JK

@victorJ0NES This is awesome. Teach good habits early. Next lesson for your son is how to safely compound those dollars!

At 3, we taught our son phonics. By 5, he read fluently, but only when assigned. To ignite his love for reading, we bought him a wallet, 200 used books—both 'Step into Reading' and 'National Geographic Kids'—for under $1 each. We offered $1 per book read, with no limit. He now reads 1 book each way on his 30-minute school commute, reads bedtime stories to his 3-year-old sister, and fills idle time reading. He’s earned over $80 in less than 2 months, reading 2 to 3 grade levels above his age. He spent $17 impulsively, regretted it, and now prefers to watch 'his number' grow. Lessons: 1. Incentives shape behavior. 2. Managing his own money teaches best. 3. I should’ve started at $0.25/book.

@jam_croissant @RickSantelli @CNBC We need this for an hour.

"Globalization is more efficient and is better for everybody, but maybe not best for us alone" 🥊 @RickSantelli vs 🥐- round 1 🥊 - @CNBC

@victorJ0NES Imagine if those 35 million capable people stopped working in capital markets and hit the labor markets. We have literal rocket scientists working at citadel. So much untapped talent to engineer actual things rather than financially engineer gains

The uncomfortable truth.

@SuitablePolitic @jam_croissant

Bessent was hired to strengthen the dollar by doing the opposite of all the warning signs he saw in the British Pound. Inflated housing markets, treasury yields, etc. all pointed to the big short that the Soros fund pulled off. Bessent's obsession with the prices of homes and the interest rates on treasury bonds isn't just rank populism. He's looking to strengthen the leading indicators of a currency. This is what I mean by "white hat hacking" the dollar. Mapping out its vulnerabilities to protect it against future exploitation. One of the most glaring vulnerabilities was a heavily overinflated trading market. Wall Street was on a sugar high. Hedge funds were leveraged to the gills, and if that bubble popped, it would have created an 08 style financial crisis. The tariff roll out... volatility and all... was a way of creating controlled detonation. Wall Street FREAKED OUT and deleveraged themselves. Now, there won't be any banks or hedge funds who can't afford to pay off their loans because they overlevered. The extreme tariffs are also coming at a time when Bessent sees a recession or depression happening in China. He emphasized this several times with Tucker. By boxing in China and shutting down their exports, he's creating the same conditions that led to the big short of the British Pound. If the Chinese Yuan collapses, then it'll cause a global flight into US Treasury bonds. Driving down interest rates even further for when they go to refinance the $9T of expiring debt.

The level of debt our country faces is unprecedented in all of history. If we don’t effectively deal with it — and soon — our system will experience a financial heart attack. It all comes down to the numbers. The US currently pays about a trillion dollars a year on interest rates. And over the next year, we’re going to have to pay back and roll forward over nine trillion dollars of debt. This squeeze on spending simply isn’t sustainable. If spending continues at its current rate, a supply-demand issue is inevitable. The good news is that this problem is manageable, so long as we act now. You can read my thoughts on what we should do about it in my new study, How Countries Go Broke here: x.com/RayDalio/statu…

@chamath Did you not know this when you were pumping SPACs?

I just learned that that, globally, the total stimulus injected into the economy during the past 4 years exceeded $16T. All of this fake money needs to be shaken out of the economy for us to know where we are really at.

@zachweinberg Fraud is legal, anyway. Cc Trevor Milton

@LynAldenContact Probably that it doesn’t actually do anything.

What do you think is the biggest structural risk to Bitcoin over the next 5-10 years?

@TheStalwart Think about every company that has debt on their books, then think about when they financed that debt, and when they’ll need to refinance that debt and what will happen if they have to refinance it at higher rates.

WHAT IS TRUMP THINKING WITH HIS INTEREST RATE STRATEGY? Since it's Fed week, in today's Odd Lots newsletter, I wrote about "5D chess" theories of the admin, the lack of attacks on Powell, Bessent's goal of getting 10-year yields lower, and why it's not really adding up for me.

@horizons59 @KushnFlow

@KushnFlow Why does ANYONE listen to the guy who has been DEAD WRONG with his market calls for years?

Some crumbs 🥐: - For this rally to proceed, must start to push significant levels higher on Tuesday $ES_F/ $SPX and later on proceed to attack new highs above +2/+3 standard dev. - If we do not, its a ⚠️flag that we will continue our decline down. - If Fed keeps their "wait & see/react" approach come 1/29 FOMC, we will continue our decline to a 10% correction maybe further: $SPX 5500-5200 by March OPEX. - Only way to stop this is Fed changing their "tone", catering to Trumps will and doing some form of a massive liquidity injection. (still a real possibility) - Correction into March OPEX should spark another counter-trend rally almost reaching previous highs that will end between May-July. - Q3 we get a massive correction, and "when we finally give up a topping process". Thank you @jam_croissant as always and @maggielake for the podcast!

@ZevShalev @jam_croissant

Musk's DOGE is based on Miele's austerity plan so basically you're seeing the United States in a year from now.

@chamath What will happen to inflation when everyone can borrow cheaply all at once, corporate tax cuts, and deregulation come into the mix? “Inflation is a very tricky genie to get back in the bottle.” -Carl Icahn

1. Trump is more popular with young people than old people. Most young people don’t own stocks or homes (aka they are asset-light). 2. Trump is also more popular amongst working and middle class folks. Most of these folks are also asset-light. It stands to reason that a fall in asset prices (stocks down or home prices down) have very little impact on his core constituents. To that end, I won’t be surprised if Trump has little reaction, then, to an equity or home price market correction. Separately, the upside of shrinking these asset prices is that it gives the folks mentioned above a legitimate chance to buy into those markets at lower levels, making equity ownership and/or home ownership more possible. Tangentially, if Trump figures out how to get rents lower, he will unite young people and asset-light working people into a reliable voting block for the foreseeable future. He will have given them the trifecta: cheaper stocks, cheaper homes, lower rent. Said differently, don’t presume that the stock market going up is a useful barometer anymore. In fact, it going down may be a better signal for his popularity. Time will tell.

