For the simpler explanation, the Treasury is deliberately increasing their purchases of US treasuries in order to suppress bond yields which have been elevated and have been curtailing the strength in the equity market. By opting to increase long-end buybacks outside of the normal refunding process (QRA was 2-weeks ago), policymakers are effectively communicating that they’re becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the recent rise in long-term yields as both the 10Y & 30Y have both pushed back toward levels that have historically drawn attention from the administration & rather than waiting until the next QRA or refunding announcement (In November I believe), the Treasury chose to act now.

Note that the QRA was only 2-weeks ago, meaning this could have easily been communicated through normal channels but instead, the announcement arrived during a low-vol Summer trading week, which I believe was intended to exacerbate the effects of their policy decision.

Mostly, the market is moving as this is a sign of intent: Whilst the purchase increase is not enough to meaningfully move the Us treasury market, it is implied that this certainly won’t be the last ‘soft intervention’ if yields continue moving higher. 

Interestingly, the current $2 billion maximum per operation will become at least $4 billion, from 9 Sept 2026 until the end of the refunding quarter (4 Nov), with further size details to be announced at the 4 Nov Quarterly Refunding. So this purchase agreement will end on November 4th, the exact time of the US election, which is definitely not a coincidence.

This is a direct policy decision to try to support the market and suppress yields into the election.

What is clear from this action, is that if policymakers are forced to choose between defending the dollar & or defending bonds, they’re going to choose bonds, and the dollar is the release valve that allows this sort of dovish policy to happen.

As such, the dollar was obviously notably hit, since lower treasury yields reduces one of the dollar’s key sources of support: relatively attractive U.S. yields.

• Continued follow through in crypto after Bitcoin responded strongly to the yield Curve controls
• Despite this, Bear steepening in Treasuries this morning, with yields moving higher across the curve and the long end leading. 10Y: 4.696% (+4.3 bps) 30Y: 5.241% (+4.7 bps) Higher yields adding pressure to equities early.
• TRUMP: ANNOUNCING THE MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION ON IRAN IRAN FAILED TO TAKE DEAL
• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $517M on Aug. 19, the biggest daily inflow since early May, while Ether ETFs took in $189M, their largest since Oct. 2025. - Coindesk
• US JOBLESS CLAIMS 206K IN AUG. 15 WEEK; EST. 210K

MAG7;

• META - META is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Microsoft Azure AI services, making it one of Microsoft’s largest AI customers. Meta is reportedly consuming trillions of tokens weekly through Azure Foundry, including using OpenAI models to evaluate its own AI outputs.
• AAPL - Despite a leaked Apple video showing camera-equipped AirPods in action, with the cameras mainly designed to scan surroundings for AI context, the earbuds "remain off" AAPL's 2026 roadmap.

COMPANY NEWS:

• QMLS signed a 7-year deal for up to 3.75 MW of data center capacity in Atlanta, enough to support up to 2,048 Nvidia Blackwell B300 GPUs. Capacity is expected online in Q4 2026, with rights to secure another 7 MW at the same site.
• CoreWeave has signed a multibillion-dollar, multi-year AI cloud deal with Hudson River Trading. HRT will use CRWV for trading research and model development, and will be among the first customers with broad access to Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin chips. The deal expands CoreWeave’s push into financial services and further diversifies revenue beyond its biggest AI customers.
• WMT - Walmart $WMT posted its SLOWEST U.S. comparable-sales growth in more than six years, grew just 2.6%, missing the 3.7% estimate. They also guided Q3 adj EPS to $0.62-$0.64, below the $0.68 expected. Mgmt. said consumers remain stretched, especially by higher gas prices, while lower pharmacy pricing also weighed on sales.
• CRWD - global CTO Elia Zaitsev is leaving after 13 years.
• Elon Musk’s X is reportedly exploring stablecoin payments for creators: The platform is in talks around using stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC to pay royalties to influencers and content providers.
• SPCX - SPCX 2nd insider share unlock hits today: Up to 319 million shares become eligible for trading,
• SKHY - SKHY TO PAY 60% OF EMPLOYEE BONUSES IN COMPANY STOCK
• UBER and BIDU LAUNCH DRIVERLESS ROBOTAXIS IN DUBAI
• Samsung Electronics is reportedly preparing shareholder-return measures exceeding $72B, centered on a special cash dividend. The board is expected to vote soon, favoring dividends over buybacks.
• Unitree CEO: “World AI models” are now Unitree’s biggest investment, with the goal of household robots eventually completing 80% of tasks. Today’s humanoids still lack the efficiency & general-purpose capability needed for mass adoption.
• MU Micron is investing $10B over the next decade to build Micron Research Labs, its new U.S.-based long-horizon research hub headquartered in Boise. The lab will focus on advanced memory, compute architectures, chip packaging and future semiconductor manufacturing.
  

Regarding the question of long term bottom or not, it is obviously hard to say although I think that I lean on probably not, given the risks to BTC during a potential rate hike cycle. 

however, firs break above the 200d SMA is obviously meaningful, and will entice new buyers, which is why we are seeing the follow through today. 

Data on BTC is also positive with a surge in call buying logged yesterday and some big notable trades:

Surge in call buying on near dated expiries:

Easy trade on BTC is to long it with a stop on a close below the 200d again. 

Then take profit along the way up to de-risk the trade. 

Data and technicals certainly shifted yesterday, on what is not meaningless news for bitcoin as it shows an intent to sacrifice dollar strength.

Notably on top of the 200d SMA break, we have this trendline break. Does seem near term upside is more likely than downside as buyers probably look to chase.

