Don't Miss These Easy Market Plays
418: Crypto Picks Soaring, Social Unrest Equity Plays
Morning all, it is a cold rainy morning in the Northeast which are some of my favorite days to throwback iced coffee, pack a strong upper decky, and then proceed to shitpost and write.
So much going on this week so let’s get straight into it today we will be covering:
Equity performance so far this week
Crypto’s pump led by ETH and alt coins
Domestic unrest stock picks I am adding
Los Angeles protest updates and more global news to be aware of
On a quick housekeeping note — make sure you guys are following on X. Whether it’s market news, crypto trades, or global news updates you cannot find a quicker way to stay in the loop.
Normies are like 48 hours behind those of us who are on X.
Financial Markets
Markets are performing well this week despite the growing social unrest in LA. It seems that China talks are progressing and the beef between Elon Musk and Donald Trump that shocked markets last week seems to be subsiding, Elon has deleted some tweets he made and Trump has gone back on his claim that he was going to sell his TSLA 0.00%↑ lol.
Still Polymarket has a current 12% chance that the two will publicly reconcile by Friday.
X, formerly Twitter, actually announced on Friday that they will partner with Polymarket, choosing it to be the platform’s official prediction market partner. Check it out if you haven’t — some great odds including the chances that Trump ends up arresting Newsom lmao.
Ray Dalio put out an interesting X thread on Civil War and the major societal trends he is observing.
"It looks to me like we are now at the brink of a new era in which machine thinking will supplement or surpass human thinking in many ways, like how machine labor supplemented and surpassed human labor during the Industrial Revolutions"
— Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates Founder
Institutional investors have become noticeably bullish, supporting the S&P 500 as it recently hovered around the 6,000 mark—just a few percentage points shy of its new record high.
A strong May jobs report with approximately 139,000 new positions added—has bolstered market confidence, contributing to a second consecutive week of gains.
The resumption of U.S.–China trade negotiations in London, especially around rare earth and semiconductor export controls, helped lift sentiment across global markets
Tech and semiconductor stocks have outperformed to start the week, particularly on optimism that export restrictions might ease
The Nasdaq modestly outpaced the S&P 500 while semiconductor ETFs have led sector gains
Key inflation data, such as the May CPI, along with a large 30‑year U.S. Treasury auction, are becoming focal points and are likely driving market volatility and shaping many people’s expectations ahead of the Fed’s June meeting
Despite all of this positive momentum, valuations are still quite elevated, the S&P 500 is trading at over 22× forward earnings, prompting some coward analysts to warn of a potential market plateau
The market value of the US bond market has fallen to just 68% of the stock market’s value, the lowest ratio since the 1970s (Kobeissi Letter)
Not much has changed for me on the equities front besides adding some LMT 0.00%↑ AMZN 0.00%↑ and TSLA 0.00%↑ off the lows.
If you missed the Defense stock picks post from last week make sure to check it out as there were numerous picks that overlap directly with AI.
Crypto
Conversations regarding the Fed’s next move should pick up some steam later this week but for now tech and crypto seem to be chugging higher.
Ethereum in particular has some life which is pulling up related meme coins and alts as well. Paid subs know that this is one of the triggers we have been watching closely to give us some indication that the bull market will continue through summer and it may just be starting.
President Trump's CFTC pick Brian Quintenz has pledged to provide jurisdictional clarity for crypto (BitcoinMagazine)
$800B AUM Bernstein has reaffirmed their $200,000 Bitcoin price forecast, labeling it “high-conviction but conservative” (CoinTelegraph)
60% of Fortune 500 companies are working on blockchain projects, Coinbase reports (WatcherGuru)
Michael Saylor (who recently aped more Bitcoin) told Jim Cramer on X that Apple should buy Bitcoin
Nearly all defi/alt/meme related Arb Letter crypto picks highlighted in the past 3 weeks are soaring this morning. As of 8:30 ET:
AAVE is up 20%
LINK is up 9.6%
AVAX is up 7%
ETH is up 9% (you can get free ETH just by opening a Gemini account HERE)
PEPE is up 11%
If this is the start of alt season and a run by ETH we are going much much higher in the short term. These plays at some point, will be a money printer for those who are well positioned.
My feeling is that max pain is going to be few stops on the way up that force sidelined traders and investors to panic buy. Still — my gut tells me that we may see some more tradeoffs between BTC dominance surging and ETH/alts pumping on and off. The traditional “cycle” pace may be behind us.
We now have the largest institutions in the world buying these assets.
Good times are ahead and the bright side is that it still seems the majority of retail is either uninterested or lacks the capital to ape like they have in the past.
Hodlrs and believers are going to get very rich in the coming months.
Unrest Driven Equity Picks
One of my favorite things to do when we have these elevated periods of social unrest is try to trade them (if they have long enough duration). We know based on some intelligence gathered on X — that many more of these demonstrations are planned this weekend.
You’re still early to some of these based on what I am seeing, but to capitalize and beat out bigger players positioning you’ll need to likely place your bets this week.