Capex 붐에 균열이 있습니까?

Cracks in the Capex Boom? THE DAILY --- H.E.A.T. Torching Wall Street’s Obsolete Playbook. Delivered straight to your inbox 5 days a week. Subscribe Home Posts Cracks in the Capex Boom? Cracks in the Capex Boom? Aug 7, 2025 Wall Street’s 60/40 formula was born in 1952 — the same year as the first credit card. A lot has changed since. That’s why we created a new approach — The --- H.E.A.T. Formula — to empower investors to spot opportunities, think independently, make smarter (often contrarian) moves, and build real wealth. Table of Contents 🔥 Here’s What’s Happening Now 🧠 Cracks in the Capex Boom 📈 Stock Corner 📬 --- In Case You Missed It 🤝 Before You Go Some Ways I Can Help 🔥 Here’s What’s Happening Now One of the worst up 77bps days I think I have ever seen. Curious how much of the up move we saw in the indices was due to AAPL (not curious enough to do the math). Advance/Decline was bad, small caps were down (long time readers know I think IWM sucks), lots of bad earnings moves (see SMCI commentary from yesterday). Narrow markets usually aren’t a good thing, and ultimately lead to down markets. On the other hand this could be a one day wonder. I’m still a bit overhedged for my tastes but a bunch of my options expire this week and will put me back in normal hedging position next week. After the close Trump announced 100% tariffs on semi conductors not made in the US, so futures are up nicely, most likely on hopes of what companies will be exempt. 🧠 Cracks in the Capex Boom Fluor Corp (FLR) has been one of our favorite AI infrastructure names. It collapsed 27% on Friday after earnings…… Which begs the question, is this just a single name not executing or a signal of something broader? 🔻 Fluor ($FLR): A Canary in the Capex Coal Mine? Fluor’s earnings collapse (-27%) was due to: Subcontractor design errors and cost overruns (execution risk) Delayed capex from clients Lowered EBITDA and EPS guidance for FY25 due to "client hesitation" and macro uncertainty This is significant : FLR is a pure-play on industrial-scale capex — infrastructure, energy, datacenters, manufacturing. A broad slowdown here implies: ❝ The AI capex supercycle may be concentrated in hyperscaler core tech , but not translating evenly to EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) names. 🔍 Stifel's Data Center Capex Call Stifel came out with a report over the weekend, which offers a seemingly opposite view: ❝ "If there were still any concerns about peaking data center capex, those should have been erased... visibility extends into 1H26." And they're not wrong — capex at the hyperscaler level is booming : $MSFT Azure +39% y/y , ahead of guidance $GOOG GCP also strong , both indicating ongoing spend But there's nuance: $AMZN AWS was just “stable,” suggesting marginal flattening $CFLT (-37%) cited customers bringing infra in-house — signal of local optimization replacing cloud elasticity So we’re not seeing an AI Capex bust yet — we’re seeing a segmented boom : Winners : Vendors directly supplying hyperscaler GPU, power, cooling, software orchestration Losers : Broad infrastructure vendors dependent on diversified customer capex or public sector projects 🧩 What This Means 🔺 FLR Is No Longer a Proxy for AI Infra In early 2023–2024, one could make a case for long $FLR as a "next-order" AI infrastructure beneficiary . That’s breaking down. Why? AI hyperscaler buildouts are vertically integrated , modular , and vendor-consolidated Players like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon increasingly bypass EPCs in favor of pre-engineered pods , built by vendors like $VRT, $MOD, $SMCI, and $AMRC So $FLR’s macro exposure to infrastructure doesn’t translate to AI capex leverage. 