Did Markets Get The Green Light to Rip?
413: Are We About to Melt Up?
Morning all.
Covering quite a bit today — the court block of Trump’s tariff regime,AI and it’s impact on businesses and employment, crypto, NVDA 0.00%↑ earnings, housing prices, and more.
Lot of market specific information in today’s post.
If you missed the last two paid posts on crypto you can check them out below:
Your Last Warning Before Things Go Parabolic
Ultimate Crypto Guide 2025
I don’t want to get prematurely riled up — but I’m thinking in the short term were about to teleport higher. A range of different conditions are aligning that makes me think anyone on the sidelines is going to miss out on some fact melting rallies as we gain short term clarity on tariffs, crypto, AI, and more.
Job Market Updates & AI
Regardless of what the mainstream media shills or tries to sell to the public — the reality is unemployment is getting worse and companies are quietly dismissing large portions of their workforces across a variety of industries.
The future is going to look much different than people expect — we are still sort of cruising through the post covid hybrid work environment where a lucky few useless corporate peons with nonsense titles have effectively managed to dodge termination. The majority, however, have not been so lucky.
Layoffs are accelerating. It’s a sneaky theme gaining momentum while official “data” isn’t representing the entire picture of the US labor and employment market.
This week the Anthropic CEO made comments on the impact of AI and the job market.
“AI will wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in one to five years.”
Anthropic is an AI research and development company that focuses on building reliable, steerable, and safe artificial intelligence systems. It was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including Dario Amodei, who previously led OpenAI's research team.
If you’re working a white-collar job that can be done in a spreadsheet, AI has a target on your back.
Below you can see other major forecasts on job displacement due to AI.
On top of the that here are some of the more recent layoff/workforce reduction news points from the last two weeks:
IBM let go of roughly 8,000 employees, mainly in HR, as the company leans into AI to automate administrative roles
Walmart is cutting around 1,500 corporate jobs in a broader move to simplify operations and boost internal efficiency
McKinsey trimmed over 10% of its workforce—about 5,000 roles—as demand for traditional consulting services slows and automation picks up
Never been a better time to start a side gig or company kings.
Side Note on AI for Business Owners & Brands
A16Z put out an interesting article authored by Zach Cohen and Seema Amble.
In it, they discuss GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) which is now gaining traction over SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with the advent of AI.
For over 20 years, SEO was the undisputed strategy for online visibility. That’s changing fast. Search is fragmenting. Instead of traditional engines like Google, people now ask GPT-4o, Claude, Perplexity, and even Siri or Instagram for answers. In order to remain competitive as an online brand you’re going to need to work to incorporate your visibility into AI model results not just keywords that pop up on Google search.
You can see below on a Polymarket Poll that Google is still favored to have the best AI model as of the end of May — in fact it’s not even close. Polymarket’s track record has been spot on in 2025 with their recent odds on Elon Musk stepping down from a government role being spot on as of his tweet last night.
Markets
Volatility is back in markets — a reporter asked President Trump about what’s being called the “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) trade in which Wall Street is capitalizing on the flip flopping on tariffs and the reduction of tariff rates. Right after that broke, we got news that a court has blocked Trump’s Tariff regime.
A federal court has ruled that former President Trump overstepped his authority by imposing broad reciprocal tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The judges (which of course had no political bias here) found that the law does not give the president unilateral power to levy sweeping duties on imports, especially when the rationale—such as combating drug trafficking—doesn’t clearly connect to the actual trade measures enacted. The ruling halts the contested tariffs and blocks future changes under that authority, though it doesn’t affect other tariffs imposed under different statutes like those on steel and aluminum.
The Trump administration immediately appealed, defending the tariffs as necessary to address trade imbalances and protect national security. Critics—including state attorneys general and affected businesses—called the decision a win for small firms and consumers, arguing the tariffs drove up prices and invited harmful retaliation from other countries. Market reaction was swift, with Dow futures jumping 500 points on the news.
The case now heads for a likely showdown at the appellate level, and potentially the Supreme Court, as the White House defends its use of emergency powers in trade policy. Zerohedge noted that Goldman thinks this will amount to nothing:
"The administration could quickly replace the 10% tariff with a similar tariff of up to 15% under Sec 122... This would then provide the administration time to launch a series of Sec. 301 cases against larger trading partners"
TLDR: futures are ripping and it sounds like for the time being we are about to pump short term until we get yet another curveball. The NVDA 0.00%↑ print probably just adds fuel to this fire.
