Big Tech Earnings Whiplash, KOSPI Wipeout And A SpaceX Rug Pull
On DHUnplugged #812, Andrew Horowitz and John C. Dvorak dissect a rollercoaster tape: blowout Microsoft and Amazon earnings, an Apple stumble on memory costs, a 40% KOSPI crash that wiped out 350,000 Korean retail accounts, and a SpaceX slide that handed short sellers $15.5 billion.
Fort Lauderdale, FL (Newsworthy.ai) Wednesday Aug 5, 2026 @ 10:45 AM CDT
DH Unplugged — DHUnplugged #812: Rollercoaster Ride
Photo: Horowitz and Dvorak
“Short sellers reportedly earned about $15.5 billion as SpaceX shares fell. The move rewarded investors betting against the company's valuation, and it shows how quickly enthusiasm can really wane.”
Episode 812 of DH Unplugged, titled "Rollercoaster Ride," hosted by Andrew Horowitz and John C. Dvorak, arrives August 4, 2026 with markets whipsawing on Big Tech earnings, a collapsing Korean stock market, and a SpaceX unwind that has become the talk of Wall Street. Horowitz, recovering from meniscus surgery two weeks earlier, walks listeners through Dow swings of 1,000 points up and 700 points down, oil reacting to a war that flipped off again, and a tape where names like Palantir jumped 26% while AMD dropped 8% after hours.
The hosts move quickly through a packed docket:
DH Unplugged — DHUnplugged #812: Rollercoaster Ride
Photo: Horowitz and Dvorak
“Short sellers reportedly earned about $15.5 billion as SpaceX shares fell. The move rewarded investors betting against the company's valuation, and it shows how quickly enthusiasm can really wane.”
- Microsoft, Apple and Amazon earnings, with Amazon crossing the $3 trillion mark and Apple falling 7% on memory chip cost warnings.
- The KOSPI meltdown, single stock leveraged ETFs, and 350,000 blown out Korean retail accounts.
- SpaceX's post-IPO slide from lockup expirations, a Starlink subscriber miss, and $40 billion in fresh debt priced toward junk.
- AI "hackathon" narratives from OpenAI and Anthropic, plus Google's new selfie-based authentication push.
- Reddit's 20% plunge on weak AI licensing demand and a Meta miss tied to its Scale AI acquisition.
Dvorak remains skeptical of the AI safety marketing cycle, framing the escalating "capture the flag" breakout stories as a regulatory moat play. "Their large marketing campaign goes around the idea that their AI is going to kill us all. So buy now, don't miss out on having the evil machine work for you," he tells Horowitz, noting OpenAI has been running the same playbook since GPT-2. Horowitz counters that either interpretation, deliberate manipulation or genuine incompetence, is unsettling for investors trying to price the sector.
On SpaceX, Horowitz calls the move a rug pull, pointing to insider selling, expired lockups, and the absence of syndicate support from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch around the $135 level before shares hit $108. The hosts also dig into housing, where Miami now shows roughly 140 sellers for every 100 buyers, and compare stuck listing prices to unsold Beanie Babies on eBay. Other threads include TSMC's additional $100 billion Arizona investment, Delta's confidence in sticky higher fares, a 1.6 million dozen egg salmonella recall, cheap lamb and shrimp at the grocery store, PCE inflation stuck at 3.3% core, and a fresh 50% Trump tariff on Canadian goods.
About DH Unplugged
DH Unplugged is a weekly investing and markets podcast hosted by money manager Andrew Horowitz and columnist John C. Dvorak. The show mixes market commentary, economic news, business trends and offbeat cultural observations in a conversational, skeptical, unrehearsed format. Episodes typically run about an hour and are available at dhunplugged.com, via RSS, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Episode 812 is available now wherever podcasts are heard.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What happened to the Korean stock market and retail investors?
- The KOSPI has been on a wild roller coaster, down 12% one week and up 18% the next Friday, and now sits roughly 40% off its high. Horowitz notes that about 350,000 Korean retail accounts were blown out after investors, many in their 50s borrowing against their homes, piled into single stock leveraged ETFs and futures that ended, as Dvorak put it, in flames.
- Why is Horowitz calling the SpaceX move a rug pull?
- After the largest IPO in history and a quick $40 billion debt deal priced toward junk, insiders sold, lockups expired, and Starlink missed subscriber estimates by a couple hundred thousand. Horowitz expected syndicate support from Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch near $135, but shares fell to about $108, handing short sellers roughly $15.5 billion in profits.
- How did Microsoft, Apple and Amazon earnings actually land?
- Amazon posted $42.2 billion in AWS revenue up 37%, rallied 15% Friday and crossed $3 trillion. Microsoft delivered $90 billion in revenue, $4.74 adjusted EPS, and 43% Azure growth, its best move since October 2008. Apple hit $109 billion in revenue and $54 billion in iPhone sales, but fell 7% Friday on warnings that unusually high memory chip costs could pressure margins.
- Why is Dvorak skeptical of the AI "hackathon" breakout stories?
- Dvorak argues OpenAI and Anthropic have been marketing existential AI danger since GPT-2 as a moat to invite regulation and lock out competitors like Deepseek, Qwen and Meta. He says the retrospective capture-the-flag stories reflect sloppy containment, not genuine breakthroughs, and that the two labs now seem to be competing over who racked up the most felonies in their evaluations.
- What is going on in the US housing market according to the hosts?
- Higher rates have pushed the 10-year yield to 4.75%, its highest since January 2025, straining affordability since buyers shop by monthly payment. In Miami, Horowitz cites roughly 140 sellers for every 100 buyers, but prices remain sticky. Dvorak compares stuck listings to Beanie Babies on eBay, where sellers cling to a dream price that never arrives.
- What did Reddit's earnings reveal about the AI training data market?
- Reddit shares plunged about 20% after warning of choppy search traffic, slowing US user growth, and a lack of new AI licensing agreements, even as revenue hit $805 million, up 61% year over year. Dvorak explains that early models were trained on Reddit upvotes, but labs have moved on, leaving Reddit's dataset far less valuable than management had hoped.
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