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Good Trading,

Bill Poulos

☕️ GM Munchers! The stock market is the only place where things go on sale and everyone runs out of the store screaming. Don’t be that guy.

On today’s menu:

• 📊 Great Economy. Terrible Inflation. Something Has To Change.

• 🍎 Apple Just Raised Prices. The Stock Did The Opposite.

• 📞 Blackberry Is Still Making Headlines?

• 👟 Nike Check-In: Still Alive. Still On Life Support.

• 👀 Michael Burry Just Closed This Trade

Yesterday’s numbers:

BREAKING NEWS

📊 Great Economy. Terrible Inflation. Something Has To Change.

Two big numbers landed yesterday and neither one made the Fed's job any easier.

First, the good news. The US economy grew at a 2.1% annual rate in the first quarter, well above the 1.6% expectation. The economy is not falling apart. Consumers are still spending. Jobs are still holding up. Great.

Now the bad news. May PCE inflation, the Fed's favorite way to measure rising prices, came in at 4.1%. That is the highest reading since April 2023. The Fed's target is 2%. America is now running inflation at more than double that number.

Why This Is Such A Big Deal

Here is the problem in plain English. A strong economy plus high inflation is the worst possible combination for anyone hoping the Fed cuts rates this year.

• 🏦 Polymarket now has the odds of a 2026 rate hike at 53%, the highest its ever been.

• 📈 Personal income rose 0.7% in May, well above the 0.4% expectation. Americans are earning more, which means they are spending more, which means prices keep going up.

• 💵 The 2-year Treasury yield, which moves directly with rate expectations, jumped sharply on the news before pulling back slightly after the inflation number matched estimates rather than coming in hotter.

What This Means For Your Portfolio

Higher rates for longer means stocks face more competition from bonds and cash. When you can earn 4% or 5% sitting in a money market account with zero risk, the argument for owning stocks at record valuations gets harder to make. Gold bounced back above $4,000 after the data, as some investors saw the inflation number as a reason to hold hard assets even in a rising rate environment.

The Munch Take: The economy is growing faster than expected and inflation is running twice the Fed's target. That sounds like good and bad news at the same time and it is. The problem is that a strong economy gives the Fed cover to raise rates without worrying about causing a recession. When the economy is healthy and inflation is hot, the Fed does not need to be gentle. Kevin Warsh already told you he plans to deliver price stability. Today's numbers just handed him the justification to do it. The only thing my wife cares about is how much we spend on groceries and this report proves that her moodiness has been justified lately.

🍎 Apple Just Raised Prices. The Stock Did The Opposite.

Apple announced yesterday they’re raising prices on almost all of their products. And no, not by a little. The MacBook Pro jumped $300 to $1,999. The MacBook Air climbed $200 to $1,299. The iPad Air rose $150 to $749. The iPad Pro went up $200 to $1,199. The only thing that didn’t go up? The stock, which dropped 6% and wiped out over $200 billion in market cap.

It was Apple worst single day since April 2025.

Tim Cook must have called Satya Nadella because just hours later, Microsoft announced Xbox console prices are rising $100 to $150 starting August 1. No, nothing is sacred anymore.

Why Is This Happening?

Apple's statement did not mince words. "We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly." The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage, and chipmakers like Micron and SK Hynix have redirected their factories toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers, leaving consumer devices to fight over whatever is left.

In plain English: the chips that go into your MacBook are the same chips that go into AI data centers. AI is paying more for them. So now you are paying more too.

• 💻 Memory and storage prices have already jumped more than 2.5 times and Microsoft says it expects another full doubling by fall 2027. This shortage is not ending anytime soon.

• 🎮 Xbox is not the only console feeling it. PlayStation already raised PS5 prices earlier this year, meaning every major gaming platform is now more expensive than it was twelve months ago.

• 📱 iPhone prices have not moved yet, but Apple left the door wide open, saying there may be more price adjustments to additional products in the future.

The Munch Take: We have said this before and we will say it again. Apple under Tim Cook was one of the greatest operational businesses ever built. Cook is a phenomenal operator. But as an innovator, Apple has been slowly fading for years. Siri was introduced in the early 2010s and still cannot reliably set an alarm. Fifteen years later. Still broken. And now instead of wowing us with something new, the headline is price hikes across the board. The memory shortage is real and this is an industry wide problem. Apple did not cause it. But a brand that used to make you feel like the price was worth it now just feels like it is coasting on loyalty while the bill keeps climbing. My wife saw the new MacBook Air price and asked if we could just not upgrade this year. I told her it’s cute that she thinks we could afford an upgrade even if we wanted one.

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MARKET OVERVIEW

🍿 Tasty Movers & Shakers

📱 $BB BlackBerry popped nearly 20% on stronger than expected quarterly results driven by growth in automotive software and secure communications. Yes, BlackBerry still exists. Yes, it is apparently doing things. The market was just as surprised as you are.

🔍 $PLTR Palantir dropped 5.49% to a fresh 12-month low, leaving the stock nearly 50% below its November 2025 peak. The AI darling that could do no wrong six months ago is now doing quite a lot wrong.

🚗 $HTZ Hertz fell 10.67% after pricing a 37 million share stock offering. Diluting shareholders to raise cash is never a crowd pleaser. The market expressed its feelings immediately.

🍔 $WEN Wendy's gave back 6.74% as the meme stock momentum that sent it flying earlier this week quietly evaporated. Reddit moved on. The balance sheet did not change. The stock remembered both of those things at the same time.

💊 $KYMR Kymera Therapeutics jumped 16.62% after completing enrollment in a Phase 2 trial for its eczema treatment. Completing enrollment is not the same as winning. But in biotech, making it to the next checkpoint is worth celebrating before the data arrives.

STOCK OF THE DAY

👟 Nike Check-In: Still Alive. Still On Life Support.

Every four to six weeks we like to check in on $NKE Nike to see if it is still breathing. And almost every single time it looks like it’s on life support. The stock is down 73% over the last five years. It is down 33% just this year alone. It is currently trading near its 52-week low of $41.31. Just devastating.

What The Numbers Say

Nike reports earnings on June 30, after the market closes. Analysts expect EPS of just $0.11, down 21% from the same quarter last year. Revenue is expected to decline 2% to 4% year over year. Those are not turnaround numbers. Those are tread-water numbers at best.

Here is what makes it worse:

• 📉 China is a disaster. Nike guided for Greater China revenue down roughly 20% in the current quarter, with no meaningful signs of recovery.

• 💸 Nike is paying out more than 100% of its earnings and cash flow in dividends. That is not sustainable and the market knows it.

• 🔄 Direct-to-consumer sales fell 8% and digital sales dropped 14% last quarter. The high-margin business that was supposed to be Nike's future is going backwards.

The Munch Take: The most honest explanation for why Nike keeps losing ground is the simplest one. The brand just does not feel like what it used to. Nike used to mean something. It used to be the shoe every kid wanted, the brand athletes fought to wear, the logo that carried a culture behind it. Now it feels like a company that is reactively chasing trends it used to set. New CEO. New strategy. World Cup marketing. All of it might eventually work. But until the product feels exciting again and China stabilizes, this chart has no reason to go anywhere but sideways at best.

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TRADING SUCCESS

🤑 Friday Motivation

🚀 Pre-Market Fuel

1. 😬 Michael Saylor is now being investigated.

2. 👀 Michael Burry just closed this trade.

3. ❗️ JP Morgan is warning of what?

4. ⏰ Is the OpenAI IPO going to be delayed?

🍪 Munchy Memes

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