CLARITY’s Thursday Showdown

Chart of the Day — New ATHs for US Indices
Trade of the Day — ZEC Short Open Now
Alpha Leaks — Cisco Systems, Nvidia & Ethena
News Roundup — CLARITY's Thursday Showdown, Ray Dalio's BTC Comments & April CPI Data
Degen Play — Copper Short Open Now

New ATHs for US Indices

The S&P hit another fresh ATH yesterday, wicking up to 7,428. The index is up an astounding 17% since the Iran panic bottom in late March.

The current catalysts are the AI trade (investors are still piling in), strong Q1 corporate earnings (84% of S&P companies beat EPS estimates), and investors shrugging off all things Iran.

But possible risks that could end this party are all things Iran (Trump just stated that the ceasefire is “on massive life support”), today’s CPI print (see third story below), and the extreme concentration and valuations of US indices (top 10 S&P stocks make up 40% of the index; index trading at 21x forward earnings).

ZEC Short Open Now

Now is an ideal time to short ZEC. We like fading assets near ATHs when the technicals call for it — and right now ZEC is flashing one of our favorite signals. Clear price-to-volume divergence.

Back in November 2025, ZEC hit its ATH at $748 on massive volumes. Today, the asset is back in the mid-$500s, but volumes are noticeably thinner. Buyers simply aren’t showing up with the same conviction. That divergence suggests the move higher is running out of steam, and prices are more likely to roll over than push much further.

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CLARITY’s Thursday Showdown

The Senate Banking Committee faces a high-stakes markup and vote on the CLARITY Act this Thursday — the biggest step yet toward comprehensive US crypto regulation. But a clean passage is far from guaranteed.

The full 309-page text dropped at 12:00 am this morning, laying out the latest negotiated language for Senators to debate in just two days.

But the American Bankers Association is mounting another lobbying blitz. They’re urging bank executives and employees to tell their senators that the stablecoin provisions still aren’t tight enough.

So currently, the banks are claiming that the “buy and use” stablecoin yield provisions will create a yield loophole which, if implemented, will drain deposits out of the traditional banking system. And this opposition comes even after crypto firms conceded to ban straight interest on idle stablecoin holdings.

Now what happens on Thursday matters because a clean committee passage will move forward a regulatory and yield framework to a final Congressional vote under a tightening legislative window. Expect serious volatility in crypto and crypto-adjacent stocks (i.e. CRCL, COIN) on Thursday.

Ray Dalio: “Central Banks Won’t Touch Bitcoin”

Ray Dalio, the legendary hedge fund investor, took a swing at Bitcoin on X today. Dalio stated that “Bitcoin lacks privacy [because] transactions can be monitored and potentially controlled, which is why central banks aren’t looking to hold it.”

Dalio’s bigger point is that gold, not Bitcoin, remains the world’s major safe-haven asset.

He also laid out two additional reasons why gold is still superior: (1) Bitcoin shows a high correlation with tech stocks (i.e. its 90-day correlation with the Nasdaq recently hit 0.89), and (2) Bitcoin operates in a “relatively small and controllable market”.

But not all of Dalio’s peers agree, as investor Paul Tudor Jones made the exact opposite claim in April: “Bitcoin is unequivocally the best inflation hedge that there is — more than gold.”

Finally, there’s irony in Dalio’s privacy critique — you can attack Bitcoin for helping criminals because it’s pseudonymous, or you can attack it for not being private enough, but you can’t logically do both. Moreover, there’s no logical reason why central banks would decline to hold Bitcoin due to its pseudonymity, and Dalio fails to offer any such explanation.

April CPI Data Incoming

The April CPI report drops this morning at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

For those new to the number, this is the Consumer Price Index — the government’s main gauge of inflation that tracks the average price changes in the basket of goods and services typical American households buy every month.

Headline CPI is expected to rise 0.6% from March to April and 3.7% from a year ago. Core CPI is expected to rise 0.3% from March to April and 2.7% from a year ago.

If expectations hold, this marks another hot inflation print driven mainly by the Iran-conflict energy surge. A hotter-than-expected reading would reinforce the Fed’s wait-and-see stance on rate cuts and add short-term pressure on risk assets. A cooler print should give Bitcoin and risk assets a modest lift.

Copper Short Open Now

Your DEGEN trade today is shorting copper. And it’s the same concept as described in your Trade of the Day above. Price-to-volume divergence near ATHs, which indicates buyer exhaustion.

Now we actually think shorting copper is a riskier trade as compared to shorting ZEC, given the copper rally is due to AI infrastructure demand. But the chart and technicals are what they are, so we like the short play here.

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