Good morning everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the market open. We are live. It is Wednesday, October 22nd. And well, we have a pre-market where one stock is up about 70%. Don't really know why, but nonetheless, it is indeed up. A lot of you guys know which one I'm talking about, and this is, I think, kind of one of the main stories of the day, and we're going to see how it plays out. Sorry, it's not up 70%. It's up 98% now. Talking about Beyond Meat. I don't know why we just can't have a normal market. I don't know why we have to have these types of stocks do what they do, but this is what they're doing. Beyond Meat, we left the market closed yesterday and this thing was $4.45. It is now $7.29.

If you look at the options flow, and we're going to look at some stats on Beyond Meat, it's quite incredible some of the amount of trades that are coming in in terms of the option flow, but also some of the people that went long on this thing back when it was like two bucks. Maybe they knew something was coming, but there you go. Beyond Meat has 16xed over the past week from 50 cents to eight bucks basically. I think it was at like 8.50 a little bit earlier before right now. And that's what you got going on. So look, I am watching on the sidelines from this for those who are in it. Do what you got to do. If you got to trade it, you got to trade it.

The Walmart partnership was announced yesterday and I guess that is somewhat bullish. Well, it's obviously more than somewhat bullish given the stock has run as much as it's run. It was also short at 60%. So I think that's another reason why Beyond Meat is moving the way it's moving. But nonetheless, we're going to see when the market opens when a lot more capital comes into not only this stock but a lot of other stocks and algos get in place what actually happens if retail gets in. There's a little bit of a story on retail trying to squeeze the hedge funds that are shorting it. So we'll talk more about kind of what's going on here. But nonetheless, Beyond Meat, one of the biggest runners today, is up 100% in the pre-markets.

Outside of that, we got a bunch of other headlines. So, we had some Google, Amazon stuff that happened yesterday. We'll talk about that. Google right there, they're up about 2.25% in the pre-markets. You have a bunch of quotes from Trump yesterday. He was hosting a Dvali celebration with a bunch of Indian leaders and he said a bunch of things about India and Russia. So, we'll talk about some of those quotes and what those quotes implicate.

The broader S&P 500 is relatively okay. It's less than 1% from all-time highs. Dow Jones was closed just below 47,000 yesterday. And the theme that we've been talking about for this past week is some of these momentum stocks like the Oklos, the D-Waves of the world, they've been losing a lot of their momentum based on just looking at their stock prices. And look, in the pre-markets, it's not that much better. Now, it's a red pre-market, but it's not a deep red pre-market. Some of those names like in Oklo continue to get hit in the pre-market, down 4%. You got a D-Wave right there that's down about 5%.

So I think one of the most important things when the market opens is hey can some of these stocks that have gotten eviscerated really over the past week and a lot of them are falling from all-time highs and you know it doesn't mean that they're going to zero but it does mean that a lot of the momentum that was carrying them to these massive massive valuations structurally could be dying out and I think today is going to be a really important day because yesterday all these names were down 10%. If that continues for a second day in a row, we might have some issues in these names. If the and if the S&P continues to go higher or at least stay stable, Nvidia stays at 180, Nvidia doesn't tank to 160 while Oaklo's tanking, you know, 30 40%. That means the market's deciding, oh, we are done playing with these stocks and we are going back to the important stocks that actually run the market. And so, we're going to have to see. So, I think today is going to be a really important day to see if that ends up continuing to happen or if it kind of goes the other direction.

So, we got a lot to talk about. Thank you everybody for being here. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Beyond Meat is uh doing its thing. And let me know in the chat if you made any money off this, if you traded it, if you got in a while ago. I see I saw a bunch of screenshots yesterday of people that bought in at like freaking 50 cents um on October 17th, five days ago. So, you do have a ton of people that actually made some money. A lot of them sold at like two, three bucks. They didn't think it would go that much higher, but yeah, there you go. We are now much higher.

And that's what we got. A couple of you couple of you saying you made some money on it. Couple of you guys saying some money. All the money going into Beyond Meat. Yeah, maybe a lot of the money is leaving those other momentum names and it's just going into the new toy which is Beyond Meat. H we're going to see if that ends up continuing to play out.

