numbers are not small. The Ordinary is now ranked top two in prestige skincare in Canada and the United States, top four in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It ships over 100 million units annually across 59 countries. Estée Lauder Companies acquired Deciem in May 2024 for approximately $1.7 billion across three tranches. The Ordinary alone generates between $500 million and $1 billion in annual revenue.

These results, in a category where almost every other brand competes on visual amplification and aspirational marketing, deserve a structural explanation. Here is mine.

What This Audit Is

Over the past months I have built a diagnostic framework I call the Brand Operating System Audit, or BOSA. It treats every premium brand as a system of four operating mechanisms — Production, Relation, Expression, Narration — each governed independently, with the structural tensions that shape the brand’s trajectory sitting at the interfaces between them.

Production covers what the brand makes and how. Relation covers how the brand engages its customers and stakeholders. Expression covers what the brand looks, sounds, and feels like across every surface. Narration covers the story the brand tells about itself and the story the customer tells about the brand.

Coherent brands govern all four mechanisms toward a single brand position. Drifting brands let one mechanism, usually Production or Relation, dominate while the others fall out of alignment. The audit identifies, brand by brand, which mechanisms are protected, which are exposed, and where the next operational decision should fall.

The Ordinary is, in my reading, one of the cleanest cases the framework can be applied to. Each mechanism is governed deliberately. Each one reinforces the others. The interfaces between them, where most brands lose discipline, are precisely where The Ordinary has built its moat. Here is how.

Mechanism 1 — Production: The Inversion of the Beauty Cost Structure

The Ordinary built its production system on a single observation: the conventional beauty industry charges the consumer for everything except the active ingredient itself. Packaging, marketing, retailer margins, founder mystique, celebrity endorsement, category mystification. These together account for the overwhelming share of a $200 serum’s price. The active ingredient, in many cases, is the cheapest input in the formula.

The Ordinary inverted this. Single-active formulations. Concentration percentages printed on the label. Cardboard outer packaging. Standard pharmaceutical-grade dropper bottles. A 30ml bottle of Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 retails at around $9. A comparable formulation from a prestige house often sits between $80 and $300.

Two operational choices made this pricing sustainable.

The first is vertical integration. Deciem owns its own laboratory, its own manufacturing, its own e-commerce infrastructure, and a growing fleet of standalone retail stores (over 35 globally). It avoided almost the entire dependency chain that inflates beauty cost structures: external formulators, third-party manufacturers, brand consultancies, agency marketing pipelines.

The second is product clarity. By selling each active ingredient as a separate, modular product, The Ordinary turned the catalogue itself into a service. The customer assembles a routine; the brand sells the inputs. This both lowered the price of each individual product and increased the total basket size, as routines rarely contain fewer than three or four pieces.

The Production mechanism here is a textbook case of what is removed becoming the product. Stripping out the conventional cost layers was not an aesthetic choice. It was the entire business model.

Mechanism 2 — Relation: Minimal Surface, Maximal Trust

The Ordinary’s Relation mechanism is the opposite of what the beauty industry teaches. There is almost no relational performance in the traditional sense: no celebrity ambassadors, no glossy campaign cycles, no fragrance launches, no aspirational lifestyle content. The brand spends remarkably little on conventional marketing relative to its scale.

What it built instead is a Relation governed by transparency and customer education. Each product page on the website is, in effect, a short scientific brief: what the ingredient does, what skin concern it addresses, what concentration is appropriate, what to layer it with, what to avoid combining. The role of “trusted dermatologist” is, in this system, performed by the website itself.

The Relation extends in two further directions. The brand listens at scale. New product launches are heavily informed by community demand signals. The popularity of hyaluronic acid as a category, the rise of niacinamide as a sebum regulator, the demand for accessible retinoids — The Ordinary surfaced and bottled each of these movements before most competitors recognised them. The relationship is asymmetric: the customer drives the product roadmap.

Second, the brand benefits from the relational work done by third parties. Reddit skincare communities, the SkincareAddiction subreddit, beauty TikTok, Caroline Hirons, the wave of skinfluencers from 2019 onward — all of these built the cultural literacy that made The Ordinary’s modular system legible to the mainstream consumer. The brand did not have to manufacture trust. It allowed the community to manufacture it, and was disciplined enough not to interfere.

The Relation, in BOSA terms, is governed by intentional restraint. The brand chose which relational layers to invest in (transparency, education, listening) and which to deliberately under-build (conventional marketing, celebrity, aspirational projection). That discipline is the entire mechanism.

Mechanism 3 — Expression: Simplicity as Operating Asset

If the Production is the inversion of the cost structure, the Expression is the inversion of the visual code. Two colours: white and a soft grey-beige. One font, used consistently across the entire range. An ingredient name and a concentration percentage on the label. Cardboard outer boxes. Pharmaceutical-grade glass bottles. Nothing else.

In a category where every competitor competes on visual amplification — gold foil, embossed lettering, designer collaborations, glass weight, fragrance theatre, packaging architecture — The Ordinary competes by refusing to compete on visual terms at all. The Expression is so disciplined that the brand has become instantly recognisable from a distance of three metres, in any retail environment, against any backdrop.

The deeper operational point: the Expression also functions as a moat against imitation. Competitors who have tried to copy The Ordinary’s pricing have rarely been able to copy its visual restraint, because their existing portfolios require visual differentiation across SKUs. A brand that already sells fifty different products in fifty different packages cannot suddenly adopt a uniform two-colour code without surrendering its existing portfolio identity. The Ordinary, born without that legacy constraint, made the constraint itself into a brand asset.

The Expression also reads as a cultural signal. In a moment of broad consumer fatigue toward visual noise, toward aspirational excess, toward the conspicuous performance of luxury, a brand whose entire visual system says we are not performing registers as honest. The brand sits at the intersection of quiet luxury in fashion, slow living in lifestyle, and ingredient transparency in food, without ever having to claim it does.

Mechanism 4 — Narration: The Name Carries Everything

The strongest mechanism in The Ordinary’s operating system is its Narration. The most remarkable feature is how little of it has to be performed. The name does almost all the work.

The Ordinary. An ordinary product, for ordinary use, at an ordinary price. While the rest of the beauty industry sells the exceptional, the rare, the bespoke, the proprietary, the patented, the limited-edition — The Ordinary tells the customer they are buying exactly what the name says they are buying.

The Narration runs deeper than that. The parent company is called Deciem — The Abnormal Beauty Company. The taglines, when they appear, describe the brand as “clinical formulations with integrity.” The founder, Brandon Truaxe, built the original positioning around what he saw as the moral failure of conventional beauty: a category that systematically over-promised and over-priced. The Ordinary, in his framing, was a corrective act, not a commercial venture.

That founding narrative carries an unusual weight, in part because of how the story ended. Truaxe was removed from the company by court order in late 2018 after a public mental health crisis. He died in January 2019 at the age of 40. Nicola Kilner, his co-founder, took over as CEO and has run the company through the Estée Lauder integration. The Truaxe story has become part of the brand’s emotional architecture and lends the brand a kind of unmanufactured cultural weight that competitors with cleaner founder narratives cannot replicate.

The Narration is therefore not built around aspirational projection. It is built around honesty, including honesty about the brand’s own complicated history. The consumer is not asked to admire the brand. The consumer is asked to trust it.

Where the Tensions Sit

A coherent operating system is not the absence of tension. It is the deliberate placement of tension at productive interfaces. Three interfaces in The Ordinary’s system reinforce each other:

Production and Relation mutually reinforce. Vertical integration and product clarity reduce the need for relational performance. The absence of relational performance lowers the cost structure further.

Expression and Narration say the same thing twice. Visual restraint and name simplicity. The brand never speaks against itself.

Relation and Narration are inseparable. The transparency in the customer education is the brand story.

There is one interface that bears watching. Production and Expression under Estée Lauder ownership. The vertical integration that made the pricing model work is now part of a $16-billion conglomerate with its own portfolio dynamics. The expansion into bodycare in 2024 and into emerging markets in India, the Middle East, and South Africa raises the question of whether the modular discipline that worked at $750 million in revenue can hold at $1.5 billion or $2 billion in revenue. Most heritage beauty brands have lost their early operating coherence at exactly this scaling inflection. The Ordinary’s defence will be the same defence Brunello Cucinelli has executed inside luxury fashion: the discipline that built the brand has to be protected against the conglomerate’s structural temptation to dilute.

The next two years will tell us whether the system holds.

What The Ordinary Teaches Other Brands

For brand leaders reading this audit, the lesson is not that every brand should look like The Ordinary. Most brands cannot, because most brands have legacy portfolios that prevent the uniform discipline that makes the system work. The lesson is structural.

A coherent brand operating system is worth more, at scale, than any single brilliant campaign. The Ordinary built a business of $750 million in revenue and a $1.7-billion exit without ever running a campaign that would be remembered. What it built instead was an operating posture so tightly governed that the product, the price, the visual code, and the name all said the same thing to the customer.

