I’ve been a trader and investor for 44 years. I left Wall Street long ago—-once I understood that their obsolete advice is designed to profit them, not you.
Today, my firm manages around $4 billion in ETFs, and I don’t answer to anybody. I tell the truth because trying to fool investors doesn’t help them, or me.
In Daily H.E.A.T. , I show you how to Hedge against disaster, find your Edge, exploit Asymmetric opportunities, and ride major Themes before Wall Street catches on.
I’m hosting a webinar entitled “Why Covered Call ETFs Suck and What to Do Instead” (More Info Below) December 9 2-3pm. Sign Up Here
Table of Contents
H.E.A.T.
The Compute Split: AI Data Centers/Infra vs. Quantum “Moonshots”
2025 has quietly split “the compute trade” into two completely different animals. AI data center / AI infrastructure stocks are getting rewarded because they’re tied to today’s bottleneck—power, space, and contracted capacity—so investors can underwrite something that looks increasingly like long-duration infrastructure cash flows. A clean example is Applied Digital ($APLD): the company expanded its lease deal with CoreWeave, adding another 150MW, and management pointed to ~$11B of prospective lease revenue over 15 years, with a path toward dramatically more capacity longer-term. That’s “real economy AI”—megawatts, leases, tenants, and financing. Meanwhile, the plumbing behind it is scaling fast: CoreWeave itself has reportedly been pursuing major financing to build more data centers, a reminder that this boom is capex-heavy and increasingly credit-linked.
Quantum, by contrast, is still mostly “option value.” The stocks can rip on narrative, positioning, and incremental technical milestones—but fundamentals are early, uneven, and capital-hungry. IonQ ($IONQ) is the perfect snapshot: strong growth, yes—but also ~$43.1M of full-year revenue alongside large losses and heavy operating expense, with profitability framed as a later goal. Rigetti ($RGTI) is even more blunt: Q1 revenue fell to ~$1.5M (down 52% YoY) and reported profitability was flattered by non-cash valuation gains, not operating strength. That’s why AI infra has looked “stronger and steadier” while quantum has been “bigger rockets, deeper craters.”
Winners & Losers (and where the asymmetry actually is)
Theme 1: AI Data Centers / AI Infrastructure (the “now” trade)
Likely winners
AI capacity landlords with credible tenants + long contracts. This is the $APLD-style setup: the market will pay for visibility when it believes the megawatts are real and the tenant is real.
“Compute-adjacent toll collectors”: power delivery, cooling, networking, high-speed interconnect, and electrical gear. When megawatts are the constraint, the quiet winners are the companies that monetize every incremental build-out.
More asymmetrical names inside the theme
$APLD: asymmetry comes from contracted scale and the market’s willingness to re-rate stable contracted cash flows; risk is execution + customer concentration.
$CIFR: one of the more interesting “pivot” stories—a 10-year agreement tied to AI data center development economics, with reporting that pegs it around $3B of revenue and an option path that could expand meaningfully; it’s also explicitly linked to a well-capitalized counterparty ecosystem (Fluidstack / Google support as reported).
Likely losers / where it breaks
Single-tenant, highly levered builds where refinancing risk rises before demand matures.
Companies selling “AI capacity” without secure power, without signed leases, or funded with fragile capital stacks. In a risk-off tape, the market stops paying for “future megawatts” and starts demanding “in-service megawatts.”
Theme 2: Quantum Compute (the “maybe / later” trade)
Likely winners
Quality platforms that can survive multiple cycles (cash runway, credible roadmap, partnerships), because the real edge in quantum is time.
Second-order winners that don’t require picking the “winning qubit”: post-quantum security, tooling, and enterprise adoption rails (where spend can happen before full fault-tolerant quantum arrives).
Likely losers
The most promotional, smallest-revenue names where the stock is the product (dilution risk, warrant overhangs, enthusiasm cycles). The financials show why: even serious players are still operating at tiny revenue versus cost structures.
The broader-market implication (the part people miss)
AI infra leadership is telling you something macro: the market is rotating toward “AI with receipts”—contracts, capex, and infrastructure cash flows—while it treats far-dated innovation (quantum) like a high-volatility call option. That’s healthy. It’s how bull markets mature: from story → to picks-and-shovels → to cash-flow underwriting. The risk, though, is that the AI infra boom is increasingly intertwined with financing capacity (banks/private credit/project finance). If credit spreads widen or rates stay sticky, the sector won’t “die,” but the multiple you pay for megawatts compresses—especially in the most levered developers. (That CoreWeave financing drumbeat matters because it’s the visible edge of the debt/capex iceberg.)
