Big checks are being written, but the real shift isn’t in earnings. It’s in who controls chips, power, and pricing. Today’s moves hint at where leverage is quietly settling.

MARKET PULSE

Relief Rally Meets Structural Questions

Positioning looked fragile into midday. Not broken, but thin.

By the close, that steadiness turned into a firm rebound. The Dow added points. The S&P climbed close to 1%. The Nasdaq led.

But the bounce wasn’t random. It had a center of gravity.

Software names found footing. Salesforce and ServiceNow advanced. IBM stabilized. DocuSign caught a lift as Anthropic framed Claude as an integration layer, not a replacement.

Meanwhile, tariffs moved from headline to invoice. The open question is duration and who eats the pass-through.

Consumer confidence ticked higher. Home Depot beat expectations. 

Capital spending remains firm. Productivity gains are modest. Enthusiasm is real. The macro follow-through is slower.

Relief, yes. Conviction, not yet.

Investor Signal

Notice where the money flowed. Chips. Select software. Value retail like Home Depot. Not speculative edges.

This tape rewarded durability and scale today, and it punished fragility most visibly in private credit and over-levered growth.

The opportunity is not in chasing every rebound. It’s in owning the assets that sit closer to power, cash flow, and contractual revenue.

PREMIER FEATURE

The New Class of “Turtle Traders” Is Emerging

Forty years ago, a group of novice traders trained by Wall Street legend Richard Dennis went on to earn more than $175 million — not through instinct, but by spotting institutional positioning before the public.

This technology scans secret institutional exchanges to detect where Big Money is quietly building positions — before prices move.

When it happens, you get the exact ticker via SMS, instantly.

PRODUCTIVITY WATCH

AI Spending Is Booming. Output Isn’t (Yet).

Everyone feels like we’re living through a breakthrough.

Models write code. Draft memos. Even help with physics proofs. The headlines scream acceleration. So naturally, people assume GDP must be about to rip higher.

Here’s the quieter truth.

Growth last year looked solid on the surface. But dig one layer down and most of it came from investment. Not broad efficiency gains across the economy.

That distinction matters.

Under the Hood

  • Roughly 90% of early 2025 growth came from capital spending, not productivity.

  • Real GDP slowed to 1.4% in the fourth quarter.

  • Only about 5–6% of work hours involve generative AI.

  • Daily usage is limited to a small slice of workers.

  • Estimated productivity lift: roughly 0.25–0.5 percentage points.

So yes, AI is improving fast. But the economy hasn’t reorganized around it.

That’s the missing step. Tools alone don’t transform output. Companies need to redesign workflows, compensation, reporting lines, the plumbing of how work gets done. That takes years, not quarters.

We’ve seen this movie before. Electricity didn’t change factories overnight. Computers didn’t immediately boost retail margins. The real gains came after firms rebuilt around the technology.

If productivity doesn’t catch up, the system doesn’t break. The hurdle rate just rises. Capex-heavy AI stories need either pricing power or a longer payback window than equity markets have been assuming.

The Rewiring Gap

AI capex is undeniable. Hyperscalers are writing enormous checks.

But margin expansion across the broader economy depends on organizational change that barely exists today. Valuations assuming near-term productivity windfalls are ahead of the evidence.

The opportunity is real. It just requires patience, and careful separation between infrastructure winners and everyone else.

AI HARDWARE WATCH

Meta Locks In AMD for Five Years

This isn’t a purchase order. It is long-duration alignment.

That’s spread over five years. The headline value runs north of $100 billion. And it comes with warrants that could give Meta up to 10% of AMD if milestones hit.

That’s not casual spending. That’s alignment.

Deal Mechanics

  • Meta commits to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of MI450 GPUs.

  • First gigawatt begins rolling out this year.

  • AMD issues warrants for up to 160 million shares.

  • Final equity tranche unlocks only if AMD stock climbs sharply.

  • Similar structure showed up in AMD’s OpenAI deal.

A handful of buyers are tying themselves to a handful of chip designers. Long duration. Equity sweeteners. Custom silicon tuned for specific workloads. This is less “try the new chip” and more “we’re building together.”

It strengthens AMD’s footing against Nvidia. It also narrows the field. When capital commitments run into gigawatts and equity swaps, switching costs rise fast.

The Industrial Turn

AI infrastructure is shifting from experimentation to entrenchment.

These are bilateral, strategic relationships. Not quarter-to-quarter budgets. That brings durability for suppliers, and concentration risk for everyone else.

This is what industrial strategy looks like in capital markets clothing: long-duration capacity, custom silicon, and equity-linked alignment. It makes the winners stickier and the mistakes harder to unwind.

FROM OUR PARTNERS

Gold Is Breaking Out — Why Now Could Be a Critical Moment to Prepare

Gold has been on a powerful climb, fueled by global uncertainty, persistent inflation, and heavy buying from central banks. With markets swinging and risk rising, more investors are turning to gold as a shield for their wealth.

But most people will chase bullion or basic miners, and miss the bigger opportunity.

Before the next major move, grab the FREE Hard Assets Alliance Investment Guide to see why gold has historically outperformed during market stress and smarter ways to position your portfolio now.

Prepare for what’s next, don’t just watch gold rise.

