TGIT: Our Issue With Alcohol, Nvidia, (Oh!) and Earth's Imminent Apocalypse

Eight new trade ideas, six essential trading strategies, GLP-1 drugs, happy hours, hangovers, fear, greed, signal, noise and too much (more) to tease. First time reading? Join other risk-takers, entrepreneurs, traders, investors, data geeks and alpha types. Sign up for free here.

TGI Thursday! (5/29) Nvidia had crushed earnings estimates for nine straight quarters, turning Wall Street analysts into giddy cheerleaders riding the AI gold rush. Yesterday's earnings drop after the close was the latest moment of truth: Would Jensen Huang's chip empire make it a perfect 10, or would reality finally catch up?

Let's call it a perfect 10.

Then, Huang delivered a tutorial in corporate passive-aggression while addressing quarterly results. Despite 69% growth in revenue, Nvidia's CEO made it crystal clear that export controls have "effectively closed" China's $50 billion market to American chipmakers.

The government torpedoed Nvidia's processor sales in April — no grace period, naturally — forcing a $4.5 billion inventory write-off and killing $8 billion in planned orders. Huang's diagnosis? China will simply develop homegrown alternatives through companies like Huawei. While carefully genuflecting before Trump's protectionist altar, Huang delivered an uncomfortable truth: "The question is not whether China will have AI. It already does." But his closing exaltation was particularly exquisite: "The president has a plan. He has a vision, and I trust him."

Nothing says corporate survival quite like performative deference.

While Nvidia's earnings did beat expectations, don't let the headlines fool you. Margins collapsed, China write-offs hit $4.5 billion and guidance disappointed. Yet the stock is trading 6% higher this morning, perhaps less from corporate brilliance but more because Trump's tariff pushback by a federal trade court has triggered a market-wide euphoria that has conveniently obscured the chip giant's emerging vulnerabilities.

Andrew Prochnow breaks down the actionable takeaways here.

As Nvidia's earnings and the trade court ruling raise the market's spirits, this week's Luckbox raises the issue of the spirits market in the wake of tariff uncertainty, shifting cultural values and the impact of GLP-1 drugs on our appetite for alcohol.

Stay Lucky!

Letter to Editor

Carlsberg (CARLB) and Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) have surged 50% and 40%, respectively, in 2025. Their gains indicate the GLP-1 appetite and alcohol suppressant drug won’t stop people from finding money for booze. It also happens that these giant brewers are premium-focused, globally diversified cash machines that have cracked the code on pricing power. While talking heads obsess over declines in volume, our analyst-at-large recognizes margin expansion when he sees it. Both stocks still trade below sector averages despite their runs, making this rally look sustainable instead of speculative. Read Full Story

Americans have discovered sobriety, causing stock prices to tumble more than 20% for three titans of the spirits world — Constellation Brands (STZ), Diageo (DEO) and Brown-Forman (BF.B). The industry is facing its sobering moment of truth with GLP-1 drugs killing the urge to drink, younger generations treating cocktails like cigarettes and Trump's tariffs wreaking havoc on international sales. While Constellation enjoys Berkshire Hathaway's vote of confidence and Diageo clings to its premium brands, one surprising pick emerges as the dark horse for tactical traders looking to profit from chaos. Read Full Story

Study participants who received a small weekly shot of semaglutide (GLP-1) drank 30% less alcohol.

— JAMA Psychiatry, February 2025

America's weight-loss wonder drugs are doing something pharmaceutical companies have never advertised: Killing the desire to drink alcohol. GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic and Zepbound, aren't just shrinking waistlines — they're shrinking bar tabs and leaving spirits and beer companies scrambling as consumers suddenly find their favorite cocktails about as appealing as cardboard. This all figures into Errol Coleman's analysis of why he’s bullish on Eli Lilly (LLY). Read Full Story

Remember when we warned you about the Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) 98% government dependency problem? Well, Christmas came early for anyone who listened. The company that turned taxpayer dependency into high art just announced it's axing 2,500 employees and Goldman Sachs just downgraded the company to a "sell.” Last week, it missed revenue guidance by $300 million, earnings projections cratered and shares fell 15% in a matter of minutes. CEO Horacio Rozanski can rebrand all he wants, but you can't pivot away from an existential business model problem.

NuScale (SMR) hasn't built a single reactor, yet investors are throwing money at it like it's the next Tesla (TSLA). The stock's up 200% because the market’s betting on ”small modular reactors" that supposedly solve nuclear power's problems. Sure, the company’s got regulatory approval and half a billion in cash, but it’s trading at 54 times sales with zero commercial deployments. It's either the ground floor of the energy revolution or an expensive lesson in hype over substance. Either way, it's one for your watch list. Read Full Story

America's Stockpile Economy 

Ilya Spivak views the market's current "recovery" as nothing more than corporate panic-buying before tariff Armageddon. While Europe and Japan circle the drain, US companies are hoarding inventory like doomsday preppers, creating a fake growth surge that's about as sustainable as a Ponzi scheme. Fed Chair Jerome Powell sits paralyzed between controlling inflation and preventing recession, while businesses slash jobs despite rising sales. This inventory binge will collapse faster than a house of cards, leaving companies holding worthless stock and consumers too broke to buy anything. The reckoning approaches. Read Full Story

Recession forecasting remains what it's always been: Educated guesswork dressed up as analysis. While Kalshi's recession odds have plummeted from 65% to 39% in weeks and yield curves are flashing contradictory signals like a broken traffic light, Cherry Picks sidesteps this fortune-telling circus entirely, focusing on mechanical strategies that actually work when prophecy fails. Read the latest issue here.

