The Weekly Buzz 🐝 by Blossom

🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US and Iran Reach Ceasefire (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:06:04 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

🕊️ After a month of war-driven volatility, markets caught a massive break this week thanks to new developments in the US-Iran conflict (this time positive).

🤝 On Wednesday, a two-week ceasefire was announced between the U.S. and Iran, brokered by Pakistan, sending markets flying high. The S&P 500 surged +2.5% in a single trading session, the Nasdaq jumped +2.8%, and Brent Crude plunging over 13% in a single day leading to its largest decline since 2020, and ending the week below $100/barrel for the first time in weeks.

🛢️ Oil and Gas stocks like ExxonMobil ($XOM) and Chevron ($CVX) got crushed on the news, falling 5% each, while basically every other sector surged.

📈 The S&P 500 ended the week up +3.56%, marking its best week of the year to-date, now almost fully recovering from its lows near the beginning of the war. Other major indexes followed the lead:

The Nasdaq 100 rose +4.45%
The TSX rose +1.77%

🥶 A Deal Sitting On Thin Ice

🍾 Now, before we pop the champagne, a few things are worth flagging:

🚢 First, the Strait of Hormuz is still not fully open, and there are still concerns over the free flow of oil going forward. Only a handful of ships have crossed through the Strait since the ceasefire was announced, and Iran has reportedly been charging up to $1 million per ship for any vessel that does cross.

😬 There are also worries around the ceasefire itself, with the biggest point of contention being around Lebanon, where Israel fired massive strikes right after the ceasefire. (According to Iran, the recent ceasefire covers Lebanon, but Israel doesn’t agree.)

🇺🇸 The US Navy also began sending destroyers into the Strait for the first time since the war began, with Trump saying American forces have started “clearing” it, which Iran says violates the ceasefire, threatening to attack the ships.

🤝 As a saving grace, late in the week, JD Vance and a U.S. envoy arrived in Pakistan for peace talks with Iranian officials, but after 21 hours, neither side could reach an agreement, with Vance saying afterwards in a press conference:

☮️ So while markets are pricing in sustained peace, this recent break in the war may still only be a pause, and a real peace deal is looking hard to come by.

🤞 So unfortunately it looks like, yet again, we’ll have to hold our breath and wait and see what new headlines the week ahead brings…

🗞️ But apart from the ceasefire, the biggest market stories this week actually came from the AI world. Specifically with Anthropic and Palantir. So let’s dive in…

😎 But before we do, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, Public!

PRESENTED BY PUBLIC
🤖 Public becomes the first brokerage to introduce AI Agents for your portfolio

🤖 Instead of manually managing your portfolio, Public now has AI Agent that can execute tasks on your behalf.

💬 Public members can enter prompts, like "If the VIX hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 to hedge my portfolio,” or "If my checking account balance exceeds $20,000, sweep the excess into my Bond Account."

🪄 From there, the AI proposes an Agent workflow based on your intent. You can refine timing, adjust triggers, and set precise conditions before anything goes live. Once activated, your Agent monitors market conditions 24/7 and executes exactly as defined.

🤩 Agents represent a fundamental shift in how you manage your portfolio. For decades, investing meant manually entering orders—whether over the phone, on the web, or in an app. Now, you can simply express your intent, and your Agent handles the execution on your behalf.

🤝 We also have an awesome partnership with Public, where if you sign up for a Public account and link it to Blossom. You get one year of Blossom Pro for free!

😎 Sign up for Public!

TOP STORY
📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

🎯 Michael Burry, the “Big Short” hedge fund manager who famously bet against the housing market before the 2008 crash, has openly been short Palantir ($PLTR) since Fall 2025, and this week, he was directly responsible for a big drop in Palantir’s stock price.

💣 On Wednesday, Burry posted a simple tweet on X saying that Anthropic is “eating Palantir’s lunch,” leading to an 8% drop in Palantir’s stock price in a single day, and $23 billion wiped off in market cap.

🇺🇸 President Trump defended Palantir on Truth Social after the feud broke out, praising the company for its “great warfighting capabilities,” which briefly led to a rise in the stock price.

🥊 But Burry doubled down right after:

💡 And for those unfamiliar with options trading, the short version is he's betting Palantir's stock will keep falling, and he just extended that bet out to 2027.

📉 By the end of the week, Palantir was down 14%, with the company officially down 24% year-to-date so far in 2026. So is Burry actually onto something, or is this just one hedge fund manager talking his book?

🐻 The Bear Case

🤖 At the heart of Burry's argument is that Anthropic is simply doing what Palantir does, but cheaper, faster, and without the army of consultants. Anthropic grew from ~$9 billion to ~$30 billion in annual recurring revenue in a matter of months, and is now capturing over 73% of spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time.

👷 Palantir's business model, by contrast, is built on expensive "Forward Deployed Engineers", software engineers who embed directly with a single client, building and configuring solutions on-site for months at a time. Even in Palantir's own annual filings, these engineers are classified as "professional services."

🧑‍💻 According to Burry, a big chunk of what Palantir charges for isn't software, it's people, and Anthropic is disrupting that.

⏳ It took Palantir 20 years to reach $5 billion in annual revenue. Anthropic is getting there on pure software margins. Burry’s bet is that Anthropic will build AI that can do what Palantir’s human-heavy model already does, but cheaper and faster, and at a fraction of the cost to scale.

🐂 The Bull Case

🛡️ But of course, not everyone agrees with Burry.

📈 For starters, bulls point to Palantir's most recent earnings.

U.S. commercial revenue grew 137% year-over-year in Q4 2025, with total revenue up 70%.
The company is guiding for 61% growth in 2026, a number that, when it was announced, was described as "crushing consensus expectations."
Last year, Palantir signed a contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion, consolidating 75 existing contracts into a single decade-long agreement.

🥪 For Palantir fans, those aren’t the signs of a company getting its lunch eaten.

💬 Dan Ives, Global Head of Tech Research at Wedbush called Burry’s take ”wrong and a fictional narrative,” arguing Palantir is a “core AI winner” and its Foundry platform is becoming a dominant enterprise platform.

📊 Analysts at Morgan Stanley agreed, and are “growing in optimism” about Palantir’s offerings, while one analyst at UBS was even more openly bullish, saying:

🤔 The bull argument for most analysts is that Palantir provides deeply integrated mission-critical government and enterprise work that requires domain expertise, security clearances, and years of political relationships. Which is something that AI can’t simply replace anytime soon.

❓ As always, only time will tell which argument is the winner. But Anthropic’s carnage didn't stop at Palantir this week… another sector went into a freefall after Anthropic’s annoucement if it’s new Mythos model: Cybersecurity.

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.
🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

🤖 Palantir wasn’t the only stock feeling the heat from Anthropic this week… cybersecurity stocks were also hit hard with HACK, the Amplify Cybersecurity ETF, falling -8%.

🚀 On Tuesday, Anthropic unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, a new AI model that, by its own description, is “strikingly capable at computer security.”

🔍 Through a new initiative called Project Glasswing, Anthropic gave a select group of ~40 companies (including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks) access to Mythos Preview for ”defensive security work,” using it to autonomously scan their code for vulnerabilities without human touch.

💥 According to Anthropic, Mythos has already identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities (flaws unknown to the software developers) across every major operating system and web browser. In one case, it even found a vulnerability in OpenBSD (one of the most popular security-first operating systems) that had gone undetected for 27 years.

⚠️ Anthropic says it will not be making Mythos publicly available because the model is too capable at finding and exploiting security flaws to release to the general public. So for now, it is only available as a controlled, partners-only Claude offering.

📉 “The Cyber-pocalypse”

😬 Now, we’ve heard a lot about the “SaaS-pocalypse,” or the idea that AI could wipe out traditional software businesses (something we covered here).

📉 But now with Mythos, it looks like we might have a ”Cyber-pocalypse” on our hands as well, with Cybersecurity stocks crashing hard this week on the news. To name a few:

CrowdStrike ($CRWD) fell -5%
Cloudflare ($NET) fell -21.1%
Qualys ($QLYS) fell -13.4%

😬 The news was serious enough that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly discussed Mythos directly with a major U.S. bank CEO, adding to the fears.

🛡️ The Counter-Argument

🤔 But not everyone is convinced the selloff makes sense.

🔒 The core argument for the cybersecurity stock advocates is that more AI in the world means a dramatically larger attack surface. Every AI agent running inside a company is a new potential entry point for attackers. Every piece of AI-generated code still needs to be secured.

✨ If Mythos can find vulnerabilities autonomously, so can the hackers, meaning the demand for companies like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto may actually go up, not down.

🤝 There's also an irony worth noting: CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks are both Project Glasswing partners. They're not just victims of Mythos, they have access to it. The same tool the market is using to justify selling them off is already in their hands.

💡 As Anthropic itself acknowledged:

❓ Whether traditional cybersecurity companies can adapt fast enough, or whether Mythos makes them obsolete, is the question the market is still trying to figure out, and like Palantir, remains another open question for investors.

IN OTHER NEWS
🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

🤖 To make sure I’m keeping you guys fully updated, I had Beevis (Blossom’s AI Investing Assistant) pull a few of the other top headlines this week that I wasn’t able to cover!

🏥 Healthcare insurers surged on Medicare rate news

On Monday, managed care stocks exploded higher as a defensive play. UNH was up 9.37%, Humana up 7.94%, and CVS up 6.74%, all in a single session. The catalyst was a Medicare Advantage rate hike announcement from CMS, which gave the sector a significant earnings boost just as investors were rotating into defensives during the Iran uncertainty.

💾 Memory stocks absolutely ripped on Wednesday

The ceasefire bounce had a clear favourite: memory chips. Micron surged more than 9.5% on the day, while Sandisk and Seagate both popped more than 8%, and Western Digital jumped more than 7%. These stocks had been crushed by supply chain uncertainty tied to the Iran conflict, so the ceasefire unlocked a massive release valve 🔓

🤖 META drops $21B more on AI infrastructure

META committed another $21 billion in AI cloud infrastructure through CoreWeave, on top of a prior $14.2 billion deal, making Meta CoreWeave's single largest customer. The new deal also uses Nvidia's brand new Vera Rubin GPU system, which analysts flagged as a signal that Meta is operating at the absolute frontier of AI compute.

💡 Goldman Sachs says tech is a "best opportunity" buy right now

Goldman noted this week that the IT sector's P/E is now below consumer discretionary, staples, AND industrials globally, which almost never happens. They said this isn't a 2000-style bubble situation, and that valuations have room to re-rate higher if the ceasefire holds. Basically: the war created a rare entry point in tech according to Goldman.

🗞️ I’ve been finding Beevis’ daily market summaries super helpful to keep up with the news relevant to my portfolio (since it’s personalized to your actual holdings). If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, try it out here!

^{(note the link says ‘coming soon to mobile’ but it’s already live if you visit the ‘portfolio tab’ in the app)}

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US and Iran Reach Ceasefire

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:51:40 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

🕊️ After a month of war-driven volatility, markets caught a massive break this week thanks to new developments in the US-Iran conflict (this time positive).

🛢️ Oil and Gas stocks like ExxonMobil ($XOM) and Chevron ($CVX) got crushed on the news, falling 5% each, while basically every other sector surged.

The Nasdaq 100 rose +4.45%
The TSX rose +1.77%

🥶 A Deal Sitting On Thin Ice

🍾 Now, before we pop the champagne, a few things are worth flagging:

☮️ So while markets are pricing in sustained peace, this recent break in the war may still only be a pause, and a real peace deal is looking hard to come by.

🤞 So unfortunately it looks like, yet again, we’ll have to hold our breath and wait and see what new headlines the week ahead brings…

🗞️ But apart from the ceasefire, the biggest market stories this week actually came from the AI world. Specifically with Anthropic and Palantir. So let’s dive in…

😎 But before we do, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, Global X!

PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X CANADA
🎯 Your "Tech" Fund Might Be Missing the Point.

💡 Have You Considered The Potential Blind Spots in "Tech" Investing?

Most investors access technology through exchange-based benchmarks or funds labelled "Information Technology." Both have a problem: they define tech by where a company trades or how it's classified, not what it actually does.

The result? Real innovators often get left out.

Tesla is Consumer Discretionary. Netflix is Entertainment. Alphabet and Amazon don't sit in "Tech" either — even though their businesses run on software, data, and digital infrastructure.

Meanwhile, exchange-based benchmarks can pull in companies like Costco or PepsiCo — diluting the very exposure you came for.

🎯 Meet NYSX: Built for How Innovation Actually Works

The Global X NYSE 100 Index ETF (NYSX) selects companies based on what they do, not where they list or what label they carry.

By looking across Consumer Discretionary, Financials, Industrials, and Media & Communications — not just "Tech" — NYSX captures the full picture of today's innovation economy.

Consider whether your current approach reflects the full range of technology-related businesses across the key sectors that matter.

Get Invested

^{*See Global X Canada Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

TOP STORY
📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

🇺🇸 President Trump defended Palantir on Truth Social after the feud broke out, praising the company for its “great warfighting capabilities,” which briefly led to a rise in the stock price.

🥊 But Burry doubled down right after:

💡 And for those unfamiliar with options trading, the short version is he's betting Palantir's stock will keep falling, and he just extended that bet out to 2027.

🐻 The Bear Case

🧑‍💻 According to Burry, a big chunk of what Palantir charges for isn't software, it's people, and Anthropic is disrupting that.

🐂 The Bull Case

🛡️ But of course, not everyone agrees with Burry.

📈 For starters, bulls point to Palantir's most recent earnings.

U.S. commercial revenue grew 137% year-over-year in Q4 2025, with total revenue up 70%.
The company is guiding for 61% growth in 2026, a number that, when it was announced, was described as "crushing consensus expectations."
Last year, Palantir signed a contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion, consolidating 75 existing contracts into a single decade-long agreement.

🥪 For Palantir fans, those aren’t the signs of a company getting its lunch eaten.

📊 Analysts at Morgan Stanley agreed, and are “growing in optimism” about Palantir’s offerings, while one analyst at UBS was even more openly bullish, saying:

🔒 But before we dive in there, a quick word from our other sponsor this week, Dynamic Funds!

PRESENTED BY DYNAMIC
Curious about crypto but overwhelmed by all the complexities 😵‍💫

With thousands of options available, it can be difficult to choose the right crypto assets to invest in. Introducing Dynamic Active Multi-Crypto ETF (DXMC), an actively managed ETF designed to provide convenient, regulated access to assets like Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP without the complexities of direct crypto investing (maintaining separate crypto exchange accounts ❌, keeping track of wallet addresses and seed phrases ❌ etc.)

✅ Why choose DXMC?

💼 Diversified exposure to leading crypto assets: As a single-ticket solution, DXMC delivers diversified exposure to leading crypto assets and innovative companies shaping the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.

📈 Simplifying high-growth potential crypto investing: Through an easy-to-use ETF structure, DXMC provides regulated access to the high-growth potential crypto opportunity without the complexities of direct crypto investing.

💡 Leading active management: DXMC employs an active strategy for asset selection and rebalancing, and uses staking to help generate growth. To capture opportunities, the portfolio is reviewed and adjusted regularly.

⭐️ Dynamic Active Multi-Crypto ETF (DXMC)

Crypto opportunity made simple.

🤓 Learn more about DXMC

^{*See Dynamic’s Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.
🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

🤖 Palantir wasn’t the only stock feeling the heat from Anthropic this week… cybersecurity stocks were also hit hard with HACK, the Amplify Cybersecurity ETF, falling -8%.

🚀 On Tuesday, Anthropic unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, a new AI model that, by its own description, is “strikingly capable at computer security.”

📉 “The Cyber-pocalypse”

😬 Now, we’ve heard a lot about the “SaaS-pocalypse,” or the idea that AI could wipe out traditional software businesses (something we covered here).

📉 But now with Mythos, it looks like we might have a ”Cyber-pocalypse” on our hands as well, with Cybersecurity stocks crashing hard this week on the news. To name a few:

CrowdStrike ($CRWD) fell -5%
Cloudflare ($NET) fell -21.1%
Qualys ($QLYS) fell -13.4%

😬 The news was serious enough that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly discussed Mythos directly with a major U.S. bank CEO, adding to the fears.

🛡️ The Counter-Argument

🤔 But not everyone is convinced the selloff makes sense.

✨ If Mythos can find vulnerabilities autonomously, so can the hackers, meaning the demand for companies like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto may actually go up, not down.

💡 As Anthropic itself acknowledged:

IN OTHER NEWS
🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

🤖 To make sure I’m keeping you guys fully updated, I had Beevis (Blossom’s AI Investing Assistant) pull a few of the other top headlines this week that I wasn’t able to cover!

🏥 Healthcare insurers surged on Medicare rate news

On Monday, managed care stocks exploded higher as a defensive play. UNH was up 9.37%, Humana up 7.94%, and CVS up 6.74%, all in a single session. The catalyst was a Medicare Advantage rate hike announcement from CMS, which gave the sector a significant earnings boost just as investors were rotating into defensives during the Iran uncertainty.

💾 Memory stocks absolutely ripped on Wednesday

The ceasefire bounce had a clear favourite: memory chips. Micron surged more than 9.5% on the day, while Sandisk and Seagate both popped more than 8%, and Western Digital jumped more than 7%. These stocks had been crushed by supply chain uncertainty tied to the Iran conflict, so the ceasefire unlocked a massive release valve 🔓

🤖 META drops $21B more on AI infrastructure

META committed another $21 billion in AI cloud infrastructure through CoreWeave, on top of a prior $14.2 billion deal, making Meta CoreWeave's single largest customer. The new deal also uses Nvidia's brand new Vera Rubin GPU system, which analysts flagged as a signal that Meta is operating at the absolute frontier of AI compute.

💡 Goldman Sachs says tech is a "best opportunity" buy right now

Goldman noted this week that the IT sector's P/E is now below consumer discretionary, staples, AND industrials globally, which almost never happens. They said this isn't a 2000-style bubble situation, and that valuations have room to re-rate higher if the ceasefire holds. Basically: the war created a rare entry point in tech according to Goldman.

^{(note the link says ‘coming soon to mobile’ but it’s already live if you visit the ‘portfolio tab’ in the app)}

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Global X Canada Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees, and expenses all may be associated with an investment in products (the "Global X Funds") managed by Global X Investments Canada Inc. The Global X Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. Certain Global X Funds may have exposure to leveraged investment techniques that magnify gains and losses which may result in greater volatility in value and could be subject to aggressive investment risk and price volatility risk. Such risks are described in the prospectus. The Global X Money Market Funds are not covered by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or any other government deposit insurer. There can be no assurances that the money market fund will be able to maintain its net asset value per security at a constant amount or that the full amount of your investment in the Funds will be returned to you. Past performance may not be repeated. The prospectus contains important detailed information about the Global X Funds. Please read the relevant prospectus before investing.}

^{Global X Investments Canada Inc. ("Global X") is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., Ltd. ("Mirae Asset"), the Korea-based asset management entity of Mirae Asset Financial Group. Global X is a corporation existing under the laws of Canada and is the manager, investment manager and trustee of the Global X Funds.}

Dynamic Disclaimer

^{* The manager is temporarily waiving a portion of the management fee for the ETF until March 1, 2027. After giving effect to the temporary waiver, the manager receives an annual management fee of 0.25%. Effective March 2, 2027, the annual management fee will revert to 0.45%. Management fees are subject to applicable taxes. The management fee waiver does not include operating expenses or other costs associated with the ETF.}

^{Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses may be associated with mutual fund investments, including ETFs. Please read the prospectus before investing. Mutual funds and ETFs are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.}

^{Views expressed regarding a particular company, security, industry or market sector are the views of the writer and should not be considered an indication of trading intent of any investment funds managed by Scotia Global Asset Management. These views should not be considered investment advice, nor should they be considered a recommendation to buy or sell. These views are subject to change at any time based upon markets and other conditions, and we disclaim any responsibility to update such views.}

^{The information provided is not intended to be investment advice. Investors should consult their own professional advisor for specific investment and/or tax advice tailored to their needs when planning to implement an investment strategy to ensure that individual circumstances are considered properly and action is taken based on the latest available information.}

^{Dynamic® is a registered trademark of The Bank of Nova Scotia, used under license by, and is a division of, 1832 Asset Management L.P.}

📈 The Market Jumps 3% After Iran Says They're 'Willing to Negotiate' (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:23:17 +0000

MARKET RECAP
📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

🤞 Investors have been crossing their fingers week after week for an end to the US-Iran conflict that has brought down the market (with the S&P 500 falling 9% from its all-time highs)…

📈 Well, this week, that wish was almost granted, as markets broke their 5-week losing streak and finally finished in the green! 🥳

🕊️ Most of the gains were made on Tuesday after Iran’s president told the president of the European Council his country had the “necessary will” to end the war, and Trump told Reuters he’d “be out of Iran pretty quickly,” leading to the best single-day gain for the S&P 500 since last spring (+2.91%).

💣 But this was quickly followed by a bit of a shock on Wednesday, when Trump made a prime-time address saying the US would “hit Iran extremely hard” and “bring them back to the Stone Ages”.

📉 Thursday morning, markets started crashing again (falling 1% on market open) as oil spiked 8% to $109/barrel.

🦸 But thankfully, dip-buyers stepped in, and the market ended the day flat, closing out the best week since last November. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 ended the week up +3.36%
The Nasdaq 100 rose +4.44%
The TSX rose +3.59%

✨ More good news came on Friday (a market holiday) after a US jobs report came out that March was stronger than expected (with unemployment falling from 4.4% to 4.3%), and February’s job decline was also revised from 133,000 to 92,000.