In a moment when most beauty and consumer brands are operating with mechanisms in mutual contradiction — premium pricing alongside mass-market design, aspirational marketing alongside broad accessibility, inconsistent narration — The Ordinary’s coherence is the moat.

It is also the answer to the question every founder in the consumer category should be asking themselves:

If my brand had to remove one cost layer to survive, which would I keep, and which would I find the discipline to live without?

That is the BOSA question, and The Ordinary is the cleanest live answer the consumer category currently offers.

This is the first applied case study from the BOSA framework. The full 8-page PDF audit, with the four-mechanism diagram and a deeper read on the Estée Lauder integration risk, is available to subscribers on demand. Reply to this email if you want me to send it across, and let me know if there is a brand you would like me to apply BOSA to next.

— Ali

Subscribe now

Share The Awakened Investor

The word we choose for today is unbreakable.

Wall Street ended the last session of the week on the increase. Believe it or not, we have now registered an eighth consecutive week on the rise for the stock market. Akin to a captain battling a Maelstrom, a tempest and an unstoppable rain, the market kept its way. That is the poetical version.

In reality, for us, it is closer to an overconfident man’s journey. With tension on crude, inflation racking up, bond market tensions at 2008 levels, and a ME conflict still ongoing, this performance is flabbergasting. Yes, the AI trade is the driver. Yes, some of the big players somewhat deliver. But do we have a concrete ROI at the minute? No.

Akin to yesterday, hope was still the main word today, with investors building up their trust on an end to the conflict, with the Pakistani Foreign Minister expected in Tehran. Warsh was sworn into office today as the new Fed Chair; we will not repeat what we said regarding his mandate, but the road ahead will be difficult.

The crypto market came back to red today.

Biggest Winner / Biggest Loser

N/A for both today. The risk-on tape was broad-based again, with no single dominant winner or loser. The dispersion has flattened into the eighth-week move higher, which itself is a signal: when there is no concentration, capital is rotating evenly because there is no clear differentiation thesis driving the tape.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Green) — More green for Apple this Friday. The week has been very solid. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 304.9—309.3 (yc) | High: 311.4 | Low: 305.

KLRN (Green) — Klarna ended the week strongly. Decision taken for the replacement stock. It will be announced Monday. A hint: it made the headlines today. Highest volume at 21:30. Range 16—16.4 (yc) | High: 16.1 | Low: 15.9.

ENGI (Flat) — Again no real movement for Engie today. Highest volume at 16:00. Range 27.2—27.1 | High: 27.2 | Low: 26.9.

SONY (-0.7%) — Sony was down by a bit more than 0.7% today. No enthusiasm on the news of Sony possibly looking to acquire IMAX. Range 22.1—22.4 | High: 22.5 | Low: 22.

DSY (Green shooting star) — Dassault Systèmes drew a green shooting star this Friday. Range 20.1—20.3 | High: 20.6 | Low: 20.1.

RYA (Green) — Ryanair went for more increase today, for the same reasons as yesterday. Range 57.4—59.6 (yc) | High: 59.7 | Low: 58.2.

AF (Green) — Air France was back on the march forward today. Range 10.09—10.25 | High: 10.38 | Low: 10.09.

NFLX (-1%) — Netflix lost yesterday’s progress. Range 89.1—88.3 | High: 89.9 | Low: 88.2.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — Cardano was back on the drop today. We might reopen the consolidation phase.

XLM (Red shooting star doji) — Stellar drew a red shooting star doji. The hollow high acted as a resistance price line at $0.15.

BTC (-1%) — Bitcoin lost a bit more than 1% today.

ETH (Red) — ETH, akin to BTC, was back on the drop today.

NIGHT (Green) — Night remained on the increase today.

UNI (Red shooting star) — Uni drew a red shooting star today. The envelope baseline is set for a support test at $3.58.

CAKE (-0.5%) — Cake lost a bit less than 0.5% today.

SOL (-1%) — SOL lost 1% this Friday.

HBAR (-0.7%) — Hedera lost a bit more than 0.7%.

Edition 29 of The Awakened Investor. An eighth consecutive green week with no concrete ROI on the AI trade, with bond tensions, inflation pressure, and ME conflict all unresolved. This is overconfidence, not strength. Warsh sworn in as Fed Chair today. Klarna replacement announced Monday. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

May 21, 2026 | The Awakened Investor

General Trend

The word we choose for today is a French one: espérance.

Wall Street ended the penultimate session of the week on the increase. Investors are back to choosing hope on the Iran-USA war, wanting to believe in successful peace talks over the coming days. It is impossible to predict exactly when the conflict will end, but we maintain our timeline of a resolution by the end of June. It could come earlier, as every day that passes increases inflationary pressure, and with the midterms around the corner, Trump and the Republicans will be in a very bad spot. US officials go from hot to cold on peace talks while Iranian officials remain on a strong and harsh line. They even went further today by announcing a new entity in charge of the Strait of Hormuz, with a form of partnership with Oman.

Now let us talk about NVIDIA’s results after the bell. We were exactly in the scenario envisioned. Yes, an earnings beat, fantastic figures with more than $80B in revenue for the quarter, but not enough to satisfy a spoiled market. The most interesting fact about this earnings release was the new methodology chosen by the brand to report results. They now have two sections: the traditional data center one, and the ACIE segment which captures all other revenues aside from hyperscaler orders. The goal for NVIDIA is to showcase what they called their new $200B TAM. Interesting play made by Huang and the board to showcase a diversification of revenue. Not enough to please investors for now, but in upcoming reports, the growth of this segment could turn into an interesting driving force.

On the earnings front today we also had Ralph Lauren rallying after showcasing very strong sales in China. Very interesting. While most brands are struggling in the biggest Asian power, RL has managed, through a structured, adaptable and regionally precise machine, to install a strong footprint in the region.

The crypto market registered little gains today.

Biggest Winner / Biggest Loser

N/A for both today. The session was characterized by broad-based modest gains rather than concentrated dispersion, with risk-on appetite spread thinly across the tape rather than focused on a single thematic winner.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Green) — Apple carried on the increase this Thursday. The break past the $300 PT is being confirmed and, as we said and expected, more progress is anticipated. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 302—304.9 (yc) | High: 305.5 | Low: 300.

KLRN (-1%) — Klarna lost roughly 1% today. Nothing more to say here. The company partnered with Tekion to offer flexible payments in US auto service departments. Highest volume at 21:30. Range 16—15.9 (yc) | High: 16.1 | Low: 15.7.

ENGI (Flat) — No real movement for Engie today. Let us see if it is a break or if we can remain on a bullish momentum. Highest volume at 15:00. Range 27.2—27.2 | High: 27.3 | Low: 27.

SONY (Red) — Sony was on the relief today. A mix of profit-taking and relief to be precise. Range 22.8—22.5 (yc) | High: 22.5 | Low: 22.1.

DSY (-1.1%) — Dassault Systèmes lost a bit more than 1% today. Nothing particular to note here. The sideways trading could carry on. Range 20.2—19.9 | High: 20.3 | Low: 19.9.

RYA (Green) — Ryanair remained on the increase today. As yesterday, the rebound has been fuelled by hope on the peace talks. Range 56.1—57.4 | High: 58.2 | Low: 55.9.

AF (-1%) — Air France lost a bit less than 1% today. We should remain above €10 as long as the outlook stays on the hope side. Range 10.09—10.25 | High: 10.38 | Low: 10.09.

NFLX (+1.1%) — Netflix was up by a bit more than 1% today. For now the consolidation is set to remain. Range 88—89.3 | High: 90.3 | Low: 87.5.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Green hammer) — Cardano drew a small green hammer today. The $0.247 price line remains a support level.

XLM (+1.7%) — Stellar was up by a bit less than 2% today.

BTC (Green hammer) — Bitcoin drew a small green hammer today. No real movement.

ETH (Marginal green) — Only marginal gains for ETH this Thursday.

NIGHT (+4%) — Night was up 4% today. Great session, but it will amount to nothing.

UNI (Flat) — No real movement for Uni this Thursday.

CAKE (Red hammer) — Small red hammer drawn by PancakeSwap.

SOL (Green) — SOL remained in green today.

HBAR (+1.1%) — Hedera was up by a bit more than 1% this Thursday.

Edition 28 of The Awakened Investor. Hope carries the tape into the end of the week, but the underlying tension is unresolved. NVIDIA’s earnings beat the consensus but not the market’s appetite. The new ACIE segment and the $200B TAM are the storyline to watch in the next two prints. Ralph Lauren’s China numbers prove that structural execution still works in a market most of the sector has given up on. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The expression we choose for today is hope.

