Monday Market Open

Almost Summer boys. This is not the time to coast. This is the season for killers. The quarter where focus makes millionaires and distractions make memories.

The noise is loud, the charts are wild, and opportunity is breathing down your neck like a rival who wants your spot.

Every morning you wake up, the market resets the scoreboard and if you’re not locked, dialed, and executing like your rent depends on it, someone hungrier is taking your trade.

Geopolitics
THE EAGLE AND DRAGON

Trump and Xi meet Thursday in Beijing with Hormuz, Iran, rare earths, AI, Taiwan, tariffs, oil, and chips on the table. Basically every global choke point in one room. Beautiful. Terrifying.

Bessent and He Lifeng pre-game Wednesday in South Korea, trying to keep the tariff truce from getting curb-stomped after Washington sanctioned Chinese refiners buying Iranian crude and Beijing fired back with rare-earth halts plus the Nexperia chip ban. Trump says he expects a “big, fat hug.” Sure. And your watchlist is “just consolidating.”

Analysts think the real play could be a dirty energy side deal where America and China protect their own asses while Europe and Japan get left holding the geopolitical condom wrapper. This is not diplomacy. This is two superpowers measuring dicks over oil, chips, Taiwan, and the world’s maritime throat. Watch the hug. Trade the choke points.

VHLA Spotlight
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS IS KILLING IT

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP is smoking people because he bought the AI plumbing, not the AI fan fiction. $BE = power. $CRWV = compute. That’s the trade, genius.

AI does not run on TED Talks, VC podcasts, or some Patagonia vest whispering “agentic workflow” into a Yeti mic. It runs on electricity, GPUs, data centers, and capex so disgusting it needs a parental advisory sticker. Retail is still asking, “Is AI a bubble?”

VHLA Picks
CIRCLE IS PRINTING

Circle raised $222M at a $3B valuation for Arc, its new blockchain built for the “AI-native economy.” BlackRock, Apollo, and ICE led the token presale. That is not Discord goblin money. That is suit money walking into stablecoin rails with a flamethrower and a legal department.

We called out $CRCL in the May 5 letter. Stock up 12% today. Congrats longs. You ate. Wipe your mouth. USDC is the gas. Arc wants to be the highway. If tokenized finance, AI payments, and stablecoin settlement keep scaling, Circle wants the toll booth.

Crypto is not back. The adults are back. And this time they are stealing the plumbing. Degenerate bet, not advice.

Software
THE SOFTWARE COMEBACK TRADE

For months, every podcast goblin screamed AI would kill software. Claude Code shows up, some guy vibe-codes a CRM between vape hits, and suddenly SaaS is supposed to die like a 2021 SPAC with a fake TAM slide. Cute narrative. Earnings just pissed on it.

$DDOG, $TWLO, and $TEAM posted monster beats. AI is not killing the good software companies. It is helping them ship faster, expand margins, and make the “SaaS is dead” crowd look like they sold the bottom in clown shoes. Trash SaaS can still die.

Nobody needs another chatbot-wrapped spreadsheet charging $79/month to “streamline workflows.” But real software? Sticky customers. Mission-critical products. Actual usage. Operating leverage. That trade is waking the fuck up. The same bears who called software dead are about to rename it “AI-enabled SaaS reacceleration” and pretend they were early.