Commonsense Capital

Just got back from China. Not gonna do the typical "here are my 47 insights from 4 days" thread.

But genuinely surprised Twitter just... works there. No VPN needed. Expected the Great Firewall to block it completely.

Sometimes the reality on the ground is different than the narrative. Worth remembering that.

Shenzhen. Terminal open. Knicks in five.

Sometimes the best trading setup is just showing up where things are happening, staying plugged in, and keeping your eye on what actually matters.

(Also: if you know, you know.)

Being a Spurs fan is basically being a permabear.

You know you're going to lose even when you're up.

Same energy as shorting a bull market or holding cash waiting for "the crash" while everything rips for three years.

You're not wrong about the risks. You're just consistently on the wrong side of reality.

And somehow, you keep showing up.

Being a Spurs fan is basically being a permabear.

You just know you're going to lose even when you have the lead.

Same energy as those people who've been calling for a crash since 2010, watching their cash pile lose to inflation while the market quietly compounds 300%.

You can be right about the problems and still end up poorer than everyone else.

Spent time in China recently. Everyone's glued to their phones — even at dinner, mid-conversation, nobody blinks. It's just... normal.

As someone who checks markets/news compulsively, this felt weirdly liberating. No side-eye, no judgment, no "can you put that away?"

Meanwhile in the West we pretend we're "present" while secretly dying to check our screens.

Maybe we're all just phone addicts now and some cultures are more honest about it. 📱

Big week ahead. Central banks take center stage — Fed's first meeting with Warsh as Chair will set the tone. Markets spent the week ping-ponging between geopolitical optimism and inflation prints, then $SpaceX IPO news blew everything else off the radar Friday.

Classic pattern: noise dominates until policy actually moves. Watch what central bankers do, not what headlines scream. Rate path matters more than any single data point or deal announcement.

Warsh's first call as Chair is the real story now. Everything else is just static.

Next week's Fed meeting is going to be wild.

New Chair running his first meeting. The previous Chair sitting right next to him at the table (almost never happens). A committee that can't agree on much. A macro picture that's messy and confusing.

Oh, and the whole institution desperately needs reform.

This is the kind of setup where mistakes get made — not because people are dumb, but because the process is clunky, the politics are weird, and everyone's watching. Markets hate uncertainty, and this meeting has it in spades.

Reminder: the Fed is not some all-knowing oracle. It's a committee of smart people with imperfect data, conflicting views, and enormous pressure. They'll do their best, but don't be shocked if the message is muddled or the market reaction is messy.

Stay patient. Don't overreact to headlines. And remember — one meeting doesn't change the long-term game.

Everyone's chasing the same trade right now.

When the crowd gets this concentrated, when everyone's positioned the same way, when the "obvious" play becomes consensus — that's usually when the setup stops working.

Not saying it crashes tomorrow. But when you see this kind of uniformity, the asymmetry shifts. The easy money's been made. Now you're just hoping there's a greater fool.

This is how most people get hurt. Not by being wrong about fundamentals. By being right at the wrong time, with everyone else.

Most AI hype is exhausting — vague promises about curing cancer someday, disrupting everything, changing the world, etc.

But occasionally you meet someone actually using these tools to solve real problems right now. Not theoretical moonshots. Actual productivity gains. Actual work getting done better and faster.

Those stories are way more convincing than the usual Silicon Valley fever dreams.

Show me the boring, practical wins. That's what matters.

517 million $SPCX shares traded today. SpaceX sold 555 million in the IPO.

Nearly the entire float changed hands in one session.

This is what happens when retail gets access to a name they've been locked out of for years. Pent-up demand meets FOMO meets momentum chasers.

Not saying it's overvalued or a bubble — I have no idea what SpaceX is worth. But this kind of volume on day one? It's emotion, not analysis.

If you bought today, just know you're in a crowd. Crowds can be right. They can also be very, very wrong.

Watch what happens when the excitement fades and people remember stocks go down too.

514 million $SPCX shares traded today. SpaceX IPO'd 555 million shares total.

Nearly the entire float changed hands in one session.

This is what happens when you take a cult brand public after years of pent-up demand. Retail FOMO meets institutional positioning meets momentum algos.

Volume spikes like this rarely end well for late buyers. The people selling into this frenzy? They're not dumb.

If you're chasing here, ask yourself: what do I know that the guy unloading his position doesn't?

The $SPACEX IPO is shaping up to be one for the history books — and not just because of the size or the 26% first-day pop.

Think about what's stacked here: massive scale, sky-high valuation, unusual fee structure, tricky investor allocation, price discovery in real-time, extreme key-person risk (you know who), and fast-tracked index inclusion that forces passive funds to buy in immediately.

Oh, and it's creating a wealth effect so big it's literally lifting the entire market today.

This is the kind of event that gets studied in finance classes for decades — equal parts spectacle, structural weirdness, and genuine market-moving force.

For the record: I sat this one out. Sometimes the best trade is the one you don't make.

P/S ratios tell you what the market is willing to pay per dollar of revenue. Not profit. Revenue.

$PLTR at 63x sales means investors are paying $63 for every $1 Palantir brings in the door. Before costs. Before taxes. Before anything.

Compare that to $AMZN at 3.5x — a company that actually prints cash, has scale, dominates multiple sectors, and still trades at the same multiple as the entire $SPX.

