Bulls vs. Bears

OpenAI printed $50 billion. The figure in circulation was $68 to $70 billion. A $20 billion miss, against commitments that need 75 to 80 per cent compounding for three years. On their own numbers they were already about $300 billion short of those commitments by 2030.

Firmus was the local disaster. $43.7 billion was the valuation ASX investors would not wear. The "oversubscribed" line lasted until the price was cut to $8.25 and the float was pulled. Front page of Bloomberg. Front page of Reuters. Morgan Stanley and the lead brokers own that one. Valued above Transurban. This is why ASX tech is still three companies, and why the next proper float will list somewhere else.

SpaceX is raising another $40 billion. $10 billion bank debt, $30 billion from institutions. JT's version of the prospectus: two pages, an arrow, the universe. Ten gigawatts at about $50 billion a gigawatt, so this is a deposit. TerraFab, no TSMC, maybe Intel. Betting against Elon has been a horrible trade. The debt still has to get paid.

Kai likes the Cursor and Colossus angle and is the only bull for next week. Mark doesn't love banks flogging Oracle CDS. Philip wanted a proper ASX tech listing and got a debacle instead.

We also get into Firmus immersion racks and whether the patents are a moat, CCC credit spreads blowing out, global banks rolling over, Maas Group halted after the Firmus stake and contract book were marked down, and a Trump week that was an 11 out of 10 with midterm postal votes already open.

Buys and avoids:

JT buys Ampol and Viva, avoids the euro, wildcard Deterra.

Philip buys Telix, avoids NEXTDC, wildcard Clarity.

Kai buys EOS on the $700 million GCC contract, avoids Maas, wildcard JB Hi-Fi.

Mark buys a short-dated VIX ETF, wildcard is a manufactured geopolitical flare-up before the midterms.

Columbus Day Monday. US bank earnings from Tuesday. Hyperscalers at the end of the month. Greece is currently a better credit than France.

General information only. Not personal financial advice. MPC Markets Pty Ltd, AFSL 296877. mpcmarkets.com.au

CPI at 4%. A White House AI pact with zero legal force. And 59% of the S&P already more than 20% off its highs.This week Mark, Kai, Jonathan and Finn (Phil is on the boat) sit down with client and fifth-generation farmer Dan. He ran apples for 27 years, then switched to cattle because frost at blossom is not a cycle you can sit through. The inflation half is diesel, supermarket pass-through, feeder cattle off the Carcoar yards, US herds at 50-year lows, and why the export cow does not have to bargain with Woolworths. There is also a kelpie, a highland copperhead, and a bloke near Coonabarabran whose GPT writes the feed ration so he can stop driving across 7,000 acres to eyeball the mob.The super-intelligence half is less charming. Trump's morally binding agreement, Zuckerberg as spokesman, Jensen stuck in the front row, Dario scratching his leg. Sam Altman apologised to the Australian government and used the apology to disclose three more agencies past Medicare. Hugging Face sat on a breach for three days. The priority in the document was staying ahead of China. That was pretty much it.Micron grew profit 250% year on year, margins near 70%, and the stock closed up about 3%. French 10-year yields have gone vertical. US 10s hit 5.37%. The dollar index has broken out, which usually means the system is short of dollars, not long of confidence.Buys and avoids: Mader Group, BCOM, Micron, and a CITIC inflation-linked note (about 7x the index, funding nearer 2.5% than 7%). Avoids are the Aussie dollar, office property, Nike, and European credit. Wildcard from Mark: Newcastle by 20. Do not tell his family.

Bond Yields Hit 5.21%. Stocks Didn’t Get the Memo

Risk-on in equities. Bond yields up 20 basis points in a few days. That pairing is usually mutually exclusive.

The US 10-year hit 5.21 — highest since 2007 on the long chart they keep rolling out. Auctions were soft. Hyperscalers are now competing with the US Treasury for the same pile of debt. And in Australia the RBA is a 90% hike next week, with all four majors on board.

