Weekly mortgage demand dropped again this week as interest rates matched a 22-year high.

Mortgage demand from homebuyers was 26% lower than the same week one year ago.

Applications to refinance a home loan fell 2% for the week and were 35% lower than the same week one year ago.

This is a fairly big deal to stocks, commodities, and the greater economy. Do you have an opinion on when the war will end?

Palantir talked a lot about AI, including comments about "unprecedented demand." But reported numbers were underwealming, with most leading indicators not signaling a growth inflection.

Total revenue was just in-line (+13% y/y), albeit towards the high end of the guidance, with largely unchanged full year revenue targets.

Customer addition momentum remained steady, though underlying commercial growth slowed vs. Q1.

While $PLTR may have some success commercializing GenAI-related offerings across their small but deep list of customers, given the deep domain knowledge, I still think packaging/monetization motion remains in its early days.

Shares are up 165% YTD and is trading at 17x EV/Sales, especially with stronger growth / clearer AI tailwinds than peers.

Citi's estimates slightly nudged up on better profitibility, but they reiterated a Sell / High-Risk Rating and $10 price target.

🪵 The kindling: 34.4% of $TRUP shares are currently sold short 👀

🧨 The match**: Trupanion** reported good Q2 earnings: Pets enrolled +23%, Revenue was up +23% and subscription revenue was up +19%. They had improvements in Free Cash Flow too. The kicker: margins improved in comparison to Q1 as pricing takes hold.

🔥 The fire: Trupanion guided for more improvement.

🩳 Shorts are getting 🤏 squeezed. $TRUP stock is up +17% today.

Trupanion does medical insurance for your pet.

$AMZN is up +6% after hours.

Amazon issued a forecast showing potential growth acceleration.

Tirzepatide achieved an unbelievable world record: 26% weight loss in 88-week clinical trial

For the efficacy estimand, those taking tirzepatide, on average, lost an additional 6.7% of their body weight from randomization, compared to those taking placebo who experienced mean weight regain of 14.8% from randomization at 88 weeks, for a placebo-adjusted net weight change of -21.4%.

In a secondary endpoint, participants who remained on tirzepatide after randomization achieved a total of 26.0% mean body weight loss from study entry over the entire 88-week period.

This suggests that these could be long-term drugs for obese and diabetic patients. - Reuters, Eli Lilly

Today Apple stock briefly jumped 2% on a report that it’s developing its own equivalent of ChatGPT.

Apple hasn't been nearly as loud about their LLM than other companies because... well they don't have to.

Apple has an internal foundation for AI called Ajax and a small team of engineers have built a chatbot that some call “Apple GPT,”

Apple doesn't call their tech "Artificial Intelligence" they call it "machine learning" because they are are scholars and have some self respect.

Apple has always used a lot of machine learning in it's products. Think speech recognition in Siri or noise cancellation in Air Pod pros.

You want to see really great use cases for AI and Machine Learning? Keep your eyes on Apple.

$MSFT is up +5.7% on the day 🤯

They announced a $30 per month A.I. subscription for Microsoft 365. That's an additional $30 per month for the use of generative AI with tools within Teams, Excel and Word.

Adding on the generative AI subscription will cost enterprise users an additional 50% or more per month.

The service is called Copilot’s, and it's capabilities include:

• Summarizing meetings

• Analyzing spreadsheet data

• Designing presentations

The tool is in currently in early testing stages and is not yet available to the public.

If you want a reason to look for stock picks— look at this. Money is flowing into ETFs as a whole. That is lifting all boats. But it also means that a lot of this money is passive. Most people don't know what they own. Looking for the best companies will pay off. Most people are investing at the ETF level.

Novocure had a meltdown earlier this month when they released their LUNAR study in non-small cell lung cancer. To me, the market's reaction to the study's results was a bit of a surprise.

The LUNAR study showed that Novocure's Thyroid transcription factor-1 (TTF) technology could significantly improve overall survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. However, the study's design didn't exactly match how non-small cell lung cancer is currently treated, and many clinicians are saying they simply want more information before they adopt the technology.

As a result, I believe that the commercial ramp for TTF in lung cancer is likely to be very slow. While I still believe in the technology, I think it's prudent to wait for more data before investing more in the company.

In the meantime, Novocure has a lot more going on. The company is also conducting a pivotal study in ovarian cancer, and I have every reason to believe that these results will be positive. However, I am personally waiting for these results before doubling down on my position.

Overall, I'm still bullish on Novocure, but I'm not adding more. I'll be closely watching the results of the INNOVATE-3 trial in ovarian cancer, and I'll update our investment thesis accordingly.