Breaking news hits and Michele Steele is joined by Cem Karsan to map the geopolitics, vol structure, inflation regime, and the market microstructure driving today’s move.

Cem explains why he sees this as a broader global conflict centered on oil dominance, the petrodollar, and control of the Strait of Hormuz, with China and Russia as the real adversaries rather than Iran itself. He argues it is not a black swan and that the pressures behind it have been building for years, feeding into structural inflation and high leverage risks in private credit and private equity.

They break down why markets can fall in “stair steps” with vol compression, why the index can be down modestly while dispersion explodes across single names, and why today’s end of quarter options mechanics can overpower headlines. Cem walks through a major recurring JP Morgan hedge roll, at-the-money zero DTE gamma, and how those flows can create violent intraday swings and vol compression.

Cem also discusses a dispersion setup in SLNO and closes with a blunt message: fundamentals are awful, hedges are not working, and the environment can bleed dip buyers with sideways action followed by sharp down moves, potentially pushing the market far lower into late summer or early fall.

#stocktwitstv 

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters

00:00 - Breaking headline hits

Welcome into StocktwitsTV. Michele Steele marks the return of Ben Cahn, and it’s equal parts market talk and comedy.

Ben explains why he came back: the StockTwits community is active, finance entertainment is ripe for disruption, and he wants a show that bridges younger and older audiences without being a constant cheerleader. They get into the weird rhythm of recent markets, where weekend narratives flip by Monday, and Ben admits he has no clean read on how any of this ends, even if he’s ruling out nukes.

Then Michele opens the fan mail bag: Ben’s path from Vine and social media to meeting creators, getting pulled into podcasting during the meme stock era, and why timing matters. He also clears up a misconception: he doesn’t manage other people’s money, and he breaks down how prop trading works. The whole thing closes with internet pain, Spectrum roasting, and a reminder to be nice to customer service reps.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters / Timestamps

00:01 - Ben returns today

This episode explores market manipulation and the potential effects of market swings. They also discuss dispelling myths about the money manager role and the basics of investing.

Welcome in everybody to Episode 5 of Talkin’ Tickers. Joey Solitro is joined as always by Brad Freeman, aka StockMarketNerd. Baseball’s back, the seasonal depression is allegedly over in Detroit, Michigan’s got teams cooking… and we’re getting right into it.

Today we’re breaking down three stocks in both of our coverage universes:

Mercado Libre (MELI) — the “Amazon minus AWS” comp, and why the company’s choosing growth and land grab over near-term margin optics (plus how Mercado Pago is turning into a real Nubank-style competitor).

We keep it fundamentals-first, talk what matters, and we’re not sugarcoating the ugly parts — especially on TTD.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro: Episode 5, Detroit weather, baseball is back

Welcome back to StocktwitsTV. Michele Steele is joined by Garrett Baldwin, economist and author behind the Substack Me and the Money Printer and Postcards from the Edge of the World, to explain what happens when global liquidity tightens.

Garrett anchors the discussion to the Four Horsemen framework: central bank liquidity, collateral multipliers and volatility, the US dollar, and oil prices tightening together. His message is simple: dominoes don’t have to fall fast, they just have to fall in the same direction, and liquidity sits upstream of everything.

They walk through the chain reaction: oil impacts bonds, bonds impact inflation expectations, that affects collateral quality in repo and refinancing markets, and tighter credit ultimately pulls capital out of equities. Michele asks what gets hit first, and Garrett points to areas that rely on refinancing and credit access, including insurance exposure tied to private credit and lingering commercial real estate issues.

Garrett also shares what his screeners are showing as relative strength, then revisits private credit, why he still rates it a seven, and why these problems can start quietly before they cascade.

To close, he gives traders two key tools: a VWAP standard deviation setup for short-term reversion trades, and a bigger-picture bottom signal that shows up repeatedly in history: policy accommodation paired with widespread insider buying happening all at once.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters

00:00 - Insider buying cluster

Welcome into StocktwitsTV. Host Michele Steele sits down with Swarmer CEO Alex Fink as the stock trends on Stocktwits a week and a half after the IPO.

Fink explains Swarmer’s core product: software that lets drones fly autonomously and operate together in large swarms, so one person can set a mission, pick assets and targets, define rules of engagement, and deploy without being a qualified pilot. He shares the company’s early milestones, including a first Ukraine customer contract, combat deployment, and more than 100,000 missions flown on different hardware.

Michele presses on the missile math problem and how Swarmer’s approach changes the economics of intercepting and defending against large numbers of incoming drones. Fink argues the new reality is about scale, reassignment, and interoperability, not just firing expensive interceptors one by one.

They also cover why demand can persist even if a specific conflict cools, plus the broader definition of drones across air, sea, land, and underwater systems. In investor Q and A, Fink compares Swarmer’s vendor-agnostic Microsoft model to vertically integrated stacks, and frames the moat as a data flywheel from real-world deployments plus interoperability across many hardware types.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters

Welcome into StocktwitsTV. Michele Steele is joined by Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, author of Trump’s Ten Commandments, Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox, for a blunt conversation about how Trump operates and why markets react the way they do.

Sonnenfeld says one of the biggest mistakes people make is underestimating Trump. He describes him as pragmatic, fast-learning, and intensely focused on keeping score through financial markets, from stocks to debt to energy.

