Wealthfront's Rate Bet | Regulation Gets Messy | Texas Data Rush

The tape softened without unraveling.

Friday's pullback didn't feel like risk coming off, it felt like standards tightening.

Tech absorbed the pressure as investors rotated out of stories built on momentum and back toward structures that still function under scrutiny.

The Nasdaq slid sharply, the S&P backed away from records, and the Dow held its ground after briefly pushing to new highs.

Broadcom became the focal point.

The reaction echoed Oracle's stumble a day earlier and reinforced a broader shift.

Capability matters, but accountability is starting to matter more.

Elsewhere, capital stayed selective.

Financials and defensives drew interest, small caps held their weekly gains, and balance-sheet trades quietly worked.

Rates nudged higher, firm enough to restrain excess without forcing a reset.

Gold cooled but stayed relevant… less fear, more filtration.

This wasn't panic. It was sorting.

Investor Signal

The market is drawing a line between what excites and what endures.

Capital is moving toward businesses that still work when optimism thins and execution is no longer optional.

The world's wealthiest individuals are making huge moves with their money.

Warren Buffett just liquidated billions of shares. Bill Gates sold 500,000 shares of Microsoft. Jeff Bezos filed to sell Amazon shares worth $4.8 billion.

What is going on? One multi-millionaire believes they are preparing for a catastrophic event. But not a crash, bank run, or recession. It’s something we haven’t seen in America for more than a century. 

For the full story, click here.

Charles Schwab is drawing a clean line while competitors lean into engagement mechanics.

CEO Rick Wurster has ruled out prediction markets, zero-day options, and social feeds, even as Robinhood's event contracts rank among its fastest-growing products.

"There's a bright line between investing and gambling," Wurster said, and Schwab is choosing to stay on one side of it.

The bet is cyclical, not generational.

Robinhood is wagering that Gen Z and millennials, set to inherit more than $100 trillion, will treat prediction markets the way prior cohorts embraced zero-commission trading.

Schwab is wagering the opposite: 

That when volatility returns, leverage fatigue follows, and capital migrates back to advice, custody, and balance-sheet trust.

Schwab insists it isn't abandoning younger users.

The firm says average new clients are in their 30s, with roughly a third under 24.

But it's opting out of the engagement arms race entirely.

The message is implicit: 

Gamification wins momentum in bull markets; credibility wins survival when cycles turn.

Investor Signal

This is a duration trade.

If risk appetite stays elevated, platforms built on velocity gain share.

If volatility spikes and speculative trades unwind, Schwab's restraint becomes an asset.

In a reversion regime, capital doesn't chase dopamine — it seeks stability.

Wealthfront's IPO priced at $14, but the company's economics tell a different story than its branding.

Cash management generates 76% of revenue; advisory services contribute just 24%.

The engine isn't automation, it's net interest margin.

Wealthfront earns the spread between what partner banks pay and what it credits to users.

When rates are high, margins expand. When they fall, revenue compresses unless repricing outpaces client outflows.

The company is structurally long "higher for longer." That exposure has worked.

Wealthfront reported a 36% net margin built on elevated yields.

But with the Fed now cutting, and projecting just one more reduction next year, the durability test begins.

If yields fall faster than Wealthfront can reprice, or if cash migrates elsewhere, the revenue base tightens quickly.

The alternative is a pivot: move clients into advisory products that don't depend on rates.

That shift is strategic, and unproven at scale.

Investor Signal

Wealthfront's resilience hinges on rates or migration.

Watch net interest margins and cash-to-advisory flows closely. The model works best when yield does the heavy lifting.

While the crowd panics and dumps, a few investors quietly buy bargains. The result: altcoins are trading at steep discounts — even as fundamentals begin improving in the background.

This isn’t hype. It’s a classic buy-low, ride-high setup. And it’s rarely this clear.

The Crypto Retirement Blueprint shows exactly how to target the coins with potential for massive gains — even if you start small today.

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© 2025 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.

The administration ordered federal agencies to challenge state AI laws and threatened to withhold $42 billion in broadband funding from states deemed restrictive.

