Google crushed it so hard the stock shot up 10% overnight. Amazon held its ground. And Microsoft and Meta? They both posted some of the best numbers I’ve seen from companies at their size. and got absolutely clapped by the market for it.

You may be confused as to why these 2 companies’ stock got punished. But this is exactly the kind of moment I live for as an investor - when Mr. Market has a meltdown over something he doesn’t fully understand yet and leaves good assets on the table for those willing to do the homework.

In this post I’m going to walk you through what happened with all four companies, then go deep on Microsoft and Meta, because their valuations are now genuinely interesting, and I think there’s a real mispricing opportunity sitting right in front of me.

So, buckle up!

Earnings Were Blockbuster

Every single one of these companies beat estimates. Some of them smashed them. And two of them got sold off.

The best part? I strongly believe there’s a mispricing story here. Ready?

META: Wall Street Is Having Flashbacks. I Think They're Wrong.

Why Did the Stock Drop?

Okay so here’s the thing with Meta. The market has trust issues with Zuckerberg when they made huge investments into the Meta verse with underwhelming investment returns and Wall Street hasn’t forgotten about them.

So when Meta shows up to earnings saying “hey, we’re going to spend an absolutely eye-watering amount of money on AI infrastructure”, investors start packing. Why? They did have a history of high Capex spending that didn’t payoff like what happened to the Metaverse.

There were two specific things that spooked the market this quarter:

1. Huge capex fears: Because of its history, Wallstreet is skeptical. “Wallstreet is debating whether margins will continue to be squeezed in the future or expand rapidly as its capex investments pay off.”

2. Daily active users dipped slightly: Due to Iran outages and WhatsApp restrictions in Russia but would have grown without those events as said by management.

Meta is Building HUGE Revenue DriverS

This is where I think Mr Market is overlooking. Meta is building huge revenue drivers that could increase its earnigns significantly in the future. I outline 3 of them below.

1. The Advertising Machine, Now Turbocharged by AI

Meta’s core business is pretty simple. They get billions of people to stare at their apps, then charge companies to put ads in front of those eyeballs. The smarter the targeting, the more those ad slots are worth.

Now they’re pouring AI into every corner of this engine, and the results are already showing up in the numbers. Ad impressions grew 19% this quarter. The average price per ad grew 12%. Both up, at the same time.

That’s not a coincidence - that’s the AI strategy working.

Here’s their monetisation strategy:

Better AI integrated → understands users’ content tastes more deeply → Reels and feed recommendations get scarily good → users spend more time on the app → more ad inventory available → better targeting → advertisers pay more → Meta makes more money → that data makes the AI smarter → repeat

And they’re not done improving. Instagram’s recommendation system is being retrained on double the amount of user interaction data. Same-day posts now make up over 30% of recommended Reels. More than double what it was a year ago! They’re even building LLM tools that let users tell the algorithm in plain English what they want to see more of. The personalisation here is going to get wild.

Here is where it gets better. Meta’s AI ad suite that basically automates what a whole team of media buyers used to do manually. Audience selection, creative testing, budget allocation, all of it. Advertisers love it because it outperforms manual campaigns.

Small businesses especially. And SMBs are Meta’s biggest advertiser group by volume. Making it easier for millions of small businesses to run better ads is a massive expansion opportunity that barely gets talked about.

2. The AI Glasses Nobody Is Talking About

Reality Labs had a mixed quarter. Quest VR headset sales were down, which dragged the segment. But buried inside was a number that caught my attention: daily active usage of Meta’s AI glasses has tripled year over year. Management called it one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics categories they’ve ever seen.

Reality Labs is still a small piece of the overall pie, and it’s losing a lot of money ($4B loss on $402M revenue. Yikes!). But the glasses trajectory is something to watch. If that category takes off the way Zuckerberg thinks it will, it becomes a whole new platform.

3. Business AI Agents — The Sleeping Giant

Okay this is the one that I think is genuinely underappreciated by the market right now.

Meta is building AI agents. Not chatbots, but actual agents that can act on your behalf. There are two types:

Personal agents: Imagine an AI that runs 24/7 managing bits of your life. Health, learning, shopping, your calendar, your career. Like having a very competent personal assistant living inside your phone.

Business agents: AI that handles customer interactions, answers questions, processes requests, and manages sales conversations for businesses running on WhatsApp and Messenger.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Business AI conversations on WhatsApp and Messenger went from about 1 million to over 10 million weekly. That’s a 10x jump. But Meta is letting its users use it all free right now.

Meta is giving this away on purpose. They’re subsidising adoption, getting millions of businesses hooked on these agents to run their customer operations. Once those businesses are dependent on it, and they will be, Meta can start charging. And with 2 billion WhatsApp users who are barely monetised at all, the pricing power they’ll have in a few years is hard to fully wrap your head around.

What I’m Watching Quarter to Quarter

For Meta’s story to play out, I’m keeping my eyes on these specific numbers:

• Revenue growth vs. capex growth: Revenue is currently growing at 33%. As long as that outpaces spending growth, the business is fine.

• Ad impressions: Looking for sustained 15%+ growth.

• Average price per ad: If both volume and price keep climbing together, the AI targeting is doing its job.