🧘‍♂️ This calmed the worries raised a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal that the Fed could have to increase interest rates, with the FedWatch tool now putting the probability of a rate increase at close to 0%.

😬 Now, while the green week was a very nice change from the sea of red, I wouldn’t celebrate just yet. There is still a ton of uncertainty shrouding the war, and more specifically, the timeline for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz (responsible for over 20% of the world’s oil trade), with some analysts saying this could take “months, not weeks.”

🗞️ Apart from the war, a few other big stories hit the headlines this week, so let’s shift gears and dive in to those! At a high level:

🚗 Tesla ($TSLA) crashed 5.5% on Friday after deliveries continued to drop, while Elon’s other company SpaceX prepares for the biggest IPO in history
🚀 Space stocks soar, with Intuitive Machines ($LUNR) jumping 36%, boosted by SpaceX IPO news and Artemis II launch
👟 Nike ($NKE) tumbled 15% after earnings as its turnaround efforts falter

😎 But before we dive in, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, AdvisorShares!

TOP STORY
🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🚗 Tesla ($TSLA) reported its Q1 2026 vehicle deliveries this week, and well… let’s just say the company’s car business has seen better days.

📦 Total deliveries came in at 358,023 vehicles, 14% lower than last quarter and missing analyst expectations of 365,645, while total vehicle production came in at 408,386 (meaning over 50,000 cars sat unsold in inventory).

🔋 Even deliveries from its energy storage business dropped, with the company deploying just 8.8 GWh (a 38% drop from last quarter) against the 14.4 GWh analysts expected.

🔴 Tesla stock fell 5% on the news, and is now down -18% for the year and -25% from all-time-highs (although it’s worth noting the stock is still up over 50% in the past year)

🤖 Optimus is Tesla’s Future

🤖 With Tesla’s EV sales on the decline, and the EV market slowing everywhere except China, Musk has been rapidly positioning the company as an AI and robotics company, with Cybercab (Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis) and Optimus (its humanoid robots) becoming the core of Tesla’s promised future.

🏭 In fact, back in January of this year, Tesla announced it was ending production of its flagship Model S and X vehicles, to instead use the factory lines to build Optimus robots. With Musk saying:

😳 For reference, $25T was more than half the entire S&P 500's market cap at the time of Elon’s quote.

😬 The problem is, despite Musk's sometimes very optimistic sentiment, over 85% of Tesla’s revenue still comes from cars, which is on the decline. And now even energy storage, the one business segment providing growth for the company, is headed in the same struggling direction.

🪄 As we’ve talked about before, a lot of Tesla is riding on the ‘Musk Magic’ Premium, a term coined by a writer at Fortune who pointed out that if Tesla were valued at a 30x price-earnings ratio (closer to Nvidia), it would be worth ~$100B, 90% less than the current $1T valuation, meaning the promise of the self-driving cars and Optimus robot accounts for 90% of the company value… leaving a lot riding on an uncertain future.

🪐 SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🥳 But while Tesla shareholders are having a rough week, investors in Elon's other company are throwing a party... as this week, SpaceX quietly filed for what could be the biggest IPO in stock market history.

🤫 On Tuesday, SpaceX confidentially filed with the SEC to IPO, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and aiming to raise $75 billion when it lists on the Nasdaq, with a target date of June 2026.

🤯 For context, that would make SpaceX the 6th most valuable company in the world.

👀 That’s a pretty eye-watering valuation… so what are experts saying about it? Well, SpaceX is on track for $25B in revenue for 2026, up from ~$15B last year, with a profit margin of ~50%. This would put SpaceX’s earnings at ~$12.5B, meaning a $1.75T valuation would put SpaceX at a 140x price-earnings multiple (a common measure of how expensive/cheap a stock is). For reference:

⚡️ Nvidia has a PE of ~36x
📊 The S&P 500 has a PE of ~27x
🚘 Tesla has a PE of ~330x

🚀 So still a very high valuation compared to the broader market, but much lower than Tesla. And when you factor in SpaceX’s growth, and the fact that SpaceX has a massive headstart and moat on any competition… I can see why many investors are excited about this IPO.

🚀 SpaceX (and Artemis II) Send Space Stocks Rocketing

📈 The SpaceX IPO wasn’t the only good news for space enthusiasts this week. The successful Artemis II launch (the first NASA mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972) marked humanity's return to lunar orbit for the first time in over 50 years.

🌕 All this attention to the Space industry sent space stocks to the moon, with Rocket Labs ($RKLB) jumping +11%, the Roundhill Space And Technology ETF ($MARS) up +15%, and Intuitive Machines ($LUNR) up +37% (@anthony.invests, aka Blossom’s rocketman, definitely had a good week)

🤝 Intuitive Machines got the biggest boost this week due to its ties to NASA, as on March 24, NASA awarded it a $180M order for another mission.

✨ While much smaller than SpaceX (valued at $5B), many saw the Artemis II mission and Intuitive’s contract with NASA as a sign of things to come. If NASA is doubling down on lunar exploration, Intuitive is one of the few companies already contracted to support it, putting it in a strong position to win more business as the space race heats up.

🤔 What’s All This Mean for Tesla?

👀 Ok… so where does all this leave us with Tesla? Well, there are two ways to look at things. One is that SpaceX is proof that Elon still has the magic of building multi-trillion dollar companies… and that the magic SpaceX is feeling, Optimus will see next.

😬 The more pessimistic view is that Elon’s magic has been redirected elsewhere, and a distracted Musk may have less time to make sure Optimus can win the much more competitive robotics race…

❓ The answer is up for you to decide, but one things for sure - Elon sure has a knack for moving markets.

👟 All right, we’ve covered a lot already, but I think we got time for one more story… an update on Nike’s turnaround story.

🤖 But first, a quick word about an exciting new feature coming to Blossom tomorrow!

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

🤖 Last Friday, we released a massive new feature for Blossom: Beevis, Your AI Investing Companion, but this was for the web-app only!

🥳 Well, I’m excited to share that this Monday (or latest Tuesday), Beevis will be live in-app as well!

😎 You guys have already asked over 5,000 questions to Beevis covering portfolio risk, market news, education and more, and the feedback has been incredible, so definetely give it a try if you haven’t already!

🤖 Try out Beevis here!

EARNINGS RECAP
👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

📋 While not nearly as exciting as Tesla, Nike ($NKE) reported its Q3 FY2026 earnings this week, beating revenue and earnings estimates, but missing on every other important metric.

✅ Revenue was $11.28 billion vs. $11.24 billion expected, essentially flat year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share was $0.35 vs. $0.28 expected, down 35% year-over-year
- ✅ North America wholesale revenue rose 11%
- ❌ Nike Direct revenues fell 4%
- ❌ Greater China revenue fell 7%, but better than the 16% decline analysts expected

🏳️ Even though the company beat Wall Street’s top and bottom line expectations, management guided for sales to decline 3% over the next nine months, which had investors fearful, sending shares tumbling 15% this week.

🔄 Back in December with Nike’s Q2 earnings, we covered the turnaround efforts the company and its new CEO were venturing toward. Now, only 3 months later, and not much has changed for its outlook. In fact, the situation has gotten worse in some ways.

🇨🇳 China revenue is still the big headache it was last quarter, and remains a major contributor to Nike revenue (~15% comes from China), facing its seventh consecutive quarterly decline this quarter, falling another 10% due to rising domestic Chinese competition in the sportswear segment, and low investment by Nike in Chinese outlets.

🩸 As of today, Nike expects total sales to be negative for the rest of the year, with its recovery in China not expected to improve until fiscal 2027, or next spring. Next quarter, it anticipates total sales will fall 2-4%, worse than the +2% growth analysts had expected. It also expects China sales to plunge another 20%.

🏆 Is The “Win Now” Strategy Working?

🔨 Elliott Hill, Nike’s new CEO who took over in 2024, has been executing a major turnaround for the company recently with his “Win Now” strategy to rebuild wholesale, get rid of poor-selling inventory, and refocus on performance categories like running and basketball.

✅ And from last quarter to this quarter, there is genuine proof of this strategy moving in the right direction. For instance, Running and Global Football grew double digits, with Basketball up high single digits in North America. But many other segments don’t seem to be having the same results. Something Hill talked about recently:

⛈️ The real problem for Nike is simple. Even if parts of the turnaround are working, China is still a sore spot. And since China revenue accounts for such a large chunk of Nike’s total business, any growth or stability in other segments is offset by China declines.

😤 With the losses in China, Wall Street’s patience for Nike is ‘running out’ with three of Wall Street’s biggest banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of America) all downgrading the stock, citing its dragging turnaround as a major headwind.

🔍 One analyst at Bank of America (BoA) put it bluntly:

📉 And with Nike now down 67% in the past 5 years, even the most loyal bulls are starting to lace up their running shoes and head for the exit.

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

📈 The Market Jumps 3% After Iran Says They're 'Willing to Negotiate'

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:15:22 +0000

MARKET RECAP
📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

🤞 Investors have been crossing their fingers week after week for an end to the US-Iran conflict that has brought down the market (with the S&P 500 falling 9% from its all-time highs)…

📈 Well, this week, that wish was almost granted, as markets broke their 5-week losing streak and finally finished in the green! 🥳

📉 Thursday morning, markets started crashing again (falling 1% on market open) as oil spiked 8% to $109/barrel.

🦸 But thankfully, dip-buyers stepped in, and the market ended the day flat, closing out the best week since last November. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 ended the week up +3.36%
The Nasdaq 100 rose +4.44%
The TSX rose +3.59%

🗞️ Apart from the war, a few other big stories hit the headlines this week, so let’s shift gears and dive in to those! At a high level:

🚗 Tesla ($TSLA) crashed 5.5% on Friday after deliveries continued to drop, while Elon’s other company SpaceX prepares for the biggest IPO in history
🚀 Space stocks soar, with Intuitive Machines ($LUNR) jumping 36%, boosted by SpaceX IPO news and Artemis II launch
👟 Nike ($NKE) tumbled 15% after earnings as its turnaround efforts falter

😎 But before we dive in, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, Harvest ETFs!

TOP STORY
🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🚗 Tesla ($TSLA) reported its Q1 2026 vehicle deliveries this week, and well… let’s just say the company’s car business has seen better days.

🔋 Even deliveries from its energy storage business dropped, with the company deploying just 8.8 GWh (a 38% drop from last quarter) against the 14.4 GWh analysts expected.

🔴 Tesla stock fell 5% on the news, and is now down -18% for the year and -25% from all-time-highs (although it’s worth noting the stock is still up over 50% in the past year)

🤖 Optimus is Tesla’s Future

😳 For reference, $25T was more than half the entire S&P 500's market cap at the time of Elon’s quote.

🪐 SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🤫 On Tuesday, SpaceX confidentially filed with the SEC to IPO, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and aiming to raise $75 billion when it lists on the Nasdaq, with a target date of June 2026.

🤯 For context, that would make SpaceX the 6th most valuable company in the world.

⚡️ Nvidia has a PE of ~36x
📊 The S&P 500 has a PE of ~27x
🚘 Tesla has a PE of ~330x

🚀 SpaceX (and Artemis II) Send Space Stocks Rocketing

🤝 Intuitive Machines got the biggest boost this week due to its ties to NASA, as on March 24, NASA awarded it a $180M order for another mission.

🤔 What’s All This Mean for Tesla?

😬 The more pessimistic view is that Elon’s magic has been redirected elsewhere, and a distracted Musk may have less time to make sure Optimus can win the much more competitive robotics race…

❓ The answer is up for you to decide, but one things for sure - Elon sure has a knack for moving markets.

👟 All right, we’ve covered a lot already, but I think we got time for one more story… an update on Nike’s turnaround story.

🤖 But first, a quick word about an exciting new feature coming to Blossom tomorrow!

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

🤖 Last Friday, we released a massive new feature for Blossom: Beevis, Your AI Investing Companion, but this was for the web-app only!

🥳 Well, I’m excited to share that this Monday (or latest Tuesday), Beevis will be live in-app as well!

🤖 Try out Beevis here!

EARNINGS RECAP
👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

📋 While not nearly as exciting as Tesla, Nike ($NKE) reported its Q3 FY2026 earnings this week, beating revenue and earnings estimates, but missing on every other important metric.

✅ Revenue was $11.28 billion vs. $11.24 billion expected, essentially flat year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share was $0.35 vs. $0.28 expected, down 35% year-over-year
- ✅ North America wholesale revenue rose 11%
- ❌ Nike Direct revenues fell 4%
- ❌ Greater China revenue fell 7%, but better than the 16% decline analysts expected

🏆 Is The “Win Now” Strategy Working?

🔍 One analyst at Bank of America (BoA) put it bluntly:

📉 And with Nike now down 67% in the past 5 years, even the most loyal bulls are starting to lace up their running shoes and head for the exit.

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Harvest ETFs Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in Harvest Exchange Traded Funds managed by Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. (the “Funds”). Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Distributions are paid to you in cash unless you request, pursuant to your participation in a distribution reinvestment plan, that they be reinvested into available Class units of the Fund you own. If a Fund earns less than the amounts distributed, the difference is a return of capital.}

📉 Meta and Google Crash Over 8% After Losing Social Media Addiction Lawsuit (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 18:56:04 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

🤞 Every week this month, investors have crossed their fingers hoping for a speedy end to the Iran-US conflict that has plagued the stock market… and at the start of this week, those hopes seemed like they might come true.

📈 On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had “very good and productive conversations,” causing the S&P 500 to soar +1.15%. But despite our high hopes on Monday, little did we know we were in for a rollercoaster of a week…

💣 So before we dive into our main story of the week (Meta/Google’s massive legal loss), here’s the play-by-play on the US-Iran war and the impact it’s having on the stock market:

📉 Tuesday, markets fall -0.37% after Iran’s speaker of parliament calls Trump’s claim ‘fabricated news’
📈 Wednesday, markets jump +0.54% after reports that Iran had received a 15-point U.S. peace proposal.
🩸 Thursday, the pain really began, with markets falling -1.74% after Iran rejected the proposal and issued its own counter demands, including war reparations and formal control of the Strait of Hormuz.
🩸 Friday, markets continue to fall -1.67% despite Trump’s attempts to calm nerves by granting a 10-day extension on his 48-hour threat to ‘obliterate Iranian power plans’ (discussed last week). Oil hit $113 a barrel with the West Texas Intermediate (the U.S. benchmark) crossing $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022.

😰 Overall, it was a very rough week, capping off the market’s longest losing streak in nearly 4 years. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 ended the week down -2.12%
The Nasdaq 100 fell -3.20%

📉 The S&P 500 is now down roughly 8% since the war began on February 28th, with the Nasdaq officially entering correction territory, falling 10% from its all-time high.

💡 And while this is incredibly painful… it’s worth noting this isn’t actually all that rare.

🤖 According to Beevis (Blossom’s AI Investing Assistant, which is trained on the context of your real portfolio and goals):

🧘 So at this point, the ~10% drop is pretty ‘par-for-the-course’ for the long-term investor and is something you should get used to if you have a long time-horizon… but what makes this drop scarier than normal is that it shows no signs of slowing anytime soon, with strategists at Citi Group releasing a frightening 165-page report on their outlook:

🛢️ Citi’s $200 Oil Warning

☀️ Ok, not to add to the doom-and-gloom, but I feel like when one of the top strategists on Wall Street compares what’s going on to the ‘sun exploding,’ I’m obligated to keep you guys in the loop…

🛢️ According to strategist Maximilian Layton, based on historical data, oil could push above $200 a barrel if the conflict remains unresolved, saying that the current supply shock is potentially larger than the 1970s oil crisis as a share of global supply, and that markets could sink much further as oil continues to climb, saying:

👍 The good news out of the report is that they say “it’s not too late to hedge upside risks to global inflation with commodities” and also point to gold as a strong hedge to the “largest inflation shock in 50 years.”

🕊️ Now, if we do get a quick Iran-US deal where the Strait of Hormuz reopens (fingers crossed), this hedging would be unnecessary, so what to do from here really depends on your view of how long this conflict will last.

💡 The honest answer is that nobody knows how long this drags on, not me, not Citi, not even Trump. What we do know is that markets have historically recovered from every geopolitical shock, including ones that felt this open-ended. If you have a long time horizon, the playbook hasn't changed: stay diversified, don't panic-sell, and use a crash like this as a chance to double-check your portfolio is matching your risk and time horizon.

⚙️ Alright, let’s switch gears a little, because while the market overall had a rough week, two Mag-7 tech stocks got hit even harder, falling over 8% after losing a landmark lawsuit…

😎 But before we dive deeper, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, AdvisorShares!

TOP STORY
🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

⚖️ The ongoing war wasn’t the only big story this week… on Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable in a ruling that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately built to be addictive and that their executives knew this and failed to protect their youngest users.

💰 Meta was ordered to pay 70% of the compensatory damages and Google 30%, with a total of $3 million. Then just hours after the verdict, the jury added $2.1 million in punitive damages against Meta and $900,000 against Google, upping the total to roughly $6 million.

👦 This was Meta’s second lawsuit loss this week. Just 2 days before, it was ordered to pay $375 million in New Mexico for misleading users about child safety and enabling harmful behaviour affecting minors.

👀 The case referenced internal memos released where Zuckerberg said, “if we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,” along with internal reports showing that 11-year-olds were 4 times more likely to keep returning to Instagram (despite the platform ‘requiring’ users to be 13+)

📉 Meta ($META) fell 13% on the news, while Alphabet (Google) ($GOOGL) fell 7%.

🚬 Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment

😰 The fear here isn’t about the $6 million (which for these companies is a rounding error), but whether this opens the floodgates to more aggressive (and more frequent) rulings like it in the not-so-distant future.

⚖️ In fact, this case is just one of more than 1,500 similar cases expected to go to trial. And while one trial won’t determine the outcomes of them all, it could help guide the direction.

💰 Some analysts say repeated losses like this at scale could put tech giants on the hook for billions and force them to change their platforms in a way that could mean less profit. Potentially even hundreds of billions:

🏛️ Both Meta and Google are expected to stand trial later this year in the first of hundreds of additional lawsuits from school districts and state attorneys general, marking a new legal push that some analysts have called Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment.

🤔 What Analysts Are Saying

🛡️ Tech companies like Meta have long relied on “Section 230” protections, which shield social media platforms from liability for user-posted content.

🎨 But the key change in lawsuits going forward is the idea of “deliberate design,” where plaintiffs argue that Meta and YouTube made deliberate design choices to make their platforms more addictive to children. Something “Section 230” can’t protect from.

🎰 One of the arguments for this case was “infinite scroll,” and how social media algorithms borrow behavioural techniques used by slot machines and the tobacco industry.

📊 And in cases like these, it’s the precedent that matters, not the damages. And analysts are worried that a large increase in similar lawsuits targeting social media features and design could force changes to the platforms, which could affect profitability:

📉 Meta is now down 19% year-to-date, while Google is down 12%. But even with the drop, most of Wall Street remains bullish, with analysts rating Meta a ‘strong buy’ with a $865 price target (64% above the current price).

😰 Despite the optimism, this week certainly marked a massive blow in Meta’s ability to stay out of the legal crossfires… and is worth keeping a close eye on for shareholders.

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

🤖 I touched on this a few times throughout the newsletter, but it’s big enough news to warrant its own section. This Friday, we released a massive new feature: Beevis, Your AI Investing Companion.

🤔 So why use Beevis instead of ChatGPT or Claude? Well, for one, it’s built on the same LLM (meaning the AI model is the same), but the major difference is that Beevis has the context of what’s in your portfolio, making its responses much more relevant to your unique situation.

😎 For example, Beevis can:

Help flag key risks in your portfolio
Give you a market recap focused on the news that caused the biggest swings in your holdings
Teach concepts with specific reference to stocks/ETFs you hold
And much more!

🌼 The Blossom team really put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this new feature incredible, and I can’t wait for you to try it out!

🤖 Try out Beevis here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

📉 Meta and Google Crash Over 8% After Losing Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 18:45:42 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

💣 So before we dive into our main story of the week (Meta/Google’s massive legal loss), here’s the play-by-play on the US-Iran war and the impact it’s having on the stock market:

📉 Tuesday, markets fall -0.37% after Iran’s speaker of parliament calls Trump’s claim ‘fabricated news’
📈 Wednesday, markets jump +0.54% after reports that Iran had received a 15-point U.S. peace proposal.
🩸 Thursday, the pain really began, with markets falling -1.74% after Iran rejected the proposal and issued its own counter demands, including war reparations and formal control of the Strait of Hormuz.
🩸 Friday, markets continue to fall -1.67% despite Trump’s attempts to calm nerves by granting a 10-day extension on his 48-hour threat to ‘obliterate Iranian power plans’ (discussed last week). Oil hit $113 a barrel with the West Texas Intermediate (the U.S. benchmark) crossing $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022.

😰 Overall, it was a very rough week, capping off the market’s longest losing streak in nearly 4 years. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 ended the week down -2.12%
The Nasdaq 100 fell -3.20%

🍁 The one saving grace was the Canadian TSX index, which rose 2% thanks to gains in materials and energy sectors (industries that benefit when oil prices surge).

📉 The S&P 500 is now down roughly 8% since the war began on February 28th, with the Nasdaq officially entered correction territory, falling 10% from its all-time high.

💡 And while this is incredibly painful… it’s worth noting this isn’t actually all that rare.

🤖 According to Beevis (Blossom’s AI Investing Assistant, which is trained on the context of your real portfolio and goals):

🛢️ Citi’s $200 Oil Warning

⚙️ Alright, let’s switch gears a little, because while the market overall had a rough week, two Mag-7 tech stocks got hit even harder, falling over 8% after losing a landmark lawsuit…

😎 But before we dive deeper, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, Fidelity Investments!

