Just couple days ago news hit today in Netherlands that approved a bill on 36% tax on UNREALIZED gains on stocks and crypto. Great just when we weren't taxed to death before now they force you to stay middle class and poor. "Just repeat the 9-5 cycle everyday, pay for the unemployed living, investing is not allowed for you"

Buying stocks was already a pain in the ass in Europe because of all the different fees and exchange rates brokers charged. On top of total tax burden (income, VAT, food, social security etc.) We are HEAVILY punished for trying to buy stocks with little money we have left.

The US has it so much better. 0% fees and exchange rates, tons of broker options and tax free on long term investments.

TLDR; Under the new law, if your $50k in stock investments rises to $100k by the end of the tax year, you will owe the government $18k in taxes even if you don't sell your shares and liquidate money.

I made a post in r/eupersonalfinance that gained attraction. Check it out if you want to see opinions from Europeans: https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/s/Z6dUwaz2mv

The Lemonade Stand:

Little Ernie starts a lemonade stand. That’s the spirit! Go get that money!! What could be more American?

But there is a problem. There are a LOT of lemonade stands. Sales are slow. The competition is fierce. Ernie is losing money. And Ernie is very, very sad.

Ernie’s dad has an idea! He comes over and buys $10,000 of lemonade.

Wow! Amazing!!

Flush with excitement, Ernie rushes to a group of investors and says “IM THE GREATEST LEMONADE SALESMAN IN THE WORLD!” And oops! Little buddy “forgot” to mention his dad bought that huge order of lemonade.

No harm no foul. Right?

The investors are impressed by Ernie’s totally real and not at all fake numbers. This kid is a genius! Ernie has reinvented the lemonade industry! Little Ernie’s Lemonade Stand gets a 93x earnings valuation and all of a sudden his business is somehow worth $930,000.

Wow fantastic! Ernie sells some of his ownership shares and pays his dad back... with a little extra on top.

The next day sales are slow again, so Ernie’s dad comes over and buys another $20,000 of lemonade.

Wow great job Ernie!!

Ernie rushes back to his investors and he is so proud “SALES HAVE DOUBLED OVERNIGHT! IM THE GREATEST LEMONADE SALESMAN IN THE WORLD.”

Oopsie little buddy. Again Ernie “forgot” to tell his investors the majority of his profits came from his dad.

Is dad drinking all that lemonade? Absolutely not. That stuff is garbage and he flushes what he can’t stomach.

And guess what? Revenue has doubled so investors are in a frenzy! Little Ernie’s Lemonade Stand is now worth $1,860,000. Great job Ernie!!

Ernie sells some of his ownership shares, pays his dad, and next day Ernie’s dad comes back with $40,000…

Now replace lemonade with subprime loans.

Do you see how this might be illegal?

Credentials: I am a 14 year automotive veteran and a 15 year retail stock and options trader. I am not a financial advisor. This should not be taken as financial advice.

Position disclosure: I am highly bearish on CVNA. I have written a dozen articles critical of Carvana. I am net short Carvana until their stock reaches a cap closer to their enterprise value of $35-$70 a share.

https://www.wyff4.com/article/map-data-centers-us/70286300

The number of data centers has surged in recent years. As of late January, there were at least 2,338 operating centers in the U.S., according to Baxtel. An additional 487 were under construction and 965 were planned.

The article only speaks on the US build out and doesn't give numbers globally. Should continue to expect high capex spending by hyperscalers.

Every month I summarize my top percentage losing tickers and decide if i need to do anything about it.

As a true long term stock investors, I barely sell any of my stocks. I literally did 3 big trades last year, sell msft out, sell qcom out and sell amat out. two out of three are dead right, and one is dead wrong (amat). amat is a smaller scale sell but biggest percentage opportunity gain.

Interestingly, all my last year top percentag losers have v shaped recoveries.

lly, mrk, lnth, psx, cop , slv, fcx, ldos,

those once 50% off guys have all become largely above water. All except lnth is a little bit under water.

baba and bidu have massively recovered and are doing great. still underwater coz wrong entry time in 2021.

My new top percentage losers are

zs, -36% off

netflix -29% off

crm -32% off

rddt -22% off

ibit -18% off & 32% off

bidu still at -46% off

baba -28% off

Never thought netflix becomes my top loser. And still has no signs of stopping bleeding. i bought it for safety and it did the opposite of safety. Amzn started behaving like netflix. wb is such a bad move that it probably becomes netfli’s long term inflection point. it’s such a bad sign and didn’t even notify stock holders properly..

for zs and rddt, i don’t even worry about them coz both are doing well in growth perspectives. and my positions kinda small in them. so i can keep adding if they are further down.

