Here’s a preview of what we’ll cover this week:

• Macro: Employment, Private Credit, Data Centers, Left Tail vs. Right Tail

• Market: IPO season, Google in TPU, Biotech

• AI: Nvidia in Cloud Computing

Lumida Featured in Unchained

Lumida’s CEO, Ram Ahluwalia, was featured in Unchained breaking down the disconnect between AI tokens and real revenue. 

Recognition

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Don’t Call It a ComeBack

Markets are back to all time highs.

In this podcast, I share some thoughts on the market. I also discuss how AI is transforming media, entertainment and discuss the Kalshi ad.

How to Analyse High ROE Companies

One of the reasons we were excited to talk about NCLH last week is that the entry was ideal.

Hope you were able to get in. Wait for a red day in case you missed it.

I spent 20 minutes of this recent podcast breaking down in great detail how we analyzed this name both qualitative and quantitatively.

Watch the full video here: Link 

The Commingling of Community and Capital

I have written before how social media has transformed investing.

Tom Lee at Permissionless put it clearly:

“Robinhood, Palantir, and HIMS have turned shareholders into customers. They don’t trade on intrinsic value. This is what hedge funds have gotten wrong.”

He’s right.

One could add Reddit to that list.

Amazon, Peloton, and Tesla were earlier iterations of this same idea. You can achieve a higher multiple — but you must mind the gap.

The broader theme is the commingling of Capital and Community.

The original nexus of these two forces began in Digital Assets.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana would not be valued where they are today without Twitter.

There is now a Social Risk Premia in asset pricing.

Sophisticated quant funds like Renaissance have accounted for this. Old school funds have not.

New York Mandami Democratic Primary Win

There are no longer many strong champions of capitalism.

Schumpeter, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, David Ricardo are the Founding Fathers I imagine are lamenting the win of Mandami.

New York started as New Amsterdam. In some ways, Amsterdam was the birthplace of global trade, markets, and trading. It also birthed the Dutch East India company.

I am disheartened to see the Democratic part drift further leftward. 

Here are thoughts on the Mandami win that I had posted on X earlier this week:

1) NYCers did not learn the lesson of San Francisco. 

2) NYCers are voting based on ‘he understands my problem’ (vibes)

rather than ‘he understands how to solve the problem’ (like Mayor Bloomberg)

Mamdani’s proposed solutions (eg, rent control, city owned groceries, raising taxes, etc) will have opposite effects. 

3) Capitalism works because it focuses attention on hard issues. 

Those issues are visible via prices. 

Prices for child care, shelter, food, and healthcare. 

The price mechanism creates an information and mechanism to focus attention and solve problems. 

Price controls shield reality and suppress supply response, or push costs to non-price terms. 

The way to get an apartment at my old building? 

You had to know someone who could bribe the super so you had the first showing. 

A lot more of that will happen. 

Price controls push costs to non-price terms: search, queuing, scarcity, who you know, non-economic factors such as race, etc) 

3) Some segment of NYers need to give up the identity desire of being identified as a NYer. 

Jersey City’s Grove Street is hip, no city tax, PATH train. (The pizza is great too.)

Or move to the gorgeous rivertowns along the Hudson Valley. 

4) Spending $16 on a Cava salad is not a basic human right. 

5) High costs of living represent economic realities. 

They cannot be willed away any more than one can bend the laws of physics. 

Smashing the thermometer at a balmy 72 degrees does not create eternal spring.

Are Capital Gains Taxes Optional?

Many early investors in names like CoreWeave and Circle now have a high-class problem.

Price action has pushed these positions to outsized weights.

Two choices:

• Sell and trigger a large tax bill.

• Or hold and stay overexposed.

We offer a third.

At Lumida Wealth, we build tax-aware structures that help crypto-native investors reduce — or eliminate — capital gains taxes while managing risk.

• Long/short positions for ongoing tax loss harvesting.

• Diversification without triggering taxable events.

• Monthly harvesting, whether markets move up or down.

These strategies aren’t new — the ultra-wealthy have used them for decades.

Now they’re accessible to you.

If you’re sitting in a concentrated position and want to explore this approach, click below to schedule a call.

Book a Call 

Macro

Federal employment tax receipts are up 6.1% YoY.

The latest print shows 6.7%, with daily receipts jumping from $12.8B to $13.6B.

Employers don’t write bigger checks if they’re cutting heads.

Bigger receipts mean more jobs, bigger paychecks, or both.

Jobless claims back it up.

Initial claims holding at 244–245K.

Continuing claims are steady near 1.9 million.

The fly in the ointment is new housing stats. Housing is a major factor for the economy. But, mortgage rates are also coming down.

Personal income is moving too.

Hourly wages are at record real levels.

For low-wage workers, real earnings have outrun their old uptrend for two years.

Consumer confidence should reflect it.

People spend when they know they can find a job or get a raise.

Permissionless

I was at the Permissionless conference in NYC.

I shared thoughts on how Stablecoins are transforming payments, custody, and lending here.

If you are a VC or in Financial Services you may find it interesting.

Left Tail vs. Right Tail Thinking

Most political leaders are lawyers by background (Clinton, Obama, etc)

Lawyers are protecting the left-tail risk rather than looking at ‘Expected Value’ (EV). 

