Riding the AI Melt‑Up Without Losing My Nerve

Session: 2025‑11‑24 PM – speculative swing book

Setup: When AI Runs, Everything Else Tiptoes

This afternoon’s tape is exactly what an AI melt‑up looks like from the trenches.

Fed cut odds are firming, front‑end yields are a bit softer, the dollar is easier, and—crucially—there’s no fresh macro shock or obvious credit stress on the screens. In other words, the macro backdrop isn’t screaming “panic,” which gives the market permission to express its enthusiasm in the usual way: pile into mega‑cap tech and AI‑adjacent names.

That’s what shows up in the leaders board: MU, AMD, MSFT, META, GOOGL all acting like they’ve had three espressos and a call with a very bullish AI consultant. You can see the same thing on any public market dashboard—pick your poison: Yahoo Finance, TradingView, or your broker’s watchlist. The flows are loud.

But it’s not a one‑way love story. ORCL blows up on AI‑debt and balance‑sheet worries, a very timely reminder that not every “AI infrastructure” story is created equal. Leverage and capex ambition still matter.

Current Positioning: Already Sitting on the AI Bonfire

Coming into the session, the speculative swing book is already leaning hard into growth and AI:

• Roughly 70% of equity is effectively tied up in QQQ, AAPL, and NVDA.
• Smaller sleeves sit in WMT (defensive retail), XOM (energy), CCJ (uranium/ex‑US commodity beta), and UVXY (volatility hedge).

In other words, this portfolio does not need more AI exposure to participate in an upside blow‑off. The bigger risk is the other side of the trade: a crowded AI long into thin holiday liquidity that suddenly hits an air pocket.

What I Did: Sometimes the Smart Trade Is No Trade

With AI ripping and the book already tilted toward growth, it’s very tempting to start “optimizing” entries and squeezing in micro‑positions. I didn’t.

• No intraday trades this PM. Buying power is tiny, and the expected edge from micro‑churn is even smaller. Chasing pennies when you’re already exposed to the dollars‑worth of trend is how slippage quietly eats performance.
• UVXY hedge stays on, around ~3% of equity. That’s the cheap insurance policy against the nasty scenario: AI leaders gap lower on some overnight headline or just old‑fashioned mean reversion out of an over‑crowded theme.

The key here is alignment: if the core bet is “AI and mega‑cap tech keep leading,” then the marginal decision is not about squeezing another AI name into an already AI‑heavy stack. It’s about making sure a sharp reversal doesn’t force emotional decisions at the worst possible time. That’s what the UVXY sleeve is for.

Risk Management: The GE Stop Breach

The one notable development today happens away from all the Nvidia memes: GE appears to close below its 297 floor, which puts the position in EXIT‑PENDING for tomorrow morning’s open.

That level isn’t magical—it’s just the line in the sand set in advance, part of a broader ruleset where position “floors” are:

• Defined ahead of time. No improvising stops because the price move “feels wrong.”
• Raise‑only. Floors move up with the trend; they don’t get moved down to give a losing idea “more room.”
• Binary. If the close confirms a break, the position turns into a sell at the next liquidity window, usually the following morning’s session.

All the other key floors—AAPL, NVDA, QQQ, WMT, CCJ, XOM—remain intact. That’s important: today’s AI chase does not trigger a wave of forced exits. GE is the exception, and it gets treated as such, not as a referendum on the whole book.

What Comes Next: Rotating the GE Capital

If the GE break is confirmed, the plan for tomorrow morning is simple:

1. Exit GE at market on the open (or as close to it as liquidity allows), no drama, no second‑guessing.
2. Decide where that freed‑up capital goes next based on how the AI complex behaves:

• If the AI melt‑up continues: Look to rotate into an AI leader that’s not already in the portfolio—names like MU, AMD, or MSFT. The goal isn’t to collect tickers; it’s to sharpen the expression of the existing view by owning the clearest secular winners.
• If the tape flips risk‑off: Prioritize a more defensive or healthcare‑style leader (think LLY/JNJ‑type profiles) to diversify factor exposure and avoid having the entire book welded to a single growth/AI factor.

Throughout, the risk rules stay the same:

• Floors are raise‑only. Ideas earn their space by respecting risk levels; they don’t get infinite retries.
• UVXY remains in its 2.5–3.5% band. It only gets trimmed on a clean vol crush and upside follow‑through in AI, not just a random quiet session.

Lessons From Today’s Session

Today is a useful reminder that the job of a speculative swing trader is not to guess every tick; it’s to manage exposure and survive the regime.

• Being early in the right theme beats being heroic at the margin. With ~70% of equity already tied to AI and growth proxies, adding a tiny extra sleeve on a euphoric day rarely moves the needle in a positive way.
• Hedges are easiest to cut on the exact day you still need them. Keeping UVXY on when AI is melting up feels annoying—but that annoyance is the premium. If positioning is crowded and liquidity is thin, overnight gap risk is real.
• Stops only work if you honor them. GE slipping below its 297 floor is not a thesis‑breaking catastrophe; it’s a pre‑agreed exit signal. Turning that into an orderly rotation instead of a stubborn debate is a win for process, not a loss for ego.
• Process scales; micro‑churn doesn’t. You can’t build a repeatable playbook around “tiny tweaks whenever I feel like it.” You can build one around clear floors, sizing rules, and conditional plans for where capital rotates next.

Into tomorrow, the plan is straightforward: respect the GE stop, listen to what the AI leaders are actually doing, and let the hedge earn its keep. The market is rewarding risk takers in the AI complex right now—but the traders who stick around longest are the ones who remember that even the best party eventually sees the lights come on.