1. SPCX Following Standard History of Big IPO

Matt Cerminaro

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2. Mag 7 +4% vs. Semiconductors SMH -3% 30 Days

YCharts

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3. Even With The Big Q2 Rally in Semis and DRAM….Equal Weight S&P (RSP=less tech) +12.33% Outperforming Capweight (SPY)…Mag 7 Drag on Capweight

YCharts

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4. 80% of Hyperscaler Free Cash Flow Going to AI Buildout

The Daily Spark

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5. Micron -30% from Highs…Hits 50 Day

StockCharts

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6. Goldman New Highs

StockCharts

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7. Big Banks $100B in Profits

Bloomberg

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8. U.S. IPO Proceeds 2026

Dave Lutz Jones Trading Brookfield-backed data center operator Csquare expects to raise up to $1.35 billion in its IPO July 15, per Renaissance Capital, which would put this year over the top.

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9. Prof G Industrial Robots vs. Humanoid Robots

Prof G Media

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10. Why Your Fear of AI Has Nothing to Do With AI

By Matthew Ferry

The anxiety gripping senior executives right now is not a technology problem.

It is an automatic behavioral pattern. A conditioned response your nervous system wrote long before ChatGPT existed. And until you name it precisely, studying more AI tools will not quiet it.

The Dataiku Global AI Confessions Report: CEO Edition, based on a Dataiku/Harris Poll survey of 900 CEOs worldwide, found that 80% of CEOs say their role is at risk if they fail to deliver results by the end of 2026. The pressure isn’t hypothetical: 65% say they worry more about over-investing in the wrong AI vendors than under-investing, and 70% identify themselves as the person with the greatest influence over their company’s AI strategy, meaning the decisions, and the consequences, land on the same desk.

I’ve worked with more than 1,000 high performers over 30 years. Founders, private equity partners, real estate executives, C-suite leaders. I’ve watched this same fear get blamed on a different thing every decade. The name on it changes. The program underneath doesn’t.

The Dip Is Real. The Panic Is Something Else.

If the fear of AI were about business performance, the numbers would tell you what to feel. They don’t.

Research from MIT Sloan Management Review on the productivity paradox of AI adoption shows that AI introduction frequently leads to a measurable but temporary decline in performance before stronger growth appears—a J-curve, with the dip most pronounced at older, more established firms. Which means a lot of companies adopting now are sitting in the trough. The technology is everywhere. The payoff is real, but it’s landed for some and not yet for others. And the executives are being judged on a timeline that doesn’t match the curve.

The executives aren’t panicking about the numbers though. The numbers say wait. They’re panicking because the thing they’ve built their worth on is what’s being automated.

Here is what the headline misses: most of these leaders aren’t losing sleep because they don’t understand AI. They’re losing sleep because their entire sense of self is wired to being the one with the answers. The person the board defers to. The irreplaceable node in the network. Now a piece of software can generate in seconds what took them decades to build. And their nervous system is treating that as a survival threat.

The Conditioned Response Running the Show

Here is the automatic behavioral pattern driving nearly every executive conversation I have about the fear of AI: performance validation seeking. It’s the compulsion to earn your worth through demonstrated expertise, as if you are not enough without it.

Underneath it is a deeper survival driver. Not arrogance. Something more fundamental. It is the fear that you will not be the priority, that you are not enough, so you compensate by making yourself right, superior or indispensable. This driver built your career. It drove you to out-prepare, out-think, out-execute. It made you the person in the room everyone deferred to. For decades, it looked like excellence. It was, and it was also a survival program.

Now that loop is running on full power, pointed at AI.

You hear “AI does what you do, faster” and the fear fires: I’m not enough. I’m falling behind. My board is watching every AI decision I make. Which activates the performance validation pattern: work harder, announce a strategy, perform fluency, be seen as AI-forward. Or the opposite: hold back, call it strategic caution, position yourself as the wise skeptic in a market moving too fast.

Both responses, the frantic over-adoption and the freeze dressed up as prudence, are the same survival driver wearing different coats. One performs urgency. The other performs wisdom. Neither comes from actual clarity.

What you accept will transform. What you resist will persist. The resistance isn’t to AI. It’s to the news AI is delivering, that being the smartest one in the room was always a rented position. Accept that, and the tool becomes a tool again.

The Leaders Navigating This Well Are Not AI Experts

The executives handling this era with the most composure are not the ones studying AI the hardest. They’re the ones who’ve stopped tying their identity to being indispensable.

Think of it like this: a master carpenter picks up a nail gun and asks one question: where does this fit in the job? They don’t ask what the nail gun says about their worth. There is no survival threat in the tool, because their worth was never stored in the hammer.