• Daily active people (DAP): 3.56B this quarter with a small dip. Want to see it bounce back above 3.6B next quarter. Any sustained decline here is a genuine red flag.

• MTIA chip progress: Meta is building its own custom AI chip with Broadcom on 2nm technology. When this rolls out properly, it cuts their dependence on Nvidia and reduces inference costs, a margin catalyst that kicks in around 2027.

• Business AIs on WhatsApp and Messenger Revenue: Mostly free for businesses. The moment any actual revenue disclosure appears here, that’s a big catalyst.

• Reality Labs losses: $4B loss this quarter. Want to see that number shrinks it signals Zuckerberg is keeping some cost discipline even while spending heavily elsewhere.

MSFT: The Market Sees the Bill. I See the Future Revenue.

Why Did the Stock Drop?

Microsoft’s situation is a bit more straightforward to explain. They told investors that full-year capital expenditures are going to hit $190 billion. The market was expecting around $154 billion.

That’s a $36 billion surprise. Nobody likes surprises that size.

On top of that, CFO Amy Hood got up and said, yes, data centre depreciation is compressing gross margins, cloud gross margins dropped from about 70% to 66% and that pressure isn’t going away anytime soon.

So investors heard: “we’re spending way more than expected, and it’s hurting margins for the foreseeable future.” Stock sold off.

But here’s what got lost in the panic.

The Number Everyone Missed

Commercial remaining performance obligations RPO hit $627 billion, up 99% year over year!!

Let me translate that into plain English: customers have already signed contracts with Microsoft worth $627 billion, and that revenue hasn’t hit the income statement yet. It’s sitting in a backlog, waiting to be recognised as data centre capacity comes online.

That’s essentially guaranteed future revenue, nearly doubling year over year and the market barely reacted to it.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Copilot paid seats crossed 20 million, growing 250% year over year. Accenture has over 740,000 seats. Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes, and Roche each committed to 90,000+ seats. These are multi-year enterprise commitments.

The market looked at the cost side of the ledger and panicked. It forgot to look at the revenue side.

The Growth Engines: The Earnings Growth Potential Blows Me Away

1. Azure: 40% Growth, And It Would Be Higher If They Had More Capacity

Here’s something that doesn’t get said enough: Azure’s growth right now is being held back by supply constraints, not a lack of customers. The demand is already there it’s sitting in that $627B backlog. Microsoft literally cannot build data centres fast enough to serve all the customers already waiting in line.

As those new data centres come online through 2026 and 2027, Azure revenue will accelerate automatically. Not because they’re out hustling for new deals but because they can finally turn the tap on for customers already committed.

And once that infrastructure exists? That’s when we talk money.

A data centre is a fixed cost you pay up front. Every dollar of Azure revenue running through existing infrastructure is extremely high margin. Management thinks the long-run economics settle at 70-80 cent margins on every incremental dollar. The current capex cycle is painful precisely because Microsoft is building the capacity that generates those margins for the next decade.

The pain is now. The payoff is in the future.

2. Microsoft 365 Copilot: The Most Underrated Revenue Story in Tech

Every single new Copilot paid seat adds about $30 per user per month on top of what that customer is already paying for Microsoft 365. No new customer acquisition needed. Pure incremental, high-margin revenue on top of an existing relationship.

Current penetration: about 3% of the 600 million+ Microsoft 365 user base.

Think about that for a second. They are at 3%. Getting to 10%, which is still a relatively conservative assumption for a product that weekly engagement has now matched Outlook levels, would add over $20 billion in annualised high-margin revenue to this segment alone.

The usage numbers back this up. Monthly active usage of Microsoft’s first-party AI agents is up 6x this year. Copilot queries per user grew nearly 20% just in the last quarter. People aren’t just experimenting, they’re making Copilot part of how they work every single day.

GitHub Copilot: The Sneaky Moat

GitHub has 140,000+ organisations using Copilot now, tripled year over year. At $19-39 per developer per month, it’s already a real revenue line. But the strategic value is even bigger, developers who adopt GitHub Copilot pull their company’s entire AI workload onto Azure. It’s the top of the funnel for enterprise Azure deals, and it’s growing like a weed.

Microsoft’s total AI revenue is already running at $37 billion annually, up 123% year over year.

What I’m Watching Quarter to Quarter

• Azure growth rate: 40% beat guidance. Need to see it hold above 38% as supply unlocks. Drops below 35% and I’ll need to dive deeper.

• Copilot paid seat count: 20M at 3% penetration is the starting gun, still has tons of room to grow.

• Commercial RPO: $627B up 99% YoY. This number predicts revenue 12-36 months out. As long as it keeps growing, the future looks bright.

• Full-year capex trajectory: Watch for FY2027 capex guidance to moderate. Peak capex = peak anxiety. The moment investors see spending plateau, there’s a relief rally waiting to happen.

• AI revenue run rate: $37B ARR growing 123% YoY. Watch this climb toward $60B and $100B.

• Cloud gross margin: Currently 66%, down from 70%. Looking for stabilisation as AI chips get more efficient.

GitHub Copilot enterprise adoption: 140K orgs, tripled YoY. Every developer in the door is a future Azure deal.