So why did stocks bounce? Meta. Muse launched, the stock was up nearly 20%, and that was enough to drag the S&P up about 0.7% and the Nasdaq about 1% while the Dow and Russell slipped. Muse put up the second-biggest post-launch download run we’ve seen, behind ChatGPT. Claude looks small next to it.

Mark, JT, Kai and Finn argue the thing the tape is ignoring: if the 10-year keeps going, the risk-free rate starts doing the job equities used to do, funding gets dearer, and a lot of private credit looks a lot less clever. Finn’s avoid is the whole private-credit-fund bucket. Mark’s buy is TBT — 2x long long-dated US yields. JT is the lone bull, mainly because last week’s breakout didn’t dump stocks and he needs to catch MG on the board.

Picks

JT: Southern Cross Gold (SXG) buy. ANZ and Temple & Webster avoid. Andean Silver (ASL) wildcard.

Finn: Genome ETF buy. Private credit funds avoid.

Kai: Zscaler buy. Uranium avoid. Southern Cross Engineering wildcard.

Mark: TBT buy. Avoid buying equities up here.

Three bears, one bull. Mark is bearish until at least 11 October. Micron reports next week if you needed another reason the market might refuse to fall.

Guest in the wings: Dan McClymont on cattle and soft commodities.

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General information only. Not personal financial advice. MPC Markets is a Corporate Authorised Representative (CAR 001309356) of LeMessurier Securities Pty Ltd (AFSL 296877).

Will they actually slow down AI? Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk say we should pace AI development — but we're not buying it. The three leaders of the AI race all agreeing on regulation? Smells like incumbents pulling up the drawbridge.

This week Mark, JT and Kai unpack the AI safety debate, $9 diesel in California and what it means for inflation, 924 Aussie construction firms entering administration off the back of the Bartholomew collapse, private credit risks that nobody wants to talk about, and why the Fed just changed the game with three more rate hikes on the table.

Plus — what the market's missing: passive ETF flows propping up prices, inflation expectations diverging from commodity prices, US government debt blasting through $40 trillion, and why we think real assets are the play.

All three hosts are bearish again. We scraped through last week's call by 0.25% and we're sticking to our guns.

Picks this week: Sigma, SentinelOne, silver miners on the buy side. Nine Entertainment, Aussie property and banks on the avoid. Wildcards include Arafura, HP Enterprise and a Tealix FDA win.

This is general information only and not personal financial advice. MPC Markets is a Corporate Authorised Representative (CAR 001309356) of LeMessurier Securities Pty Ltd (AFSL 296877).

Oil at $103. Treasury yields at 5%. Trump handing out $5,000 cheques. And former AI safety researchers say there's a 10%+ chance artificial intelligence ends humanity within the decade.

In Episode 136 of Bulls vs Bears, the MPC Markets team cuts through the noise on AI existential risk — is it a genuine warning or conveniently timed ahead of capital raises and IPO season? Plus: why analyst earnings forecasts have failed to warn investors ahead of every major crash, Uber burning through its entire annual AI token budget in four months, and the fertiliser angle no one's talking about.

All four hosts are bearish. Picks include Apple, Cloudflare, the VIX, shorting the NASDAQ, and selling crypto.

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General information only. Not personal financial advice. AFSL 296877.

Oil hit $93, Fed rate hike odds swung wildly, and Nvidia bought Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. Three simultaneous shocks heading into September, historically the worst month for equities.

This week we break down the oil breakout, the Warsh vs Waller showdown at the Fed, why open-source AI just became a closed shop, and what September seasonal weakness actually means for your portfolio. Plus stock picks, what the market is missing, and our bull vs bear calls for next week.

Featuring Mark Gardner, Kai Chen, Finn Judell and Jonathan Tacadena.

Key topics: Brent crude breakout, Fed September rate decision, Nvidia-Hugging Face acquisition, September seasonality, Berkshire cash levels, agriculture commodities, Robinhood blockchain, cybersecurity stocks, non-farm payrolls preview.