When your self-worth isn’t on the line, your thinking clears. You can evaluate AI with the same calm rigor you’d bring to any strategic decision. The executive terrified of AI isn’t seeing AI clearly. They’re seeing a mirror showing them how much of their self-worth was borrowed from being the bottleneck.

That is not a technology crisis. It’s a consciousness one.

The Four-Beat Practice

Here’s what I walk clients through when this loop is running:

1. Catch it.

Notice when AI conversations trigger urgency, anxiety or excessive caution. That activation is data. Something is being threatened that matters to your sense of self.

2. Name it.

Say it plainly: “I’m running a performance validation pattern right now. Underneath it is a survival fear of not being enough.” Naming both the conditioned response and the driver starts to release the pattern’s grip.

3. Reframe it.

AI is not a verdict on your value. It is a shift in the environment. The same kind every exceptional leader you’ve admired navigated in their era. Your worth was never stored in the answers you gave.

4. One rep.

In your next AI-adjacent conversation, be a learner. Walk in without needing to be the expert. Ask questions. Let it be unfamiliar. One rep rewires more than a hundred resolutions.

The executives who make this shift report something consistent: the anxiety drops, the strategic thinking improves and the AI adoption decisions become cleaner. Not because they became AI experts. Because they stopped needing AI to confirm their worth.

Here’s the truth: The leaders who thrive in the AI era won’t be the most technically fluent. They’ll be the ones clear enough to use the tool without being threatened by it.

Featured image by PeopleImages/Shutterstock

https://www.success.com/why-your-fear-of-ai-has-nothing-to-do-with-ai

1. Year Over Year S&P Earnings Growth Skewed by “Other Income”

@Charlie Bilello  In the first quarter, just 3 companies (Google, Nvidia, and Amazon) saw massive gains in the “other income” category from their private investments in companies like SpaceX and Anthropic.   The total of $69 billion in “other income” was roughly 10% of the S&P 500’s overall net income for the quarter. Absent this boost, S&P 500 YoY earnings growth would have been 15% in Q1, well below the reported figure (+28%).

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2. Leverage Play in S.Korea Blowing Up…350k Accounts Liquidated by Brokers Due to Margin Calls

Global Markets Investor

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3. Tech Sector Volatility at Records While VIX Sitting at 16

The Kobeissi Letter

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4. Semis and DRAM Record Volatility….Overall VIX Trending Down

StockCharts

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5. S&P Sector Changes in P/E Ratio….5 Sectors P/E Ratios Lower in 2026

NASDAQ DORSEY WRIGHT

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6. USA Oil– Out Producing Russia and Saudis

Wolf Street.

Wolf Street

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7. Retail Gas Prices—Now We Need the Next Drop to 2025 Levels

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8. CPI Breakdown-CNBC

CNBC

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9. 10-Year Small Down Tick Post CPI

CNBC

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10. 3 Top Tier Emotionally Intelligent Tendencies

Psychology Today EI is the “it” factor and doing 3 things means you have it. Erin Leonard Ph.D.

 Key points

• Emotional intelligence is the “it” factor.
• There are three high level EI tendencies that signify you have it.
• Although you may not enact these tendencies every time, you try very hard to make them your norm.
• Respond instead of react, set boundaries in place of being passive aggressive, and embrace accountability.

Emotional intelligence is the “it” factor. EI people are secure enough to handle their own flaws and continually evolve as a result. They look in the mirror instead of outsourcing all blame, and they are not fixated on the ego-win in the moment, but rather on the deeper, meaningful, and long-term priorities. Although this description portrays them as saint-like, they are certainly not. They make mistakes like everyone else and occasionally lose their temper, but overall, they routinely do 3 things that set them apart from everyone else.

1) They respond… not react.

When confronted, they quickly reflect on what the person is saying instead of immediately lashing out defensively. Their ability to think about the other person’s perspective, while looking at themselves to evaluate the merit of the confrontation, allows them to respond rather than react. They are equipped with a greater understanding of the issue; they can decide fairly whether they are at fault or not and reply with a grounded, balanced, and wise rebuttal that is not disrespectful or destructive to the relationship.

Alternatively, someone who reacts refuses to think about their part in the issue and immediately lashes out and redirects the blame onto the person who is confronting them. They deflect any accountability and use their fervor to shut down the person who is bringing up a problem. Following the confrontation, typically a person with low emotional intelligence plays the victim and acts as though they have been bullied, or they become passive-aggressive towards the person who “dares” to bring up an issue with them. Either way, the problem is not remedied, and now there is a chasm in the relationship.

2) They are not passive-aggressive… they set a boundary.