Final Words

When stocks drop after earnings, the instinct is to panic or at least question everything. But sometimes the market is just… wrong in the short term. It happens more than people like to admit.

What we have here with Meta and Microsoft are two companies that are essentially in the middle of building the infrastructure for the next decade of their businesses. It’s expensive, it’s messy, and the payoff isn’t showing up on this quarter’s income statement. Wall Street outlook is still very much short-term but as a long-term investors, I see it as an opportunity.

Meta has a highly profitable advertising business that’s getting smarter by the quarter, a WhatsApp asset that’s barely been touched from a monetisation standpoint, and Zuckerberg is one of the most aggressive and focused capital allocators in tech.

Microsoft has $627 billion in contracted revenue waiting to hit the books, Copilot at 3% penetration of a 600 million user base, and an Azure business that’s constrained by supply, not demand. The growth is basically already sold. They just need to build fast enough to deliver it.

Are there risks? Of course. Capex could spiral. AI could take longer to monetise than expected. A macro slowdown could hit ad budgets hard. I’m not pretending this is a sure thing nothing in investing ever is.

But at current valuations, trading below their own historical averages on forward earnings? I think this creates an interesting setup worth watching.

I’ll be watching the metrics I laid out above every single quarter. If the numbers keep pointing the right way, I’m staying put for my own portfolio. And if they don’t, well, that’s why we watch the numbers.

As always, do your own research. But don’t let short-term noise drown out a long-term signal.

This is not financial advice. Everything written here reflects my personal opinions and research only. Always do your own due diligence and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Charts used above are generated by Qualtrim

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Gold has had a strong bull run this past year. But I strongly believe it is not over.

Central banks and governments around the world have been quietly piling into gold at record levels and they are not stopping.
The question is why?

Here is the short answer: the US is slowly losing its grip on the global financial system. And the data is hard to ignore.

US debt-to-GDP is at a record 134%. The government spent nearly $2 trillion more than it earned in 2025. Countries are quietly moving their reserves out of US dollars because they are genuinely afraid the US can freeze their assets at any time. And the Federal Reserve’s independence is now openly being questioned.

All of this weakens the dollar. And when the dollar weakens, gold rises.
I went deep on this. Here is what I found.

Why Every Country in the World Has Been Forced to Buy Dollars — The Petrodollar System

Before we get into why this all matters, let us quickly establish what the petrodollar system actually is, because without understanding the foundation, the cracks are hard to see.

The petrodollar system is the arrangement where oil is priced and traded globally in US dollars. Since oil is the world’s most traded commodity, this creates an almost mechanical, perpetual demand for the US dollar. Think of it like this: every country in the world needs energy to function. Every country that needs to buy oil must first acquire US dollars. That one simple fact has underpinned America’s financial dominance for the past 50 years.

Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency and the settlement currency for oil, governments and central banks have every reason to hold enormous stockpiles of it. And where do you park idle dollars? You buy US Treasury bonds, essentially, you lend money to the US government and earn interest while you wait. This recycling of petrodollars back into US treasuries is what has allowed America to run persistent budget deficits without facing the consequences that would cripple any other country.

Source: National Deficit | U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data

What Happens If the World Stops Buying Oil in Dollars?

Here is where it gets interesting and uncomfortable for anyone heavily exposed to the US dollar.

If countries no longer need to acquire US dollars to purchase oil, global demand for the dollar falls. A currency, like any other asset, is subject to supply and demand. Less demand means the dollar weakens. And a weaker dollar means your purchasing power erodes. You can buy less with every dollar you earn!!

For the average American household, this is not an abstract problem. It means higher prices for imported goods, higher energy costs, and wages that struggle to keep pace with the declining value of the currency in their pocket. For the US government, it means rising borrowing costs and a deteriorating fiscal position. The petrodollar system is not just financial architecture, it is the invisible subsidy that has kept the American standard of living intact for generations.

You can track the value of the USD dollar over time by looking at the US dollar index (DXY)

The Wake-Up Call: Central Banks Are Already Moving Away from the Dollar

This is no longer a theoretical risk. It is happening right now.

In April 2026, news emerged that UAE Central Bank Governor Khaled Mohamed Balama had privately warned US Treasury officials that if the dollar shortage caused by the ongoing Iran war continues, the UAE may have no choice but to price a portion of its crude oil sales to China in yuan rather than dollars.

To appreciate the significance of this, consider the analogy: the UAE warning the US that it might stop using the dollar for oil is like the local currency issuer telling the bank, “If you do not help us, we will take our business elsewhere.” For decades, Gulf states have been the most loyal pillars of the petrodollar system. Their oil revenues flood into US Treasuries. Their sovereign wealth funds park trillions in US assets. If even one of them publicly pivots to yuan settlement, it is a structural rupture , , not just a headline.

The underlying reality is real: the Strait of Hormuz closure has forced oil buyers to seek new payment rails, and every week yuan-based infrastructure gets normalised.

Why Are Central Banks Moving Away from the Dollar?

1. The Dollar Was Weaponised and Everyone Noticed

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the G7 and allied nations froze approximately $300 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves.