All right, so let's get into it. Thank everybody for being here. Good morning. Good morning once again. Got a lot of stories and let's get into it. Surj, thank you for the $20 super chat. Appreciate it. Marathon government summit today. You know, the government had a big crypto panel yesterday and we'll talk about the implications of that crypto panel. There was a lot of different things they discussed in regards to new payment infrastructure. A lot of stuff that seems relatively bullish for the future of crypto in this country. And uh so we'll talk about that and we'll do a briefing on that.

Also uh let's not forget we had Netflix earnings yesterday which I think we'll start off with along with Tesla earnings later today which we'll do a big preview on. I think we'll be guest to kick off Tesla earnings. Um, in terms of what we have with Netflix, so let's just start off with that, then we'll get to some of the other earnings that we had today.

Netflix had a good quarter. The problem is they had a Brazilian tax dispute with some authorities, which caused a $690 million uh penalty that they had to pay. And as a result, their operating margins got hit by about 3% and that means their actual net income got hit by 16% in terms of EPS. So Netflix right there, 5.87 versus 6.97 missed by 16%. Revenue came in line with expectations. Netflix is down in the pre-market. I think this is not a real big deal for Netflix. At the end of the day, Netflix is a phenomenal company and they will continue to keep executing and continue to grow over the long term.

However, for the people that thought they were going to smash earnings, they didn't, right? It was a good quarter. It was not a phenomenal quarter. One could argue it's not even a great quarter because when you miss by 16% on EPS, even if it's something that's out of your control like Brazilian tax authorities, that can still cause some pain. And unfortunately, that pain is why the street did not get excited for Netflix.

I don't think this is a uh contagion with all the Mac tech all the Mac 7 companies. I think this is isolated towards Netflix and you know unfortunately it sucks that Netflix has to kick off big tech earnings with this. We do have Tesla today and you know I hope Tesla has good earnings but I'm not expecting anything massive and you know if we don't get something massive from Tesla, Netflix I don't think that's emblematic of Meta, Microsoft, Google etc. not having good earnings. Those are the ones that really, really, really matter. And so, as long as we see some momentum around those names, then I think we're going to be okay.

But regardless, that is what you had from Netflix uh yesterday. Yeah. And you know, one can make the argument Netflix has nothing to do with the rest of tech. At the end of the day, Netflix is a media company. It is a tech company, but they buy media and they sell a subscription against that media. They are not the ones spending $450 billion on capex to try to, you know, compete with the other hyperscalers. From that perspective, I don't think it would be that big of a deal.

Transitioning to Google, though, uh Google is up in the pre-markets. Why is Google up in the pre-markets? Well, uh yesterday after hours, this bad boy got all the way up to 257, right now at 255. So, Google fell to 244 yesterday when there were rumors of OpenAI launching a new browser. OpenAI did launch that browser. We'll talk about it in a second. But then after hours you had anthropic rumors around, hey, Anthropic, which has largely used AWS, might end up signing a multiple tens of billions of dollar deal with Google for cloud computing.

>> Google on a new cloud deal potentially worth tens of billions of dollars in compute. That's according to Bloomberg. So far, Amazon has been its main infrastructure provider and its largest backer, investing around $8 billion into the company. Google has put in about $3 billion and has supported Anthropic's multicloud strategy. I reached out to both companies, haven't heard back yet. I will say this, Google was down all day because of that OpenAI web browser, but those shares bouncing higher in the after hours, up more than 3%, Mel. >> All right, Mac. Thank you, Mackenzie Sagalos.

So look, I thought that was actually pretty bullish for Google because at the end of the day, if Anthropic's thinking of diversifying their cloud revenue spend, then you know, Google being the beneficiary of that and maybe not Microsoft as much as their competitors. That is bullish. Now, is it bearish? Amazon, not really. Amazon already makes a ton of money off anthropic. I mean, there were rumors that they paid them over $3 billion in AWS just this year alone. Amazon was up 2% yesterday, even after the outage. It was down 1.2%, still down 1.2% off of this anthropic news. bullish Google, not bearish Amazon, but nonetheless, the street's going to react and, you know, they're going to take Google higher, take Amazon lower based on a that headline, but I don't think it's a headline that would necessarily cause that much pain for uh for Amazon.

