I don’t want to be the naysayer but the link clearly shows why investors should be cautious when even the best-intentioned men talk of peace when their armies are still on the battlefield with itchy trigger fingers.
Oil is dumping this morning back to the April lows (well, post-war lows, anyway). Brent is down 3.57% to $87.15, WTI down 3.76% to $84.18 after yet another Trump pronouncement that peace with Iran is imminent, with the “Time and place of the [MOU] signing to be announced shortly.“
🥷 The market is bidding equity futures up on it — S&P up 0.47% to 7,430, Nasdaq up 0.44% to 29,593. But gold is also up +2.76% to $4,227, which is the tell. When stocks rally on peace and gold rallies with them, somebody isn’t fully buying it.
Before you go long the peace dividend, look at this:
That’s the Brent chart from March 1 through yesterday. Every annotation is a Trump statement about Iran. Read them in order:
-
- March 1: “I think the war is very complete, pretty much” — Brent then ran from $70 to $119.
- March 22: “Very good and productive conversations with Iran” — faded inside a week.
- April 3: “Hormuz completely open” — followed immediately by Iran disputing it.
- April 25-30: “This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE” — Brent peaked at $126.31 on the announcement, then bled $40 over five weeks.
- May 17-24: “Iran conflict will end very soon” / “Final Determination later today” — he did not, per the chart caption.
- June 11 (yesterday): “Cancelled Iran strikes. Time and place of [MOU] signing to be announced shortly.“
We are now on the sixth peace announcement of the cycle. Each one has been faded. We’re not betting against it eventually being true — we’re noting that “this time for sure” has a 0-for-5 record. Brent at $87.15 is pricing peace as roughly a done deal. If Trump is wrong again (or if Iran prices it differently), crude bounces fast and hard. If he’s right, crude grinds lower into the $70s.
PPI was at record highs yesterday and nobody cared. Consumer Sentiment hits at 10am today and nobody is going to care about that either (though they should). Inflation data is transient if the war ends. Consumer mood is “transient” if the war ends. Even CPI next Wednesday is transient if the war ends. Every macro print this month is a sideshow to the Strait of Hormuz.
So we’re not going to tell you what to do about peace or war, because we don’t know and neither does Trump, evidently. We are going to tell you what to do about the “sure things,” the things we can see, NOW, that are real – and tradeable.
The Sure Thing: SpaceX IPO Brokers
Yesterday we talked about how silly the SpaceX IPO is at $1.75Tn (Chanos agrees, and we’re not chasing it). But there’s a Part 2 we didn’t write yesterday and we’re writing it now: who collects the tolls when retail money floods in?
The S-1 directed share program names three retail brokers (CNBC, May 21):
-
-
-
Robinhood (HOOD)
-
Fidelity — private, can’t trade it
-
Charles Schwab (SCHW)
-
-
That’s it. Not SoFi, not Webull, not Interactive Brokers. The 21-bank syndicate (CNBC, April 1) will pull in $750M-$1B+ in fees (Jay Ritter via MarketWatch — “biggest underwriting payday ever in absolute dollars“). But the brokers don’t just get a sliver of the fee — they get every retail customer the IPO drags into the system and they keep them!
That’s the toll collector business. And unlike the war, nothing stops the IPO from happening. The S-1 is filed, the syndicate is paid, the marketing money has shipped, the retail FOMO is built. SpaceX going public is the most over-determined event of 2026.
HOOD: The Generation Play
Phil’s daughter Maddie opened her first trading account on HOOD last year. On her phone. With options approval. In ten minutes. Phil spends weeks and sometimes months helping new PSW members navigate Schwab or Fidelity platforms. That single anecdote is the entire thesis for HOOD.
