🧭 MACRO SNAPSHOT

The macro picture is increasingly bifurcated. Fed funds at 3.63% with the 10Y at 4.49% and 2Y at 4.20% gives us a modestly positive 29bp 2s10s — a normal curve after years of inversion, which historically is a constructive setup for risk assets but only if growth holds. Real GDP growth at 1.6% is sluggish, unemployment at 4.3% has drifted higher, and HY credit spreads at 263bp remain tight — credit markets are not flashing distress. VIX at 18.4 is benign. The Yahoo Finance piece on the "Warsh era Fed vibe" is worth flagging: a more market-friendly Fed posture is the consensus interpretation, and it dovetails with the GEV-cited "US-Iran peace deal" narrative pressuring oil and easing inflation expectations. CPI YoY remains the wild card (the FRED print appears to be index level, not %; treat it as noise here).

The two macro stories that matter for the portfolio: (1) Trump's announced Intel-Apple chip partnership (WSJ) — this is a direct policy lever pushing US semiconductor onshoring, with read-throughs to $AAPL margin pressure, $INTC optionality, and indirectly $TSM (negative at the margin, but TSM's Arizona ramp is already priced). (2) The Anthropic/Fable export-control crackdown — confirming that AI is now a national security domain where the government will pick winners and constrain losers. This directly benefits US-aligned infrastructure plays ($NVDA, $AVGO, $ANET) and complicates the China AI thesis ($BABA).

₿ BITCOIN DAILY WRITE-UP

Price & Market Structure: BTC trades at $64,194, up 0.8% on the day but down 0.6% on the week and down 16.87% on the month. We are now -49.1% from the $126,080 ATH and -38.2% YoY. Dominance is 56.3%, which means BTC is holding share even in a broader crypto drawdown — alts are bleeding harder.

Structural Thesis: The core hold thesis is that the post-halving supply shock (450 BTC/day new issuance vs. $17.8B daily volume) plus permanent ETF distribution infrastructure creates an asymmetric long-term setup, even if the cycle timing is being violated in real time. We hold not because we expect a bounce — we hold because the structural demand channels are intact and the supply side is unforgiving over multi-year horizons.

What Happened This Week: This was a structurally negative week. CryptoSlate flagged $10B in margin calls in the digital credit/yield trade — that's real deleveraging, not just volatility. JPMorgan (via Bitcoin Magazine) noted mining economics have deteriorated with BTC trading ~19% below production cost — a historical leading indicator of miner capitulation. The Bitcoin Layer's "When Does The Next Green Dot Confirm?" post suggests the technical community is waiting for a bottoming signal that hasn't arrived.

Bull / Bear Scorecard:
- 🟢 Halving supply math intact: 95.46% of supply mined, daily issuance trivially small vs. volume
- 🟢 ETF channel is a one-way ratchet — distribution infrastructure doesn't un-build
- 🟢 Regulatory backdrop constructive (SEC posture, state-level adoption despite IL taxation headline)
- 🔴 Cycle pattern materially broken: 14 months post-halving should be parabolic; we're -49% from ATH
- 🔴 $10B in margin call cascades = structural deleveraging, not noise
- 🔴 BTC trading below miner production cost — historically precedes deeper drawdowns before bottoming

Conviction Check: Action: HOLD | Conviction: 4/10. Conviction is unchanged but the bias is asymmetrically to the downside — if hash rate breaks meaningfully, we drop to 3/10 and treat this as a confirmed bear cycle.

What to Watch:
1. Sustained ETF net outflows >30 days — would confirm institutional distribution
2. Hash rate decline >15% from current — miner capitulation signal
3. Long-term holder supply behavior — are diamond hands actually diamond?

Community Pulse: Reddit was quiet this weekend (no fetched threads), so the signal comes from newsletters. The Bitcoin Layer is running a "Strategy Doesn't Have to Unwind for Bitcoin to Recover" piece — meaning the community is actively debating whether $MSTR's leveraged position is a systemic risk. JPMorgan's mining-cost note is being widely circulated, which tells you institutional sentiment is leaning bearish-curious. Kalshi's $2B revenue + IPO chatter is a sideshow but reinforces the broader "crypto-adjacent prediction markets are real" narrative. Net read: community is bruised but not capitulating.

🔬 TODAY'S DEEP DIVES

No new ideas screened today and no rolling review queued. The pipeline was quiet — I'd rather skip a forced deep dive than manufacture one. Use today to sit with the existing target list. The re-review queue below has eight names that may deserve a fresh look.