TOP STORY
🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

📉 Meta ($META) fell 13% on the news, while Alphabet (Google) ($GOOGL) fell 7%.

🚬 Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment

⚖️ In fact, this case is just one of more than 1,500 similar cases expected to go to trial. And while one trial won’t determine the outcomes of them all, it could help guide the direction.

🤔 What Analysts Are Saying

🛡️ Tech companies like Meta have long relied on “Section 230” protections, which shield social media platforms from liability for user-posted content.

🎰 One of the arguments for this case was “infinite scroll,” and how social media algorithms borrow behavioural techniques used by slot machines and the tobacco industry.

😰 Despite the optimism, this week certainly marked a massive blow in Meta’s ability to stay out of the legal crossfires… and is worth keeping a close eye on for shareholders.

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

😎 For example, Beevis can:

Help flag key risks in your portfolio
Give you a market recap focused on the news that caused the biggest swings in your holdings
Teach concepts with specific reference to stocks/ETFs you hold
And much more!

🌼 The Blossom team really put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this new feature incredible, and I can’t wait for you to try it out!

🤖 Try out Beevis here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Fidelity Investments Canada Disclaimer

^{No purchase necessary. The Fidelity Investments Canada TFSA Contest is open to residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Financial advisors and employees of Fidelity, among others, are excluded from the contest. Void where prohibited. Starts February 10, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. ET and ends March 31, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. ET. One prize is available to be won, consisting of a CDN$7,000 cheque to be used or invested at the winner’s discretion. Skill-testing question required. Odds depend on number of entrants. For full rules and entry details, please see the}^{Official Contest Rules and Regulations}^.

^{This information is for general knowledge only and should not be interpreted as tax advice or recommendations. Every individual’s situation is unique and should be reviewed by his or her own personal legal and tax consultants.}

Harvest ETFs Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in Harvest Exchange Traded Funds managed by Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. (the “Funds”). Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Distributions are paid to you in cash unless you request, pursuant to your participation in a distribution reinvestment plan, that they be reinvested into available Class units of the Fund you own. If a Fund earns less than the amounts distributed, the difference is a return of capital}

^{The Fund is categorized as a liquid alternative ETF. This means it has the ability to use leverage and can invest more than 10% of its assets in a single issuer. The Fund employs moderate leverage which can amplify both gains and losses.}

🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales As It Pivots to AI Operating System (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:34:02 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Tumble For 4th Week with ‘Ticking-Time Bomb’ Of Uncertainty

🤖 It’s the 4th week in a row of very rough markets, as the US-Iran war continues to escalate…

The S&P 500 fell another 1.9%, now down -5.1% year-to-date
The Nasdaq-100 fell 2%, now down -5.2% year-to-date

✨ I realize since the war started, it’s been 4 weeks of pretty negative headlines, so instead of going on and on about the doom-and-gloom this week, I want to shift gears to some of the exciting updates in the AI world: from Nvidia’s announcements at its GPU Tech Conference (GTC), Micron’s incredible earnings, and what it all means for the market at large.

🤿 But before we dive in there, let me give a quick recap of the big picture this week (buckle up for some more bad news 😢):

💣 The US-Iran War Escalates With A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ of Uncertainty

😰 Investors have been hopeful for a quick resolution to the war, but on Friday, those hopes evaporated quickly after the WSJ reported that the Pentagon is sending thousands of Marines to the Middle East and that “heavy preparations” were being made for sending ground troops to Iran.

🩸And while the market has fallen a lot, many analysts believe troops on the ground could cause the pain to continue:

📉 Another analyst adds that:

😬 Threats back and forth between the US and Iran have also been heating up, with Trump threatening last night to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Iran doesn’t fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. In response, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that:

⏰ One IG market analyst calls this a “48-hour ticking time bomb of uncertainty” and expects markets to fall when they reopen tomorrow.

🏦 Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady

🗞️ The other big macro news in the markets this week was the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged (bad news for the stock market since interest rate cuts usually help boost stock prices).

😵‍💫 The Fed is stuck in a pretty tough spot right now. On one hand, the slowing economy is a perfect time for a rate cut. But with oil prices climbing, the risk of runaway inflation is heightened…

😰 This has led to a new fear: that the Fed’s next move could be an interest rate increase. According to the Wall Street Journal, if oil keeps surging and inflation stays sticky, the Fed could actually have to consider raising rates again, which would be a major negative surprise for stocks (as if we needed more bad news).

That said, not everyone thinks this is likely. In a Friday note, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist called rising fears of rate hikes this year “overdone,” saying:

📉 Overall, the picture still isn’t pretty: war uncertainty is rising, oil prices are surging, and the Fed doesn’t have an easy way to step in and calm markets like investors might hope.

⚠️ That likely means the market could continue to fall in the short term, especially if the conflict worsens or inflation data starts moving in the wrong direction, so make sure you and your portfolio are prepared for a bit of a bumpy road ahead and keep the long-term view in mind

💡One thing that’s helped me is switching to the 1-year chart. Even though it’s tough to see red for 4 weeks in a row, the S&P 500 is still up 12.8% over the past year, which is still really strong returns despite what feels like a massive drop…

🤖 Alright, with the bad news out of the way, let’s switch to something a bit more exciting: some of the big updates coming out of Nvidia’s tech conference this week!

😎 But first, a quick work from this week’s sponsor State Street Global Advisors!

ANNOUCEMENT
🤝 We’ve Partnered With State Street for the #MyStory Contest!

📊 In case you haven’t heard of them, State Street Global Advisors are the architects behind the popular SPY ETF, which in addition to being a great way to track the S&P 500, is also the world’s most traded ETF, trading $52.57 billion a day!

🤝 SPY (and State Street) has been an important part of many investors’ stories, which is why I’m excited to share that State Street is our sponsor this year for the annual #MyStory contest on Blossom!

🎁 To enter, all you have to do is share your investing story in the #MyStory topic on Blossom, and you’ll get entered to win some sweet prizes.

😎 For inspo, check out Brandon (one of Blossom’s cofounders) story here!

💡 Learn more about State Street!

TOP STORY
🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales by 2027 as It Pivots from Chips to AI Operating System

✨ Despite four brutal weeks in the market and the US-Iran war dominating headlines, on the AI front, there was a lot to cheer for…

🤖 Nvidia's annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose drew 30,000+ attendees, with lines of people waiting to take photos with server racks. Micron reported one of its most impressive earnings reports to date, with revenue up nearly 200% year-over-year.

✨ So let's break down the big themes from GTC, Micron's blowout earnings, and what they mean for the AI market overall…

👀 Jensen’s New Play: From Chipmaker to AI Operating System

💰 The GTC conference started with a huge announcement, with Jensen Huang telling investors that he expects purchase orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin chip to reach $1 trillion through 2027, more than double the company’s $500 billion projection from just a year ago.

🦞 But the biggest story from GTC wasn't a new chip, it was a new product called NemoClaw, an open-source, chip-agnostic platform for building and deploying AI agents.

🤖 NemoClaw is built on top of OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent that went viral earlier this year and became what Huang called "definitely the next ChatGPT", and the fastest-growing open-source project in history.

💡 The strategy is simple: NemoClaw is free. Huang isn't charging for the software layer, he's giving it away. But as adoption increases, Nvidia makes money on the chips and compute every AI agent needs to run.

💬 Huang made the mission clear at GTC:

🏆 If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same playbook Google ran with Android. You give away the layer that drives adoption, and monetize the infrastructure beneath it. If Huang pulls this off, Nvidia stops being a chipmaker that sells into commodity cycles and becomes a platform company that compounds.

😰 Why Nvidia Needs a New Moat

🤔 Nvidia's moat in the training era of AI, when companies were racing to build the biggest, most powerful models, was nearly impenetrable. Its chips and software ecosystem were so embedded in how AI models are built that switching to a competitor was nearly impossible.

⚠️ But the industry is shifting. The next wave isn't training new giant models, it's inference: running those models constantly, in real-world applications, at the lowest possible cost. And for inference, the lock-in is much weaker. Google, Amazon, and Broadcom are all building their own inference-tailored chips. The moat that made Nvidia the most valuable company in the world is thinning.

💬 As CNBC put it this week:

🚀 The Trillion-Dollar Token Economy

💡 And if Nvidia can successfully become the operating system, the potential could be massive, with Huang introducing the concept of "token economics" as a framework to think about AI value.

🔢 Basically, Huang explained that tokens are the basic unit of AI output (it takes about 1,300 tokens to generate 1,000 words of text). The key metric is cost per token. And as long as Nvidia's chips keep producing tokens at the lowest cost per unit, and demand for tokens continues to far outstrip supply, the AI boom rolls on.

🤖 And demand is accelerating fast. Reasoning AI models like OpenAI's o1 perform far more work to arrive at answers, consuming dramatically more tokens per task. Add AI agents on top of that, which run autonomously across multi-step workflows, and token consumption per user could multiply by 10x or 100x compared to a simple chatbot prompt.

🧐 But even this logic isn’t without critics, with some analysts pointing out that token prices have collapsed 99%+ in two years, increasing fears of commoditization that are likely at least in part to blame for Nvidia’s 4% drop this week.

📉 Micron Falls 10% Despite “Exceptional” Earnings

📊 Two days after Nvidia’s GTC on Monday, Micron ($MU), one of the most popular AI chip stocks in the market, reported exceptional Q2 FY2026 earnings, but saw its stock drop 10% over the week.

By the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $23.9 billion vs. $20.0 billion expected, up 196% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $12.20 vs $9.19 expected, up 757% year-over-year

🔥 One writer at Barron’s called the results “exceptional,” and analysts remain very bullish, with 25 of the 27 analysts covering the stock on TipRanks maintaining buy ratings.

💡In fact, the demand is so strong that Micron has been struggling to keep up, with the CEO saying:

🤔 So why the drop? The concern is capital intensity. Meeting this level of AI demand requires massive ongoing investment, and investors are increasingly asking the same question they're asking all of Big Tech: how much value is left for shareholders after all the spending?

💡 AI Is Still Booming, But the Bar Has Been Raised.

🔮 Across all of this week's AI news, one theme runs through everything: AI adoption is accelerating, not slowing. The infrastructure spending is flowing through the whole supply chain.

⭐️ But investors are done being wowed by roadmaps. Three years into the AI era, they want proof that spending produces durable profits, defensible moats, and real returns on capital.

🍏 In some ways, this is healthy for AI. It means investors are shifting focus from headlines and announcements and focusing more on fundamentals and execution.

🔍 And again… if we zoom out, this week’s blip is basically a rounding error, with Micron still up a massive 336% over the past year and Nvidia up 42%.

📰 Ok, I’ve already covered a lot today, but there’s one more big story that’s worth taking a quick look at, and that’s Alibaba, which crashed 11% after earnings showed profits fell 67%.

😎 But before we cover our last story of the day, a quick word from our other sponsor this week, Mogul!

Experts Would Invest $100,000 in This Alternative Now

A new report shows 44% of family offices are investing more in residential real estate. Now, you can access these assets with mogul. This platform lets you invest in properties producing +7% yields and 18% IRRs. Plus, they do all the property management for you.

Join 20,000 investors today.

Past performance isn't predictive; illustrative only. Investing risks principal; no securities offer. See important Disclaimers

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Alibaba Crashes 11% After Profits Plummet 67%, But Wall Street Is Still Buying

😰 On the surface, Alibaba's ($BABA) Q3 earnings report looks like a disaster. By the numbers:

❌ Revenue came in at $40.7 billion, up just 2% year-over-year, missing analyst expectations
❌ Non-GAAP net income fell 67% year-over-year to $2.39 billion
❌ Adjusted earnings per share (ADS) sank 67% to $1.01, badly missing estimates

🤔 But despite the rough numbers, analysts at Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and BofA are all essentially telling their clients to buy the dip… but why?

🚀 Cloud Revenue Soars 36%

🤖 While the headline numbers were rough, Alibaba’s AI story showed a lot of promise. This quarter, Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence Group posted revenue of $6.19 billion, up 36% year-over-year (outpacing growth rates of AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure).

📈 More striking: AI-related product revenue posted triple-digit growth for the 10th consecutive quarter in a row.

⭐️ Alibaba's open-source Qwen model has now hit 1 billion cumulative downloads. The Qwen app crossed 300 million monthly active users as of February, and BABA now estimates more than $100 billion in external AI and cloud revenue within five years.

Like many tech companies, Alibaba is going all in on AI, with the CEO putting it plainly, saying:

🎯Analyst Reactions

💡 The key question is whether this profit collapse is a sign of structural weakness, or just the cost of doing business during a heavy investment cycle.

⭐️ Well, according to analysts, it’s the latter, with most analysts maintaining aggressive price targets for the stock:

🎯 Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating and a $180 price target, with analyst Gary Yu noting the results show "explosive AI demand from strong token usage" and that the biggest takeaway is a "strengthened commercialization of AI across model capabilities, MaaS, and agentic applications."
🎯 BofA maintained a Buy rating and $180 target, with analyst Joyce Ju calling the e-commerce softness "expected" given the macro environment.
🎯 Citi has the most aggressive target on the Street at $200, calling the cloud acceleration a "positive note." With BABA trading around $124.90 at the time of writing, that implies roughly 60% upside from current levels.

💬 The broader Wall Street consensus has Alibaba at a strong buy, with an average price target of $187 (over 50% upside from current price). Goldman summed up the bull thesis best, noting that the profit decline reflects "higher reinvestment, not weaker demand", and that the spending is a strategic bet, not a distress signal.

🌎 The Bigger Picture: A Rough Patch for Chinese Tech

😰 BABA's drop isn't happening in isolation. The broader Chinese tech sector has been getting hammered, with the CHQQ China ETF (one of my personal holdings) down 19% year-to-date.

🇨🇳 Personally, I’m with the analysts on this one and am still bullish on Chinese tech and AI (as you can see from my ~6% position in CHQQ and 3% in BABA), but Chinese tech carries a lot of risk and uncertainty and definitely isn’t for the faint of heart.

✨ If I have time this week, I’ll try to share more of my perspective on Blossom, so make sure you drop me a follow if you haven’t already, but since this edition of the Buzz has already gotten quite long, I’ll wrap it up there and end off with our Top Discussion of the week 😊

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales As It Pivots to AI Operating System

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:14:56 +0000

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Tumble For 4th Week with ‘Ticking-Time Bomb’ Of Uncertainty

🤖 It’s the 4th week in a row of very rough markets, as the US-Iran war continues to escalate…

The S&P 500 fell another 1.9%, now down -5.1% year-to-date
The Nasdaq-100 fell 2%, now down -5.2% year-to-date
The TSX had the roughest week, falling -3.8%, but only down -1.8% year-to-date

🤿 But before we dive in there, let me give a quick recap of the big picture this week (buckle up for some more bad news 😢):

💣 The US-Iran War Escalates With A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ of Uncertainty

🩸And while the market has fallen a lot, many analysts believe troops on the ground could cause the pain to continue:

📉 Another analyst adds that:

⏰ One IG market analyst calls this a “48-hour ticking time bomb of uncertainty” and expects markets to fall when they reopen tomorrow.

🏦 Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady

That said, not everyone thinks this is likely. In a Friday note, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist called rising fears of rate hikes this year “overdone,” saying:

📉 Overall, the picture still isn’t pretty: war uncertainty is rising, oil prices are surging, and the Fed doesn’t have an easy way to step in and calm markets like investors might hope.

🤖 Alright, with the bad news out of the way, let’s switch to something a bit more exciting: some of the big updates coming out of Nvidia’s tech conference this week!

😎 But first, a quick work from this week’s sponsor Harvest ETFs!

😊 P.S. This week we kicked off the #MyStory contest on Blossom, where you can win some sweet prizes just by sharing your story! Make sure to check it out and enter if you haven’t already! For inspo, check out Brandon (one of Blossom’s co-founders) story here!

TOP STORY
🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales by 2027 as It Pivots from Chips to AI Operating System

✨ Despite four brutal weeks in the market and the US-Iran war dominating headlines, on the AI front, there was a lot to cheer for…

✨ So let's break down the big themes from GTC, Micron's blowout earnings, and what they mean for the AI market overall…

👀 Jensen’s New Play: From Chipmaker to AI Operating System

🦞 But the biggest story from GTC wasn't a new chip, it was a new product called NemoClaw, an open-source, chip-agnostic platform for building and deploying AI agents.

💬 Huang made the mission clear at GTC:

😰 Why Nvidia Needs a New Moat

💬 As CNBC put it this week:

🚀 The Trillion-Dollar Token Economy

💡 And if Nvidia can successfully become the operating system, the potential could be massive, with Huang introducing the concept of "token economics" as a framework to think about AI value.

📉 Micron Falls 10% Despite “Exceptional” Earnings

By the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $23.9 billion vs. $20.0 billion expected, up 196% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $12.20 vs $9.19 expected, up 757% year-over-year

🔥 One writer at Barron’s called the results “exceptional,” and analysts remain very bullish, with 25 of the 27 analysts covering the stock on TipRanks maintaining buy ratings.

💡In fact, the demand is so strong that Micron has been struggling to keep up, with the CEO saying:

💡 AI Is Still Booming, But the Bar Has Been Raised.

🔮 Across all of this week's AI news, one theme runs through everything: AI adoption is accelerating, not slowing. The infrastructure spending is flowing through the whole supply chain.

⭐️ But investors are done being wowed by roadmaps. Three years into the AI era, they want proof that spending produces durable profits, defensible moats, and real returns on capital.

🍏 In some ways, this is healthy for AI. It means investors are shifting focus from headlines and announcements and focusing more on fundamentals and execution.

🔍 And again… if we zoom out, this week’s blip is basically a rounding error, with Micron still up a massive 336% over the past year and Nvidia up 42%.

😎 But before we cover our last story of the day, a quick word from our other sponsor this week, RBC Direct Investing!

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

🎯 GoSmart by RBC Direct Investing is an easy-to-use, commission-free way to get your money working harder for you. You can:

✨ Trade for free: Unlimited commission-free trades on select ETFs, plus 50 additional commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs, and $0 maintenance fees.
📲 Automate your investing: easily create a recurring investment into an all-in-one ETF. Set it once, let it grow. You can choose one of four all-in-one ETFs, or buy the stocks and ETFs you love commission-free. Contribute when and how you want by choosing how much and when to invest. The money will automatically move from your RBC bank account.
📚 Save tax now and in the future: make the most of built-in tax benefits with the GoSmart TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA account options. Open as many accounts as you need and never pay account fees.
📊 Invest on your terms: you can:
- make changes to your recurring investments on the fly
- invest your way without the maintenance fees
- instantly transfer funds to and from your RBC bank accounts
- access info to drive decisions: real time data at your fingertips to help you follow stock and ETF prices – at no extra-charge.

⭐️ Get started today

^{*See RBC Direct Investing’s Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Alibaba Crashes 11% After Profits Plummet 67%, But Wall Street Is Still Buying

😰 On the surface, Alibaba's ($BABA) Q3 earnings report looks like a disaster. By the numbers:

❌ Revenue came in at $40.7 billion, up just 2% year-over-year, missing analyst expectations
❌ Non-GAAP net income fell 67% year-over-year to $2.39 billion
❌ Adjusted earnings per share (ADS) sank 67% to $1.01, badly missing estimates

🤔 But despite the rough numbers, analysts at Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and BofA are all essentially telling their clients to buy the dip… but why?

🚀 Cloud Revenue Soars 36%

📈 More striking: AI-related product revenue posted triple-digit growth for the 10th consecutive quarter in a row.

Like many tech companies, Alibaba is going all in on AI, with the CEO putting it plainly, saying:

🎯Analyst Reactions

💡 The key question is whether this profit collapse is a sign of structural weakness, or just the cost of doing business during a heavy investment cycle.

⭐️ Well, according to analysts, it’s the latter, with most analysts maintaining aggressive price targets for the stock:

🎯 Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating and a $180 price target, with analyst Gary Yu noting the results show "explosive AI demand from strong token usage" and that the biggest takeaway is a "strengthened commercialization of AI across model capabilities, MaaS, and agentic applications."
🎯 BofA maintained a Buy rating and $180 target, with analyst Joyce Ju calling the e-commerce softness "expected" given the macro environment.
🎯 Citi has the most aggressive target on the Street at $200, calling the cloud acceleration a "positive note." With BABA trading around $124.90 at the time of writing, that implies roughly 60% upside from current levels.

🌎 The Bigger Picture: A Rough Patch for Chinese Tech

😰 BABA's drop isn't happening in isolation. The broader Chinese tech sector has been getting hammered, with the CHQQ China ETF (one of my personal holdings) down 19% year-to-date.

