In the latest episode of DHUnplugged, hosts John C. Dvorak and Andrew Horowitz dissect a flurry of market-moving events, headlined by SpaceX's stock sliding below $147 following its IPO. The decline comes amid news that Elon Musk cashed out $7.5 billion in Tesla options, while SpaceX launched a $20 billion bond offering and secured a $6.3 billion computing deal with Reflection AI at the Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. The hosts launch a new Closest to the Pin contest for SpaceX shares, inviting listeners to guess where the stock will land.
The episode also mourns the passing of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan at age 100, with Dvorak recalling him as a "walking thesaurus" whose opaque language once required decoding. The discussion then shifts to a stunning surge in RAM prices, with DDR5 memory jumping from about $75 to $450. Horowitz highlights the disparity in corporate pricing, noting that Dell quoted $5,700 for a corporate desktop that costs $2,700 on its consumer site. This price explosion is rattling PC buyers and could signal broader supply chain issues.
Other key topics include Alphabet's addition to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Verizon, which lifts the index's tech weighting from roughly 17% to 22%. The hosts argue that this shift reflects the market's growing dependence on a few mega-cap tech stocks. Meanwhile, China's H-shares entered a bear market as retail sales contracted, and the Korean KOSPI briefly plunged into correction territory overnight. Dvorak and Horowitz also delve into Elon Musk's relentless deal-making, with Horowitz relaying a striking observation: "Someone said something very interesting today, that he sees these as points in a game, like points in a video game, tokens that you win. It's not real money."
The hosts apply a cyclical framework to current events. Horowitz revisits his long-running mattress-company thesis, noting that Sleep Number (SNBR) collapsed from $140 to roughly ten cents, which he calls a "swing and a miss" short. Dvorak warns that memory pricing defies the historical learning curve and that Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital could face brutal oversupply. They dig into Chris Bloomstrand's analysis of hyperscalers shifting from asset-light to asset-heavy models, Satya Nadella's comment that AI has become commoditized, Oracle cutting 21,000 jobs, Getty Images soaring 145% on an OpenAI licensing deal, and a Chevron-Microsoft 20-year natural gas power pact dubbed Project Kirby. They also flag the mahjong craze, citing Yelp's 4,400% search surge. The episode is available now on DHUnplugged.com and streaming platforms.