Wall Street ended the mid-week session on the increase. We are a few hours away from NVIDIA’s earnings release. No surprise on the earnings beat, the question for us, as we framed in Monday’s edition, is the Blackwell order book, the margin trajectory, the memory shortage commentary, and what Huang says about China.

Back to the Middle East, the situation remains tense in this huge game of chicken. Trump said the agreement phase was in its latest stage, while also stating that he was not in a hurry to close a deal. We also think the agreement phase is in its last minutes, and that in spite of what he says, Trump wants the quickest deal he can get.

The market was in full optimism mode today on the ME, with all three indexes gaining more than 1%. The crypto market also enjoyed some gains today. Hope is doing the work this week. NVIDIA tonight will tell us whether the tape can keep carrying the weight.

Biggest Winner — IMVT +35.2%

Immunovant (biotech) posted a strong +35.2% session, with TE (electrical equipment) following at +26.45%. The risk-on tape is back today, and capital is finding the same dispersion pattern we have flagged all month: pockets of conviction across unrelated sectors, all riding the broader sentiment shift driven by ME de-escalation hopes.

Biggest Loser — GDS

GDS (data centers) and HAS (consumer goods) led the losers list today. Worth noting that GDS, a Chinese data center play, is the kind of name that gets caught in the geopolitical crossfire as US-China rivalry compounds. The dispersion inside AI-adjacent infrastructure is sharpening between US plays (rewarded) and China-exposed plays (penalized) almost daily now.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (+1.1%) — Apple was up 1.1% today, following the broader risk-on tape. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 298.1—302.2 | High: 302.8 | Low: 298.

KLRN (Green) — Klarna was back on the rise today. For the new stock to be tracked, we still have some doubts, so the choice will be delayed. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 15.2—16 | High: 16.4 | Low: 14.8.

ENGI (Green) — Engie carried on the green today. Highest volume at 16:00. Range 27.1—27.3 | High: 27.3 | Low: 27.

SONY (Flat) — No real movement for Sony again today. Range 22.7—22.78 | High: 22.8 | Low: 22.4.

DSY (Flat) — Dassault didn’t really move today (yc). Range 20.2—20.28 | High: 20.5 | Low: 19.8.

RYA (Green) — Ryanair had a great session, the exact same scenario as usual. Optimism on the ME pulled the airline trade higher. Range 54.7—56.8 | High: 57.2 | Low: 54.

AF (Green) — Back to some solid green today, following the optimism in the Middle East. Range 9.8—10.1 | High: 10.4 | Low: 9.8.

NFLX (-1.3%) — Netflix lost 1.3% today. Range 89.3—88 (yc) | High: 88.5 | Low: 87.5.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (+0.5%) — Cardano was up by a bit more than 0.5% today.

XLM (Flat) — Stop-gap session for Stellar today.

BTC (Green) — Bitcoin came back to green today.

ETH (Green) — ETH followed the general trend and came back to green today.

NIGHT (Red) — Night remained on the drop today.

UNI (Green) — Great session for Uni today.

CAKE (Green) — PancakeSwap rallied today. We do not expect the momentum to last.

SOL (+2.3%) — SOL was up by 2.3% today.

HBAR (Flat) — Hedera stayed at bay today.

Edition 27 of The Awakened Investor. Hope is doing the work this week. NVIDIA earnings drop tonight, and the Blackwell order book is the line that matters most. ME de-escalation is propping the tape, but the agreement is not done yet. Klarna replacement decision delayed pending clearer conviction. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The expression we choose for today is stand off.

Wall Street ended Tuesday’s session on the decrease. Anxiety is building in the Treasury market. We had our rate-focus point yesterday, and today the US 10Y was on the rise for a third consecutive session. Tension is building exactly where we said yesterday it would: at the financing layer of the entire AI rally.

Speaking of tension, we had another stand-off between the US and Iran. Trump said he had cancelled an attack on Iran at the last minute, but added that he was ready to restart the strikes in the next two days if no progress is made. Iranian officials, on the other side, said they were ready to retaliate. The standoff is sustained, not resolved.

All eyes are now on NVIDIA earnings. As usual, we are set for a lot of movement. The interest for us, as we framed yesterday, lies less in whether they beat (they will) than in the Blackwell order book, the margin trajectory, the memory shortage commentary, and what Huang says about China.

Biggest Winner — ALAB +13.3%

Astera Labs (semiconductor connectivity) posted a strong +13.3% session, riding the AI-infrastructure picks-and-shovels theme that continues to find concentrated bursts of strength inside the broader risk-off tape. AGYS (software) followed with +12.4%. Both names benefit from the same dynamic we have flagged for weeks: capital is differentiating tightly inside the AI trade, rewarding specific operational picks-and-shovels exposure even on days when the broader index sells off.

Biggest Loser — BLBD -11.1%

Blue Bird (industrial) cratered 11.1% in the session, with Warby Parker (WRBY) following at -10.9%. Two unrelated names hit by the same broader sentiment: industrial and consumer-discretionary plays without a clean AI hook are losing capital fastest as the Treasury tension widens the K-shape inside the market.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — A pretty calm session for Apple today, after last week’s $300 PT confirmation. Nothing much to add. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 296.9—298.9 | High: 300.5 | Low: 296.3.

KLRN (Red) — Klarna was back on the drop today. The replacement stock for daily tracking will be announced tomorrow. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 15.6—15.1 | High: 16.2 | Low: 15.1.

ENGI (+0.3%) — Engie gained a small 0.3% today, consolidating off the weekly envelope baseline support we flagged yesterday. Highest volume at 15:00. Range 26.9—27 | High: 27.2 | Low: 26.9.

SONY (Flat) — No real movement for Sony today. Range 22.7—22.76 (yc) | High: 23.2 | Low: 22.7.

DSY (+2.8%) — Dassault Systèmes had a solid session today, +2.8%. The envelope baseline resistance at 19.7 has now been cleared, and the stock has the room to test the next zone above. Range 19.85—20.2 | High: 20.6 | Low: 19.85.

RYA (-3.44%) — Ryanair lost 3.44% today. Same reasoning we have repeated for weeks: the airline trade remains hostage to oil tensions, and yesterday’s optimism on US Iran sanctions has now been reabsorbed by the broader stand-off uncertainty. Range 54.3—54.1 | High: 55.1 | Low: 53.9.

AF (-1.1%) — Air France lost 1.1% today, following the same trajectory as Ryan. Range 10.1—9.87 | High: 10.18 | Low: 9.87.

NFLX (Flat) — Netflix did not really move today. Range 90.1—89.3 (yc) | High: 91.4 | Low: 88.6.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (-1%) — Cardano was down by a bit more than 1% today.

XLM (-2.5%) — Stellar was down by 2.5% today.

BTC (Red hammer) — Bitcoin drew a small red hammer today.

ETH (-1%) — ETH was down by a bit more than 1% today.

NIGHT (-3%) — Night down 3% today.

UNI (Red) — Uni came back on the drop today.

CAKE (Red) — PancakeSwap has now registered a fifth consecutive red candle.

SOL (-1.2%) — SOL lost 1.2% today.

HBAR (-1.81%) — Hedera lost 1.81% today.

Edition 26 of The Awakened Investor. The 10Y Treasury yield on its third consecutive day of rises confirms the bond-market signal we flagged yesterday. NVIDIA earnings tomorrow, FED Minutes Wednesday. Klarna replacement announced in tomorrow’s edition. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

Wall Street began the week with mixed fortunes. We saw a solid retraction on the NASDAQ, a mix of profit-taking and pre-event nerves before the big one. All of us are waiting for it, dear readers. It is not Rihanna’s new album. It is not GTA 6. It is NVIDIA earnings.

Expectations will, once again, be absolutely unbelievable. There is no risk in saying that an earnings beat is expected. The interest for us in this reading will be elsewhere: the updates on the Blackwell chips and the order book, how margins are evolving, how the memory shortage is being managed, and what Huang says about China.

The other key event of the week is the release of the FED Minutes on Wednesday. That should tell us more about FED officials’ thinking and the tensions inside the institution. We are not sure we will learn much, but a few indications can be taken.

Lastly today, we want to focus on the bond market. The level of tension we are seeing has not been reached since 2008.Japanese rates are at their highest in 30 years. EU rates are sky-high, with UK Gilts above 5%, while the US 10Y Treasury sits at 4.6%.

There are two possible scenarios for the bond market. The first is inflation with an economic slowdown. This one still gives institutions the possibility to act via rate hikes to take control of inflation like in 2022, although they were late then. The most problematic scenario is the second one: the vicious circle of inflation with growth kicks in. We then get wage increases with persistent inflation, leaving no room for central banks to intervene.

The issue with rates being this high is that AI spending backed by debt becomes unbearable for the brands carrying it, and we start to see cracks. Our goal with this section is not to play doom’s angle, but to remind readers that this dynamic must be understood to navigate a market that currently seems to believe AI can solve everything.

