TGIT: Good Times, Bad Times: D.C.'s Statistical Swindle and Other Stories

Three sizzling tech stocks, Kingsoft Cloud, short-sellers, penny pinchers, volatility drag, inside Palantir, playing God, Hammer of the Gods, a new Rising Star and much more. First time reading? Join other risk-takers, entrepreneurs, traders, investors, data geeks and alpha types. Sign up for free here.

Market indices retreated a bit yesterday on new consumer price index data that rose 0.5% and pushed the annual inflation rate back to 3%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics informed us that the uptick was driven by higher prices for food, shelter, energy and gasoline. Immediately after the news broke, the markets and the financial talking heads responded in predictable fashion.

But should we really care? Not according to one of the best stories we’ve seen from Politico in a long time.

It ran an article Tuesday by Eugene Ludwig, a comptroller of the currency in the 1980’s. Here's the brutal truth Ludwig uncovered about data from Washington: That celebrated 4.2% unemployment rate? Try 23.7% when you count people who can't find full-time work or earn poverty wages. And the median wage isn't $61,900—it's $52,300. And while the last administration was bragging about 4.1% inflation, working Americans were getting crushed by a 9.4% spike in the cost of basics like food and rent.

Welcome to the greatest statistical con job, where homeless people with odd jobs count as "employed,” and the government measures inflation by averaging yacht prices with grocery bills. While Washington's elite were busy lecturing voters about their "perception problem," they missed something fundamental: Their precious numbers were complete fantasy.

This isn't just about bad math—it's about a systemic deception that's warped the entire conversation about economics. Turns out those "uninformed" voters who kept insisting the economy wasn't working for them weren't watching too much partisan media. They were just looking at their empty wallets instead of Washington's cooked books.

Ludwig’s story is a must read. The bottom line: You weren’t wrong about the economy—the data was.

So strap in. Active investors are going to have some awesome opportunities. But the Trump administration is going to have its hands full with the harsh realities of this economy—sticky inflation, high unemployment, record high stock prices, looming tariffs and our soaring debt.

Stay lucky.

Editorial Director

A Chinese tech company just pulled off a stunt that would make Silicon Valley blush—and Wall Street can't decide whether to applaud or panic. While everyone's been obsessing over DeepSeek's AI breakthrough, a scrappy underdog called Kingsoft Cloud (KC) has quietly engineered a 500% stock surge that's leaving analysts slack-jawed. And now it’s even partnering with tech giant Xiaomi. Kingsoft is either sitting on a gold mine or the biggest bubble since the dot-com era.
Read Full Story

The tech rally of 2025 is heating up and AI stocks have dominated the headlines. But other sectors are delivering impressive gains as well. Cloudflare (NET), Doximity (DOCS) and Semrush (SEMR) are all up over 40% this year, showcasing the broader growth potential across technology. However, with elevated valuations, timing will be key. We dive into what’s driving their momentum, and explain why investors should stay alert for the right entry points. Read Full Story

The whispering started when legendary short-seller Nate Anderson—the guy who took down one of the world's richest men—suddenly shut down his Hindenburg Research investment firm just days before Trump's inauguration. It appears the market’s most controversial truth-tellers are facing an existential crisis as the Trump administration prepares to revamp the Securities and Exchange Commission and Elon Musk circles the regulatory waters. Read Full Story

Finally, something Americans can agree on—killing off the nation's most useless coin. While Washington wastes $179 million a year minting these copper-plated eyesores at nearly 4 cents each, they pile up under America's couch cushions like metallic cockroaches. But nothing is ever easy in Washington: Stopping penny production might actually cost us more money. Why? Because as these zinc-filled parasites disappear, we'll need more nickels. In a twist that perfectly captures government incompetence, nickels cost almost 14 cents each to make. While that plays out, here are a few somewhat common cents you should have the common sense to be on the lookout for. Read Full Story

A slick mathematical trap awaits active investors who think they can multiply their money with leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The brutal reality is these instruments are slowly bleeding their holders dry through the merciless mathematics of volatility drag. When markets zigzag, these "double your money" promises are transformed into a slow-motion mugging. A 10% market drop followed by an 11% recovery leaves you permanently poorer, not wiser.  This week's Cherry Picks illustrates volatility drag and tosses in two new trade ideas. Read Full Story

