July 2026 · Interim Note
American Airlines’ Roughest Day in Months, and Alphabet Falls Despite Beating Estimates
Thursday was a bad day for two unrelated reasons, and both landed on positions I actually hold. The S&P 500 fell 1.23%, the Nasdaq-100 fell 1.90%, and volatility (VXX) jumped 4.5% — a broad risk-off tape, but the causes underneath it were two separate stories, not one.
Two stories, two positions
American Airlines fell 8.35% to $13.56 after crude oil spiked on reports of an Iran port blockade and tanker attacks near Saudi Arabia — a real, dated geopolitical shock, not a company-specific problem. I bought this position at an average cost of $10.18, so even after today's drop it's still comfortably above cost; a levered airline getting hit hardest on a fuel-cost shock is exactly the kind of correlated risk I signed up for when I bought it, not new information. Full writeup on the News page.
Alphabet fell 7.13% to $317.69 the same day it reported Q2 revenue growth of 24% and Google Cloud growth of 82%, both ahead of estimates — the stock sold off because management raised 2026 capex guidance to $195–205 billion, and the market read that as the AI-spending question getting harder, not easier, to answer. My average cost here is $274.57, so the position is still up net of today. I go further into what this specific pattern means in today’s Opinion piece.
The one clear bright spot was Micron, up 3.20% to $990.21 — the same Alphabet capex raise that hurt Alphabet's own stock read as a demand signal for the memory chips Micron sells into that buildout. Same headline, opposite reaction, in the same portfolio.
No trades today
The Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist for exactly this kind of session. Nothing in Thursday's move changes a thesis I've written up on either name; it just moved the price. No trades made.