What seemed like a decisive act of economic warfare had an unintended consequence: it sent a chilling signal to every central bank on the planet.

The message was clear:

“Your dollar reserves are only safe as long as you stay in Washington’s good graces. The moment you cross a political line, your savings can be seized overnight.”

Think of it this way: imagine you deposited your life savings into a bank, and one day you watched the bank freeze your neighbour’s account, not because of fraud, but because of a political disagreement. Would you feel comfortable leaving all your savings there? Of course not! That is exactly how dozens of central banks responded after 2022.

Even former US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen publicly acknowledged this risk, warning that using financial sanctions linked to the dollar could, over time, “undermine the hegemony of the dollar.” Over 20 years, official US sanction designations have risen more than tenfold. Countries like Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba were forced out of the dollar system the moment sanctions hit. Nations not yet sanctioned began hedging pre-emptively.

The 2022 Russia asset freeze was not just a financial manoeuvre, it was an advertisement for dollar alternatives. The US plans to weaken Russia’s economy totally backfired on them!

(This is a space that moves fast. New sanctions, new bilateral deals, new reserve disclosures, the signals come weekly. And luckily, I have a system that finds the most important market news and send them to your inbox daily)

2. America’s Fiscal Position Has Become Indefensible

Source: United States Debt Clock - National debt of United States

The US national debt now exceeds $39 trillion. In May 2025, Moody’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating from AAA to Aa1 , the first such downgrade in over 100 years, making it the last of the major agencies to strip America of its top rating.

Source: United States Debt Clock - National debt of United States

The US federal debt-top-gdp ratio is about 134% now in 2026, up from 123% in 2025. Interest payments on the debt are already consuming an enormous portion of federal revenue, and Moody’s forecasts that figure could climb to 30% of all federal revenue by 2035.

Here is a simple analogy: imagine a household that earns $100,000 a year but spends $107,000 every year and that gap keeps growing. At some point, the people lending that household money start to wonder: will we ever get paid back? That is the question foreign central banks are now asking about US Treasuries. Every dollar held in a Treasury bond is a bet that the US government will manage its finances responsibly. That is a bet fewer and fewer are willing to make at scale.

3. Is the Fed Still Independent?

The credibility of the world’s reserve currency rests on one critical assumption: that the central bank setting monetary policy operates free from political interference.

In early 2026, with Jerome Powell’s term as Fed Chair set to expire in May 2026, European policymakers, including figures at the Bundesbank, publicly voiced concerns about potential political interference in the Federal Reserve’s future leadership. A Fed that prints money to fund government deficits rather than to manage inflation is not an independent central bank. It is a political tool. And no central bank in the world wants to hold reserves in a currency managed by a political tool.

The HSBC 2026 Reserve Management survey found that central banks overwhelmingly agree the dollar’s safe-haven status is being challenged.

4. America’s Economic Weight Has Shrunk

The dollar’s dominance as a reserve currency was cemented in the post-World War II era, when the United States represented an enormous share of global economic output. That world no longer exists.

According to J.P. Morgan’s research, the dollar’s share of global FX reserves has declined in direct proportion to the US share of global GDP and global exports. As the US economy becomes a smaller slice of a much larger global pie, the case for holding everything in dollars weakens automatically. This is not a sudden crisis it is a slow, and an ongoing process.

Defending the Petrodollar Was One of the Key Causes of the Iran War

Few geopolitical analysts have stated this plainly enough, so let me say it directly: one of the key catalysts for the Iran conflict was the active erosion of the petrodollar system.

Iran had been pricing oil in yuan for Chinese buyers, routing shipments through shadow tankers to circumvent US sanctions. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil flows became the lever Iran used to force yuan-denominated transactions. Analysts noted that this conflict is partly about who controls how and where oil flows, and critically, in what currency it is settled.

The bitter irony is this: Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait has dramatically accelerated yuan oil pricing. Every week the strait stays closed, more yuan-denominated payment infrastructure gets built, normalised, and entrenched. Even if a ceasefire is reached and the strait reopens, the question is whether that infrastructure the bilateral payment rails, the CIPS-linked settlement systems simply stays in place. If it does, you have a structural shift that does not reverse.

The Process of Dedollarisation Is Already Visible in the Data

When governments and central banks hold dollar reserves, they earn a return by parking that cash in US Treasury bonds. The chain of events is straightforward:

dollar reserves go up, Treasury demand goes up, yields stay low, and the US borrows cheaply.

Now reverse that chain.

Central banks reducing their dollar reserves means less demand for Treasuries. Less demand for Treasuries means bond prices fall and yields rise automatically. Simultaneously, the US government, running persistent deficits, must keep issuing new Treasuries to fund itself.

With fewer willing buyers, it must offer higher yields to attract investors. Higher yields mean higher interest payments. Higher interest payments make the deficit worse. A worse deficit means even more Treasury issuance. More supply hits a market with shrinking demand. Yields rise further.

Source: CNBCCheck out ‘s stock price (US30Y) in real time​

Source: US10Y: 4.306% -0.017 (-0.3932%)

This is a reinforcing loop, not a one-time event. It is what happens when the petrodollar recycling mechanism begins to break down.