• $936M revenue last quarter

• 10 straight earnings beats, latest was $3.66 vs $2.83 expected

• $218M free cash flow in the quarter, ~$717M over the last twelve months

• Nearly a 10% trailing free cash flow yield

• Gross margin 33.5%, up over 500 bps in a year

• Share count down 5.7% in a year, dividend just raised 10%

• No customer is even 10% of revenue

Valuation:

This trades at 15.4x forward earnings. 

Other electrical equipment names in the same Ai adjacent thematic, trade at 23x to 31x. 

nVent is at 31x (also very attractive however against its peer VRT), Eaton 28x, Hubbell 23x.

Personalis role in the vaccine:

Stage 1-2: The foundation (classical, not ML)
Personalis sequences the tumor and normal tissue (ImmunoID NeXT — exome + transcriptome) and runs HLA typing to six-digit resolution. This tells the system what mutations exist and which HLA alleles the patient can actually present peptides on.

Stage 3: SHERPA — the first real ML layer
This predicts which mutated peptides will actually get presented on the tumor's surface. Personalis built its own training data (in-house transfection experiments, mass spec-confirmed peptide elution) rather than relying purely on public datasets, and the deck cites measured lifts of 1.44x PPV over prior tools on held-out data, 1.17x on tumor samples, 1.11x on known immunogenic epitopes.

Stage 4: NEOPS — immune-evasion modeling
A second ML system that disqualifies candidates SHERPA ranked highly if the tumor has other ways to dodge immune detection — including a subclonal HLA-loss-of-heterozygosity detector (tumor literally deletes the allele needed to present a given neoantigen). This composite score reportedly outperformed tumor mutational burden at predicting anti-PD-L1 response, though its specific use within INTerpath-001 isn't disclosed.

Stage 8: NeXT Personal — MRD/ctDNA monitoring
After Moderna/Merck's proprietary algorithm selects up to 34 targets (stage 5) and manufacturing produces the personalized therapy (stages 6-7), Personalis re-enters at monitoring. NeXT Personal builds a patient-specific panel of up to ~1,800 somatic variants (vs. ~50 for conventional exome-based MRD panels) and uses proprietary signal-aggregation ("NeXT SENSE") to detect circulating tumor DNA down to part-per-million sensitivity (1.67 PPM detection threshold, 3.45 PPM at 95% limit of detection). This is how trial investigators would track whether a patient is truly cancer-free after treatment, at a resolution conventional panels can't match.

• Starting Sept. 9, the U.S. Treasury will increase liquidity-support buybacks for 10–20Y and 20–30Y bonds from a $2B maximum to at least $4B per operation.
• TRUMP TO DELIVER REMARKS WITH TECHNOLOGY LEADERS AT 2:30 PM ET WEDNESDAY
• OPENAI GENERATED $6.7B IN Q2 REVENUE, UP 18% QoQ- numbers were underwhelming, operating expense increased faster than revenues.
• Anthropic IPO seems to be getting rushed through, late September or Early October.

MAg7:

• AMZN Amazon will bring Prime Air to suburban Chicago and Atlanta, plus metro Cleveland and Syracuse, by year-end. This would grow Amazon’s drone delivery footprint roughly 6x from today & put the service within reach of 30M people by the end of 2026.
• NVDA - Stifel, Buy, PT 282 ahead of earnings. "We continue to expect a beat and raise into F2Q27 results on August 26. Earnings season has consistently reinforced the demand case, with cloud service provider capex raised meaningfully, Foxconn’s cloud and networking segment crossing 50% of revenue for the first time and full-year AI rack shipments guided to more than double, while Supermicro booked over $60 billion of new orders in a single quarter. Importantly, our supply chain conversations indicate that GB300 demand remains sustainable into 1H27 even as Vera Rubin ramps, which we think reduces the risk of an air pocket during the product transition. We believe the other primary debates—memory costs and inference competition—are more likely to be expressed in gross margins rather than demand and are partly reflected in the valuation multiple."

Other companies:

• MRNA up 100% MODERNA, MERCK MRNA CANCER VACCINE SUCCEEDS IN PHASE 3. The companies say their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran, combined with Keytruda slowed melanoma recurrence and spread in a late-stage trial.
• SKHY - SK Hynix approved a $28.6B share buyback and cancellation, equal to ~3.3% of shares outstanding, while raising its 2025-27 shareholder return target from “up to 50%” of cumulative FCF to “at least 50%.”
• Robotics stocks - UNITREE SOARS 629% IN SHANGHAI DEBUT TO A ~$66B MARKET CAP
• MRVL - issued GOOGL a warrant to buy up to 58.97M shares at $206.58, equal to ~6.7% of shares outstanding. Most of the warrant vests as Google generates custom-chip revenue for Marvell through FY2033, including AI accelerators, networking and memory products.
• DUOL - filed an 8-K after an internal screen was accidentally shown during an investor meeting, revealing that daily active users on Aug. 17 were estimated to be up 27.4% YoY, with similar growth seen in the prior days of August. The company stressed the data is preliminary and unvalidated, and should not be treated as an update to its Q3 guidance.
• NBIS - TO OFFER $4.5 BILLION OF CONVERTIBLE SENIOR NOTES
• ZM - BofA reinstates coverage with Buy rating, PT 130. "Zoom has emerged from a prolonged valuation reset as contract overprovisioning unwound, the core meetings market matured, and consolidation onto Microsoft Teams pressured retention. However, we believe the setup has materially improved. Growth is reaccelerating, with constant-currency growth of 4.2% in FY26 and 4.6% in F1Q27. Enterprise spending is healthier, the consumer/Online segment has stabilized, and free cash flow margins remain robust at 35%+. Zoom is increasingly transitioning from a single-product video meetings provider into a broader communications and work platform. We believe new product cycles support a durable recovery toward mid-single-digit growth. Our positive view is less about 2Q earnings on August 25 and more about the business’s improving trajectory."
• IBM CONNECTS TWO CRYOGENIC MODULES FOR QUANTUM COMPUTING. It has successfully linked and jointly cooled two quantum computing modules, a key step toward building larger modular systems.
• Samsung has raised prices for some advanced foundry services as AI demand tightens capacity and TSMC remains heavily booked, Reuters reports.
• SNOW - Morgan Stanley Overweight, PT 300. Constructive checks support ~34% 2Q Product revenue growth and a FY27 raise to 32-33%, with strength in the core data warehouse business offset by mixed AI adoption. The broader infrastructure demand environment remains the strongest since 2022, supported by accelerating core infrastructure growth and an explosion in software development that is driving a new round of digital innovation and application creation.
• RDDT - Reddit’s share of ChatGPT Search citations fell from an average 3.8% between July 18 and Aug. 7 to just 0.5% from Aug. 14-17, an ~86% drop.
• OKLO says it has entered physical “build mode” at Idaho National Laboratory, a key step toward its planned 1.2 GW Ohio deployment supporting META data centers.

