The Foxhole

Moderna nearly tripled overnight, and every other mRNA stock jumped with it. I think that could be a trap.

🧬 The breakthrough: mRNA therapy reached its goals in a late-stage melanoma trial.
🔬 Same tech, different bet: One author sees potentially 192% upside in this Moderna peer.
🧫 Tap into more: 84 biotechs expected to turn profitable within three years.

This week Moderna (MRNA) and Merck's personalized mRNA cancer therapy hit its main goals in a late-stage melanoma trial. Early data, but a first, and Moderna nearly tripled. Then the halo spread to other mRNA names, rising 20% or more in a day.That might be problematic.

Ultimately mRNA is a delivery method, not a guarantee. The same platform can carry a breakthrough or a dud, because what decides the outcome is the target, the biology and the data behind each specific program. Moderna's win tells you almost nothing about whether the next company's candidate works. That’s why I think the next move isn't to buy the theme, but instead, to open up each one's story and judge it on its own merit.

Do you think this is a rising tide lifting all boats?

Recent contrarian ideas

mitchell_lawler

Google (GOOG) just paid US$10 million for a dead airline's emails. I think some companies are sitting on undervalued data goldmines, just waiting to strike a deal. But which can monetize it without going broke?

📧 Dead airline, live data: Google paid US$10 million for a bankrupt airline's data.📚 Skeptical of the hype: One author calls RELX (REL) an undervalued data goldmine.
💬 Comments into cash: Another values Reddit (RDDT) 96% higher on its AI data.

Google just won a bankruptcy auction for the internal data of Spirit Airlines, the collapsed budget carrier, and paid US$10 million for it. This included around 100 million employee emails, 500 million Teams messages, spreadsheets, pricing models, and operations records. The purchase is yet another bid to get an edge on AI.

What Spirit’s data offers is an insight into how a real company operates behind the scenes, and that messy internal record is exactly the thing you can't scrape off the open internet.

If a bankrupt airline's emails fetch US$10 million, what is the data sitting inside the healthy companies you own actually worth? The market rarely puts a number on the decades of proprietary data locked in their systems, and that information is quickly becoming valuable in the eyes of data-hungry model builders.

However, there’s a catch… the richest data (customer records, health data, etc.) is often exactly what privacy laws bar from being sold. Plenty of data-rich companies may never earn a cent because of this. The beneficiaries will be the ones that can dig it up without digging themselves into a hole.

What company do you think is sitting on a treasure trove of data?

👍🧠🔥🤡

10 comments

mitchell_lawler

The crowd thinks AI winners will be the labs behind the models. I think an easier pick is hiding in payments, and Stripe just spent US$7 billion proving it.

💸 Priced for position: Stripe acquired OpenRouter for 438% more than its last valuation.
🛣️ The one you can own: Stripe is private, but Adyen (ADYEN) publicly runs a similar toll.
⛏️ Own the cut, not the coin: Listed businesses that take a slice no matter who wins the boom.

Stripe, a payments company, just paid more than US$7 billion for OpenRouter, a startup worth US$1.3 billion three months ago. OpenRouter doesn't build AI models. It actually routes developers to more than 400 different models, from OpenAI to Anthropic to Google, and takes a cut of the spending that flows through. Stripe, which already taxes a huge slice of internet commerce at 2.9%, has bought another toll booth that sits above AI use. Real recognize real, as they say.

See the fee tied to payments never dies, it moves, and right now it's moving to wherever AI spending flows. Stripe isn't trying to guess which model wins. It's positioning to collect no matter which one does, and that, to me, is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

Which company do you think is the best toll booth on the market?

👍🧠🔥🤡

10 comments

mitchell_lawler

A dozen retail giants report this week, and they won't agree on whether the consumer is healthy. What if that disagreement is the real signal?

🛒 Checkout time: Retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.6% in July, right before the giants report.📋 Your week-ahead watchlist: Every big retailer reporting this week, in one place to track.
🏷️ Shop the shelves: Set your own conditions for success on top of our Retail Sector Screener.

This week is a gauntlet for retail. Home Depot (HD) kicks it off Tuesday, then Target (TGT), Lowe's (LOW) and the off-price names midweek, with Walmart (WMT) the headline act on Thursday. Everyone will be hunting for one answer: is the consumer holding up, or cracking?

But there is no single "consumer." Home Depot is a bet on big-ticket spending and the housing market. Walmart, Target and the off-price chains live on everyday budgets. And when money gets tight, people don't stop spending, they trade down: from the big renovation to the small treat, from full price to off-price. So a "weak" consumer is a headwind for one of these names and a tailwind for another, in the very same week.

That's why the useful signal this week is the divergence. Listen to the language management uses, traffic, basket size and trading down. The economy rarely hands you one clean answer. More importantly, for long term investors, it’s about assessing a company’s ability to exert pricing power and sustain itself through tougher economic conditions.

Name a retailer you'd trust to come out of a downturn stronger, not weaker.

👍🔥🤡

10 comments

View all ideas