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Harvest ETFs Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in Harvest Exchange Traded Funds managed by Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. (the “Funds”). Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The indicated rates of return are the historical annual compounded total returns (except for figures of one year or less, which are simple total returns) including changes in unit value and reinvestment of all distributions and do not take into account sales, redemption, distribution or optional charges or income taxes payable by any securityholder that would have reduced returns. The Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Distributions are paid to you in cash unless you request, pursuant to your participation in a distribution reinvestment plan, that they be reinvested into available Class units of the Fund you own. If a Fund earns less than the amounts distributed, the difference is a return of capital.}

^{Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in Harvest High Income Shares ETFs managed by Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. (the “Funds” or a “Fund”). Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. This article is meant to provide general information for educational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. Any security mentioned herein is for illustration purposes and should not be taken as an invitation to purchase or sell such security. The Funds will pay a monthly distribution. If a Fund earns less that the distribution the difference will be a return of capital.}

RBC Direct Investing Disclaimer

^{GoSmart is a service offered by RBC Direct Investing Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada and is a member of CIRO and the CIPF. © Royal Bank of Canada 2026.}

^{The standard commission fee will be waived for the first 50 trades you place in stocks and ETFs in GoSmart Accounts each year. If you place more than 50 trades in a year, combined across all GoSmart Accounts you hold, the standard commission fee will apply to those trades. Capped Commission-Free Trading applies per client, not account, and resets to zero (0) at the start of each calendar year. Any unused Capped Commission-Free Trades will expire on the last day of the calendar year, and will not carry over to the following year. Orders placed, but not filled, do not count towards your first 50 trades.}

^{The commission fee detailed in the Commission and Fee Schedule as applicable to Stocks and ETFs will be waived for ETFs listed as eligible for commission free trading at the time an order is placed. The list of ETFs eligible for commission-free trading is not guaranteed and may change from time to time. The standard commission fee may be applied to ETFs not listed as eligible for commission-free trading at the time an order is placed. The inclusion or exclusion of any ETF under commission-free trading does not constitute a recommendation by RBC Direct Investing to purchase or sell such securities. RBC Direct Investing Inc. does not provide investment advice or recommendations regarding the purchase or sale of any securities. Investors are responsible for their own investment decisions.}

^{If you place a trade in a U.S. denominated security, or receive an entitlement (e.g., a dividend) from an issuer of an U.S. denominated security, a foreign exchange transaction will occur and foreign exchange fees will apply. This means that the Canadian dollars you hold in your account will be converted to U.S. dollars or the U.S. dollars you receive will be converted to Canadian dollars to be held in your GoSmart account. This conversion occurs at the prevailing Foreign Currency Conversion Rate. The Foreign Currency Conversion Rate that appears on your trade confirmation and account statement includes the spread that RBC Direct Investing (or our affiliates) earn for performing foreign currency transactions for you. The spread is the difference between the rate we (or our affiliates) obtain and the rate you receive. The Foreign Currency Conversion Rate and the spread will depend on a number of factors, including market terms and conditions as well as the amount, date and type of foreign currency transaction. Foreign exchange rates and the spread is subject to change without notice. Please refer to RBC Direct Investing Commission and Fee Schedule for more information.}

📉 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:42:01 +0000

🩸 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel
🎯 CHPS: Invest in the Future of Digital Infrastructure
😬 Could the Private Credit Crisis be a Bigger Problem than the Iran War?
⭐️ 5 ETFs to Add to Your Watchlist
📉 Adobe Crashes 11% After Earnings

TOP STORY
🩸 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel

😰 It was another rough week for the markets, and once again, the Iran-U.S. war was the main culprit.

🗺️ As we’ve been covering (read here and here), the main factor hurting the markets is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a very narrow (but important) waterway responsible for roughly 20% of the world’s total oil supply.

🛢️ And this week, as tensions remain high, Brent Crude (the global Oil standard) officially crossed and maintained $100 a barrel for the first time in years, as inbound tanker traffic through the Strait fell to zero.

🚢 As of the time of writing, roughly 1,000 ships are now trapped in the Gulf, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimating the war is cutting global supply by 8 million barrels per day, calling it “the largest oil supply disruption in history.”

🎭 Geopolitical Theatre

🛡️ Trump tried to ease the volatility by doubling down on his promise from last week to have the U.S. Navy escort oil tankers through the Strait, saying it will “happen very soon,” but according to U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, that may be easier said than done:

🛢️ That said, the U.S., along with 32 member nations of the IEA, has also agreed to help bring down energy prices with a coordinated release of 400 million barrels of oil and other products from their reserves (172 million of those coming from the U.S. itself).

🩸 But even with this coordinated effort, the war led to another five straight days of declines, ending the 3rd consecutive week of bloodshed for U.S. markets:

The S&P fell -1.6%
The Nasdaq-100 fell -1.1%
The TSX fell -1.6%

📉 The S&P is now down -4.5% since the war started and -3.3% year-to-date.

😰 And while the market is already in rough shape, according to some analysts, there may be another crisis on the horizon that’s an even bigger problem than the Iran war…

👀 But before we talk about what that is, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, XTrackers!

PRESENTED BY XTRACKERS BY DWS
🎯 CHPS: Invest in the Future of Digital Infrastructure

⭐️ Position your portfolio at the center of technological innovation with the Xtrackers Semiconductor Select Equity ETF (CHPS).

🚀 Why CHPS?

Targeted Exposure: CHPS provides access to the leading chipmakers, powering breakthroughs in AI, 5G, and cloud computing—the engines of tomorrow’s economy
Cost Advantage: With a low 0.15% expense ratio, CHPS provides efficient access to a high-growth sector.
Focused Strategy: Ability to express a long-term view on semiconductors as key enablers of modern digital infrastructure and productivity trends.

📚 Learn how CHPS can strengthen a portfolio and help investors capitalize on semiconductor market momentum.

Learn More

^{*See Xtrackers Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

TOP STORY CONT.
😬 Could the Private Credit Crisis be a Bigger Problem than the Iran War?

😰 While the war has been dominating the headlines, another crisis has been brewing in the private credit market.

💸 The private credit industry has soared to $3 tillion in assets by offering higher yields than traditional bonds, lending directly to companies through private funds instead of banks.

😬 But this week, several large funds, including ones run by major firms like BlackRock, Blackstone, Blue Owl, and Morgan Stanley, have limited investor withdrawals after redemption requests surged, leading some to ask if this could be a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis and headlines like “What Is Private Credit—and Why Could It Be a Bigger Problem Than the Iran War?” from Barrons, CNBC, the New York Times, and many others.

💸 The Rise of Private Credit

🏦 After the 2008 crash, regulators forced banks to hold more capital and limit risky lending. But companies still needed loans, and investors still wanted yield. So a new set of lenders stepped in: private credit funds.

❌ Unlike stocks or ETFs, private credit investments are not easily sold. Most funds only allow investors to withdraw a limited percentage of assets each quarter. When markets are calm, this works fine. But if many investors try to withdraw at once (as is happening now), funds can hit those limits and “gate” withdrawals, meaning investors can’t access their money right away.

🤖 AI-Driven Panic

🤖 One of the factors causing these panic withdrawls is AI. A large portion of private credit lending has gone to software companies, which have been facing a massive disruption from rapidly improving AI tools.

📊 Some analysts estimate that as much as 35% of private credit portfolios could face AI risk, particularly among software firms.

📉 Private credit funds have built a reputation for very stable returns, but with the AI disruption, funds may be forced to mark down the value of those loans, adding to the panic.

👀 Potential Crisis?

🚨 The main reason for the big scary headlines isn’t really about the private credit markets, it’s more that it could be an early warning sign for broader stress in the credit markets.

💬 As the CEO of JP Morgan said back in September, after the high-profile bankruptcy of two companies funded by private credit:

👀 According to Amit Seru, a finance professor at Stanford, one collapse “often reveals deeper weaknesses in balance sheets, valuations or risk management.”

🔗 Private credit is much smaller than the mortgage market that caused the 2008 crisis, but it’s deeply connected to the broader financial system. As Laks Ganapathi from the research group Unicus says:

😮‍💨 But according to many other experts, the potential impacts are being largely overstated, especially when it comes to AI.

👀 Overall, I found it quite challenging while researching to truly understand what the risk is (other than just broad panic), and do think the headlines are overstating the potential impact to get clicks, but I’ll certainly be researching more and keeping you all updated as the crisis develops.

💡 A Note About Panic

⏰ With the war, a potential private credit crisis, AI bubble worries, and whatever new mess happens next week, a lot of you are probably feeling anxious right now, but history shows that keeping a long-term investing view is better than panic selling and trying to time the market.

📊 I shared this chart last week but I think it’s worth sharing again:

🔍 As I said last week, if you’re a long-term investor, you should get used to headlines shaking up markets, and the best way you can keep calm during times like these is to zoom out.

💡 That said, mini market crashes like these (if we can even really call it that with the S&P still up 17% over the past year), are a good time to re-evaluate your portfolio to make sure it matches your risk tolerance and goals… and if you want a tangible next step to do that, make sure you check out Beevis on Blossom, our new AI tool which gives you a quick analysis of your portfolio!

📰 In other news, Adobe ($ADBE) had a big stock crash this week and a cool new ETF hit the market, so let’s switch gears and dive into our other stories of the week!

FUTUREPROOF RECAP
⭐️ 5 ETFs to Add to Your Watchlist

🥳 This last week the Blossom team were out in Miami for Futureproof, essentially a big festival for ETF providers and financial advisors, and I had the chance to meet a lot of awesome fund managers and lead about some ETFs that are worth adding to your radar!

🤖 1) The Draco Evolution AI ETF ($DRAI)
An ETF that uses a proprietary AI-driven model to make investment decisions, blending quantitative analysis with macroeconomic data. The fund dynamically adjust its portfolio based on market conditions, giving investors exposure to a strategy that combines artificial intelligence with active portfolio management.

🪙 2) Hashdex’s Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF ($NCIQ)
Instead of betting on just one token like Bitcoin, $NCIQ tracks the Nasdaq Crypto Index, which includes multiple leading digital assets and aims to represent the broader crypto market.

📊 3) InfraCap’s Small Cap Equity ETF ($SCAP)
A small-cap focused ETF that aims to capture opportunities among under-the-radar companies with strong growth potential. Small caps have lagged large caps in recent years, so funds like $SCAP are designed for investors who believe a rotation back into smaller companies could be coming.

🏦 4) Northern Trust’s Municipal Bond ETFs ($TAXS and $TAXI)
These ETFs focus on tax-advantaged municipal bonds, which are popular with investors looking for income that may be exempt from federal taxes. With interest rates still elevated, muni bond ETFs like $TAXS and $TAXI are drawing attention from investors seeking steady tax-efficient yield.

💸 5) BondBloxx’s CCC Rated USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF ($XCCC)
An ETF targeting the highest-yield segment of the high-yield bond market, specifically CCC-rated corporate debt. While riskier than most bond ETFs, $XCCC offers exposure to the part of the credit market that can deliver very high income potential (currently at a ~11% 30-Day SEC Yield)

💡 One thing that stood out at FutureProof was just how niche ETFs are becoming. From AI-powered stock pickers to private credit exposure and even CCC-rated bonds, ETF issuers are increasingly building funds that target very specific strategies and parts of the market! I hope you find some of these as interesting as I did!

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Adobe Crashes 11% After Earnings

😬 On Thursday, one of the most sold off stocks in the market to-date reported its Q1 earnings, beating on the top and bottom line, but dropping another 11% this week on the news that it’s longtime CEO, Shantanu Narayen, would be stepping down.

🪑 The reason for his resignation wasn’t exactly stated, though he be working with Adobe’s Board of Directors to identify a successor and will stay on as Chair of the Board when the new CEO is chosen.

📊 An overview of the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $6.4 billion vs. $6.28 billion expected, up 12% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $6.06 vs $5.87 expected, up 11% year-over-year

🤖 Easing AI Concerns

🧐 In the past year, Adobe has been hurt by the “SaaSpocalypse” narrative, an idea that AI from companies like Midjourney, Google ($GOOGL) or OpenAI would slowly eat Adobe’s lunch by making Creative Cloud and the company’s suite of video and image editing software obsolete.

💡 But behind the scenes, rather than fighting AI, Adobe has embedded it directly into its products with Firefly, its commercially safe generative AI model, trained on licensed and public domain content. This model has been integrated into the company’s own software:

📈 As of this quarter, Firefly subscription and credit pack ARR grew 75% quarter over quarter, generative credit consumption was up over 45% quarter over quarter, and video generative actions grew 8x year over year. Monthly active users across Adobe products also surpassed 850 million, growing 17% year-over-year.

🤔 Some analysts say this may help with AI fears, though Adobe will need many more quarters to follow with similar results before sentiment officially changes.

🔑 But whether the next CEO can keep that momentum going without missing a beat is the real question heading into a new year.

📈 Despite the Drop, Analysts Remain Fairly Bullish

📉 Analysts remain relatively bullish on Adobe despite all the concerns surrounding it, but some still remain cautious. And a new CEO will need to stay on the track of defending Adobe’s business in an AI world to put down any fears from investors. As one analyst put it:

🎯 Current analyst consensus rate Adobe a “Moderate Buy” with an average price target of $348 per share, or roughly 40% higher than the current price of $250, with most sitting in the $250-$350 range.

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Xtrackers Important Disclosures

^{Important Disclosures}

^{All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Information on the fund’s investment objectives, risk factors, charges, and expenses can be found in the fund’s prospectus at}^{Xtrackers.com}^{. Read it carefully before investing.}

^{For current holdings and more info}^{Xtrackers Semiconductor Select Equity ETF | CHPS}^{. Distributed by ALPS Distributors, Inc.}

📉 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 21:03:26 +0000

TOP STORY
🩸 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel

😰 It was another rough week for the markets, and once again, the Iran-U.S. war was the main culprit.

🎭 Geopolitical Theatre

🩸 But even with this coordinated effort, the war led to another five straight days of declines, ending the 3rd consecutive week of bloodshed for U.S. markets:

The S&P fell -1.6%
The Nasdaq-100 fell -1.1%
The TSX fell -1.6%

📉 The S&P is now down -4.5% since the war started and -3.3% year-to-date.

😰 And while the market is already in rough shape, according to some analysts, there may be another crisis on the horizon that’s an even bigger problem than the Iran war…

😎 But before we talk about what that is, a quick word from our sponsor this week RBC Direct Investing!

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

🎯 GoSmart by RBC Direct Investing is an easy-to-use, commission-free way to get your money working harder for you. You can:

✨ Trade for free: Unlimited commission-free trades on select ETFs, plus 50 additional commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs, and $0 maintenance fees.
📲 Automate your investing: easily create a recurring investment into an all-in-one ETF. Set it once, let it grow. You can choose one of four all-in-one ETFs, or buy the stocks and ETFs you love commission-free. Contribute when and how you want by choosing how much and when to invest. The money will automatically move from your RBC bank account.
📚 Save tax now and in the future: make the most of built-in tax benefits with the GoSmart TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA account options. Open as many accounts as you need and never pay account fees.
📊 Invest on your terms: you can:
- make changes to your recurring investments on the fly
- invest your way without the maintenance fees
- instantly transfer funds to and from your RBC bank accounts
- access info to drive decisions: real time data at your fingertips to help you follow stock and ETF prices – at no extra-charge.

⭐️ Get started today

^{*See RBC Direct Investing’s Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

TOP STORY CONT.
😬 Could the Private Credit Crisis be a Bigger Problem than the Iran War?

😰 While the war has been dominating the headlines, another crisis has been brewing in the private credit market.

💸 The private credit industry has soared to $3 tillion in assets by offering higher yields than traditional bonds, lending directly to companies through private funds instead of banks.

💸 The Rise of Private Credit

🤖 AI-Driven Panic

📊 Some analysts estimate that as much as 35% of private credit portfolios could face AI risk, particularly among software firms.

📉 Private credit funds have built a reputation for very stable returns, but with the AI disruption, funds may be forced to mark down the value of those loans, adding to the panic.

👀 Potential Crisis?

🚨 The main reason for the big scary headlines isn’t really about the private credit markets, it’s more that it could be an early warning sign for broader stress in the credit markets.

💬 As the CEO of JP Morgan said back in September, after the high-profile bankruptcy of two companies funded by private credit:

👀 According to Amit Seru, a finance professor at Stanford, one collapse “often reveals deeper weaknesses in balance sheets, valuations or risk management.”

😮‍💨 But according to many other experts, the potential impacts are being largely overstated, especially when it comes to AI.

💡 A Note About Panic

📊 I shared this chart last week but I think it’s worth sharing again:

🔍 As I said last week, if you’re a long-term investor, you should get used to headlines shaking up markets, and the best way you can keep calm during times like these is to zoom out.

📰 In other news, Adobe ($ADBE) had a big stock crash this week and a cool new ETF hit the market, so let’s switch gears and dive into our other stories of the week!

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CBOE
📣 New ETF Alert: Dynamic Funds Launches DXMC, the Active Multi-Crypto ETF

It’s been a minute since we’ve had a new ETF alert in the Weekly Buzz, but this week we’re in luck, with a new crypto ETF hitting the market.

🎯 DXMC, the Dynamic Active Multi-Crypto ETF, a single ticket solution offering access to leading crypto assets and companies deploying blockchain technology in real-world applications.

📊 The ETF structure also eliminates the need for crypto wallets, exchanges, or custody management, and can be held in an RRSP or TFSA.

➕ Add it to your Blossom watchlist here or learn more on Dynamic’s website!

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Adobe Crashes 11% After Earnings

📊 An overview of the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $6.4 billion vs. $6.28 billion expected, up 12% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $6.06 vs $5.87 expected, up 11% year-over-year

🤖 Easing AI Concerns

🤔 Some analysts say this may help with AI fears, though Adobe will need many more quarters to follow with similar results before sentiment officially changes.

🔑 But whether the next CEO can keep that momentum going without missing a beat is the real question heading into a new year.

📈 Despite the Drop, Analysts Remain Fairly Bullish

/FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

RBC Direct Investing Disclaimer

^{GoSmart is a service offered by RBC Direct Investing Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada and is a member of CIRO and the CIPF. © Royal Bank of Canada 2026.}

😰 Stocks Drop As Fears of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict Rise (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:24:37 +0000

TOP STORY
😰 Markets Have Worst Week Since April As Fears Rise of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict

😰 The numbers are in, and unsurprisingly, the Iran-US war was not good for the stock market. As discussed last week, the biggest threat from the war was the closure of the ‘Strait of Hormuz’, a waterway vital for the world’s total oil trade.

🚢 According to reports, a handful of drone strikes came off near the strait, and that was enough for insurers and shippers to deem it unusable, leading to over 20% of global oil supply effectively trapped.

🛢️ As a result, Brent Crude (the global oil benchmark) surged over 28% to $92 per barrel, with Qatar’s energy minister saying prices could reach $150 per barrel in the coming weeks if oil tankers are unable to pass through the Strait, and that “this could bring down the economies of the world.”

🧘‍♂️ Trump Tries to Calm Nerves

🛡️ In response to the Strait chaos, Trump vowed to provide all vessels with $20B in government-backed “political risk insurance” and even brought up the idea of escorting oil tankers in the Strait by the U.S. Navy to “ensure the free flow of energy to the world.”

🩸 But that unfortunately wasn’t enough to save us from a very rough week, with all the major indexes falling, in the worst week since last April (when ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs shook the markets). Across the indexes:

The S&P fell -2.02%
The Nasdaq-100 fell -1.27%
The TSX fell -3.66%

⭐️ “Not As Bad As It Might Have Been”

Despite the big drop, according to many analysts, the week ‘wasn't as bad as it might have been,’ with many investors still buying the dip in hopes that the conflict would end quickly:

🤞 This hope was especially strong at the start of the week, with the market opening relatively flat on Monday and even climbing on Wednesday. But as the conflict waged on, stocks fell hard Thursday and Friday, with JPMorgan saying:

😬 While Trump has suggested the war could end in a matter of weeks, fears of a prolonged conflict spiked on Friday when Trump said he would only accept "unconditional surrender" from Iran to end the war.

🏆 Energy & Defence Stocks Rise With Palantir Soaring 15%

Despite the rough week overall, there were some sectors and stocks which benefit from the war:

🛢️ Energy stocks and ETFs like the State Street Energy Select Sector ETF ($XLE) (which tracks the largest Oil & Gas companies in the world) jumped 1.2% over the week and now up 24% year-to-date.
🛡️ Defence stocks and ETFs like the Global X Defense Tech ETF ($SHLD) were also unsurprising winners, with SHLD jumping 3.2% over the week and now up 16% year-to-date

⭐️ One of the biggest winners was Palantir ($PLTR), which soared 15% (its best week since last August), a welcome boost for investors after the over 33% decline over the past 2 months.

⏰ The war is especially good timing for Palantir, as many feared the government’s blacklisting of Anthropic (which Palantir partners with to power its AI tools) would hurt the company, but it seems investors largely brushed that off this week.

🤔 What’s Next?

👀 Ok, so does this mean you should sell all your stocks and ETFs and pile into defense and energy? Well no…

🔍 The reality is, if you’re a long-term investor, you should get used to headlines shaking up markets, and the best way you can keep calm during times like these is to zoom out (see chart below).

🟢 While the market swings up and down, over the past 82 years, every 10-year period in the markets has delivered positive returns (also, 93% of 5-year periods and 88% of 3-year periods). This means while it’s difficult to know what will happen next week or next year, if you have a diversified portfolio, you can rest easy knowing time is your ally.

⁉️ In the near term, the big question that will sway the markets is ‘how long will the conflict last’. If the conflict drags on, oil prices will stay high, hurting the economy and the stock market. If it wraps up soon, we'll likely see the quick recovery that dip buyers are hoping for.

🛍️ Outside of defense and energy, two other stocks saw strong gains this week that flew completely under the radar amid the war: Costco & Target, which soared 3% and 9% this week after earnings.

🕵️‍♂️ So let’s take a look at what’s going on with 2 of Blossom’s favourite retail/grocery stocks, and what they mean for the economy at large. But first, a quick word from our sponsor this week Public!

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUBLIC
🎁 Sign up for Public and Get Free Blossom PRO Access!

🔥 Did you know that through our partnership with Public, if you sign up for a Public account and connect it to Blossom, you unlock Blossom Pro for free?

💸 On top of that Public also has some of the best yields in the market, with a High-Yield cash account of 3.3%, a Bond Account of 5.5%, and a 1% IRA match!