It is not fun to have your kindness taken advantage of or exploited. It is understandable to be angry in these situations, yet an emotionally intelligent person uses this as critical data. If a person repeatedly manipulates you for their own gain and does not care how it impacts you, they may be the type to react, not respond, when you tell them how you feel, which means it may be painful and useless. Instead, the emotionally intelligent person now sees this person realistically and, despite their disappointment, recognizes the importance of setting a boundary so they are not exploited again in the future. They know that this does not require them to be cold or rude. It simply means that they will be busy the next time this person needs help with something, or instead of going out to dinner with the friend who always forgets her debit card, they will propose going on a walk instead. Basically, they think creatively about how to casually implement a boundary that protects them from being used in the future.

A person who is angry because they perceive a friend took advantage of them or the friend doesn’t give them their way, may seek to covertly make this friend pay, passive-aggressively. Unfortunately, this person typically attempts to sabotage the friend’s success by doing something sneaky or they talk nasty about them to key mutual acquaintances. This is the, “you hurt me, and I’ll hurt you worse” mentality. Yet, they are nice to your face. This passive aggressive approach signals a sizable deficit in emotional intelligence.

3) They apologize when they are wrong… not when they get caught.

Typically, an emotionally intelligent individual is self-aware. They care about how their actions and words impact others, especially the people with whom they are close. So, they are cognizant of how they interact. They wish to understand the people that they care about, so they are careful to listen attentively and honor the person’s feelings rather than making it about them and what they want and feel.

This self-awareness and motivation to be a good person in their friendships and relationships also allows them to catch their mistakes. Maybe they had a selfish moment or were too tired and stressed to authentically listen and offer empathy. Whatever it may be, they search their soul because, although the moment is over, it nags at them. They do not feel quite right about how they handled it. Because they are secure enough to handle their own flaws, they apologize to the person that they impacted. Their accountability fosters trust and closeness with the people in their lives and sustains strong attachments with people who share these relational qualities.

A person with deficits in emotional intelligence usually defends against truly knowing their own character flaws. They may not be strong enough to handle them. So, they resist looking at themselves and instead feel more secure critiquing others. The last thing they want to do is show any “weakness” in a relationship, so they refuse to look at the possibility that they did something hurtful or selfish…. Until they get caught. When their back is against the wall, and they have no choice but to apologize because they risk losing the person, they will. However, it may come with excuses, justifications, and minimizations, which may signify insincerity. Often, insincere apologies are a sign that the person will repeat the same mistake.

Emotional intelligence is a gift when you use it wisely. Responding instead of reacting, setting healthy boundaries in place of being passive-aggressive, and embracing accountability in a relationship rather than evading it are top-tier emotional intelligence tendencies. You can find more on this important topic in my book, How to Outsmart a Narcissist: Use Emotional Intelligence to Regain Control at Home, at Work, and in Life.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parenting/202607/3-top-tier-emotionally-intelligent-tendencies

1. Semiconductor Index Moved Up or Down 3% 15 Times in Last 30 Days

StockCharts

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2. History of Semiconductor (SOX) Volatility

Loved by Analysts, Hated by Investors

The market got off to a bad start this week with the major indices in the red as oil and interest rates spiked sharply on renewed tensions with Iran. The semis fell nearly 5% as the SOX saw its ninth straight Monday with a gain or loss of at least 1%. The SOX has seen an average daily move of +/-3.36% over the last 50 trading days. As shown below, the only other times we’ve seen this much daily vol were in the lead-up to the Dot Com peak and then down the other side of the mountain, the Financial Crisis in late 2008, and in early 2020 during the COVID Crash.

Bespoke

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3. Momentum (MTUM) Outperformance of Low Volatility Stocks (SPLV) is at Record Levels….10-Year Chart =the Big Outperformance is 2024-Now

YCharts

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4. FLOWS-Active Managers Extremely Bullish

Dave Lutz Jones Trading Global investors buying stocks aggressively should consider reducing exposure, according to Bank of America Corp.’s fund manager survey.  Asset allocators have become extremely bullish, a typical warning sign for markets, with cash levels falling to an “uber-low” level of 3.6% of assets from 4.1% last month, strategists from the bank said. Positioning on US equities is now at its highest level since December 2024 at a net 24% overweight, the survey showed.

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5. FLOWS-Individual Retail Investors Single Stock Buying Plummets

Retail activity. “Retail investors’ net single-stock buying has fallen to a new post-COVID low”.

