Hey Snackers,
The Economist analyzed the lyrics of the national anthems of every country competing in the World Cup to see who has the most violent anthem and which country was referenced the most in other nations’ anthems. Spain, which appeared in three other countries’ national anthems, was the most disliked by other countries based on their analysis.
An AI rout dragged down the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 yesterday as investors rotated out of tech and into defensive sectors: consumer staples, health care, and utilities were among the top performers, along with real estate.
Leverage in the AI trade is even scarier than the debt used for its build-out
The sharp selloff in South Korean stocks — with massive follow-through across US tech stocks on Tuesday — is a useful reminder that the leverage involved in the AI trade can be a bigger near-term risk for markets than the leverage involved in the AI build-out.
South Korea’s Kospi is dominated by SK Hynix and Samsung, two of the three members of the high-bandwidth memory triumvirate along with Micron (which reports earnings after the bell today).
An eagerness to embrace risk in a bid to get rich quick is not a uniquely American phenomenon. South Koreans love leverage.
Data from the Korea Financial Investment Association shows that margin loans have been going straight up and to the right. Total assets in 11 Korean-listed ETFs that boast single-stock leveraged exposure to Samsung or SK Hynix in their fund names are up from under $3 billion since their launches less than a month ago, touching north of $10 billion heading into the most recent session.
So, to a certain extent, Korea’s world-beating rally is fueled by using borrowed funds to make leveraged bets. Leverage squared!
Either way, high-flying AI stocks all took a big dive, along with Micron, including Sandisk, Corning, Applied Optoelectronics, Western Digital, Marvell, ASML, Arista, and Seagate.
The Takeaway
The twists and turns of leveraged ETFs linked to the Kospi as a whole are heavily skewed by the performance of these heavily-weighted members. What caused this rout? Who knows.
High leverage means you don’t (or shouldn’t) have to think too hard about why massive moves happen, particularly when nobody was asking too many pointed questions about why these same stocks were seemingly going up 5% per day in perpetuity. Play with matches and you get burned, or, worst case, start a fire.
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Because all NBA blockbusters must happen in the middle of the night — I think Adam Silver formally added that to the league rulebook a few years ago — the big NBA news on Monday night going into Tuesday was not the draft, but rather a superstar on the move. Giannis Antetokounmpo has been traded from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Miami Heat in a six-player megadeal. Is all this superstar hubbub worth it in a league where unheralded teams keep winning?
Maybe less than it used to be, but Giannis is still a needle-mover — over the past three seasons, he was tied with Kawhi Leonard (who markets say has just a 35% chance of staying with the Clippers) for the third-largest on-court impact according to my LAKER impact ratings, trailing only MVPs Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
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Snacks Shots
It’s a huge day of simultaneous group head-to-heads in the World Cup, games that will decide which teams advance to the knockout rounds.
Group A @ 3 pm ET: 🇨🇿 Czechia vs 🇲🇽 Mexico / 🇿🇦 South Africa vs 🇰🇷 South Korea: Mexico (2-0-0) has punched their ticket to the knockout round already and is favored to beat Czechia (0-1-1) with 53% to win, which could very well send the Czech squad home, while South Africa (0-1-1) is locked in a must-win with favorite South Korea (1-0-1) where Korea is the 60% favorite.
Group C @ 6 pm ET: 🏴 Scotland vs 🇧🇷 Brazil / 🇲🇦 Morocco vs 🇭🇹 Haiti: Haiti has been eliminated, but Morocco is still gunning for that top seed and has an 85% chance of winning. Meanwhile, Brazil is favored as a 73% chance to beat a Scottish team that is looking like the best of the third-place squads and may still make the knockout round if they can continue on course.
Group B @ 9 pm ET: 🇨🇭 Switzerland vs 🇨🇦 Canada / 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina vs 🇶🇦 Qatar: The game between Canada (1-1-0) and Switzerland (1-1-0) will decide the winner of Group B, and Canada has a 28% chance of a win, Switzerland a 43% chance, and a tie 32%. Bosnia and Herzegovina (0-1-1) is on the bubble right now of being a good enough squad to be one of the eight third-place teams to make the knockouts, and with a 72% chance of victory a win against Qatar could be the thing to put them over.
*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.
What else we're Snackin'
Mark Zuckerberg directed a team at Meta to build a prediction markets app, internally named “Arena.”
Car rental agency Avis won $650 million in a settlement with hedge fund Pentwater Capital for stoking wild stock swings.
Even notorious return-to-office advocate JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is easing up on in-office attendance for the World Cup.
As personal ads in newspapers are largely a thing of the past, newsletters are apparently the hot new place for singles to find one another (for the record, we have no intention of ever playing matchmaker).
Snack Fact of the Day
Median CEO pay rose to nearly $18 million at S&P 500 companies in 2025.
Wednesday
Postmarket earnings due from Micron.