Source Central Banks | World Gold Council

The gold demand data tells a parallel story. According to the World Gold Council, central banks bought over 1,000 tonnes of gold in each of 2022, 2023, and 2024, the first time three consecutive years have breached that threshold since the 1950s. In 2024 alone, central bank gold purchases totalled 1,045 tonnes, more than double the average annual pace between 2010 and 2021.

These are not speculative purchases. These are sovereign balance sheets diversifying away from dollar-denominated assets and into something that cannot be frozen, cannot be confiscated by political decree, and cannot be printed.

Source: Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025 | World Gold Council

How I’m Thinking About Positioning for Dedollarisation

So by now, you should know that the conditions in the world don’t look so promising and I’m sure as an investor you are afraid how the markets will impact your investment portfolio. So what assets have historically done well in environments like this?

1. Physical Gold and Gold ETFs (GLD)

Gold is the ultimate reserve asset because no government can manufacture it on demand. Unlike fiat currencies, the supply of gold is constrained by geology, not by a central bank’s printing press. When confidence in fiat money erodes, gold historically fills the vacuum.

The cleanest way to access this is through ETFs like GLD (SPDR Gold Shares) or IAU (iShares Gold Trust), which hold physical gold on your behalf. For those who prefer direct ownership, allocated gold accounts or physical bullion are options though storage and insurance costs apply.

2. Gold Mining Stocks

If gold is a lever, gold miners are a longer lever. Mining companies have fixed operational costs. When gold prices rise, those costs stay relatively stable but revenues surge meaning margins expand dramatically. This is called operating leverage.

For example, if a miner’s all-in cost to produce an ounce of gold is $1,500 and gold trades at $2,000, their margin per ounce is $500. If gold rises to $2,500, that same margin doubles to $1,000, a 100% increase in profitability from a 25% move in gold. That asymmetry is why miners tend to outperform gold itself in bull markets. The flip side is that they underperform badly when gold falls, so position sizing matters. Established names like Newmont, Barrick, and Agnico Eagle are the more liquid choices (I’m not recommending any of these stocks specifically — always do your own research).

3. Silver

Silver tends to follow gold during monetary crises but with substantially more volatility. Historically, it has outperformed gold in the later stages of a dollar decline, as broader public participation in the precious metals trade increases.

What makes silver distinct is that it carries a dual demand driver: monetary demand (as an alternative reserve asset) and industrial demand (solar panels, electric vehicles, electronics, medical devices). This industrial dimension means silver benefits from the global clean energy transition regardless of what the dollar does. Historically, silver ETFs like SLV have offered more leveraged exposure to precious metals moves.

4. Broad Commodities

When the dollar weakens, commodity prices rise almost automatically because most commodities are priced in dollars globally, a weaker dollar means it takes more dollars to buy the same barrel of oil, tonne of copper, or bushel of wheat. Commodities are real assets. They hold purchasing power independent of what currency they are denominated in. Broad commodity ETFs like PDBC or DJP are examples of how some investors access this exposure.

This is exactly what central banks are doing at the sovereign level systematically swapping paper claims on governments for real, physical assets.

What I Am Watching Now

1. Saudi Arabia’s Oil Pricing Decision

This is the single most important domino. Saudi Arabia still prices the vast majority of its oil in dollars. If Riyadh formally announces yuan-denominated oil contracts at meaningful scale, beyond the current approximately 45% sold to China. That is the moment the petrodollar system breaks structurally, not just at the edges. Watch for any joint Saudi-China energy announcements or expansion of their existing $7 billion currency swap agreement. (If you want them delivered to your inbox without having to hunt for them, I send out a daily market brief covering exactly this, here)

2. The New Fed Chair Appointment

Jerome Powell’s term expires in May 2026. Trump nominated Kevin Warsh as the new FED chair and Warsh has vowed to keep the Fed independent and stated Trump never asked him to commit to any particular interest rate decision. However the question of whether he stays truly independent under political pressure remains the key risk to watch.

3. Iran Ceasefire and Hormuz Reopening

The Strait of Hormuz closure is currently forcing oil buyers to seek alternative routes and alternative payment systems. Every week it stays closed, more yuan oil infrastructure gets built and becomes the default. Even if a ceasefire brings Hormuz back online, the critical question is whether yuan-denominated transit pricing persists. If it does, that is a structural shift that does not reverse.

4. US Deficit Trajectory and Debt Ceiling

Watch the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projections closely. If the annual US deficit remains above $1.8 trillion with no credible consolidation plan, the Treasury issuance spiral accelerates. A US credit rating downgrade beyond Moody’s 2025 action would be a major signal to markets that the fiscal situation has moved from “concerning” to “systemic.”

5. Central Bank Gold Purchases, World Gold Council Quarterly Reports

The World Gold Council publishes quarterly gold demand data. Watch whether annual central bank purchases remain elevated, specifically whether Saudi Arabia and the UAE begin meaningful gold accumulation (they currently hold very little relative to their reserve size), and whether China resumes publicly reporting its purchases after going quiet.