Biggest Winner — RAMP +27.3%

Ramp (data infrastructure) posted a strong +27.3% session, riding the broader risk-on appetite that continues to favor any name with a credible AI-adjacent data play. BRC (security services) followed with +18.9%. Two unrelated names, both pulled higher by the same engine that has been driving the dispersion all month: capital is rotating away from generalist tech and into specific operational picks-and-shovels names.

Biggest Loser — AEHR -16.01%

AEHR (semiconductors) cratered 16.01% in the session, with AXTI (semiconductors) following at -14.46%. The K-shape inside semis is now sharper than ever. Within the AI trade itself, the market is finalizing its tier-by-tier verdict, and the smaller-cap semi names without clear AI integration are being treated as the speculative band that gets discarded first when sentiment turns.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (-1%) — Unbelievable Apple, which extended its winning streak to seven sessions last week. Last Monday we said the $300 PT was plausible. It has been reached. Now we expect some relief and profit-taking action. Apple began the week down by a bit more than 1%. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 300.2—297.8 | High: 300.6 | Low: 294.9.

KLRN (+2.5%) — What a joy to have respected the main key in trading: patience. The Klarna earnings report was exactly what we expected ever since the previous one. Improving margins, new customers. Now we no longer think tracking the stock daily makes sense. We have two to three names in mind for replacement, and the decision will be locked tomorrow. Rotation between the three remains a possibility. Klarna was up 2.5% today. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 15.1—15.5 | High: 15.8 | Low: 15.

ENGI (+1%) — Engie has now registered a third consecutive week on the drop. Now that we have reached the weekly envelope baseline, we expect some sort of support. We remain confident on the stock and maintain our €30 PT. Engie begins the week up by a bit more than 1%. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 26.5—26.9 | High: 26.99 | Low: 26.4.

SONY (Green) — Sony had a very good week, carried by the news of the GIC deal. Will the momentum carry on? Not really, in our view. More upside is plausible, but a breakout out of the $23 price line seems unlikely. Sony was in green today. Range 22.3—22.7 (yc) | High: 22.8 | Low: 22.5.

DSY (-1%) — Dassault Systèmes drew a green hammer on its weekly chart. The stock gained a bit less than 2% last week. The envelope baseline at 19.7 will now be tested as resistance. A break doesn’t seem likely. DSY began the week down by roughly 1%. Range 19.78—19.72 | High: 20.2 | Low: 19.4.

RYA (Green) — Ryanair retraced the gains made in the May 4 week. Tension around crude remains high, with Brent stuck above $100. No changes to the outlook we have been repeating for weeks. Ryan had a very good start to the week, following a rumour of a possible US sanction on Iranian crude. Range 53.3—56 (yc) | High: 57.8 | Low: 55.7.

AF (Flat) — Air France lost a bit more than 2% last week. Same situation for the whole airline industry: until clarity appears on kerosene prices, the sector will face sustained uncertainty. AF ended today’s session without much movement. Range 9.9—9.9 | High: 10.2 | Low: 9.6.

NFLX (+3%) — Netflix drew a green shooting star on its weekly chart. Not much movement last week, as the stock is in search of a new wind. NFLX was up 3% today. Range 86.5—89.6 | High: 89.8 | Low: 86.3.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (-0.2%) — Cardano retraced the May 4 gains last week. Same story for the whole crypto market. Yes, we have phases of gains, but on the whole we always come back to the drop. The crypto market is in a huge distribution phase and needs catalysts to break out of it. More ETFs. Some developments on the blockchain side with the integration of AI. The avenues exist, but the market needs drivers to walk down them. -0.2% for ADA today.

XLM (Red) — Stellar lost a bit less than 12% last week. The envelope baseline acted as a resistance line ($0.173). We are now back on the $0.14 price line for support. XLM has now registered a fourth consecutive red candle.

BTC (Red hammer) — Bitcoin was down a bit less than 6% last week. We expected the $80K price line would not hold for long. Now the question is where we stabilize. We do think we will see some relief, but bulls will not remain on the sideline for long. BTC drew a small red hammer today.

ETH (Flat) — Double-digit loss for ETH last week. We are now back on the $2K price line for support, and we remain confident that it will hold. No real movement for ETH today.

NIGHT (Flat) — Night drew a solid red shooting star last week. The hollow high showcased a resistance line at $0.0368 USDT. We should remain in the distribution phase on the $0.03 price line. Night didn’t move much today.

UNI (+2%) — Uni had a rejection from the $4 price line. Nothing surprising there. Uni was up by a bit more than 2% today.

CAKE (Red) — PancakeSwap lost 10.7% last week. The envelope baseline acted as a resistance line ($1.53). Akin to Stellar, CAKE registered a fourth consecutive red candle.

SOL (Green hammer) — SOL was down by a bit more than 11% last week. We will now be watching the $84-$86 distribution zone. SOL drew a green hammer today.

HBAR (Flat) — Hedera lost 7.6% last week. No real movement for Hedera today.

Edition 25 of The Awakened Investor. The bond market is telling the real story this week, the level of tension hasn’t been seen since 2008. NVIDIA earnings and FED Minutes loom Wednesday. Klarna patience paid off, the stock retires from the daily tracking tomorrow. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is scant.

Wall Street closed the last session of the week on the decrease. Yesterday, we were questioning the reason behind the market’s cheering of the Xi-Trump meeting. Today it seems investors came to the same realisation we did: only scant results were achieved after this two-day China-USA summit. The pictures were nice. The substance was thin.

The main takeaway of the week for us is clear: inflation is no longer a forecast, it is a fact, and it is set to get worse in the months ahead. Yes, the AI trade is here. Yes, it remains the main fuel of the market. But investors will not be able to look the other way for much longer. In the second semester of 2026, inflation will probably push above 4%. Crude prices remain above $100, and we do not see the war in the Middle East ending in the upcoming weeks.

A word now for Jerome Powell on his last official day at the head of the Fed. In spite of Trump’s “lovely” remarks praising Powell for his “lateness,” we believe Powell will be seen as a great Fed chair in retrospect. The only real issue, in our view, was the timing of the 2022 rate hikes, which came a bit too late. Everything else, the post-pandemic stabilisation, the inflation glide path attempt, the political pressure absorbed without abandoning the mandate should age well. History will be kinder than Truth social is.

Applied Materials, which we had flagged as a key earnings watch for the week, beat forecasts. The driver? You guessed it: AI demand. Same story, same engine, different ticker.

Last note to close the week on the stock market: Bill Ackman announced a new position in Microsoft. We have been calling for weeks that MSFT is undervalued, and we still see a huge buy window at the current P/E. When Ackman moves on a name we have been publicly bullish on, the position deserves the underline.

The crypto market came back to the drop today.

Biggest Winner — SEDG +22.9%

SolarEdge (solar inverters) posted a strong +22.9% session. The energy infrastructure trade continues to find pockets of strength as the AI buildout starts being read as a power-demand story, not just a chip story. FIG followed with +13.24%. Two unrelated names, but both linked to the broader infrastructure-adjacent rotation we have been calling all week.

Biggest Loser — POET -22.3%

POET (semiconductors) cratered 22.3% in the session, giving back almost the entirety of yesterday’s +43.1% move. That single round-trip is the cleanest illustration of what we have been writing about all week: within the AI trade itself, dispersion is now violent, and chasing speculative momentum names at the top is how investors get hurt. TGNX followed with -17.3%. The K-shape inside tech is no longer subtle.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Green) — Apple, as we expected, closed the week at the $300 price target. Good call. We have been bullish on every dip since Edition 15. The thesis was the Mac mini AI surprise, the Intel/Samsung supply discussions, and the Tim Cook China delegation. All three played out. Highest volume at 16:30. Range 297.9—300.2 | High: 303.2 | Low: 296.5.

KLRN (Red) — After yesterday’s +20.3% rally, Klarna came back on the decrease without much surprise. The jackpot is logged. This is the last Klarna entry in our daily watchlist — the stock gets replaced next week. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 16.4—15.1 | High: 16.6 | Low: 14.8.

ENGI (Red) — Engie ended its trading week with a solid decrease. Highest volume at 11:00. Range 27.2—26.6 | High: 27.3 | Low: 26.5.

SONY (+1%) — Sony was up a bit less than 1% today. Range 22.1—22.3 | High: 22.6 | Low: 22.2.

DSY (Green) — Dassault Systèmes carried into green today. The envelope baseline support at 19.2 we flagged Thursday is holding. Range 19.5—19.92 | High: 19.95 | Low: 19.5.

RYA (Red) — Ryanair ended the week with a strong drop. Tensions on crude remain high, the airline trade remains hostage to oil, and we still do not see structural ceasefire progress. Range 54.0—53.3 | High: 54.3 | Low: 53.3.

AF (-1.2%) — Air France closed a bit below the €10 mark today. Range 10.1—9.9 | High: 10.01 | Low: 9.83.

