☕️ Big money stepping back from tech? Don’t bet on it!

Howdy! 👋 

I’m back from a fabulous 4 mile ruck this morning after one heckuva storm rolled through overnight.  

Ready to get to it! 😀 🎯 

Btw, skipping a workout feels harmless… until it becomes a habit. Same with skipping your investments.  

Success doesn’t care about excuses. 

Here’s my playbook. 

1 – Yep – inflation IS cooling 

July's producer price index – the wholesale inflation number that tends to show up in your grocery bill a few months later – came in at zero.  

Economists were looking for a 0.2% increase. They didn't get it. (Read) 

More importantly, so-called Core PPI, which strips out food and energy, rose just 0.2% against a forecast of 0.3%. Energy prices actually fell despite the ongoing war in Iran, with gasoline sliding – good news if you're tanking up and GREAT if you’re an investor. 

Here’s the thing. 

I have repeatedly told you over the years that the Fed’s data chain is busted, lags badly and, frankly, no longer reflects today’s markets. 

The “lag” part is especially critical. 

The markets are forward-looking which means investing should be too. So, riddle me this – and I’m asking rhetorically – why is it that the news fawns over every last pronouncement when the data the Fed uses to compile this stuff lags by an average of 1 to 2 months per series? 

Exactly. 

Smart investors know that the time to get busy is months ahead of time, because the markets turn an average of 6 months before the data itself. 

Starting with the strongest, best companies on the planet. 

I’ve got a few ideas as to what that shopping list may look like and, if you’re a member of the One Bar Ahead® Family, you know exactly what that represents. If not, I hope you’ve got a “buy list” that’s even half as strong. 

Keith’s Investing Tip: You can’t possibly hope to be ahead when the chips are up if you’re not willing to invest when they’re down. 

2 – Econ101: What record Manhattan rents say about the real economy 

Median rent on a new Manhattan lease hit $5,000 in July – a record – up 6.4% from a year ago. (Read) 

That's twice the pace of shelter inflation – the government's measure of how fast housing costs are rising – nationwide. 

The official story is that demand is exploding. 

The truth is that supply has vanished. 

Listings have collapsed after a change to how broker fees work. Worse, landlords are sitting on fewer available units right when the summer apartment rush hits hardest.  

Some people say what’s happening is a function of the FARE Act – a NYC broker-fee law in effect since June 2025 that flipped fees from tenants to brokers.  

I think there’s another wrinkle. 

Landlords are holding units off the markets longer to price them “right” now that rent responsibility has shifted to them. So they’re taking more time to list while deciding whether they want to eat the listing fees or raise the rent to cover the added hit. Both slow down the number of listings. 

Consider super specialized REITs – data, medicine, defense etc – that don’t depend on relationships like who pays the listing fees to succeed. 

One of my favorite REITs has returned ~127% over the past 5 years versus the SPY which has turned in ~74% over the same time frame. That’s a ~1.7x performance advantage.  

Hopefully, you’ve got this covered. If not, you know where to find me.  

3 – Big money stepping back from tech? – I wouldn’t bet on it 

Hedge funds and asset managers sold $21.6 billion worth of Nasdaq futures in the week ending August 4, the largest weekly sale on record according to Goldman Sachs. (Read) 

Pundits and clickbait artists are already warning about another apocalypse. Even His Excellency Big Shortimus Maximus is back warning that Palantir is worth $1… never mind that nearly every company he’s said he’s shorted recently has charged higher but that’s a story for another time. 🤦️ 

At first glance, the numbers look scary… short sales drove 72% of that selling, hedge funds sold $11.9 billion of it, asset managers sold $7.4 billion. And so on. 

Goldman says that institutional positioning in Nasdaq futures flipped negative for the first time since May 2025 – a sharp turn from the +$54 billion bullish bet these same players were holding back in October. 

Not likely. 

The big money has simply arbitraged risk and more than likely gone synthetic – meaning they’ve sold out of stocks themselves while simultaneously creating what are called synthetic longs – a form of super specialized position that can replicate the upside of owning the stock outright, without the balance-sheet footprint or capital tied up in actually holding it. 

Taking this action helps the big money stay in the game while reducing risk and freeing up capital and margin they can redeploy elsewhere – all while keeping their upside exposure to tech fully intact. 

There is no way short of hell freezing over that they’re gonna abandon the profit potential associated with tech. 

Read what I’ve just said again if you must. 

The game is far more likely about creating the perception that they’re getting out… so that unsuspecting folks freak out, sell and give the big money (and smart investors) the opportunity to buy back in at lower prices. 

Keith’s Investing Tip: Think like a shark, not a minnow. 

4 – Buy Cerebras? 

Cerebras raised its full-year guidance, but second-quarter revenue still came in light versus estimates – and the market punished the stock anyway, sending shares down about 15% in extended trading. (Read) 

CEO Andrew Feldman told CNBC that AI demand is "through the roof" and that companies are willing to pay a premium for Cerebras's specialty inference chips – the kind that power real-time AI responses rather than training the models themselves.  

What catches my attention is his observation that margins are expanding because fast inference "is priced at a premium." 

Hmmm. 

5 – The cars you wanted at 16 are now the ones Wall Street wants 

Monterey Car Week could sell close to $500 million in classic cars this week. That would be a record. (Read) 

For decades, it was Boomers buying 1950's and '60s classics – the "important" cars, the ones with racing history and pedigree. Thing is that market is actually down 2% over the past year. 

However, younger buyers are paying up for the supercars they grew up wanting – I'm talking 90s and 2000s Ferraris, Bugattis and so on. That side of the market is up 28% according to Hagerty. 

Some cars have apparently doubled in two years. 

RM Sotheby's, for example, listed a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR for a cool $35 million. Ferrari remains the preeminent marque with a 2023 Ferrari Daytona SP3 valued at $10 million+. 

Here's where it gets interesting. 

Many of the younger buyers are buying these cars with the intention of "flipping" 'em the same way that social media traders drove meme stocks into the stratosphere not too long ago. 

That suggests the collector car market is decidedly frothy… and that there’s a play to be had. 

Here are a few ideas to get you started – pun absolutely intended. 

• If you fancy a 1950s or 1960s classic, I think there's a case to be made that prices will remain lower for the next few years. Particularly for “drivers” you can get out and enjoy rather than garage royalty that lives inside a bubble wrapped, environmentally controlled box you wouldn’t dare breathe on. 
• If you're after the exotics, start tracking the models you'd love to own. I also think there's an excellent chance that many prices are going to come down sharply in the next 12-24 months when the speculative froth comes off (and today's younger buyers figure out what a real maintenance bill looks like for one of these things; speaking with experience, it's not something to take lightly). LowBall Orders work with collector cars, too. 😀 
• There are a few specialized investment funds but they're definitely not for the faint of heart. Examples – if memory serves – include Azimut's new evergreen classic car fund out of Italy, which only touches cars worth north of €1 million each, and Hetica Capital's closed-end fund out of Switzerland.  

Like stocks, buy only what you’d want to own because you may own it for a while. 😀 

Oh, and do check your local markets for mechanics who can work on whatever you pick up because really talented “wrenches” are increasingly hard to find and correspondingly expensive when you do. 

Keith's Investing Tip: A car is worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it on the day you need to sell – not what the guy at the auction podium says it's worth on the day you buy it. 

Bottom Line 

The most important investment skill you can learn today is to calculate the future cost of decisions you make today. 

So – ta da – make excellent decisions! 😀 

You got this — I promise. 

As always, let’s MAKE it a great day. 

Keith 😀