AI data centers are the “infrastructure phase” of a revolution—cash flows first, hype second. Quantum is the “venture phase”—hype first, cash flows later. Own both only if you size them like what they are.
News vs. Noise: What’s Moving Markets Today
The market is trying to stage a comeback, but risk appetite still hasn’t fully reloaded. The S&P is now basically back at the October highs (only about 0.6% off), and yesterday’s tape looked like a classic “correction in positioning, not a broken cycle” day: an AI-growth scare (the Microsoft quota rumor) fizzled, the ISM Services number helped, and stocks ground higher. But the under-the-hood tell is important: the stuff that reflects animal spirits most cleanly, crypto and the retail momentum cohort, is still way below its recent peaks. That divergence usually means the marginal buyer is still cautious and capital is prioritizing “index-quality” exposure over high-octane beta. That’s not bearish by itself. It’s often what a healthier base looks like after froth gets purged. The risk is that if the high-beta complex can’t catch up, the index rally can start to feel like levitation rather than breadth.
Now zoom in on the consumer, because the headlines are a trap. Online spending from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday hit records (over $44B, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday both up solidly year over year), but the cracks are in the composition: orders fell while average order value rose, which is basically inflation doing the heavy lifting. And the financing mix is getting worse at the margin: BNPL usage is rising, credit cards are the default payment method for more households, and delinquencies are already elevated. Pair that with ADP showing small businesses cutting a meaningful number of jobs, and you get the real story: the top end can keep the data looking fine, but lower-income cohorts and SMEs are feeling it first. That’s the setup where the economy can look “resilient” right until it doesn’t, and where the next leg of market upside depends less on “the consumer is strong” and more on whether liquidity stays easy enough to paper over the stress.
Takeaways
The index recovery is real, but the risk-on bench isn’t back yet. Watch crypto and retail momentum as the early-warning dashboard.
Holiday spending was strong, but the volume/financing mix is flashing “stress,” not “strength.” Higher prices and more credit are doing the work.
Small business employment matters more than people think. If SMEs slow hiring into 2026, the weakness spreads from Main Street into the labor data that actually moves the Fed.
Positioning implication: stay constructive, but be selective. Own quality, keep defined-risk upside, and don’t mistake record spending headlines for a healthy consumer.
A Stock I’m Watching
Today stock is Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR)….
Monolithic Power (MPWR) is the “power tax” on AI compute — the chips that turn raw electricity into usable, stable power inside every server and accelerator rack. As AI data centers move to 48V architectures and rack power doubles (and then doubles again), efficiency stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the gating factor: every lost percent becomes heat, cooling cost, and constrained capacity. MPWR sells the high‑performance power management that lets hyperscalers pack more compute into the same footprint without melting the room, and that’s real operating leverage because power content per rack rises as AI scales. In other words: you don’t buy MPWR because you want to guess which model wins — you buy it because no matter whose GPUs/TPUs/ASICs win, they all need cleaner, denser power delivery to run.
How Else I Can Help You Beat Wall Street at Its Own Game
Inside H.E.A.T. is our monthly webinar series, sign up for this month’s webinar below….
Why Covered Call ETFs Suck-And What To Do Instead
Tuesday December 9, 2-3PM EST |
Covered call ETFs are everywhere — and everyone thinks they’ve found a “safe” way to collect yield in a sideways market. |
The truth? |
They cap your upside, mislead investors with “yield” that’s really your own money coming back, and often trail just owning the stock by a mile. |
Join me for a brutally honest breakdown of how these funds actually work — and what you should be doing instead. |
What You’ll Learn:
🔥 Why “high yield” covered call ETFs are often just returning your own capital |
The H.E.A.T. (Hedge, Edge, Asymmetry and Theme) Formula is designed to empower investors to spot opportunities, think independently, make smarter (often contrarian) moves, and build real wealth.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the Chief Executive Officer and Portfolio Manager for Tuttle Capital Management (TCM) and are subject to change without notice. The data and information provided is derived from sources deemed to be reliable but we cannot guarantee its accuracy. Investing in securities is subject to risk including the possible loss of principal. Trade notifications are for informational purposes only. TCM offers fully transparent ETFs and provides trade information for all actively managed ETFs. TCM's statements are not an endorsement of any company or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. Trade notification files are not provided until full trade execution at the end of a trading day. The time stamp of the email is the time of file upload and not necessarily the exact time of the trades. TCM is not a commodity trading advisor and content provided regarding commodity interests is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a recommendation. Investment recommendations for any securities or product may be made only after a comprehensive suitability review of the investor’s financial situation.© 2025 Tuttle Capital Management, LLC (TCM). TCM is a SEC-Registered Investment Adviser. All rights reserved.