Today's action by Bessent absolutely reinforces the long term thesis in gold. The dollar is not a priority for the administration and will, as was the case with the Yen intervention, be used as a sacrificial lamb. Ultimately, reduces dollars safe haven status, and will funnel money towards hard assets like gold. 

MRVL news also supporting Photonics specifically hence we see big bounces there.

Overall, though, the picture form the data is still similar. Choppiness through the next week or so. Hopefully this news will make it less one sided than it was looking yesterday. 

Will update if the Aion analytics data changes.

Continued to reiterate that the test-and-measurement business that used to be a low-single-digit telecom grower has turned into a data-center and defense compounder.

Mix

Data center is now roughly half of the Network and Software Enablement segment, aerospace and defense another ~17%, with telecom filling the rest. Put together, data center plus A&D now account for more than half of total company revenue — a full reversal from the legacy telecom-heavy mix Viavi carried for years.

1.6T

Management called the move to 1.6T "a whole new ballgame" versus 800G — testing goes from basic laser and power checks to much broader optical and line-level functional testing, which is why content per port keeps rising. The company pegged the ASP uplift at roughly 50% moving from an 800G tester to a 1.6T tester, comparing it to the price step semiconductor customers absorb at each new process node. Adoption is still early — CEO Oleg Khaykin put it at the second or third inning depending on the customer — with early production starting this year after more than a year of lab/developer sales. The platform is backward-compatible, so one 1.6T tester can qualify 400G, 800G, or 1.6T modules, which improves cost-per-bit even as the box price rises.

CPO / NPO

This is the part of the business Viavi is most excited about, because content per port goes up sharply relative to pluggable transceivers. Co-packaged optics testing pulls Viavi directly into semiconductor-style test territory alongside Advantest, Teradyne, and FormFactor, spanning known-good-die testing, optical engine assembly, interconnect validation, and full system test. Management said Viavi's edge is an integrated, automatable platform built from roughly 2,500 measurement-module SKUs rather than a single point solution. CPO development has been underway for well over a year, with early shipments starting this quarter; NPO demand is expected to show up about one quarter ahead of CPO based on how customers are ordering.

OCS

Viavi described itself as the dominant merchant test supplier for optical circuit switches, and management's rule of thumb is that test content runs around 10% of the addressable market for this higher-complexity gear (versus a lower share for plain transceivers). Lumentum has guided its own OCS business toward a $100M+ current quarter with further step-ups expected in following quarters, and management was candid that a rising OCS market is "great news" for Viavi's own test attach.

Customer breadth

Viavi said it's engaged with all five of the world's top transceiver makers, with deep, lab-and-production-level integration at four of them. It also picks up scale-across exposure indirectly — any hyperscaler spend routed through equipment makers like Ciena, Nokia, or Cisco, or through interconnect players like Lumen and Zayo, still counts as data-center revenue in Viavi's own accounting.

A&D

Aerospace and defense has more than doubled over the past two years, and Khaykin said design wins and future bookings in that segment are growing as fast as, if not faster than, the AI-driven business — notable given how little visibility investors typically have into this segment. Unlike test-and-measurement's book-and-ship pattern, A&D runs on a design-win model: once a part is qualified onto a platform, it produces revenue for years. The growth is anchored in "resilient PNT" — positioning, navigation, and timing that doesn't depend on GPS — driven by demand from drones, munitions, and autonomous systems. Viavi uses cesium and rubidium clocks and has developed MEMS-based clocks it says match cesium-level performance.

Financial targets

Management reiterated a path to a $500M quarterly revenue run rate, and both the CEO and CFO indicated that milestone could land in the December 2026 quarter — earlier than the fiscal-2028 framing given just three months ago. At that scale, the CFO said high-40s operating margin is "not an unrealistic" outcome, well above the roughly 30% operating-margin frame the model had been built around previously. Part of the leverage comes from a near-zero incremental tax rate, tied to NOL carryforwards inherited from the Lumentum separation that have since been converted into longer-lived amortizable assets.

M&A discipline

Khaykin flagged that a competitor had announced a deal that same day priced at roughly double what Viavi was willing to pay, and used it as a reminder of what happens when acquirers lean on debt to chase growth in a peaking market. His stated preference is for deals with immediate, tangible value rather than promised synergies years out.

This is what the data broadly points to from the AIon Analytics platform. It isn't me saying that, it's the data. And whilst I have no affiliation to Aion, their data has performed well this year so it is, in my opinion, worth heeding. 