NFLX (Flat) — Netflix did not really move today. Range 86.9—87.0 | High: 89.4 | Low: 86.6.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (-3%) — Cardano lost a bit more than 3% today.

XLM (-5%) — Stellar was down a bit less than 5%.

BTC (Red) — Bitcoin came back on the drop today. Yesterday’s gains were caught back.

ETH (-2.5%) — ETH lost 2.5% today.

NIGHT (Red hammer) — Night drew a red hammer today with a strong hollow low. We saw solid support at $0.03 USDT.

UNI (Red) — Uni retraced yesterday’s gains.

CAKE (-2%) — PancakeSwap was down 2% today.

SOL (-3%) — SOL lost a bit more than 3% today.

HBAR (Red) — Akin to Uni, Hedera retraced yesterday’s gains.

Edition 24 of The Awakened Investor. Week 5 closes with three confirmed calls: Apple to $300, Klarna jackpot on earnings, MSFT undervaluation now validated by Ackman. The inflation thesis is now structural. Crude sticky above $100. Powell exits. Week 6 begins with a new stock replacing Klarna in the daily tracking. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is threat.

Wall Street ended the penultimate session of the week on the rise. Investors decided to cheer on the Xi-Trump meeting. To be honest, we do not see any particular reason for this cheer. Yes, Trump complimented President Xi and returned him an invitation for the month of September. We also learned that China was going to order 200 big planes from Boeing — but this order is less than most analysts expected.

The key moment of today’s exchange between the two presidents was, for us, the word chosen by President Xi in regards to Taiwan. He said both countries could “face off” over Taiwan. Some could argue they are already facing off at this minute. That is true, but this time the Chinese president used a more belligerent tone. It seems China could be ready to go on a military front if needed. Obviously that is not the country’s goal, and we do not think it will be anytime soon. But as you have seen in the Awakened Investor bio: the black swan is becoming the norm. We dove a little further into the geopolitics today because we believe this can play a big role in the future of US–China relations.

Now back to the economy. On the macro front, we got another confirmation of the price increases we have been flagging all week, with retail sales up 0.5% in April. Three editions, three different data points, one same story: CPI rising, PPI surging at the producer level, and now retail sales confirming the consumer is absorbing the pass-through. The inflation thesis is no longer a forecast. It is a trend.

To finish today’s General Trend, we have to talk about Cerebras’ first trading day. The full-stack integrated AI company began its trading history with a +105% increase. What is genuinely interesting about Cerebras is that the company sits right in the middle of the AI trade. It is not an NVIDIA with its 60-70% margins. It is not an equipment company with single-digit margins. It is a complete AI player exposed to both the chip side and the hardware play, through its full-stack nature. If they manage to convince investors that their slice of the cake is substantial, the company has bright days ahead.

The crypto market was back to gains today.

Biggest Winner — POET +43.1%

POET (semiconductors) posted a massive +43.1% session. The picks-and-shovels semi rotation we have been calling for weeks continues to deliver in concentrated bursts. ONDS (drones) followed with +26.5%. Drones and photonics moving on the same session points to the broader risk-on appetite that any AI-adjacent narrative now generates almost reflexively.

Biggest Loser — DOCS -23%

Doximity (healthcare technology) cratered 23% in the session. NIQ followed with -18.3%. The dispersion inside healthcare-tech and data names is widening — capital is rotating away from companies with no clean AI hook and into the names that are actually feeding the infrastructure buildout. Same K-shape pattern we have flagged in tech for weeks, now visible inside adjacent verticals.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — No real movement for Apple today. Nothing much to add to a week of strong upside. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 299.8—298.2 | High: 300.4 | Low: 295.3.

KLRN (+20.3%) — CLING GLING GLING. Jackpot, ladies and gentlemen. We always said patience is key, and it was rewarded with Klarna. After last earnings, we said we trusted the stock. Over the past few days, we said we would drop the stock after earnings. Well, we were right to wait. The stock was up 20.3% today. Revenue came in up 44%. Active consumers climbed 21% YoY to 119M. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 13.6—16.4 | High: 16.4 | Low: 14.9.

ENGI (Flat) — No real movement for Engie today. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 27.6—27.3 | High: 27.6 | Low: 27.3.

SONY (Red) — Sony, as we expected, came back down today after yesterday’s exit of the price from the envelope. Range 22.7—22.1 | High: 22.2 | Low: 22.0.

DSY (Green) — Great rebound for Dassault after the envelope baseline acted as support at 19.2. Range 19.17—19.61 | High: 19.6 | Low: 19.1.

RYA (Flat) — Ryan had a stop-gap session today. Range 55.0—55.2 | High: 55.6 | Low: 54.7.

AF (-1%) — Air France lost a bit less than 1%. Range 10.3—10.1 | High: 10.3 | Low: 9.9.

NFLX (Flat) — Netflix didn’t really move today. Range 87.6—86.9 | High: 88.5 | Low: 86.6.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Green) — Cardano bounced back this Thursday like the vast majority of the crypto market. The $0.26 level acted as support.

XLM (+2.2%) — Stellar was up 2.2% today.

BTC (Green) — Bitcoin bounced back today. The envelope baseline at $79K acted as support. We did see bulls coming back as soon as we broke the $80K level.

ETH (+1%) — ETH was up 1% today. Looks like consolidation.

NIGHT (Green) — Night took back yesterday’s losses.

UNI (+3%) — Uni gained back 3% this Thursday.

CAKE (Flat) — PancakeSwap, no real movement today.

SOL (+1%) — SOL was up 1% today.

HBAR (Green) — Hedera was up a bit less than 2%.

Edition 23 of The Awakened Investor. Klarna proved patience pays off. The inflation trilogy (CPI, PPI, retail sales) is now confirmed. Xi shifted his tone on Taiwan in a way that should not be underestimated. Cerebras debuted at +105% and just changed the AI conversation. Week 6 begins Monday with a new stock replacing Klarna in the daily watchlist. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is unbreakable.

Wall Street ended the mid-week session with mixed feelings. In spite of the ever-worrying macro of the day, with the PPI index coming in 1.4% higher month-over-month (the biggest increase in four years), both the NASDAQ and the S&P remained at record highs, carried by the unbreakable AI trade. There was once Terminator. There is now the AI trade.

The PPI figure is genuinely interesting. It showcased that firms are now starting to pass on the overall price increase to the consumer. After absorbing the cost for quite some time during the tariff sequence, it seems firms have reached a form of limit. Furthermore, this trend is set to worsen in the months to come.

Warsh’s confirmation finally occurred. The new Fed chair has 48 very tough months ahead of him.

The stock of the day was Nebius, which announced an 8-fold increase in revenue. The driver? You guessed it: strong AI demand.

Our eyes will remain on China for the next two days after Trump arrived in the country. Do we expect any big announcement regarding the war in Iran? No. We should get the announcement of several contracts signed between the two countries, especially in tech and for Boeing, plus some nice pictures. But in reality, this will be a huge game of chess from which very little of substance will come out.

The crypto market remained on the drop today.

Biggest Winner — RVI +37.8%

Robinhood Ventures posted a strong +37.8% session. The retail-trading and venture-adjacent names continue to find pockets of strength inside the broader risk-on tape. OUST (sensor kits) followed with +26.09%. Two unrelated names but both linked to the broader speculative appetite that the AI trade keeps unleashing on adjacent sectors.

Biggest Loser — WIX -27.1%

Wix (website builder) cratered 27.1% in the session. The SaaS dispersion we have been flagging for weeks continues. Capital is increasingly differentiating between AI-enabling infrastructure plays and legacy web/software names that have no clean AI hook. REZI (industrials) followed with -17.9%. The K-shape inside tech is now visible on the tape almost every session.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (+1.3%) — Another great session for Apple. Tim Cook is part of the US delegation in China, and the $300 PT could be reached by the end of the week. Highest volume at 18:30. Range 293.5—298.8 | High: 300.9 | Low: 293.5.

KLRN (Red) — Fourth consecutive day on the drop for Klarna. Earnings drop tomorrow, then we replace the stock in the daily tracking. Highest volume at 21:30. Range 14.1—13.6 | High: 14.1 | Low: 13.2.

ENGI (Green) — Engie took back some of yesterday’s losses. Highest volume at 14:00. Range 27.2—27.4 | High: 27.5 | Low: 27.1.

SONY (Green) — Sony carried the increase forward today. Bulls are in complete control of the momentum. Now that we have exited the envelope, this might be the end of the rally. Range 22.1—22.7 | High: 22.9 | Low: 22.6.

DSY — No notable movement worth flagging today.

RYA (Red) — Ryan remained on the drop today. Same situation as we have been saying for weeks: airlines remain hostage to oil tensions. Range 55.2—54.9 | High: 56.0 | Low: 54.9.