Can we talk about how many times Catch mentioned Google during the live stream? You know, I didn't even watch the live stream, so I I don't know how many times OpenAI mentioned Google. I would imagine they probably wanted to mention Google a lot to be able to uh show off their new browser. Look, in terms of their new browser, again, I really do think it's a nothing burger. It it's it's not it's not the most exciting thing to me when you take a look at this browser. And and the the thing is, number one, it looks like Perplexity's comet. And number two, there's the browser right there. Number two, I don't know why Chrome's not going to be able to do this either. I I like all it is is a a web browser with an AI assistant on the corner or on the side.

And as a result, you know, when you press ask Gemini or ask chatbt, that's it. So, I think Chrome should like quickly come out with something that uh that rivals this and just shows you, hey, you don't need to use something like this, especially because they have the distribution. I think there will definitely be a lot of people that use Atlas, which is the name of their their browser. I just don't think it's I just don't think it's a a a death argument for for Chrome.

Chrome already has it, but Chrome Pro has it, right? Not the regular Chrome. I heard Google Pro has it, but not not Chrome in general. Some of you guys saying, "Okay, maybe I have to update to see if Chrome already has I've never seen it on Chrome." But if that's the case, then yeah, regular Chrome has it as well. That's weird. Okay, I feel like I should have known that or maybe they need to do a better job of like telling people that's there. But a more integrated version of Gemini in the browser I think is inevitable. And so like again OpenAI is going to get users from this. It's going to be good for them. I just don't know if it's a bare case for I mean Google lost a hundred billion dollars when this announcement. And so it's just like if you picked up that dip at 244. It was really a gift and you know you got a nice little trade from 256 right here is what we have on Google.

Salesforce that's flat in the premarket. Meta that's down uh.3%. Amazon down 1.2. PayPal that's down half a percent. Apple that's down half a percent. SMCI down one. Ethereum and Bitcoin unfortunately have not been able to get a lot of momentum. The problem with Ethereum and Bitcoin right here is uh Bitcoin went up to 114 yesterday. It came all the way down to 108 by the end of the day. Now it's back at 108. Uh and then Ethereum got to 4100 right back down to 3,800.

So a lot of the momentum that they saw for a little bit potentially based on the rally of gold dying out which we'll talk about in a second. It's almost like that money came to crypto and that money left crypto. I mean, it is one of the weirdest October I've seen for Bitcoin in particular. And as a result, all the crypto derivatives, whether it's a Coinbase, a Micro Strategy, a Hood, a BMR, BMR right there, 50.98, not getting as much love. And as a result, those are getting hit.

Now, let's talk about gold. So, gold is uh not doing the best. It's down another 1.5% as you can see right there. Silver down another 1%. The hard thing to understand about gold is that although it's had it massive rally, it has lost 2.5 trillion of market cap um over the past two days. Another 8% decline. This is the largest two-day drop since 2013.

So just like the momentum stocks like your quantum and nuclear names that are not really getting any love in the pre-market and you got like some stocks that are down half a percent, a lot of those stocks are down 5% right now in the pre-markets. gold continuing to go down as well. I think the biggest thing a lot of people should be watching out for just as a market participant is, hey, is gold going to recover? Are momentum stocks going to recover? And we're not just talking about momentum as in, you know, Amazon, Google that have momentum. We're talking about massive high beta names that don't really have tons and tons of revenue earnings, but have a lot of momentum carrying them on their narratives. Are they going to recover?

Because if they don't recover and if gold doesn't recover, maybe they even go sideways even if they don't keep going down, that means there's some structural shifts happen happening in this market. And I I I think it would become pretty evident over the next coming days if you don't see any level of movement a top on those numbers. But it seems like that could be playing out right now and that's how we would ultimately have to navigate it. Gold again right here down at 4,51. It loses 51 points. It's down below 4,000. And psychologically, that could also be something that a lot of traders don't necessarily love to see.

Uh, Applied Digital, looks like they got a deal right here in the pre-markets. APLD 33.98 that is up 4%. Um, and so we'll see what deal they had. I know they had a good earnings a couple of weeks ago as well, which got this stock to really get a move. Same thing with Navitas. Apply Digital enters a 5 billion 15year lease agreement for an AI factory in North Dakota.

