Malls, beer, and health insurance: your July Main Street Gut Check

Your July Main Street Gut Check

Our monthly read on where the American consumer is actually spending, built from real demand data across the 600-plus companies we track.

This month digs into shoppers heading back to the mall, a World Cup beer summer that's minting some brewers and skipping others, and a fresh trend out of the most squeezed corner of the family budget.

Nine themes, the charts behind each one, and the four things we're watching into August.

If you open one thing we’ve covered this week, make it this.

Read here →

Robot Hands Just Got Good Enough to Feel a Glass Slip

1X's NEO humanoid can now hold a wine glass, feel it start to slip, and adjust its grip before it drops. 25 degrees of freedom and, more to the point, a sense of touch.

That points at a corner of the robotics supply chain that gets far less attention than the cameras and AI chips: the sensors, actuators, and connectors that let a hand feel contact instead of dropping it.

We put a fresh set of pin-action plays on the watchlist and mapped where the cleanest US exposure actually sits.

Read here →

PepsiCo Just Tripped as GLP-1s Squash Snacking

PepsiCo beat on revenue but missed on earnings, and the weakness landed exactly where appetite suppression bites hardest: North American snacks and beverages.

With McKinsey projecting 25 to 50 million GLP-1 users by 2030, up from around 10 million today, that basket shift is only accelerating, and the market is still underpricing the winner on the other side of the trade.

We name the enabler we think owns the customer, the app, and the prescription flow, plus the CPG names now on the defensive.

Read here →

The Biggest Robinhood Catalyst Since 2021

Over the July 4 weekend, the government launched savings accounts for American children and routed them through Robinhood (HOOD).

Parents registered more than 6 million kids before contributions even opened, with Robinhood named the exclusive brokerage and initial trustee.

We've been long HOOD since $13.71 (near $118 today), web traffic just hit a 13-month high, and Q2 earnings land July 29.

We break down what becoming the first brokerage for a generation is worth, and the ripple effects we're watching next.

Read here →

LikeFolio Weekly Roundup: 3 Infinite Holds Strengthen Their Grip

Data. Compute. Energy. Three different stories, one long-term trend…

This week, three of our Infinite Holds all strengthened the same thing: their competitive advantage.

Tesla (TSLA) expanded its data advantage.

Amazon (AMZN) expanded its compute advantage.

Google (GOOGL) expanded its energy advantage.

Each company is investing in an asset that becomes more valuable as AI adoption accelerates, and harder for competitors to replicate.

Each move matters for one reason: it deepens the long-term investment thesis.

Infinite Hold Updates

Tesla (TSLA) Takes Robotaxi to Miami

Tesla's Robotaxi service is now operating in Miami, following last month's commercial launch in Austin.

The service currently covers parts of western and central Miami, but every new market exposes Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to different roads, traffic patterns, weather conditions, and driving behavior. Those real-world miles help improve the software for the entire fleet.

Tesla has now accumulated more than 11 billion miles on Full Self-Driving. By comparison, Waymo, the current leader in commercial autonomous ride-hailing, has logged roughly 200 million fully autonomous miles. AI systems improve by learning from actual road miles rather than simulations. The company collecting the most high-quality driving data has the best chance to build the strongest autonomous system.

Tesla is already selling millions of vehicles equipped with the hardware needed for Full Self-Driving. Every new vehicle expands the potential Robotaxi network while generating even more real-world driving data.

That growing AI advantage is also becoming more valuable across Elon Musk's other companies. Reports this week reignited speculation about a future combination of Tesla and SpaceX (SPCX). Whether that ever happens matters far less than what is already taking place today. The companies share engineering talent, collaborate on AI and compute infrastructure, and SpaceX relies on Tesla Megapacks to power the data centers of xAI, Musk's AI startup.

We have consistently said Tesla's biggest opportunity extends far beyond selling cars. Every vehicle the company sells is another AI-powered machine collecting data that makes the entire network smarter. That is an advantage few companies can match, and it becomes more valuable every time Tesla expands into a new market.

Amazon (AMZN) Expands Its AI Foundation

Amazon plans to raise at least $25 billion as it expands the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence.

The company expects to invest roughly $200 billion this year, with most of that spending directed toward data centers, AI chips, and cloud capacity.

Every major AI application needs enormous computing power. Whether businesses are building AI agents, training large language models, or deploying new enterprise software, they need the infrastructure to make it all work.

That is where Amazon has the advantage.

AWS, Amazon's cloud computing arm, already powers a significant share of the world's cloud computing. Every new data center it builds expands the capacity available for customers while strengthening Amazon's own AI capabilities across shopping, logistics, advertising, and cloud services.

We have said before that AI is driving one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in decades.

Amazon sits in the middle of that buildout. As AI adoption accelerates, we believe its cloud platform becomes more valuable, because thousands of other companies depend on it for the computing power behind their own AI.

Google (GOOGL) Bets on AI’s Bottleneck

Google just made another bet on a future most investors are still ignoring.

The company joined a €411 million funding round for Proxima Fusion, a startup working to build Europe's first commercial nuclear fusion power plant. Fusion is the reaction that powers the sun, and it promises abundant carbon-free electricity if anyone can make it work at scale.

Fusion will not move Google's earnings next quarter. The first demonstration plant is not expected until the early 2030s, and commercial deployment would come later in the decade.

So why invest now?

Because Google expects electricity to become the binding constraint on AI, ahead of chip supply.

Every new AI model requires enormous amounts of power to train and operate. We have already seen Google invest in nuclear fission, geothermal energy, and long-term power agreements. Fusion is another piece of the same strategy: securing reliable, carbon-free energy before demand overwhelms supply.

A single large AI data center can consume as much electricity as two million homes. The extra power the U.S. grid needs by 2030 has climbed from 24 gigawatts to 166 gigawatts in just a few years. McKinsey, a consulting firm, expects data center investment to reach $7 trillion by 2030.

The AI race will be won by the companies that secure the computing power and the electricity to run it. Google is planning for both.