AF (Green) — Air France managed to register a small gain. Range 10.1—10.2 | High: 10.3 | Low: 9.9.

NFLX (Flat) — No real movement for Netflix today. Range 87.6—87.5 | High: 88.6 | Low: 86.2.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — Third consecutive day on the drop for ADA. Price is back on the envelope baseline ($0.263).

XLM (-2%) — Stellar lost an extra 2% today.

BTC (Red) — Bitcoin has now broken the $80K level. The envelope baseline is set for a support test at $79K. Let’s see if bulls react again.

ETH (Red shooting star) — ETH drew a red shooting star today.

NIGHT (-2.8%) — Night down 2.8% today.

UNI (Red) — Uni has also registered its third consecutive day on the drop.

CAKE (-1%) — PancakeSwap lost an extra 1% today.

SOL (Red) — SOL carried the drop forward today.

HBAR (Red hammer) — Hedera drew a small red hammer today.

Edition 22 of The Awakened Investor. PPI surprise is the macro signal of the week — firms are no longer absorbing tariff costs. Klarna earnings tomorrow, then we replace the stock in the daily tracking. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is tomatoes.

Wall Street ended mostly in losses today. The CPI figure confirmed what we have been saying for weeks now: inflation is rising for the second consecutive month, reaching 3.8%, and the first effects of the Middle East war are showing up in the numbers. This is only the beginning. Depending on the length of the conflict, we could see inflation push above 4% in the second semester.

No, we have not become fans of ketchup overnight. The reason we choose tomatoes today is to highlight the insane price increase of the fruit, up 40% year-over-year. It is also a striking real-world illustration of what it means to be an inelastic good. There is no clear substitute for tomatoes. People put them in burgers, in salads, in guac. So even when the price increases sharply, consumption continues. Speaking of burgers, the price of beef has also skyrocketed, up 18.5% on the year.

The figure everyone has been looking at, of course, is oil, which registered another increase. The situation in the Middle East remains completely blocked, and we do not see the gallon price dropping below $4 for quite some time. What a paradox for US citizens: they sit in the biggest oil exporter in the world, yet they still feel the impact of the Middle East tensions. That is the reality of the supply-and-demand law.

The only positive news of the day came for Humana investors, with the stock jumping 7% after Bernstein raised its price target by 36%.

The crypto market also caught some relief today.

Biggest Winner — PACS +28.5%

PACS Group (nursing facilities) posted a strong +28.5% session. Healthcare services continue to surprise on the upside as defensive sectors attract capital amid the inflation pressure. RAIL (rail industries) followed with +19.3%. Two unrelated names but both linked to the broader rotation we have been observing: capital flowing into defensive, infrastructure-adjacent plays when macro uncertainty rises.

Biggest Loser — UAA -17%

Under Armour (UAA) cratered 17% in the session. The athletic apparel space continues to bleed market share to the on-trend names (HOKA, On Running, New Balance). CAMT (metrology equipment) followed with -15.5%. Semiconductor capital equipment is showing the first signs of a real cool-down, after months of riding the AI capex wave. Worth watching.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Green) — Apple managed to grind out a small gain today. Two pieces of news: customizable cameras for pros are being rolled out, and director Levinson dumped $71M in shares, locking in some nice profits. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 292.5—294.8 | High: 295.2 | Low: 292.5.

KLRN (-2%) — Klarna lost a bit less than 2% today. We are waiting for earnings in two days before dropping the stock from our daily tracking. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 14.5—14.1 | High: 14.9 | Low: 14.0.

ENGI (-1%) — Engie lost roughly 1% today. Range 27.4—27.1 | High: 27.4 | Low: 27.0.

SONY (+4%) — Sony carried yesterday’s rise forward, gaining another 4% on the Recognition Music catalog deal. The catalyst we were waiting for is now working. Range 21.2—22.1 | High: 22.2 | Low: 21.8.

DSY (-1%) — Dassault lost a bit less than 1% today. The envelope baseline is about to be tested for support at 19.1. Watch this level. Range 19.4—19.2 | High: 19.3 | Low: 19.0.

RYA (-0.5%) — Ryan lost roughly 0.5% today. The situation around oil remains very tense. Range 56.4—56.2 | High: 56.6 | Low: 55.9.

AF (Flat) — Air France stayed at bay today. Range 10.1—10.1 | High: 10.3 | Low: 9.9.

NFLX (Green) — Netflix took back some of the previous days’ losses this Tuesday. Range 85.9—87.6 | High: 89.1 | Low: 85.8.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (-3%) — Cardano lost a bit more than 3% today.

XLM (Red) — Stellar’s loss of the day put the coin price back on the envelope baseline ($0.163). The level to watch.

BTC (-1.3%) — Bitcoin was down 1.3%. Let’s see if, as we have been thinking, the $80K level fails to hold.

ETH (-2.5%) — Ethereum lost a bit less than 2.5% today.

NIGHT (-5%) — Night roughly lost 5% today.

UNI (Red) — Second consecutive drop for UNI today.

CAKE (-1%) — PancakeSwap lost a bit more than 1% this Tuesday.

SOL (Red) — First day on the drop for SOL in four. As expected, we did not break past the $100 level.

HBAR (-3%) — Hedera roughly lost 3% today.

Edition 21 of The Awakened Investor. Inflation now structural, not transitory. Oil stays sticky. Klarna earnings drop in two days, then we replace the stock in the daily tracking. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is defiance.

New week, same outcome. Wall Street began the week the way it ended the last — carried by the AI trade. On a day when news from the Middle East turned from bad to worse, investors picked AI optimism to fuel their trades. It was Intel that led today’s wave, still gaining momentum from the reported preliminary agreement with Apple. Qualcomm followed suit, reaching record highs.

The main watch of the week for us in regards to earnings will be Applied Materials. Solid figures will give even more fuel to the semiconductor sector — the current number one. So far, out of the 440 firms of the S&P companies that have reported Q1, 83% have topped expectations. That figure is doing a lot of heavy lifting under the surface of this rally.

Back to the Middle East: Trump dismissed Iran’s proposal to end the war and stated that the ceasefire was now on life support. We knew that despite the news we got last week on the one-page peace plan, the road to ending the war is still long. There is no point in playing a prediction game — only God knows where it will stop. We only have the feeling that Trump won’t want to drag this past June.

The crypto market didn’t move massively overall today.

Biggest Winner — BW +30.06%

Babcock & Wilcox (energy emission control) posted a +30.06% session. The energy infrastructure trade continues to find pockets of strength — emission control, grid, and power names are quietly rotating up. POET (semiconductors) followed with +27.09%. The semi rally keeps broadening — Intel, Qualcomm at the top, POET on the rise. Capital is rotating into anything connected to the AI buildout.

Biggest Loser — UI -12.2%

Ubiquiti (communications equipment) dropped 12.2% in the session. IREN (data center vertical) followed with -9.89%. The dispersion within the AI infrastructure complex remains stark — same theme, very different outcomes. As we have said for weeks, capital is now sorting within the AI trade, not just rotating into it.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — Apple has now registered a sixth consecutive week on the rise. What a run it has been. There isn’t a new element to add to the analysis we have done so far. The $300 PT seems plausible. Some profit-taking action in the upcoming weeks appears to be the scenario. Apple began the week on a calm note. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 293.3—292.6 | High: 293.8 | Low: 290.2.

KLRN (Red) — No real movement for Klarna this week. As we said in a previous analysis, we are looking at other stocks at the moment for the daily tracking. Klarna began the week on the drop. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 14.4—14.3 | High: 14.5 | Low: 13.8.

ENGI (+1.7%) — Engie lost a bit less than 4% last week. We discussed the earnings — a sort of normalization in the figures, nothing surprising. Our outlook remains bullish, particularly with the quick integration of UK power networks. Engie began the week up 1.7%. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 27.0—27.4 | High: 27.44 | Low: 26.9.

SONY (Green) — Sony gained back 1.8% last week. On the long run and fundamentals, we remain bullish on Sony — but short term still looks complex, with the real impact of the memory shortage still unfolding. Sony began the week on the rise following the news of a deal with Recognition Music to buy their catalog. Range 20.1—21.2 | High: 21.6 | Low: 21.1.

DSY (Red) — Dassault drew a green shooting star today. The envelope baseline acted as a resistance level (20.1). It seems like we have shifted into a distribution phase. Shareholders meeting on May 20. Dassault began the week with a small decrease. Range 19.6—19.4 | High: 19.7 | Low: 19.4.

RYA (Red) — Ryanair had a solid week thanks to oil tensions easing. The analysis remains the same for all airlines: once the conflict ends, we will have a strong rally — but in the meantime, expect roller coaster sessions. Range 58.0—56.6 | High: 57.8 | Low: 56.5.