The numbers to watch: if central bank gold purchases remain above 800 tonnes annually, that is the baseline signalling structural de-dollarisation. If they surprise to the upside again, as they did in 2022, 2023, and 2024, gold has further room to run. (PSSSSSSSSST, I track key economic indicators in real time in my dashboard - Macroeconomic Dashboard. Gold central bank purchase data is coming soon. Watch this space.)

Final Thought

The petrodollar system was built on a simple deal: the world uses dollars to buy oil, and in return, America guarantees global financial stability. That deal is under more strain than at any point in the past 50 years. The Russia reserve freeze, the US debt trajectory, the Iran war’s impact on oil payment rails, and the quiet but relentless accumulation of gold by central banks, these are not separate stories. They are chapters of the same story.

Gold is not a trade. In this environment, it is insurance. And right now, the premium for that insurance is still reasonable relative to what the risks actually look like.

If you have read this far, you already think differently about money than most people around you. The petrodollar story, the gold accumulation, the Fed independence question. These are not things that resolve in a week. They are slow-moving structural shifts that reward the people paying attention.

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The Daily Investment Brief — a free daily email that distils the most important market news into 5 minutes and how the market events may affect your portfolio

The Macroeconomic Dashboard — a free real-time tool I built to track the macro regime and key economic indicators in one place. I will be adding central bank gold purchase data soon, so you can watch this thesis play out in the numbers directly.

I am not a financial advisor. I am just someone who reads obsessively, looks for mispricings, and shares what I find. If that sounds useful — feel free to join!

If you are like me, my portfolio is getting BURNED from the tech SaaS sell-off.

The IGV hit a 52-week low of $73.93, roughly 37% below its recent peak of $117.99. The IGV cratered more than 24% in Q1 2026, its steepest quarterly plunge since Q4 2008, and short-selling volume across single stocks hit the highest level Goldman Sachs has recorded since 2016. This is not a rotation story. It is a genuine question that Wall Street has been asking louder with every passing week: if AI agents can do the work, why are we still paying for the software?

The fear has a specific origin. On February 24, 2026, Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, a product that demonstrated AI agents performing sustained, autonomous knowledge work across legal document review, financial analysis, customer support triage, and project management, precisely the categories where SaaS companies had built their moats.

The numbers behind the fear are hard to ignore. HubSpot has fallen 39% this year following a 42% slump in 2025. Figma has plunged 40%and Shopify has dropped 18%. Adobe, Salesforce, and ServiceNow have all seen their shares slide roughly 30% to 35% so far this year, even as these companies have continued reporting relatively strong results.

Why was there a crash in SaaS stocks?

Well, the market is not pricing in a confirmed collapse of enterprise software. It is pricing in deep uncertainty about which companies survive the transition to an agentic world.

Performance of SaaS companies and my OWN portfolio

I believe in Warren Buffett’s philosophy: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” (That’s a mindset that shapes how I manage my own emotions during volatility).

So when SaaS stocks started crashing, I did my research and invested a meaningful amount into few SaaS stocks I’ve been watching. The selling pressure continued. My portfolio felt it. :(

So i decided to chart a few SaaS stocks vs their revenue to better understand the “Tech Sell-off due to fears of AI disruption Narrative” and see what im missing.

Instead of panic-selling, I charted a few SaaS stocks against their actual revenue figures and my reaction was genuinely “WHAT THE HACK?!”

Despite the IGV ETF collapsing over 28% this year, the underlying revenue growth at most of these companies is still trending up. Stock prices down. Revenue up. The market appears to be pricing in a doomsday scenario that the fundamentals have not confirmed yet. So is this a buying opportunity or a genuine SaaSpocalypse? That is exactly what I set out to answer.

So is this a buying opportunity or a genuine SaaSpocalypse? That is exactly what I set out to answer in this post.

Who are the winners/losers from this investment narrative. And is there any turnaround investment opportunity?

I was curious as to know how this investment narrative move markets and who would be the winners, losers and are there any investment opportunities that the market is overlooking are not yet priced in the market. I outline my research below:

(This is STRICTLY not financial advice, this maps how the narrative historically affects each sector and sub-industry.)

Winners:

1. Cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)

While enterprise SaaS companies are being repriced down, the infrastructure layer underneath them is seeing demand accelerate. Amazon leads with $200 billion in planned capex for 2026, with the bulk directed at AWS AI infrastructure. Alphabet doubled its guidance to $175–185 billion, while Microsoft is tracking toward $120 billion or more in fiscal 2026. The five largest US cloud and tech companies have collectively committed between $660 and $690 billion to AI infrastructure in 2026, nearly double the prior year, driven by a shared conviction that AI workloads will consume every available unit of compute capacity. The mechanism here is straightforward: whether enterprises replace SaaS tools with AI agents or keep them, those agents need to run somewhere. The compute layer wins regardless of which software companies survive.

2. Cybersecurity (e.g. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks)

When I heard about the release of openclaw and how you could download it into your laptop which empowers you an AI assistant that works alongside with you. Productivity definintely will be increased greatly, but what about security? Giving an AI agent full access to your laptop is no joke if it messes up, leaking sensitive data?