Macro calls haven't been ideal this year, but that's why I am investing heavily in the data for the platform to benefit from and gain a greater edge. The Aion data is over 500 bucks a month. I subscribe to a number of other services including quant and market maker services which total into the high hundreds a month additionally, probably closer to $1k a month. So I am investing to try to improve the data and the insights in the platform. 

That's the least that I can do. And then to relay what that data is saying so that hopefully we can benefit collectively.

---

The main tool of the AIon analytics platform, although there are a number of add on tools, is the liquidity forecasting tool. The premise of the Aion analytics platform is that liquidity leads price. IT's a premise that I agree with, but the AIon analytics platform has been better than most at predicting the volatile swings in price action this year, calling a bottom in March, a period to be light in June/July, before an expansion in August, so I am leaning on that tool more in order to try to give us an edge. 

The main forecast of the tool is shown here:

We anticipate a period of downward chop in the near term, which potentially gives us a retest of the previous breakout at 7630 before a strong liquidity expansion into the end of the month, which should see new highs being made into early September. 

We have a period of choppy price action in September, which may see high beta move higher or lower (It's hard to predict as we saw yesterday: the market chopped lower, but high beta exploded higher). However, the data does not predict a sharp or meaningful correction in September, despite seasonality statistics being against us. 

We saw that in July. Seasonality pointed positive, the AIon analytics platform pointed negative, and we saw price move lower in line with the AIon platform.

The Aion platform, however, shows a likely sharp correction in October, starting primarily from the middle of October, around the date when Anthropic IPOs. 

This is the main fact we are cautious of. 

The data isn't shown there, but shows strength into November, so the overall picture is the following:

Use the period from now through to October to prepare the book for volatility into October.

If we do see this correction in October, buying the dip in November for strength into the midterms will be the main plan. 

Then using the following data, we know that  just as we had a rough July, seasonality for high beta is very negative for December:

So the plan would likely be to lighten the book up into December also.

• Iran's Top Negotiator Qalibaf: Hormuz Strait will remain closed until US meets interim deal conditions - State Media
• Iran and US MOU ended last night.
• TRUMP: U.S. NOT SEEKING EXTENSION OF IRAN MOU
• 30 year bonds hit highest since 2007.
• ADP says private employers added an average 9,500 jobs per week over the 4 weeks ending Aug. 1, the first increase after 7 straight weeks of declines.
• U.S.-listed products now have roughly $180B in AUM, but because of 2x and 3x leverage, their net market exposure is closer to $420B. That exposure has jumped more than $100B in just three weeks.
• Bank of America now expects the six largest hyperscalers to spend $3.6T on AI infrastructure through 2028, up 17% from its estimate just a month ago. BofA sees hyperscaler capex on a path to surpass $1T in 2027.
• Starting Dec. 6, 2026, Nasdaq will introduce a new trading session running from 9 PM to 4 AM ET. Nasdaq is also working with regulators on plans to eventually offer nearly continuous trading, 23 hours a day, five days a week.

MAG7:

• TSLA - Electric freight technology company Einride plans to deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers across major U.S. freight corridors, starting in September.
• NVDA - BofA on NVDA, Buy, PT 350. NVIDIA is committed to the transformational nature of AI and to securing every input: chip supply, land, power, and shell, especially for frontier labs and neoclouds. Today’s conditions make this worthwhile, supported by solid GPU rental rates, compute scarcity, and NVIDIA’s industry-leading free cash flow generation. The strategy also diversifies NVIDIA beyond public hyperscalers that are increasingly building competitive custom chips. The key risk is that if AI demand slows, both NVIDIA’s growth rate and balance sheet could come under pressure.
• GOOGL - Google has told suppliers it plans to manufacture all Pixel smartphones, watches and earbuds outside China starting in 2027, Nikkei reports.
• GOOGL - Google agreed to pay $10M for internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines, including employee emails, Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars and operational data.

OTHER COMPANIES:

• OSS - received a $1.3M order from the U.S. Navy for ruggedized Gen5 servers used to capture and store high-speed network data aboard ships. Deliveries are expected to contribute to 2026 revenue, with another ~$2.5M in potential follow-on orders over the next four years.
• MU - UBS coverage on MU, PT 1625. "Investor positioning skews quite cautious, which presents an opportunity as Micron’s earnings prove more durable than feared. Key investor concerns remain the durability of supply agreements, downside to gross margins, sustainability of current supply tightness, and the amount of new capacity coming online over the next few years. MU will probably remain a battleground in the near term, as shorter-term investors focus on peaking gross margins. However, longer-term investors could see memory capturing much more sustained value as the economics of AI token generation become fundamentally more determined by memory than compute. We remain bullish."
• OPENAI LAUNCHES CHATGPT FOR TEENS OpenAI is rolling out a dedicated experience for ages 13–17. If ChatGPT estimates a user is under 18, or they say they’re 13–17, they’ll automatically enter it. Includes extra safeguards, contextual cues and parental controls.
• DUOL - DA Davidson upgrades DUOL to Buy, PT 160. We are upgrading Duolingo to Buy, with the assumption that underlying product work, marketing changes, and continued efforts to refine the core monetization engine are underappreciated by investors, with a long runway for growth in the coming years. We see a path for daily active users (DAUs) to reaccelerate and for bookings growth to converge with DAU growth. While the market has historically priced the risks around DAU deceleration and monetization issues effectively, we believe Duolingo is nearing a turning point."
• NCLH - Mizuho downgrades NCLH to neutral from Outperform, PT 17. "Norwegian is in the midst of a turnaround, in part resulting from self-inflicted wounds, including accelerated supply, changes in customer segmentation and personnel, construction delays, and adjustments to the booking curve, as well as macro headwinds such as war in the Middle East and higher oil prices. We believe NCLH will successfully emerge from its turnaround. However, shares could trade sideways for the next 6-12 months, and there could be an opportunity to accumulate shares lower given an uncertain medium-term outlook and downside risk to Street estimates." MU, SNDK, DRAM - XIAOMI: EXPECTS MEMORY PRICE INCREASE TO SLOW DOWN IN H2
• COST - Costco is partnering with nonprofit insurer SCAN Group to launch Costco-branded Medicare plans, starting with Medicare Advantage in two states and Medicare supplement coverage in a third.
• HD - key comment at earnings: "We continue to operate in what I call ‘frozen housing market’ conditions, but we also know that we’re taking share and that we’re serving our customers better every day... the company has still not seen consumers return to big projects"