DATA CENTER WATCH

The Grid, Not Demand, Sets the Pace

If you think this is about app usage, zoom out.

Vacancy in data centers is sitting near 1%. Almost everything under construction is already spoken for. Hyperscalers are reserving power years ahead.

So demand isn’t the question. Access is.

Texas is about to overtake Virginia as the largest data market. Not because it’s trendy. Because it has land and electricity. Meanwhile, about 64% of the 35-gigawatt pipeline now sits outside the old core hubs.

Why? The grid.

Power Queue

  • Grid connections are taking roughly four years.

  • 92% of new capacity is pre-committed.

  • Hyperscalers plan over $700 billion in capex next year.

  • Lenders deployed a record $75 billion into the sector.

  • Some operators are exploring on-site generation to cut risk.

This is no longer a software land grab. It’s a power allocation race. If you don’t have secured land, transmission rights, and financing lined up, you’re waiting in line.

That waiting embeds costs. Steel, transformers, cooling systems. All bid up.

The Build Constraint

AI demand is real. But it’s boxed in by substations and permits.

That favors operators who already control dirt and megawatts. It keeps a bid under local power pricing, equipment lead times, and construction labor, and it forces projects to get financed years ahead of revenue. This cycle runs on electricity, not code.

And electricity takes time.

SOFTWARE WATCH

Claude Steps Inside the Apps Themselves

This isn’t another chatbot update.

Anthropic just pushed Claude deeper into actual workflows. Gmail. Docusign. LegalZoom. Finance plug-ins. Investment banking tools. The goal is simple: stop copy-paste. Let the agent sit inside the work.

That changes the tone.

For years, SaaS vendors sold seats. Per user. Per month. Predictable. Clean. Now an agent can draft, summarize, review contracts, build models, and move across tools without asking for another login.

That’s not incremental. That’s pressure.

Workflow Shift

  • Claude integrates directly into enterprise apps.

  • Agents now handle finance, legal, and research tasks.

  • Context lives inside the model, not the SaaS layer.

  • IBM dropped hard after AI modernization headlines.

  • Traditional vendors sold off on disruption fears.

If the agent becomes the “front door,” the app becomes plumbing. Useful, yes. But less central. That compresses the moat around seat-based pricing. When the agent becomes the interface, seat counts stop being the growth engine. That is a margin story, not just a product story.

And here’s the tension. Adoption isn’t slow. It’s spreading from coders to lawyers, bankers, and analysts.

The Value Shift

This isn’t about whether AI gets used. It already is.

The question is where the profit pool settles. Model providers and compute owners are climbing the stack. Application vendors now have to defend their slice.

Expect wider gaps. Some software names will adapt. Others will feel the squeeze.

CRITICAL MINERALS WATCH

When Tariffs Start Backing AI Prices

This one feels different.

The White House is looking at using a Pentagon AI model to help set reference prices for critical minerals. The White House is exploring the use of a Pentagon AI model to help set reference prices for critical minerals, potentially backed by adjustable tariffs.

That turns metals into policy.

The program, called OPEN, was built to calculate what a mineral “should” cost once you strip out alleged Chinese dumping. Germanium. Gallium. Antimony. Tungsten. Thin markets. Strategic inputs.

Now imagine those numbers tied to trade barriers.

Policy Pivot

  • Pentagon AI calculates reference prices.

  • A trade bloc backs them with adjustable tariffs.

  • Focus starts with four critical minerals.

  • U.S. miners gain clearer pricing targets.

  • Downstream manufacturers face higher input costs.

If tariffs enforce a floor, commodity markets stop being purely supply and demand. They become partially administered. That supports U.S. miners trying to compete with Chinese overproduction. It also raises costs for automakers and electronics firms using those inputs.

So pricing power moves.

The Political Floor

AI is no longer just a tool inside companies. It’s shaping trade policy.

If reference prices hold, miners gain leverage. Industrial buyers lose flexibility. Critical minerals start trading with a geopolitical premium.

Investors now have to model politics into metal pricing. That’s a new layer — and it won’t be temporary.

FROM OUR PARTNERS

The Memecoin Play for What Comes Next

The CLARITY Act is still moving through Congress, but it is coming. And when it passes, sidelined institutional money won’t trickle into crypto… it will rush.

The opportunity? You don’t have to wait.

Community growth is accelerating, catalysts are firing, and it doesn’t need a regulatory greenlight to move. With real utility, a capped supply, and rare institutional interest, it’s positioned to benefit now, and potentially surge when clarity arrives.

© 2026 Boardwalk Flock LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2382 Camino Vida Roble, Suite I Carlsbad, CA 92011, United States. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Readers acknowledge that the authors are not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. The reader agrees that under no circumstances Boardwalk Flock, LLC is responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, which are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. Results may not be typical and may vary from person to person. Making money trading digital currencies takes time and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk.

CLOSING LENS

Step back from the noise and a pattern emerges.

Meta secures compute for years. AMD gains a strategic partner. Software steadies once the fear of instant displacement fades. Tariffs move from threat to implementation. 

That is a mature phase of a cycle.

For investors managing real size, that matters. This environment favors businesses with durable contracts, control over infrastructure, and balance sheets that can withstand friction.

The day closed stronger.

But the real story is not the rebound. It is where long-term technological and financial leverage is consolidating.

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