Every AI agent introduced into a corporate environment is also a new attack surface. Global cybersecurity spending is projected to reach roughly $248 billion in 2026 as organisations accelerate investment in response to escalating AI-driven threats, and every Fortune 500 CIO survey published this year ranks cybersecurity as a top-two budget priority. CrowdStrike dominates cloud endpoint security with a 97% gross retention rate that points to genuine switching costs. Cybersecurity is also one of the few areas where the “AI as competitor” fear largely inverts, AI agents are the threat, and these companies are selling the defence against it.

Losers:

1. Seat-based CRM and workflow automation (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot, ServiceNow)

These are the stocks at the centre of the selloff, and for a structurally sound reason. The more immediate and dangerous mechanism is not AI replacing the software itself, it is AI reducing the headcount that uses the software. As SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin put it, if 10 AI agents can do the work of 100 sales reps, you do not need 100 Salesforce seats anymore. You need 10. That is a 90% reduction in seat revenue for the same work output. Atlassian dropped 35% after quarterly earnings showed enterprise seat count declining for the first time in the company’s history. Salesforce fell 28% despite revenue growth, as investors shifted focus from top-line numbers to declining net-new customer acquisition. The companies are still generating revenue, but the pricing model that justified their valuations for two decades is now structurally suspect.

(Seat* refers to single user licence for each employee to use the software)

2. General-purpose workflow tools (e.g. Atlassian, Asana, Notion-tier tools)

In April 2026, sales automation sits well below the broader SaaS average on valuation multiples, as generative AI threatens to fundamentally replace traditional CRM workflows rather than augment them. The mid-tier productivity tools are arguably more exposed than the enterprise giants.They lack the deep data moats and integration lock-in that companies like Salesforce have built over 20 years, yet they charge on the same per-seat model. Gartner predicts that 35% of point-product SaaS tools will be replaced by AI agents by 2030, and it is the narrower, single-purpose tools that will feel this first.

Catchup Plays (Where the turnaround investment opportunity lies)

Right now the market is treating every SaaS stock the same way. As long as you are a SaaS, BAAMMM , your stock is down.. BADDDD.

However, i dont believe all SaaS stocks are losers just because AI agents are here, i strongly believe the market is mispricing some SaaS names, but whether that’s an opportunity depends entirely on your own thesis, time horizon, and risk tolerance.

I read an article by Barron’s stating that investors are only partially right about how software companies will be victimized by artificial intelligence. And for a SaaS stock to turn around, they outline 2 factors.

1. “Software companies must help customers incorporate agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others into their products.”

2. “Software makers must show investors that they can use AI themselves to deliver growth with steady or falling head count. That means delivering big upside earnings surprises, especially because upside revenue surprises could be harder to come by.”

As the article notes, “software companies are actually in the best position to benefit from the AI revolution because their costs are software development, which can now be done 10 times more efficiently.”

Here are some tips outlined in the article on how to find these “turn around” opportunities:

1. Start with companies that can continue to produce excellent growth this year, demonstrating that they’ve traded down unfairly with the group.

2. Then there are companies that can use AI to cut costs

I don’t think all SaaS companies will be replaced by AI agents, in fact, some will BENEFIT from it. One good example is Figma, Figma hit $1.056 billion in revenue for full-year 2025, a 41% increase year-over-year. This is not a company in decline. Net dollar retention was 136% as of Q4 2025, meaning existing customers are spending more, not running away. Figma isn’t being disrupted by AI agents: it’s become the platform they run on. Figma opened its canvas to AI agents in March 2026, allowing them to write directly to Figma files using the design system, creating components, applying variables, and building brand-aligned designs using real structure, not just pixels. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, they all work inside Figma now.

(Im not giving Figma as a stock recommendation, im using it as an illustration and these are just my views. Please do your own due diligence before investing any of your own money)

What I’m watching

Below i outline a few key market events that will affect and may change the SaaS sell-off narrative. These are the key events worth monitoring if you are in the SaaS investment game.

1. Microsoft Q3 FY2026 Earnings (April 29, 2026)

Microsoft will publish its fiscal Q3 2026 results after market close on Wednesday, April 29. This report matters more than any other event for the software selloff thesis, because Microsoft sits at the exact intersection of every force driving it, it is simultaneously a cloud infrastructure winner, a Copilot AI monetisation story, and a legacy enterprise software company that is itself supposed to be eating its own SaaS competitors’ lunch.

Investors will be watching closely whether accelerating AI adoption can offset concerns around moderating cloud growth and heavy AI-related spending. The key focus areas will include Azure growth as additional AI capacity comes online, early traction in Copilot monetisation, and the stability of non-AI segments that underpin free cash flow.

2. A New AI Agent Product Launch from Anthropic or OpenAI

If Anthropic or OpenAI announces a major new autonomous agent capability targeting a mainstream enterprise workflow category- HR, finance, sales operations- in the next 30 days, expect an immediate and indiscriminate selloff across software names regardless of fundamentals. The market has repeatedly shown it reacts first to capability announcements and asks questions about monetisation later.

Final Words

So, is this a buying opportunity or a SaaSpocalypse?

Honestly, it is probably both: depending on which company you are looking at.

The fear driving this selloff is real and structurally grounded. The per-seat model that powered two decades of SaaS growth is under genuine pressure, and any company that does not adapt its pricing and product around AI agents in the next 12 to 18 months deserves the valuation it gets. I am not dismissing the bear case.