AF (Red) — Like Ryanair, AF was up by 10.7% last week. Exact same analysis. AF began the week with a small drop. Range 10.1—10.1 | High: 10.2 | Low: 10.0.

NFLX (-2.3%) — Netflix lost roughly 5% last week. The weekly envelope baseline was broken down (90.8). As we said previously, NFLX is not on the favored stock list anymore, but for us it is still a buy. Netflix lost 2.3% today. Range 87.4—85.4 | High: 87.3 | Low: 85.1.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (-0.5%) — Cardano had a very good week. For the first time since August 25, ADA was up double digits on the weekly chart. That figure is quite telling of the crypto market over the past nine months — a domination by bears, with some distribution phases in between. For us, the increase of last week will not amount to a new rhythm. ADA lost a bit less than 0.5% today. Interesting to note the support at $0.27 — not sure it will last.

XLM (Green hammer) — Stellar took back the previous week’s drop. We are set to keep going on a distribution for Stellar. XLM drew a small red hammer today. The envelope baseline acted as support ($0.164).

BTC (+4.6% LW) — Bitcoin was up 4.6% on its weekly chart. The $80K level will be where bulls and bears clash to define the upcoming direction. The momentum is solid around BTC, but we don’t think we will remain above $80K for long. Small red hammer for BTC to start the week.

ETH (-1%) — Ethereum was up 2% last week. We see ETH remaining around $2.3K—$2.4K at the moment. ETH lost a bit more than 1% this Monday.

NIGHT (Green) — Night bounced back by 10% last week. Is there anything to say here? Well, as we said before, the momentum of the early ICO days has long vanished. NIGHT seems to have fallen into a sort of indifference. Night went contrarian with a strong push this Monday — will it amount to something? Probably not.

UNI (-2.7%) — Uni had a fantastic week, up 23.5% — representative of last week’s broader momentum. Uni lost a bit less than 2.7% today.

CAKE (-3.1%) — PancakeSwap was up 8.3% on the week, same story as Uni, encapsulating the week’s momentum. Cake was down a bit more than 3.1% this Monday.

SOL (Green) — Best week for Solana since the beginning of September. The $93.6 level has been broken — but can the momentum be sustained? We don’t think so. SOL is pushing for more increase, bulls are still on top. We still don’t think we will break $100.

HBAR (Red hammer) — Hedera gained 11.1% last week. There isn’t anything fundamental here. Hedera drew a small red hammer today.

Edition 20 of The Awakened Investor. Applied Materials earnings the watch of the week — confirmation or warning for the semi rally. Apple six weeks up and the $300 level in sight. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is achievement.

Wall Street closed the final session of the week with a strong rise. That makes it six consecutive weeks of gains for the stock market. Who could believe that we are in the middle of a war in the Middle East, with oil above $100 a barrel, and equities still pushing higher? Once again, investors need only think of the magic AI word.

This time around it was SanDisk that led the charge, posting strong demand tied to data center buildout. The earnings season has kept its promise so far, with the broader index on track for 29% YoY growth. That figure is the real story behind the rally — not sentiment, not speculation, but actual delivery.

The other great news of the day came from the macro side. The non-farm payroll report showed 115K jobs created, marking the first back-to-back positive readings in months. Furthermore, the March figure was revised upward — a small detail, but a meaningful one. The labor market is not breaking, despite everything.

On the Middle East front, tensions persisted today. Both camps accused each other of breaking the ceasefire, and oil prices ticked back slightly above $100. The road to resolution remains uncertain. We have said it before — caution is the keyword until we see structural progress.

The bad story of the day came from Cloudflare, which plunged 24% after announcing it will cut 20% of its workforce and issuing a Q2 forecast below expectations. A reminder that even within tech, dispersion is alive and well. Not every name catches the AI tailwind.

The crypto market was back on the rise today.

Biggest Winner — INOD +86%

Innodata (data engineering) posted a staggering +86% session. The company sits squarely in the AI infrastructure value chain — data labeling and engineering services for large language model training is exactly the kind of niche the market is now rewarding. RKLB (Rocket Lab) followed with +34.2%. Two very different names, but both linked by the same theme: capital is hunting picks-and-shovels exposure to AI and space — the unsexy backbones of the headline themes.

Biggest Loser — NET -23.6%

Cloudflare (NET) cratered 23.6% on its workforce reduction announcement and weak Q2 forecast. The market is sending a clear message — the era of “tech rising tide lifts all boats” is over. HUBS (HubSpot) followed with -19.03%. Software application names continue to face dispersion. The AI sorting mechanism within tech is now visible: capital is rotating out of mid-cap SaaS plays that are not directly enabling the AI buildout, and into the names that are.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (+2%) — What a great end to the week for Apple. The $300 level is not far. We have been bullish on the stock at every drop, and the confidence has been rewarded. Highest volume at 15:30. Range 287.4—293.3 | High: 294.7 | Low: 290.

KLRN (Red) — Klarna was back on the drop today. Nothing surprising here. Highest volume at 16:30. Range 14.6—14.5 | High: 14.8 | Low: 14.3.

ENGI (Green) — Small recovery day for Engie. Highest volume at 09:00. Range 26.7—26.9 | High: 27.0 | Low: 26.6.

SONY (+1.3%) — Sony took back 1.3% today. However, the hollow body of today’s shooting star showcased a strong presence of bears at the envelope baseline ($20.5). The recovery is fragile. Range 19.8—20.1 | High: 20.8 | Low: 20.0.

DSY (-1.6%) — Dassault lost 1.6% to close the week. Range 19.75—19.5 | High: 19.9 | Low: 19.4.

RYA (Red) — Ryanair came back down today. Oil prices spiked again — we warned of this yesterday. The airline trade remains hostage to oil, and we do not have a structural ceasefire yet. Range 59.3—58.0 | High: 59.1 | Low: 57.7.

AF (-3.8%) — Air France lost 3.8% to close the week. Same reason as Ryanair. Range 10.6—10.2 | High: 10.4 | Low: 10.1.

NFLX (Flat) — Netflix didn’t really move today. Range 87.7—87.4 | High: 88.0 | Low: 87.2.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Green) — Great session for ADA, which broke out of the $0.26 level. Can we get a confirmation? We don’t think so — the broader pattern still favors range-bound trading.

XLM (Green) — Great day for Stellar as well, but the price remains below the envelope baseline ($0.165). The constructive signal is incomplete.

BTC (Green hammer) — Bitcoin drew a small green hammer today. As expected, we had a support reaction from bulls and the price is back at $80K. The level is holding.

ETH (+1%) — Ethereum took back 1% today.

NIGHT (Green shooting star) — Night drew a small green shooting star. The envelope baseline acted as a resistance level ($0.03). Watch for follow-through.

UNI (Green) — Great push for UNI today, with the price breaking the envelope. We don’t see us breaking out further from here.

CAKE (Green) — PancakeSwap took back yesterday’s drop.

SOL (Green) — Great session for SOL, which is building a bit of momentum.

HBAR (+3%) — Hedera was up by a bit less than 3% today.

Edition 19 of The Awakened Investor. Six weeks of gains in the books. Apple within reach of $300. The AI/picks-and-shovels thesis keeps confirming. Week 5 begins Monday with fresh catalysts. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is consumer.

Wall Street closed the penultimate session of the week in retreat. Chip stocks failed to carry yesterday’s momentum despite solid gains earlier in the day. ARM Holdings’ earnings release made supply concerns impossible to ignore. Yet it remains telling that the big market caps — MSFT and NVIDIA — both posted solid gains. Investors are still willing to bet on the giants.

Today, though, we wanted to focus on something different. We have been watching consumption stocks languish for four years now. Kraft Heinz — a merger Warren Buffet himself called a mistake. MDLZ — crushed by rising cocoa prices. All of them telling the same story: the consumer is in retreat, and he is making choices about where his money goes. That story became impossible to ignore today.

Shake Shack reported earnings this morning and fell 30% on a quarterly loss. The company blamed rising beef prices and declining consumer spending at fast casual chains. We got immediate confirmation: McDonald’s missed its growth targets in the USA for the quarter. The fast food reckoning is here.

We see this getting worse for fast food, and for two specific reasons. First, the cyclical issue: oil prices remain elevated, so the customer is less willing to drive to a restaurant — and when he does, the price shock is even worse. Second, and more structural: fast food chains have been pushing prices higher for years now. Ukraine. Bad harvests. Middle East tensions. All legitimate reasons, but they miss the point. The fast food promise is simple — cheap, reliable, food on the go. Break that promise and the customer goes somewhere else. This is why Chipotle is holding up while Shake Shack collapses. Higher price, yes, but it comes with something else: health positioning.

Coca-Cola’s data confirms it. The consumer across the entire food industry is now looking for healthier options. McDonald’s is responding with the Value Meal. MDLZ is cutting prices. These chains won’t disappear overnight, but they have to adapt. The ones that do — like McDonald’s — will survive and thrive. The ones that don’t will fade.

