Author: admin

Authored by Ed Dowd via ‘Beyond The Narrative’ substack,

The COVID Reckoning That Never Came… And the Silence That Proves the Psyop

Over the last several years I have been posting nonstop on X about the same nightmares we’ve been living through…the COVID psyop, the experimental mRNA shots, the mandates that destroyed lives, the injuries, the excess deaths, and the relentless propaganda machine that tried to silence anyone who noticed the bodies piling up. I have watched it all in real time: the fear porn, the goalpost moving, the “safe and effective” lies repeated like gospel while real-world data told a different story.

Now we have fresh, documented revelations that should have blown the lid off of everything. Instead? Crickets from the media and, more disappointingly, from the current administration that promised accountability.

Senator Ron Johnson dropped another devastating report and hearing in late April 2026: “Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals.” Internal records show FDA officials knew their VAERS monitoring was inadequate to say least. They had better data-mining tools ready to flag clear safety signals: cardiac deaths, strokes, pulmonary issues, Bell’s palsy but they chose not to use them. Why? To avoid “vaccine hesitancy.”

This was not screw-up territory. It was deliberate. Vaccine-injured people sat across from Peter Marks and other top FDA brass begging for acknowledgment. They got stonewalled. Johnson rightly calls this one of the biggest scandals in his decades in public service. Then in early June he held another hearing exposing potential cancer links to the mRNA shots and the systematic suppression of critical studies. Same playbook: inconvenient science gets buried or attacked.

Around the same time, Tulsi Gabbard, in one of her final moves as DNI, declassified documents laying out Fauci’s role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan, the lab-leak cover-up, the intelligence manipulation, and the retaliation against truth-tellers. Millions of taxpayer dollars funneled into risky biolabs, followed by the full narrative-control machine kicking in to blame nature instead of the obvious.

These are not anonymous X threads. This is a sitting Senator with subpoena power and the former Director of National Intelligence dropping official records.

So where is the firestorm? Where are the front-page exposés, the prime-time specials, the demands for real hearings and prosecutions? In 1976 the swine flu vaccine was pulled after 25 deaths and 500 cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome. In the covid shot era we have approximately 39,000 deaths reported to VAERS following the shot. Apparently lives got cheaper over the last 50 years. The legacy media has mostly ignored it, downplayed it, or run the usual “right-wing conspiracy” dismissals. Paid to lie… and crickets on recent FDA COVID vax revelations. Their complicity is not an understatement, rather it was essential to the entire psyop.

Even more frustrating is the relative silence from the current Trump administration. After years of vowing to expose the lies and drain the swamp on the pandemic response, these revelations land and… not much follow-through. No aggressive push for accountability. No sustained public reckoning for the officials who covered up safety signals or manipulated the origins story. That silence hits hard. Additionally the vaccines are still on the market and this administration is now complicit. What an epic failure!

A lot of us did not need Johnson’s reports or Gabbard’s declassifications to see the fraud. Back in 2022 and 2023, my team at Phinance Technologies was already digging into the data and uncovering the real narrative through our Humanity Projects. We analyzed excess deaths, disability surges, absence rates, and the human and economic costs of mass inoculations when almost no one else wanted to touch it. Check out the full body of work here: Humanity Projects

What we found through cold, hard numbers lined up with what the bodies on the ground were showing. We weren’t surprised by the latest revelations from Senator Johnson. We had been sounding the alarm years earlier, while getting labeled conspiracy theorists for it.

We watched the institutionally well-established benefits of natural immunity get summarily dismissed and memory holed. We saw “two weeks to flatten the curve” turn into endless boosters for the compliant and job losses for the unvaccinated. We saw friends and family injured or worse, then told it was “rare,” “coincidence,” or “misinformation.” Those of us who protested the mandates and the experimental mRNA shots were labeled Russian disinformation, dangerous spreaders, even domestic terrorists. It did not stick, but they tried.

For those who saw through the propaganda early, resisted it, and watched peers fall for it our worldview has forever changed. The greatest cover-up ever. But despite the MSM blackout, word has gotten out through underground channels, thanks in no small part to Senator Ron Johnson and others who refused to let subject die.