Okay, North Dakota. There you go. Apply Digital 5 billion 15-year lease agreement. We'll try to get some more details on it. Looks like they're working with two of the world's largest hyperscalers. They didn't announce which of the hyperscalers, 600 megawws is what they're going to be looking for in this North Dakota AI factory. again more of these companies getting these deals from the hyperscalers and I think a lot of them that have rallied over the past couple of weeks I mean they really need more deals to justify the rally and so applied digital showing some of the deals that you have right here

um Russia Ukraine all right we got some headlines there so I think this is stuff that was talked about um last night as well when Trump was speaking the Financial Times right here saying Russia strikes Ukraine after Trump Putin meeting cancelled a lot of this was hinted did yesterday based on what Trump said about Putin. He was explicitly asked if you want to meet with Putin and he said no. He doesn't want to waste his time. And well, now it looks like we're actually seeing the ramifications of that.

>> I don't want to have a wasted meeting. I don't want to have a waste of time. So, I'll see what happens. But, uh, we did all of these, uh, great deals, great peace deals. They're all peace deals, agreements, solid agreements, every one of them, but this one. And I said, "Go to the line. Go to the line of uh battle on the battlefield lines and you pull back and you go home and everybody take some time off because you got two countries that are killing each other. Two countries are losing 5 to 7,000 soldiers a week. So, we'll see what happens. It's we haven't made a determination."

>> Now, Russia has been striking Ukraine for the past couple weeks now. So, it's it's not like this is like the first strike in a long time. I mean, this is part of the reason why Trump is pissed off, right? is because they haven't stopped striking Ukraine and they haven't agreed to any level of a ceasefire. This is after the Putin phone call he had last week which he said you know was reasonable uh in terms of getting to some level of negotiation and this was after the Zalinsky meeting in the Oval Office. So even after both meetings and this is like multiple meetings he's had this year with both of these guys especially after the Alaska conference they had back in in June still no progress on this. I mean, it goes to show how unbelievably deep this conflict is and how hard it is to really get to a negotiation here. If they were to do it, Marcus probably would like it, but right now it doesn't look as easy to uh to get this job done.

Speaking of deals, government shutdown still in place. You had a trade representative Jameson Greer give some thoughts in the morning and basically he said that the Democrats continue to hold up the negotiations which again Mike Johnson and Trump and all these it's the same story every single day. One side blaming the other. Uh Kevin Hassid yesterday said maybe by the end of the uh by the end of the week we're going to get some you know some some level of resolution on this but I don't know dude it looks grim.

It looks very grim. Kaui is still estimating November 16th there is a chance for the shutdown to last. We are now 21 days into the shutdown. The headline yesterday as well was that Trump said he is not going to speak to the Democrats until the government is reopened. So, I mean, if the Democrats don't want to talk until the government until the the Democrats want to talk before the government is open to get to a deal and Trump's not willing to talk until after it's open, you got two sides that are at a standstill. And I don't know how it's going to be resolved. Again, markets don't care about it too much right now, but I think if this lasts more than 30 days, you know, and we're nine days away from that happening, markets might start to care.

But that is what you've got with Russia, Ukraine, and some of this government shutdown. The rare earth stocks, let's take a look at them. Wow. Continue to go down in the pre-market. MP down 3.5. TMQ down 7. CRML down 9. LAC down 3.3. US AR down 5.5. The quantum stocks, D-Wave, that's down 6%, and NQ that is down 2%. Regetti, this one has gotten hit pretty bad. That's down another 3.5%.

Nanukular, that one is down 2.4. Oaklo is down 5.3. Oaklo again was at 147 yesterday. Now it's at 132. Alltime high was around 193. Uh and then SMR, this stock is slightly flat to green. So you got all those names still continuing to take a hit. The Bitcoin miners turn data centers. Galaxy got some love yesterday because of they had good earnings. That's down 4%. IN down 4%. Cipher down five. CleanSpark down three. Wolf down one. Hive down six. Bit farms down seven. Marathon down two. And Riot down two.