⭐️ The app is also jam-packed with useful features like ‘Key Moments’, which share AI-generated summaries on the reasons behind every major stock price movement.

😎 If you haven’t signed up already, definitely check them out!

⭐️ Sign-up for Public!

EARNINGS RECAP
🛍️ Costco and Target Soar After Earnings

✨ With the markets deep in the red this week, let’s lighten the mood with 2 stocks that crushed it this week after earnings: Costco ($COST) and Target ($TGT).

First Costco, which beat both Revenue and Earnings estimates. By the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $69.60 billion vs. $69.06 billion expected, up 9% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $4.58 vs $4.54 expected, up 7% year-over-year

🚀 An E-Commerce Growth Pathway

🛒 A core part of Costco’s growth story is e-commerce. As we saw with Walmart ($WMT) recently, digital sales have been the highest-growing segment for traditional retail businesses. And Costco isn’t any different.

📈 This quarter, Costco’s digital sales grew by 23%, over double the company’s overall sales growth of 9%. As CFO Gary Millerchip put it:

🗺️ This roadmap includes third-party delivery partnerships (like with Instacart ($CART), expanding same-day pickup services, and growing its app ecosystem.

💡 The idea is that with Costco’s already-loyal membership base, it can layer a high-growth digital channel on top of its traditional warehouse business.

🔄 In other words, with every digital investment, the membership becomes more valuable, which drives renewals, which funds more investment into the digital business.

💰 And more spending means a higher membership renewal rate (where the lion’s share of Costco’s profit is made from), a rate that already sits at 89.8%.

📊 Analyst Reactions

👍 Analysts remain optimistic on Costco, with all the major analysts maintaining buy ratings, but expectations are enormous for the company given its sky-high valuation.

Right now Costco sits at a 50x Price to Earnings Ratio, which is higher than even Nvidia’s and nearly double the S&P 500 average. This is probably one of the main reasons the stock only jumped a little bit on such great numbers:

🤖 Target Soars 8% Despite Revenue Drop Amid ‘AI-Powered Turnaround Plan’

🎯 Target on the other hand, which has crashed over 60% since all-time-highs in 2021 as higher-income shoppers switch to stores like Walmart and Costco to save money, saw a surprising 8% jump this week despite declining revenue. By the numbers:

❌ Revenue was $30.45 billion vs. $30.48 billion expected, down 2% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share was $2.44 vs $2.16 expected, up 1% year-over-year

👎 This was Target’s 13th quarter of weak sales as Walmart and Costco steal its market share, and looking at the valuations of the 3 companies, it shows.

🪦 Compared to Costco’s PE ratio of over 50x, and Walmarts of ~45x, Target is sitting at only 15x, as many investors see it as a dying stock.

🔄 A Hopeful Turnaround

📈 So why the stock jump? Well, on Feb 1, Target installed a new CEO and leadership team, and has been making massive investments into the business.

🏠 According to the new CEO, Target had lost its place in the market and turned into an “everything store.” Now, the company is set to win back its core customer (busy families) and improve its offerings by focusing on areas such as home, beauty, and women’s style.

🏗️ The company plans to invest $1 billion in 2026 to update its stores, hire and train more employees, and, most importantly, invest big in AI. Target was an early mover in applying machine learning to its business, but with the rise of generative AI, its competitors have caught up. Target’s new CEO sees AI investments as the way to reclaim it’s spot as one of the leaders of retail.

🤩 And in the earnings call this week, Target’s new CEO says this work is already paying off, with an acceleration in February sales, and sales growth expected for every quarter of 2026. Some of the ways Target plans to leverage AI to accelerate the business include:

🤖 Predicting trends faster: Target built an internal AI system called “Trend Brain” that analyzes social media and visual data to spot fashion trends earlier, allowing designers to launch new collections in weeks instead of months.
🧑‍💼 AI tools for store employees: Workers are using AI-enabled handheld scanners that help prioritize restocking, store displays, and operational tasks, freeing employees to focus more on customer service.
🛒 AI-powered shopping experiences: The company is experimenting with chatbots and conversational commerce tools that allow shoppers to search and buy multiple items directly through AI interfaces.

✅ Ultimately, Target’s turnaround thesis is simple: get back to what made the brand work in the first place, affordable style for busy families, while using cutting-edge tech to run the business more efficiently behind the scenes.

💸 And from a valuation standpoint, expectations are already extremely low. As mentioned above, while Costco and Walmart trade at roughly 45–50x earnings, Target sits closer to 15x. That means even modest improvements in sales or margins could lead to meaningful upside in the stock (which helps explain the stock jump this week).

📈 With expectations this low, it also creates an opportunity for investors willing to bet that the new leadership team can successfully execute the turnaround.

🤔 What This Means for the Economy Overall

📊 Taken together, earnings from Costco, Walmart, and Target paint an interesting picture of the US consumer right now: spending is still strong, but shoppers are becoming far more value-conscious.

✨ Retailers that emphasize low prices and essentials, like Costco and Walmart, continue to outperform.

💳 On the flip side, retailers positioned slightly higher on the price spectrum, like Target, have struggled more as consumers cut back on discretionary purchases and look for deals.

🔄 Whether Target can turn that around remains to be seen…

PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

🤑 Fiscal.ai is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors.

📊 With comprehensive data on more than 100,000 stocks, Fiscal has everything you need to track and manage your investments.

💸 From standard financial metrics like revenue and earnings per share, to company-specific metrics like Google’s Cloud Revenue or Tesla’s Deliveries, Fiscal.ai tracks everything so you don't have to.

💡 Fiscal.ai also provides conference call transcripts, custom dashboards (with portfolio news/notifications), Super Investor Holdings, and much more!

✨ Sign up today to try Fiscal for free or to get 15% off Fiscal Pro!

🙋‍♂️ Sign up here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

😰 Stocks Drop As Fears of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict Rise

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:01:14 +0000

TOP STORY
😰 Markets Have Worst Week Since April As Fears Rise of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict

🧘‍♂️ Trump Tries to Calm Nerves

The S&P fell -2.02%
The Nasdaq-100 fell -1.27%
The TSX fell -3.66%

⭐️ “Not As Bad As It Might Have Been”

Despite the big drop, according to many analysts, the week ‘wasn't as bad as it might have been,’ with many investors still buying the dip in hopes that the conflict would end quickly:

🏆 Energy & Defence Stocks Rise With Palantir Soaring 15%

Despite the rough week overall, there were some sectors and stocks which benefit from the war:

🛢️ Energy stocks and ETFs like the BMO Equal Weight Oil and Gas Index ETF ($ZEO) (which tracks the largest Oil & Gas companies in the world) jumped 1.7% over the week and now up 19% year-to-date.
🛡️ Defence stocks and ETFs like the Global X Defense Tech ETF ($SHLD) were also unsurprising winners, with SHLD jumping 3.2% over the week and now up 16.3% year-to-date

⭐️ One of the biggest winners was Palantir ($PLTR), which soared 15% (its best week since last August), a welcome boost for investors after the over 33% decline over the past 2 months.

🤔 What’s Next?

👀 Ok, so does this mean you should sell all your stocks and ETFs and pile into defense and energy? Well no…

🕵️‍♂️ So let’s take a look at what’s going on with 2 of Blossom’s favourite retail/grocery stocks, and what they mean for the economy at large. But first, a word from our sponsor this week RBC Direct Investing!

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

🎯 GoSmart by RBC Direct Investing is an easy-to-use, commission-free way to get your money working harder for you. You can:

✨ Trade for free: Unlimited commission-free trades on select ETFs, plus 50 additional commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs, and $0 maintenance fees.
📲 Automate your investing: easily create a recurring investment into an all-in-one ETF. Set it once, let it grow. You can choose one of four all-in-one ETFs, or buy the stocks and ETFs you love commission-free. Contribute when and how you want by choosing how much and when to invest. The money will automatically move from your RBC bank account.
📚 Save tax now and in the future: make the most of built-in tax benefits with the GoSmart TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA account options. Open as many accounts as you need and never pay account fees.
📊 Invest on your terms: you can:
- make changes to your recurring investments on the fly
- invest your way without the maintenance fees
- instantly transfer funds to and from your RBC bank accounts
- access info to drive decisions: real time data at your fingertips to help you follow stock and ETF prices – at no extra-charge.

⭐️ Get started today

^{*See RBC Direct Investing’s Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

EARNINGS RECAP
🛍️ Costco and Target Soar After Earnings

✨ With the markets deep in the red this week, let’s lighten the mood with 2 stocks that crushed it this week after earnings: Costco ($COST) and Target ($TGT).

First Costco, which beat both Revenue and Earnings estimates. By the numbers:

✅ Revenue hit $69.60 billion vs. $69.06 billion expected, up 9% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share hit $4.58 vs $4.54 expected, up 7% year-over-year

🚀 An E-Commerce Growth Pathway

📈 This quarter, Costco’s digital sales grew by 23%, over double the company’s overall sales growth of 9%. As CFO Gary Millerchip put it:

🗺️ This roadmap includes third-party delivery partnerships (like with Instacart ($CART), expanding same-day pickup services, and growing its app ecosystem.

💡 The idea is that with Costco’s already-loyal membership base, it can layer a high-growth digital channel on top of its traditional warehouse business.

🔄 In other words, with every digital investment, the membership becomes more valuable, which drives renewals, which funds more investment into the digital business.

💰 And more spending means a higher membership renewal rate (where the lion’s share of Costco’s profit is made from), a rate that already sits at 89.8%.

📊 Analyst Reactions

👍 Analysts remain optimistic on Costco, with all the major analysts maintaining buy ratings, but expectations are enormous for the company given its sky-high valuation.

🤖 Target Soars 8% Despite Revenue Drop Amid ‘AI-Powered Turnaround Plan’

❌ Revenue was $30.45 billion vs. $30.48 billion expected, down 2% year-over-year
✅ Earnings per share was $2.44 vs $2.16 expected, up 1% year-over-year

👎 This was Target’s 13th quarter of weak sales as Walmart and Costco steal its market share, and looking at the valuations of the 3 companies, it shows.

🪦 Compared to Costco’s PE ratio of over 50x, and Walmarts of ~45x, Target is sitting at only 15x, as many investors see it as a dying stock.

🔄 A Hopeful Turnaround

📈 So why the stock jump? Well, on Feb 1, Target installed a new CEO and leadership team, and has been making massive investments into the business.

🤖 Predicting trends faster: Target built an internal AI system called “Trend Brain” that analyzes social media and visual data to spot fashion trends earlier, allowing designers to launch new collections in weeks instead of months.
🧑‍💼 AI tools for store employees: Workers are using AI-enabled handheld scanners that help prioritize restocking, store displays, and operational tasks, freeing employees to focus more on customer service.
🛒 AI-powered shopping experiences: The company is experimenting with chatbots and conversational commerce tools that allow shoppers to search and buy multiple items directly through AI interfaces.

📈 With expectations this low, it also creates an opportunity for investors willing to bet that the new leadership team can successfully execute the turnaround.

🤔 What This Means for the Economy Overall

📊 Taken together, earnings from Costco, Walmart, and Target paint an interesting picture of the US consumer right now: spending is still strong, but shoppers are becoming far more value-conscious.

✨ Retailers that emphasize low prices and essentials, like Costco and Walmart, continue to outperform.

💳 On the flip side, retailers positioned slightly higher on the price spectrum, like Target, have struggled more as consumers cut back on discretionary purchases and look for deals.

🔄 Whether Target can turn that around remains to be seen…

PRESENTED BY EVOLVE ETFS
⭐️ QQQY: Get Paid to Own Big Tech

🍁 For Canadian investors seeking exposure to the world’s leading technology companies while generating consistent income, QQQY offers a compelling solution.

QQQY invests in companies classified as technology within the Nasdaq-100®, giving investors access to many of the businesses driving today’s modern economy, from semiconductors and cloud infrastructure to cybersecurity and software platforms. Rather than broad market exposure, QQQY focuses on a concentrated segment of tech leaders reshaping how industries operate and grow.

💰 What sets the strategy apart is its enhanced-yield design. QQQY actively writes covered calls on up to 50% of the portfolio, seeking to generate additional premium income while maintaining meaningful participation in equity markets. These option premiums help support attractive monthly distributions and may help reduce portfolio volatility during periods of market turbulence.

The bottom line: QQQY is designed for Canadians who believe in the long-term growth of technology and want to be paid along the way, combining big-tech exposure with a disciplined enhanced income strategy.

Learn more about QQQY

^{*See Evolve ETFs Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

RBC Direct Investing Disclaimer

^{GoSmart is a service offered by RBC Direct Investing Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada and is a member of CIRO and the CIPF. © Royal Bank of Canada 2026.}

Evolve ETFs Disclaimer

^{Evolve Funds Group Inc. is the investment fund manager and portfolio manager. Evolve NASDAQ Technology Enhanced Yield Index Fund (“QQQY”) is offered by Evolve Funds Group Inc., and distributed through authorized dealers.}

^{The information contained herein is a general description and is not intended to be specific investment advice to any particular investor nor intended to be investment or tax advice. You should not act or rely on the information contained herein without seeking the advice of an appropriate professional advisor. The information contained herein is intended for informational purposes as a summary only, does not constitute an offer to sell any securities or a legally binding obligation, it is qualified entirely by, and should be read in conjunction with, the more detailed information appearing in the prospectuses found on the Evolve Funds Group Inc website at}^{https://evolveetfs.com/}

^{Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with exchange traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds. Please read the prospectus before investing. ETFs and mutual funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.}

^{Certain statements contained herein are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements (“FLS”) are statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or that include words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” or “estimate,” or other similar expressions. Statements that look forward in time or include anything other than historical information are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results, actions or events could differ materially from those set forth in the FLS. FLS are not guarantees of future performance and are by their nature based on numerous assumptions. Although the FLS contained herein are based upon what Evolve Funds Group Inc. and the portfolio manager believe to be reasonable assumptions, neither Evolve Funds Group Inc. nor the portfolio manager can assure that actual results will be consistent with these FLS. The reader is cautioned to consider the FLS carefully and not to place undue reliance on FLS. Unless required by applicable law, it is not undertaken, and specifically disclaimed that there is any intention or obligation to update or revise FLS, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.}

^{Nasdaq®, Nasdaq-100®, Nasdaq-100 Index®, Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector Adjusted Market-Cap Weighted™ Index are trademarks of Nasdaq, Inc. (which with its affiliates is referred to as the "Corporations") and are licensed for use by Evolve ETFs. The Product(s) have not been passed on by the Corporations as to their legality or suitability. The Product(s) are not issued, endorsed, sold, or promoted by the Corporations. THE CORPORATIONS MAKE NO WARRANTIES AND BEAR NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT(S).}

^{Any use of or references made to Nasdaq®, and any materials or indices thereof, are used under licence and do not imply any formal association.}

💥 The US Strikes Iran. Here's What To Expect in the Stock Market (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:01:11 +0000

TOP STORY
🪖 The US Strikes Iran. Here's What To Expect in the Stock Market

🪖 Nvidia’s earnings (covered in detail on Thursday) were supposed to be the big story of the week… but that changed yesterday when the US military conducted joint missile strikes with Israel to topple the current regime in Iran.

💀 In less than a day, Iran’s Supreme Leader and other members of the regime were killed, with Trump announcing that strikes will continue “for as long as necessary.”

🎯 The main justification for the attack was to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which, according to Trump, the country wasn’t willing to do. In response to the strikes, Iran launched waves of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel and U.S. bases across the Middle East (including striking the Fairmont in Dubai).

🛢️ While the markets closed before the Saturday attack (meaning we won’t see the market’s reaction until Monday), Oil prices reflected the potential conflict, with Brent Crude (the global standard) rising +2.45% on Friday in anticipation (it’s highest price since July).

😥 Obviously, war has a massive human cost, and I don’t mean to downplay the tragedy by jumping directly into market impact, but since this is an investing newsletter, I’ll leave the politics and human impact to the other commentators and focus on what the war means for the stock market…

😰 Risk Of “Guaranteed Global Recession”

🛳️ Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer globally and shares a coast with the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that accounts for roughly 20-30% of the world’s total oil trade.

📢 According to former White House advisor Bob McNally, a potential blockage of this strait, likely as a retaliatory measure by Iran, would result in oil prices spiking from $72 to $100 a barrel. And if prolonged, would result in “a guaranteed global recession.”

💬 Even just the prospect of a smaller conflict in the region is expected to make prices jump $5-10 a barrel on fear alone.

😰 According to John Briggs, the head of US rates strategy at Natixis, the “scale of the attacks and Iranian retaliation is larger than what the market expected,” and traders will be adopting a “haven first, ask questions later” approach.

📉 This is bad for stocks since investor anxiety and fear typically drives money managers to sell equities and flee to safe-haven assets like Treasuries and Gold.

⚠️ All this means we’ll likely see a stock market dip on Monday, leading Strategists at Barclays to warn against buying the dip, saying:

👎 But many others disagree with Ajay, with the Head of Macro Research for Charles Schwab, saying:

🚨 But in any case, exercise caution on Monday and understand that if you’re buying the dip, you're basically making a bet that the conflict (and market impact) will be short-lived. You could be right, but the move is not without risk!

🤖 Outside of the war, there was actually a lot of other big stories in the world of AI + a massive update in the Netflix bid to buy Paramount, so let’s shift gears to the other big news this week…

😎 But first, a word from our sponsor this week Public!

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUBLIC
🎁 Sign up for Public and Get Free Blossom PRO Access!

🔥 Did you know that through our partnership with Public, if you sign up for a Public account and connect it to Blossom, you unlock Blossom Pro for free?

💸 On top of that Public also has some of the best yields in the market, with a High-Yield cash account of 3.3%, a Bond Account of 5.5%, and a 1% IRA match!

⭐️ The app is also jam-packed with useful features like ‘Key Moments’, which share AI-generated summaries on the reasons behind every major stock price movement.

😎 If you haven’t signed up already, definitely check them out!

⭐️ Sign-up for Public!

IN THE WORLD OF AI
🤖 AI Winners and Losers and February’s ‘Panic Rotation’

📊 Outside of the war, there was also a lot going on with AI this week… both good and bad.

🔴 The Bad

📉 On Wednesday, Nvidia ($NVDA) reported blockbuster earnings (which I covered in detail here), but the stock dropped anyway, ending the week down 8% and erasing all its gains so far this year.

⏰ Part of the drop is likely due to Nvidia’s massive exposure to 5 Hyperscalers (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Oracle), which make up 50% of Nvidia’s revenue. Many of these stocks had a rough month as investors grow increasingly impatient on a ‘return on investment’ from the massive AI spending.

🤖 This is reflected in the stock prices across Big Tech, with the MAGS ETF (tracking the Mag 7 Hyperscalers) falling roughly 7% in February.

😰 This drove the S&P 500’s and Nasdaq-100s worst monthly performance since last March. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 fell 1.4%
The Nasdaq-100 fell 3%

🍁 Meanwhile, the Financials and Energy-heavy TSX index rose 7.6%

🟢 The Good

💰 But it wasn’t all bad… one of the biggest concerns lately has been OpenAI (which is wrapped up in a web of circular deals with players like Nvidia) potentially running out of money to meet its massive spending commitments.

🏦 Well this week, OpenAI raised a record-breaking $110 billion in new funding from Amazon ($AMZN), Nvidia, and SoftBank, valuing the company at $730 billion and easing concerns about its ability to meet its big promises (at least for now).

🏆 Outside of OpenAI, there were also some standout AI winners this week:

🖥️ Dell ($DELL) surged over 20% after reporting 39% revenue growth and forecasting its AI server business will double to $50 billion in fiscal 2027
💳 And Block ($XYZ) (owner of Cash App and Square) jumped nearly 17% after announcing a 40% workforce cut, and restructuring around an “AI-first operating model.”

🤔 It begs the question, if AI is doomed as some say, why are some stocks with AI stories rising while the “premier AI trade” (i.e. Nvidia and the Mag 7) falls?

🔄 Well, analysts are calling this a “panic rotation” where investors are simply relocating their money from the Mag 7 and broader tech due to spending uncertainty. In other words, moving their capital into more defensive sectors and companies with clearer growth stories.

📈 This can be seen based on this month’s sector performance, with tech falling as Utilities and Energy soar:

🔍 Overall, investors don’t seem to be turning a blind eye to AI (or the stock market for that matter), but they’re now turning to new sectors and looking for new AI growth stories like Dell or Block.

🎬 And speaking of growth stories, one popular stock was flying high this week. A small streaming company called Netflix… but before we dive into our final story of the week, a quick word from our other sponsor this week Fiscal AI!

PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

🤑 Fiscal.ai is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors.

📊 With comprehensive data on more than 100,000 stocks, Fiscal has everything you need to track and manage your investments.

💡 Fiscal.ai also provides conference call transcripts, custom dashboards (with portfolio news/notifications), Super Investor Holdings, and much more!

✨ Sign up today to try Fiscal for free or to get 15% off Fiscal Pro!

🙋‍♂️ Sign up here!

ACQUISITION DRAMA
🎬 Netflix Soars 25% After Losing Warner Acquisition Bid to Paramount

⚔️ After a months-long battle, Paramount Skydance ($PSKY) has officially emerged victorious over Netflix ($NFLX) in the bid to purchase Warner Bros. ($WBD).

📋 On Thursday, the Warner Bros. board said Paramount has a “superior offer” to Netflix, and gave Netflix 4 days to come up with a better one. Netflix quickly declined to raise its bid, leaving Paramount with the winning deal.

💰 The two companies (Paramount and Warner Bros.) expect to close the merger by the third quarter of 2026 and will pay Netflix a $2.8 billion breakup fee.