Markets heard deregulation.

Courts may hear something else.

The legal footing is thin.

The Justice Department plans to invoke the dormant commerce clause… an argument courts have rejected before.

Politically, the threat is awkward: many of the states most exposed to broadband cuts voted for Trump by wide margins.

Republican governors, including Florida's Ron DeSantis, are already pushing back, framing the move as a subsidy to Big Tech.

Even if enforcement falters, the signal matters.

Washington is attempting to centralize AI regulation and blunt state-level constraints.

The effort may stall in court, but it telegraphs a near-term pro-industry tilt that could slow restrictive rulemaking.

Investor Signal

Legal uncertainty favors scale.

Large platforms gain breathing room as states hesitate and enforcement timelines stretch.

Smaller AI firms face prolonged ambiguity without the lobbying weight to shape outcomes.

Texas is overwhelmed with data center interconnection requests.

More than 220 gigawatts by 2030, over twice the state's record peak demand. Roughly 70% are tied to data centers.

Energy experts see a familiar pattern forming.

"It looks, smells, feels like a bubble," said UT Austin's Joshua Rhodes.

The constraint isn't demand, it's execution.

Many requests are speculative, clogging queues without financing, permits, or completed studies.

More than half haven't advanced past early stages.

Meanwhile, the cost of building generation has surged; natural gas plant costs have more than doubled in five years.

The real risk isn't that AI demand vanishes.

It's that capital gets deployed against inflated signals, leaving stranded assets when timelines slip and queues clear.

DEEPER READ

Interconnection queues have become speculative instruments, not construction plans.

Capital is being allocated to placeholders instead of power, distorting price signals across the grid.

When reality asserts itself, only projects anchored to real load will survive the unwind.

Investor Signal

AI power demand is real, but access is rationed.

Favor developers with contracted load, signed offtake agreements, and bankable counterparties.

Avoid projects built on queue position and narrative momentum alone.

The rate-cut rally is already taking shape — and our analysts just pinpointed 10 stocks most likely to lead it.

They’ve dug through every chart, sector, and earnings trend to find companies positioned for explosive upside once the Fed eases.

From AI innovators to dividend aristocrats, these are the names attracting billions in early institutional money.

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Fermi shares plunged after its first tenant walked away from a $150 million construction funding agreement.

The counterparty was investment-grade, had signed a letter of intent, then a funding deal.

Now it's gone.

The market didn't debate, it repriced.

In AI infrastructure, certainty matters more than vision.

Without financed anchor tenants, the "power landlord" thesis collapses fast.

Fermi went public in October at $21, pitching itself as a flagship AI-power platform tied to the Donald J. Trump Generating Plant.

The stock had already slid 27% before Friday.

It now trades nearly 60% below its IPO price.

The company has no revenue, projects cash flow beginning in 2027, and warned losses would deepen before improving.

The tenant exit exposed the gap between narrative and structure, a gap markets punish quickly when capital gets tight.

DEEPER READ

The failure wasn't political, technical, or regulatory, it was commercial.

Without an anchor tenant, timelines lose credibility and financing evaporates.

AI infrastructure doesn't fail loudly; it bleeds out quietly when contracts don't materialize.

Investor Signal

AI infrastructure rewards contracts, not connections.

Winners will be defined by signed leases, financed builds, and credible delivery timelines.

Fermi is a reminder that stories don't power data centers, balance sheets do.

This feels like a phase change, not a pause.

Across finance, technology, and infrastructure, the common thread is the same: optionality is giving way to accountability.

Scale, governance, cash flows, and physical constraints are reasserting themselves as filters on capital.

The next winners won't be the fastest builders.

They'll be the ones that survive friction: regulatory, financial, and real.

In our AM newsletter, we flagged a shift already underway.

Capital is rotating away from abstraction and back toward structures that hold under pressure. 

From bank consolidation and AI margin scrutiny to physical sanctions in energy and widening access to private markets, the common thread is accountability replacing optimism. 

What’s getting rewarded now isn’t excitement.

It’s scale, control, and durability.