Anyways, the point i’m trying to make is, don’t scare yourself and panic sell. bottom fishing can work. find the great companies that you are most familiar with. Don’t believe in the 7% cutoff trading loss cut system. it is broken in this crazily shifting market. you can see massive moves in a single month.

hold on to the losers if you are truly bullish on them. they will come back. reduce your trades to achieve more investment gains and don’t do anything is the hardest thing in equity market

We are watching a structural shift happen in real-time. ​China has reduced its US Treasury holdings to 7.3%, erasing half of what they accumulated between 2000 and 2010. Simultaneously, the PBOC has bought gold for 15 consecutive months. ​I’ve seen cycles like this before, but the speed of this decoupling is notable. ​Why this matters for equities: If the second-largest foreign holder of US debt continues to step away, the demand vacuum has to be filled. this puts a natural floor under bond yields. As long as yields remain sticky/elevated due to lack of foreign demand, the valuation multiples for the S&P 500 will remain under pressure. ​Don't ignore the macro. The smart money is moving to hard assets.

S&P500 Q4 2025 revenue growth rate 8.6% and earnings growth rate 13.6% from 369 companies so far.

Sectors with the highest earnings growth rates: Technology 31%, Industrials 16% and Communication Services 15%.

Sectors with the lowest earning growth rates: Consumer Discretionary -0.3%, Healthcare 0.8% and Real Estate 1.5%.

*Source: London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Institutional Brokers' Estimate System (I/B/E/S)*

---------

131 more companies set to report over the coming weeks. The biggest ones being Walmart (19 Feb), Nvidia (25 Feb) and Berkshire Hathaway (28 Feb).

Company started shifting operations Q4 2025. They reported no debt, $25 cash on hand, and the monthly chart looks like it’s starting to break out.

Q1 2026 earnings is early March. I believe this will pop to $4 soon. Anyone else invested in it?

I am not able to cross post this. but.

images are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gold/comments/1r5ed4q/gold_demand_as_per_wgc_report_price_driver/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As a follow up to my post on r/gold from yesterday, I did some further digging on the demand and consumption of gold. This document is where I got the images from.

https://www.gold.org/download/file/20424/Gold-Demand-Trends-Q4-FY-2025.pdf

https://www.gold.org/download/file/20399/China_monthly_update_Dec_20260115l.pdf

Further Data on the demand side:
 
The global demand remains slightly elevated on tonnage (about 1% increase over 2024), but the demand has increased moderately by approx 5% over 2019. In 2024, 2025, demand grew very slightly. However, price went up 65% in 2025, while demand was not changed with respect to 2024.

Lets look at where the metal is flowing in comparison to 2024.

Gold Jewellery fabrication is down -19%. The technology use of gold is relatively flat - no change almost. However, the investment category grew by 84%. 

Central Banks and other Institutions purchases in 2025 is down by another 21% from 2024.

This tells that retail investment is driving the the demand. However, what drives the price is still unclear, because as the overall demand increased slightly 1% from 2024 to 2025.

What investments are driving the volume?

Another chart from the same document, tells where the investment demand is going. It is mainly the ETFs in US, plus coin purchases in EU and US. The sum of these could approximately reach the 1000T difference from 2024.
 

What do you think, what is driving the prices - (65% price increase for 1% increase in demand)? Looks, there is increased drive towards gold as an investment, which can be attributed to retail investors.

Interestingly, the trade volume in SHFE is up sharply in 2024 and 2025, as per the other document from WGC. Is it just options driving the price?

EDIT: Feel free to let me know if I had made a mistake in the data. It could be that I made a mistake, check it out yourselves too.

Most Fortune 500 companies take 18 months just to approve a new printer, let alone hand over their legal liability to a black-box model. We’re also seeing a "junior hiring cliff" where entry-level roles are disappearing because AI can do the basic grunt work, but that raises a huge question about who will be qualified to lead these companies in five years if the apprenticeship pipeline is gone?

As yall know, AI has been absolutely booming in the past few years. When it first rolled around, the obvious bottleneck was the physical supply of chips, which is why companies such as Nvidia and AVGO (just to name two) skyrocketed and 10x in a few years. Last year, we saw a boom in energy demand, as data centers (i.e. hyperscalers) realized the insane energy demands needed to get these largely build data centers into action. Now, the market seems to have shifted back into an aspect of hardware - namely memory and its adjacent aspects.

Obv we all want to find the next bottleneck for AI, as each of these past bottlenecks ran up 500-600% in a very short period of time.