If you understand options trading, you know chaos in the markets is actually your friend. When everyone else is panicking about volatility, smart options sellers are quietly collecting premium checks. New tastylive research shows that during periods of high implied volatility, you can place your bets twice as far from the money and still rake in bigger returns. It's like being the house in Vegas where the odds are in your favor. Here’s why the pros pray for market turmoil. Read Full Story

Regular readers of Luckbox know how we feel about the long-term potential for Palantir (PLTR). But the stock is up over 260% since we beat the Palantir drum back in October, and reality's inevitably going to pull the punch bowl from that party. Trading at 600 times earnings—that's not a typo—Palantir has soared so far past sanity that even its legitimate government contracts and AI prowess can't justify its cosmic valuation.

But with implied volatility (IV) above 60, the stock will continue to provide opportunities for active investors and options traders. So, let’s step back a bit and share an insider's view from Palantir's trenches. If you think this is just another surveillance company, try again. An eight-year veteran of Palantir has exposed how Peter Thiel's "pariah" firm became a powerhouse. It was by arming ice-chewing, 20-something philosophers with nothing but laptops and an obsession with Wittgenstein and then sending them into the world's grittiest industries. The result? A $230 billion giant built by making government software that actually works. Read Full Story

Rising Stars is the fan-favorite tastylive video series that showcases people from all walks of life who consistently earn market-beating returns. The latest installment introduces a physics professor who reveals how he used a mechanical strategy to achieve positive annual returns from trading crude oil options. Beginning with $50,000 in capital, he generated an $18,000 profit trading 0DTE strangles three times a week. See him reveal his self-imposed rule that led to 12 straight profitable months without a single four-figure loss. Read Full Story

Think your life is worth saving? The cold calculus of autonomous vehicles might disagree—especially if you have some gray hair. In the largest ethics study ever conducted, MIT researchers discovered some chilling truths about who we would collectively decide should live or die on our roads. About 4 million people played this morbid game of choices, and the results exposed an uncomfortable reality: Age discrimination is alive and well in the world of AI ethics. This study reveals how our moral compass goes haywire when machines make life-or-death decisions. Want to play God? Try MIT's Moral Machine yourself.

The Great Electric Vehicle Shakeout Is Coming 🚙

While the new administration plots the demise of those cozy $7,500 tax credits on EV purchases and slashes charging-station funding, something counterintuitive is happening: The big boys might actually thrive in this hostile environment because they have a lot going for them. Tesla (TSLA) controls a global empire, Ford (F) is pumping $22 billion into electrification, and even those luxury upstarts Lucid (LCID) and Rivian (RIVN) don't need government handouts to sell $100,000 trucks to the wealthy. Darwin's coming for the EV market. Read Full Story

When The Levee Broke:
The Birth of Led Zeppelin 🎸

Finally, a rock documentary that spares us the tired circus of groupies, drugs and hotel room destruction in favor of something far more intoxicating: The raw genesis of musical genius. "Becoming Led Zeppelin" is that rarest of creatures—an authorized documentary that emerges as a masterclass in artistic evolution, showing how four working-class British musicians, including a teenage session player named Jimmy Page and a homeless kid called Robert Plant, created the blueprint for modern hard rock in a mere 36 hours of studio time. The archival footage is nothing short of revelatory, particularly when witnessed on an IMAX screen that makes John Bonham's thunderous drumming feel like it might trigger seismic activity.

The film wisely focuses on the band's formation through their first U.S. tour, before the medieval debauchery and shark incidents that would later define their legend. Director Bernard MacMahon has unearthed footage that plays like the Dead Sea Scrolls of rock: Page as a 13-year-old prodigy on television, Plant's flower-power years and, most poignantly, rare audio of John Bonham discussing the band with a pride that now feels prophetic.

Watching a young Robert Plant unleash that banshee wail while Jimmy Page attacks his guitar with a violin bow during Dazed and Confused at the Fillmore West feels like witnessing the birth of a new religion. And in a way, it was. The band's early live performance of How Many More Times is equally mesmerizing.

By focusing only on their formation through the album Led Zeppelin II, the film captures that magical moment when four virtuosos realized they'd stumbled onto something unprecedented. This isn't just rock history—it's a tutorial in artistic alchemy. Watch the trailer here.

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