MahJong and Markets: RAM Surges, Greenspan Dies, and SpaceX Hits the Board
In DHUnplugged Episode 807, hosts John C. Dvorak and Andrew Horowitz dissect a strange market stretch: RAM prices skyrocket, Alan Greenspan dies at 100, Alphabet joins the Dow, and SpaceX shares slide post-IPO. The duo also explores Elon Musk's token-like view of money, a mahjong craze, and a bear market in China's H-shares.
Found this article helpful?
Share it with your network and spread the knowledge!
In a week that saw former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan pass away at age 100, the hosts of DHUnplugged argue that markets are entering one of their strangest stretches in years. Episode 807, titled 'MahJong and Markets,' dives into a whirlwind of developments: DDR5 RAM prices have jumped from roughly $75 to $450, Dell is quoting a $5,700 corporate desktop that costs $2,700 on its consumer site, and the Korean KOSPI briefly plunged into correction territory overnight.
Alphabet is set to replace Verizon in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, lifting the index's tech weighting from about 17% to 22%. Meanwhile, China's H-shares have entered a bear market as retail sales contract. The hosts also announce a new Closest to the Pin contest for SpaceX shares, which have slid under $147 post-IPO.
Elon Musk's relentless deal-making draws a striking observation from co-host Andrew Horowitz: 'Someone said something very interesting today, that he sees these as points in a game, like points in a video game, tokens that you win. It's not real money.' Dvorak tracks insider selling across dozens of companies, noting his screen is a 'sea of red,' with Cantor Equity Partners—linked to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—as the lone buy.
The episode revisits Greenspan's legacy, with the hosts calling him a 'walking thesaurus' whose vocabulary once required decoding. They also dig into cyclical market themes: Horowitz points to Sleep Number (SNBR) collapsing from $140 to roughly ten cents as a 'swing and a miss' short, while Dvorak warns that memory pricing defies the historical learning curve, potentially leading to brutal oversupply for Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital.
Other topics include Chris Bloomstrand's analysis of hyperscalers shifting from asset-light to asset-heavy models, Satya Nadella's comment that AI has become commoditized, Oracle cutting 21,000 jobs, Getty Images soaring 145% on an OpenAI licensing deal, and a Chevron-Microsoft 20-year natural gas power pact dubbed Project Kirby. The hosts also flag a mahjong craze, citing Yelp's 4,400% search surge.
Listen to this Episode