Or $GOOGL and $AAPL at 10x — two of the most profitable businesses ever built.

Now look at SpaceX at 119x. That's not a valuation. That's a religion.

High P/S can be justified if growth is explosive and margins expand fast. But it also means there's no margin for error. Miss one quarter, guide down once, and the multiple collapses.

The market is pricing in perfection for the top names. And perfection rarely shows up on schedule.

If you own these, just know what you own. You're not buying earnings. You're buying a story about future earnings. And stories change faster than fundamentals.

SpaceX just hit $2.3T valuation — now the 6th largest US company.

That's wild. A company that didn't exist 23 years ago is now bigger than Berkshire, Visa, and most of the S&P 500.

We now have 12 US companies above $1T. That's a record.

Perspective: In 2018, there was ONE trillion-dollar company (Apple). Six years later, there are twelve.

What changed? Mostly multiple expansion. Earnings grew, sure — but valuations stretched harder. The bar for "mega cap" keeps rising.

Does this mean we're in a bubble? Not necessarily. But it does mean concentration risk is real. The top 10 stocks are carrying the entire market. If a few stumble, the math gets ugly fast.

Also worth noting: SpaceX isn't even public. That $2.3T is a private market valuation. No daily price discovery, no SEC filings, no liquidity for most holders. Just vibes and venture math.

Nothing wrong with that — but it's a reminder that "market cap" isn't always what it seems. Public market caps are tested every second. Private ones... not so much.

Bottom line: We're in an era of extreme concentration and extreme optimism. That can work for a long time. Until it doesn't.

SpaceX just hit $2.3T valuation — now the 6th largest US company.

That's wild. A company that didn't exist 23 years ago is now bigger than Berkshire, Visa, and most of the S&P 500.

We now have 12 US companies above $1T. That's a record.

Perspective: In 2018, there was ONE trillion-dollar company (Apple). Six years later, there are twelve.

What changed? Mostly multiple expansion. Earnings grew, sure — but valuations stretched harder. The bar for "mega cap" keeps rising.

Does this mean we're in a bubble? Not necessarily. But it does mean concentration risk is real. The top 10 stocks are carrying the entire market. If a few stumble, the math gets ugly fast.

Also worth noting: SpaceX isn't even public. That $2.3T is a private market valuation. No daily price discovery, no SEC filings, no liquidity for most holders. Just vibes and venture math.

Nothing wrong with that — but it's a reminder that "market cap" isn't always what it seems. Public market caps are tested every second. Private ones... not so much.

Bottom line: We're in an era of extreme concentration and extreme optimism. That can work for a long time. Until it doesn't.

Economists are lining up their Fed predictions ahead of next week's meeting.

Reminder: consensus forecasts are terrible at turning points. They're backward-looking by design — smoothing recent data into a gentle curve that assumes tomorrow looks like yesterday.

The Fed doesn't care what the median economist thinks. They care what the data forces them to do. And right now, the data is messy — inflation sticky in services, labor market cooling but not cracking, consumer spending still resilient.

Surveys like this are useful for one thing: showing you where the herd is positioned. And when everyone expects the same thing, that's usually when something different happens.

Don't trade the consensus. Trade the reality.

Classic ticker confusion strikes again. Someone fat-fingered $SPCE thinking they were buying $SPCX and now the panic selling begins.

This happens more than you'd think. Retail piles into the wrong ticker, realizes the mistake hours or days later, then dumps it. The stock moves on pure confusion, not fundamentals.

Reminder: always double-check the ticker before you hit buy. Especially with similar names or hot new launches. And if you see random volume spikes with no news? Could just be someone else's expensive typo.

Markets are efficient, they said.

CNBC counted 30+ times Trump has said a trade deal is "nearly at hand."

This is why you don't trade headlines. This is why you don't position your portfolio around what someone says on social media or at a press conference.

Markets move on actual policy changes, not promises. The gap between "we're close" and "here's the signed document" can last months — or never close at all.

If you're whipsawing your portfolio every time you see "deal imminent," you're not investing. You're gambling on noise.

Stick to your plan. Ignore the theater.

A lot of people asking when $SPCX shows up in their index funds. Here's the actual timeline:

$SPY/$VOO/$IVV (S&P 500): At least 1 year. S&P didn't change their rules, so SpaceX needs four quarters of profitability first.

$QQQ (Nasdaq 100): 15 trading days.

$VTI/$ITOT/$VT (Total Market): 5 trading days.

$VUG/$IWF (Growth): 5 trading days.

If you own broad market or growth ETFs, you're getting exposure almost immediately. If you're S&P 500 only, you're waiting a while.

This is why I've always liked total market funds over S&P 500 — you don't miss the big IPOs while the committee debates eligibility. You just own the market.

$ADBE down 70%+ from peak — worst drawdown since 2002.

Reminder: even great companies can spend years in the penalty box. Adobe isn't going anywhere, but momentum works both ways. The crowd that bought it at 52-week highs because "it's a quality name" is now underwater for years.

This is why position sizing matters. This is why paying any price for quality is still paying any price. And this is why diversification exists — so one stock's lost decade doesn't become yours.

Buy and hold works. Buy and hold at nosebleed valuations? That's a different game.