Vanda Research via @kevrgordon

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6. FLOWS-ETFs Dominate…State Street Projects $2.3 Trillion in Flows to ETFs 2026

State Street Investment Management Chart Pack

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7. DRAM ETF -30% from High of $80…-20% One Month

Google Finance

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8. Russian and Chinese Bots Now Turning Americans Against Each Other on Data Centers

NYT-China, Russia and Others Seek to Inflame Debate Over A.I. Data Centers  State actors in China, Russia and Iran have sought to exploit the U.S. public debate over the effects of the technology.

NY Times

OpenAI released this cartoon as an example of one generated with ChatGPT by people in China who the company believed were affiliated with a regional government. It is not clear what word in the title was blurred out.By Steven Lee Myers and Dustin Volz

A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Va., writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans’ physical and financial well-being.

A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet — created with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said — circulated on X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash.

A video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been a focus of Kremlin pressure. “The country’s electrical grid instability may render it useless,” the video’s narrator says.

All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence — verging at times on hostility — about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere.

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9. 2.6% of Americans Live in Subsidized Housing

The state of Section 8

The federal government has provided rental assistance to low-income Americans since the 1937 US Housing Act, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) now oversees eight different nationwide housing assistance programs. The latest data shows how many units the country has, who lives in them, and how long they must wait for one.

• About 8.86 million people, or 2.6% of the US population, lived in subsidized housing in 2025. On average, residents had lived in their units for 10 years and three months.

USAFacts

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10. Cities with Longest Time to Sell a Home

Market Watch

1. South Korea EWY ETF -25% Correction After Today’s Sell Off

StockCharts

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2. Earnings Growth Highs…So Korean Stocks Very Cheap on Forward P/E

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3. Chinese Models Huge Summer Rally in Usage

Financial Times

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4. It’s All About Earnings Season

Earnings are the most important driver of any bull market and they are now shifting into their highest gear in nearly five years.

S&P 500 earnings are tracking above 23% year-over-year growth for the second quarter, but historical patterns have led FactSet to project the final figure will come in above 29%.

That would mark the highest growth rate since the end of 2021, when the index reported a 32% jump in earnings.

The early signals suggest that even 29% could be a conservative guess:

• Of the 18 companies that have reported so far, 89% have beat estimates
• Those 18 names together exceeded forecasts by 14.5%, nearly double the 10-year average of 7.4%
• The S&P 500 has surpassed end-of-quarter estimates in 37 of the last 40 quarters

Opening Bell Daily

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5. Earnings Growth So High…Tech Stock Forward P/E Getting Cheaper

Ryan Detrick

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6. Retail Investors Not as Active

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7. AAPL Makes New Highs Just Before Lawsuit vs. Open AI

StockCharts

Interesting take from Semafor on AAPL vs. Open AI Lawsuit

Semafor

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8. 54% of New ETFs Using Derivatives

Howie Lindzon Another topic related to the ‘degenerate economy’ is all the ‘leveraged’ ETF’s being issued – now 33 percent of all ETF’s and 54 percent of all theses ETF’s use derivatives. I don’t think most investors fully understand what they own.

Howie Town

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9. Tech Stocks and Baseball Cards 2018-2026

Barron’s

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10. The hedonic treadmill-Seths Blog

When we upgrade something in our lives, the thing we used to be satisfied with is no longer satisfying.

That’s the nature of an upgrade.

After a certain point, the only thing we’re buying is the way the upgrade makes us feel in the moment, not our satisfaction going forward.

Stereos, salt, art on the wall. It’s easy to get hooked on the climb, not the altitude.

Luxury goods are a special set of upgrades. These are purchases that aren’t actually an upgrade, they simply feel that way because of their cost (and the status that goes with it).

At some point, the best upgrade is the realization that we have enough.

July 13, 2026

https://seths.blog

1. Softbank Volatility -40% Twice in 8 Months

StockCharts

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2. IGV Software ETF Hit Negative Return for 5-Year Period Before Recent Bounce

Google Finance

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3. Leverage ETF Craze Changing Structure of Stock Market

Joshua Brown

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4. 2 Clients-Customer A and Customer B Make Up Almost 40% of NVDA Revenue

Perplexity

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5. AI Contribution to GDP Growth-Morningstar

Preston Caldwell MYTH AI Isn’t a Major Contributor to the US GDP Growth

The third myth is that AI isn’t a major contributor to recent US GDP growth. This may sound odd, because the naive view is “of course it is—look at the hundreds of billions being spent on data centers.” But Goldman Sachs economists argued that AI-related investment in 2025 was offset entirely by imports, leading to zero contribution to GDP on net. This view is now perhaps the consensus among more sophisticated observers. But we think it’s missing the full picture.