📈 📉 On the news, Netflix shares rose 14%, Paramount rose 20%, and Warner Bros. fell 2% with Netflix ending the week up 25%

😰 The Looming $100 Billion Debt Load

🏷️ Paramount’s offer is a $111 billion cash buyout, or $31 per share for Warner Bros. shareholders. This includes all of the company’s assets, in comparison to Netflix’s $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix stock ($28 per share total), which only included IP and streaming assets.

🏗️ About $47 billion of the deal is financed with equity from the Ellison family trust and RedBird Capital, while the remaining $57 billion is with debt.

⚠️ But while investors seem excited about the future, some analysts say the debt is a big worry, with the combined entity expected to be left with over $100 billion in debt:

📅 Overall, this deal will be one of the largest corporate buyouts ever and would leave the combined company with a debt that would take roughly 22 years to pay off, assuming every dollar is spent towards debt repayments.

🎯 On the business front, Paramount is expected to pull some IP strings and create a real viable competitor to Netflix through a new combined streaming platform. Though there are a lot of ifs, and time will tell whether overpaying for a debt-ridden movie studio and declining cable networks was the best bet.

🏆 A “Win-Win-Win”

😌 Despite the idea that Netflix “missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the co-CEOs of Netflix issued a statement saying they don’t feel bad about the outcome, and that this development won’t change the fact that Netflix is still stronger than ever:

💵 For Netflix, walking away means preserving capital for content spending and future growth rather than taking on tens of billions in debt on top of a bidding war it was losing.

🎬 And for Paramount, it gets a leading streaming platform (HBO Max), movie studio, quality IP, and two dozen cable networks… even if the price tag was a bit steep.

💬 To join the discussion on Blossom, make sure to check out @jacobb’s great post on the topic here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

💥 The US Strikes Iran. Here's What To Expect in the Stock Market

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:50:59 +0000

TOP STORY
🪖 The US Strikes Iran. Here's What To Expect in the Stock Market

💀 In less than a day, Iran’s Supreme Leader and other members of the regime were killed, with Trump announcing that strikes will continue “for as long as necessary.”

😰 Risk Of “Guaranteed Global Recession”

🛳️ Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer globally and shares a coast with the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that accounts for roughly 20-30% of the world’s total oil trade.

💬 Even just the prospect of a smaller conflict in the region is expected to make prices jump $5-10 a barrel on fear alone.

📉 This is bad for stocks since investor anxiety and fear typically drives money managers to sell equities and flee to safe-haven assets like Treasuries and Gold.

⚠️ All this means we’ll likely see a stock market dip on Monday, leading Strategists at Barclays to warn against buying the dip, saying:

👎 But many others disagree with Ajay, with the Head of Macro Research for Charles Schwab, saying:

😎 But first, a word from our sponsor this week BMO ETFs!

PRESENTED BY BMO ETFS
⭐️ Hey Blossom Socialites- This is your reminder to consider putting those RRSP
contributions to work!

⏰ The 2025 RRSP contribution deadline is March 2—but once you’ve made your contribution, the bigger question becomes: now what?

⭐️ For long-term, buy-and-hold investors, an asset allocation ETF such as ZEQT, the BMO All Equity ETF, offers a simple and effective way to put your RRSP dollars to work. With a single trade, you can gain access to a professionally designed, globally diversified portfolio of equities—so you’re not relying on just one market, sector, or strategy.

💸 It’s investing made refreshingly straightforward. Even better, our low management fee of just 0.15% on ZEQT means more of your money stays invested and compounding over time, which can make a meaningful difference on the road to retirement.

📊 Whether you’re just getting started or fine-tuning an existing plan, BMO’s Asset Allocation ETFs are built to help you stay invested, stay diversified, and stay focused on what matters most: your long-term retirement goals.

⭐️ Learn more about ZEQT

*See BMO Global Asset Management's Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter

IN THE WORLD OF AI
🤖 AI Winners and Losers and February’s ‘Panic Rotation’

📊 Outside of the war, there was also a lot going on with AI this week… both good and bad.

🔴 The Bad

📉 On Wednesday, Nvidia ($NVDA) reported blockbuster earnings (which I covered in detail here), but the stock dropped anyway, ending the week down 8% and erasing all its gains so far this year.

🤖 This is reflected in the stock prices across Big Tech, with the MAGS ETF (tracking the Mag 7 Hyperscalers) falling roughly 7% in February.

😰 This drove the S&P 500’s and Nasdaq-100s worst monthly performance since last March. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 fell 1.4%
The Nasdaq-100 fell 3%

🍁 Meanwhile, the Financials and Energy-heavy TSX index rose 7.6%

🟢 The Good

🏆 Outside of OpenAI, there were also some standout AI winners this week:

🖥️ Dell ($DELL) surged over 20% after reporting 39% revenue growth and forecasting its AI server business will double to $50 billion in fiscal 2027
💳 And Block ($XYZ) (owner of Cash App and Square) jumped nearly 17% after announcing a 40% workforce cut, and restructuring around an “AI-first operating model.”

🤔 It begs the question, if AI is doomed as some say, why are some stocks with AI stories rising while the “premier AI trade” (i.e. Nvidia and the Mag 7) falls?

📈 This can be seen based on this month’s sector performance, with tech falling as Utilities and Energy soar:

PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X CANADA
📚 A Smarter Way to Hedge Without Selling Your Investments

💨 When markets move fast

Market pullbacks can happen quickly, and reacting by selling long-term investments can lock in losses, trigger taxes, and make it tricky to get back in at the right time. For many investors, the bigger challenge is staying invested when volatility spikes.

👀 How inverse leveraged ETFs may help

Inverse and inverse leveraged ETFs are often viewed as short-term trading tools, but in certain cases some sophisticated investors also use them to tactically help manage short-term downside risk. By adding inverse exposure tied to the same index or asset class, investors may be able to reduce the impact of short-term market movements without giving up their long-term positions.

🛠️ A tool for specific market events

These ETFs can be particularly useful around known catalysts – such as economic data releases or central bank announcements – when markets are expected to be volatile. In such cases, a smaller, targeted position may help offset short-term market fluctuations while maintaining existing long-term positions.

✨ Use with care

Inverse and leveraged ETFs are not buy-and-hold investments. They reset daily and carry unique risks, especially in volatile markets. While these products are therefore not for everyone, when used selectively and sized appropriately, they may offer tactical flexibility during uncertain market conditions.

Learn more

^{*See Global X Canada Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

ACQUISITION DRAMA
🎬 Netflix Soars 25% After Losing Warner Acquisition Bid to Paramount

⚔️ After a months-long battle, Paramount Skydance ($PSKY) has officially emerged victorious over Netflix ($NFLX) in the bid to purchase Warner Bros. ($WBD).

💰 The two companies (Paramount and Warner Bros.) expect to close the merger by the third quarter of 2026 and will pay Netflix a $2.8 billion breakup fee.

📈 📉 On the news, Netflix shares rose 14%, Paramount rose 20%, and Warner Bros. fell 2% with Netflix ending the week up 25%

😰 The Looming $100 Billion Debt Load

🏗️ About $47 billion of the deal is financed with equity from the Ellison family trust and RedBird Capital, while the remaining $57 billion is with debt.

⚠️ But while investors seem excited about the future, some analysts say the debt is a big worry, with the combined entity expected to be left with over $100 billion in debt:

🏆 A “Win-Win-Win”

💵 For Netflix, walking away means preserving capital for content spending and future growth rather than taking on tens of billions in debt on top of a bidding war it was losing.

🎬 And for Paramount, it gets a leading streaming platform (HBO Max), movie studio, quality IP, and two dozen cable networks… even if the price tag was a bit steep.

💬 To join the discussion on Blossom, make sure to check out @jacobb’s great post on the topic here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

BMO Global Asset Management Disclaimer

BMO Global Asset Management Disclaimer: Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investments in exchange-traded funds. Please read the ETF Facts or prospectus of the BMO ETFs before investing. Exchange-traded funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. For a summary of the risks of an investment in the BMO ETFs, please see the specific risks set out in the prospectus. BMO ETFs trade like stocks, fluctuate in market value and may trade at a discount to their net asset value, which may increase the risk of loss. Distributions are not guaranteed and are subject to change and/or elimination. BMO ETFs are managed by BMO Asset Management Inc., an investment fund manager, a portfolio manager, and a separate legal entity from Bank of Montreal. BMO Global Asset Management is a brand name under which BMO Asset Management Inc. and BMO Investments Inc. operate. “BMO (M-bar roundel symbol)” is a registered trademark of Bank of Montreal, used under licence.

BetaPro by Global X Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees, and expenses all may be associated with an investment in products (the “Global X Funds”) managed by Global X Investments Canada Inc. The Global X Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. Certain Global X Funds may have exposure to leveraged investment techniques that magnify gains and losses which may result in greater volatility in value and could be subject to aggressive investment risk and price volatility risk. Such risks are described in the prospectus. The prospectus contains important detailed information about the Global X Funds.}^{Please read the relevant prospectus before investing}^.

^{The BetaPro Products consist of our Daily Bull and Daily Bear ETFs (the “Leveraged and Inverse Leveraged ETFs”), Inverse ETFs (the “Inverse ETFs”), and our BetaPro S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures™ ETF (the “VIX ETF”) and can offer opportunities for enhanced returns or hedging strategies, but it’s essential to understand and accept the associated risks. Leveraged ETFs aim to amplify the returns of an underlying index, which can lead to higher gains, but they also magnify losses in downturns. Similarly, inverse ETFs seek to profit from declines in the underlying index, meaning they can perform inversely to the market, but losses can accumulate quickly if the market moves against expectations. While these strategies will only be used in accordance with the investment objectives and strategies of the BetaPro Products, during certain market conditions they may accelerate the risk that an investment in shares of a BetaPro Product decreases in value. Investors should be aware of and understand their risk tolerance and capacity and conduct their research before investing. An investment in any of the BetaPro Products is not intended as a complete investment program and is appropriate only for investors who have the capacity to absorb a loss of some or all of their investment.}

^{Please read the full risk disclosure in the prospectus before investing. Investors should monitor their holdings in BetaPro Products and their performance at least as frequently as daily to ensure such investment(s) remain consistent with their investment strategies}^.

^{Global X Investments Canada Inc. (“Global X”) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., Ltd. (“Mirae Asset”), the Korea-based asset management entity of Mirae Asset Financial Group. Global X is a corporation existing under the laws of Canada and is the manager, investment manager and trustee of the Global X Funds.}

^{© 2026 Global X Investments Canada Inc. All Rights Reserved.}

😬 Nvidia Saves the Market?

Maxwell Nicholson — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:53:06 +0000

SPECIAL EDITION
😬 Nvidia Saves the Market?

😬 Once a quarter, the market holds its breath as Nvidia ($NVDA) reports earnings…

😰 This quarter in particular, AI jitters have been riding high. Nearly all the major AI players (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) saw big stock drops after earnings, as investors continue to question the massive spending AI spree that seemingly has no end in sight.

🥳 With all this stress, a lot was riding on earnings last night… and Nvidia delivered. The stock initially jumped 4% after earnings, but opened this morning down 5%.

🤿 So let’s dive into the report and break down what it means for both Nvidia and the AI boom or bubble (depending on who you ask 😜)

🏆 Nvidia Smashes Revenue & Earnings

📊 First, let’s take a look at the numbers:

💰 Revenue: $68B, up 73% from last year, and 2.9% higher than analysts expected
🎯 Forward Revenue Targets: $78B, ~7% higher than analysts expected
💸 Earnings per Share: $1.62, ~6% higher than analysts expected

🤯 AI-driven data centre revenue now drives over 90% of Nvidia’s revenue, up from 60% just 3 years ago and just 38% 5 years ago.

🤔 And all this shouldn’t really come as a surprise... while the rest of the Mag 7 saw their stock prices fall after earnings, one thing was consistent: the massive increases in AI spending commitments:

Amazon ($AMZN) announced its AI spending would hit $200B this year (up 60% from last year)
Google ($GOOGL) is planning to spend $185B (double last year)
Microsoft ($MSFT)’s AI spending rose 66% in the most recent quarter to a record $37.5B.

👎 Investors reacted negatively to this as they started to question when this wild spending would show returns, but as long as Mag 7 continues to spend big, Nvidia will continue to rake in the cash.

✨ But outside of the numbers, let’s take a look at the 3 big themes from Nvidia’s earnings:

🚀 1) Revenue Continues to Accelerate

📉 Two quarters back, I shared this chart and talked about how Nvidia has posted revenue % growth declines for 9 straight quarters:

🤯 Well in Q3 (last quarter), they turned this around, with 63% year-over-year growth. This quarter, that uptrend continued with 73% growth. The fact that Nvidia is not just growing, but that growth is accelerating, is truly amazing.

🏆 Leading the charge is Nvidia’s networking business. Nvidia breaks down its data center business into compute (CPUs and GPUs) and networking. This quarter, compute revenue grew a strong 58%, but networking soared 263% to $11 billion (~20% of data center revenues).

🔗 Networking is the high-speed infrastructure that connects thousands of GPUs together so they can operate as a single AI supercomputer. As hyperscalers build massive AI “factories,” Nvidia isn’t just selling the chips, it’s capturing a growing share of the entire data center build-out.

😰 2) Heavy Exposure to Hyperscalers

🐻 The accelerating growth is certainly exciting, but on a more negative or ‘bearish’ note, Nvidia reported that more than half of its revenue comes from the 5 big ‘Hyperscalers’ who almost all plan to double their spending this year (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Oracle).

💰 The problem with this is that it’s unclear how long this can go on. Up until last year, the Hyperscalers were spending less than their quarterly free cash flow, meaning they weren’t having to dip into their cash reserves.

😥 But this year, that’s changing as spending is expected to surpass cash flow, meaning Hyperscalers will have to issue debt and/or dip into cash reserves to cover spending increases.

🃏 This means Nvidia has a LOT riding on these 5 companies and basically needs them to keep up these massive spending increases (and withstand continued investor pushback) to keep up its massive growth.

😎 But Jensen Huang is confident that the other 50% of Nvidia’s customers will also continue to keep the AI spending spree going, pointing to the buzz around new tools like Open Claw as evidence:

🇨🇳 3) Still No China Revenue

❌ China was a big pain point for Nvidia in the past, with Trump banning Nvidia from selling H20 chips in the country, costing Nvidia $4.5B two quarters back.

😥 In July, that ban got reversed, but despite government approval for shipments of its H200 chips to China, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said the company has "yet to generate any revenue" from the country, and she isn't sure if any imports of its chips will be allowed.

⚠️ While this obviously hasn’t slowed Nvidia’s growth, it does pose a major risk. After a string of AI IPOs in China (that we covered here), Nvidia's Chinese competitors are gaining momentum with Nvidia’s CFO saying:

⁉️ Now to the questions on everyone’s minds… bubble or boom? Is Nvidia overvalued or undervalued? Before we dive into what analysts have to say, a quick word from this week’s sponsor Fiscal AI!

PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

🤑 Fiscal.ai is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors.

📊 With comprehensive data on more than 100,000 stocks, Fiscal has everything you need to track and manage your investments.

💡 Fiscal.ai also provides conference call transcripts, custom dashboards (with portfolio news/notifications), Super Investor Holdings, and much more!

✨ Sign up today to try Fiscal for free or to get 15% off Fiscal Pro!

🙋‍♂️ Sign up here!

NVIDIA EARNINGS CONT.
🫧 Boom or Bubble? What Are Analysts Saying About Nvidia

💡 First, I’ll start by sharing an interesting chart: Nvidia’s price-earnings ratio, a common measure of whether a stock is under- or overvalued.

⭐️ Currently, Nvidia’s P/E is at ~40x, roughly the same level it was at a year ago and lower than levels from even 2017/2018, long before the AI bubble. For reference, the S&P 500’s PE ratio is 30x, so Nvidia’s multiple isn’t too far off. This suggests that Nvidia’s valuation hasn't run too hot compared to its fundamentals and could even be undervalued.

🎯 Analysts agree, reacting with ‘overwhelming optimism’ to Nvidia’s earnings, with 35/36 analysts covered by TipRanks maintaining buy ratings with an average price target of $267, 37% above the current price.

An analyst from D.A. Davidson summarized the sentiment well:

Many called out that Nvidia is suffering from AI jitters:

⚠️ But that doesn’t mean there aren’t major risks. Nvidia’s success is in direct correlation with the rising AI spending, and the many fears of how long the massive capex can continue to grow are very real.

💡 Even in periods of massive technological progress, infrastructure can get overbuilt. The internet has been no doubt transformational, but in the late 1990s dotcom bubble, companies invested over $1 trillion in fiber-optic infrastructure, much of which went unused.

⁉️ The big unknown is where we are in the AI buildout. Are we still in the beginning, or are we at the ‘overbuilding’ stage? As one analyst put it:

👀 And ultimately… that’s up to you to decide. If you’re curious what other investors are thinking - join the discussion on Blossom!

👋 Thanks for reading! For those new here, my name is Max (@maxstocks) and I'm the CEO of Blossom and author of the Weekly Buzz 🐝 Drop me a follow on Blossom if you want to see what I’m investing in!

PRESENTED BY PLYNK
Beyond headlines: Get AI-powered stock insights on the Plynk app

You check your portfolio, you see the numbers...but what's the story behind the movement? 🤔 Stop guessing. Plynk, the app that helps you grow your investing knowledge and move with confidence, now has AI-powered news summaries from Pebble, giving you the "why" behind changes in the market.

Get clear, concise updates on:

✔️ Your Portfolio: Understand the news affecting your specific stocks.

✔️ Your Watchlist: Stay on top of the companies you're tracking.

✔️ Market Movers: The latest on biggest movers.

Sifting through countless articles and updates is a thing of the past. This tool helps you cut through the noise and synthesizes information from third-party news sources to deliver insights in plain language.

Ready to get your own news tailored to your portfolio?

Download Plynk!

*See Plynk Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter

Plynk Disclaimer

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Digital Brokerage Services LLC (DBS), Member FINRA, SIPC. Blossom is a third party unaffiliated with DBS. DBS is responsible for the content of this advertisement only and does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any other content provided by Blossom. Content provided by a third-party service provider, Pebble Finance, Inc (Pebble). Pebble uses generative artificial intelligence to summarize financial news from MT Newswires, which may contain errors and is not intended to provide investment advice.

😬 Nvidia Saves the Market?

Maxwell Nicholson — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:51:08 +0000

SPECIAL EDITION
✨ Nvidia Saves the Market (Again)

😬 Once a quarter, the market holds its breath as Nvidia ($NVDA) reports earnings…

🥳 With all this stress, a lot was riding on earnings last night… and Nvidia delivered. The stock initially jumped 4% after earnings, but opened this morning down 3% (but is still in the green over the past week)

🤿 So let’s dive into the report and break down what it means for both Nvidia and the AI boom or bubble (depending on who you ask 😜)

🏆 Nvidia Smashes Revenue & Earnings

📊 First, let’s take a look at the numbers:

💰 Revenue: $68B, up 73% from last year, and 2.9% higher than analysts expected
🎯 Forward Revenue Targets: $78B, ~7% higher than analysts expected
💸 Earnings per Share: $1.62, ~6% higher than analysts expected

🤯 AI-driven data centre revenue now drives over 90% of Nvidia’s revenue, up from 60% just 3 years ago and just 38% 5 years ago.

Amazon ($AMZN) announced its AI spending would hit $200B this year (up 60% from last year)
Google ($GOOGL) is planning to spend $185B (double last year)
Microsoft ($MSFT)’s AI spending rose 66% in the most recent quarter to a record $37.5B.

✨ But outside of the numbers, let’s take a look at the 3 big themes from Nvidia’s earnings:

🚀 1) Revenue Continues to Accelerate

📉 Two quarters back, I shared this chart and talked about how Nvidia has posted revenue % growth declines for 9 straight quarters:

😰 2) Heavy Exposure to Hyperscalers

😥 But this year, that’s changing as spending is expected to surpass cash flow, meaning Hyperscalers will have to issue debt and/or dip into cash reserves to cover spending increases.

😎 But Jensen Huang is confident that the other 50% of Nvidia’s customers will also continue to keep the AI spending spree going, pointing to the buzz around new tools like Open Claw as evidence:

🇨🇳 3) Still No China Revenue

❌ China was a big pain point for Nvidia in the past, with Trump banning Nvidia from selling H20 chips in the country, costing Nvidia $4.5B two quarters back.

😥 In July, that ban got reversed, but despite government approval for shipments of its H200 chips to China, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said the company has "yet to generate any revenue" from the country, and she isn't sure if any imports of its chips will be allowed.

PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X CANADA
⭐️ A Modern Way to Access Growth, Income, and Diversification

⚖️ Built for Changing Markets

Markets continue to evolve. Volatility can persist, income opportunities may be hard to find, and managing multiple investments can add unnecessary complexity.

The Global X Growth Asset Allocation Covered Call ETF (GRCC) is designed as an all-in-one portfolio solution intended to help simplify how investors approach income and diversification.

🌎 A Globally Diversified Foundation

GRCC seeks to invest in a globally diversified portfolio of exchange traded funds with a target allocation of approximately 80% equity and 20% fixed income, providing broad exposure across regions and asset classes within a single ETF.

💵 Income Potential, Systematically Applied

In addition to its asset allocation, GRCC benefits from an actively managed covered call overlay. This option-writing approach is intended to generate option premiums, which is designed to deliver high monthly income.

🎯 One ETF, Streamlined Approach

If you prefer a streamlined all in one portfolio approach with built-in diversification and income potential, GRCC may be worth exploring.

Learn why. Watch the video to learn how combining equities, bonds, and covered calls can help support a more consistent investing experience.