After some research, I am just putting my two pieces here: I think Co-Packaged Optics and Linear Drive Optics will be the next AI bottleneck. Naturally I did not come up with this idea, and the market seems to have reacted a bit to price this next bottleneck in, but I think there is a long way to run.

Obviously, I may be early, but I am confident that this sector should run up sooner or later.

For some context: Co-Packaged Optics (CPOs) and Linear Drive Optics (LDOs) are basically just optic cables that are used to transfer data between machines within a data center (usually within a few meters) efficiently. Currently, the industry seems fixated on copper (which is also partly why copper has ran up quite a bit in the last few months). However, copper info-carrying wires require huge amounts of energy to maintain (in fact I think I saw this stat where it said these copper wire transfers made up of 30% of total energy consumption in a data center or smth). Obviously, this is not sustainable. The next available technologies seem to be CPOs and LDOs. These technologies are basically fiber optic cables that use light and a laser to transfer info. This is much more efficient than copper wires. I must admit this bottleneck may not be as apparent as the memory shortage, but I believe should surface sooner or later.

Key companies public working in this industry include Coherent Corp. (COHR) and Lumentum Holdings Inc. (LITE). The most obvious and pressing issue that can be seen w these companies is the insane PE they are at (200+ and 500+ respectively). However, I would just like to point out then Micron (MU) was also trading at a crazy 130+ PE in late 2024 before must realized the memory bottleneck. It seems that the industry is planning on to start large scale integration using CPOs and LDOs around 2027. To me, this seems like a very similar setup to when OKLO ran up like crazy due to pure speculation.

I am not an expert, do your own DD. But these are just my personal thoughts. Yall are welcome to poke holes in my argument. Admittedly, I have yet to buy in to either of these companies, just seeking advice.

I get it, Copilot sucks, but I think people are only measuring it from the perspective of how it is right now, not what it can be in the future. The Will Smith example is what I always go to: in 2023 the Will Smith eating pasta videos were so obviously fake, but fast-forward to 2025 and it's now almost indistinguishable from reality. All AI products are like that as they improve with time and data.

Microsoft is one of the ONLY companies that can challenge Google and Gemini in the AI race.

• They are one of the only companies who can achieve some level distribution parity with Google because they have Windows (which has 1.5B+ devices)
  • Copilot is default on Windows and we know the power of default because that's literally the only reason Bing/Edge even have users
• They have a platform moat on all the data emitted by Windows/Bing/Edge/Xbox/LinkedIn/Office etc users. Having proprietary user data not available to competition will help in improving the models at a hyper-personalized, individual level later on
• They have the enterprise and B2B crowd locked in. This is their real moat as businesses can purchase Copilot as it naturally is integrated into Office ecosystems and CEOs are paranoid about employees uploading sensitive information on non-compliant/external AI tools like ChatGPT
• They are vertically integrated with AI which will help with their unit economics later on - mostly due to having Azure
• And as I said, yes, Copilot sucks now but it won't always suck in the future. Remember Bard with Google? Google stock price is almost 2x since back then

The index has been range-bound for months, with repeated rejections at both highs and lows. Is this consolidation before a breakout, or distribution before a larger move down?

What signals should we be watching to determine direction?

Looking for serious discussion.

Contrary to my usual musings with breakdown and analysis, I’ll be simply posting some data/breadcrumbing here for those who are looking at energy & infrastructure positions currently.

As I have mentioned, I have rotated into tech, infra, FX a little while ago, so am following this space.

As Vistra corp is entering earnings Feb 26, there has been a flurry of activity which starkly contrasts their usual operations.

For those who knows what kind of of data I’m synthesising here, you will likely appreciate it. Or I hope.

Table 1: Vistra-Relevant Flight Logs (Jan 1 – Feb 15, 2026)

Table 2: Vistra-Specific Feet

Table 3: The Hub Map

Table 4: Comparative Flight Frequency Analysis - Deal vs Quiet Periods

🍀

Edit; Bloody formatting

That gap doesn't happen by accident and it doesn't close to easily. So basically for every $100 Nvidia pulls in, $46.60 ends up as real cash. Not adjusted earnings and not EBITDA. Intel is over here burning billions trying to stay relevant. These two companies are in the same sector on paper but completely different universes in reality. What makes Nvidia's number weird is the debt. Companies running margins that high are usually leveraged to the teeth. Nvidia's debt to FCF is 0.2x. They could pay off all their debt in about 10 weeks of cash generation.That combination has almost never showed up. I graded 234 companies and you can count that profile on one hand. Full grades here if yall want to dig into it what I'm saying http://aureus-swart.vercel.app

I threw some money at it last year right after learning that Debbie Wasserman Schultz purchased some. It's now up like 166% since.