But what I keep coming back to is this: the market right now is treating every SaaS stock as if it is the same company facing the same existential threat. It is not. A generic task-tracking tool with no data moat and no AI roadmap is in a fundamentally different position from a platform like Figma, which has opened its canvas to AI agents and is actively becoming the infrastructure they run on. These are not the same bet.

The charts I shared earlier tell the real story. Revenue is growing. Earnings are holding up. What has collapsed is the market’s willingness to pay a premium for uncertainty and when sentiment eventually recalibrates back toward fundamentals, the gap between price and underlying performance will need to close somewhere.

Warren Buffett’s line about being greedy when others are fearful is easy to quote and genuinely hard to act on. Sitting in a position that is down 30% while every headline says the whole sector is dead requires a specific kind of conviction one that has to be built on research, not hope. That is why I spent time charting revenue against price, reading the earnings calls, and understanding exactly what the AI displacement mechanism actually is before deciding whether this is a dip or a cliff.

In the next few weeks I’ll be watching both Microsoft and ServiceNow earnings calls closely.

If you found this breakdown useful, Im going post weekly updates of the investment narratives I’m tracking - covering the macro stories and investment themes actually moving markets, with the specific triggers to watch and the exact conditions that would break each thesis.

You may subscribe below if you want to keep yourself updated on such narratives and discover more overlooked opportunities might be hiding in the market now.

The US economy is entering a classic stagflation trap. inflation re-accelerating at the same time as growth and the labour market soften driven by two compounding forces:

1. the ongoing tariff regime, which has raised the effective import tax rate from 2.1% to an estimated 11.7% since the start of the Trump administration.

2. the Iran war shock, which drove a 21.2% surge in gasoline prices in March and pushed headline CPI to 3.3% year-on-year, the highest reading since May 2024.

Charts from dailyinvestmentbrief.com

Beneath the energy spike, the structural pressure remains: tariff pass-through to core goods is still incomplete, core CPI sits at 2.6%, and EY-Parthenon forecasts headline inflation could reach 3.6% by April–May as second-order energy effects work through transportation and goods pricing. The Fed is paralysed!! holding rates at 3.5–3.75% with its dot plot signalling just one cut in December, while seven of nineteen FOMC participants now see no cuts at all in 2026 and a hike is no longer off the table , unable to ease without re-igniting inflation, unable to tighten without breaking an already softening labour market where monthly job creation has collapsed to an estimated 11,000 per month against a breakeven of under 70,000.

This is a regime where the traditional 60/40 portfolio hedge is breaking down: bonds and equities face simultaneous pressure as the Fed’s hands are tied and the fiscal deficit continues to widen under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Source: CME

Market Implications

Based on the current events ongoing I mapped out how different asset classes will play out and who is likely to benefit, get pressured or could there be securities that can rise in the future.

Key events I would watch in the market now

Below i outlined key events in the next 2 weeks that could accelerate or change the stagflation narrative. You would have a clear overview of what to watch, when the event happens and how the market could playout based on different scenarios.

1. FOMC Meeting + Press Conference (Date: April 28–29, 2026)

It is the first Fed meeting since the March CPI shock, and the first where Powell must publicly reconcile a 3.3% headline print with a softening labour market.

2. PCE Inflation + Q1 GDP Advance Estimate (Date: April 30, 2026)

The inflation and GDP data of the economy are key statistics that the FED uses to determine their actions on interest rates.

3. April CPI Data Release (Date: May 12, 2026 estimated, per BLS standard schedule)

This is the first CPI reading that will capture a full month of post-ceasefire energy price behaviour. It is the definitive test of whether the oil shock was a one-month spike or the start of a broader inflation re-acceleration driven by second-order effects working through supply chains.

Source: federalreserve.gov

What could break the stagflation narrative

While the economy is moving in a direction of a stagflation narrative (and only time will tell). There are scenarios that could break the stagflation narrative and i outline them below

1. Oil shock eases as Iran ceasefire hold and Strait of Hormuz opens fully

2. Tariffs rollback and inflation falls

Final Words

The US economy is move towards a stagflation trap. Prices are rising and growth is slowing at the same time, leaving the Fed with no good options. It can’t cut rates without making inflation worse, and it can’t raise rates without hurting an already weak job market. So it sits on its hands, and that inaction is itself the story.

To make things worse, the US gov debt sits at nearly 39 trillion dollars!!! which has an est US Debt-to-GDP ratio of 133%. Hiking rates would just make the interest on debts higher and investors would require a higher risk premium when they are already broke. Moreover, the cost of war is going to be insurmountable causing the US govt to fork out more money that they dont have.

Source: fiscaldata.treasury.gov

In the market now, for me, the winners in this environment are hard assets like gold and the clearest losers are high growth equities and long-dated bonds.

The three things to watch over the next six weeks are the FOMC meeting on April 28–29, the PCE and GDP data on April 30, and the April CPI print in mid-May. Together those three events will tell you whether this narrative is accelerating, holding steady, or starting to crack.

This is not financial advice. Everything written here reflects my personal opinions and research only. Always do your own due diligence and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.