Again, a lot of these names, whether they're Bitcoin miners, regionals, or not regionals, rare earths. Regionals is actually doing pretty well after uh some good earnings that we saw over the past couple days, uh it's Bitcoin miners, rare earth stocks, quantum, and nuclear. Those are the ones right now as the S&P 500 is $2 away from alltime highs are down 30 to 40% over the past couple weeks. And I think today is going to be really important to see structurally if that one can continue.

Jess says, "Weak hand speculative stocks and those with zero earnings getting hit hard. Let's go. Final push before the move up." Yeah, you know, I mean, again, the thing is a lot of these names can change their stock price action. The 10-year, by the way, slightly up, but still below four. If they put up a good earnings, the the hard part about understanding all this is like if these companies don't have any earnings to begin with, what earnings are they going to put up? What could they possibly say, right?

Right? Like if if Google's having a crappy couple months, they can put up a massive earnings and change the entire narrative. But if one of these stocks are having a crappy couple weeks and they don't have any earnings, what could they possibly say that get like what is Big Bear AI going to say that there's no growth? They already guided for no growth. The stock was almost $10 last week. Now it's at 691. All the people that bought at 950, like what can they look forward to on earnings? And so I think the I mean they didn't even take questions last time on their call. Big Bear AI did not take Q&A. They didn't take any questions.

So, it's going to be really interesting to see, is the money going to come back to these names or is it just going to go into an AMD and Amazon undervalued opportunities that are out there that have a bit more fundamentals, but then you see Beyond Meat and you kind of wonder, all right, like what exactly is going on right here? And I think this one is more so just a squeeze in in the context of the hedge funds that are getting excited about it with retail. But we're going to have to see, you know, where exactly this ends up playing out.

Oh, we got the SEC chair. He's talking about Beyond Meat. He's talking about Beyond Meat. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see what he has to say. He's talking about a bunch of things. And I think he's also talking about Beyond Meat. Let's get some of his thoughts.

>> Roundh ETF now. um what what what what goes on in your mind or at the SEC when you see crazy moves like this? >> Well, you know, the market's going to do what it's going to do and uh so people can focus on things that they want to invest in. What we're concerned about is man manipulative behavior. And so here even during the shutdown as we uh conduct our surveillance of the marketplace we have uh stopped trading on eight uh foreign companies on NASDAQ that showed uh indicia of uh manipulative behavior ramp and dump we call it. Um and so those have been shut down. Uh so we are monitoring the market for um uh the behavior that indicates uh you know hanky panky going on in the marketplace. So, you're you're high are you high alert, heightened alert right now that meme trading is is back on. >> Well, I think we're we're doing our normal surveillance and and so we have uh people who are devoted to that. That's part of our law enforcement effort.

Dude, this guy does not care. Yeah, there's some hanky panky going on in the market. Dude, Paul Atkins doesn't give a [ __ ] He This is Trump's SEC, folks. This is Trump's SEC. He you can look at him. He's like he's like, "Oh, cool. There's some like he doesn't care. The market's going to do what it's going to do." That is his quote. Now, if this was Gary Gendler, there would be a different vibe. But Paul Atkins is like, "Well, let people trade. If they want to trade, they want to trade."

Now, we'll get back to him in a second. We do have the entire market that's taking a pretty ugly red candle right here. So, I'm definitely getting assigned on this Nebius 98. I will be a shareholder on Friday if this doesn't bounce. 98.97 D-Wave 10% down. Netflix 9.4%. Tesla down 2%. S&P loses 670. Hoodie 124 low 120s might be coming up. Nvidia that's down half a percent. Oaklo down 13% potentially losing 120. AS just lost 70. Oh my. AS just lost 70. SoFi 27.50 that's down 4%.

Here's uh what UBS has to say about the state of the markets that we're in right now.

>> 100 isn't a coincidence. I think you have an alignment of um productivity, an alignment of policy, and I think that we see that continuing to go forward. I think that you also have some tailwinds that could help us out with interest rates coming down. And what you've seen from the Fed and you've seen this this pivot by the Fed, the pal pus pivot. Um you've seen a pivot to an understanding that interest rates are going to come down and I think that that could be and and we at UBS feel that that could be something that will help the market going forward.

