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The Momentum Crash of 2026, The Bond Market Is Spooked and The Summer of Weed and Peptides

The Momentum Crash of 2026, The Bond Market Is Spooked and The Summer of Weed and Peptides

Howard Lindzon
July 30, 2026

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Good morning from France.

I know, I know…I have been very quiet here on the newsletter.

The truth is I have been very busy with work and negative on the markets this summer. Back in June I shared all the reasons why I was ditching semiconductor and AI stocks. The Semiconductor Index ( $SMH ( ▲ 7.15% ) ) is down nearly 20 percent since and many of the stocks in that index are down 50 percent since.

Yesterday, I actually waded back into the semiconductor index and added some back to my portfolio. If you follow me on Stocktwits you see these updates in real time.

How the semiconductors and AI stocks behave after the inevitable relief rally will be important. The era of Nvidia’s CEO Jensen moving markets with their ‘partner’ and investment announcements seems to be over.

If you own the S&P you don’t have a care in the word right now as Apple is at all time highs and has surpassed $NVDA ( ▲ 2.93% ) as the most valuable company in the world (makes sense to me). Apple is being rewarded for making the hardware that people need to run their personal AI agents and for NOT investing in AI frontier models and data centers. Apple has also further entrenched themselves in the ‘degenerate economy’ partnering with Klarna to lease computers and iPhones. The ridiculous ‘Mandami generation’ will stiff you on their lease payment but knows better than to miss a payment on their iPhone or Macbook.

My Degenerate Economy Index has held up well because of Apple, Philip Morris (vaping is uncorrelated to the AI boom/bubble) and a big rally back in the $CBOE ( ▼ 1.75% ) which last month had crashed because people were assuming that prediction markets were putting it out of business.

If you are a momentum investor, the world turned against you in July.

It has been the worst July EVER for the Nasdaq 100.

The Goldman Sachs ‘Momentum Index’ has dropped 37 percent in July…it’s worst month EVER. How cute is it that Goldman got paid to distribute (puke) SpaceX on everyone in June which of course was ‘the top’ for said index.

One thing that stands out to me for all the selling in growth and momentum is the rise in interest rates. Yesterday, the ‘Treasury ETF’ ( $TLT ( ▼ 0.09% ) ) was trending on Stocktwits. Interest rates spiked after The FED held rates unchanged. That index has never trended (maybe way back in 2008 during the GFC). The bond market is spooked. The war, inflation, the grifting and the AI spending spree is weighing on the mood of the bond market.

Two trends that have caught my attention are weed and peptides. I am not a user of either though I am told to keep testing gummies to help with my sleep troubles and I am ready to test peptides when I don’t have to buy them out of someones trunk.

Look at the weed trend…

— (@)

Eli Lilly ( $LLY ( ▼ 4.23% ) , which I own, is close to launching their GLP that will have peptides as well and I am ready to go when it gets approval.

My friends who have been early ‘users’ of peptides, swear by them.

I enjoyed this ‘take’ on peptides from Brian Sugar. The gist…

Let me be precise, because the sharpest readers will push here. GLP-1 is proven. Most of these peptides are not, not yet. So what matters is not any single molecule. It is that people have changed. Those tens of millions have agreed to manage their own biology, and they are not going back. Every one of them is a vote that health has become something you do on purpose, not something that merely happens to you. Whether today’s compounds earn their claims is an open question. That a willing market is waiting for the ones that do is not.

I am old enough to be cynical, and I am choosing to spend that cynicism elsewhere. For most of human history your body was a fate. You were handed a metabolism, an attention span, a slow decline, and you lived inside the verdict. That is the thing quietly ending. The body is becoming something you can edit.

We spent a century building smarter tools. We are about to spend one improving the toolmaker. This time the future is not happening to us. It is happening in us.

The children being born now will find it strange that we ever simply accepted the body we were handed. Tuning it will feel as ordinary to them as straightening their teeth. They will not call it a revolution. They will call it Tuesday.

That is how the biggest shifts arrive, not as headlines but as habits nobody thinks to question.

Have a great rest of the week.