Levered Bull

Former Fortune 500 VP Treasurer | Now full-time futures trader | Results on website | Not financial advice

[fred hickey @htsfhickey]

WSJ: "Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. To put its more than $30 trillion vision in context, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, according to FactSet."

Another way of looking at absurdity of the $30 trillion addressable market claim: annual U.S. GDP is currently $32.5 trillion.

And yet this nonsense (wild proclamations and predictions) is allowed to continue so that Wall St. & Silly-con-Valley can extract as much money from unwitting "investors" as possible, before the inevitable stock market bubble collapses.

https://t.co/JKhlVqCizs

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

Price action is price action. NVDA earnings were mind blowing, but what matters is market reaction. I strongly suspect that AI trade is no longer a key fundamental driver, and focus, at least for now, is on rates / mid-terms. Weak Nasdaq price action on strong earnings is bearish.

But I think RTH hours will be more important tomorrow vs what's happening now

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

Some bear porn on 4-hrs Nasdaq chart ... possibly building a bear flag. I remain super bearish, and short the rallies

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

Futures are not impressed with #NVDA earning ... not a good sign for tomorrow

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

If you trade the markets and never adjust your views—i.e., you’re a perma-bull or perma-bear—you’re just a perma-idiot

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@EliteOptions2 Both

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@edzitron @CryptoCyberia They will claim it's in the interest of national security, and will drive a freight train of bailout through this loophole

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@RyanDetrick @yardeni Yeah, national debt was a little bit lower in absolute level and as % of GDP, like by a factor of 2.5x as % of GDP

I think it's time we stop pretending that everything is fine

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@KobeissiLetter At some point Treasury will lose control of the situation and markets will do what they need to do.

In a short -run this means negative real rates again soon if Treasury is successful.

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@OddStats In my town in TX people are buying guns and ammo

I am 100% certain it is linked to your VIX study

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@ColyerAndy @CGasparino @realKunalAShah @SecScottBessent It's an old playbook, I recall short sellers were blamed and held responsible for 2008 crash 🙄🤡 but it tells us one thing - US Treasury may be nearing a point where they will lose control over rates on a long end of the curve

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@DeItaone Is US Treasury going to sanction itself?

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@markminervini Which is 90% of the time

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@PeterDiamandis "Don't die from something stupid." - if I want to die from something smart, what are my options?

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

I’ll be extremely tactical and trade a lot

Shorting is a brutal game—especially with leverage

Markets almost never hand you those clean, smooth declines where you can just short and hold for the ride

Most of the time, selloffs get punctuated by vicious, gut-wrenching counter-rallies that make holding shorts pure hell

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

I'm mostly shorting this market into the midterms.

Longs? Strictly short-term, tactical, and with tiny price targets only.

Markets can only focus on one or two drivers at a time.

First it was the Iran war. Then the AI trade. Now rising rates are about to take over.

Throw in the long history of midterm declines + Nasdaq flipping from leader to laggard… and the odds are stacked for a solid market drop.

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

I'm mostly shorting this market into the midterms.

Longs? Strictly short-term, tactical, and with tiny price targets only.

Markets can only focus on one or two drivers at a time.

First it was the Iran war. Then the AI trade. Now rising rates are about to take over.

Throw in the long history of midterm declines + Nasdaq flipping from leader to laggard… and the odds are stacked for a solid market drop.

[Handre @Handre]

Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow.

No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it.

This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in.

Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again.

What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive.

The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn't weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.

[Levered Bull @LeveredBull_]

@tmaxftw No, it’s signaling that 5.3% is a pain point. Treasury just showed its hand to the market—it’s worried at these levels. The question is what happens at higher levels?