The Last Time This Happened, Bush Was President

Hey Traders,

How long can the market ignore what's going on in the bond market? The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.21% on Thursday, its highest level since June 2007, when George W. Bush was still in the White House.

You'll see people on X and in the news point out that the long-term average for the 10-year note sits around 5.5%. That sounds great. But remember, since COVID, we've gone from excessive government spending to completely unsustainable government spending.

The last time the 10-year yielded this much, total federal debt ran about 62% of U.S. annual GDP. Since COVID, debt and deficits have ballooned, and that ratio now sits near 123%. We owe more than the entire economy produces in a year.

Higher rates widen the deficit, which pushes the debt higher and forces Washington to issue even more bonds. The interest bill alone now tops what we spend on the military, and the Congressional Budget Office projects it'll run past $1 trillion this fiscal year.

At some point, Treasuries start to squeeze out just about everything else. We're already seeing it in MOST stocks. Take a look at the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) (the same 500 companies as the S&P, but each one counts the same no matter its size) as yields have exploded higher:

RSP has dropped about 5% from its mid-August high, while the regular S&P 500 sits less than 1% off its peak. That's what's really been happening in most of the market. AI and tech have hung in and kept rising.

I expect that excitement and strength to continue at least through the Anthropic IPO. Names that supply Anthropic or own a piece of it should run ahead of the listing, and they happen to be the same names propping up the market.

That's going to create some huge opportunities over the coming days and weeks. I'm running the HALO Plan to take advantage of it, and you can learn all about what I'm doing here. Join me!

It Stopped Digging

Most people still think of Hut 8 (HUT) as a bitcoin miner. But the company has branched out into compute, and it's now one of the AI "landlords" out there. It builds the data centers and leases the space and power to the companies that fill them with chips.

One of those tenants matters a lot right now. Hut 8 is building a Louisiana campus for Anthropic under a 15-year, $7 billion lease with Fluidstack, with Google backstopping the payments. It has also leased out its entire 1-gigawatt Texas campus to an unnamed investment-grade tenant for another $19.6 billion.

The stock closed Friday near $97, still about 21% below its late-June high. I think HUT's set for a pretty nice run higher in the coming weeks. I'll trade it in HALO, but for a one-week trade, I like it higher.

The Hottest App in America

On the State of the Market show, Hans shared several reasons he thinks the AI move in Meta Platforms (META) has gotten overextended. The stock ran 36% in September through Thursday's record close, riding Muse, its new personal AI agent, to the top of the App Store's free chart.

Meta does have a head start in personal AI agents, but the competition's coming, and coming quickly. OpenAI and Google are pushing their own agents, and Amazon already blocked Muse from its platform. Shares fell about 3% Friday after a New Mexico jury ruled against the company.

I still like the stock, but I see a trip back to $700 or lower coming. That's about 7% below Friday's close.

Question, as always, is will either one of these win the battle of the best and become the basis for our Monday Ticker Highlight Show weekly option play?

There’s only one way to find out – tap this freakin link and join before that play hits on Monday at 10:30 AM ET

Your only option,

 

Mark Sebastian

Mark Sebastian

Mark Sebastian is a former member of both the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), where he spent years mastering the art of options trading in the most competitive environment imaginable. As Chief Investment Officer at the hedge fund Karman Line Capital, Mark manages sophisticated options strategies for institutional clients. He is the author of two highly regarded books on options trading: ‘The Option Traders Hedge Fund’ and ‘Trading Options for Edge.’ Mark is a frequent guest on major financial networks including CNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg, and First Business News, where he provides expert commentary on market volatility and options strategies.

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About the Author

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Mark Sebastian

Former CBOE floor trader and CIO at Karman Line Capital. Author of ‘The Option Traders Hedge Fund’ with over 30 years of options trading experience.

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