>> Yeah, I mean, you could call it the Doge dividend. It's it's been a reframe of how people think about spending in Washington. In addition to that, you have a president, an administration, a secretary of the Treasury that doesn't think out of the box, but has no box. And you hear the the the Treasury Secretary talk about stable coins being a two trillion dollar uh industry. You see treasuries being used as under the Genius Act as something that would would be backing stable coins. So there is an effort to address the fiscal realities of what's going on. A $ 38 trillion deficit is not something that this administration is going to tolerate and that certainly is having a positive impact on the uh on the animal spirits and on the economy.

>> Yeah. And I think you see that risk in what's happening in the credit markets. You see it in the smaller uh the smaller credit obligations. But I think that on balance taking a risk in the equity markets and on any pullback gain greater exposure to those equity markets could be something that would benefit. at UBS, you know, we believe that the market could be somewhere between 67 and 6,900 by the end of this year. Um, by June of next year, we could see 7,300. And we we have a bullc case scenario that says 8,000. And I think there's a lot of factors that are coming into play. It's a perfect storm of goodness that could happen, but we have to be cognizant of the risk. You see gold prices going up. I mean, notwithstanding the movement today, notwithstanding the movement today, um, you see gold prices going up.

Now, is that a question of people buying a risk insurance or is that a matter of people understanding that there's fiscal issues that are going on around the world? The fiscal premiums around the world for sovereign debt are something that we have to take note of. But all in all, between the productivity that comes from artificial intelligence, between with lower interest rates and the $7 trillion on the sideline, this is a very positive time to be in the markets

>> and and does it matter? Do you like small caps over large caps? Do you stick with technology? I mean, how do you allocate that? So if you look at uh monumental changes that are going on the economy, having exposure to technology, having exposure to artificial intelligence, longevity is an issue that that is on everybody's mind. I have a birthday coming up so it's on my mind, but uh but this is something that that we all are looking at and technology as applied throughout industries is going to change many many things. So it it it goes beyond just uh just what we're used to in normal practice because we have things happening now that have never happened before.

>> All right, Alan, thank you for joining us. It's always good to be here, sir. Thank you. Good to see you from UBS. Alan. >> All right, so UBS is pretty bullish in the midst of all the different arguments to be bearish or bullish on the market. UBS chooses to think this is one of the better times to be in the market.

Here's the thing that I'm thinking for Tesla, and I said this yesterday, but I don't know what the company will be able to say on electricity, energy, power, uh, deliveries, or FSD to to get this thing to really go higher. Given it's up so much from 335, I think Elon will be able to paint a story after the earnings that are out that basically says Tesla is the greatest physical AI company that's out there in the market and that theoretically could help the stock.

Now granted, if the stock was at 330, this would be a different question, but the stock is up way above 330 and most people did probably didn't think it would even touch the 400s given how much it was stuck in the low 300s. And there's no earnings growth for it to go up. So, it's just pure excitement on the trillion dollar pay package and the XAI equity stake and El Elon buying a billion dollars of stock. I just think they need to have a quarter that doesn't mess up any of their momentum. And as long as that happens, I think Tesla stays strong and at least it holds the 420s, you could say.

But I really don't know what gets Tesla to move to like 450, 460. I see the problem with robo taxi news all these headlines that they could put out whether it's optimist robo taxi any of this stuff none of this I think is going to change the dynamics of the earnings picture so it would be old narrative so then the question becomes is the narrative good enough and it's like yeah sometimes the narrative is good enough but the narrative is good enough when the stock's in the gutter Tesla's not in the gutter it was in the gutter but then after Elon bought shares and that pay package came out stock's up a lot from the lows I mean the stock was at 240 on the lows it's at 435 year to date it's up 15%.

So, my gut tells me it's not going to be a a fun quarter for the stock. Uh, and I definitely wouldn't bet on it like or like take an earnings gamble, but maybe they announce something. I mean, they're not buying back their stock. You know, they have 38 billion in cash, but like the street already knows a lot of the numbers. It's like the numbers can't be the surprise. The surprise is going to have to be Elon announcing something that we don't know about FSD or robotics or energy or like energy demand is going insane. We just signed a contract with Nvidia to power a bunch of data centers in the Dominican Republic and Tesla's going to be the battery pack that like you know something like that maybe. But outside of that announcement, I I just don't know what to expect for Tesla.