Part 1: The market's "broad rally" question just got answered… badly.
The 10-year yield broke 5% for the first time since 2007, Nasdaq's record streak snapped and Meta Connect confirmed exactly what we said to watch for.
Yesterday we asked whether the Nasdaq's record was real breadth or three or four stocks wearing a "broad rally" costume. Today gave us the answer, but it wasn't a good one.
The Nasdaq fell nearly 1% yesterday, ending its back-to-back record-high streak. The S&P dropped 0.5%. The reason: the 10-year Treasury yield broke above 5%, as hotter-than-expected US business activity data (fastest pace since 2021) and rising oil prices reignited inflation fears. All while investors brace for Thursday's Trump-Xi summit in Washington.
That's the exact macro backdrop flagged yesterday as unresolved, which has just resolved. But the wrong way.
The concentration problem is worse, not better. The Philadelphia semi index has ripped +14% since the Fed's rate cut. But half of Tuesday's Nasdaq gain came from just: Micron, SanDisk, AMD and Nvidia. That's not four companies confirming a broadening AI trade. That's the same handful of names doing more of the work, right up until the whole thing turned over.
Meta Connect, at least, delivered on the script. Zuckerberg unveiled the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3, a camera-free "Luna" version addressing the privacy concerns we flagged yesterday, and a preview of the "Project Phoenix" mixed-reality headset, alongside Muse AI updates meant to make the assistant feel less like a novelty and more like daily-use software. Meta's message was blunt: wearables aren't a side project anymore and Meta plans to be your AI assistant of choice going forward.
Part 2: Elizabeth Holmes Documentary - the illusion of narrative control!
I remember reading Bad Blood by John Carreyrou in 2018. Unbelievable. The twists and turns, the prominent figures that were hoodwinked, the whistleblower left out in the cold by his own grandfather. The book had it all.
So, I am fascinated to see A24's upcoming documentary, which promises an intimate portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos (and convicted fraudster). The teaser was both unmissable and completely unwatchable.
The longer trailer for You Can See Everything, co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, must be one of the strangest three minutes of film anyone has ever watched. The premise: 34 days before going to prison, Holmes invites a film crew to move in and document her life. What follows looks less like journalism than a hostage negotiation.
Fielder presses Holmes on trust. She insists she's never lied to her partner. He asks if she's worried about him seeing something that makes her look bad. "I don't think so," she says, "because I don't have anything to hide."
None of this reads as spontaneous. A cynic would suggest that Holmes, who is convicted of defrauding investors and patients out of hundreds of millions of dollars, is taking the opportunity to construct the image of a misunderstood character right before she goes to prison.
The comms read: is this Holmes's Hail Mary?
Buried in the discomfort, there is a real reputation-management question: is Holmes trying to reset the narrative before a decade out of public view, or just confirming the "manipulator" narrative for good?
This could change the conversation as total narrative control beats an information vacuum: Rather than let journalists and true-crime docs construct her story while incarcerated, Holmes attaches herself to a serious, critically respected filmmaker, and shows a side to her that the public has never seen, before she disappears. There's precedent for image rehabilitation after prison; Martha Stewart being the obvious comparison. Getting ahead of the story, however uncomfortable, usually beats silence.
This is going to be like throwing gasoline on an inferno: Fielder could be an unfortunate choice, as he looks incredibly sceptical every time Holmes or her partner speak. The lack of conviction when "I don't have anything to hide" is delivered bodes badly. I would also suggest that given the jury found Holmes guilty, her position that she did nothing wrong is a challenging line to hold. Redemption arcs that work usually involve some visible acceptance of wrongdoing. I am thinking Ant McPartlin of Ant & Dec here. Whilst maintaining innocence in the face of a conviction is a much harder story to work with.
My guess: This backfires! The instinct to control absolutely everything, including the narrative, is probably the same one that built Theranos… So this looks less like a Hail Mary and more like Holmes walking straight back into the trap that got her convicted in the first place.
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