The financials back it up:
The analyst community has them growing +11.7% in 2026 after two years of +58% and +52%. This is very conservative guidance with revenue projections rising “just” $530M in 2026 versus $1.5B they actually rose in 2025. That’s a 65% deceleration in growth dollars in a year when the firm is gaining the SpaceX directed share program, the rumored OpenAI and Anthropic IPO access and the Trump retirement account custody mandate. The analysts have penciled in a deceleration that the catalysts contradict and management has not defended better numbers – so HOOD has been drifting:
They do project growth to be re-accelerating to +21.6% in 2027 — which only makes sense if you assume the 2026 number is the floor that the actual prints will beat. We agree with that, we just think 2026 is the year the beats start to happen, not 2027.
At $92.23 and an $83B market cap, current P/E on the consensus 2026 NI is 48.8x. That looks rich — but if the actual 2026 print is closer to $2.2-2.5B (which the 2027 estimate implies is reachable), forward P/E is closer to 35-37x. For a 50% top-line grower with operating leverage and three monster catalysts in the pipeline, that is NOT expensive!
The Chart Case: HOOD Is Mid-Channel, Not Topping
The other thing the chart tells you:
-
-
October 2025 peak: $150.21 — that was the parabolic blow-off following the meme rally
-
March/April 2026 bottom: $65.87 — a 56.1% drawdown
-
Today: $92.23 pre-market — recovered +40% off the lows, still +62.9% below the Oct high
-
That is not a stock that has rallied into a top. That is a stock that crashed, based, and is now testing the upper rail of a new channel. SpaceX IPO doesn’t have to take it to new all-time highs — it just has to push HOOD from $92 to the $110-120 channel ceiling. That’s a +20% move with a defined catalyst and a defined date.
😎 As I often remind our Members, we don’t need a stock to go higher to make fantastic returns – we just need it NOT to go lower and I think HOOD will be very strong for the long term, with just 20% of SCHW’s revenues (so far) and a lock on the Trump Accounts and EXTREMELY HIGH penetration for college grads (5M/year) and, as Basho noted when we talked about this, you are comparing Maddie’s 10-minute experience on her phone to Schwab of Fidelity and all their forms and waiting periods and tests (for options), etc.
That is NOT young-adult friendly!
Still, I’m allergic to paying 40x for a stock so, in our Short-Term Portfolio, let’s sell 10 HOOD 2028 $75 puts for $20 ($20,000). That is us promising to pay net $55 ($55,000) for 1,000 shares of HOOD. That’s a 40% discount to the current price if we’re assigned – THAT I can live with! If HOOD fails to fall below $75 (19% below the current price is our cushion), we simply KEEP the $20,000 and the options expire worthless.
If, on the other hand, we are forced to buy the stock at net $55, then we can sell the 2029 or 2030 $50 calls (now $54) for at least $25 and that would lower our basis to $30 and we can sell more short puts for $10 and our basis would drop to $20, etc. so PLEASE assign us the stock at $20 – we’ll be DISAPPOINTED if all we get to do is keep the $20,000!
So this is what I mean when I say I consider the $20,000 to be free money. It’s like someone saying to you “I’ll pay you $20,000) if you promise to by that $100,000 Mercedes for $75,000 if it goes on sale.” In what way do you not win?
THIS is how we teach you to Be the House – NOT the Gambler at PhilStockWorld!
That makes this too good to pass up for the Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) so here’s our Top Trade Idea for that one:
-
-
-
- Sell 10 HOOD 2028 $75 puts for $20 ($20,000)
- Buy 20 HOOD 2028 $75 calls for $41.50 ($83,000)
- Sell 15 HOOD 2028 $110 calls for $30 ($45,000)
- Sell 7 HOOD Sept $105 calls for for $10 ($7,000)
- Sell 5 HOOD Sept $85 puts for $9.50 ($4,750)
-
-
That’s net $6,250 on the $70,000 spread so there’s $63,750 (1,020%) upside potential but we’re starting out $17 ($34,000) in the money – so that’s nice! There are ALSO 5 more quarters where we’ll be able to sell $11,750 in premium so that’s another potential $58,750 (940%) to be gained in income while we wait. Aren’t options fun?
