Tasos Hadjinicolaou

Married to Stella, 3 fantastic children.

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

Education of a Speculator is a brilliant trading book

[Linda Raschke @LindaRaschke]

It's important for me to share my thoughts now while I can. Sadly, Victor Nieiderhoffer passed yesterday. I share my stories of Vic in my book. Eccentric person who influenced Toby Crabel and Monroe Trout. Worth reading his book! The Education of a Speculator.

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

If you're 90 on your deathbed and you get to go back and relive 1 memory before perishing, playing catch with your 4 yr old would be more appealing than sitting alone with coffee. So when your 4 yo asks to play catch, just say to yourself you're 90, you went back in time for this

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: A source close to Iranian officials says Tehran has documented a pattern of oil market manipulation tied to Axios reporting and Trump administration insiders, including evidence of a $9 billion insider trading operation linked to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

The documented timeline of the $9 billion insider profit:

Between April and May 2026, a series of highly suspiciously timed trades in oil futures markets preceded major Iran war and deal announcements, each tied to reporting by Axios.

On March 23, approximately $500–580 million in shorts were placed 15 minutes before Trump announced he was postponing strikes on Iran, oil dropped.

On April 7, roughly $950–960 million in shorts were placed hours before Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, oil fell 15 percent.

On April 17, approximately $760 million in shorts were placed 20 minutes before Iran's foreign minister announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, oil dropped.

On April 21, around $430 million in shorts were placed 15 minutes before Trump extended the ceasefire, oil dropped again.

On May 6, nearly $920 million to $1.7 billion in crude oil shorts were placed approximately 70 minutes before an Axios scoop claimed the U.S. and Iran were near a "14-point agreement." Oil dropped 12 percent. Traders made an estimated $125 million in profit, while Iran called the May 6 Axios report "the Americans' wish list," and completely false.

A senior Iranian official previously told Drop Site News that Iran privately warned VP JD Vance during Switzerland talks that Kushner and Witkoff were "abusing" negotiations, being "more interested in exploiting insider knowledge to profit in financial markets than reaching a deal."

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

Love this!

[Lee Roach @leevalueroach]

My wife left me today. She said it was because I “never stop talking.” I said the yen carry trade is a $20 trillion leveraged bet that the Bank of Japan will never normalize rates and she said “I’m taking the dog.”

Let me explain to you what I was trying to explain to her.

For thirty years Japan ran rates at zero. Zero. Free money. So the entire planet borrowed yen for nothing and bought literally anything with yield. Treasuries, Mexican peso bonds, Nasdaq, your uncle’s crypto. That’s the carry trade. It’s not a strategy. It’s a short volatility position wearing a business casual outfit.

Then in August 2024 the BOJ raised rates 15 basis points. FIFTEEN. And the yen ripped, the Nikkei fell 12% in a day, and the VIX printed 65. That was the tremor. That was the trailer.

She said “you said this last year.” I said YES AND I WAS RIGHT, THE MARKET JUST FORGOT, and she started packing.

Japan’s debt-to-GDP is roughly 250%. The BOJ owns over half the JGB market. They are the market. There’s no price discovery, there’s a guy in Tokyo with a printer and a dream. Every basis point higher on the long end costs them real money on debt they can never actually repay in real terms. So what do you do when you can’t default and you can’t pay? You inflate. You always inflate. It’s the only tool that doesn’t require anyone to vote.

She said “our marriage counselor thinks you have anxiety.” I said your marriage counselor doesn’t know what the 30-year JGB is doing and she said “NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE 30-YEAR JGB IS DOING, THAT’S THE POINT, PAUL.”

My name isn’t Paul. That’s how far gone we are.

Anyway I’ve got canned goods, a Kagoshima yield curve chart laminated above the bed, and nobody left to explain it to. So it’s you now. Buckle up.

[Chris Parry @DrChrisParry]

A month ago, I was driving though Sussex at 30 mph.

A Ford Transit van travelling at about 50 mph on my side of the road suddenly filled my windscreen. With about a second or so before head-on impact, I forced the car to the left and was struck heavily on the driver's side. Happily, I drive a Volvo. Almost any other car and I would not be typing now.

The van driver, without checking for injury to me or damage to my car, then sped off and left the scene of the accident. The incident was witnessed another driver who set off in pursuit to get the details of the van and driver. I checked for any injuries and damage to the mechanical functioning of the car and followed him.

We caught up with the van driver a mile and a half away, in slow traffic and convinced him to hand over his details.

I reported this incident fully to @sussex_police. They apparently consider dangerous driving and leaving the scene of a serious accident 'anti-social driving' and, so far, no action or statements have been taken, from the witness or me.

This surely cannot be right. How on earth are we expecting to deter and prevent this sort of potentially lethal behaviour, if these incidents are not subjected to the full rigour of the law?

[Lee Roach @leevalueroach]

Every asset you own was partly financed in Tokyo. That funding is being withdrawn.

For thirty years Japan lent the world money for free. Zero rates. Yield curve control. A currency engineered to sink.

So capital did the obvious thing: borrow yen at nothing, sell it, buy Treasuries, Nasdaq, emerging market debt, Mexican pesos, credit, anything with a yield, add leverage, repeat until the trade became invisible. Until it was simply the water global markets swam in.

Nobody knows how large it got. Estimates run from a few hundred billion to past 10 trillion depending on what you count, which is another way of saying nobody can size the unwind until it is already running.

August 2024 was the rehearsal. The Bank of Japan raised rates fifteen basis points. The Nikkei fell 12% in a day, its worst since 1987, and the VIX printed in the 60s.

Fifteen basis points.