Learn More

^{*See Global X Canada Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

NVIDIA EARNINGS CONT.
🫧 Boom or Bubble? What Are Analysts Saying About Nvidia

💡 First, I’ll start by sharing an interesting chart: Nvidia’s price-earnings ratio, a common measure of whether a stock is under- or overvalued.

An analyst from D.A. Davidson summarized the sentiment well:

Many called out that Nvidia is suffering from AI jitters:

⁉️ The big unknown is where we are in the AI buildout. Are we still in the beginning, or are we at the ‘overbuilding’ stage? As one analyst put it:

👀 And ultimately… that’s up to you to decide. If you’re curious what other investors are thinking - join the discussion on Blossom!

👋 Thanks for reading! For those new here, my name is Max (@maxstocks) and I'm the CEO of Blossom and author of the Weekly Buzz 🐝 Drop me a follow on Blossom if you want to see what I’m investing in!

CANADIAN TOP PERFORMERS
🚀 The TSX Venture50 List is Live, Showcasing 50 Stocks With Average +431% Returns

😎 This one’s a repeat from last week, but I thought I’d reinclude it in case you missed it!

🏆 The TSX just released its annual Venture 50 list, a ranking of the 50 top-performing companies on the TSX Venture Exchange over the past year, scored equally on share price appreciation, market cap growth, and trading volume… and some of the numbers were truly eye-dropping…

📊 In 2026, the 50 companies on this list posted an average price performance of 431%, generating over $17 billion in new market cap. To highlight a few:

Santacruz Silver Mining ($SCZ), a Latin America–focused silver producer, ranked #1 with an incredible +1103% share price growth
Ucore Rare Metals ($UCU), a North American critical-minerals company focused on advancing secure rare earth refining, ranked #2 with +627% share price growth
Millennial Potash ($MLP), a development-stage potash company with direct access to fertilizer markets in Brazil, the United States, and Africa, ranked #3 with +950% share price growth.

⛏️ Interestingly, mining accounted for 48 of the top 50 performers, marking what the President of the TSX Venture Exchange describes as a clear inflection point for the market:

🌼 Blossom is an official media partner of the TSX Venture 50 this year, so if you want to dig into the full list and add some of these stocks to your watchlist, be sure to check the “Markets” tab on the app (mobile-only) or check out the list here on the TSX website!

Global X Canada Disclaimer

^{Certain statements may constitute a forward-looking statement, including those identified by the expression “expect” and similar expressions (including grammatical variations thereof). The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect the author’s current expectations regarding future results or events. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the authors do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that is contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by applicable law.}

^{This communication is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase investment products (the “Global X Funds”) managed by Global X Investments Canada Inc. and is not, and should not be construed as, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice, and should not be relied upon in that regard. Individuals should seek the advice of professionals, as appropriate, regarding any particular investment. Investors should consult their professional advisors prior to implementing any changes to their investment strategies. These investments may not be suitable to the circumstances of an investor.}

^{All comments, opinions and views expressed are generally based on information available as of the date of publication and should not be considered as advice to purchase or to sell mentioned securities. Before making any investment decision, please consult your investment advisor or advisors.}

^{For more information on Global X Investments Canada Inc. and its suite of ETFs, visit}^{www.GlobalX.ca}

^{Global X Investments Canada Inc. (“Global X”) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., Ltd. (“Mirae Asset”), the Korea-based asset management entity of Mirae Asset Financial Group.  Global X is a corporation existing under the laws of Canada and is the manager, investment manager and trustee of the Global X Funds.}

📈 Markets Jump After Supreme Court Overrules Trump’s Tariffs (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:52:04 +0000

TOP STORY
📈 Markets Jump After Supreme Court Overrules Trump’s Tariffs

😰 Since last April, when Trump announced a wave of tariffs on ‘Liberation Day’, the markets have swung up and down with every new tariff announcement as uncertainty swept through the market.

🧑‍⚖️ Back in June, a three-judge panel actually ruled the tariffs ‘illegal’, but Trump vowed to fight this ruling to the Supreme Court.

😮 Well, this week, the Supreme Court made its decision, striking down the tariffs in a 6-3 ruling.

🟢 This gave the market a small boost, as investors hope the ruling should mean fewer tariff surprises moving forward:

The S&P 500 rose 1.07%
The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.13%
The TSX rose 2.25%

But while the market only jumped ~1%, stocks that have been hit hard by the tariffs jumped a lot:

Lululemon ($LULU) jumped 6.8% this week (still down over 50% since Liberation Day)
Amazon ($AMZN) ended the week up 4.7%, Apple up 2.5%
European stocks rose to all-time highs, with stocks like Hermes jumping 3.6%

👊 But celebrations were short-lived as Trump vowed to find other channels to impose tariffs, and the markets digested the massive headache of tariff refunds. So let’s break down what happened, and what this all means for the markets moving forward…

🚧 Trump Vows to Fight, Saying He Has “Backup Plans” on Tariffs

🤔 Ok, first of all - how can the President’s tariffs be ruled illegal? Isn’t he the President?

⚠️ Well, the ruling was really about the way Trump imposed tariffs, which were under the emergency law, saying that annual trade deficits were “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security and the economy.

⚖️ The Supreme Court disagreed, saying that as per the U.S. Constitution, the decision to levy tariffs on another country had to be approved by Congress.

👎 Trump was quick to respond, saying he was “absolutely ashamed” of some of the justices who ruled against the tariffs, adding:

⚡ And Trump didn’t wait around. Within hours of the ruling, Trump signed an order imposing a flat 10% tariff on all imports under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, effective February 24, then raising it to 15% within a day.

🛡️ He also announced broader use of Section 232 (tariffs under national security) and Section 301 (tariffs for unfair trade practices) statutes, two laws giving him the ability to impose tariffs outside of the IEEPA (the emergency act that the Supreme Court ruled unlawful for tariffs).

💬 U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent made it clear that “this administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs” and said that these alternatives would result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue for 2026.

😰 The Uncertainty Continues

📈 📉 So while the ruling was significant, its impact on the market was pretty short-lived. Stocks like Nike jumped 4% on Friday morning, but then ended the day down -1.3% as the market digested Trump’s response.

⁉️ While the ruling should limit the speed and severity of Trump’s ability to set tariffs, it opens the door for new questions, like what happens to the $133B in tariffs that have already been collected?

💰 Many companies, like Costco and Walmart, have already lined up in court to demand refunds, but there is likely a long legal battle ahead. Trump made it clear that the US government will not make immediate refunds despite the ruling, since the Supreme Court did not explicitly state that the administration needs to make refunds, saying the matter could “end up in court for the next 5 years”.

💡 All in all, this ruling does matter, but there’s still a long road ahead. Dan Siluk, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, put it best by saying:

🔮 In other words, the era of tariff announcements moving markets by 3% overnight is probably over. But tariffs themselves aren’t.

🤿 In other news this week, the Superinvestors (like Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and Masayoshi Son) filed their ‘13Fs’, giving us insight into what they’re buying and selling. So let’s take a look at the most significant moves this quarter…

😎 But first, a word from our sponsor this week YieldMax!

PRESENTED BY YIELDMAX®
YieldMax® 0DTE ETFs: Designed for Weekly Income Across Major U.S. Indexes

📊 YieldMax® 0DTE ETFs are built for investors who want income without giving up exposure to the greater stock market. Instead of relying on dividends alone, these funds generate income by selling zero days to expiration call options on major U.S. equity indexes. That means the strategy is designed to collect option premiums frequently, with the goal of delivering weekly income.

🤝 Each fund focuses on a different part of the market, giving investors choices based on how they want to participate. One strategy, SDTY targets the S&P 500, offering exposure to large and established U.S. companies. Another, QDTY follows the Nasdaq-100, which is home to many growth and technology driven names. The third, RDTY focuses on the Russell 2000, providing access to smaller U.S. companies that can behave differently from large caps.

📈 While the primary goal is income, these ETFs are also designed to participate in market upside through their index exposure. This approach may appeal to investors looking for a more active way to generate potential income while staying connected to the broader market. As with all investments, distributions are not guaranteed and may change over time.

Learn about YieldMax® 0DTE ETFs

^{Investing in these ETFs involves a high degree of risk. Distributions are not guaranteed and may vary.}

^{Distributed by Foreside Fund Services LLC.}

SUPERINVESTOR MOVES
👨‍💼 Bill Ackman Bets Big on Meta, Buffett Buys New York Times, and more…

📊 In other news, the Q4 2025 13F filings are in. And in celebration of super investor trades officially coming to Blossom, it’s time we take a look at the smartest portfolios on Wall Street and what story they’re telling.

👇 Here are the Top 3 moves that stood out most this quarter:

🛍️ Bill Ackman Bets Big On Meta and Buys More Amazon

💡 The most significant moves this week were from Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager behind the $15B+ hedge fund Pershing Square Capital.

🤖 Amid all the AI jitters, Bill Ackman took a bold new stake in Meta, bringing it up to ~12% of his portfolio and saying:

📈 At the same time, Ackman raised his Amazon exposure by 65%, doubling down on his AI bets, with Mag 7 stocks now nearly 40% of his entire portfolio.

💼 To fund the moves, he exited the last of his Chipotle position and sold about ¼ of his total Google position, but despite the sale, Google remains Pershing’s third-largest holding.

🗞️ Buffett Buys 3% of the New York Times

👀 Another Superinvestor everyone watches each 13F closely is Warren Buffett, aka Berkshire Hathaway. And while we say ‘Buffett’, Berkshire is now run by Greg Abel (the new CEO) after Buffett stepped down, though Buffett still oversees the company as Chairman.

🆕 While Berkshire’s moves were relatively light this quarter, one interesting one was the purchase of more than 5 million shares of The New York Times ($NYT). While for Buffett this is <0.2% of his total portfolio, it amounts to 3% of the entire New York Times, underscoring how challenging it is for Berkshire to build up positions that meaningfully swing the portfolio.

✂️ Berkshire also sold more than 75% of its Amazon ($AMZN) position (although this was <1% of the portfolio before) and continued its long-running trims of both Apple ($AAPL) and Bank of America ($BAC).

🤖 Masayoshi Son Goes All-In on OpenAI, Sells Nvidia

👀 Last but not least, Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, who arguably had the most singificant move this quarter.

This quarter, Softbank completely sold out of its Nvidia ($NVDA) stake for $5.8 billion, the second time Son has exited the AI giant.

The reason? To prepare for more investment into OpenAI.

🧠 SoftBank currently owns about an 11% stake in OpenAI after investing more than $30 billion last year, and the company plans to invest as much as $30 billion more this year in a round that would value the startup at about $800 billion.

🗣️ According to SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto the sale has “nothing to do with Nvidia itself,” but was needed to fund the OpenAI efforts.

🔄 However, with swirling concerns about OpenAI’s ability to make it’s obligations and the fears of ‘circular deals’ propping up the AI industry, it’s very interesting to see a big player have to dump one AI giant to buy another… and with increasing competition to OpenAI from Gemini, Claude, Anthropic and more, the move respresents a big bet on a single player in the ecosystem.

Alright, we wrap up with the Top Discussions of the week, a quick word from our other sponsor this week Public!

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUBLIC
🎁 Sign up for Public and Get Free Blossom PRO Access!

🔥 Did you know that through our partnership with Public, if you sign up for a Public account and connect it to Blossom, you unlock Blossom Pro for free?

💸 On top of that Public also has some of the best yields in the market, with a High-Yield cash account of 3.3%, a Bond Account of 5.5%, and a 1% IRA match!

⭐️ The app is also jam-packed with useful features like ‘Key Moments’, which share AI-generated summaries on the reasons behind every major stock price movement.

😎 If you haven’t signed up already, definitely check them out!

⭐️ Sign-up for Public!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

📈 Markets Jump After Supreme Court Overrules Trump’s Tariffs

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:20:36 +0000

TOP STORY
📈 Markets Jump After Supreme Court Overrules Trump’s Tariffs

😰 Since last April, when Trump announced a wave of tariffs on ‘Liberation Day’, the markets have swung up and down with every new tariff announcement as uncertainty swept through the market.

🧑‍⚖️ Back in June, a three-judge panel actually ruled the tariffs ‘illegal’, but Trump vowed to fight this ruling to the Supreme Court.

😮 Well, this week, the Supreme Court made its decision, striking down the tariffs in a 6-3 ruling.

🟢 This gave the market a small boost, as investors hope the ruling should mean fewer tariff surprises moving forward:

The S&P 500 rose 1.07%
The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.13%
The TSX rose 2.25%

But while the market only jumped ~1%, stocks that have been hit hard by the tariffs jumped a lot:

Lululemon ($LULU) jumped 6.8% this week (still down over 50% since Liberation Day)
Amazon ($AMZN) ended the week up 4.7%, Apple up 2.5%
European stocks rose to all-time highs, with stocks like Hermes jumping 3.6%

🚧 Trump Vows to Fight, Saying He Has “Backup Plans” on Tariffs

🤔 Ok, first of all - how can the President’s tariffs be ruled illegal? Isn’t he the President?

⚖️ The Supreme Court disagreed, saying that as per the U.S. Constitution, the decision to levy tariffs on another country had to be approved by Congress.

👎 Trump was quick to respond, saying he was “absolutely ashamed” of some of the justices who ruled against the tariffs, adding:

😰 The Uncertainty Continues

💡 All in all, this ruling does matter, but there’s still a long road ahead. Dan Siluk, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, put it best by saying:

🔮 In other words, the era of tariff announcements moving markets by 3% overnight is probably over. But tariffs themselves aren’t.

😎 But first, a word from our sponsor this week Fidelity Investments Canada!

SUPERINVESTOR MOVES
👨‍💼 Bill Ackman Bets Big on Meta, Buffett Buys New York Times, and more…

👇 Here are the Top 3 moves that stood out most this quarter:

🛍️ Bill Ackman Bets Big On Meta and Buys More Amazon

💡 The most significant moves this week were from Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager behind the $15B+ hedge fund Pershing Square Capital.

🤖 Amid all the AI jitters, Bill Ackman took a bold new stake in Meta, bringing it up to ~12% of his portfolio and saying:

📈 At the same time, Ackman raised his Amazon exposure by 65%, doubling down on his AI bets, with Mag 7 stocks now nearly 40% of his entire portfolio.

💼 To fund the moves, he exited the last of his Chipotle position and sold about ¼ of his total Google position, but despite the sale, Google remains Pershing’s third-largest holding.

🗞️ Buffett Buys 3% of the New York Times

🤖 Masayoshi Son Goes All-In on OpenAI, Sells Nvidia

👀 Last but not least, Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, who arguably had the most singificant move this quarter.

This quarter, Softbank completely sold out of its Nvidia ($NVDA) stake for $5.8 billion, the second time Son has exited the AI giant.

The reason? To prepare for more investment into OpenAI.

🗣️ According to SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto the sale has “nothing to do with Nvidia itself,” but was needed to fund the OpenAI efforts.

Alright, before our final story of the week (a highlight of the TSX Venture 50 list featuring 50 companies that hit an average +431% share price appreciation this year), a quick word from our other sponsor this year Harvest ETFs…

CANADIAN TOP PERFORMERS
🚀 The TSX Venture50 List is Live, Showcasing 50 Stocks With Average +431% Returns

📊 In 2026, the 50 companies on this list posted an average price performance of 431%, generating over $17 billion in new market cap. To highlight a few:

Santacruz Silver Mining ($SCZ), a Latin America–focused silver producer, ranked #1 with an incredible +1103% share price growth
Ucore Rare Metals ($UCU), a North American critical-minerals company focused on advancing secure rare earth refining, ranked #2 with +627% share price growth
Millennial Potash ($MLP), a development-stage potash company with direct access to fertilizer markets in Brazil, the United States, and Africa, ranked #3 with +950% share price growth.

⛏️ Interestingly, mining accounted for 48 of the top 50 performers, marking what the President of the TSX Venture Exchange describes as a clear inflection point for the market:

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Fidelity Investments Canada Disclaimer

^{Source: Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, as at January 31, 2026; ticker symbol FBAL and FGRO.}

^{Returns shown in Canadian dollars, net of fees.}

^{Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees, brokerage fees and expenses may be associated with investments in mutual funds and ETFs. Please read the mutual fund or ETF’s prospectus, which contains detailed investment information, before investing. The indicated rates of return are historical annual compounded total returns for the period indicated including changes in unit value and reinvestment of distributions. The indicated rates of return do not take into account sales, redemption, distribution or option charges or income taxes payable by any unitholder that would have reduced returns. Mutual funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change frequently, and investors may experience a gain or a loss. Past performance may not be repeated.}

^{Each of the Fidelity All-in-One ETFs (excluding Fidelity All-in-One Fixed Income ETF) has a neutral mix which includes a small allocation to Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF™ ranging between 0.5% and 3%. Additionally, if the portfolio deviates from its neutral mix by greater than 5% between annual rebalances, the portfolio will also be rebalanced. In the case of a Fidelity All-in-One ETF’s allocation to cryptocurrency, if the portfolio weight exceeds twice its neutral weight, the allocation will be brought back to its neutral weight, with any proceeds being reallocated to the other underlying Fidelity ETFs at their approximate strategic allocations. Such rebalancing activity may not occur immediately upon crossing that threshold but will occur shortly thereafter.}

^{The ETF/ETF Funds are subadvised by Geode Capital Management, LLC.}

Harvest ETFs Disclaimer

^{Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in Harvest Exchange Traded Funds managed by Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. (the “}^Funds^{”). Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The indicated rates of return are the historical annual compounded total returns (except for figures of one year or less, which are simple total returns) including changes in unit value and reinvestment of all distributions and do not take into account sales, redemption, distribution or optional charges or income taxes payable by any securityholder that would have reduced returns. The Funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Distributions are paid to you in cash unless you request, pursuant to your participation in a distribution reinvestment plan, that they be reinvested into available Class units of the Fund you own. If a Fund earns less than the amounts distributed, the difference is a return of capital.}

^{FundGrade A+® is used with permission from Fundata Canada Inc., all rights reserved. It reflects risk-adjusted performance and is based on Fundata’s GPA-style 12-month methodology with assigned grades A to E and corresponding scores 4 to 0. Funds with a GPA of 3.5+ receive a FundGrade A+®. There are 21 ETFs in the Health Care Equity category (CIFSC). For full methodology, visit}^{www.FundGradeAwards.com}^.

📈 Coinbase Jumps 16% Despite Worst Quarter in 2 Years (US)

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:22:31 +0000

TOP STORY
📈 Coinbase Surges 16% Despite Worst Quarter in 2 Years

🔴 This week, the stock market posted its worst week of the year as AI fears continued to intensify. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 was down 1.39%
The Nasdaq 100 was down 1.37% (it’s 5th loss in a row)
The TSX rose +1.86%

🤖 Much of the discussion this week centered around the “SaaSpocalypse” (which we covered in detail 2 weeks ago) as investors worry that AI will displace white-collar workers (and therefore software stocks like Salesforce and Intuit), with Microsoft’s AI chief saying that most white-collar jobs will be “fully automated” within 12 to 18 months.

✨ The one silver lining was the inflation report on Friday, which showed inflation slowed to 2.4% in January, its lowest reading since May, and a bigger slowdown than economists expected (a key data point for the interest rate cut decision in March).

😬 And while lower inflation is generally good news for a rate cut, FedWatch still has the probability of ‘no cut’ at 90%, so I wouldn’t get your hopes too high that the Fed will come save the day…

😰 But despite this week’s big drop, looking at 2026 overall, there’s a big disconnect between how the market is performing and how investors are feeling. Even though the S&P 500 is only down -0.33% year-to-date, the year has felt much rougher for many investors, in part due to the collapse of many popular retail stocks:

Hims & Hers Health ($HIMS) is down 48% in the past month
Reddit ($RDDT) is down 43% in the past month
Pinterest ($PINS) is down 45% in the past month

✅ We’ll dive into why later in the buzz, but let’s start things off on a much-needed positive note…

📈 Amidst the bloodbath this week, one stock emerged as an unlikely winner, up 16% on Friday despite posting its worst quarter in two years: Coinbase ($COIN).

🤿 So without further ado, let’s dive into Coinbase’s earnings and its share price surge, plus a rundown on some of retail’s biggest underperformers.

📊 Coinbase’s Worst Quarter in 2 years

🔍 One of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, officially reported its Q4 2025 earnings this week, and to put it lightly… it’s had brighter days:

❌ Revenue hit $1.78 billion vs. $1.85 billion expected, down 22% year-over-year
❌ Earnings per share hit $0.66 vs $0.92 expected, down 80% year-over-year
❌ Coinbase posted a $667 million net loss, ending an eight-quarter profitability streak

🚀 But despite the dismal results, the stock surged 16% on Friday, ending the week in the green, with CEO Brian Armstrong saying he’s “more bullish than ever.”

💰 The Pivot to the “Everything Exchange”

💰 Coinbase earns most (56%) of its revenue from exchange trading fees, and most of what’s traded on its platform is crypto. That means when crypto trading is up, its revenue goes up, and when crypto trading is down, its revenue goes down.

🎢 This model has long been the driver of Coinbase’s volatile financials, which piggybacked off the trading movements of the crypto industry as a whole.

😰 And recently, with major cryptos like Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ether ($ETH) plummeting by 41% and 55% over the past 6 months, Coinbase’s trading-fee business model was hit hard.

📉 And as crypto falls, Coinbase’s stock price has also suffered, with the stock falling 53% over the past 6 months.

🔄 But Coinbase has been making moves to diversify its revenue streams, with a recent push into prediction markets and derivatives (in addition to its current crypto and equity offerings) and a heavier emphasis on its stablecoin business.