We estimate that, as officially measured, AI investment contributed 0.4 percentage points to real GDP growth in 2025. And that contribution would’ve been 0.6 points without the Bureau of Economic Analysis undermeasurement of IT equipment investment.

Where does the view that AI’s contribution to GDP was zero in 2025 get things wrong? First, it assumes the official figures are correct. But even granting the official figures, there are two other mistakes. The zero-contribution view neglects the components of data center investment that correspond to non-IT equipment and structures. And it neglects the fact that AI services spending is capitalized as intangibles investment in the national accounts.

So, AI is providing a massive boost on the demand side of the economy, considering this direct contribution, as well as indirect effects, such as the boost to consumption from higher stock prices.

There’s one more nuance to unravel, though: AI’s contribution to GDP growth may be offset by tighter monetary policy. If this is the case, AI’s main impact on the economy isn’t higher GDP growth, but rather higher interest rates. Then, AI won’t start having a major uplift to GDP growth until it shifts from being merely a demand shock to also being a supply-side shock. The latter will happen once AI starts boosting productivity growth, which, as we discussed, is probably yet to ramp up.

https://www.morningstar.com/economy/5-myths-about-ais-economic-impact-what-data-actually-shows

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6. Nuclear Power Capacity To Jump 44% By 2036 As China Surpasses US

by Tyler Durden  Global nuclear capacity is set to surge by 44% over the next decade as China topples the United States as the biggest nuclear power capacity holder and India will hike its capacity to boost energy security. These are the estimates in a new report by BloombergNEF, which sees total global nuclear capacity at 535 gigawatts (GW) by 2036, up from the 372 GW of installed capacity as of the end of 2025.

The world is projected to have as much as 535 gigawatts of installed nuclear power by 2036, up from 372 last year, according to the report released Wednesday.

ZeroHedge

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7. You Know Its Howard Lindzon’s “Degenerate Economy” When Goldman Has to Throw on Ban

Goldman Bans Staff Prediction Markets Bets on Finance, Politics

Bloomberg

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8. U.S. Condo Market Supply for Sale Back to 2013 Levels

Wolf Street Sales of condos and co-ops fell by 2.7% seasonally adjusted in June from May, and by 2.7% year-over-year, to annual rate of 360,000, a record low, shared also by May 2020 and May 2025, all of them the same record low in the data that go back only to late 2011.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate compared to June in prior years:

• 2025: -2.7% (year-over-year)
• 2021: -50.7%
• 2019: -36.8%
• 2012: -25.0% (first June in the data series)

Supply of condos rose to 6.4 months, along with May, June, and September last year the highest since 2012.

Wolf Street

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9. White Lines on American Roads in 1950s Life Saver

WSJ By Ben Cohen  In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road.  The study found that Dorr’s line nudged cars away from the center line, into the middle of their lanes, and narrowed the speed gap between day and night. In other words, the study found scientific evidence that a single line could dramatically alter human behavior.  

WSJ

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10. My Question—Brown U has 20% of Kids Getting “extra time” for Exams Due to Issues.  Do They Still Get Extra Time While Cheating with AI

This chart should be a ‘wake-up call’ about AI cheating, Brown University professor says  By Henry Chandonnet 

Brown University professor Roberto Serrano told Business Insider that the “cost of cheating has basically gone down to zero.” Roberto Serrano

• Brown University professor Roberto Serrano saw scores drop between a take-home midterm and an in-person final.
• He suspects the students cheated with AI. “It’s certainly a wake-up call to the professors,” he told Business Insider.
• Serrano shared the exam scores. Some dropped from perfect scores on the midterm to below 20% on the final.

What feels off in this AI-generated summary?

Roberto Serrano’s class scored curiously well on the take-home midterm exam. When he suspected widespread AI cheating and made their final exam in-person, their grades tanked.

The Brown University professor teaches welfare economics and social choice theory. The midterm was administered from home after a shooter killed two students in December.

“The problem with this technology is that the cost of cheating has basically gone down to zero,” he told Business Insider. “It’s very easy for students to succumb to the temptation.”

When he told students that the final exam would be in person, many previously high-scoring students dropped out. Others who scored in the high 90s on the midterm scored in the 50s on the final.

Brian E. Clark, Brown’s VP for news and strategic campus communications, wrote to Business Insider that Serrano shared details with the university’s standing committee on the academic code on July 8. The committee “move forward according to its procedures.”

“Brown treats every allegation of academic integrity with the utmost seriousness,” Clark wrote.

The scandal has drawn interest across the internet, and particularly among those who work in tech. Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham posted on X about it; two Google DeepMind staffers also shared their thoughts.

A chart of the data, which was first publicized by Inside Higher Ed, shows each student’s grades: 

Business Insider