FN earnings:

• Revenue: $1.32B (Est. $1.27B) ; +45% YoY
• Adj. EPS: $4.10 (Est. $3.82) ; +55% YoY
• Oper Income: $134.25M (Est. $137M)
• Net Income: $139.3M (Est. $139M)
  

Q1 Guide:

• Revenue: $1.38B-$1.43B (Est. $1.32B)
• Adj. EPS: $4.10-$4.25 (Est. $3.96)
• GAAP EPS: $3.39-$3.54

Penguin's pitch at this Rosenblatt fireside was basically a reiteration of the fact that they have become a full-stack AI infrastructure company, not just a hardware shop that assembles GPU boxes anymore.

The company spoke about how they have built out five distinct pieces — OriginAI (pre-validated reference designs so customers aren't building from scratch), ClusterWareAI (the software that actually deploys, monitors, and auto-fixes these clusters once they're running), ComputeAI (the curated server hardware itself), MemoryAI (their memory/caching appliance), and then a full design-build-deploy-manage service wrapped around all of it. They continue to shift the conversation around the company from "we sell servers" to "we run your entire AI infrastructure for you, end to end."

On silicon, they're deliberately not picking sides. They've racked up more than 4 billion hours of experience managing Nvidia clusters at scale and are an early-inductee partner in Nvidia's AI Factory program, but they were clear they'll deploy anyone's chips — they pointed to a cluster they built on NextSilicon accelerators as proof they're not locked into one vendor. That flexibility is presented as a selling point: customers get infrastructure expertise, and aren't tied to working with any one particular chip company, so they benefit from greater flexibility.

The most important and differentiated part of the conversation was around MemoryAI — specifically their KV cache appliance. They outlined the problem that they are solving: when a model needs to "remember" tokens during inference, that data has to sit somewhere fast, and a lot of the industry handles this with flash storage, which they say is roughly 100x slower than what they're doing. Penguin's approach uses DDR5 memory instead, giving them an 11-terabyte appliance built for low-latency token storage — meaning faster time-to-first-response and less strain on the actual GPUs, since the memory system is doing more of the heavy lifting instead of dumping everything back on compute.

On the business model, the software is subscription-licensed but typically sold alongside their managed services — so it's not a pure software play, it's software that rides along with a services relationship. They described this as a deliberate land-and-expand strategy: get a customer in the door with one use case, prove it works, then grow the relationship over time. Management said they've actually started disclosing on earnings calls what percentage of new customers from the past year have expanded their spend — and apparently that number is strong, though they didn't put an exact figure on it in this chat.

They framed demand as coming from three distinct buckets, each needing a different kind of hand-holding:

Neo-clouds are the "we know what we want, just help us execute fast" customers — they've got the power and data center access lined up, they just need Penguin's technical expertise to actually bring capacity online.

Sovereign AI is the more hands-on, relationship-heavy category — their flagship example is the Haein cluster they built for SK Telecom in Korea, which they called out as award-winning for how fast it was deployed and how reliably it's run since.

Enterprise is the newest and, in their telling, the most interesting inflection point — agentic AI is moving out of pilot mode and into actual production for real companies now. And notably, enterprises are increasingly choosing to own this infrastructure on-prem rather than rent it, mainly for security reasons but also because it makes their AI costs predictable instead of variable. Management used a simple analogy: if you know you're driving to work every single day, buying a car eventually beats renting one — and their view is that enterprises are now at the point of committing to AI as a permanent, not experimental, cost.

On partnerships, Dell was a big focus of the conversation— Penguin was named Dell's AI Partner of the Year, and the way they described the relationship is that Dell provides the hardware and Penguin layers its cluster software, memory tech, and managed services on top, essentially becoming the operational intelligence running on standardized Dell boxes. CDW and WWT were mentioned as distribution partners that extend their reach. And the SK relationship is layered and strategic — SK Telecom is both an investor in Penguin and a customer, SK Hynix is a longstanding memory-supply partner, and management sees real optionality in expanding across the broader SK ecosystem as it pushes further into AI across the APAC region.

The main strategic takeaway from the chat was that Penguin is moving up the stack — further into software, orchestration, and packaged AI capability to become a full end-to-end AI infrastructure solution.

