revenue is up 24% yoy. Numbers probably good for semi space, not sure about google

https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2026/q2/2026q2-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf

Deck - https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2026/q2/2026q2-alphabet-earnings-slides.pdf

I have three retirement accounts with Schwab, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price and hold each of their S&P 500 index funds. The ER for Schwab is 0.02%, Fidelity is 0.015%, and the stodgy old dinosaur T. Rowe Price is a whopping 0.2%. Look at the difference in % gained over a 5-year period between the three funds. Does the 0.2% expense ratio with T. Rowe really eat away 3% over 5 years or this due to some other indexing or trading reason? I'm always amazed at you folks' knowledge about this stuff. Thanks in advance. Well, Reddit won't let me add a photo but the % gain over the last 5 years is 70.87% for Schwab, 70.38% for Fidelity and only 67.17% for T. Rowe.

I honestly don’t get it anymore… NKE has basically been going down for like a year now. Just red after red after red.

What really confuses me is the World Cup. Nike was everywhere. Big teams, huge visibility, constant exposure… I really thought that would boost sales and give the stock some momentum.

But nope, it just keeps sliding.

https://finviz.com/stock?t=NKE&ty=c&ta=0&p=d

So I’m wondering… is there something deeper going on here? Competition? margins? strategy issues?

Or is this just market overreaction?

Curious what you guys think, because right now I clearly feel like I’m missing something.

I think gold miners are about to get an influx of investment from Asian retail investors. I would imagine that Chinese gold investor/traders that are all of a sudden restricted from leveraged gold would be looking for alternative means to gain similar exposure. Gold Miners accomplish that… gold miners basically give traders leveraged gold prices. Of course, shares in a company means additional exposure to business risk but I still think there is enough there to entice investment. It might be a practical place to move given the circumstances.

Just got my first job and I’m setting up my benefits. I’m 26 years old and have 0 debt and I’m making 95k/year as my starting salary. I have about 10k spread across a brokerage and a Roth IRA but that’s it.

I want to maximize my returns. My company allows me to pick my allocations but not the funds if that makes sense. There’s equity fund (s&p), small company stock fund, international equity fund, emerging markets equity fund, company stock fund just to name the most lucrative ones…

How does this sound: 80% s&p, 15% international equity fund, 5% small company stock fund

There's a line that has always stuck with me from the movie the Hitman's body guard and the line is ''Boring is best''. Whenever anything is made to seem like the place to invest its usually just been discovered by the hype train and propped up by the perception that the asset will increase rather than foundations of value. So id like to hear about something I wouldn't think to look into that may not seem glamourous at all. What boring unheard of maybe even embarrassing alternative investments that will probably never reach my ears can you point me in the general direction of?

I am guessing much harder if only one stock in the ETF gaps and the rest don't. I'm also curious if it's harder for an equal weighted or an market weighted ETF to gap vs the other.

I am not sure if anyone has some historical gap info on ETFs, but curious about any info you may have.

This subreddit seems to be more about traditional equity and funds investments but rarely do you see people talk about speculative asset investments. For example, sports cards and tcg (ie Pokemon cards) have shown to out perform the stock market. Isn’t diversification what we all need? I have a card collection that currently makes up more than my net worth and been contemplating on converting it into $$ and speeding up my the compounding of my passive income portfolio but I don’t want to pay the capital gains tax (ie collectible tax).

So, from what I can gather, in both 2000 and 2008 when the US market fell, that bled over globally, they all fell when the panic hit.

It seems like in the event of big drawdowns, people pull cash from everywhere for liquidity, even if fundamentals aren't the same across the globe?

After the initial drop, then the divergence happened in the recovery across different countries as some recovered much faster than others.

Does this pattern hold for other historical corrections? Do you think it's likely to repeat?

I developed a standard brokerage account and Roth IRA in Ellevest between 2020-2025 (until they transitioned their assets to Betterment). It was my first time investing, and I let the roboinvestor do the work. Then once Ellevest moved to Betterment, I was running these two accounts via the Betterment roboinvestor for about a year. I am not maxing out my IRA, and contributing about $200/mo to each account (brokerage and IRA).

I met with a flat-fee fiduciary advisor who told me I could simplify my portfolio to focus on maxing out the IRA and reduce the amount I'd lose to platform fees with Betterment by managing my portfolio myself in Vanguard, shifting all my assets into the Roth, and using an allocation of 54% VTI, 36% VXUS, 10% BND. He talked me through the process and it seemed doable to me, so I went ahead and transferred my portfolio into Vanguard.

