Power Plays Weekly Roundup
August 1, 2025

We’re closing out an incredibly busy week with markets.

The Fed left rates unchanged as expected, and the entire meeting was a non-event. Rate cuts are starting to look more out of reach, but we’ll play that as it goes.

Earnings were on the strong side, with Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), and Amazon (AMZN) all beating expectations.

Post-report reactions were a bit all over the place, with some names extending, and others, notably Amazon, seeing major sell-the-news declines.

On Friday, we got a slightly light jobs report.

But the bigger news there was major downward revisions for the past two months, which injected some major worries about the economy.

We also saw President Trump announce a big new wave of tariffs, which gave traders reason to do more selling on Friday.

And all this news came after a fresh round of all-time highs.

I’d been actively taking down risk, perhaps too early, but nonetheless, I'm happy to be cash heavy at a time like this.

I’m glad we cut down longs in Power Plays as of late, because many of the names we exited have tumbled further – Unusual Machines (UMAC), Quantum Computing (QUBT), and Pony AI (PONY) to name a few.

And now we have flexibility to pick up quality names on sale.

Nonetheless, I'm looking to be careful because there is risk of a real volatility spike in August.

Now let’s dig into our remaining name:

Alphabet (GOOGL): The stock broke below $191 this morning, which put it in the danger zone. However, I'm giving this a little more room because it's been one of the stronger names in the market.

Enjoy your weekend!

–Scott