August was a busy month. Nvidia. SpaceX. Nike. SAP. Spinoffs. AI. Insider buying. Different stories, same question: What is the market missing? I wrote through the month on the structures, incentives, and catalysts underneath the headlines. Free to follow my Forbes page here forbes.com/sites/jimosman/

I just said “thank you” while dictating to a bot. When the machines take over, I’d like the record to show I was polite.

The uncomfortable mechanism: You made money so you assume you knew something. The tide was the something.

Nike is being removed from the S&P 100. The index didn't discover the problem. Index committees are often late to discover that a company has a problem. Nike didn't get weaker because S&P removed it. Customers moved first. Competitors gained ground. The numbers just caught up with what was already happening underneath. Confirmation, not discovery. #Investing #Nike #IndexFunds

Investors want cheap stocks without the fear that makes them cheap. They want lower rates. No war. Falling inflation. Strong earnings. A booming economy. And bargains. Good luck with that. The market has never offered certainty at a discount. Fear feels expensive. Certainty costs more.

We all know who can save McDonald’s. And it isn’t Sydney Sweeney. He’s got red hair. Size 29 shoes. Zero interest in brand consultants. BRING BACK RONALD. 🤡🍟 $MCD

McDonald’s stock has fallen 29%. Management’s answer? An $8.5 billion plan, while warning that customer traffic could stay flat. If the customers don’t come back, who pays for the turnaround? My take: Chart @Barchart $MCD forbes.com/sites/jimosman/20…

It’s Friday, and I’ve already argued with two people before 9:30 a.m. Productivity is through the roof. This is going to be a great day.

Everyone is waiting for the market to crash. They may be watching the wrong thing. The real damage is happening inside the market. High rates. Expensive capital. Weak balance sheets. Forced sellers. Broken business models. The index can look perfectly healthy while individual stocks get destroyed and others double. Stop trying to predict the market. Find what the market is mispricing.

Serious question: Did anyone here buy the Jersey Mike’s IPO? What was the thesis? I’m genuinely curious what you saw at the IPO price that private equity hadn’t already priced in. $JMKE

My latest GameStop article is trending. Please sign up for the next article. It’s free. $GME

Wall Street loves an IPO. Especially when you’re the exit. Jersey Mike’s IPO: $23 $JMKE today: $17.45 Down 24%. The warnings were there. I wrote about them. Private equity gets years to buy, lever, package and sell the story. Public investors get the story. Never confuse a great company with a great price.

GameStop isn’t really just GameStop anymore. Ryan Cohen just put another $47 MILLION of his own money into $GME. But here’s the number investors should be watching: GameStop now has roughly $4.9 BILLION riding on $EBAY — about 41% of its entire market value. The meme stock has become something very different. And Cohen may have just made the biggest bet of his career. My latest for Forbes. Chart @Barchart forbes.com/sites/jimosman/20…

Bull markets create geniuses. Everyone looks intelligent when liquidity is abundant. Weak decisions get rewarded. Returns get confused with skill. Then the cycle turns.

SpaceX was hard to buy. That's no longer the more relevant question. As liquidity improves, scarcity matters less. Valuation assumptions and institutional willingness to commit capital start to matter more. The next debate isn't whether shares get sold. It's whether a broader buyer base can absorb the supply without needing ever more extraordinary assumptions. #Investing #SpaceX #Valuation

Good morning. ☀️ Your stock doesn’t know you own it. It doesn’t know your cost basis. It doesn’t care how much you’re down. And it has no obligation to get you back to even. Ask yourself one question: If I had cash instead of this stock today, would I buy it? If the answer is no, you already know the answer.

Most investors don’t lose 50% in one bad decision. They lose it 5% at a time. “It’ll come back.” “The thesis is intact.” “Management deserves another quarter.” “I’ll average down.” That’s micro-compliance. One small excuse becomes another until you’re defending a stock you wouldn’t buy today. Your biggest losses rarely start with stupidity. They start with permission.

The market is starting to make cautious investors look stupid. Every dip gets bought. Every warning gets ignored. Every risk becomes another reason to buy. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. When a market makes risk management feel unnecessary, that’s usually when you need it most. Never confuse a rising market with the absence of risk.

What are the chances Nike or Wendy’s goes to zero? Zero? BlackBerry had the brand. BlackBerry had the customers. BlackBerry had the dominance. Until it didn’t. The most dangerous words in investing: “That could never happen.” $NKE $WEN