The betrayal runs deep. These new revelations do not surprise us but rather they confirm what the data and our own eyes showed years ago. They lied. They knew they were lying. They censored, gaslit, and destroyed lives to protect the narrative. Many institutions including public health, intelligence, media, Big Pharma were all in on it and still propagating the lies today.

That loss of trust is profound and permanent for millions of us. We no longer default to believing official statements. We demand primary data. We assume self-preservation and narrative control from authorities until proven otherwise. The COVID era did not just damage credibility on one issue instead it shattered how an entire group of people view government, “experts,” and authority. “Doing your own research” proved to be a critical lifesaver.

The people in authority still defending the garbage jab or pretending none of this matters can keep taking their 12 boosters (dirty little secret… they are not). The rest of us are done. We are profoundly changed. More skeptical. More data driven. Less willing to comply. Team Humanity was born out of this mess.

The window for real accountability is slamming shut. Even if these official revelations get memory-holed, the lesson is clear: they never planned to come clean. They want us to forget and move on to the next crisis.

I am not forgetting. And from what I see every day, millions are not either. As time rolls forward and the cognitive dissonance of those who took the vaccine wears off…our numbers will continue to grow.

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” — Luke 8:17

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

I have 5 charts for you today which put this crazy market into context and give some clarity on what might come next.

We’re at a fascinating crossroads for markets, geopolitics, and finance.

Let’s get started.

Semis Party Like It’s 1999

First up, semiconductor returns. The index below includes U.S. semi stocks like Nvidia, Micron, Intel, Broadcom, Marvell, Texas Instruments, and more:

Source: Charlie Bilello 

As you can see, during the dotcom bubble, semiconductor stocks soared 234% over 14 months in the period leading up to February 2000. That was the peak of the market, and tech stocks wouldn’t recover for about 15 years.

And in the past 14 months, SOX is up 237%. Reminiscent of the dotcom days.

Maybe this time is different, and yes, the stocks are more profitable today. But it’s undeniable that markets are getting bubbly. Semis are looking especially frothy. When AI spending inevitably slows down, watch out below…

+$2.99 Trillion

Over the past year, America’s federal debt jumped by $2.99 trillion.

Needless to say, our current trajectory is unsustainable. We’re paying about $1.2 trillion per year just in interest on federal government debt.

This is the key reason I believe interest rates will need to go down to near zero sometime in the next few years. Even if inflation remains above target. And it’s why I still believe holding precious metal investments is key to wealth preservation and growth.

AI Infrastructure Surpasses Humans

We all know data centers are booming. But the chart below puts it all into perspective. It compares office construction (blue) to data centers (red):

Source: Zerohedge

Simply remarkable. We’re spending more on infrastructure for AI than humans.

And since 2016, spending on data centers is up more than 10x.

But all around the country, locals are pushing back against big tech. Data centers are extremely loud. They spike local electricity prices to unaffordable levels. In some cases, they pollute the water with nitrites and other chemicals.

And most importantly, our power grid is hitting its limits. We can’t build new power plants fast enough to keep up. So eventually, the data center boom will have to slow down significantly. And that will likely mark the top of this boom/bubble.

Silver vs Stocks

Silver has had a rough few months. After rising almost 4x in a year, it has been cut in half.

The chart below compares silver to the S&P 500. As this chart rises, silver is beating stocks. When it falls, it is losing.

Source: Tavi Costa

As you can see, even at the recent highs we didn’t get anywhere near the levels we saw in 2011, when silver outperformed stocks for an extended period.

We’ve gotten our big correction, and I believe the next 5 years will be excellent for silver. It still has a long way to go to reach 2011 levels (compared to stocks). And supply deficits today are far more extreme than they ever were back then. Solar is booming and investment demand is soaring, especially in Asia.

I remain convinced silver will find new highs over the next few years. Maybe sooner.

-$246B Gambling Losses

The USA’s gambling problem is getting worse. As a whole, Americans are on track to lose $246 billion this year.

Source: Joey Politano

As we highlighted last week, Americans invest about $600 billion in 401ks every year. That number could be $850 billion if we ever learn that gambling has horrible odds.

