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I depart for Boston tomorrow and will have limited access to the internets until Wednesday, so I wanted to get some thoughts about markets before bed.

* Markets lifted for the month but it was chaotic and narrow
* Most sectors were NET LOWER because of the narrow concentration
* Defensive sectors were impressive

Some notable winners:

$META +10%, $BRK +10%, $LLY +19%, $JPM +5.7%, $WMT +12%, $NFLX +11%, $ISRG +11%, $RACE +20%, $MELI +23%, $SHOP +21%

Focusing in on the winners of +10% or more.

* There were 305 stocks +10% or more
* Median EBITDA was +15.8%. If we only screened for positive EBITDA, the average was +25%
* Median gross margins were +52%
* Average FCF TTM was $802M
* Median rev growth was 9%
* Average market cap was $24b
* Median price of stock was $44

Are you getting it yet? There are methods of trading and there are methods of investing. When investing the above matters, because the fundamentals always, eventually, drive share prices. When trading, price and volume drive the momentum and to be a trader means to be changeable and unfaithful to dogma.

Let’s just say I am happy with the close, so happy I will drink some gin to celebrate. So you know, I do not ever drink whilst angry or walking the black dog. I drink to celebrate and only associate that feeling with success.

I closed the session +85bps and possess 10% cash into Tuesday. Markets are closed on Monday to celebrate “Labor Day.”

On Sunday I depart for Boston to move my daughter into her apartment for her final year of college. It is a bitter sweet occasion, sweet only because I am proud of her and want to see her succeed and chase her dreams.

I closed the month +2.84%, better than all indices, but way below my own quant of +6.2% It was a unique month for the quant, as it was perfectly positioned in financials and stocks that really held their own the entire month.

At any rate, a new quant will be allocated into Stocklabs on Tuesday, as I always do, and I look forward to dealing with the pangs, and also the horrors, of what September is for traders.

Quick note on my prospective return to the business: I have your emails and will schedule you for a call when time permits. I have been overwhelmed by the response and will likely only accept 150 clients. If you were fence sitting about having Le Fly manage your vast sums of money, I suggest you quit doing that, post haste. Contact flybroker @ gmail for inquiries.

The morning tape opened very nice and clean, no signs of red. But the longer we are into this trading session the more fucked it is, with sellers prevailing over the buyers in ways that should not be possible. I made it a point to close out my hedges this morning and it felt good doing it. But here we are now, my gains HALVED and I’m now forlorn thinking about feeding myself to sharks should I lose another 10bps today.

Should we collapse today’s gains I am not sure what type of emotional response I will have but it won’t be nice. Back in the old days I’d slap my traders in the face with hot pizza or punch holes into the sheetrock. But since then I’ve refined myself and consider that behavior to be BENEATH a man in my station.

What station is that is ask?

I am at the station where I am ready to FEED MYSELF TO SHARKS should markets go lower today.

For me, there is nothing worse than having a gain, losing it, and then sitting with losses. Early on I was King of the Hill, #1 APEX predator of the market in search of meat, hungry to devour more. But by the end of the day, I had fucking T Rex’s on my tail trying to bite off my head. I closed DOWN 10bps for the session.

If you think about it, losing 0.1% for the day should not evoke an emotional response from a normal person. After all, plenty of people lost more. But some didn’t and some did a lot better and I cannot stand it. Some people ask me what drives me to want to always trade well and the answer is simple: to outstrip you. That’s right I am talking to YOU specifically, the fucking guy reading this now thinking he’s hot shit +25% YTD.

All I do is build systems and adjust them and try new systems and adjust them, in order to create ‘par excellence.’ The stated goal is to one day clone me and have the machines take over. Fly AI might one day be better than Fly himself. But until that day arrives, I am stuck with me.

I acquiesced to the fucked close and took out a small hedge, which is really a fucking throwaway. I only did it to satiate my desire to enact some sort of dark, craven, cosmic revenge on whoever the fuck was pulling levers in the tape today. If being honest, which I almost always am, I am super bullish, but feel betrayed by the bastards who tanked such a beautiful market based off such stupid reasons. These reasons are so absurd, I dare not repeat them aloud, for I might find myself morbidly enraged by it all over again.

While I was on the phone talking to a prospective investor in my soon be launch RIA, I was greatly chagrined to see ALL OF THE GAINS disappear on this fucking headline:

US PENDING HOME SALES CRASH 5.5% FOR JULY *
A Sales Recovery Did Not Occur”: Pending Home Sales Crash To Record Low

Since it’s fun to pretend, I will now pretend how I could have and would have traded it had I been at the turret.

Anyone who trades with me knows I would have definitely bought some $SQQQ to protect my ass. Instead… well you know what happened. My gains vanished as if Merlin himself appeared and absconded with them, as some sort of sick perverted parlor trick. Well, I want them back you fucking piece of shit. But I cannot and will not hedge or short into that set up. The gains on the short side, at least the easy ones, have already been enjoyed. We might trade up sharply from here and all those jumping on the shorts now will be tied to a fucking rail line and steamed.

