TBOY Newsletter · Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Have we hit peak protein… if we’re pulling protein out of thin air? 25 startups are currently working on “Air Protein”. Kinda gross, but bacteria is a life-form that can be protein-rich. Feed a single bacteria oxygen, nitrogen, and CO2 and boom — it grows. An air farm in California is trying to cultivate air chicken. Today’s deep breath is tomorrow’s deep fried.

The South Korean stock market turned into a casino this summer — and that’s according to Koreans. Because 2 chips stocks — SK Hynix and Samsung — make up half of the entire Korean stock market. And those two stocks are now officially more volatile than Bitcoin (true story).

The Korean market plummeted 44% from June 19 to late July, leading to this wild Hero Stat: 1.2M South Koreans — 3.4% of the entire adult population — got a margin call.

• Blame it on the Leverage: Single-stock ETFs that amplify a stock’s position by 2x were introduced this May and became extremely popular.

• They’re like Samsung, on Steroids. But when the chip company fell 35%, these ETFs fell 70%. Like the nitrous oxide button in “Fast & Furious”, leverage makes you go fast, but can make you crash.

• 1st-time traders bought $2 of stock with just $1 of their own money: But when stocks plummeted 44%, they were completely wiped out.

• Brokerages made margin calls, requiring traders to sell stock to pay back their loans. Hence the nationwide depression.

• Koreans are mourning and angry. Some are vowing “stock celibacy” — swearing off investing in stocks altogether.

The Takeaway The Koreans didn’t own the wrong stocks — they owned them the wrong way.

You don’t have to quit stocks, you can just use protection instead.

• Rule #1: Unless you have experience and understand the risk, don’t invest with borrowed money.

• Rule #2: Diversify so that no single bet can crush you.

• Rule #3: Time in the market beats leverage in the market.

Steve Madden — the man — did prison time. In 1993 he got caught up in a pump-and-dump stock scheme (the one from The Wolf of Wall Street). He was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 41 months in prison, and forced to resign as CEO. But Steve Madden — the shoe company — never stopped selling shoes, and 33 years later both the man and the brand are at all-time highs. #ATH

• The Duke of Dupe Shoes saw revenue surge 19% last quarter and profits pop 40x to $99M in the first ½ of the year.

• Steve Madden stock has doubled over the past year (ticker symbol $SHOO) and Google searches rose 71% last quarter.

Here’s Steve’s secret: They’ve become season-proof. Boots used to be a winter item, now Steve Madden sells them year-round. Suede used to be for shoulder seasons, now “suede sells all year.” The only category still stuck on a calendar is sandals.

The Takeaway Sell beans, not bananas.

The same way grocery stores lose $50B of profits annually thanks to food that spoils, seasonal clothing that doesn’t sell must be tossed on the sale rack. End-of-season markdowns are profit crushers — they can erode pricing power for a whole brand.

So Steve Madden sells items not seasonally, but full-price year-round. Steve Madden found a way to turn bruised bananas into calendar-proof cans of beans.

This morning, a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon at 5,400 MPH. Is that a metaphor for SpaceX’s 1st earnings?

• Quarterly revenue was $7.8B, nearly double last year’s.

• The loss shrank by nearly half to $541M.

The rocket biz keeps losing money (even more money). But Starlink continued to be the sole profit puppy. Revenue for the space-based wifi biz rose 66%, profits rose 79%, with 12M subscribers paying $66/month on average. If you haven’t used it yet, we bet your first time will be on an airline, because Elon’s now inked Starlink deals with United, Southwest, and American.

• But SpaceX stock still fell 7% after earnings…

• And Thursday nearly 1B employee-owned shares unlock, more than doubling the supply of stock on the market.

The Takeaway There’s only frenemies in AI.

SpaceX built its own AI lab, Grok — but then turned around and rented spare data-center capacity to Gemini and Claude, the labs Grok is supposed to be competing with. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google? All doing the same dance too.

All the AI labs are roommates, sleeping in each other’s beds. The one exception: SpaceX hates OpenAI. But every other AI company wants to keep the hype cycle going, so they’re happy to do biz with each other, even though they’re supposed to be competing.

In the AI industry there are no enemies. There are no friends. There are only frenemies.

And if you’re wearing boots to the beach right now, more power to ya.