Look, if you can afford to gamble and enjoy it, great. But many people are trying to strike it rich. And that almost never happens.

Gambling is all around us, and we should be on guard against its pernicious effects. Saving and investing should always come first.

China successfully landed the first-stage booster of a Long March 10B rocket on a floating barge during an orbital launch test earlier Friday, marking the first major step in reusable launch technology, albeit roughly a decade behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“This mission … signifies a historic breakthrough in China’s reusable rocket technology and a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of China’s space access capabilities,” the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation wrote in a social media post.

China has achieved its first-ever controlled recovery of a rocket booster, a breakthrough for the country’s reusable space tech. On the maiden flight of Long March-10B, the rocket successfully placed its payload into orbit, and its first stage returned and was captured by a net… pic.twitter.com/YZRcgbneTg

— China Xinhua Sci-Tech (@XHscitech) July 10, 2026

Reusable rockets are key to SpaceX’s dominance of the global launch market, with Musk’s company having mastered booster recovery and reuse a decade ago:

• December 21, 2015: First successful landing of an orbital-class Falcon 9 booster.
• April 8, 2016: First successful landing on an ocean drone ship.
• March 30, 2017: First relaunch of a previously flown Falcon 9 booster, marking the start of operational reuse.

Ten Years Ago: SpaceX Falcon 9 First Stage Landing  

Blue Origin, SpaceX’s closest U.S. rival, completed the first successful landing of a New Glenn first-stage booster last November.

pic.twitter.com/0WzaWjjjL9

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 19, 2026

BryceTech’s latest launch report for Q1 2026 shows how SpaceX’s reusable-rocket technology has transformed Musk’s space and AI company into a market leader.

SpaceX launched 40 rockets during the quarter, compared with 12 for China, five for Rocket Lab, and four for Russia, reinforcing the widening gap between SpaceX and the rest of the global launch industry.

More evidence of SpaceX’s dominance:

And again:

SpaceX is a major reason America’s space program continues to lead the world today and should maintain that lead through 2030.

Investors are waiting for the commercialization of Starship…

84% chance Starship is fully reusable before 2028. https://t.co/PZiahSxMgo

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) July 7, 2026

With SpaceX maintaining roughly a decade-long technological lead over nation-state-backed programs such as China’s, it is little surprise that Wall Street analysts are piling in with bullish ratings on SPCX. Raymond James is the most aggressive, setting a Street-high 12-month price target of $800. Read the report here.

Iran has thrown Trump’s ultimatum and Saturday deadline right back at Washington, saying that instead it is the United States that must first meet the agreed-upon conditions in order to normalize shipping and energy transit in the Strait of Hormuz.

Fars news agency reports Saturday that Iranian leadership is demanding that the US implement “agreed-upon understandings” before any talks take place. While the White House has declared the ceasefire to be ‘over’ – it has also indicated ongoing contacts and talks with Iran via mediators. But this appears to have been reduced to simple ultimatums being shuttled between capitals by Qatari mediators. There are no actual sit-down talks on the horizon after two rounds of fresh tit-for-tat attacks broke out this past week.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) itself is barely alive at this point, also with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani, separately announcing that Tehran could stop honoring the MoU if US attacks continue. 

“Should the United States continue to violate its obligations under the MoU, Iran will no longer be bound to fulfil its obligations under the MoU,” Iravani told reporters at UN headquarters.

But he did make clear that Iran is still committed to the agreement “provided that the United States fully and faithfully complies with its own obligations.”

President Trump has meanwhile continued to issue his own warnings and threats. He said Friday that the US military would “completely decimate” Iran if its leaders attempted or carried out his assassination. He took it a step further in an overnight Truth Social Post, saying he has 1,000 missiles “locked and loaded” – aimed at Iran – should he be targeted by Tehran’s agents.

Strangely, the US President signed off with his puzzling “praise be to Allah!” reference – perhaps mockingly or sarcastically.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei still hasn’t been seen in public after the Feb.28 US-Israeli airstrikes took out his father, killed members of his family, and reportedly badly wounded him. Mojtaba is said to be observing a private memorial for his slain father, and made no known appearance at the week-long funeral processions and burial.