Free portfolio review → mpcmarkets.com.au Stock recommendations → Mosaic (mention the podcast for 3 months free)

General advice only. AFSL 296877 via LeMessurier Securities.

Jensen Huang has done it again. NVIDIA posted $59.7 billion in net income, more than 12 iconic companies combined, on 70% margins. Software stocks are surging, the SaaSpocalypse is dead, and we're only a quarter of the way through the hyperscaler capex cycle.

This week the boys break down NVIDIA's monster earnings, why ASX tech is lagging US software by 43%, Amazon's robotics play, the uranium setup heating up on US-Canada trade tensions, and warning signs in private credit. Plus the full Buy, Avoid and Wild Card picks for the week ahead.

Fear & Greed: 58 (Greed). Bull/Bear: 3-1 Bullish. Next week: Jackson Hole, Broadcom, ZScaler and Non-Farm Payrolls.

US debt hits $40 trillion. Bitcoin surges 20%. Moderna rockets 177% on a breakthrough cancer treatment. And Bessent starts buying the long end of the curve — is this the white flag on US fiscal discipline?

In this week's Bulls vs Bears, Mark, Phil, JT, and Finn (filling in for Kai) break down ASX earnings season — CSL shines (+7%), BHP delivers a record dividend, and consumer discretionary gets hammered across the board. Plus the team debuts a new segment: Buy, Avoid, and Wildcard picks.

Topics covered:

• $40 trillion US debt — what it means for fiat currency and precious metals
• Bitcoin's 20% rally, the Clarity Act, and why Finn says be patient on the 4-year cycle
• ASX earnings: CSL, BHP, Stockland (+12%), Breville, and the consumer pain trade
• Why gold miners are still cheap despite record gold prices
• Bond yields, yield curve targeting, and Bessent's "surrender"
• Oil creeping toward records while the US consumer burns through savings
• Each team member's Buy, Avoid, and Wildcard picks
• Bulls vs Bears verdict: 2 bearish, 2 bullish heading into NVIDIA week

Next week: RBA Minutes, Aussie CPI, NVIDIA earnings, Jackson Hole, and the "Next Winners in AI" webinar.

General advice only. AFSL 579 757.

Bulls vs Bears Ep. 132 — The Forgotten Themes of 2026. It's been a quiet week, so the team digs into the thematics that got buried by geopolitics and headlines. Rare earths are down 41% from highs and JT lays out three catalysts for a comeback. Software caught a private equity bid on Workday. Kai explains AI sandbox escapes and why cybersecurity keeps running. Plus, an ASX earnings wrap, next week's big reports (NAB, BHP, CSL, JB Hi-Fi), the private equity wave sweeping ASX mid-caps, and why the "neocloud" might be where the next phase of AI investing really kicks in. General advice only. AFSL 556167.

EP131: AI & SaaS Bounce as Investors Regain Belief

The full crew reunites — JT's back from holiday, Phil's settling in, and markets are at all-time highs across the board. Record ETF inflows, fear & greed stuck at 40, and ASX earnings season is off to a flying start.

We unpack AMP's gap-up, Credit Corp's algo-driven sell-off (and why buying it at the open was the move), James Hardie's US aftermarket rally, and the Nick Scali playbook. In the US, Microsoft and Amazon saved the week while Google's AI team had a mass exodus.

The SaaS apocalypse is over — CrowdStrike, Palo Alto and Atlassian are up 100%+ from lows. Kai's five pillars trade continues to deliver.

Big segment on the "Situational Awareness" hedge fund that went from $45B AUM to near-zero on a 20% move. We talk Kelly Criterion, Martingale strategy, and why position sizing is the real edge.

Plus: gold bouncing off $4,200, commodities turning green, Trump commoditising insider trading, AI model benchmarks, and our Bulls vs Bears calls for next week.