John C. Maxwell, III

I'd say European Bond Yields are a wee bit more "concerned" about #Quad3 Stagflation than USA's parrot Powell is

🚨The oil market disruption is far worse than headline prices suggest: Oman crude hit a record $173 per barrel on Wednesday, surpassing even the 2008 Financial Crisis spike. Dubai crude also surged to an all-time high above $150, as buyers scramble to replace supplies cut off by the Strait of Hormuz shutdown. The Hormuz closure has severed ~20% of the world's oil production from global markets, triggering the largest supply disruption in modern history. By comparison, Brent is trading at ~$115 and WTI near ~$95, massively understating the severity of the physical shortage. As a result, the gap between Brent and WTI is now the widest since 2013, as the Iran War disproportionately hits European oil supply. The problem is that Brent and WTI are the most commonly quoted benchmarks, but they only reflect North Sea and US supply conditions, not the Middle Eastern crisis. If the Strait does not reopen, Western oil prices will inevitably catch up, as US and European inventories are depleted and global supply tightens further. The real oil crisis has not even reached Western markets yet.

According to Goldman Sachs Research, 300 million jobs globally could be exposed to AI automation over the next decade. However, AI is also likely to help create jobs—particularly in the buildout of the power and data center infrastructure required to sustain the boom: click.gs.com/t3et

“Cliffwater Private Credit Fund’s Outlook Cut to Negative by S&P” “…e roughly $32 billion Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund’s decision to meet 7% of withdrawal requests in the first quarter was higher than the 5% minimum, and the second quarter in a row it topped that level, S&P said in a report Wednesday. Analysts warned if that “were to constitute the new norm and not the exception,” it could strain the fund and potentially spur a downgrade. The fund has about 25% of its portfolio invested in software and is mostly owned by retail investors, according to the report….” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

How #AgenticAI work by @genamind #GenerativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #MI #MachineLearning

“JPMorgan, Goldman offer hedge funds way to short private credit” “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among investment banks offering hedge fund clients ways to bet against the $1.8 trillion private credit market, people with knowledge of the matter said.  The firms have assembled baskets of listed companies with exposure to the space, the people said, who requested not to be identified discussing bespoke product offerings…” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

New York Gov Kathy Hochul is begging wealthy people who have moved to Florida and Texas to come back to New York and pay taxes. 🤣 "I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state. Now, there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. OK, cut me the checks if you want to be supportive, but maybe the first step should be go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home." "I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals. And I would say remote work changed everything." "There were people who could only work in an office in Manhattan and work in New York state. And they were captives to our state, they were going to stay. We saw that that's not the case. Wall Street businesses looking at Texas, they're not going there because they have a nicer governor. They're going there because of the tax rate."

Lennar, America's 2nd largest builder, has cut prices 24% from peak. Their price on new deliveries hit $491k in 2022. But they've cut by over $110k since then, through price reductions and mortgage buydowns. The result is a $374k net price in 2026, down -8% YoY and -24% from peak. This is the cheapest we've seen in a decade, even lower than the pre-pandemic norms. This is actually great news for homebuyers. Housing deflation is setting in, and Lennar is leading the charge for builders in returning affordability to buyers.

“Barclays CEO Says MFS Impairment Likely to Be Below £500 Million “.. Barclays Plc’s chief executive officer said he was “disappointed” by the bank’s exposure to collapsed property lender Market Financial Solutions Ltd. but said the anticipated impairment would be “materially lower” than £500 million ($668 million), the amount MFS owes the firm…. …The failure came months after the demise of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings LLC, to which Barclays was also exposed….” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Quick Cash Out 👀👀👀 “Millennium Pulls $1 Billion Allocation From Hedge Fund Scopia” “…New York-based Millennium has pulled about $1 billion that it gave Scopia to manage in late 2024, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The hedge fund’s decision was triggered by other redemptions as well as personnel changes at Scopia, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private….” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

US home supply is resurging: 44,698 homes that were delisted last year were relisted for sale in January 2026, the highest January figure since data began in 2016, according to Redfin. This also marks the 5th consecutive annual increase. Since 2022, relistings have surged +27,692, or +167%. As a result, relistings now represent a record 3.6% of all active listings, up from 1.9% in 2022. This comes as home delistings hit a record 112,788 in December 2025, as sellers pulled their homes off the market rather than accepting lower prices. Now, they are returning in hopes of capitalizing on the spring buying season, adding even more supply to an already buyer-friendly market. The US housing market could see more price discounts.

Private credit default rate just hit 9.2%. That's higher than 2008 bank loan peaks. $1.8 trillion in assets, $100B in secondary liquidity. 18:1 mismatch. When exits close, panic starts.