But on Saturday he did call for revenge in a rare public message. “It is our certain and undeniable duty that this revenge be carried out,” he said.

“We pledge to avenge your pure blood and the blood of all the martyrs of these two [recent] wars by taking revenge against the criminal, disgraceful murderers,” the Ayatollah also stated. “This vengeance is what our nation is demanding, and this must definitely be done.”

He issued a series of statements tinged with Shia Islamic references. His words contain repeat vows to enacting vengeance, including this not so veiled threat to kill Iran’s enemies: 

The criminal, disgraceful murderers of the martyred Leader, whose names are fully documented from the highest to the lowest ranks, will carry their dream of a peaceful death in bed to the grave.

— Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) July 11, 2026

As for the big picture of where things stand, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, who authors “The Escalation Trap,” has pointed out that that the millions of Iranians who took to the streets last week to attend the late Ayatollah’s funeral demonstrate growing nationalist resolve. He explained that this only makes further escalation more likely later this summer, as public sentiment gets hardened against the US.

“The balance of military capabilities did not change over the weekend,” Pape said. “The balance of political will shifted.“

Referencing the now unraveling ceasefire and negotiations process, Pape is predicting: “The pause appears to be another stage in the escalation process rather than the beginning of de-escalation.” 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Let’s pull all this into an undeniable conclusion: AI is based on massively subsidizing users’ costs.

What’s already abundantly clear but verboten to say as it would pop the bubble of AI valuations and triumphalism is that AI is unaffordable once the direct and indirect subsidies are withdrawn. Nothing that consumes this much electricity and requires such an immense scale of costly processing and memory capacity can be low-cost, never mind free.

The major AI platforms and vendors are subsidizing corporate and individual users in the hopes that they can achieve AI sector dominance –and the pricing power that comes with it–via the network effect, the dominance generated by having the majority of users bound by habit or dependence to your platform or tools.

This battle for network effect dominance is playing out in full view:

AI Giants Are Handing Out Tons of Free Computing Power to Grab Startup Share: (wsj.com) Pitched battle for business users comes as AI companies seek lasting streams of revenue.

Hans Ibarra, a founder building an AI-voice startup, has found himself on the receiving end of a big opportunity: Top artificial-intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and others desperate to win his business are ramping up discounts.

Across Silicon Valley, startup founders like Ibarra are enjoying a wave of computing credits and fielding competing offers from AI-model makers racing to land new enterprise customers. Cursor, the AI-coding company bought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, offered a 75% discount through July 5.

“If I’m choosing between a really cheap Chinese model that I actually have to pay for, and a very expensive Anthropic model that I don’t have to pay for, I’m going to pick the Anthropic model,” Acker said. “I’m always going to pick the one for which I have free credits.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world of costs, AI Costs More Than The People It Replaced (forbes.com)(via Tom D.)

It turns out that experienced human workers doing the work right in the first place is cheaper than having AI run a probability distribution process that needs vetting and corrections. And remember, AI isn’t actually “intelligent,” it’s just a probability distribution using natural language.

As management guru Peter Drucker observed, enterprises don’t have profits, they have costs. Purveyors of AI platforms and tools have costs, and so do their customers. Those costs are currently being funded by investors, who are in effect subsidizing the AI companies’ “free” giveaways of horrendously costly “tokens” in a manic, desperate attempt to grab the brass ring of network effect dominance before their cash runs out.

This raises a question: Is this any way to run a railroad? In other words, is this actually a viable business model, burning billions of dollars in cash to lock in network effect dominance in a field that is rapidly obsoleting every iteration of an innately limited mode of computation? Is claiming that a probability distribution is “intelligent” in the same way humans are intelligent a viable business model when there is ample evidence this simply isn’t true?

AI and human intelligence are drastically different–here’s how (scientificamerican.com)

What happens when enterprises have to pay the unsubsidized costs of AI is they immediately curtail their AI spending because the customer-facing / financial benefits of AI are at best elusive and often negative. Peter Drucker was onto something that is currently being lost in the PR-propaganda push of those trying to cash in on the AI euphoria: enterprises don’t have profits, they have costs, and the real-world costs of AI are extraordinarily high while the payoffs are ambiguous.

