Laurent Lequeu

Multi-assets strategist with actionable trading ideas based on global macro trend. Managed international institutional & High Net Worth individuals’ portfolios

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Your savings are being robbed.

Quietly. No break-in. No bill. Just 3–4% a year. At 3.5% inflation, $100 buys ~$71 of stuff in a decade.

Here are the three thieves — and the antidote. 🧵

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

After the 20-year in October, the 2-year in late October and now the 10-year, the message is the same: foreigners will lend to America, just less and at higher prices. When the world’s safe asset needs a 5% coupon to find buyers, it is no longer risk-free; it is merely too big to refuse.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

America’s benchmark bond has a coupon of 5% again, for the first time since 2006, and the world is less keen to collect it. Treasury’s 10-year auction stopped at 5.020%, tailing the 5.010% when-issued by a full basis point, the widest tail since February.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Bid-to-cover fell to 2.468 from 2.771, the weakest since May. Foreign demand fell sharply. Indirect bidders took 61.2%, down from a near-record 80.3% in October and the lowest since October 2023. Domestic directs had to absorb 29%, the most since September 2013, and dealers were left with 9.8%.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, it turns out, was negotiable at the correct price.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The Ministry of Drained Swamps has a small clarification about who was holding the drainage contract: The Manipulator In Chief’s former chief of staff Susie Wiles — for nearly a decade a managing partner at Ballard Partners, Washington’s top-earning lobbying shop — stands accused by two of the President’s own allies of using the West Wing to protect the industries paying her old firm. A Vance pollster says she warned him off criticising Pfizer, Ballard’s “number one client”; an ex-RFK aide says she told him “I need the sugar industry money” and pushed HHS toward fruit-flavoured vapes. The numbers do the confessing: Ballard booked a record $88 million in 2025 and $98 million through three quarters of 2026 — $186 million since Donald Copperfield returned — while a tobacco subsidiary gave MAGA Inc. $5 million and flavoured vapes hit shelves days later. The FDA commissioner who objected resigned.

https://t.co/mItVFVGSut

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler Special Service newsletter via podcast on YouTube.

https://t.co/AjxF3Iz45P

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

🤵 The Macro Butler Special Service 🤵

🌐 How Washington's Gridlock Brews the Trump Stagflation…🌐

Read more here: https://t.co/2hhaXCBwnZ

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

🤵 The Macro Butler Special Service 🤵

🌐 How Washington's Gridlock Brews the Trump Stagflation…🌐

Read more here: https://t.co/2hhaXCBwnZ

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

🤵 The Macro Butler Special Service 🤵

🌐 How Washington's Gridlock Brews the Trump Stagflation…🌐

Read more here: https://t.co/2hhaXCBwnZ

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

🤵 The Macro Butler Special Service 🤵

🌐 How Washington's Gridlock Brews the Trump Stagflation…🌐

Read more here: https://t.co/2hhaXCBwnZ

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The US midterms are over — but what did they really change? Nothing that matters. 🎙🗳🔥

The Macro Butler returns to Türkiye’s Diplomacy with Umar Tasleem to decode the November 3rd US midterm elections — and why, blue or red, the trajectory of the Empire doesn’t change:

🗳 The Democratic sweep of Congress — and why “gridlock until 2028” is the only guaranteed outcome, as both parties discover they agree on just one thing: the need for more wars abroad to distract from a dire economy at home.
⚔️ The war cycle after the vote — why the post-election window points to escalation, not peace, from Iran to Ukraine and North Asia.
🏛 The deeper truth — that neither party serves the average citizen, and real change will come not from Washington but from the collapse of trust in its institutions.
🥇 What it means for your wealth — why the midterms accelerate the march toward stagflation, the currency reset, and the real assets that survive it.

📺 Watch the full interview on Türkiye’s Diplomacy with Umar Tasleem now.

