Reminiscences of a Shrub Operator

Reminiscences of a Shrub Operator

The Key Question on AI *

* that anyone invested in the Market has to be able to answer

Le Shrub's avatar
Le Shrub
Jul 19, 2026
∙ Paid


We recently introduced the Meme-rithmic Scale™ to keep track of the “Meme Tops” and “Meme Bottoms” that got triggered.

Here’s the performance so far:

  • Meme Bottoms: BABA +25% higher, Crude +22% higher

  • Meme Tops: Nasdaq -7% lower, SOXX -13% lower

Not too shabby for Parody!
But please don’t try this at home. Parody is best left to the Professionals.

Some things are easy to spot from a mile. For example, in our latest Portfolio Review we noted that: “This Market loves to punish hubris, so the group of people that exhibits the most confidence seems to be the one that gets annihilated next. You can guess which one that is …”

The AI Bulls even had their own tagline:

“If you don’t use more tokens, you’ll never escape the permanent underclass” …

… which is the new version of “HAVE FUN STAYING POOR!” that the crypto monkeys were throwing at us years back…

Someone should ask the millions of South Korean retail investors that got margin-called if they managed “to escape the Permanent Underclass”…

…but it makes me sad that so many people got hurt, all while the S&P is less than 2% off its All-Time-Highs…

S&P 500

…you can blame FOMO, Leverage and forgetting to “Give Thanks”:

When Will Semis Bottom?

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