There are many other hidden subsidies within the AI machinery. There are corporate tax write-off subsidies, energy subsidies, tax credit subsidies for building data centers, and so on. If these were stripped out, what would the real unsubsidized costs of AI be? No one knows, but they would be higher than what’s presented as the cost now.

Then there’s the if it’s legal, it’s moral, and what’s legal is for sale subsidy: AI is built on the systemic theft of copyrighted content. Last month alone, AI scrapers gorged on 246,000 pages from my Of Two Minds server, and hundreds of thousands of pages of my copyrighted works on my mirror site and other sites posting my work.

This is legal, but is it moral? Nobody asks such questions because the important thing is to avoid saddling AI users with the real costs. So if all those content creators get nothing–in effect, subsidizing both AI companies and the users of their AI platforms and tools–well, so what, because if it’s legal, it’s moral, and what’s legal is for sale.

Well that’s just peachy, but let’s do a thought experiment where every creator of copyrighted work got paid for supplying AI with its database, and every user of AI had to pay us content creators. How about a penny a page / image / sound clip? so 246,000 pages per month (again, only a fraction of the total volume of my work that was scraped by AI companies for their “free” use in a single month) would be $2,460 a month paid to me by AI users benefiting directly from my copyrighted work. Wouldn’t that be fair, i.e. moral?

Recall that US copyright law is explicit: all creative content is copyrighted upon completion, period.

How many current users of AI are willing to pay the full unsubsidized costs for their use of AI? We can safely say far fewer than are using the tools for “free” due to subsidies both direct and indirect.

Let’s pull all this into an undeniable conclusion: AI is based on massively subsidizing users’ costs. Once those subsidies end, what’s left are costs, not profits. Play that any way you like, but massive subsidies are not sustainable, though they generate a temporary illusion of viability that can be exploited by those selling a fantasy of future profitability to credulous investors and enterprises.

Left unsaid is a lot of money is being gambled on the illusion that subsidies are sustainable. They’re not. Enterprises don’t have profits, they have costs.

*  *  *

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free). Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

The Pentagon released its fourth new batch of UFO files on July 10, including a transcript from a conference that included scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project.

This release of information on UFOs, which the government refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), has a total of 40 files, including 19 videos, 14 documents, four audio clips, and three images.

The mix of partially unredacted files and historical documents is sourced from multiple agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, NASA, and the Department of Energy.

The Pentagon said it is not the last release of UFO files in relation to President Donald Trump’s executive order, according to a statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

High-Speed ‘Rectangle’

In one report, five U.S. military-affiliated personnel witnessed a strange object over the eastern United States in 2019.

“I noticed an object with flight characteristics unlike anything I had seen in my 28 years of performing [REDACTED] for the [Army] and Navy. A small object was below us and appeared to be traveling in a straight line opposite our direction at high speed,” the observer wrote.

“I tracked it for ~10-15 seconds before we turned on the recorder to provide the attached video. When I zoomed in to try and achieve more resolution, the object’s speed took [it] out of my [field of view] and I was unable to reacquire, even at a lower zoom.”

The military service member said the object “appeared to be rectangular,” and said others “with equal or more experience” were also unable to identify it.

In the 20-second video, the object is tracking quickly to the left of the screen before it zooms out of view.

The report came from a “range fouler debrief,” which is a “standardized reporting form the U.S. Navy uses to record the circumstances surrounding an unauthorized intrusion into controlled airspace during active military operations or training,” according to the Pentagon.

Balloon Over the Atlantic?

Another range fouler debrief described a sighting over the Atlantic in 2020 of what an observer suggested could have been an unidentified balloon.

The heavily redacted report stated that the object “traveled with the wind, the closer we came to it,” and that it was difficult to ascertain which direction it was heading, but it was “generally” moving south without any “maneuvers or change in direction.”

