Marge Incall | Wall Street Memes

You know in sci-fi movies when they would just fill out the background with news reports on the TV or whatever and they have these implausible futuristic headlines like “Venutian Uprising Quelled!” or “Mutant Spiders Conquer India!”? …well this is one of those, except it’s not the future. It’s now.

The robotics firm, Foundation, is reportedly sending two humanoid robots to the front line of the Ukraine war in a groundbreaking test that could shape the future of combat.

In February, two Phantom Mk-1 units, designed for simple factory work, were deployed for reconnaissance trails in Ukraine. As Foundation CEO Mike LeBlanc told Time, “We think there’s a moral imperative to put these robots into war instead of soldiers,” and eventually these robots should be able to use “any kind of weapon that a human can.”

See what I mean? This is copy from a cyberpunk video game, not actual news, surely?

Now, I know Mike says there’s a “moral imperative” to use his product and give him money, but if you’re going to bring up morality, let’s talk about that, shall we? Because sure, it’d be better if machines are being ‘killed’ in wars rather than people but if you’re arming those machines, you’re still arming them to shoot other people. Right?

What this’ll just end up being (and what it has been in almost every modern war) is you’ll have one side who can afford to use robots to minimise casualties while the other, poorer side will still be using good old disposable humans.

So it makes you wonder, is it moral to fight a war where only your enemy loses soldiers, Mike?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves for sure. We’ve seen enough viral clips of Asimo falling over to know that we’re still a long way off any kind of terminator scenario. Additionally bear in mind that ‘Foundation’ and other tech companies have it in their interests to conjure these sci-fi headlines because it makes them seem so advanced and trailblazing that you just have to invest in them.

The future is a long way off but investing in the hype is happening right now.

It’s the ultimate test of wits, brawn, might and muscle, that’s right, it’s Polymarket! everyone’s favorite prediction platform. But the real question is which is better? Claude or ChatGPT, sorry, wait, not ChatGPT… OpenClaw.

OpenClaw? Who gives a g** about OpenClaw??? I guess this one guy I suppose…

This anonymous bettor gave Claude and OpenClaw $1,000 each and 48 hours to trade however they wanted. So let’s see how they did, huh?

Oh. Turns out it’s a complete wash. Never mind. Claude was up 1,322%, making a massive $13,216 nice, interesting, ok, thank you, good job. OpenClaw?

“Liquidated to zero in under 48h.”

Nice one, idiot. I mean, tbh I didn’t expect anything of from you, so sounds about right.

So it was less Rocky and more Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson.

Polymarket? More like, GOLLY-market!

We don’t know what the actual trades were of course or if the post is even real, before you start putting all your chips on Claude. On top of that, OpenClaw is just that, an open source AI agent making software, so the results completely depend on how good the agent that this guy made was.

This isn’t the first time someone’s run a similar experiment (see below) so is the future of these prediction markets is entirely run by AI? Maybe. Idk. Why you asking me? Get out of here.

So this flashy chart made the rounds on social media recently because it seems to show you if you’re going to lose your job because of AI and we humans are just suckers for anything that promises to tell our future, aren’t we?

The graph comes from a research paper by economists Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory working at Anthropic who definitely don’t have a vested interest in making AI look like it can do a bunch of jobs.

There’s a bunch of interesting observations such as, “Workers in the most exposed professions are more likely to be older, female, more educated, and higher-paid.” So, sorry about that, mom.

But onto the graph itself:

And it’s all pretty much what you’d expect. Stuff that requires talking directly to people or dealing with physical objects are least likely to be affected whereas more abstract, numbers focused areas and stuff will potentially be hardest hit.

What’s more interesting though than the sectors is the gap between the ‘observed’ AI coverage and the ‘theoretical’ coverage. Nice of them to put that distinction in there.

To me it kind of shows that AI’s not really hitting the way it should yet. There’s massive promises but still a big gulf between where it’s at and where it’s supposed to be.

I mean you may have seen stories of people being laid off to be replaced by AI but rumors of their deaths may have been greatly exaggerated. For example, Jack Dorsey’s ‘Block’ fired a bunch of people and claimed it was because of AI when really they just overhired during COVID but want to look tech-forward to investors.

I’m not saying it’s not happening, but just bear in mind that the tech industry is entirely built on hype.

Just the name itself, ‘AI’, is overpromising what it actually is because we’re yet to see sci-fi levels intelligence but they’re banking on you making that assumption yourself.

There’s a lot of hot air flying around, blowing up AI to make it something bigger than it actually is. And I’m sorry to say that this graph is just another example of that.

