AI Melt-Up, One New Bet: Micron – Evening Swing Journal 2025-11-25

Macro and markets, 2025-11-25 PM – written for a general investing audience, not as financial advice.

The Backdrop: Dovish Fed Vibes, AI Still Driving

The market came into this evening still locked onto a familiar story: a Federal Reserve that sounds more worried about slowing growth than runaway inflation, and futures markets that continue to price in a path of rate cuts over the next year. That “soft-landing plus gentle cuts” combo has kept a tailwind behind growth and tech, especially anything touching AI and data centers.

Index-wise, the tone remained risk-on. The major benchmarks stayed broadly supported, with the Nasdaq/QQQ complex again acting as the high-beta engine of the tape. Under the surface, leadership is still clustered around AI, semiconductors, and megacap tech. The twist: Nvidia has started to look a bit more fragile and choppy after its huge run, injecting some two-way risk into the AI trade even as the broader theme remains intact.

How the Portfolio Is Tilted

The swing sleeve is intentionally concentrated in AI and growth, built around liquid, widely followed names. Think of the portfolio in rough buckets rather than dollars:

• AI & Big Tech Core (largest weight): exposure via QQQ plus key single-stock stakes in names like Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), and now Micron (MU). This is the main engine we want working when the AI/growth trade is in gear.
• Defensive / Non-AI Balancers (moderate weight): a steady retailer (Walmart, WMT) and a global energy major (ExxonMobil, XOM). These are there to keep the portfolio from being a one-factor AI bet.
• Secular Theme Satellite (smaller weight): uranium exposure via Cameco (CCJ), reflecting a long-horizon bet on nuclear power’s role in the transition story.
• Volatility Hedge (small weight): a small position in UVXY, sized around the low-single-digit percentage of equity (roughly 2.5–3.5%). The goal is not to make money on vol every day, but to have something that kicks in if we get an air pocket lower.

Net-net, this is a fully invested, AI-tilted swing book with a handful of stabilizers and a modest shock absorber.

Today’s Only Move: Leaning Into Micron (MU)

With a bit of idle cash on the sidelines, we made one new trade this session: adding a small long position in Micron Technology (MU).

The thesis is simple and deliberately boring: if AI, large language models, and data-center buildouts remain the primary growth story, someone has to supply all that high-bandwidth memory and storage. Nvidia may get the headlines for GPUs, but Micron sits squarely in the memory and HBM lane. A small starter position lets us participate in that piece of the AI infrastructure stack without overcommitting capital in a single day.

We sized the add conservatively, treating it as an incremental tilt, not a hero trade. If the AI/server memory narrative keeps firming up and price action cooperates, there’s room to scale. If not, risk rules (see below) decide.

Risk Discipline: Stops, Not Caps

The risk framework stays intentionally simple:

• Manual, raise-only stop levels on core positions. Once a name earns more room by trending, we can trail risk higher, but we don’t lower stops just to “give it space.”
• No profit caps. The upside in powerful themes like AI can be nonlinear; the goal is to avoid cutting winners too early while still honoring downside limits.
• Small UVXY hedge around the 2.5–3.5% of equity range, meant as crash insurance rather than a day-trading vehicle.
• Multi-day swing horizon only. No intraday scalping; trades are intended to work over days to weeks, with intraday noise ignored unless it blows through risk lines.

Put differently: the portfolio expresses a clear view (bullish AI/growth while the Fed leans dovish), but every line item has a defined “you’re out” level.

What’s Next: Watching the Crowd and the Fed

A few things sit on the top of the watchlist from here:

• Fed narrative shifts: Any hawkish surprise in speeches, data, or market-implied odds could quickly hit long-duration growth and AI names. That’s when the stops will earn their keep.
• How crowded the AI trade feels: If sentiment and flows get too one-sided, even good news can become “sell the fact.” The recent wobble in Nvidia is an early warning that the path may get choppier even if the long-term story is intact.
• Rotation plans if we’re wrong: If stops start triggering across AI/growth, the plan is to rotate toward other themes—more defensives, select housing plays, and potentially biotech—rather than trying to hero-buy every dip in the same crowded complex.

For now, we stay fully invested, tilted toward AI and growth, with Micron now added to the roster as a measured bet on the memory side of the story. Tomorrow’s job is the same as always: respect risk, let winners breathe, and stay honest about when the narrative changes.

Information above reflects a single swing-trading framework and is shared for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.