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📉 "Bad Things" Will Happen
Pip Munch
February 20, 2026
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☕️ GM Munchers! Happy Friday! My weekend plans include avoiding eye contact with my wife when she asks about "that Bitcoin thing I said was a guarantee" and stress-eating bread over the kitchen sink while refreshing stock prices that aren't even moving.
On today’s menu:
📉 The Market's Bipolar Episode: Iran Edition
📦 Amazon Dethrones Walmart
📊 Today’s Economic Gauntlet: GDP, PCE & Tariff Chaos
🤑 The Highest Paid Hedge Fund Manager of 2025
🏘️ U.S. Rents Are Crashing
Yesterday’s numbers:
S&P 500 | 6,861 | -0.28% |
Nasdaq | 22,682 | -0.31% |
Dow Jones | 49,395 | -0.54% |
Bitcoin | $67,200 | +0.38% |
BREAKING NEWS
📉The Market's Bipolar Episode: Iran Edition
Turns out the market is a 15-year-old high schooler, because I've never seen anything more bipolar. Yesterday, I checked between pretending to work—up 0.5%, down 0.3%, up again, down again—only to end mostly red like my trading account on most days.
What's Happening: The largest military buildup since 2003 is unfolding in the Middle East right now. Two aircraft carriers (USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford), dozens of fighter jets, and enough refuelling tankers to make this look serious. Trump gave Iran 10 days to make a deal or "bad things" will happen. This isn't a Venezuela-style quick strike—this is the full menu.
Market Reaction: Oil is slowly climbing to $70/barrel as traders price in a "war premium." Gold's holding near record highs. The market keeps whipsawing because nobody knows if we're pricing in the threat of war or the reality of war.
The Munch Take: Markets hate uncertainty more than my wife hates when I check stocks during dinner. If bombs actually drop, expect oil to spike violently, gold to moon, and the broader market to take a hit. Until then, it's volatility roulette.
📦 Amazon Dethrones Walmart
For the first time in 13 years, Amazon is officially the company with the most revenue in the world—$716.9 billion vs Walmart's $713.2 billion. Considering my wife's credit card statement, this surprises absolutely nobody.
The Secret Weapon: Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew revenue at nearly 10x Walmart's pace over the last decade. AWS alone hit $35.6 billion in Q4, up 24%. Walmart's website still looks like a 1999 GeoCities page—not in the nostalgic way.
What It Means: For Amazon, this is mostly symbolic. The stock won't catch up to the Mag7 until they prove their $200 billion AI bet generates actual profits instead of just incinerating free cash flow. For Walmart, losing #1 doesn't hurt—they just hit a $1 trillion market cap for the first time and are viewed as a safe-haven stock with reliable dividends.
The Munch Take: Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king. Buffett would pick Walmart's $14.9 billion in free cash flow over Amazon's $11.2 billion any day. In fact, Buffett just sold most of his Amazon stock.
Porter Stansberry’s Critical New Warning:
This Is The End of
An Economic Age
Trump’s Executive Order 14365 set to “reset” U.S. economy…
Get the stocks to buy and sell ahead of this bombshell event.
ECONOMY
📊 Today’s Economic Gauntlet: GDP, PCE & Tariff Chaos
Today is an absolute blockbuster—GDP, PCE inflation data, and a potential Supreme Court tariff ruling all dropping simultaneously.
PCE (8:30 AM): The Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Expected to rise 0.3-0.4% monthly and 2.9% yearly. If it comes in hot, the "higher for longer" rate narrative gets reinforced and stocks could get punished.
GDP (8:30 AM): Growth is expected to cool to 3.0% annualized (down from 4.4%). Markets want a "Goldilocks" scenario—slow enough to help inflation, strong enough to avoid recession.
Supreme Court Tariff Ruling: Polymarket prices 74-75% odds the Court strikes down Trump's IEEPA tariffs. If overturned, importers like Nike and Mattel could rally, inflation pressures ease, and the government could face a $150 billion refund bill.
The Catch: Even if struck down, the White House has backup plans—Section 301 or 232 tariffs aren't being challenged. Translation: legal whack-a-mole.
The Munch Take: Buckle up. Today decides whether rate cuts are coming or dead.
MARKET OVERVIEW
🍿 Tasty Movers & Shakers
🥕 $DASH We're all out here complaining about inflation destroying our wallets, yet apparently none of us have the self-control to stop ordering $47 burritos. DoorDash just posted its largest order jump EVER—903 million total orders, up 32% year-over-year. We're financially suffering, but at least the suffering is being delivered in 30 minutes or less. The stock's still down 17% over the past year, probably because Wall Street finally checked the delivery fees.
📉 $BKNG Booking Holdings crushed profit expectations and got absolutely obliterated for it—down 6% yesterday, down 21% over the past year. The crime? Investors are terrified that AI-powered travel agents will make the entire company obsolete. Nothing says "relaxing vacation" like arguing with a chatbot about whether your hotel has a pool.
🚜 $DE John Deere absolutely ripped yesterday, climbing 12% after beating profit expectations. I write emails for a living and have never operated heavy machinery, but that didn't stop me from buying a John Deere t-shirt at Costco. I wear it around the house pretending I'm a real man who understands torque and hydraulics. My wife sees through the charade immediately.
🚗 $CVNA Carvana dropped 7.95% despite beating overall profit estimates because their profit-per-vehicle was lower than expected. Wall Street has zero chill but the stock is absolutely unhinged. It hit $7 in 2023 and today trades at $332.
🍺 $KO For the 64th consecutive year, Coca-Cola raised their dividend, up 3.90% to $0.53/share. While the rest of the market has an identity crisis every earnings season, Coke just keeps printing dividends like a vending machine that never breaks. Boring? Absolutely. Reliable? Disgustingly so.
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🚀 Pre-Market Fuel
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