Michele and Sonnenfeld break down “the wall of sound” and how rapid-fire controversy and repetition can shape attention, as well as how traders can think about timing, especially the way Friday messaging can set up Monday market corrections.

They also discuss whether monitoring Truth Social has become part of modern investing, Sonnenfeld’s view on Trump’s preference for conflict over coalition, and the “TACO” framing of opening salvos as aggressive threats that often get walked back to something that looks better by contrast.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapters:

00:18 - Intro: Jeff Sonnenfeld joins

Welcome into StocktwitsTV. Michele Steele sits down with Shay Boloor after Nvidia GTC to answer the question retail traders keep asking: if Jensen is talking about demand doubling and trillion-dollar numbers, why isn’t the stock up 10 percent?

Shay explains the issue is not demand. It’s the timeline and spend velocity. He says the market wanted more specificity on how fast the spending curve accelerates, especially as AI moves from training into inference, where token economics may spread across more architectures and create a bigger second tier. He argues Nvidia is doing what it needs to stay the leader in the inference era, but the market still lacks clean visibility into how efficiency gains and lower token costs translate into revenue density and pricing power.

Michele then asks what breaks Nvidia out of a rangebound tape. Shay’s answer: consumer products. He says enterprises are deploying AI, but consumers still don’t have true AI-native products that flip the narrative, and he frames physical AI as a massive catalyst for Nvidia, just not this year.

The conversation closes on Micron, which Shay calls a key AI bottleneck trade. He breaks down why memory pricing power looks durable, why HBM4 production matters ahead of Micron earnings, and why the stock’s low multiple can be read two ways. He says the tell is margin resilience and guidance, with gross margin expectations climbing to levels that would be unheard of in a typical memory cycle.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

#stocktwitstv 

Chapters / Timestamps

00:01 - Michele tees up Nvidia GTC and the NVDA frustration

Welcome back to Episode 4 of Talkin’ Tickers — chaos weather, chaotic markets, same vibe.

We kick it off with Meta and the Reuters layoff report: is Zuck heading toward Year of Efficiency 2.0 to fund AI capex? And bigger picture… when do layoffs go from “bullish” to “uh oh” for the consumer?

Then we pivot to ServiceNow. Stock’s down hard, fundamentals look fine. We break down what NOW actually does, why “workflow + proprietary data” matters in an AI world, and why software has been getting sold first and questions asked later.

Finally, we hit HIMS — the name you can’t criticize without getting jumped in the replies. We talk the Novo Nordisk deal, what it changes, what still needs to improve (subscriber growth), and why the risk/reward looks way more realistic now than it did at the highs.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

Chapter Timestamps (dash format)

00:00 - Episode 4 intro + Brad’s back home

Episode 3 is live — and we’re ripping through three names with very different vibes.

First up: Amazon. Everybody knows the marketplace and AWS… but Brad’s flagging two segments that could get way more attention in the coming years: Zoox (autonomous taxi) and Kuiper (satellite internet). Then we hit why the stock’s been sluggish, what’s actually holding it back, and why the valuation conversation gets interesting when you look at EBIT.

Next: Lemonade. Joey uses it for homeowner’s insurance, and we get into what the company actually does, why the “AI-native” buzzwords might be legit here, and the insurance metrics that matter (yes, the acronyms are annoying).

And then Joey tries to do what he promised: pitch a stock from his universe that Brad should add to his coverage… Reddit. We talk web traffic, ad targeting, ARPU growth, the LLM licensing angle, and the bear case risks you’d actually want to think about.

Drop a comment with what ticker you want on the next episode — and if you want Brad to deep dive Reddit, you know what to do.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

#talkintickers

Chapter Timestamps

00:04 - Welcome to Episode 3 + what we’re covering

Oil just ripped from about 79 a barrel a week ago to nearly 120 at the peak, and Michele Steele sits down with Hardika Singh, economic strategist at Fundstrat, to explain what is happening and why investors should care.

Hardika walks through the sequence of shocks investors have faced this year and why oil is the third major surprise. They focus on the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through, and why the US is more insulated thanks to shale and exports, but still exposed through the cost of imported goods if Asian producers face higher energy prices.

They also break down the inflation and Fed problem. If oil remains elevated, inflation can re accelerate, which makes it harder to argue for rate cuts, especially if leadership pressure pushes in the opposite direction. Hardika adds historical context, saying geopolitical events often hit markets in the short term but tend to fade over the long term, and that buy the invasion sell the rumor has worked in most past conflicts. The catch here is that a prolonged disruption through Hormuz would be a true black swan, and that is when prior records can get tested.

Finally, they discuss what Wall Street understands that Main Street often misses: pump prices usually lag futures, but the move can still show up as meaningful increases at the pump. Hardika shares the single number she is watching to gauge whether this gets better or much worse: the prior Brent record near 147.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this show are solely the opinions of the hosts’ and guests’ and do not reflect the opinions of Stocktwits, Inc. or its affiliates. The hosts are not SEC or FINRA registered advisors or professionals. The content of this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Read the full terms & conditions here: https://stocktwits.com/about/legal/terms/

#stocktwitstv 

Chapters

00:00 - Oil spikes from 79 to nearly 120

The recent surge in crude oil prices, jumping from $79 to nearly $120 a barrel in just one week, highlights significant volatility in commodity markets. This drastic increase, largely influenced by the ongoing iran war in the middle east, raises concerns about a potential supply shock. Experts are warning that these higher gas prices could reignite inflation and complicate future interest rate decisions.