The left-tail protection often means ‘status quo’ type decisions that don’t shake the boat. 

We’d guess that most lawyer-Presidents would have not made the choice to drop bunker busters. 

Trump looked exhausted at his Saturday press conference after the strike on Iran’s Frodow Nuclear sit 

It was not an easy decision. 

His ‘We love you god’ statement I don’t think was contrived. 

That was a new dimension to Trump. It came across as a sincere mix of emotions. 

Back to the lawyers. 

Most lawyer politicians would rather embrace the comfort of the status quo. 

Rather than embrace the uncertainty of a public conflict where quarterback ‘play action’ is required.  

There’s a connection to investing. 

Investors know that EV+ bets should be taken, even if they feel uncomfortable. 

But, most politicians are ‘maxi min’  - a game where players seek to maximize their minimum gain. 

Politicians optimize for the left tail - incrementally advancing. 

A VC or entrepreneurial President might ask ‘What can go right?’

There’s more willingness to take a bigger risk and reach for a bigger prize. 

And wasn’t that the core of Rubio’s pitch?

We don’t think any other President would have made the same call.

Private Credit Pushes Past Traditional Wealth

Apollo and other private credit firms are cutting out the middleman.

No more JP Morgan or Goldman fees stacked on top.

They’re building direct distribution — brand power and track records do the heavy lifting.

They’re creating liquidity for assets — more liquidity means higher prices.

The punchline: private credit funds with 8–12% yields are now feeding stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle.

Real adoption — people paying the barber with Tether on Tron.

Lending, payments, custody — all converging.

Crypto is just FinTech evolving in real time.

We’re watching this convergence closely, and positioning client portfolios to capture the yield and structural edge.

Datacenter Theme Is Alive And Well 

US semiconductor production just hit an all-time high.

Relentless AI demand is driving the move.

At the same time, S&P 500 Semiconductors forward EPS has climbed to 229.76, even through this year’s correction.

This isn’t a hype cycle.

It’s a structural trend in output and earnings.

The clearest signal yet that semis are now foundational to the next economic era.

Market

IPO Season

If you haven't noticed, IPO Season is here. 

At Lumida Wealth, we believe the best way to approach IPOs is to get involved early.

Early-stage positioning not only gives you the potential for long-term capital gains but also the flexibility to de-risk as the market heats up.

Historically, we've observed that deal quality tends to decline as IPO season progresses.

The faster the pace, the more selective and cautious you need to be.

Our first investment at Lumida was in CoreWeave, at a $7B valuation.

It was a classic “East Coast” deal - priced efficiently and structured for long-term value creation.

Less than two years later, it’s now valued at over $70B.

We are now receiving distributions for one of our pre-IPO investments in CoreWeave.

CoreWeave went up 4x in the public market. Investors that got in at the $7 Bn valuation are up 10x.

I would like to thank my friend Andrew S. for bringing this deal to my attention.

Thank you, Andrew.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about how we sourced and underwrote that opportunity, and how we’re evaluating new ones.

The only way I can share with you our upcoming deals is if you are are accredited and fill out this form  at lumidadeals.com. 

OpenAI Taps Google TPU

Google will provide TPU to OpenAI for inference.

OpenAI is scrambling to find more compute, lower cost structure, and reduce dependence on Microsoft as it navigates that relationship.

Google has proven it can train and deliver a high-quality model with Gemini Advanced.

Google is now our top holding.

At a double-digit EPS growth, at the very least the stock moves higher with earnings.

At the very best, the stock re-rates due to multiple expansions.

The Google story now includes: TPUs for OpenAI, Driverless Cars (Waymo), Youtube, and AI Cloud.

Biotech Screens Cheaper Than Energy

Pharma and Biotech now screen cheaper than Energy.

Pharma/Biotech tops the Russell 3000 on 12-month expected excess return.

Energy, even with recent weakness, ranks second.

What does this tell us?

Valuation rotation is picking up.

Pharma/Biotech offers macro insulation and re-rating potential.

Tax cuts may offset the drag from student loan payments restarting this summer. 

This is good for consumption-sensitive pockets.

AI

Nvidia in Cloud Computing

Nvidia is moving up the stack.

DGX Cloud launched two years ago. UBS pegged it as a potential $10B+ annual business.

CoreWeave, which Nvidia backs, expects ~$5B this year.

The pitch: more AI compute, direct from the source. Nvidia’s chips, Nvidia’s experts, Nvidia’s lease model.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google now face an awkward truth: the arms dealer is renting out the ammo too.

Cloud giants buy the hardware, Nvidia leases it back, then sells it to customers.

For now, DGX Cloud is small next to AWS’s $107B cloud business. 

But it’s growing fast: Nvidia booked $10.9B in multiyear cloud deals last year, up from $3.5B.

AWS cloud margins carry Amazon’s profit engine. Any share shift stings.

Google skipped Nvidia’s DGX marketplace in May, a clear signal the tension is real.

Nvidia says it’s not competing. 

But the logic is obvious: if the cloud giants build custom chips to squeeze Nvidia, Nvidia builds DGX Cloud to squeeze back.

This is the real game: control the chips and the cloud, or risk becoming a supplier with no leverage.

Meme of the week

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