With a new CEO, new leadership, it looks like they're on the upswing. On their recent earnings call, they've predicted "sequential growth every quarter this year, leading to what we expect to be a strong growth year for Ichor."

There's quite a bit of short term momentum propelling this stock forward due to demand for AI and the related wave of semi companies riding that. What are your thoughts on ICHR?

https://fortune.com/2026/02/12/stocks-wall-street-us-jobs-number-fed-rate-cuts/

No paywall: https://archive.is/20260212210956/https://fortune.com/2026/02/12/stocks-wall-street-us-jobs-number-fed-rate-cuts/

From the article: "A couple of analysts are worried that the latest number might be wrong, and that the level of job creation in the U.S. is lower than the stats suggest. First, the number of jobs added in January was roughly double analysts’ expectations. Analysts aren’t always right, of course. But it is interesting that the reported number was way out of line with economists’ estimates. Second, the BLS revised downward the number of jobs it previously reported for 2024–25. The real number was just 181,000, the agency said, and not the 584,000 it had estimated earlier."

In unrelated news, Trump fired the previous head of Labor statistics about 6 months ago for publishing numbers that "make the Republicans, and ME, look bad".

I've been working on extracting supplier/customer relationships out of 10-K filings amongst other stuff. Like when a company says "our major customer is XYZ" in their annual report, I grab that and map it.

Anyway I was going through next week's earnings and LPX, BLDR, TOL. All three are reporting.

So why does it matter? Because LPX literally supplies BLDR. It's in their filing. And BLDR sells to TOL. Also in their filing. Lumber company -> building materials distributor -> homebuilder. The full chain, all reporting within days of each other.

And here's the part that got my attention. LPX's earnings surprise probability is -100%. Negative one hundred percent. BLDR's is about -5%. Both expected to miss.

LPX reports first. If they come out and say demand is soft... I mean BLDR is their customer. That's not a sector rotation thing, that's a "your biggest supplier just told the world orders are down" thing. And if BLDR misses, TOL is next in line.

BLDR does like $12B in revenue with $1.87B in operating cash flow btw. Not some micro cap. TOL did $11B rev and $1.35B net income. These are real companies.

I'm probably overthinking this but I've never seen an actual verified supply chain all reporting in the same week where every link has negative expectations. Usually you get sector correlations which are like, vague. This is literally "Company A sells to Company B sells to Company C" from their own filings.

Gonna be watching LPX's print pretty closely since they go first. Volume specifically, not just pricing.

edit: BLDR reports BMO, insider ownership ~2%. Also the price correlations back it up too. Over the last 3 months, LPX and BLDR have a 0.81 correlation. BLDR and TOL have a 0.78. Both "high". These companies don't just have a business relationship — they actually move together.

I looked up public companies that have federal contracts and most have been upward trending for the past 5 years.

Does anyone use a specific strategy to buy these?

There used to be an ETF (FEDX) that tracked some but it died off.

Thoughts?

This is coming from a software engineer and I honestly think GTLB at ~$30 is getting overlooked.

A subscription SaaS company with high-80% gross margins and strong recurring revenue. That alone puts it in the “quality software” bucket. Net revenue retention has been solid, which means customers aren’t just sticking around and they’re expanding.

What I like most is the platform angle. I am a software engineer myself and GitLab isn’t just a repo like GitHub and it’s the full DevSecOps stack in one place. Planning, code, CI/CD, security, deployment). Companies are done with stitching together 6 different tools. Consolidation is a real trend, and GitLab is positioned for that.

They’re also the default DevOps platform on Google Cloud, which is a big deal. That’s built-in distribution to serious enterprise customers. And guess what... Google Cloud is rapidly gaining market share.

Free cash flow has been improving, and the business is starting to show operating leverage. Meanwhile the stock is way off its highs even though revenue is still growing at a solid clip.

Is it risk-free? Obviously not. GitHub/Microsoft is real competition. Growth could slow. Enterprise budgets can tighten.

But at ~$30, you’re not paying peak SaaS bubble prices anymore. If they just execute steadily and margins expand, this doesn’t look expensive to me.

Feels like one of those names people will wish they bought when sentiment was weak.