Are you still waiting for an election to fix the system — or positioning for what comes after the system? 👇

https://t.co/cDqU6S3kEO

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

When people fear both the price tag and the pink slip, it is stagflation of the spirit. A Fed that hikes into fear doesn’t cool inflation; it confirms the pessimists.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Americans now fear for their jobs and their wallets at the same time. The New York Fed’s October survey shows that 45.3% of consumers expect unemployment to be higher a year from now, the most since the COVID crash of April 2020. College graduates are the most anxious at 51.1%. Inflation won’t budge either.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Year-ahead expectations hold at 3.9%, above consensus and near a three-year high, three-year expectations are 3.3%, and the five-year anchor has been stuck at 3.0% for 14 straight months, a full point above the Fed’s target. Households expect wages to rise 2.6% while expecting prices to rise 3.9%, which implies a real pay cut of about 1.3%. They expect rent to rise 7.7%, medical care 9.3% and college 7.6%. The share expecting to miss a minimum debt payment within three months has jumped to 13.8%, and 42.7% say they are worse off than a year ago. Payrolls may have boomed in October, but consumers clearly don’t trust it.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

@Irenezhao_ @Irenezhao_ we already knew

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Everyone should consider who “direct bidders” actually are: domestic institutions, pensions, and parties bidding on their own account rather than through a primary dealer. When a record share of America’s short-end paper must be absorbed at home because foreigners have stepped back, the Treasury has not found demand; it has found a substitute.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

Washington sold $58bn of three-year notes at 4.627% against a When Issued of 4.622% — a half-basis-point tail, the biggest since May, after October stopped through.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The bid-to-cover slipped to 2.528 from 2.616, the weakest since August 2025. Indirects, the foreign proxy, took 55.5% versus 57.6%, also the lowest since August 2025. Dealers were left with 9.5%, among the lowest on record. And what rescued the sale? Directs at 35.04% — an all-time record.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The man who runs AI’s indispensable supplier, lobbied for looser China export rules and flew with Donald Copperfield to Beijing now has a board inquiry, a requested congressional briefing on 18 November and earnings on the 17th. Markets can price a chip shortage, but not a key-man risk with a security clearance attached. In Silicon Valley, the founder was the moat; now he is the risk factor. A CEO can apologise to his family; his shareholders will want an audit.

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

After a few hours of rumours, The Jensen stopped denying and started apologising. In a letter titled “A Message to Our Company,” posted on #Nvidia’s newsroom on 8 November, the CEO of the world’s most valuable chipmaker wrote: “I was unfaithful to my wife. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” He says he takes “full responsibility,” asks for privacy for his family, and promises to “earn back your confidence.” He doesn’t dispute the reports linking him to Alice Huang, the Megaspeed executive whom US officials reportedly identified as a Chinese intelligence asset. Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation, and The Jensen says he will “cooperate fully.” Nobody has been charged, and the national security questions remain unanswered. What was private is now a governance issue.

https://t.co/XvdToETy2K

[Laurent Lequeu @LLequeu]

The FT and NYT report that Washington believes Jensen Huang was romantically involved with Alice Huang — no relation — a #Megaspeed executive whom US intelligence believes the Ministry of State Security recruited to collect on him and perhaps nudge @nvidia toward lobbying for #China access. The sourcing is memos, unnamed officials, and surveillance; nobody has gone on record, the embassy calls it smears. What is documented is quite enough. Megaspeed bought billions in advanced silicon from 2024, built Southeast Asian data centres and rented compute to Alibaba — the backdoor the NYT describes. Nvidia’s internal probe found no wrongdoing. Jensen lobbied successfully for the 2025 rollback and the H20/H200 arrangement, on which Washington takes a 25% cut. Commerce has now approved two dozen Chinese firms to handle H200s, some tied to sanctioned entities. Three House chairs want a closed-door briefing on 18 November; he must answer by the 11th — the day after earnings.

https://t.co/7dJCkxv0iV