Rob Topping

Allbirds, the shoe brand, now says it's an AI compute company.

The SEC just killed the most regressive financial regulation in America. For 25 years, the Pattern Day Trader rule required $25,000 in your account to make more than 3 day trades per week. Created in 2001 after the dot-com crash to "protect" small investors. Here's what it actually did: A 22-year-old with $5,000 and genuine trading discipline was legally treated the same as a degenerate gambler. Both locked out. Meanwhile, anyone who already had $25,000 could trade as recklessly as they wanted with zero restrictions. The rule never measured skill. Never measured risk tolerance. Never measured strategy quality. It measured one thing: how much money you already had. Worse, it created the exact behavior it was supposed to prevent. Traders couldn't day trade U.S. stocks, so they moved to offshore brokers with extreme leverage and zero consumer protections. Others opened accounts at 4-5 different brokerages to get 3 day trades at each. FINRA's own data showed day trading moving to cash accounts specifically to dodge the rule. The replacement is the first smart regulation the SEC has approved in years. Instead of a flat wealth gate, brokers now calculate intraday margin requirements in real-time based on each position's actual volatility. Minimum drops from $25,000 to $2,000. The system now asks "can your account handle this specific position?" instead of "are you rich enough to trade?" The catch nobody's pricing in: FINRA's own data shows 72% of day traders end the year with losses. A landmark study found only 3% are profitable long-term. The $25K barrier was bad policy, but it was also an accidental filter that kept millions of undercapitalized traders from lighting money on fire faster. That filter just disappeared. Robinhood's order flow is about to get a lot more interesting.

On this day 35 years ago, over 1,500 people attended the funeral of an 18-year-old boy from Indiana, United States. His pallbearers included Elton John, one of the most famous musicians in the world, and Michael Jackson. The First Lady sat in the front row. The former president wrote a tribute that ran in the national papers. His name was Ryan White. At 13, he contracted HIV through a blood transfusion to treat his haemophilia, a blood disorder that prevents clotting. Doctors gave him six months. When he tried to go back to school, parents and teachers fought to ban him. Restaurants threw away his dishes. Church members refused to shake his hand. He didn’t fight back. He educated. He went on national television and calmly explained how the virus actually worked. He changed more minds about the disease than any campaign or government programme at the time. He lived five years longer than anyone expected. He passed away one month before his high school graduation. Four months after his funeral, the United States Congress passed the Ryan White CARE Act. It became the largest federally funded programme for people living with HIV in the country’s history, and it still operates today, providing care to over 500,000 people every year.

Hip hip hooray 🪅🥳🥂

UConn G Braylon Mullins will hold the first ever “NIL Auction” to determine what his next team will be with the minimum bid starting at $6M. Mullins intends to return to college and wants to be with the team that is willing to pay him the most.

Tom Brady shares the advice that changed his career and his mindset. He was at Michigan - he was only getting 2 practice reps while the starter got 20. He was complaining to sports psychologist Greg Harden: "How can I ever get better? All these guys get all the reps and I only get 2." Greg's response changed everything: "Just go in there and focus with the 2 that you got and make them as perfect as you possibly can." Focus on what you can control. So that's what he did. "They'd put me in for those 2. Man, I'd sprint in there like it was Super Bowl 49. 'Let's go boys! Here we go! What play we got?'" "I did really well with those 2 'cause I brought enthusiasm, I brought some energy, and I had a little more confidence in myself." You don't get what you want in life - you get what you earn. It starts with showing up and earning it every single day. "It went from 2 reps to getting 4 reps because those 2 were pretty good. Then I had 4 good reps. Then I got 10 good reps." You can always try to lead the team in effort, attitude, and perspective because it takes no talent. Then he shared the mindset shift: "Focus on what you can control. Focus on what you're getting, not what anyone else is getting. Whenever you get an opportunity, you take advantage of it. You treat it like it's the Super Bowl." Stop complaining about what you don't have. Dominate what you do. Opportunity doesn't care about fairness - it rewards how ready you are. (🎥PBD Podcast )

Renewed Confidence in Brazil 🇧🇷 The Central Bank of Brazil raised its interest rate by a full percentage point today. In the chart, this is represented by the white line. This decision comes as inflation (blue line) is climbing again. Notice the significant gap between the central bank’s interest rate and inflation, this showcases how mature Brazil’s central bank has become. In the past, the Federal Reserve led the way, but now Brazil’s central bank is ahead of the curve. The first rate hike came in 2021, a year before the Fed. The first rate cut happened in 2023, also a year before the Fed, and now, with the first signs of inflation re-emerging, we’re seeing multiple rate hikes already. I get it, most eyes are on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq racing to new highs. But amidst the current negativity, I’m adding more Brazilian stocks to my portfolio. Changes in price levels are a major driver of shifts in price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. If inflation in Brazil is decisively controlled, P/E ratios could double. Alternatively, even if inflation persists, a bull market in commodities could also lead to a doubling of P/E ratios.

The Shawshank Redemption flopped in theaters, $16 million worldwide on a $25 million budget, opening weekend just $727,000 in 1994, it disappeared almost immediately. It lost all seven Oscar nominations to Forrest Gump, no awards, no box office, the studio labeled it a failure and the director walked away devastated. Then something quiet started happening, VHS rentals, cable reruns, someone watching it alone on a Tuesday night and calling a friend the next morning. People who watched it told their friends, their friends told more people, it spread slowly, one recommendation at a time, no marketing push just genuine word of mouth. By 2008 it reached number one on IMDb, the audience voted it the greatest film ever made and it has stayed there ever since. It took 14 years to get there, a box office bomb turned into the highest rated film in history, built entirely by viewers long after the studio had already moved on.

Trump is not Making America Great Again. During the first 446 days, the S&P stock index has performed more poorly than the last 5 administrations. TRUMP'S TARIFFS + TRUMP'S WARS = MAKE AMERICA POOR AGAIN.

No deal...this war will take a decade to settle. Issue is, there is no decent way out for us. We look like idiots in front of the whole world. Situation is even more messed up than before. Iran will charge for ships to pass. 💰 Oil is more expensive. 😧 Inflation is up ⬆️ Rates might stay up longer % Regime is still there and will murder more innocent people. We don’t have their uranium. This is costing us immense amount of $. What a mess.