I am frankly besides myself over this occurrence and did not expect fucking PENDING HOME SALES to ruin and otherwise splendid day. I was having such a nice time in the market. It was easy street with strong breadth and happy nice upwards movements. And now we are LIMIT DOWN diving the fuck lower in panic, headlong by losers executing sales out of fear.

Now that I am taking calls from some of you, due to getting back in the business, I am starting to see why there is so much cash ‘on the sidelines.’ You’re all bearish. Nearly every single one of you have been scarred and tattered by the market fires over the years, disgusted by the political environ, which has poisoned your minds against wealth creation.

I know we all want to feeeeeel special and have our lives be fruitful and purposeful; but maybe the collapse to come will not happen in our lifetimes. OR, maybe it will. My point is, nothing is a certainty and if you’re operating under the assumption that it is, you have deluded yourselves into folly.

Look, the market is a game, nothing more or less. Some of us are really good at it and others aren’t. Some of us are smart enough to outsource it to people like me and some of you aren’t and end up blowing yourselves up for sport. I find that it is important to separate our emotional biases when approaching the market. Our sole job is to increase the value of our accounts in the most efficient manner possible. End of note.

Regarding the market: the $NVDA call was bullish. $BBY smashed. $AFRM is soaring on blockbuster numbers. What is not to like? My only regret was not selling the $SQQQ I had hedged with in the after hours last night. Alas, I have no hedges now and attempting to ride this wave, +60bps early going.

I think you should take an hour and listen to the $NVDA conference call to really grasp what is happening here. I know the stock is down 7% in the AHs because margins dropped from 78% to 75%, but please. This is the most important company in the world and it isn’t even close.

Here is the co discussing how AI is collapsing computing costs because the speed to run programs are operating at 50x the speed of normal applications.

The company also discussed how their “sovereign AI” business is now in the billions and growing rapidly. The CEO expressly mentioned how the “next trillion” in AI rollouts would build upon the first and increase productivity and margins. This is all super bullish, not only for $NVDA, but the entire Fortune 500 complex. We are talking about AI actually REDUCING energy expenses due to rapidity of programs. This stock should be bought on dips.

The second story of note are barnstormer earnings at $AFRM. I will have more to say about this tomorrow, as I intend to listen to the call before I sleep.

Affirm beats by $0.34, beats on revs; guides Q1 revs above consensus (31.58 -0.93)Reports Q4 (Jun) loss of $0.14 per share, $0.34 better than the FactSet Consensus of ($0.48); revenues rose 47.9% year/year to $659.2 mln vs the $603.67 mln FactSet Consensus.Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) grew 31% year over year to $7.2 billion and significantly outpaced overall e-commerce growth. Transactions on the Affirm network grew 42% year over year to 24.7 million in FQ4’24, and 15% sequentially vs. FQ3’24 Co issues upside guidance for Q1, sees Q1 revs of $640-670 mln vs. $625.04 mln FactSet Consensus.GMV of $7.1-7.4 bln. Adjusted operating margin of 14-16%

Incredible, and bullish for retail.

Last is the bankruptcy rumors at $BIG and it is a teachable lesson. The stock was just $60 a few years ago and operated discount stores profitably for decades and employed over 10,000 people and now it’s a zero. Why? For whatever reason in 2018 the company decided to leverage up the balance sheet and take on debt.

All it took was 3 bad years and it’s game set match for an iconic discount retailer. The lesson is, stop being fucking greedy and don’t take sojourns into debt and attempt to scale retarded discount stores.

So why did Biglots do this? The answer is always the same: NEW CEO!

In 2018 the company appointed Bruce Thorn as CEO and his plan for the company, similar to what RON JOHNSON did to JC Penny may years ago with Bill Ackman, was to transform Biglots into a chic retailer.

In 2018, Big Lots took on a significant amount of debt primarily to fund its strategic initiatives, including store renovations and expansions. The company aimed to enhance its store experiences and remodel existing locations to drive sales growth. Additionally, the debt helped support their growth strategies, such as expanding their store base and investing in supply chain improvements.

The company’s decision to take on this debt was part of a broader effort to position itself for long-term success amid a competitive retail environment. However, such debt can also increase financial risk, making it crucial for the company to effectively manage its cash flows and execute its strategies successfully to ensure it can meet its debt obligations and achieve its growth targets.

The results? FLOP

You might not like it but this is what indecision and churn looks like.

$SMH

Traders are being chewed up and spit out with phlegm onto the hot pavement to cook until $NVDA posts results after the close today. You will soon find out if having $SMCI as a customer, an apparent scam, is something that might be bad for $NVDA. More than that, we have a market brutalizing those who opting for a high beta allocation of cool stocks. Those fuckers have COLLAPSED to the tune of 3.4% today. So although indices look like down 1 to 1.5% today, the true grit of this tape, the stocks that matter, are down way more.

I will standby my belief that weakness ahead of a major earnings announcement is BULLISH because expectations are low. We are all on edge, ready for the really bad news, hoping it doesn’t happen during our lifetimes.

But it is going to happen and you will endure a world war and your summer homes will be fucking bombs down to the foundation, whole continents lit aflame by nuclear blasts and washed with radiative fallout.

But before that happens, we are all very excited about tonight’s quarterly results at $NVDA, hoping for a little beat and hike to help our portfolios jimmy higher tomorrow.