Hedge funds are offloading Magnificent 7 stocks at an UNPRECEDENTED pace:
Hedge fund net exposure to the Mag 7 is down to ~17% of total North American net exposure, near the lowest in 3 years. At the same time, the top-most purchased stocks by retail investors last week were Alphabet, $GOOGL, at +$273 million, Micron, $MU, at +$243 million, and Tesla, $TSLA, at +$234 million. This was followed by Meta, $META, at +$210 million and Intel, $INTC, at +$197 million. This means hedge funds are effectively offloading Mag 7 exposure directly to retail buyers. Wall Street is dumping tech stocks to retail. Source: Global Markets Investor, Morgan Stanley
US continues to drain SPR to export oil to Asia
SPR down 5.22MM last week (-22MM last month) US oil exports 4.75MM last week Source: www.zerohedge.com
Wall Street projects hyperscalers’ free cash flow to fall by over 70% from its peak by the end of 2026, even as earnings keep climbing
Source: Christophe Barraud, Bloomberg
🔥Silver and gold prices are surging:
Silver and gold are up +4.5% and +1.0% on Thursday, on track for the 3rd consecutive day of gains. Silver is now up +10% and gold is up +4.0% over the last 2 trading sessions. Following the recent pullback, investors are returning to gold and silver, with many viewing this dip as a buying opportunity. Furthermore, global growth concerns, central bank demand, and a macro environment increasingly favoring hard assets continue to support prices, reinforcing the broader bullish backdrop. At the same time, decades of underinvestment and constrained supply growth have created a structurally higher price environment for precious metals. Is another leg of the precious metals bull run now unfolding? Source: Global Markets Investor
Goldman: On the back of 3 large data center and hyperscaler transactions over the past week+ April IG supply finished at $205 bn, nearly doubling the informal street estimate (~$110bn).
This took IG supply over the past 12mo to new highs at ~$2trn (~20% of outstanding IG bonds), pari with peak Covid. Source: Neil Sethi
Upward revisions to earnings, which have been very sharp, have come mostly from AI infrastructure stocks where growth is very strong.
Source: Lance Roberts, Goldman Sachs, The Daily Shot
BBG's Authers: "It might be unfair to call this a dash for trash. "
But nobody seems to care about quality. This is from Bloomberg’s Factors To Watch service, showing the results of buying the top 20% of stocks by a factor while shorting the worst 20%. "Since Liberation Day, buying quality stocks has been a one-way ticket to losses." Meanwhile, Momentum has been performing strongly. Source: Bloomberg, Neil Sethi
Nomura's McElligott says there's a "new 60/40":
"Government bonds no longer work as your Risk-Asset / Long Asset Beta Hedge in a world of “Sticky Higher Inflation”... “The New 60/40” is a 50/50 Equities Barbell Long between AI Semis and Energy…. where Energy insulates on the Global “Supply Shock” and “Molecule Shortage” as the risk-off vehicle in the current backdrop, against the risk-on component being a world where AI Hyperscalers are going from $600B of Capex in 2026 to upwards of ~$1 TRILLION in 2027 and “Chasing Compute”. Source: Neil Sethi
