GM. This is Milk Road.

Tuff day, here is my view!

Corning is one of my core AI holdings, and this quarter highlights a key reality across AI infrastructure:...

Why is the market selling off today?

Today's selloff is bigger and messier than what we've seen lately, KOSPI crashed almost 11% overnight, chip stocks are getting hit everywhere and it's not because AI demand suddenly disappeared but rather a bunch of fears piling up at once that I think are getting way overplayed.

Start with the AI ROI thing since it's been building since last week's earnings. Tesla and Alphabet both kicked off earnings season with big capex numbers and negative free cash flow and even with strong revenue growth both stocks got hammered. That set the tone of we don't care if capex is growing, show us the cash, and it's carrying into this week with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Apple all reporting, which isn't helping the nerves. But look at what actually happened with Alphabet, cloud revenue grew 81%, total sales grew 24%, that's not a company torching cash on nothing, that's a company scaling into demand it can barely keep up with. Negative free cash flow during a capex supercycle is normal, you build the data centers and buy the GPUs before the revenue shows up. Judging a buildout phase like it's a mature business is the wrong lens, and that's basically what happened last week and what's still happening today.

Then there's China chip competition, which is honestly the biggest accelerant of today's move. CXMT's IPO shares rose over 466% and combined with headlines about China's homegrown DUV lithography progress, it triggered a brutal rout in Korean chipmakers, Samsung fell as much as 13%, SK Hynix over 14%, Kioxia nearly 18%, dragging the KOSPI down almost 11% and into an eighth circuit breaker this year. That spilled straight into Nvidia, ASML, Sandisk and Seagate here in the US, with Nasdaq 100 futures down over 1% before the bell. But here's the thing, five DUV units this year against ASML's 131 a year, running performance closer to a 2008 design, is not an equipment moat collapsing, it's a headline that's gotten repeated so much this week it's built its own gravity. These tools are aimed at mature nodes like automotive and industrial chips, not the leading edge logic or HBM that actually drives the AI trade, so the read through to Nvidia, ASML or Applied Materials earnings power is basically nothing. The CXMT pop is scarcity, people bidding up the only pure play China memory stock they can get their hands on, not a sign that oversupply is coming. And Korean chipmakers dropping 12 to 14% in one session looks a lot more like leverage unwinding after a parabolic run than a real rethink of Samsung or SK Hynix's HBM backlog, which both companies have already said is basically sold out for the year.

Geopolitics is actually the one spot where the news should be helping, not hurting. US and Iran hostilities seem to have paused for now, which should be easing oil driven inflation fears. If this were purely a geopolitical panic you'd expect oil spiking and yields following, but that's not what's happening, this move is chip specific and Asia led, not an oil shock like a week or two ago.

Rates and the Fed are still in play, decision lands tomorrow, and people are nervous about higher for longer language even though a hike isn't the base case. On top of that, reports that Nvidia's five year credit default swap costs jumped by a record margin are getting read by some as a credit risk signal tied to all this AI debt spending. But a one day CDS spike during a market wide panic is a fear indicator, not proof of an actual credit problem, spreads on every big name widen fast when volatility spikes, Nvidia's balance sheet hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. Fed futures are pricing in some chance of a surprise hike tomorrow but this is a hold meeting, and I'd bet the hawkish jitters fade fast once Warsh actually talks.

Then there's the bigger liquidity and positioning story, which I think explains more of today's violence than any single headline. KOSPI is down nearly 29% for the month now, steeper than 2008, mostly because Korean chipmakers had turned into crypto like gambling tokens, running way too far, too fast on retail leverage and margin debt, and now unwinding just as hard on the way down. That's positioning excess getting flushed, not HBM demand disappearing or hyperscalers pulling back. Nothing in the actual order books, capex guidance or HBM contract pricing has changed, DRAM and NAND prices are still climbing quarter over quarter, nobody's canceled a GPU order or a data center project. What changed is how much leverage was sitting on top of this trade, and that's getting ripped out in one ugly session.

This is one of the scariest looking selloffs we've had all year but scary looking and actually broken are two different things. Every headline driving today, the China lithography story, the CXMT IPO, the Nvidia CDS spike, the Fed jitters, looks a lot less scary once you dig into the actual numbers, and none of it touches real AI infrastructure demand or supply. This looks like leverage and sentiment unwinding, not the long term thesis breaking....

Bloom Energy earnings where phenomenal!!!

They delivered a standout quarter with revenue of $1.07B, up 166% YoY and 42% QoQ, while product revenue reached $935M and grew 215% YoY....

How are you guys holding up?

I know this one's rough, and for a lot of you, it's the first time you're watching a drop this big up close. So I just want to share how I'm seeing things from here....