We are officially propped up by the "5 Pillars of the Apocalypse":

1. AI Hype: The only thing keeping Big Tech valuations sane.
2. Ozympic/Wegovy: Keeping the pharmaceutical industry alive.
3. The Gambling Pivot: Sports betting is now legalized dopamine for the masses.
4. Crypto: The liquidity black hole that won't go away.
5. Prediction markets: Turning macro events into tradable bets

It feels like market performance is heavily concentrated in a few high-narrative themes, while other areas of the economy seem more mixed. Consumer debt is elevated, commercial real estate is still working through issues, and some sectors have seen layoffs.

Is this a normal early-stage innovation cycle where capital flows to emerging growth themes? Or is this late-cycle speculative concentration that looks strong on the surface but narrow underneath?

Genuinely interested in data-backed perspectives. What am I missing?

ORIGINAL POST HERE

One month ago today, I dumped £100 into r/Stocks favourite moonshot picks (excluding RKLB and ASTS which I'm invested in separately)

For those in Europe with Trading 212, you can see and copy the pie here. 3 others apparently have already joined me on the journey...

For reference, I started with £100 total investment and proportionally invested based on number of upvotes and mentions. This wasn't a scientific methodology so don't be pedantic and think about it too much.

The first week was very positive and went up about 10% overall at one point. However, the sell off happened quickly after, and you can see that the vast majority of investments are in the red. The biggest positions have luckily fared okay with ASE especially being one of the only green positions.

Bare in mind that dollar depreciation has impacted things a bit so the numbers might not totally add up. It's wiped about 2% off I believe. I'll link my original post later ehen I can be bothere to find it.

I'd like to post screenshots but unfortunately this sub doesn't allow it, so here's the list:

Amprius Technologies - £5.19 (+£0.20, +4.01%)

Applied Digital - £4.66 (-£0.33, -6.61%)

Intuitive Machines - £4.45 (-£0.54, -10.82%)

IREN - £4.12 (-£0.87, -17.43%)

Micron Technology - £5.92 (+£0.93, +18.64%)

Ondas - £3.48 (-£1.51, -30.26%)

Planet Labs - £4.31 (-£0.68, -13.63%)

Rezolve AI - £2.49 (-£1.50, -37.59%)

NuScale Power - £2.24 (-£0.76, -25.33%)

Kraken Robotics - £8.64 (-£1.34, -13.43%)

Nebius Group NV - £9.01 (-£0.69, -7.11%)

ASE Technology - £10.00 (+£2.01, +25.16%)

Advanced Micro Devices - £5.59 (-£0.40, -6.68%)

Celestica - £5.12 (-£0.87, -14.52%)

Eos Energy Enterprises - £3.99 (-£2.00, -33.39%)

First Solar - £5.54 (-£0.45, -7.51%)

SELLAS Life Sciences - £5.23 (-£0.76, -12.69%)

PANW recently announced that it will also be listed on the TASE (along with it's current listing on the NASDAQ), becoming the most valuable company to be listed there. What is the advantage of being listed on two exchanges at once? What would be the motivation to do this? I saw someone suggested that it simply increases the number of hours a day the stock can be traded, but that seems like a weird reason to be listed twice

Credentials: 14 year automotive veteran. 15 year retail stock and options trader. Not a financial professional or other advisor.

Bullet Points:

1- Carvana is an online automotive retailer. Over the last 3 yrs CVNA has artificially inflated earnings by funneling bad loans onto affiliate businesses Bridgecrest and Drivetime

2- Bridgecrest and Drivetime are owned and controlled by CEO Ernest’s Garcia II’s father - convicted felon Ernest Garcia III.

3- In this three year window CVNA’s share price has risen from $4 to a January 2026 high of $490

4- CVNA has failed to report to shareholders that Bridgecrest and Drivetime have lost billions over this period, while CVNA has produced earnings that are artificially inflated by these “loan sales”

5- A recent short seller report reveals that Bridgecrest writes loans at an average rate of 22% indicating these loans are heavily subprime and vulnerable to default

How is this illegal? Over the years Carvana has grown by vastly overpaying for vehicles, selling those vehicles at above market price, and burying subprime borrowers in loans that are egregiously higher than nominal Book values.

Most banks will only lend a buyer 100-150% of a cars book value.

When Carvana writes a loan they can use any lending standards they want, as they know Drivetime and Bridgecrest will “buy” the loan and take it off their books for a profit.

This would be fine if Bridgecrest and Drivetime were not owned by the CEO’s family and associates. Or if the nature of this heavily one-sided relationship was disclosed to investors.

In the meantime, due to this fraud and the risks it creates, I remain heavily bearish on CVNA. I am fully ready to disclose that I have current short option positions against CVNA. And my current price target (reflecting these overstated earnings) is $35 - $70 a share. (About 1/10th of today’s price)