TGIT: Our Issue With Drugs, Red Pills, Blue Pills and Other Stories

Drugmaker's dismay, Universal Display, VIX-taming, fat tail-shaming, macro's home, the Golden Dome and much more. First time reading? Join other risk-takers, entrepreneurs, traders, investors, data geeks and alpha types. Sign up for free here.

TGI Thursday! (5/15) The markets opened softer today after Fed Chair Jerome Powell once again suggested higher for longer interest rates. Despite President Trump's incessant jawboning, we're not the least surprised. Structural shifts in the economy have permanently altered the landscape. Government debt has exploded beyond all recognition. Supply chains have fractured. Labor markets have been transformed. And trade and monetary policy now change direction with the predictability of a toddler in a toy store.

It's the new economic reality. The days of free money are as dead as disco. Higher long-term rates aren't a bug; they're a feature of our reshaped reality.

And while disco may be dead, America’s prescription drug industry is making Studio 54 look like a church social. Americans consume pills with the enthusiasm of Andy Warhol at a Bianca Jagger birthday. But they’re paying VIP prices at the door while the rest of the world slips in through the back entrance.

For decades, the American pharmaceutical cartel has pulled off history's greatest scam. Countries in the rest of the developed world negotiate as bulk buyers while we sit back and let drugmakers set their own prices. Why? Because our politicians — both Democrats and Republicans — take industry donations and lecture us about "free markets."

There's nothing "free" about this market. It's a cartel system where the identical pill costs Americans multiples of what people in other countries pay. If enacted, Trump's latest executive order’s "most-favored-nation" approach flips the industry's profit model upside down: Americans would pay what other countries pay—potentially slashing prices by 50-90%.

Will this survive the courts? Big Pharma's attorneys are already shopping for sympathetic judges. And considering OpenSecret’s list of pharma’s political beneficiaries, don't expect much in the way of legislative backup.

Nobody claims this executive order is perfect, but when Americans are being fleeced for $400 billion annually, it's about damn time someone called the scam what it is.

Stay lucky!

Letter to Editor

Trump's pharma shakedown has landed like a live hand grenade in boardrooms from Jersey to California. The president's executive order — essentially a "please lower your prices" Post-it note — might lack the force of law, but the warning shot has been fired. Meanwhile, Pfizer (PFE) and Merck (MRK) executives are sweating through their bespoke suits as share prices plummet 20% and 40%, respectively. Pfizer limps along after its weight-loss drug faceplant, while Merck rides Keytruda's cancer-fighting coattails toward an inevitable patent cliff. The winner? Luckbox analyst-at-large Andrew Prochnow shares his pick. Read Full Story

$212 billion — The value of 2024 US pharma imports.

—  The Observatory of Economic Complexity

Behemoth equipment from Caterpillar (CAT) may move mountains, but lately its stock couldn't move anywhere but down, plunging 30% after January's peak. Now, as shares claw back toward $340, investors face the ultimate heavy machinery conundrum.

Despite revenue dropping a gut-wrenching 10%, the company somehow delivered impressive margins. The record $35 billion backlog has our analyst's attention, and he now has a price target in mind. Read Full Story

Universal Display (OLED), the wizard behind those impossibly thin, energy-sipping screens, has stumbled dramatically from its $235 peak. Now hovering at $140 after shedding 40% of its value, a question looms: Comeback story or dead cat bounce?

Its latest earnings report offers tantalizing contradictions — licensing revenue up, material sales down. But blue OLED technology promises salvation, and the company's valuation screams "future tech darling" despite its present mediocrity. Read Full Story

In the latest installment of Nick Battista's Life Cycle of a Trade series, the discussion centers on dealing with a volatile market by setting up an iron condor – that four-legged options beast that feasts during market convulsions.

With the VIX at a tumescent 23 — a reading that’s sent the weak-kneed fleeing to cash — Battista demonstrates why the sophisticated trader views volatility as an opportunity. He dissects SPX options with surgical precision, opting for weekly expirations not out of impatience but because in the gladiatorial arena of options, time management equals survival. Watch the video here.

After four decades of daily combat in the options markets, Tom Sosnoff — the maverick behind ThinkorSwim and now tastytrade — has identified the common thread among successful traders: An insatiable hunger to transcend mediocrity. And this video shows how to satisfy that appetite.

You’ll see panelists strip away conventional nonsense about portfolio theory and share the mathematical frameworks that actually work when markets behave badly. From Black-Scholes fundamentals to the practical application of fat-tail analysis, these six veteran traders describe advanced techniques that separate professional results from amateur outcomes. They combine sophisticated modeling with the art of human decision-making that algorithms alone cannot replace. Catch their high-level discussion here.

Trading Insight Without the Hindsight

While financial television typically wastes your precious viewing hours explaining what already happened, Ilya Spivak is busy calculating what comes next. Every trading day from his San Francisco war room, Spivak livestreams 20 years of macro market experience, zeroing in on what actually matters: Actionable intelligence for tomorrow's trading day. No academic theorizing. No sentimental storytelling.

Just the naked machinery of global macro forces translated into trade ideas that might actually make you money. Currencies, rates, commodities, equities — he tracks the tectonic shifts beneath them all with the cold-eyed precision of someone who's survived in the market's arena.

Watch Spivak’s Macro Money. It’s on Monday through Thursday at tastylive or on tastylive’s Trending YouTube channel.

The Defense Sector's Upcoming Feeding Frenzy

The Trump administration has a new military fetish — a continental missile shield that makes Reagan's Star Wars look like amateur hour. The "Golden Dome" isn't just a Pentagon plaything; it's a $150 billion defense package with $27 billion already earmarked for its initial stages. The chief operating officer at Lockheed (LMT) compares it to the Manhattan Project. But the real action may be with Kratos Defense (KTOS), where CEO Eric DeMarco just dropped $250K of his own cash on company shares. Read Full Story

More Cowbell

Trump's drug-pricing EO is a problem for some GOP pols.

Ilya Spivak resolves inflation data with the falling dollar.

Our analyst sees a break above $65 as bullish for crude. 

Cherry Picks: An excel-based options pricing calculator. 

Check out tastylive’s best videos of the past week. 

It turns out “nuts” are an aptly named superfood.

Ranking the world's most valuable soccer clubs.

A look at an average college student’s day.

ICYMI: Last week’s Luckbox TGIT. 

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