Now I'm stumped at figuring out how to transfer the assets from the brokerage account into the Roth without triggering a sale/taxable event. There isn't a UI for this (you can transfer assets between brokerage accounts freely, though). From what I'm reading, I will have to sell the holdings from the brokerage account, keep them in a settlement fund, then deposit them into the IRA. Because it's a sale, I'll incur the capital gains tax on them.

1. Is there truly no way for me to transfer these assets to the IRA without incurring a capital gains tax?
2. Once in my IRA, can I redistribute the holdings into the allocation mentioned above without additional taxable events occurring?
3. Is there any way for me to calculate how much the capital gains will be from (1) so I can set a proper amount aside for taxes? I don't see anywhere in Vanguard that tells me how long I've had the holding to be able to estimate which bracket it'll taxed be in.

Cross-posted into r/personalfinance and r/VanguardInvestments

Can someone explain to me these billions and trillions being invested in Data Centres and cloud centres and AI by Google, Oracle, etc where are funds going. I mean if a company is going negative, another must be going positive?

I mean the money is not vanishing in air. I understand these are long term investments but then the money must be going somewhere and someone or some companies just be benefiting in the short term?

Bloomberg reports that Oklo and X-Energy are joining a Trump administration initiative aimed at accelerating advanced nuclear reactor deployment to support the rapidly growing electricity demands of AI data centers.

The $200 million initiative also includes Microsoft and Nvidia, and is designed to speed the development of new power generation needed for AI infrastructure. An official announcement could come as soon as Wednesday during a U.S. Department of Energy AI energy summit.

As part of the program, several DOE national laboratories and institutions- including the University of Texas at Austin- are expected to share $60 million over three years to support research and development efforts.

The initiative reflects growing concern that the rapid buildout of AI data centers is straining the U.S. electric grid and contributing to higher electricity prices. Major technology companies, including Nvidia and OpenAI, have identified energy availability as one of the biggest constraints on scaling AI in the United States and maintaining competitiveness with China.

For Oklo, the news reinforces the company’s positioning as one of the advanced reactor developers expected to play a role in powering next-generation AI infrastructure. The administration’s continued focus on streamlining nuclear deployment and supporting domestic energy production could provide additional tailwinds for companies working to bring advanced reactors online.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-21/oklo-x-energy-join-trump-effort-to-speed-new-nuclear-reactors-for-ai

So I use fidelity and I have FXAIX, FTIHX and FXNAX for my Roth IRA could anyone help me or recommend some I could add or remove also should I put money into my individual account or just keep buying/adding money into what i already have invested/going to invest in.

If anyone could also, can you tell me sum videos on YouTube I could watch to understand what I’m doing and looking/looking for, I want to grow and ik it wont be quick so that’s why I asked if I should use my individual account. I’m currently getting my CDL now too so I’ll have even more money to invest, I just want to do it right and not have it fuck me also what’s you’re guys opinions on bitcoin?

There are two things I've been looking into that don't get enough attention in the AI bull case, and I think they matter a lot for anyone holding NVIDIA, Microsoft, or anything riding on AI CapEx continuing forever.

People compare AI buildout to railroads or the 90s telecom boom. I get the analogy. Those were also periods of massive overinvestment, and the narrative is that even though the bubble popped, the infrastructure ended up being useful for decades. Fibre cables from 1999 still carry traffic. Rail lines from the 1800s still move freight. The argument is basically that even if AI spend overshoots, the assets will retain value over the long run.

But I started looking into how long data centre hardware actually lasts, and it doesn't match that story at all. Chips go obsolete in a couple of years. Cooling systems and networking equipment, maybe five. Even the buildings themselves can become outdated in under a decade because hardware keeps changing shape and density requirements shift. This isn't a build-it-once-and-it-pays-off-for-30-years situation. It's a treadmill. Companies will have to keep sinking hundreds of billions back in every few years just to stay where they are.

The second thing I've been watching is what's happening with actual adoption on the ground. We keep hearing about exponential demand and how everyone is racing to integrate AI, but the survey data coming out lately tells a different story. Enterprise adoption rates have started dipping month over month. Around 80% of companies using AI say it hasn't moved their bottom line in any measurable way. And on the consumer side, sentiment is shifting too. Half of Americans now say they're more concerned than excited about AI, up from about a third a few years ago.

If you put those two things together, the picture gets uncomfortable. On one side, you have infrastructure that needs constant replenishment and doesn't hold value the way past buildouts did. On the other, you have demand signals that are softening in exactly the places where the revenue is supposed to come from. If the corporate middle doesn't see the value yet and the general public is cooling, where does the payoff come from?