As day traders burn through accounts chasing momentum plays, pro traders quietly deploy six time-tested strategies for consistent results. ZEBRAs, short puts, jade lizards, iron condors, broken wing butterflies and ratio spreads aren't glamorous — they're effective. These aren't get-rich-quick schemes for armchair warriors; they're mechanical approaches that exploit time decay, volatility shifts and market probabilities. Whether you're managing a modest account or serious capital, these strategies work because they embrace market realities instead of fighting them. Watch this special video from legendary options trader Tom Sosnoff here.

Slate published this week's most alarmist financial commentary with author-actor Ben McKenzie delivering a screed entitled "Crypto Is About to Cause the Next Great American Financial Crisis.” The headline practically screams for your attention.

McKenzie's thesis runs like this: Cryptocurrency will trigger America's next financial meltdown, replaying 2008's subprime mortgage catastrophe with digital coins as the villain. He points to the March 2023 collapse of three banks — Silvergate, Silicon Valley and Signature — which held over $400 billion in assets, arguing their failures stemmed directly from crypto exposure. When crypto markets tanked in 2022, crypto companies yanked their deposits, creating old-fashioned bank runs. McKenzie sees this as "Subprime 2.0," with cryptocurrency playing the role of toxic asset. He warns that conditions not only haven't improved but have actually deteriorated.\

We’re not buying into the drama.

The 2023 bank failures weren't crypto's fault alone — or even primarily. Silicon Valley Bank imploded because of textbook interest rate risk and spectacularly bad asset management. It bought long-term bonds when rates were basement-low, then watched those investments crater when rates climbed. The crypto angle was more about having too many similar customers than about crypto being inherently poisonous.

Here's the reality check: Crypto remains a financial system footnote. The entire crypto market hovers around $1 trillion to $2 trillion, while US banking assets exceed $20 trillion. Even if every digital coin vanished tomorrow, it's questionable whether that alone could topple the banking system as McKenzie suggests. His assumption that "crypto-friendly legislation" would unleash reckless exposure ignores the regulatory framework that still governs banking.

McKenzie's core worry about crypto risk has merit, but today's banking system carries more capital cushions and better oversight than in the pre-2008 era. McKenzie's "next great financial crisis" rhetoric feels overwrought given crypto's actual systemic presence.

Chris Vecchio Cuts Through the Noise 

While most financial pundits contribute to the noise, tastylive's Christopher Vecchio cuts straight to signal. From his New York perch, this CFA charterholder transforms macro chaos into tradeable intelligence, separating what moves markets from what merely moves lips.

Vecchio dominates the less-populated space between academic theory and trading reality, where wrong calls cost more than credibility. He dissects central bank double-speak, currency carnage and geopolitical circus acts with the kind of clarity that makes you wonder why everyone else sounds like they're reading from fortune cookies. Think of it as pure signal extraction from the global noise machine.

Watch Vecchio every trading day on Futures Power Hour, Let Me Explain or after the close on Overtime on tastylive, or the @tastyliveTrending YouTube channel.

Trump wants to pull the plug on the Federal National Mortgage Association (aka Fannie Mae or FNMA) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (aka Freddie Mac or FMCC). These zombie mortgage giants have been shambling around in government conservatorship since 2008, neither dead nor alive, privatizing profits while socializing losses. Now their shares have exploded 50% on privatization rumors because Wall Street apparently thinks 17 years of limbo wasn't enough. But Christopher Vecchio reveals what nobody wants to admit: These creatures control half the $16 trillion mortgage market, and cutting the government umbilical cord could either unleash real market forces or completely crater housing finance. Read Full Story

Last Call, But Not Just for Alcohol 

Three sizable asteroids are lurking behind Venus like cosmic assassins, each packing the punch of a million Hiroshima bombs. These city-killers, ranging from 330 to 1,300 feet across, have been playing hide-and-seek in our solar system's ultimate blind spot, shielded by the Sun's glare from every telescope we've got pointed skyward. Scientists from Brazil, France and Italy just discovered this delightful trio, warning their chaotic orbits could send any one of them careening toward Earth with maybe four weeks' notice. Read Full Story

More Cowbell

The flawed logic behind GME and MSTR bitcoin holdings.

Short selling came up short for Nvidia and Tesla sellers.

Why our brains continue to be fooled by randomness. 

Musk feels the GOP spending bill undermines DOGE. 

See iron condors explained on Life Cycle of a Trade.

Sneak preview: The Lego-Nike collab drops soon.

Tastytrade CEO Scott Sheridan dishes on volatility.

A closer look at what “no tax on tips” means. 

Ranking the most popular beers in America. 

ICYMI: tastylive’s best videos of the week. 

Beer Advocate’s forum for beer geeks. 

ICYMI: Last week’s Luckbox TGIT. 

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