“The object itself was a darker, maroonish color, approximately 12-15ft in height. Structurally, it appeared as a large, somewhat deformed balloon, but we were unable to verify that as we passed at the merge,” the observer wrote.

The strange object slowly comes into focus in the 32-second video, which was captured by a U.S. military infrared sensor, before the footage abruptly cuts off.

Manhattan Project Scientists  

One of the historical documents included in the Pentagon’s fourth batch of UFO files is a transcript of a conference at the-then Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1949.

Now known as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the facility was hosting leading scientists and physicists at the time, including many who had worked on the Manhattan Project.

After unknown “green fireballs” had been observed for several months near the laboratory, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission convened the conference to determine their origin and explain the phenomenon.

The panel failed to reach a consensus to explain the “green fireballs,” with one hypothesis suggesting they could be meteors entering the atmosphere at a “shallow” angle and altitude.

Lincoln LaPaz, an expert specializing in meteorics at the time and one of the key witnesses, said “95 percent of the observations indicate a very nearly horizontal path” of the objects, which he estimated were moving “between 3 miles per second and 12 miles per second.”

That would equal roughly 10,800 to 43,200 miles per hour, within the range of speed for a meteor.

However, after running calculations based on the objects’ estimated light, speed, and kinetic energy, Edward Teller suggested that if they were not characteristic of a “material body,” they “might be an electron phenomenon.”

LaPaz replied, “You see why I’m puzzled, Dr. Teller.”

“Nothing like this, to my knowledge, has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops,” he added.

At the conclusion of the meeting, another scientist said, “The puzzling thing is the long horizontal path; also, absence of noise is puzzling.”

When meteors fall through the atmosphere, their high speed creates a sonic boom, along with other noises, sometimes a crackling or “whooshing” sound.

‘Six-Pointed Star’ Near China

A 12-second infrared sensor video came from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command last year, showing “an area of contrast resembling a six-pointed star” that remains in the center of the screen.

The Pentagon said the video was taken near China over the Yellow Sea.

The area of contrast looks similar to the “eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length” that was submitted by U.S. Central Command in 2013, and featured in the Pentagon’s initial batch of UFO files released in early May.

Another video taken in 2025, this time over the East China Sea, shows what appears to be an object tracking across the sky for nearly five minutes.

What is seemingly multiple areas of contrast moving in formation across the sky, at times appearing like a curved line similar to a massive, fast-moving flock of birds, was shown in a video taken over the South China Sea in 2024.

Intrusion Near Nuclear Facility

The Energy Department included a file detailing a UFO sighting in the airspace over the Pantex nuclear weapons facility near Amarillo, Texas, in 2015.

Two officers reported seeing the object at 7 a.m. local time flying northward “in a non-threatening manner” at roughly 10 to 15 miles per hour.

As the facility was placed on lockdown, the officers continued tracking the object and, through binoculars, reported that it looked to be approximately four feet tall and two feet wide at the bottom.

“They noted that the object did not make any sound. Furthermore, the [lieutenant and security police officer] stated that they were unable to identify any type of propulsion system on the object while using binoculars to assess the object. After viewing it for 1-2 minutes, the object then continued north offsite,” the report states.

Observers were split on the object’s color, with some reporting it looked black, while others said it “appeared to be silver, red, and blue.”

With SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts now trading under the temporary ticker SKHYV as of late Friday morning, the seven-times-oversubscribed offering highlights Wall Street’s rush for more direct exposure to high-bandwidth memory amid the AI infrastructure boom.

Against the backdrop of mounting concerns about an AI infrastructure bubble, Roth Capital Partners’ sales trading team asked clients earlier Friday: “How will investors, looking back two years from now, view the timing and significance of SK Hynix’s US offering?”

Taking a look at the GS TMT Memory Exposed Index (GSTMTMEM Index), Goldman Sachs’ thematic basket tracking companies with high exposure to the memory chip cycle, the trade appears to have peaked in mid-June.

Zooming in on the recent price action in the GSTMTMEM Index:

That rollover has since spread into the broader South Korean market, with the Kospi entering a bear market this week as the memory stock euphoria begins to fade.

