RiskReversal Pod

Dan Nathan and Guy Adami cover PPI, upcoming earnings, and this week’s jobs report. They focus on mounting stress in the AI infrastructure and financing complex: CoreWeave’s post-earnings drop, heavy customer concentration, funding challenges, and Jim Chanos’ critique that its GPU-leasing model loses money and shows distress-level liquidity, alongside declines in Apollo, KKR, Blackstone, and banks. They contrast Nvidia’s strong quarter and 60% growth outlook with stock stagnation, discuss Broadcom as a key AI barometer, and note ongoing software multiple and margin compression highlighted by volatile moves in Workday and Salesforce. Despite rising VIX swings, falling 10-year yields, and consumer-credit concerns signaled by AmEx, Capital One, Klarna, and Walmart trade-down commentary, the S&P remains near highs; they also discuss crude’s rebound amid Middle East tensions and Bitcoin weakness pressuring MicroStrategy.

After the break, Jen & Kristen join Dan and Guy live from the iConnections Global Alts conference in Miami to unpack an “AI panic” market day, why higher productivity could mean higher rates, and what private credit hiccups really signal for hedge funds and alts. They also explain how The Wall Street Skinny is turning arcane finance jargon into plain English for everyone from college students to the C‑suite, plus why there are no dumb questions when it comes to bonds, credit, and careers on Wall Street.

Timecodes

0:00 - Intro

2:00 - CoreWeave & The Software Slide

17:30 - VIX, SPX & The Consumer

25:00 - Yields & Crude

28:30 - Bitcoin & Broader Market

33:20 - He Said, She Said

Dan Nathan hosts Peter Boockvar to discuss the rapid growth of private credit, arguing it has replaced bank lending but now faces rising defaults, potential liquidity mismatches as retail capital enters evergreen funds, and limited stress-testing in a downturn; they cite pressure in leveraged loans, gating/redemptions, and examples like Blue Owl financing tied to CoreWeave’s asset-heavy model and customer concentration. They connect credit stress to equity risk via the capital structure and watchpoints like the LSTA leveraged loan index, high yield spreads, and HYG. Boockvar outlines a leadership shift away from hyperscalers toward equal-weight and “boring” sectors like energy and staples, while warning a deeper tech decline could still pull markets down. They cover oil’s inflation implications, a challenging labor market, cautious consumers per Walmart/Home Depot/Lowe’s, bullish long-term gold/silver dynamics, stronger international performance, and Japan’s rising long-end yields affecting carry trades and global flows.

Checkout Peter's SubStack: https://boockreport.com/Follow Peter on X: https://x.com/pboockvar?lang=en

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Broadcast live from iConnections Global Alts in South Beach, Guy Adami and Dan Nathan are joined by Dan Greenhaus of Solus Alternative Asset Management and later Vincent Daniel to discuss a sharp, risk-off market move tied to the increasingly financialized AI buildout. They review weakness across private credit and alternative lenders after reports of difficulty placing debt to fund CoreWeave’s data center, spilling over into names like Blue Owl and into large alternative managers, banks, and high-profile stocks like IBM, which suffers its worst day in decades. The group debates how a viral AI “thought experiment” amplified uncertainty about near-term industry disruption, the circular quid-pro-quo dynamics of AI financing and chip demand, and whether market valuations offer any cushion if the AI narrative falters. With Nvidia reporting the next day, they focus on expectations for growth and margins, the risk that competition could compress gross margins and re-rate the stock, and the broader question of whether AI success could drive major white-collar job losses, “ghost GDP,” and policy responses. The conversation closes with Vinnie describing investor “what if” fears around AI’s impact on employment and fee-based industries.

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Dan Nathan and Guy Adami are joined by Jen Saarbach and Kristen Kelly of The Wall Street Skinny to discuss two major developing market stories ahead of meeting in Miami for the iConnections Global Alts conference. The first topic is stress in private credit, centered on Blue Owl’s retail-focused semi-liquid vehicle (Blue Owl Capital Corp II) facing heavy redemptions and gating, highlighting the liquidity mismatch between retail redemption needs and long-dated loan assets. They contrast the gated evergreen structure with Blue Owl’s publicly traded BDC that was trading roughly 20% below NAV, discuss Blue Owl’s reported loan sales near NAV, and explore why the issue is pressuring related stocks like Blue Owl and Blackstone despite an S&P 500 that appears indifferent. The group connects the private credit conversation to how AI/data center buildouts are financed, including references to Meta-related structures and concerns about CoreWeave’s ability to raise capital for data center obligations, and notes that credit markets often reprice quickly only after complacency breaks. The second topic is prediction markets, focusing on Kalshi and its partnership with Tradeweb to publish analytics and potentially enable institutional trading of binary outcomes on events like Fed decisions and macro data, raising questions about democratized access, liquidity constraints, regulatory gaps, spoofing, and the role of insider information, along with implications for politics and whether more information is always better.

Show Notes

1 big thing: Trump's huge tariff loss (Axios)

Blue Owl permanently halts redemptions at private credit fund aimed at retail investors (FT)

Wall Street Bond-Trading Hub Tradeweb Strikes Deal With Kalshi (Bloomberg)

Exclusive: Supreme Court tariff ruling makes over $175 billion in US revenue subject to refunds, Penn-Wharton estimates (Reuters)

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Guy Adami interviews Michael Kao (@UrbanKaoboy), discussing the historic moves in gold and silver, the debate over fiat debasement versus speculative positioning, and why charts showing central bank gold eclipsing Treasury holdings can be misleading because much of the change is price appreciation rather than new buying. Kao argues true de-dollarization is unlikely due to the lack of a rival fiat ecosystem with comparable liquidity and deep bond markets, and says a shift from Treasuries to gold as a reserve anchor would imply economic austerity and slower global GDP growth. They explore how geopolitics (including post-Ukraine reserve seizure fears) and Trump-related tariff and deficit narratives have fueled gold, while Kao outlines a contrarian view that Trump 2.0 policies plus AI could be deflationary and potentially restore productivity-driven disinflationary growth similar to the late 1990s; he also critiques CBO debt projections for assuming low productivity growth. The conversation covers AI’s disruptive impact on industry moats and equity multiple compression versus immediate default risk, touches briefly on Japan’s bond market and the yen carry trade, and examines the “sanctity” of large AI CapEx plans and whether AI expands total addressable markets or mainly drives cost cutting.

Kao highlights his thesis from his piece on AI electrification: U.S. electricity demand may accelerate sharply after decades of flat growth, creating an energy bottleneck that increases reliance on natural gas (given limits to coal and nuclear), amplified by data center buildouts and LNG exports. He explains his preference for natural gas mineral strategies that distribute cash flow over trading commodities or owning E&P equities due to capital allocation risks, and notes recent oil spikes have often faded since 2022.

Show Notes

AI, Electrification, and the Hidden Energy Bottleneck | Michael Kao

The Fourth Turning by Strauss & Howe

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