Jensen ‘Well’ Huang has come out and said that Nvidia’s massive investment in OpenAI and Anthropic will likely be its last for a long time.

At an industry conference on Wednesday, Huang explained that although the $30 billion was being finalized, investing the full $100 billion was “probably not on the cards”. …graphics cards do you mean??

I’m not sure how they can just go back on the original $100 billion promise but whatever…

The U-turn might be due to the ongoing spat between OpenAI, Anthropic and the Pentagon. After Anthropic’s military deal fell apart, OpenAI swooped in to fill the gap. As a result, OpenAI has seen droves of users uninstall ChatGPT while Anthropic’s Claude rocketed to the most downloaded free app in the charts.

Here’s the full lowdown on that:

There’s a lot happening and it’s all quite messy but from what I can gather, Claude was actually used to help gather intelligence, select targets and carry out battlefield simulations for the Iran attack. Which is CRAZY on it’s own. Like, sci-fi level stuff here. But do remember that chatbots aren’t AI (despite the branding), they are just very very good LLMs so we haven’t gone full skynet/matrix just yet.

But then Trump said Anthropic is a “Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about” and told the Pentagon not to use it because they objected to its use in the Venezuelan kidnapping.

So then OpenAI swoops in and says, ‘Don’t worry! We don’t have any moral principles whatsoever!’ and signs a contract that let’s the Pentagon use ChatGPT to spy on American citizens. Obviously everyone, including OpenAI’s own employees, objected to this clause and now Sam Altman’s trying to go back on this deal and get some more human rights assurances in the deal.

*deep breath*

I mean that’s like twelve different news stories in one there and it goes even deeper than that. But THE POINT IS it feels like we’re reaching a crunch point for AI and government influence over AI. This story likely isn’t going anywhere for a while so watch this space if you want to see our society collapse in real time!

An anonymous trader just made an insane bet: $14 million that Netflix will lose its bid for Warner Brothers BUT still profit from the whole thing.

The trader (who will remain anonymous because I don’t know who they are) bought 55,000 call options with a $90 strike price that expire in May but also sold 55,000 call options at $105, offsetting the premium, totally $2.51 per contract and a $13.8 million outlay.

It’s a hefty bet, and it seems crazy given that Warner Bros already accepted Netflix’s offer. But Paramount just recently boosted their offer to the point where Warner Bros is interested again (if the price is right, right?) so there’s a chance they might just win out this battle after all.

And even with Paramount’s fresh and tasty bid, Netflix still had a massive stock surge of 6% and analysts predict that even with a loss on this bid, Netflix might just profit from this whole debacle either way.

So who exactly made this bid that views Netflix so favorably? Well, reportedly it rhymes with Sned Snarandos, but we’ll likely never know.

Whether this mystery trader gets their winnings or not is still very much up in the air. But who knows, there is still such a long way to go. Netflix might yet raise their offer. The government might shut down both acquisitions (unlikely). But the point is it’s all still on the table and we’ll just have to wait and see.

I really don’t get what Warner Bros is playing at. They’ve just come out and said that Paramount’s latest $31-a-share could lead to a better deal than what they’ve agreed with Netflix. But… they’ve already agreed to the Netflix deal? Surely everything else is off the table? What does an agreement mean if not that?

DOES A MAN’S WORD MEAN NOTHING ANY MORE??

The only way this makes sense to me is if there’s some internal conflict at WB. Like, maybe one Warner Brother likes Paramount but the other brother wants to go to Netflix. That’s the only way this works, right?

To be fair, WBD haven’t thrown out Netflix’s offer completely, only that Paramount’s new bid reaches the threshold for further talks.

But previously WBDD spoke out against Paramount’s offer on the grounds that they didn’t have the funding, wouldn’t merge in the way they wanted and was just an all round shittier company.

It seems everyone has a price, however and WBDDD happily reopened talks with shitty Paramount, discussing the new offer right up until midnight on the dot when they were legally forced to hang up the phone.

Wild stuff.

So basically, like always, there’s still a lot of irons to be kinked out and we won’t know any more actual info until the dust settles a bit more.

But whatever happens, you just know that they’ll make a Netflix series about this whole saga.

There are two options basically: things could go up or, get this, things could go down.

Yes, the world’s most valuable company (we’re talking $4 trillion-valuable) is due to reveal its quarterly earnings at the close of play on Wednesday, and it’s due to have wide-ranging implications for Wall Street, the tech industry and you, yes, YOU.

AI stocks have been in a weird place recently, with a bunch on the slump but maybe because they’ve not been AI-ing enough? Nvidia’s earnings report could restore faith in the industry as a whole. No pressure, then.