Adding to the AI bubble doomerism camp is UBS’ proprietary Market Fragility Index, an internal risk gauge measuring how vulnerable markets are to a sharp reversal or volatility shock, which currently prints at an eye-popping high.

UBS proprietary market fragility index hits all time high pic.twitter.com/zwOUS0dbGk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 10, 2026

But not everyone on Wall Street is pessimistic, and analysts at BNP Paribas say the AI boom increasingly resembles the late 1990s.

João Torres, a European credit strategist at BNP Paribas based at the bank’s Portugal branch, penned a note on Friday with a title that suggests the AI bubble has more room to inflate: “The Bubble Playbook: It’s still 1998.”

“Technological progress can create industrial bubbles. Chart 2: Equity IPOs following late 90s path, led by Tech We analysed the extent to which the AI buildout is evolving in line with previous industrial bubbles. The late 1990s provide a fitting playbook. In our view, AI has similarities of an industrial bubble but is not yet extreme,” Torres wrote in the note.

The BNPP Bubble Indicator currently stands around the 84th percentile, driven by elevated animal spirits, valuations and earnings expectations. At that level, near-term stock returns could be positive, but historical patterns suggest softer performance over six to 12 months if the indicator moves to the 85th percentile level.

Torres put together a compelling chartpack that suggests today’s environment is more like the late 1990s:

Chart 1: Technological breakthroughs can lead to industrial bubbles

Chart 2: Equity IPOs following late 90s path, led by Tech

Chart 3: Spreads tend to widen when balance sheets deteriorate

Chart 4: Supply in late 90s – from K-shaped to a crowding-in effect

Chart 5: Expectations are rising faster just as they did in the late 90s

Chart 6: Great Expectations – a new paradigm ahead

Chart 7: $ HY Risk Premium – low but not extreme

Chart 8: Credit Conditions are not restrictive yet

Chart 9: The Fed could resume rate hikes, as in the late 90s

Chart 10: BNPP Bubble Indicator is currently at the 84th percentile

Chart 11: Closest template is the dotcom bubble

Chart 12: Overweight $ IG Banks vs. $ IG Corporates

Chart 13: € IG TMT: Reverse Yankees are trading wide vs. Domestic

Professional subscribers can read more on memory and KOSPI at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Official Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released today shows Muhammad – including variant spellings – has once again claimed the top spot as the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales.

This marks the third consecutive year Muhammad has led the boys’ chart, continuing a trend that has drawn significant public attention and debate about demographic changes.

The ONS figures for 2025 births confirm Muhammad’s dominant position. In previous years, when spellings are combined, it has frequently outranked traditional English names like Oliver and Noah.

Commentators have linked the sustained popularity to the UK’s growing Muslim population, which now makes up a significant and increasing share of births in many areas.

Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe responded strongly to the news, posting: “Muhammad has comfortably topped the list for the most popular boy name for the third year running. You can call me Islamophobic, I really don’t care… This is awful and demonstrates the rapidly changing demographics of our country.”

‘Muhammad’ has comfortably topped the list for the most popular boy name for the third year running.

You can call me Islamophobic, I really don’t care.

This is awful and demonstrates the rapidly changing demographics of our country.

Only Restore Britain will fight this.

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) July 9, 2026

Lowe, who recently chaired an independent Rape Gang Inquiry Report, has highlighted concerns about integration, cultural shifts, and failures in addressing grooming gangs. His report estimates that at least 250,000 young, mostly white British girls have been victims of systematic abuse by predominantly Pakistani Muslim grooming networks over decades, with institutional cover-ups exacerbating the crisis.

The report and Lowe’s comments tie into broader discussions about rapid demographic transformation, with critics arguing that names like Muhammad’s dominance reflect communities that have not fully integrated and, in some cases, parallel issues seen in grooming gang scandals where perpetrators often shared similar names and backgrounds.

Broader Implications

While many celebrate Britain’s multiculturalism, others like Lowe warn of parallel societies and strain on social cohesion. The baby name data is often cited alongside grooming gang reports as evidence of deeper cultural challenges.

Full ONS rankings for 2025 are expected to provide more context on rising and falling names across both genders.