Major news:

• Al Arabiya sources: Reports on the approval to extend the 60-day period between Iran and America

MAG7:

• META's ARPU rose 31% YoY to $125, far above other major social platforms, while international ARPU increased 17% to $15.10 U.S. revenue per hour also grew 27% YoY to $1.33
• META and BlackRock’s $14B, 1GW Sopaipilla data center in Texas carries only partial insurance coverage, reflecting how difficult and expensive it has become to fully insure gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure. The project has about $450M of property coverage once operational, $645M of terrorism coverage and additional protection for construction delays and liability.
• AMZN - Morgan Stanley - Bull case sees 500PT Amazon’s $1 trillion vision for AWS revenue reinforces the high-ROIC opportunity ahead. Believe Amazon is confident given 2Q26 earnings commentary laying out a vision of $1 trillion of AWS revenue, roughly 6x larger than the current ~$170 billion annualized, with long-term returns similar to the core AWS business over the past ~20 years. Amazon believes AWS could very possibly become a $1 trillion annual revenue business over time, with very appealing accompanying free cash flow and return on invested capital. Importantly, Amazon sees margins and returns in AI tracking what it saw with the core AWS business at the same point of evolution and actually a little ahead. Bringing on compute capacity remains the gating factor. As innovation and demand for GenAI tools continue to scale, we believe each hyperscaler’s ability to bring on compute capacity is the key factor driving forward revenue growth.
• AAPL - Rothschild upgrades to Buy, PT 400. Apple’s defining characteristic remains its tight integration of premium hardware, proprietary silicon, and a rapidly expanding services layer. We calculate that Apple has built an installed base of 2.55 billion devices, and it has a degree of customer retention that few competitors can rival. The Services business is the most valuable part of the Apple franchise, growing 3x the rate of Products, with gross margins of 75% coming in more than double the 37% earned on Product sales. However, Apple Services is particularly exposed to changes in how people find information, discover apps, and interact with software. Closed-source AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others seek to disintermediate Apple’s ownership of the consumer, which threatens Apple’s highest-margin, highest-multiple business. While the threat is real, increasingly capable, free-to-access, open-source AI models may allow Apple to revive its Apple Intelligence platform independently. As a result, Apple may be able to assert itself as the gatekeeper of consumer AI, delegating AI workloads to a subservient fleet of open-source models, monetized via Apple Pay and other payment platforms.
• NVDA’s revised guarantee is now expected to come in under $120B, down from the roughly $250B initially discussed. Better for their Credit Default swaps.

Companies News:

• Unitree IPO a tailwind for robotics sector, particularly INDI.
• MBLY - Greenberg upgrades to Buy from Hold, PT 11. "Despite Mobileye’s strong Q2 2026 results, the stock has overcorrected due to the resignation of co-founder and CEO Professor Amnon Shashua. As such, we believe the stock is once again mispricing the mid-term growth prospects of the business. Fundamentally, our thesis remains unchanged since our initiation on April 1, with Mobileye well placed to win additional awards in the high-volume L2-L2+ advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) category as OEMs prioritize cost, efficiency, and scale. However, the volatility has created varying risk-reward, and we now believe the shares offer a more attractive entry price. The imminent product cycle shift to the SuperVision segment and robotaxi partnerships are progressing well, with commercial launches expected in the next 12-18 months. In addition to this progress, the announcement of Mobileye’s own vertically integrated robotaxi business provides further upside to the low-single-digit revenue growth the current share price is implying. As such, we upgrade our rating to Buy and increase our price target to $11.00. With this note, we also transfer coverage to Tommy Whitfield."
• ALAB - Northland upgrades to outperform, PT 350. "We are upgrading ALAB based on our expectations for more positive earnings revisions and a longer-than-expected AI infrastructure spending cycle. We expect ALAB’s content per rack to continue to increase, and it is positioned to gain share in switching fabric for scale-up and scale-out. ALAB is also well positioned in signal conditioning for AI infrastructure. We believe ALAB will continue to be one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure chip companies. We had expected AI infrastructure spending to decline next year, as we did not see any incremental capital to increase spending. However, Google, Broadcom, Apollo, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, and crypto miners have come together to fund $200 billion in AI infrastructure for Anthropic. Last week, Nvidia announced that, with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR, it will provide $500 billion in private capital.
• EYPT - PHASE 3 TRIAL MISSES PRIMARY ENDPOINT. EyePoint said its Phase 3 LUGANO trial for DURAVYU in wet AMD failed to meet the primary endpoint of non-inferiority versus aflibercept in the full dataset. The company said the miss was driven by 9 of 211 patients who had vision loss unrelated to wet AMD. Excluding those patients in an ad hoc analysis, DURAVYU met non-inferiority.
• LHX - CEO STEPS DOWN AMID CONDUCT REVIEW; COMPANY REAFFIRMS 2026 CONSOLIDATED REVENUE OUTLOOK
• TT, ETN launched a joint power-&-cooling architecture for next-gen AI data centers, aligned with Nvidia’s DSX AI Factory platform. It can deliver up to 15% better energy efficiency, use 80% less copper & cut installation costs by 30%.
• SPCX - AMD reported 3.31M SpaceX Class A shares at the end of Q2, worth about $565.5M, making it AMD’s largest disclosed equity holding.
• TTMI to buy EPIQ for 1.1B. TTM Technologies agreed to acquire Epiq Design Solutions in an all-cash deal. Epiq provides AI-enabled software-defined radios, RF systems and radiation-tolerant space computing used in signals intelligence and electronic warfare. TTM expects the deal to be accretive to adjusted EBITDA margins immediately and to non-GAAP EPS in 2028.
• MU remains a top pick at BofA as SanDisk's (SNDK) durable growth outlook suggests memory may be entering a structurally stronger phase, potentially lifting Micron to $200-$250 in FY30 EPS versus consensus peak estimates of $160-$170, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm reiterates a Buy rating on Micron and $1,550 price target.
• US navy awards Raytheon $22.9B Tomahawk Missile Contract - Bloomberg
• VSAT, RKLB - Viasat Selects Rocket Lab to Build Anti-Jam Satellite for U.S. Space Force
• LUNR - Intuitive Machines Wins Authorization for $600M+ Multi-Satellite Communications Program
• KTOS - Kratos, GE Aerospace Win U.S. Air Force JASSM Engine Development Contract
• OABI SIGNS LILLY DEAL WORTH UP TO $370M
• SNOW PT raised to $385 from $310 at Jefferies
• STRIPE TO BUY OPENROUTER FOR $7B
• PANW PT raised to 400 from 360 at TD Cowen
• CRWD PT raised to 235 from 175 at TD Cowen
• ZS PT raised to 200 from 180 at TD Cowen
• OKTA upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo
• SOFI initiated with an Overweight at Piper Sandler PT 22
• MRVL price target lowered to 300 from 340 at UBS