This is 100% completely unsustainable as a society. Nearly 50% of all consumer spending now comes from the top 10% of earners. The bottom 80%? Their share keeps falling. This is why the economy can look strong in the data while millions of people feel like they're falling behind.

Investors fled U.S. large caps again (largest outflows last week); precious metals a distant second, followed by consumer cyclicals ... government bonds saw largest inflows ⁦@DataArbor⁩

Memory prices are completely out of control (thanks, hyperscalers!). Bad news for OEMs that use these memory components in their products. Prime example: Apple. A month ago, TrendForce estimated that memory, which historically accounted for around 10–15% of a smartphone’s BOM (bill of materials), had surged to 30–40%. These latest memory price increases (below) have come since then. Lunar New Year just ended a couple of weeks ago. DigiTimes today: "DRAM and NAND flash prices have soared by as much as 180% since the Lunar New Year, amid worsening memory chip supply shortages that are expected to persist at least until late 2027" digitimes.com/news/a20260316…

Interestingly, in yesterday's issued FOMC statement, the Fed removed the phrase 'U.S. banking system is sound and resilient.' 🤔 It's not necessarily concerning, but it's worth noting! * $NYCB down 45% in 2 days, $KRE -10% in 2 days, $WAL -10% today, most since May '23 🩸

The software sector is facing a massive debt wall: ~$40 billion in software and services debt matures in 2028, the largest single-year concentration. The vast majority of this is rated B- or lower, deep in junk territory, with no investment-grade debt in the mix. In total, ~$100 billion in software debt matures from 2026 to 2029, with an additional ~$70 billion beyond 2030. Meanwhile, AI disruption is increasing credit risk for software borrowers, the exact companies that private credit funds have been lending to most aggressively. Software is also the largest sector in the leveraged loan market, representing 12% of the total. Refinancing this debt at higher rates with deteriorating fundamentals will be a growing problem for the sector. The software sector has a tough road ahead.

Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Delinquency Rate Increased in December

🚨 JP MORGAN ISN'T JUST "INVOLVED" IN A $328 MILLION CRYPTO PONZI. THEY WERE THE ESSENTIAL PIPELINE THAT MADE THE WHOLE SCAM POSSIBLE 💸🔥 Let's call it what it is. Goliath Ventures didn't steal $328 million from 2,000 trusting people by magic. They did it because the world's largest bank, JP MORGAN CHASE, opened the door, held it wide open, and waved the money through for years. Over $250 MILLION flowed through a single JP Morgan business account. A deliberate, sustained pipeline. They watched: - Structured deposits pouring in from retail investors - Immediate large wires shooting out to Coinbase wallets - "Returns" being paid back to earlier victims straight from new money - Luxury home purchases, private jets, five-star events being funded in real time And JP Morgan's legendary AML, KYC, and transaction monitoring systems (the same ones that flag your $500 Venmo if it looks weird) somehow saw NONE of this as suspicious? For THREE YEARS? Come on. This wasn't negligence. This was facilitation. Jamie Dimon goes on TV calling crypto a fraud vehicle while his own institution becomes the preferred checking account for one of the biggest crypto frauds in recent memory. Coincidence? Or business model? They let the scheme inflate, sucked in maximum victims, collected wire fees and account fees (maybe even sweetheart deals on the side), then quietly let it collapse when the heat got too high. The real crime isn't just the Ponzi. It's that the gatekeeper of the traditional financial system (the one that demands we trust them over "risky crypto") actively enabled the largest crypto theft of the cycle. They aren't the victim here. They are the infrastructure. If JP Morgan can process a quarter-billion-dollar Ponzi without raising a single internal red flag that actually stops anything, then their entire "we protect you from fraud" narrative is a lie. They protect their profits. Not your money. Class action is just the beginning. When the discovery phase hits and we see the internal SARs (or lack thereof), the compliance emails, the risk committee notes, the mask is coming off. Big Bank didn't miss the Ponzi. Big Bank ran the plumbing for it. Who's really too big to fail now?

Private Credit Check: U.S. private credit defaults reached a new high of 9.2% in 2025, more than double the 4.5% rate in broadly syndicated loans. Stress is concentrated among smaller companies, where firms with EBITDA under $25M defaulted at nearly 4x the rate of larger issuers. As seen in the image below, one stressed private credit loan tied to “Project Leopard” is trading at a yield that is nearly double where it started 2026. Against that backdrop, JPMorgan has marked down some private credit loans and restricted lending to certain private credit funds. Even with defaults rising, realized lender losses have remained relatively contained so far, with most first-lien recoveries still close to par.