💬 According to CEO Brian Armstrong:

⭐️ Coinbase is now being seen as the “Everything Exchange,” something that helped push the stock higher despite crypto fears.

📊 Analysts Maintain Buy Rating Despite Rough Quarter

💹 The “Everything Exchange” strategy is clearly resonating with analysts.

🎯 Despite the brutal Q4 miss, analysts saved the day for Coinbase, with top analysts maintaining their buy ratings.

🔥 Most notable was Bernstein, which maintained a $440 price target, saying investors are “overlooking the exchange’s resiliency” and that the stock is “too cheap to sell.”

✅ Other analysts maintained their buy rating on Coinbase stock even as they lowered their target price. While the average price target has dropped from ~$400 three months ago to $270, the majority of analysts still have a buy rating on the stock, with Brian from Deutsche summing up the sentiment:

💡 On the flip side, some analysts, like at Mizuho Securities, remain cautious that a push into other markets outside of crypto will “cannibalize on crypto sales” in the medium-term and could lead to more volatility.

🚗 And while the stock ended this week in the green, it’s still 63% down from it’s all-time-highs… and with crypto in the shape it’s in Coinbase investors likely still have a bumpy road ahead.

⚠️ But unlike Coinbase’s rally, other retail favourites continued to get absolutely crushed this week...

⚙️ But before we switch gears, a quick word from this week’s sponsor Plynk!

PRESENTED BY PLYNK
Plynk: The investing app that speaks your (love) language

Relationships can be complicated. But how you get along with your money doesn’t have to be. The healthiest relationships are often built on trust, communication, and regular check-ins and the same can go for your relationship with investing. Plynk speaks your portfolio's love language.

💬 Words of affirmation? Get expert ratings to help build confidence in your choices.

🕒 Quality time? Learn at your own pace and build confidence as you go with jargon-free education and intuitive tools.

🤝 Acts of service? Your dividends are automatically put to work, buying more shares when dividends are paid.

🎁 Receiving gifts? Get a competitive rate on your uninvested cash—a gift that keeps on giving.

Try the Plynk app today, because this could be a relationship worth investing in.

DOWNLOAD PLYNK

^{*See Plynk Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter}

RETAIL FAVOURITES FALL
📉 The Collapse of Hims, Reddit, and Pinterest

😰 I mentioned earlier that the S&P 500 is only down -0.33% this year, but for many investors, it may feel like the market is completely collapsing.

💡 Ronan made a great post about this on Blossom this week, saying, “the market isn’t down, you’re too risky.”

📉 Part of the reason why is that many of the popular retail stocks, which gave us eye-watering gains in the past few years, are facing sharp reversals in fortune, so let’s dive into 3 of them today, look at why they’re falling, and what this means for investors.

📊 I’m hoping this section can be a great reminder of the importance of diversification… as even when the market is basically flat, overexposure to a few names can lead to sharp swings in your portfolio!

💊 HIMS Down 47% This Month Amid Legal Woes

💊 First up is HIMS, the popular telehealth platform that connects consumers with licensed healthcare professionals for online prescriptions.

📈 From September 2024 to September 2025, HIMS went on a wild bull run, soaring over 300% as hype soared around the company, particularly its weight-loss drugs which competed with Ozempic and Wegovy. This led investors to price the company like a high-growth obesity-drug platform.

😬 But as often is the case, valuation got ahead of fundamentals, and as competition and regulatory uncertainty increased, the stock crashed as quickly as it soared, falling 70% from all-time-highs.

📉 This month the stock was hit especially hard, falling 48% after facing a lawsuit from Novo Nordisk (the creator of Ozempic) which seeks to ban Hims & Hers from selling compounded versions of its weight-loss drugs.

❌ The FDA has also taken action against the company, announcing Friday that it planned to take “decisive steps” to crack down on the sale of compounded GLP-1s, such as those sold by the company.

🤷‍️ This leaves the future of HIMS very uncertain and shows how quickly growth stocks can swing when the narrative changes.

💡 This isn’t to say HIMS is a good or bad investment, but is a good reminder to make sure you understand the risks you're taking on when investing heavily in a single stock.

😬 Reddit Falls 43% This Month Despite Surging Ad Revenue

⭐️Next up is Reddit ($RDDT), which soared over 140% from April 2025 to the end of the year as Reddit delivered strong growth quarter after quarter, including its most recent quarter in which revenue soared 70% to $726M (vs $665M expected).

🤖 This month, Reddit also saw a sharp reversal as investors worry about AI search cannibalizing time on Reddit, and slowing advertiser growth in 2026.

🤔 Ironically, AI was part of the reason for Reddit’s soaring stock price, with the stock jumping after licensing deals with OpenAI and Gemini, leading to articles claiming “Reddit Is Winning the AI Game.”

⏰ But as users spend more time on AI, they’re spending less time on Reddit, and the threats to Reddit’s ad revenue are proving greater than the opportunity from data licensing.

💡 But amid the massive drop, there are many who believe the fears are overblown and who argue that Reddit is now undervalued (including the controversial Jim Cramer) and is just falling victim to the ‘AI jitters’ which have plauged the market this year.

Reddit’s CEO emphasized their strong position in recent earnings, saying:

🔍 It’s worth noting as well that Reddit is betting on becoming an AI search destination itself, but that hasn’t been proven yet. Its main AI tool is Reddit Answers, which grew from 1 million to 15 million weekly users in just 9 months, but is not yet being monetized.

😬 Pinterest Falls 45% This Month Amid AI Threats

🤖 Last but not least, Pinterest ($PINS). Similar to Reddit, investors are also worried about AI’s threat to the social media company. These threats are coming from a few angles:

Pinterest's value prop is centered around human-curated discovery, and users have been reporting increased frustration with ‘AI-slop’ causing users to abandon the platform
Competitors are developing AI that connects directly to products, removing the need for an intermediary ‘discovery’ app.
Experts fear that platforms with deeper pockets, such as Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI, will offer "superior" AI-powered clones of Pinterest's core functionality.

😰 But unlike Reddit which is seeing soaring ad revenue amid AI threats, Pinterests ad revenue is falling, with net income for the most recent quarter plunging 85% to $277 million from $1.85 billion the prior year.

💰 Pinterest blames this in part on tariffs, as it is more exposed to ad spend from retailers (which are the most exposed to tariffs) and is going ‘all-in’ on an AI-first pivot to combat AI threats.

🎢 So what is the takeaway from all these rollercoaster stories?

📊 Well, even with the S&P 500 roughly flat this year, investors concentrated in high-momentum retail favorites like HIMS, Reddit, or Pinterest are experiencing bear-market-level losses.

📉 Many of these stocks were soaring on strong narratives instead of fundamentals. But once the narrative shifted, the stocks saw a sharp reversal.

💡 The same characteristics that drive the 100%+ gains, momentum, investor enthusiasm, and future expectations also make these names extremely sensitive to sentiment changes.

📊 So if you haven’t already, make sure to check your portfolio for concentration risk, and if you’re chasing these 100%+ gains, make sure you know the game you're playing…

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

🤑 Fiscal.ai is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors.

📊 With comprehensive data on more than 100,000 stocks, Fiscal has everything you need to track and manage your investments.

💡 Fiscal.ai also provides conference call transcripts, custom dashboards (with portfolio news/notifications), Super Investor Holdings, and much more!

✨ Sign up today to try Fiscal for free or to get 15% off Fiscal Pro!

🙋‍♂️ Sign up here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Plynk Important Disclosures

^{Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Digital Brokerage Services LLC (DBS), Member FINRA, SIPC. Blossom is a third party unaffiliated with DBS. DBS is responsible for the content of this advertisement only and does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any other content provided by Blossom.}

📈 Coinbase Jumps 16% Despite Worst Quarter in 2 Years

Maxwell Nicholson — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:15:05 +0000

TOP STORY
📈 Coinbase Surges 16% Despite Worst Quarter in 2 Years

🔴 This week, the stock market posted its worst week of the year as AI fears continued to intensify. Across the indexes:

The S&P 500 was down 1.39%
The Nasdaq 100 was down 1.37% (it’s 5th loss in a row)
The TSX rose +1.86%

Hims & Hers Health ($HIMS) is down 48% in the past month
Reddit ($RDDT) is down 43% in the past month
Pinterest ($PINS) is down 45% in the past month

✅ We’ll dive into why later in the buzz, but let’s start things off on a much-needed positive note…

📈 Amidst the bloodbath this week, one stock emerged as an unlikely winner, up 16% on Friday despite posting its worst quarter in two years: Coinbase ($COIN).

🤿 So without further ado, let’s dive into Coinbase’s earnings and its share price surge, plus a rundown on some of retail’s biggest underperformers.

📊 Coinbase’s Worst Quarter in 2 years

🔍 One of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, officially reported its Q4 2025 earnings this week, and to put it lightly… it’s had brighter days:

❌ Revenue hit $1.78 billion vs. $1.85 billion expected, down 22% year-over-year
❌ Earnings per share hit $0.66 vs $0.92 expected, down 80% year-over-year
❌ Coinbase posted a $667 million net loss, ending an eight-quarter profitability streak

🚀 But despite the dismal results, the stock surged 16% on Friday, ending the week in the green, with CEO Brian Armstrong saying he’s “more bullish than ever.”

💰 The Pivot to the “Everything Exchange”

🎢 This model has long been the driver of Coinbase’s volatile financials, which piggybacked off the trading movements of the crypto industry as a whole.

😰 And recently, with major cryptos like Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ether ($ETH) plummeting by 41% and 55% over the past 6 months, Coinbase’s trading-fee business model was hit hard.

📉 And as crypto falls, Coinbase’s stock price has also suffered, with the stock falling 53% over the past 6 months.

💬 According to CEO Brian Armstrong:

⭐️ Coinbase is now being seen as the “Everything Exchange,” something that helped push the stock higher despite crypto fears.

📊 Analysts Maintain Buy Rating Despite Rough Quarter

💹 The “Everything Exchange” strategy is clearly resonating with analysts.

🎯 Despite the brutal Q4 miss, analysts saved the day for Coinbase, with top analysts maintaining their buy ratings.

🔥 Most notable was Bernstein, which maintained a $440 price target, saying investors are “overlooking the exchange’s resiliency” and that the stock is “too cheap to sell.”

💡 On the flip side, some analysts, like at Mizuho Securities, remain cautious that a push into other markets outside of crypto will “cannibalize on crypto sales” in the medium-term and could lead to more volatility.

⚠️ But unlike Coinbase’s rally, other retail favourites continued to get absolutely crushed this week...

⚙️ But before we switch gears, a quick word from this week’s sponsor Scotia iTrade!

RETAIL FAVOURITES FALL
📉 The Collapse of Hims, Reddit, and Pinterest

😰 I mentioned earlier that the S&P 500 is only down -0.33% this year, but for many investors, it may feel like the market is completely collapsing.

💡 Ronan made a great post about this on Blossom this week, saying, “the market isn’t down, you’re too risky.”

💊 HIMS Down 47% This Month Amid Legal Woes

💊 First up is HIMS, the popular telehealth platform that connects consumers with licensed healthcare professionals for online prescriptions.

🤷‍️ This leaves the future of HIMS very uncertain and shows how quickly growth stocks can swing when the narrative changes.

💡 This isn’t to say HIMS is a good or bad investment, but is a good reminder to make sure you understand the risks you're taking on when investing heavily in a single stock.

😬 Reddit Falls 43% This Month Despite Surging Ad Revenue

🤖 This month, Reddit also saw a sharp reversal as investors worry about AI search cannibalizing time on Reddit, and slowing advertiser growth in 2026.

⏰ But as users spend more time on AI, they’re spending less time on Reddit, and the threats to Reddit’s ad revenue are proving greater than the opportunity from data licensing.

Reddit’s CEO emphasized their strong position in recent earnings, saying:

😬 Pinterest Falls 45% This Month Amid AI Threats

🤖 Last but not least, Pinterest ($PINS). Similar to Reddit, investors are also worried about AI’s threat to the social media company. These threats are coming from a few angles:

Pinterest's value prop is centered around human-curated discovery, and users have been reporting increased frustration with ‘AI-slop’ causing users to abandon the platform
Competitors are developing AI that connects directly to products, removing the need for an intermediary ‘discovery’ app.
Experts fear that platforms with deeper pockets, such as Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI, will offer "superior" AI-powered clones of Pinterest's core functionality.

🎢 So what is the takeaway from all these rollercoaster stories?

📊 Well, even with the S&P 500 roughly flat this year, investors concentrated in high-momentum retail favorites like HIMS, Reddit, or Pinterest are experiencing bear-market-level losses.

📉 Many of these stocks were soaring on strong narratives instead of fundamentals. But once the narrative shifted, the stocks saw a sharp reversal.

💡 The same characteristics that drive the 100%+ gains, momentum, investor enthusiasm, and future expectations also make these names extremely sensitive to sentiment changes.

📊 So if you haven’t already, make sure to check your portfolio for concentration risk, and if you’re chasing these 100%+ gains, make sure you know the game you're playing…

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

🤑 Fiscal.ai is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors.

📊 With comprehensive data on more than 100,000 stocks, Fiscal has everything you need to track and manage your investments.

💡 Fiscal.ai also provides conference call transcripts, custom dashboards (with portfolio news/notifications), Super Investor Holdings, and much more!

✨ Sign up today to try Fiscal for free or to get 15% off Fiscal Pro!

🙋‍♂️ Sign up here!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

Scotia iTrade Disclaimer

* Conditions apply. For full details visit www.scotiaitrade.com/winter26.

¹ For full details see here.

Scotia iTRADE® (Order-Execution Only) is a division of Scotia Capital Inc. (“SCI”). SCI is regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization and is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. Scotia iTRADE does not provide investment advice or recommendations and investors are responsible for their own investment decisions.

®Registered trademark of The Bank of Nova Scotia, used under license.

The Weekly Buzz 🐝 by Blossom

🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US and Iran Reach Ceasefire (US)

MARKET RECAP🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

🥶 A Deal Sitting On Thin Ice

PRESENTED BY PUBLIC🤖 Public becomes the first brokerage to introduce AI Agents for your portfolio

TOP STORY📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

🐻 The Bear Case

🐂 The Bull Case

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

📉 “The Cyber-pocalypse”

🛡️ The Counter-Argument

IN OTHER NEWS🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US and Iran Reach Ceasefire

MARKET RECAP🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

🥶 A Deal Sitting On Thin Ice

PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X CANADA🎯 Your "Tech" Fund Might Be Missing the Point.

TOP STORY📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

🐻 The Bear Case

🐂 The Bull Case

PRESENTED BY DYNAMICCurious about crypto but overwhelmed by all the complexities 😵‍💫

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

📉 “The Cyber-pocalypse”

🛡️ The Counter-Argument

IN OTHER NEWS🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

📈 The Market Jumps 3% After Iran Says They're 'Willing to Negotiate' (US)

MARKET RECAP📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

SPONSORED BY ADVISORSHARES🌍 Invest Beyond U.S. Borders With a Disciplined, Momentum-Driven ETF

TOP STORY🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🤖 Optimus is Tesla’s Future

🪐 SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🚀 SpaceX (and Artemis II) Send Space Stocks Rocketing

🤔 What’s All This Mean for Tesla?

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

EARNINGS RECAP👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

🏆 Is The “Win Now” Strategy Working?

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

📈 The Market Jumps 3% After Iran Says They're 'Willing to Negotiate'

MARKET RECAP📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

SPONSORED BY HARVEST ETFS🚀 Why Technology Still Has Room to Run | Owning Tech with Monthly Income

TOP STORY🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🤖 Optimus is Tesla’s Future

🪐 SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

🚀 SpaceX (and Artemis II) Send Space Stocks Rocketing

🤔 What’s All This Mean for Tesla?

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

EARNINGS RECAP👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

🏆 Is The “Win Now” Strategy Working?

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

📉 Meta and Google Crash Over 8% After Losing Social Media Addiction Lawsuit (US)

MARKET RECAP🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

🛢️ Citi’s $200 Oil Warning

SPONSORED BY ADVISORSHARES🌍 Invest Beyond U.S. Borders With a Disciplined, Momentum-Driven ETF

TOP STORY🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

🚬 Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment

🤔 What Analysts Are Saying

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

📉 Meta and Google Crash Over 8% After Losing Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

MARKET RECAP🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

🛢️ Citi’s $200 Oil Warning

SPONSORED BY FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CANADA⭐️ Watch your savings blossom! Last chance to win $7,000 from Fidelity!

TOP STORY🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

🚬 Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment

🤔 What Analysts Are Saying

SPONSORED BY HARVEST ETFS🏦 Get Paid Twice, Every Month & Access the Big Six Banks | HPYB

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales As It Pivots to AI Operating System (US)

MARKET RECAP🩸 Markets Tumble For 4th Week with ‘Ticking-Time Bomb’ Of Uncertainty

💣 The US-Iran War Escalates With A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ of Uncertainty

🏦 Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady

ANNOUCEMENT🤝 We’ve Partnered With State Street for the #MyStory Contest!

TOP STORY🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales by 2027 as It Pivots from Chips to AI Operating System

👀 Jensen’s New Play: From Chipmaker to AI Operating System

😰 Why Nvidia Needs a New Moat

🚀 The Trillion-Dollar Token Economy

📉 Micron Falls 10% Despite “Exceptional” Earnings

💡 AI Is Still Booming, But the Bar Has Been Raised.

MARKET RECAP
🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

PRESENTED BY PUBLIC
🤖 Public becomes the first brokerage to introduce AI Agents for your portfolio

TOP STORY
📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.
🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

IN OTHER NEWS
🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
🥳 Market Has Its Best Week of the Year After US-Iran Ceasefire Sends Stocks Flying

PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X CANADA
🎯 Your "Tech" Fund Might Be Missing the Point.

TOP STORY
📉 Palantir Plunges 14% After “Big Short” Michael Burry Tweet

PRESENTED BY DYNAMIC
Curious about crypto but overwhelmed by all the complexities 😵‍💫

ANTHROPIC HAVOC CONT.
🔒 Cybersecurity Stocks Plunge Following Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos” Preview

IN OTHER NEWS
🗞️ Other Top Headlines, Presented by Beevis

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

SPONSORED BY ADVISORSHARES
🌍 Invest Beyond U.S. Borders With a Disciplined, Momentum-Driven ETF

TOP STORY
🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

EARNINGS RECAP
👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
📈 Markets Break Losing Streak After Iran Signals Willingness to Negotiate

SPONSORED BY HARVEST ETFS
🚀 Why Technology Still Has Room to Run | Owning Tech with Monthly Income

TOP STORY
🚘 Tesla’s Rough Year Continues as SpaceX Prepares for Biggest IPO in History

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Coming to Mobile!

EARNINGS RECAP
👟 Nike Tumbles 16% After Earnings As Turnaround Efforts Falter

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

SPONSORED BY ADVISORSHARES
🌍 Invest Beyond U.S. Borders With a Disciplined, Momentum-Driven ETF

TOP STORY
🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Cap Off Worst Losing Streak in 4 Years, Citi Strategist Says $200 Oil Could Be Coming Soon

SPONSORED BY FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CANADA
⭐️ Watch your savings blossom! Last chance to win $7,000 from Fidelity!

TOP STORY
🧑‍⚖️ Meta and Google Fall 10% After Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

SPONSORED BY HARVEST ETFS
🏦 Get Paid Twice, Every Month & Access the Big Six Banks | HPYB

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT
🤖 Beevis, Blossom’s AI Investing Companion, is Live!

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Tumble For 4th Week with ‘Ticking-Time Bomb’ Of Uncertainty

ANNOUCEMENT
🤝 We’ve Partnered With State Street for the #MyStory Contest!

TOP STORY
🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales by 2027 as It Pivots from Chips to AI Operating System

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Alibaba Crashes 11% After Profits Plummet 67%, But Wall Street Is Still Buying

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

MARKET RECAP
🩸 Markets Tumble For 4th Week with ‘Ticking-Time Bomb’ Of Uncertainty

SPONSORED BY HARVEST ETFS
🇨🇦 Invest in Canada’s Strengths in 2026

TOP STORY
🤑 Nvidia Eyes $1T in Sales by 2027 as It Pivots from Chips to AI Operating System

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Alibaba Crashes 11% After Profits Plummet 67%, But Wall Street Is Still Buying

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

TOP STORY
🩸 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel

PRESENTED BY XTRACKERS BY DWS
🎯 CHPS: Invest in the Future of Digital Infrastructure

TOP STORY CONT.
😬 Could the Private Credit Crisis be a Bigger Problem than the Iran War?

FUTUREPROOF RECAP
⭐️ 5 ETFs to Add to Your Watchlist

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Adobe Crashes 11% After Earnings

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

TOP STORY
🩸 Market Crash Continues For 3rd Week As Oil Crosses $100/Barrel

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

TOP STORY CONT.
😬 Could the Private Credit Crisis be a Bigger Problem than the Iran War?

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CBOE
📣 New ETF Alert: Dynamic Funds Launches DXMC, the Active Multi-Crypto ETF

EARNINGS RECAP
📉 Adobe Crashes 11% After Earnings

/FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

TOP STORY
😰 Markets Have Worst Week Since April As Fears Rise of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUBLIC
🎁 Sign up for Public and Get Free Blossom PRO Access!

EARNINGS RECAP
🛍️ Costco and Target Soar After Earnings

PARTNERSHIP WITH FISCAL AI
🔍 Research Stocks Like a Pro

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Top Discussions of the Week

TOP STORY
😰 Markets Have Worst Week Since April As Fears Rise of a Prolonged US-Iran Conflict