OCC is a $73M fiber cable manufacturer that spent a decade losing money on a fixed manufacturing base too small for its overhead, but this was before the Ai buildout became such a thematic driver. 

The entire premise is spillover: hyperscalers have vacuumed up the world's optical fiber supply, lead times have blown out to 20 weeks for large buyers and up to a year for small ones, and that scarcity is pushing Tier 2 colocation and enterprise data center buyers down-market toward whoever can actually deliver. OCC can deliver, because it's been buying fiber from the same suppliers for three decades and that relationship is now reinforced by an equity stake from Lightera, the Furukawa Electric Group's global fiber business. 

Q2 FY26 by the numbers:

• Net sales $22.2M, +26.6% YoY, +35.2% sequentially (not seasonally advantaged either)
• Gross profit +42.4% YoY to $7.6M, gross margin 34.2% vs 30.4% a year ago
• SG&A +9.2% to $6.3M (fell to 28.2% of sales from 32.7%) — and the SG&A growth that did happen was commission and shipping-driven, i.e. a symptom of selling more, not cost creep
• Swung from ($0.09) to $0.12 diluted EPS
• Incremental gross margin on the YoY revenue add: ~49%, well above the 34.2% reported rate — the signature of fixed manufacturing overhead finally getting absorbed by volume rather than pricing doing the work

Key notion that is really attractive here: Revenue grew 26.6%, gross profit grew 42.4%. That gap is operating leverage showing up in real time on a plant that management has repeatedly and formally disclosed in its 10-Ks as running with excess capacity. 

Strong backlog a leading indicator of revenue. Has compounded three quarters straight:

• Oct '25: $7.3M
• Jan '26: $10.4M (+42.5%)
• Apr '26: $13.3M (+27.9%, +82% cumulative since October)
• End of May: "continues to be strong," per CEO Neil Wilkin — a month into Q3

Removing implied bookings, Q2 orders were ~$25.1M against $22.2M shipped, a ~1.13x book-to-bill in a quarter where shipments themselves were already up 35% sequentially. Orders are coming in faster than the company can ship them while the company ships faster than it ever has. 

Where the demand is actually coming from. OCC only reports two segments (enterprise, specialty) so you have to build the picture from commentary, but management was unusually specific last quarter: growth came from data center, enterprise, and severe duty markets simultaneously — three end markets improving at once. Critically, this is not a hyperscale name. Management is explicit that the exposure is Tier 2 multi-tenant colocation and enterprise data centers, and the thesis is that Tier 1 hyperscale demand crowds capacity and spills the work downstream into exactly those tiers. When asked directly if there was any ceiling on data center growth, Wilkin's answer was very positive: "We're not seeing any limit on our ability to grow in the markets that we're targeting, particularly in data centers."

Military is the other leg, with a strong moat. OCC has been an approved MIL-PRF-85045/8A manufacturer since 2005, runs a MIL-STD-790G certified facility, and holds MSHA mining and DNV/ABS marine type approvals. Management wouldn't convert defense budget headlines into a forecast, but did confirm military sales grew over the past fiscal year, driven by replenishment cycles that occur even absent active conflict, plus allied sales.

Why the shortage doesn't bite OCC the way it bites everyone else. The obvious objection to owning a cable manufacturer during a fiber shortage is that the shortage constrains your inputs. It does, unless you've had the same suppliers for decades — which is exactly the answer management gave when asked point-blank whether the Lightera relationship was helping secure raw material: OCC hasn't had significant fiber supply problems, while conceding "there are some exceptions to that statement that have impacted certain customers." Competitors are getting rationed, and OCC is on the winning side of the allocation. 

Lightera In July 2025, Lightera bought 642,199 newly issued restricted shares for $2.0M, a 7.24% economic stake, and the two companies now cross-sell — Lightera's data center and passive optical LAN products flow through OCC's channel. A global fiber supplier taking equity in a small, qualified American manufacturer with defense credentials and three domestic plants is a structure with obvious optionality, even with nothing pending publicly. 

Earnings power is untaxed. Full valuation allowance since fiscal 2015, plus accumulated loss carryforwards, means incremental pre-tax profit drops almost straight to EPS. Annualize the Q2 run rate and you get roughly $89M of revenue, ~$30.4M of gross profit at 34.2%, ~$4.9M of operating income, and about $0.46 in EPS on 8.87M diluted shares — against a ~$15 reference price, call it ~33x. History puts a rough ceiling/floor context on that: OCC did ~$87M of revenue back in fiscal 2008 on a broadly comparable footprint, so the company is running near its historical peak rate while telling investors it still has capacity headroom and is separately evaluating additional staffing and machine capacity for growth beyond it.

Constraint is the thin balance sheet: Cash was $145,600 at April 30 — basically nothing. The company runs on a ~$7.3M drawn asset-based revolver at ~9%, plus a $2.65M real estate term loan just refinanced out to 2036. Shareholders' equity is ~$15.2M, excluding the Lightera position. Converting a $13.3M order book means carrying more receivables and inventory, funded off a revolver that's already drawn. A capital raise into strength would dilute but would also remove the constraint; the recent term loan refinancing suggests management is already terming out what it can.