🏆 Winners: Companies Still in the AI Capex Flow ✅ Direct Capex Winners (high confidence) Ticker Company Why It Wins $NVDA Nvidia GPU capex still core driver $SMCI Supermicro Rack-level supplier, margin expanding $VRT Vertiv Power + thermal, hyperscaler-embedded $MOD Modine HVAC/cooling for dense clusters $CRWV CoreWeave GPU cloud infra, still raising capital $AMRC Ameresco Energy integration for AI power needs $MPWR Monolithic Power High-vol DC/DC conversion chips ✅ Service Layer Winners (still durable) Ticker Company Why It Wins $PLTR Palantir AI agents + orchestration in gov/defense $SNOW Snowflake Data layer for enterprise AI $MSFT Microsoft Copilot + Azure scaling ❌ Losers: Cracks Emerging ⚠️ Infra Vendors with Execution/Macro Risk Ticker Company Problem $FLR Fluor Customer hesitation + execution risk $ACN Accenture Weak IT services + discretionary spend $EPAM EPAM Under pressure on margins and visibility $DOCN DigitalOcean SME AI capex flattening $CFLT Confluent Pull-in of infra in-house $FORM FormFactor Semi capex cycle softness ⚠️ Chip / Component Players Showing Weakness Stifel's note highlights: Weak prints from $QCOM, $QRVO, $ARM, $COHU, $TOKYO ELECTRON China pull-in may be frontloading , not sustainable demand 🔐 Tactical Implications 🧠 1. Don't Overgeneralize AI Infrastructure Exposure FLR’s crash is not an indictment of AI — it’s proof that you need to be precise Stick with direct hyperscaler-exposed vendors , not second-order industrial proxies 🧠 2. Short EPCs with Flat Guidance or Public Sector Leverage Names like $FLR, $J, $KBR could all see multiple compression if they miss FY25 capex visibility Especially if tied to infrastructure stimulus or energy transition projects, which are lagging 🧠 3. Long “Hardware to Workload” AI Plays Core infrastructure (GPUs, racks, cooling) still has visibility through at least 1H26 But shift into service layer (like $PLTR, $SNOW) as physical capex reaches plateau 🧠 4. Monitor Transition from Cloud Spend to On-Prem AI Signals like $CFLT’s guidance and Microsoft’s Azure spend mix matter The next leg may be in private LLM orchestration and custom GPU cluster management — not just cloud hyperscaler rental 📊 Watchlist Long Ideas Short Ideas $SMCI, $MOD, $VRT $FLR, $ACN, $EPAM $PLTR, $SNOW $CFLT, $DOCN $MPWR, $NVDA $FORM, $COHU A new report from Brendan Wood & Partners (BWTG) Designing Brendan Wood TopGun ETF Final.pdf 264.48 KB • PDF File Download 📈 Stock Corner Today’s stock is Pan American Silver (PAAS)….. One of my favorite silver companies, so I am often long. Had earnings last night and looks like a blow out. Doesn’t really trade pre market so hard to be sure of market reaction. Had some unusual options activity ahead of earnings so I added to my position (I usually do not add to anything ahead of earnings but looked like somebody knew something). 📬 --- In Case You Missed It Duh….. Forget About Bond Ratings. This Is the Biggest Fixed-Income Risk.- WSJ ❝ Research finds that investors need to pay attention to the length of time to maturity Look at a monthly chart of TLT….. It looks more like a shitco than a bond ETF. It’s basically been cut in half since the start of 2020. You think something like this reduces portfolio risk? There’s a reason I get my bond exposure through Tbills, preferred shares, and indirectly through P&C companies. Duration is a killer, unless interest rates go back to 20%, in which case I back up the truck. 🤝 Before You Go Some Ways I Can Help ETFs : The Antidote to Wall Street Inside HEAT: Our Monthly Live Call on What Wall Street Doesn’t Want You To Know Financial HEAT Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@TuttleCap Freedom from the Wall Street Hypocrisy Tuttle Wealth Management: Your Wealth Unshackled Advanced HEAT Insights: Matt’s Inner Circle, Your Financial Edge All rights reserved. Keep Reading No posts found View more caret-right 0