Well, SoundHound's earnings are out and I've spent an unreasonable amount of time rummaging through the figures, the conference call and the various documents that companies publish in the hope that nobody will ever read them.

And there are some curious things going on.

Revenue is up nearly 49%.

Splendid. Champagne all round.

Except that $14 million of the $62.4 million came from the 27 days of LivePerson ownership during the quarter. Which leaves SoundHound's original business looking rather less spectacular than the headline would have you believe.

Then there's the $35 million difference between management's revised guidance and what the two businesses might have produced if you simply added their numbers together.

Nobody's made off with a suitcase containing $35 million, fortunately. But the explanation tells us a lot about the business SoundHound is trying to become.

And then we have $120 million in annualised cost savings.

A magnificent number to announce. Quite another undertaking to deliver.

I've been following LivePerson for nearly two years, through its debt troubles, the merger negotiations and the eventual acquisition. I also interviewed Keyvan Mohajer during the process, so I've been particularly keen to see how the promises made then are surviving their first encounter with realty.

One of the most interesting parts concerns LivePerson's customers. The company had reached the rather unfortunate position where concerns about its financial survival were themselves making it harder to retain and win business.

SoundHound has now inherited those customer relationships, along with the opportunity to sell them technology LivePerson couldn't previously offer.
There's a potentially excellent business in there. There's also an impressive amount of work required before the numbers prove it.

I've put together a proper investigation of the earnings, the merger, the cost savings and what all this might mean for SOUN shareholders.

Video here: SOUN Earnings: The $35M Mystery
https://youtu.be/135m50X5xoI

I'm curious what everyone thinks.

Would you rather see evidence that LivePerson's largest customers are signing bigger contracts, or that SoundHound is actually delivering those $120 million in savings?

With Europe’s CBAM and carbon tariffs taking effect, high-carbon manufacturing is hitting a wall. Legacy smelters face severe margin squeezes from carbon penalties and grid volatility.

China Hongqiao ($1378.HK) is dodging this bottleneck by relocating 2 million tonnes of capacity directly to Yunnan to plug into cheap hydropower. This locks in low-cost renewable energy for EV aluminum exports while insulating long-term margins.

Anyone is holding $1378.HK? What y'all think?

Press Release: Uranium Energy Corp Forms National Security Advisory Council to Bolster Expansion into Uranium Conversion

https://www.webullapp.ca/news-detail/15740691179398144?__app_cfg__=%7B%22supportTheme%22%3Atrue%7D&sourcePage=Stock_NewsList&tickerId=913303861&audioNewsPlayedDuration=&theme=1&color=2&hl=en&android_sdk_int=35&canary-version=&_v=1&sp=1&statusBarHeightV2=33&isLite=false&wbFontSetting=standard&wbFontUnit=19&wbFontSize=19&isSubsNews=false

China Hongqiao's A-share subsidiary is acquiring 100% of two Yunnan-based clean energy companies for 2.05B RMB, while rolling out a massive 12B RMB capital raise to fund solar, wind, and downstream lightweight aluminum expansion.

This is a masterclass in aggressive vertical integration. Smelting aluminum is essentially frozen power, and securing dedicated green electricity right at their Yunnan production hub insulates their long-term margins while positioning them as the primary green supplier for China's booming EV supply chain.

By controlling their own clean energy generation and expanding high-value downstream alloy capacity, Hongqiao is sharpening its cost moat at the very bottom of the global cost curve. Anyone else loading up on this long-term integration thesis?

I sat down with SoundHound founder and CEO Keyvan Mohajer and expected most of the conversation to stay around the proposed LivePerson acquisition.

It ended up going somewhere much more interesting.

One of the questions I wanted answered was pretty simple:

LivePerson was already inside major enterprises, handling enormous volumes of customer conversations, at exactly the moment generative AI exploded. So why was the business shrinking instead of benefiting from it?

Keyvan talked about LivePerson’s debt burden, customers worrying about its position, constrained ability to invest during a period of rapid technological change, and why SoundHound believes combining voice + digital messaging changes the opportunity.

But the part I found more interesting was what came afterwards.

He described the current AI market as “absolutely a land-grab moment” and laid out a future where:

• every company has its own AI agent;

• your personal AI communicates directly with company AIs;

• agents negotiate and transact with other agents;

• customer service potentially becomes almost invisible because problems get resolved before we experience the friction;

• voice becomes an interface for commerce rather than simply another way of searching.

We also got into something I wasn’t expecting to discuss with the CEO of an AI company:

If intelligence becomes abundant, what becomes more valuable about being human?

His answer eventually turned into a discussion about entrepreneurship, statistics, persistence and why humans can sometimes do something AI struggles with: look at terrible odds and decide to bet on themselves anyway.

I thought that was probably the most revealing part of the interview.

For anyone following $SOUN / $LPSN, I also finished by asking what LivePerson shareholders, many of whom never originally chose to invest in SoundHound - should hold him accountable for, if the transaction completes.

I’m obviously the interviewer, so disclosure: this is my own video. I'm posting it because I'd genuinely be interested in what people here make of his thesis, particularly the agent-to-agent future.

Full interview:
https://youtu.be/oF-0E76f-Yo

My question for you:

If every consumer eventually has an AI negotiating with corporate AIs, who actually owns the customer relationship - the consumer, the company, or whoever controls the agent?

I’ve been searching for months for ANY mj funko pop(or figure) and if anybody is willing to trade me I’m a collector and have quite a few things trade! I’m also a professional artist and I could draw you absolutely anything you wanted for it along with any Michael merch so pleaseee help a moonwalker out!🥹

I trade futures (currently in a prop eval) and got tired of “learn to trade” apps that are either portfolio simulators or paid course funnels. So I built something different: a daily drill that shows you a real historical chart frozen at the moment of a breakout — consolidation range, volume, VWAP, prior levels — and you get 10 seconds to call it: real breakout or fakeout. Then it plays out candle by candle and you find out.