Other Market News:
Telegram to receive $300,000,000 cash, equity from xAI, plus 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram (Whale Insider)
Palantir x Freddie Mac – Palantir’s AI tools are being deployed to flag mortgage fraud at Fannie Mae and could soon roll out at Freddie Mac. Another bullish step in their growing government footprint
Nvidia Crushes Earnings – Nvidia reported $44B in revenue with AI demand driving $39B from data centers. Stock jumped after hours—guidance stayed strong despite a $4.5B hit from export curbs
HP Tanks on Tariffs – HPQ fell over 17% after missing estimates and blaming higher costs tied to tariffs
I added the following the last three trading sessions:
L3Harris Technologies the major U.S. defense contractor that develops advanced communications, surveillance, and electronic warfare systems for military, space, and intelligence operations. David Tepper of Appaloosa Management has a long in this name as of his last filing.
QuickLogic Corp, a company that designs low-power semiconductors and embedded FPGA (field-programmable gate array) solutions, often used in AI, edge computing, and defense applications.
Advanced Micro Devices AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) designs and manufactures high-performance semiconductors, including CPUs and GPUs used in personal computers, gaming consoles, and data centers. The company is a key player in the AI and cloud computing space, competing directly with Intel and Nvidia.
The Gamestop Bitcoin purchase (something I called awhile back in a paid post) is not surprising to me given Ryan Cohen’s style and the unconventional approach the management team seems to be taking. While the name dumped yesterday I think something on a whole new level of fuckery is going on with GME 0.00%↑ price.
I have some longer dated calls on Gamestop for end of summer and fall with strikes around $65/$70 for fun. Not too much technical analysis going into this play, I just think (especially now with the BTC news) that we’re going to see something ridiculous play out again before the end of the year with Gamestop.
Expect the unexpected, especially if Bitcoin hits another new ATH and other corporates join in the Bitcoin treasury play.
Real Estate Note
I talked about home affordability, sovereignty, and more with Will Tanner on his recent podcast. It’s no secret that young people today are struggling to afford homes given lower salaries and comically overvalued homes across the US.
The chart below from Apollo is staggering, showing that the median age of all homebuyers is now 56 years old — up from 31 years old in 1981. While there’s some good boomers out there, the ones who pretend like young people these days just don’t work hard enough don’t really have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to home affordability.
This is a mind blowing chart.
Home ownership is going to remain out of grasp for millions of young people as we get closer to 2030. Asset prices are sky high, the dollar is worth more, and salaries have failed to keep up with the rising cost of virtually everything.
Crypto
On the heels of the court news re: tariffs, I saw for a moment last night a promising sight.
Bitcoin cooling off and ETH and alts beginning to pump.
Could it be the start of alt season? We can hope and pray. One things for sure, those who panic jeeted their Ethereum are hurting right now and are going to be lamenting their lost gains if we break $3,000 in the next two weeks.
Crypto had never been more coiled in my opinion with Bitcoin adoption spreading in the corporate world and at the institutional level like wild fire.
The US Labor Department rescinded 2022 guidance that warned fiduciaries against including crypto in their 401(k) plans
GameStop GME 0.00%↑ announced their first purchase of 4,710 Bitcoin for $512 Million in their corporate treasury
FTX is set to begin distributing over $5B in stablecoins to creditors on May 30
At this week’s Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, Vice President JD Vance said that “Crypto and digital assets particularly bitcoin are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay.”
BlackRock is set to purchase 10% of Circle's IPO shares, the issuer of USDC
New York City has plans to issue Bitcoin Bonds according to Mayor Eric Adams\
Nasdaq-listed VivoPower has raised $121M to launch an XRP-focused treasury strategy—led by Saudi Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Saud (CoinDesk)
Bergen County is planning to tokenize $240 billion in property deeds on Avalanche blockchain (CoinTelegraph)
I think there’s a high chance we see ETH and alts continue to run into next week which should spark some more retail interest in defi and alts again.
If you’re still underexposed, the window to hop on board for a quick 20% might be nearly closed.
Monday or Tuesday we’re going to take a hard pivot to national security and geopolitics again. Chinese US tensions are already high due to the trade war, but with the news re: foreign students and recent Trump administration moves to root out espionage on college campuses things are getting even more spicy. Senator Marco Rubio said on X yesterday:
The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.
In any case this week appears to be shaping up for our bags legends.
That’s all I have for you guys today — make sure to check out the latest episode of Risk On. Next week trying to record two new interviews to get up before the end of the first week of June.
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Disclaimer - I am a former trader, enterprise sales rep, and current entrepreneur with a monkey brain. Nothing I say should be considered formal financial advice or life advice, these are my opinions - always do your own research and diligence before
Been on the AA page for years - peer accts too. I noticed another prominent finmeme acct w/ about 900K followers seems to post crypto-dismissive content and his followers comment in kind. Any past conversations with this acct owner on why he's bearish on crypto?
Didn’t see reference here to $QUIK. Whats the intel king?