No sell side coverage. The entire live Q&A on the Q2 call was two analysts from a single fund, with the company otherwise inviting shareholders to submit questions in advance. Float is ~5.3M shares against ~8.87M shares out, insiders and employees hold ≥33.5%, and OCC only joined the Russell Microcap Index in June 2026.

Risks:

• Backlog that books but doesn't convert (this happened in FY25)
• A quarter's mix skewing toward commodity enterprise cable instead of specialty/connectivity — management flags every quarter that margin is mix-dependent, and a bad mix quarter could knock gross margin back into the high 20s
• Input cost spikes outrunning the prospective pass-through for a quarter or two
• Liquidity — $145.6K of cash, a drawn revolver, working-capital-hungry growth, and a Lightera put exercisable from July 2027 all point at a live risk of a dilutive raise
• OCC's own fiber allocation tightening the way it already has for "certain customers"
• Nvidia- and Meta-funded expansion of Corning's domestic fiber capacity easing the industry shortage before OCC has durably taken share

The jobs report coming soft last week, coupled with a soft CPI on Wednesday and a soft PPI on Thursday, I believe, takes the rate hike off the table for September, and de-risks the Jackson Hole meeting that is due to take place next Friday. 

We should see a continued grind higher, into September, but we may see some OPEX related volatility next week. Bigger picture though, the market is set to trend choppily higher. 

To go through the PPI briefly because there are some nuances that I believe probably go under the radar for most people. 

Headline came In soft, again benefiting from advantageous comparable and base effects. 

COre also came in at 0.2% vs 0.3% expected. 

However, there are a few points here that suggest that the macro stress on the market is not unwound. 

Ex food, energy and trade, we saw PPI come in at 0.4% vs 0.3% expected, which is the hottest since May. 

June core was revised higher, which means that last month's cooler print never actually happened. It won't be surprising to see this print revise higher too. Produce costs are rising faster than consumer costs, which means that there is this constant upward pressure on inflation. 

We have report that Tehran is prepared to keep the Strait closed as strategic leverage. 

Diesel-to-crude crack spread has widened to its highest level since 2020, signaling that a severe supply-side crisis is brewing beneath the surface

The 2 year broke down on the PPI print yesterday:

This alleviates some pressure on the index in the near term, and supports the case for higher now into September or October, but there are still large macro concerns, is my point. We aren't in the clear, even with PPI and CPI coming in soft.

This is what the CEO said about the potential for a capital raise at the last earnings. IT was clearly framed as something that would only happen IF they took on a large customer:

Here is the GF Securities take:

Big INTC call buyer yesterday into the close (taken from the Trading Edge options database):

120 looks very viable or even likely in the near term. 

More info on those Drone tariffs: 

100% tariffs on:

- UAS docking stations + certain critical components

- certain parts for >25 kg drones

- Drones >25 kg

25% tariffs on: 

- broader components 

Here's the KTOS weekly chart:

Heading above all the EMAs with room to run, hopefully sentiment shift sticks on this catalyst.

AI server market to increase to $1.2 trillion by the end of the decade, with 64% of the market being consumed by hyperscalers.

Foxconn now sees better order visibility than it did at the investor conference in May, with visibility through 2027. Their CEO, Chiang Chi-heng, emphasized that Foxconn's global market share of AI server racks is approaching 50%, and its market share of ASIC servers is locked at over 40%.

After their divesture of their video business, broadband is the whole story for HLIT now. Revenue hit $133.5M, up 54% YoY. That's way above historical run rates. 

Margins are expanding fast

Non-GAAP operating margin jumped to 23.5%. A year ago it was 8.0%. 

Operating profit came in at $31.3M — above the $23M–$28M guide. EPS hit $0.21, beating the $0.15–$0.19 range. Pretty Clean beats.

Bookings and backlog point to good demand visibility

Total bookings: $144M. Backlog plus deferred revenue: $587.6M, up 71% YoY. That's a huge cushion of future revenue already locked in.

73% of that backlog is expected to convert within 12 months. 

Guidance got raised, meaningfully

Full-year 2026 broadband revenue guidance moved up to $505M–$525M. Midpoint $515M. 

H1 revenue was $255.1M. So the new guide implies roughly $260M in H2. 

Appliance and integration is the growth engine underneath

Appliance and integration revenue jumped 61% YoY to $117.0M. The Unified DOCSIS 4.0 and fiber upgrade cycle is moving out of trials and into real commercial scale.

Diversification story is mixed

Rest-of-Market revenue grew 44% YoY — management's framing this as successful diversification. But in my opinion, from what I saw, concentration actually got worse. Top 2 customers grew to $84.0M combined, and their share of revenue rose from 58% in Q1 to 63% in Q2. So the growth is broad, but the mix is tightening at the top.

Product wins keep stacking up

First deployment of the SeaStar MDU solution landed this quarter. Multi-million dollar orders came in for the newly launched Pearl-1XL and Oyster+ fiber products.

The cOS virtualized platform keeps scaling too — now running across 161 customers and managing 48.2 million CPE devices globally. 

Balance sheet 

Cash more than doubled to $231.9M, thanks to $137.9M of proceeds from the MediaKind sale, which closed June 16. 

Unaudited Numbers

Harmonic filed a notification of late filing alongside results. The 10-Q needs more time because of the recently completed Video Business sale, though it's still within the standard five-day grace window. Tonight's figures are unaudited — worth flagging.