Alf

@choffstein Fair point, Corey. Hope you are doing well. Your podcast keeps being amazing!

"I miss the good old FinTwit." Every class of fintwit back to 2008 has said the same thing. Everyone thinks the world peaked in their youth.

My journey on FinTwit has been nothing short of incredible. When I set to go on my own in 2021, I remember a friend from the rates industry telling me “You are posting your thoughts on other platforms, but you’re missing out on the biggest of them all. Try Twitter”. I had never used it in my life, but it clicked immediately. The whole ecosystem was about deep research, sharing ideas, and some fair banter - just a fantastic place where to get high quality financial info. I still remember working overnight on the “banking crash” of 2023 as I felt I could add value given it was about interest rate derivatives - my home turf. Followers and impressions grew at an outrageous pace. A few times I was stopped in NY and London by fellow FinTwitters asking if I was “MacroAlf”. Crazy stuff. Fast forward to today, unfortunately all of that it’s gone. It’s mostly low quality info, accounts flaming each others to get subscribers to their newsletters, and a ton of selective “look how smart I was” self-quote posts. I hope it will come back to what it was. Really. In the meantime a few people pointed me to the post below. It is flattering but incorrect. I have gotten a lot of things publicly wrong. And I don’t have any issues admitting it. My win rate has always been around 50%. Good luck to everyone. I miss the good old FinTwit.

@dampedspring Thanks for the insightful comment!

@MacroAlf 2025 was that year fwiw.

@options_insight LatAM looks great in general. I like Europe a lot too. Especially the most left-behind components.

@MacroAlf What are your favourites bud? Brazil looks interesting as usual!

@SirOfFinance Wow mate, what a fantastic resource. Made it compulsory for all my analysts at the hedge fund. Thank you so much for doing this - people like you and @EffMktHype should be part of a protected species!

The market doesn’t care about the narrative. It cares about liquidity and leverage. While the consensus debates the "hard landing," the real story is happening in the plumbing: Repo volatility, Basis disconnects, and regulatory constraints. Today, I am launching ONLYSOFRs.👇

@donnelly_brent Yes, but what time is the BoJ?

@MacroAlf You never left our hearts

@AxelMerk Americans have to pay more for proper pasta now.

@MacroAlf I knew it: US tariffs on Italian pasta got you to come back and speak up - it's about time.

Hi guys, quick announcement. I won't be posting here anymore until further notice. To everyone who supported my work and engaged fruitfully over the years: thank you. If you want to be in touch, my email is: alf at my research firm dot com And remember: never break pasta.

New TMTF podcast out with my buddy Brent Donnelly. - Maybe the Fed is ready to move dovish, but what's already priced in bond markets? - How to think about carry when setting up trades - Sometimes Brent is more Italian than me Check it out on your preferred podcast platform

Not sure who needs to hear this. But with Fed Funds at 4.33% and terminal rate at 3.1%, long bonds are not offering big juice and carry is quite limited. The curve could still be way steeper as the inflation risk premia goes up.

So the US enacted a $300 billion tax hike for 2025 with pretty much no offsetting new fiscal injection this year. Perhaps investors should include this in their assessment going forward?

@EffMktHype You said 90k right? That’s what I did, I sold 90k contracts

The intern on the rates desk currently explaining what the "oops" was about when he filled his boss' order to sell '90k contracts of DV01 or something like that'

@Ksidiii You deserve the best. Keep being you, Kris

My entire life and career were changed by a single phone call. No doubt, it was God shining His light down on me. I went to a non-target school (LIU) for undergrad. I was completely obsessed with trading. I blew up a few hundred bucks early on in college, but eventually stumbled across a niche strategy that took me from $1,200 to $58,000. At the time, I felt like a millionaire lol. Right out of college, I started applying to trading firms, no internships, no network, no real guidance. It was a grind. I spent months firing off emails and applications for junior trader roles. Occasionally, I’d get a call from a recruiter, but I mainly never made it to an actual interview. It got so bad that I started standing outside trading firms with my resume and “track record” in hand. I’d wait for PMs to leave around 4:30, trying to match their face to a LinkedIn profile. If I spotted them, I’d walk up, introduce myself, and hand them my track record with my resume. Most were polite (some were not lol), said they’d pass it along to HR, but it almost always went nowhere. Then one day, I saw a job post for a junior trader role. The listing was 10 minutes or so old. This time, it had something different: a phone number. I said, “fuck it,” and called. An older guy picked up, kept cutting off my intro, yelling, “I can’t hear you! Where are you?!” After my third attempt, he just said, “Meet me at the Starbucks in Southampton. Wednesday. Noon.” I showed up in a tie. And as God as my witness this interview lasted about six hours. We talked about trading, market structure, war stories, and what he was trying to build. I had no idea who this man was, but I knew I wanted to learn how to trade professionally. I wanted a real seat with real risk. Turns out, that man was Robert Kanter, a derivatives legend from the CBOE pit. Founder and first president of the CBOE Market Maker Association. Four decades of double-digit returns. He launched and ran ETG in the ’90s. A true volatility icon, semi-retired in the Hamptons, just looking to play the game again, for the love of it. I ended up working for Bob. It was brutally hard, but everything I know about trading options came from that experience. To this day, I’m forever grateful I picked up the phone and made that call. If he hadn’t answered (God’s grace), my life would’ve taken a completely different path.

@NiallHarbison Stay strong, Niall. You are an inspiration for so many people!

@conksresearch 1 pizza = 1 pizza

1 Euro = 1 Euro

The S&P 500 is down 4% this year when measured in EUR.

@Brad_Setser EURCNY is up a lot which doesn’t help. What do you mean by “watch France on macro/currency”? Always appreciate your insights.

German exports are down even more -- which is part of the reason why the overall European consensus is moving ... 5/5

Americans, understandably focused on the (past and present) antics of Donald Trump, tend to underestimate the shift in elite European views toward China 1/

@VKMacro Where do you like them the most?

@MacroAlf Plus there are better regions to play steepener

US curve steepeners are very popular, but you pay to own them (negative carry and roll) and Bessent can hit you with QRA changes, buybacks and more. I would say there are better “fiscal dominance” expressions out there?

Everyone obsesses about US fiscal, but the pivot from austere budgets to fiscal spending in Europe and Asia is equally important. Fiscal deficits are a global phenomenon now, and that’s the real news.