So much is riding on tomorrow that the opposite could happen and if Nvidia produces anything less that an insanely stellar report card, AI, tech and all other stocks in general might get pulled down a peg or two.

Earnings Shmernings

Options pricing says that the Nvidia could go as much as 6% either way. So, the point is, no one knows. Be ready for everything. Like a boy scout.

Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 8% of the S&P 500’s entire value, the waves from this boulder drop will be huge whatever happens.

Yes.

Richest man sur la planet just announced on an investors call that Tesla will discontinue production of its Model X SUV and Model S full-size sedan. Anyone currently driving those models on the road will immediately be auto-driven into the traffic barriers in a fiery ball of explosion.

“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end,” Musk said threateningly. “We expect to wind down S and X production next quarter.”

And in case the transition from cars to robots wasn’t on the nose enough for you, Tesla is converting its Fremont, California factory from model S and X production to making the Optimus robot.

The move away from EVs might be sensible given the slumping sales, but towards AI and robotics? Idk.

Sure, AI is the golden goose atm but for how much longer? And will Tesla have an edge in a very competitive market?

As for robots, unless Elon’s Optimus can offer a substantial improvement from previous attempts at androids, it’s still looking like a dead end sector. At least for now. Who knows, maybe the Optimus will be the product that populises the technology, a cultural pivot point like the iPhone was in 2007.

But if that’s going to be the case, they’re going to have to stop showing us what amounts to incredibly expensive puppets, with the puppeteer just behind a curtain like the Wizard of goddamn Oz.

This is Elon’s trillion dollar bet, given that that’s the pay package that lured back (no, to stay) at the company BUT it’s contingent on Elon delivering massive dividends for the shareholders.

Will AI and robots be the magic bullet for success? No, but also, only time will tell.

As CFOs, CEOs and CNTs are tripping over themselves to line up for the Federal Reserve Chairman position, one man has emerged as the frontrunner.

Rick Rieder is the Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income (CIOOGFI for short) at BlackRock and just this past week Polymarket and Kalshi have bumped him up to ‘Most Likely To Become Powell 2.0’ beating off, wait, beating out “The Two Kevins”. …Who?

‘Who’ is a great question, thanks for asking. So this Rick guy started out at as a broker or something and then he was at the Lehman Brothers, which is a little awkward. Wait, are we sure this is the right guy for the job?

Then he founded his own firm which was swiftly bought by BlackRock and Larry Fink made him a ‘super investor’ managing $2.3 trillion dollars in global bond markets. That’s a bigger GDP than most countries in the world.

In fact, let me list for you the only countries that have a GDP higher than Rieder’s responsibilities, it won’t take long: Russia, Italy, France, UK, India, Japan, Germany, China and the US. Literally every other country in the world has less to worry about than this guy.

Well, his portfolio might be getting a little bigger sometime soon if he gets asked to effectively manage USA’s GDP, which in turn is basically the global economy.

Look, he’s not worked at the Fed before, he hasn’t worn that sexy little hardhat so his recent appearance in the leaderboard has surprised insiders but if he’s the right guy, he might be the right guy.

The real question that’s going to cliche his application is… how does he feel about Trump?

We are all just a ship on the ocean, buffeted to and fro, merciless to the great wave that is Donald Trump.

And the tides have turned once more, the storms have receded, offering a moment’s respite for a “framework for a future Greenland deal” has been agreed and the tariffs have been dropped, huzzah!

Wtf does that mean? Well no one knows. The details have not been released and still need to be agreed by Greenland, Denmark and the US. But! It does mean that the stock market has bounced back in anticipation of this sunny future of endless peace and no wars.

The news also came with the unveiling of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, a newer, cooler NATO, aimed at an “everlasting” peace in the middle east at first and then once that’s sorted maybe, y’know, Ukraine if there’s time.

A bunch of countries have signed up but not the UK because maybe Russia will join and they’re not fwends wight now 🙁.

Oh and also you had to pay to join? Like a billion dollars or something, idk I’m not looking it up again, but it’s crazy, like it feels like just more corruption, right? Like, Trump’s mad at NATO so he makes a newer cooler one where he’s the chairman and everyone has to pay him.

Like, great if it solves things but I’m not expecting world peace from the guy who threatened to invade Greenland, the guy who literally said peace wasn’t a priority just because he didn’t get a medal for it.

But whatevers Trevors, the headline is that the stock market is stabalizing thanks to the diligent work of TACO Trump. So for now, it’s smooth sailing. Thank you, Mr. Trump!