McDonald’s remains our top buy for exposure to this sector.

A few other reads from today: ADP reported stronger job creation than expected. Kalshi, the prediction market firm, is now valued at $22B. DataDog beat on strong cloud security demand. Crypto finished the day in relief mode.

Biggest Winner — FLNC +39.9%

Fluence Energy (utilities) posted a +39.9% session. XMTR (AI-powered manufacturing marketplace) followed with +39.1%. Both names benefiting from relief in tech infrastructure demand and manufacturing exposure. The utilities rotation — especially names tied to data center power supply — continues to show strength.

Biggest Loser — FSLY -38.2%

Fastly cratered 38.2% in a single session. The CDN and edge computing play got hit hard on demand concerns post-ARM’s earnings warning. PLNT (Planet Labs) followed with -31.1%. The dispersion between infrastructure winners (FLNC) and infrastructure losers (FSLY) is stark — the market is beginning to differentiate within the picks-and-shovels narrative. Not all AI infrastructure plays are equal.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (Flat) — Apple had a nothing burger of a session. Neither conviction today. Biggest candle: green at 15:30. Range 287.0—287.0 | High: 292 | Low: 285.7.

KLRN (Green) — Back to gains for Klarna. The distribution phase is carrying on. Biggest candle: green at 15:30. Range 14.4—14.7 | High: 15.0 | Low: 14.4.

ENGI (Red) — Engie tumbled today. A couple words on Wednesday’s earnings: we saw a normalization in the figures after a series of very strong quarters. Nothing surprising. We still maintain our confidence in the stock with our €30 PT. Biggest candle: red at 15:00. Range 27.5—26.8 | High: 27.6 | Low: 26.8.

SONY (Red) — Sony was back on the drop today. Not a good signal to see us back in losses so quickly. Bears have the advantage. Range 20.2—19.8 | High: 20.2 | Low: 19.8.

DSY (Green) — Dassault Systèmes gained a bit less than 0.5% today. Nothing to report here. Range 19.77—19.86 | High: 19.93 | Low: 19.5.

RYA (Green) — More gains for Ryan as oil tension eased further. Nevertheless, it is still not the end of the conflict, so caution remains the key word. Range 58.5—59.3 | High: 60.7 | Low: 59.1.

AF (Green) — Another solid day for Air France. Same analysis as Ryanair. Range 10.3—10.6 | High: 10.76 | Low: 10.3.

NFLX (Flat) — Like Air France, Netflix had a nothing burger of a session. Range 88.2—88.2 | High: 89.4 | Low: 88.1.

Quick Scan — Crypto

ADA (Red) — Back on the drop for ADA. As expected, the 0.26 level acted as a resistance price level.

XLM (Red) — Stellar lost 2.1% in today’s general relief.

BTC (Green) — Some relief for BTC, which broke back below $80K as expected. Let’s watch the first bull response.

ETH (Red) — Solid retraction for ETH, which slid below its envelope baseline ($2,317).

NIGHT (Red) — Second consecutive session on the drop for Night.

UNI (Green) — Uni gained a bit less than 1.5% today.

CAKE (Red) — PancakeSwap was down by a bit more than 3.5% today.

SOL (Red) — Sol lost a bit less than 1% today.

HBAR (Red) — Hedera lost a bit less than 1.5% this Friday.

Edition 18 of The Awakened Investor. Week 4 closes strong — the consumer thesis is now the structural story. McDonald’s divergence from the fast food collapse is the call we’re making. Subscribe for daily coverage as we enter Week 5.

— Ali

The word we choose for today is chips.

Wall Street ended the mid-week session with a sharp increase. Once again, AI came to the rescue with AMD earnings being nothing short of fantastic. The company anticipates higher revenue for Q2, while Q1 revenue came in at $10.25B — and 50% of that figure originates from data centers. The thesis we’ve been laying out for weeks keeps confirming itself: AI infrastructure is not a story, it’s a balance sheet event.

Let’s keep the earnings talks going with Disney’s Q2, which came in above expectations. For his first earnings call, D’Amaro did well. He reassured investors with a clear focus on streaming, sports, and parks/cruises investment. Revenue came in at $25.2B. For the full year, the new CEO announced an EPS growth expectation of 12%. As expected, the entertainment division was carried by Avatar and Zootopia 2 — both monster successes.

The last earnings mention is for NVO, which surprised all of us after announcing a 67% jump in net profits. We got the confirmation of Wegovy’s pill success — but few realised the extent of the usage, with now 2 million people on it. Still, in our opinion, NOVO needs to grow its pipeline. LILLY will gain market share on the GLP-1 market with its Fundayo, and the obesity market — once seen as an Eldorado — is turning more into a volume model. NVO needs something else, and the next 12 months will tell whether they have it.

Now on the Iran situation. We said yesterday that the tone was changing, and it seems progress is being made behind the scenes with a possible one-page memorandum for peace soon to be announced. Oil slid below $100 today. The road could still be rocky — very tough to gauge. If we had to give a deadline, we would say by the end of the month, especially with the World Cup coming to the USA. We don’t think Trump will want his image to be tarnished further. Then again, that’s all speculation.

The crypto market was slightly in green overall.

Biggest Winner — FLEX +39.69%

Flex Ltd (electrical components) posted a +39.69% session. This is yet another picks-and-shovels AI infrastructure name moving up — same theme as STRL’s run yesterday. Capital keeps rotating into the names that enable AI rather than the headline AI plays themselves. HUT followed with +35.3%, riding the BTC strength. The crypto-adjacent miners are still benefiting from Bitcoin holding above $80K.

Biggest Loser — PRIM -50.1%

Primoris Services (industrials) cratered 50.1% in a single session. After yesterday’s STRL +52.2%, today’s PRIM -50.1% — the dispersion within infrastructure names is brutal. This is exactly the kind of single-name volatility that should remind everyone: sector themes are real, but stock-specific risk is alive. KVYO (software application) followed with -32.23%. Software dispersion continues — not all AI plays are equal, and the market is starting to differentiate.

Quick Scan — Stocks

AAPL (+1%) — Apple up more than 1% today. The company is facing supply shortages for the Mac mini, with demand far beyond expectations. We’ve been saying for two weeks that the Mac mini AI surprise was the real takeaway from earnings — the demand confirmation makes it official. Biggest candle: green at 15:30. Range 281.9—287.5.

KLRN (Flat) — Not much movement for Klarna today. We will soon replace Klarna with another stock for the daily follow-up — there’s been too little signal here. Biggest candle: red at 16:30. Range 14.2—14.3.

ENGI (Flat) — A second consecutive trendless session for Engie. Earnings tomorrow. The market is in classic pre-print silence. Biggest candle at 09:00. Range 27.5—27.9.

SONY (Green) — Great session for Sony. The company and GIC Venture are finalizing a deal worth around $3.5-4B for Recognition Music. That’s a meaningful catalyst — finally a reason to break out of the 19.6 zone. Range 20.5—20.7.

RYA (+7%) — Very good session for all airline stocks. In a day where oil tension appeared to ease, it comes as no surprise. We’ve said it before — as soon as oil tension vanishes, it’s straight big gains for airlines. Today is the textbook proof. Range 54.4—58.5.

AF (+9.6%) — Fantastic session for Air France for the same reasons as Ryanair. Same trade, same logic, even bigger payoff thanks to the higher beta. Range 9.4—10.3.

NFLX (Flat) — Stop-gap session for Netflix today. Three days of declines absorbed, no further deterioration. The reset we wanted. Range 87.1—88.2.

Quick Scan — Crypto

BTC (Green shooting star) — Bitcoin also drew a green shooting star this Wednesday. Bears might come back in the next 2 days. Caution above $80K — the pattern is signaling sellers taking profits.

ETH (Red shooting star) — Ethereum drew a red shooting star today. The $2,419 level appeared as resistance. Six-day rally pausing here.

ADA (Green) — ADA remained on the increase today. The $0.26 level will now be tested for resistance — the key level to break for sustained momentum.

XLM (Green shooting star) — Stellar drew a green shooting star today. We saw a rejection from the envelope baseline at $0.165. Watch for follow-through.

SOL (+3.3%) — Solana gained an extra 3.3% today. The breakout from yesterday’s $85.4 envelope test is confirming.

UNI (Green) — Uniswap registered a 3rd consecutive session of gains today. The momentum is building.

CAKE (+4%) — PancakeSwap rallied by a bit more than 4% today.

HBAR (Green shooting star) — Hedera drew a green shooting star today. Same signal as BTC — watch for sellers.

NIGHT (Green) — Some relief for Night today.

Edition 17 of The Awakened Investor. Engie earnings drop tomorrow — the test we’ve been waiting for. The stock is up 25% YTD with strong numbers already priced in. The reaction matters more than the print. Subscribe for daily coverage.

— Ali