DHUnplugged #738: Thread Pull DeepSh*t

The Impact of Flagrant Braggadociousness Hard rug pull? Tariffs - giving out like candy TikTok Saga continues - with a twist PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter   Warm-Up - The Impact of Flagrant Braggadociousness - Hard rug pull? - Tariffs - giving out like candy - TikTok Saga continues - with a twist Markets - Deflating Stocks - Thread Pull (Before the rug pull) - Monday Mayhem - S&P 500 down 1.9%, Equal Weighted down 0.35% - DEEPSeek - Tuesday - plenty of buyers stepping in .... - Staples, Banks are in favor all of a sudden... ANNOUNCING a New CTP! $600 Billion Lost Monday - for one company! BIGGEST one day drop ever! Monday Markets - News of a cheap AI model (program/app) from China hit the tape and it pulled the loose string and tech / markets felll apart. - DeepSeek, has more downloads that ChatCPT - DeepSeek's latest app comes just days after Mr. Trump announced a new $500 billion venture with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, dubbed Stargate, which he touted as ensuring "the future of technology" in the U.S. (Which is higher than anyone could calulate as the actual value- more like $60-$80 billion) - ORCL -13%, NVDA -17%, AMD -7%, ASML - 8%. Nuke power companies getting squashed - NASDAQ 100 down 3.2% - DeepSeek is also catching investors off guard because of the low development costs for its AI app, which Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives pegged at only $6 million. By comparison, OpenAI, Google and other major U.S. companies are on track to invest a total of roughly $1 trillion in AI over the coming years, according to Goldman Sachs. - FWIW - DeepSeek excels in technical tasks like coding and reasoning, while ChatGPT is better for creative writing and conversational tasks - Founder Liang, who had previously focused on applying AI to investing, had bought a "stockpile of Nvidia A100 chips," a type of tech that is now banned from export to China. Those chips became the basis of DeepSeek, an MIT publication reported. - DeepSeek is looking to differentiate from its competitors with its reasoning capabilities, meaning that before delivering the final answer, the model first generates a “chain of thought” to enhance the accuracy of its responses. - Question: Will this shed reality on the AI bubble or just a bump in the road? ---- Lesson: As an investor, be careful of the current administration's hype - we saw this last time and many of the "deals" never got done fully or at all. ---- In addition, DJIA was flying high as staples and other ramping. HD, CRM, JNJ - 10Yr Yield drops to 4.52% Hard Rug Pull - Hard rug pull: The developers have no intention of completing the project and plan to scam investors from the start In the End... - The narrative with switch... Was:  How great all of this as capital spend is going to be great! - Will morph to: No need for capital spend therefore companies will have the benefit of not spending the money! - The usual Wall Street Machine --- Update: That has already started in the background. The idea that this is great as there is more competition AND a layer has been built that can support faster and cheaper build out of this AI ..... One More Thing - Wang (CEO of ScaleAI) said DeepSeek actually has more H100 chips from Nvidia than expected — about 50,000 of them. - At $25,000 a piece that is $1.25 billion. Sooooooo how is it that it took only $6 million to build.. Big Cuts - The Trump administration is offering millions of federal workers the option to accept buyouts through a government-wide "deferred resignation" program if they resign by Feb. 6. - Those who accept the offer will receive pay and benefits through Sept. 30,