📋 TARGET LIST STATUS

No conviction changes today. Last week's only actions were 50-day rolling reaffirmations on $FTNT and $PGNY at 5/10. No names dropped today. The list has room (~32 of 50 slots used) — quality bar remains the constraint, not capacity.

💼 YOUR PORTFOLIO

• $AAPL | HOLD | 6/10 — Intel partnership announcement is a wildcard: positive for political optics, potentially margin-dilutive if it forces use of inferior process nodes. Insider selling continues. Hold, don't add.
• $AVAV | HOLD | 4/10 — Stock within 9% of 52-week low; class-action overhang persists. This is becoming a "watch for a forced-seller bottom" situation, not a thesis-driven hold. Trim candidate if it breaks lower.
• $AVGO | STRONG HOLD | 9/10 — +6.7% week, thesis fully intact. Citi, JPM both reaffirming. AI custom-silicon story is the highest-conviction name in the book.
• $BABA | STRONG HOLD | 7/10 — Down to $107, ~3% above 52W low. Fundamentals haven't broken; sentiment has. China AI export-control crosswind worth monitoring but priced.
• $FSLR | BUY MORE | 8/10 — Pulled back 5% this week to $257.70. Domestic solar policy backdrop unchanged; valuation more attractive than a month ago. Add on weakness.
• $GOOGL | HOLD → STRONG HOLD | 8/10 — Recent thesis update lifted conviction to 8/10 after price recovery. $1.5B Alabama data center investment + TPU competitive narrative vs. NVDA matters. Hold tight.
• $ISRG | BUY MORE | 8/10 — $10 above 52W low. Surgical robotics secular story unchanged; this is a buyable drawdown.
• $MKL | HOLD | 7/10 — Drifting. Two recent 8-Ks worth tracking but no thesis change.
• $MP | STRONG HOLD | 8/10 — $60.88, up from $57.18. Rare-earth/critical materials policy tailwind reinforced by the $UUUU Pentagon news. Hold.
• $SYM | HOLD | 6/10 — Modest weakness. Thesis intact but no catalyst near-term.
• $TSLA | HOLD | 5/10 — Musk now near 20% voting power post-option exercise; Cramer/Gerber both flagging "nobody's talking about Tesla." Sentiment vacuum can cut both ways. Hold.
• $UNH | STRONG HOLD | 7/10 — Recovered from $234 low to $401, near 52W high. Mean-reversion trade has played out; from here it's a fundamentals story.

⚠️ WATCH LIST

• $AVAV: Hold conviction at 4/10, target conviction at 5/10. If the class-action settles or fundamentals stabilize, could re-rate. If it breaks below $156 (52W low) on volume, downgrade to TRIM.
• $GEV: Up 18% on the week on the Iran peace deal / inflation-easing narrative. If Q2 backlog data confirms momentum, upgrade to 7/10 RECOMMEND. Watch for follow-through.
• $TSM: At 8/10 conviction. Intel-Apple partnership is a marginal negative read-through. If onshoring pressure intensifies and TSM's pricing power softens, could downgrade to 7/10. Monitor.
• $AAPL (portfolio + watchlist): The Intel partnership is the swing factor. If it's symbolic (low-volume chips), no impact. If it's material to iPhone SoC sourcing, this is a margin event. Awaiting detail.

🔁 RE-REVIEW QUEUE

Eight previously abandoned names hit their re-review window today. Quick triage:

• $CEG | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-13 — Dropped on capacity (50-name list). Power/nuclear demand from AI buildout has only strengthened since; worth re-evaluating against $VST and $GEV.
• $DDOG | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-07 — Observability play. AI-infra spending boom continues; question is whether DDOG's growth has reaccelerated.
• $TTD | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-07 — Ad-tech. Has gone through significant turbulence; could be a contrarian setup if fundamentals stabilized.
• $BWXT | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-07 — Nuclear small-modular reactors. Same secular tailwind as $CEG; defense + power combo is increasingly interesting.
• $NET | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-07 — Cloudflare. Edge/security AI story persists; valuation always the issue.
• $KTOS | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-13 — Defense/drones. With $AVAV struggling, KTOS may be the cleaner exposure.
• $CRWD | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-08 — Cybersecurity leader. Has the post-outage rehabilitation completed?
• $NTRA | Was 6/10 | Dropped 2026-05-09 — Genetic testing. Idiosyncratic; less affected by macro crosswinds.

To run a fresh dive on any of these, ask Meridian in the chat.