🥷 SCHW: The Boring Sibling That’s Just Cheap
If HOOD is the growth play, SCHW is the value play that nobody talks about.
At $88.70 with a $154B market cap and 2026E net income of $10.15B, current P/E is 15.2x but 2027 is estimated at $7.22, which becomes 12.3x forward earnings!
Fifteen times current (real) earnings. For a company growing top-line ~14% and bottom-line ~15%, sitting on $10T in client assets, with a SpaceX retail allocation pipe, and a balance sheet that prints net interest income while we sleep. That’s just cheap regardless of the IPO.
SCHW doesn’t need HOOD’s catalyst stack — it needs a small rerating to 18-20x earnings, which would put it at $105-115 against $88.70 today. The SpaceX IPO is a free option on top of an already-cheap stock.
😎 For our STP, we can do the same for SCHW and sell 10 2028 $75 puts for $6.50 ($6,500). It’s not as volatile as HOOD – so we are paid less for taking the risk. On the other hand – it’s less risky!
For our LTP, we can pick up the following Top Trade Idea:
-
-
-
- Sell 10 SCHW 2028 $85 puts for $11 ($11,000) (we are being aggressive as we REALLY think SCHW is oversold)
- Buy 20 SCHW 2028 $70 calls for $27 ($54,000)
- Sell 15 SCHW 2028 $100 calls for $11.50 ($17,250)
- Sell 7 SCHW Sept $92.50 calls for $4 ($2,800)
- Sell 5 SCHW Sept $85 puts for $3.50 ($1,750)
-
-
That’s net $21,200 on the $60,000 spread with $38,800 (183%) upside potential and I know that sounds bad after HOOD but it’s a higher probability of success – so that’s our trade-off. We also have 5 more quarters to sell $4,550 in premium and that’s another potential $22,750 (107%) so a very nice reward profile for 18 months against what we don’t feel is a very risky bet!
🥷 The “Both Branches Win” Argument
Here’s why this is a “sure thing” in a way that the peace trade is not.
If Trump is right and peace happens this time:
-
-
Oil collapses, markets rip, retail floods back into stocks, HOOD/SCHW collect the deposits and the PFOF.
-
If Trump is wrong again and we re-escalate:
-
- Volatility spikes, options volume spikes, HOOD collects PFOF on every panic trade, SCHW collects fees on the asset rotation.
Either way, SpaceX IPO still happens because the deal is filed, the bankers are paid, and nothing in geopolitics stops a $75B IPO that everyone wants to do. HOOD and SCHW get the directed shares either way. They get the new accounts either way. They get the brand halo either way.
Both branches of the binary tree pay. That’s what we mean by a “sure thing“.
And the sloshback™ — when traders don’t get their allocations (but have cash ready to deploy) and the peace trade gets faded or the war trade gets faded — every reversal sends retail into trading apps. HOOD and SCHW are short volatility insurance for the rest of us and long volatility revenue for themselves. We are not likely to lose on this trade structure unless the entire retail-trading complex collapses and the retail-trading complex isn’t collapsing while one-third of the country has a phone-based brokerage account and the President and Congress get rich off the markets.
Bottom Line
We are not betting on peace. We are not betting on war. We are not betting on PPI, CPI, or Consumer Sentiment. We are betting on the one event in 2026 that has no off-ramp — SpaceX going public — and we are buying the two retail brokers who are positioned to collect tolls regardless of which way every other macro variable goes.
Trump can announce peace six more times. The Fed can leave rates alone for another six months. Iran can do whatever Iran does. None of that stops SpaceX from IPO’ing in front of a screaming retail audience that has to go through Robinhood or Schwab to get some.
THAT is the toll booth. We are standing in it.
Have a great weekend, see you Monday for the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO recap.
— Basho 🥷, Phil 😎 and the Round Table
Disclosure: PSW positions in HOOD and SCHW per the trade structures above. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This is not investment advice; we are sharing how we are positioning. Do your own work.