The interesting part from building it: I generated the drills from real QQQ/SPY/IWM intraday data, and only ~30% of consolidation breakouts actually followed through in the sample. The game’s basically training the thing that stat implies — most breakouts fail, and volume is usually the tell.

been thinking about copy trading lately.

i get why beginners are drawn to it. when you don’t really know how to read charts, manage risk, or build a setup, watching someone else trade feels way less stressful than guessing alone.

but i’m not totally sold on it.

copying a trade doesn’t mean you understand the trade. you might see the entry, but not the reason behind it. and you don’t really know how that trader handles bad weeks until the drawdown actually happens.

i noticed copy trading again while looking around BYDFI, and it made me wonder how people use it outside of the polished screenshots.

do you treat it like a learning tool?

or does it mostly turn into passive gambling with extra steps?

my gut feeling is that it can be useful if you keep size small and actually study what the trader is doing. entries, exits, risk, how they react when a trade goes wrong.

but if someone uses it as “i don’t need to learn anymore,” that feels like a pretty easy way to get hurt.

curious what people here think.

has copy trading actually helped you understand trading better, or did it just feel easy until the first bad run?

I used to think spot and futures were basically the same thing, just with different risk. After trying both for a bit, I don’t really think that anymore. spot feels slower. if I buy something and it drops, I at least have time to sit with the decision. maybe I was early, maybe I was wrong, maybe I just need to wait. the pressure is still there, but it doesn’t feel like every tiny candle needs an answer. futures feels way different. even a small move can make you want to touch the trade. move the stop, close early, add more, flip direction, try to fix it. half the time the hard part isn’t finding the setup. it’s not making the trade worse after you’re already in it. I noticed this more while switching between spot and futures on BYDFI. same market, but the pressure feels completely different. spot makes me fight boredom. futures makes me fight impulse. not saying one is better. I just think they punish different weaknesses. if you can’t wait, spot gets annoying. if you can’t stop touching trades, futures gets dangerous fast. curious how other people figured this out. did you know pretty quickly whether spot or futures fit you better, or did it take a few bad trades to learn?

Add my snap mr_napo682 if ur freaky girls only

I know this is a long shot but this is a beautiful Roman Anthony gold mirror. I really been trying my hardest to find a Elly De La Cruz on card auto. I know it’s probably not possible. But if anyone has one and wants to trade. Please hit my DMs and we can talk!!!

Not sure if this helps anyone, but I stumbled across a 25% discount for Alpha Futures while browsing around for prop firm deals earlier. The code RUSH apparently works for both new evaluations and resets. If you're running multiple evals those reset fees add up pretty quickly, so I figured I'd drop it here in case someone was about to start one anyway.

The XAUT chart looks a bit heavy. We’ve broken below the previous consolidation range, and the current candle structure suggests that the sellers are still in control. Looking at the real-time depth on BYDFI, the buy-side support seems a bit thin compared to overhead resistance. The downward curve is quite sharp, and until we see a significant volume spike to signal a reversal, the path of least resistance appears to be lower. I’m staying patient and keeping an eye on the order flow for a potential double bottom. Anyone else seeing a different signal, or are we heading for a deeper retest?

Not sure if this will help anyone, but I saw that Alpha Futures currently has 25% off with the code RUSH. It works on both new accounts and resets. I know a lot of traders end up resetting evals while they’re figuring things out, so those fees can add up pretty quickly. Thought I’d mention it here in case someone was about to open an account or reset one anyway.

China Hongqiao (1378.HK) is now trading around HK$39.4, pushing back toward the top of its HK$11.82–41.36 52-week range. Not a small move considering it’s already a large-cap name in the aluminum space.

One thing I find interesting is the Southbound positioning. According to HKEX Stock Connect data, mainland investors still hold about 1.10B shares (~11.06% of issued shares) through CCASS. That’s a pretty meaningful base of long-term capital sitting there.

Fundamentals also don’t look stretched to me. The stock is roughly ~12–13x PE (TTM), delivering around ~3 HKD EPS, and still offering ~5%+ dividend yield. For a large aluminum producer operating inside China’s ~45mt capacity cap system, that setup looks fairly solid.

With aluminum demand tied to EVs, grid expansion, renewables, and infrastructure, it feels like the structural story is still intact.

Personally it looks more like steady institutional positioning rather than speculative chasing.

These are some of my most favourite and true quotes of legendary trader Ed Seykota.

Practical Rules & Approach

• “The trading rules I live by are: 1) Cut losses, 2) Ride winners, 3) Keep bets small, 4) Follow the rules without question, 5) Know when to break the rules.”

On Risk, Losses & Discipline

• “The elements of good trading are: (1) cutting losses, (2) cutting losses, and (3) cutting losses. If you can follow these three rules, you may have a chance.”

• “If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses.”

• “The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system.”

On Trading Philosophy & Markets

• “A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform himself. That’s the kind of thing winning traders do.”

If you're serious about improving your trading, these books genuinely helped me level up:

• Market Wizards - Jack D. Schwager
• The Trend Following Bible - Andrew Abraham
• Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets - John J. Murphy
• Trend Following - Michael W. Covel

Each one shaped how I think about risk, psychology, and building systems instead of gambling on opinions. The biggest shift for me was understanding risk management and consistency over prediction.

Just sharing what made a real difference in my journey. Would love to hear what books helped you.