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A real-life mishmash of different Team Rocket wannabes is having a lot more success thieving “Pokémon” cards than Jessie and James ever did in their attempts to pilfer Pikachu throughout the anime series. Now, the massive boom in the value of “Pokémon” cards, with some seeing 3,000% returns on their collectibles, has spawned a string of “gotta steal ’em all” heists. To give a sense of what treasure the robbers are hoping to catch: the most valuable cards in the recently released Mega Evolutions set are going for over $1,000 each.

On Tuesday, US stocks tumbled and the VIX rose as investors worried about a broader pullback. The S&P 500 and Russell 2000 sank over 1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped more than 2% as negative reaction to Palantir’s earnings dragged down the sector, along with big names revealing bearish views on it as well as Nvidia. Unsurprisingly, tech was the worst-performing sector ETF.

The stock market is facing a bit of a speed check.

That’s the message emanating from various key actors and assets, communicated in ways that range from subtle subtext, to somewhat fuzzy, to the extremely explicit.

A retail favorite failing to build on momentum even when it “deserves” to, the heads of banks warning of a pullback, and the most important part of the stock market being told it’s overheating, along with a filing showing that prominent short seller Michael Burry has bet that Nvidia and Palantir will tumble. 

In and of themselves, any single one of these events probably doesn’t equal the S&P 500 being down over 1% on Tuesday. Collectively, under different circumstances, they might not be sufficiently potent for a sell-off of this nature. But the likes of Cboe and Goldman Sachs were flagging signs from the options market that traders were becoming perhaps a little overenthusiastic in their positioning.

If you go over a speed bump while driving 100 miles per hour, there’s an extremely high risk of damage to the car even though the obstacle itself isn’t that daunting. Similarly, relatively inconsequential catalysts can cause more market damage at times when exuberance has started to creep in.

Kevin O’Leary is a paid spokesperson for StartEngine. See his 17(b) disclosure, here.

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Uber’s earnings call yesterday saw the company reveal that markets where it has autonomous vehicles are outperforming markets without them.

Uber said it expects to have autonomous vehicle deployments on its network in at least 10 cities by the end of next year.

While Khosrowshahi said it’s too early to tell how the AV business, which is not profitable, affects Uber’s business overall, the relative growth is a “good signal.”

Data earlier this year from ride-share comparison app Obi found that consumers were willing to pay more for autonomous rides, citing a notable preference by users of driverless car services to be in a car without a driver.

“I attribute higher demand for AVs to two reasons: a) novelty and ridership enthusiasm for a new experience and b) once consumers have taken rides it’s easy to see that the user experience in an AV is far superior,” Obi CEO Ashwini Anburajan told Sherwood News. “It provides privacy, comfort and safety, and all in a really nice car. The premiums in price are being supported by consumer enthusiasm.”

Michael Burry, famous for predicting the 2008 housing crash, has placed massive bets against Nvidia and Palantir, according to a new regulatory filing that reveals the huge put options his fund has bought on the pair. Last week, Burry warned of market “bubbles” on X, writing that “sometimes the only winning move is not to play.”