@JustinBloesch @kylascan If they want to keep their promise to onshore manufacturing they’ll need to first crush the economy so people can borrow to do so then they’ll stimulate with tax cuts & de-regulation. If they don’t crush the economy first then they’ll get a major wave of inflation.

@kylascan To what end, though? Hard to see why a recession would help them politically. They can try to pin it on Biden, but I don’t think that will work.

The problem is the vision is very clear. The slowdown *is* the goal, the soon-to-be enacted tariffs, the face-slap to allies, the cratering sentiment of the people, the uncertainty from businesses, the distraction that was the crypto strategic reserve - it's just the plan to crater this thing. It was said. This is the plan!

@jam_croissant price action reminding me so much of March 2022. FOMC was a fun one that month…

@SpencerHakimian I don’t disagree at all. Raw materials in general would be a winner. But let’s do a thought exercise. Govt can make their debt vanish if they choose. What about the players who can’t (CRE, VC, PE)? What happens when they need to roll over the debt they took out in 2020?

@IamJakeKane Gold to $10,000

The United States has a $66B 10 Year Bond from February 2015 coming due tomorrow. It had a 2.00% fixed coupon. It is going to be replaced with another $66B 10 Year Bond, but this time, with a 4.55% fixed coupon. This one single rollover will add an extra $1.67B per year to the national debt for the next 10 years. Bond auctions like these are happening every single day. We are just beginning to pay the price for a decade of ZIRP. All of that debt now costs taxpayer money. Just wait for the 2032-2035 vintages when we're paying 5% for all the debt we took out when we had 4% unemployment and 3% real GDP. There is really only one trade here. It's to own hard money. Gold (for risk off). Bitcoin (for risk on). Own both. And own stocks as long as policymakers run the economy hot on borrowed money (this is great for stocks as long as it lasts).

@elonmusk @unusual_whales

It’s not like these politicians started companies or were NBA All-Stars, so where did they get all the money? Does anyone know?

@SamanthaLaDuc Great write up, Samantha. I am extremely interested to see what DOGE actually uncovers. I don’t believe getting the 10Y yield to drop is going to be an easy feat. I am leaning towards a period of stagflation, but undeniably a lot of moving parts and we will see!

So many bad takes on where I am aligned on Trump! Here it is in my voice, if you care to listen. 1. I said it early and often and I’ll say it again: short-term pain for long-term gain. Fiscal restructuring is core to Trump‘s agenda to get tax cuts passed at end of this year. 2. AND Trump/Musk/Bessent are going after “fraud, corruption, and abuse” in the fiscal spending ALSO to rid US of the “deep state” so as to barter a PEACE with Russia and Ukraine. Wars are inflationary. Trump goal: Let’s get rid of the war funding machine to bring down inflation. No, I reject the idea we are turning Nazi Germany or handing America to the Russians. If you believe that I am sorry for you: I choose not to be paranoid, influenced from media gaslighting and/or recency biased. I’m a staunch independent and I could care less about loyalty to either party or narrative. 3. Trump can still screw this up: from trade wars, specifically with China, or actual war with Iran. His biggest fight will be a capital war after investors realize stock market must fall for the US economy to rise. I wrote about this is you care to understand what I see: 👉 samanthaladuc.com/p/this-is-the-… 4. Leaders of Mexico and Japan are actively aligning. Leaders of Canada and EU are not. That’s where money will flow and relations will be strong. 5. Trump needs to tread lightly with China as they matter more than anywhere else, but his ego may not let him. That’s his Achilles heel. They don’t need our oil. They don’t need our dollars. 6. I think Trump wants peace, but he will defend Israel to the extreme. By extension, that puts escalation with Iran as biggest geopolitical risk - along with EU crumbling. 7. I’m gonna get trolled on this one, but I don’t care: I think Americans NEED accountability from DOGE to end the gaslighting and those responsible for the parasitic nature of our fiscal spending in order to restore our faith in government again - and by extension God. 8. Trump needs to focus on US manufacturing and consumption and the rest will take care of itself. 9. Trump will have so many hard tasks ahead! And he will fail at some (too aggressive tariffs), while other events (like pandemics) will truly test his power to govern + distract from his goals as the American people are still physically weakened by the last pandemic and still sick from all the lies. 10. If you believe I am now a Trump proponent, you are half right … I still think at the core he is a grifter and he enables grifters, and it is through all of these powerful, motivated, rich grifters that he insulates himself with a moat of favors to trade and LOYALTY that he has paid for and which is of great value to him accomplishing his goals … to fix America in his final run and in his final days. … Lastly, I’m still really worried about war, even if I removed that pinned tweet. But right now, I’m more worried about the war taking place inside Americans with each other. Healthy debate is healthy. So is a financial audit of the US government from top to bottom! And even if you disagree with the process of how it’s being done, we do not have time to waste, and the chances of a bipartisan effort are minuscule. The fat needs to be cut away even as it takes some meat and bone with it. I’m sorry. But we have to do this cleanse to rid US of the parasites so we can start to heal as a country. 🇺🇸🙏

GVV (gamma-vanna-volga) modeling. This is a very handy and intuitive approach to thinking about options that links the shape of volatility surfaces to the nature of the key risk factors that an option position represents.

@unusual_whales To be fair, there was a regional banking crisis that March lol

Two years ago, Michael Burry famously said sell. Since then, the S&P500 is up nearly 50%. In March 2023, he said he was wrong to say sell.