I'm not saying AI is useless or that the whole thing goes to zero. But the timeline for these investments to earn a real return feels a lot tighter than the bull case assumes, and that gap between spend and payoff is where things usually break. Curious what others make of this, especially anyone with hands-on experience in data centre economics.

The setup in one paragraph

A debt free company with over 60% of its market cap in cash, growing, inflecting to profitability, buying back stock while it’s depressed, run by respiratory operators with M&A in their history, holding a free option on a $500M market, in an industry where every peer already got acquired. Priced at 0.18x sales against comps at 1.5x to 5.8x. Early and wrong look identical on the tape. August 6 is the first checkpoint where the market gets a number it has to price.
Not advice. Do your own work.

VC analyst here, and Figure AI keep’s landing on my desk. Figure’s Series C put it at ~$39B (NVIDIA, Microsoft, Bezos backing) but that already tops Goldman’s estimate for the entire 2035 humanoid market, on basically zero revenue. BMW also went with a rival for its latest pilot, and there’s an open safety whistleblower suit.

Bull: massive TAM, deepest backer list, owns the full stack.

Bear: pricing 2040 into a pre-revenue company; Tesla/China could win on cost.

Is $39B defensible on any real numbers, or pure optionality? (It’s private, so mostly a thought exercise.)

I noticed that the spread on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issue pools are tightening to almost the lowest level for about 10 years.

I know you can't plot a spread like you would on a normal yield curve because you have to allow for the prepayments, and you can't get a very distant point on the curve.

But let's say you take a yield at a given point on the Agency MBS curve, adjusted for an expected prepayment pattern, and compare it to the same point on the treasury, that spread has been narrowing a lot.

Source: https://atlantisdatasolutions.com/agency-mbs-yield-curve

So my main exposure to big Tech is the Fidelity Contrafund which is up 12% in the past year and 71% in the last 3 years. I’m not really diversified beyond that fund but still believe in the Mag 7 stocks future as well as AI and the relative safety that fund offers. Since I can remain somewhat aggressive for a few years i’m not sure i want to go a different route yet. My question is should I add some diversity like small caps and international stocks? Im struggling here as that fund has outperformed all of the other options i have to invest in over the past 5 years. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Government debt and deficits are rising fast worldwide and particularly in the US. US Treasury has been selling short paper instead of bonds in the expectation that Warsh will be a puppet and drop the funds rate. The AI hyperscaler complex is issuing mountains of debt to finance CapEx way, way beyond available cash.

What happens when the bond market says, "enough is enough"?

Where is the best place to hide? In particular, what's going to happen to inflation and short-term rates?

There are several high-profile examples where large tech companies invest in AI startups, and those startups then spend a significant portion of that capital back with the same investors (or related companies) through cloud infrastructure, GPUs, or long-term compute contracts (e.g., Microsoft/OpenAI, Amazon/Anthropic, Google/Anthropic, Nvidia and various AI labs).

The Kospi's 4.9% plunge - it's the sharpest signal that the AI/chip rally is getting wobbly right before the biggest US tech names report, setting up a high-stakes week.

https://stocktwits.com/news-articles/markets/equity/korea-focused-koru-etf-dips-on-kospi-drag-samsung-sk-hynix-extend-selloff-into-us-big-tech-earnings-week/cZZLrtnR7Mr

So I went through the filing. The call was all "parabolic demand" and everything sounds amazing. Then you actually read the numbers.

$58 billion in net income, but $13.4 billion of that was just unrealized gains from stocks they own. Intel went up so they booked a gain. That has nothing to do with selling chips. If those stocks stayed flat the quarter looks a lot more normal. Like $44 billion. Management didn't really mention this on the call.

Also three customers make up 54% of revenue. 21%, 17%, 16%. Jensen talked about having customers in 40 countries but half the business is three companies. And the filing says these are mostly purchase orders that can be cancelled anytime. These are probably the same cloud companies building their own chips. If one of them slows down even a bit that's a big hole.

The Groq thing was surprising too. They paid $13 billion cash to Groq. Another $4 billion committed. And now there's $14.4 billion in goodwill on the balance sheet. Groq is an inference startup a lot of people think could compete with them someday. If that goodwill ever gets written down it's a real hit. And nobody really talks about it.

Not saying the company is bad. The business is clearly strong. Just thought the earnings got a nice tailwind from non-operating stuff and a few risks seem under-discussed.

Just sharing in case someone finds it useful.

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