The policy rate is now 1%, the highest since 1995. The yen still hit a 40 year low. Tokyo has burned roughly 133 billion dollars defending it in four months, 59 billion of that in a single night last week.

On Friday the US Treasury sold euros out of its own reserve account to buy yen through the New York Fed. The last time Washington intervened for the yen was 2011, after the Fukushima earthquake.

There is no earthquake.

Underneath the currency, the collateral is repricing. Japanese gross debt sits near 256% of GDP. The 10 year JGB hit a 30 year high. The 30 year broke 4% for the first time since that bond was created in 1999. The 40 year touched 4.24%.

Which quietly flips the arithmetic for the largest pool of patient capital on earth.

A Japanese insurer buying a US 10 year at 4.7% pays away roughly 250 basis points to hedge the currency and nets about 2.2%. The domestic JGB pays 2.8% with no currency risk attached.

Japan holds 1.19 trillion dollars of Treasuries as the largest foreign owner and sold nearly 30 billion in the first quarter alone. The most reliable marginal bidder in the world has started going home, and it is going home for arithmetic reasons, which means it is not coming back when volatility calms down.

Everyone will watch the equity selloff. The equity selloff is survivable.

The bond market is where this actually breaks. Forced deleveraging and Japanese repatriation hit Treasuries simultaneously, into a market where the 30 year already sits at its highest since 2007 and the Fed just held with three members dissenting in favor of a hike.

Stocks fall, bonds fall with them, and the hedge everyone has owned since 1982 stops functioning in the same week they need it.

At which point the Fed has no good option left. Oil is driving inflation, so it cannot cut. But a disorderly Treasury market is a systemic event, so if the long end goes it has to step in and buy.

That is printing money to hold down the price of government debt while inflation runs above target, and it has a name that nobody at the podium will use.

Here is the part almost nobody models correctly. The crash is a distraction. The crash is loud, brief, and recoverable.

What follows is a decade of nominal returns that never quite keep up, of a currency that buys slightly less every year, of a central bank that keeps rates below inflation because the alternative is a fiscal crisis.

Nobody photographs that. There are no bread lines. There is a person who bought Treasuries because that was the responsible thing to do, held them for fifteen years, and ended up with two thirds of what they thought they had.

That transfer is the actual policy. It moves wealth from whoever saved to whoever borrowed, and the largest borrower in the room writes the rules and appoints the referee.

Japan built this trap over thirty years and is now walking into it in public.

US publicly held debt is at 99% of GDP, the highest since 1946, with net interest headed from roughly 1 trillion to 2.1 trillion by 2036 while the primary deficit actually shrinks. The entire deterioration is interest compounding on itself

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

@PeterLBrandt Love this

[Bogachan Ozdemir @Bogachan_1971]

When #Barrons claimed that $CRWV was "woefully" undervalued, it traded around $120 on June 16... today around $66.6

I understand that you can be wrong but 50% in 45 days.... "woefully"....??

We are back to the same sad fact: In 2026 USA, anyone can do any job.

If I were you, I would not read a single article from mainstream or Twitter slvts about these stocks that can easily go up and down 50% in a month. These people have no idea about what they are writing about.

If you want to trade these stocks, trade momentum... most of them have no fundamentals... For example CoreWeave is like a SPV for $NVDA. It stores chips and financed by #Nvidia ... at the end of the movie, it will be worth nothing like all other SPVs we saw during GFC.

But it can easily double if the momentum comes back... and for that you need to monitor the markets not presstitutes.

[Bogachan Ozdemir @Bogachan_1971]

I had been more of a #StarWars fan then Star Trek, more of a Batman fan than Superman since early childhood.

Hollywood always found great talents to play the villain in Batman movies... The Joker...

We eventually got a real life version in USA when we tried to get rid of evil politicians... we replaced them with incompetent evil ones led by a real life joker.

Problem is... he hijacked the movie since there is no Batman and turned it into a Groundhog Day....

Joker issues memecoins to siphon $1.5 billion from people, sells early access to his tweets that move markets, buys and sells thousands of stocks before those annoucements, helps his Private Credit and Private Equity friends from #Epstein Island to stuff the retail, picks most incompetent people to run the government.... but none of this is as torturous as his childish conduct during #IranWar.

Even a 5 year old would not take Trump seriously anymore but markets, under serious amount of VIX supply, trade it.

Bad news? Hollywood will never be able to find a talent to play the role better.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

One of the most valuable skills in life is being able to see another person's perspective.

If you're going to someone's house, think about how it might feel to be the host. If you're creating a product, spend as much time as possible thinking like the customer. If you're calling customer service, think about how it might feel to be on the other end of the conversation.

The more clearly you understand the viewpoint of your spouse or customer or coworker, the better positioned you are to find a solution.

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

Legend

[FTBL_Planet @FTBL_Planet]

When Duncan Ferguson got home from Everton’s game at Watford in January 2001, it was around one in the morning and he was still too full of adrenaline to sleep.

His wife Janine had gone upstairs.

Their daughter Evie was six months old and asleep in bed.

Ferguson stayed on the sofa in his tracksuit bottoms, waiting for himself to calm down after the game.

Ferguson had heard a noise somewhere in the house, but had not thought much of it.

When he heard it again, he stood up and saw two shadows moving through the conservatory.

They were trying to leave with some champagne, a picture and a collection of CDs.

Ferguson went straight after them.

One of the men escaped immediately.

The other stayed and tried to fight him.

Ferguson knocked him to the floor and kept hitting him until Janine came downstairs and saw what was happening.

“Stop it, Duncan, stop it!”

“You’re going to kill him!”

Ferguson looked down and realised there was blood everywhere.

Only now, the anger had gone and he thought the man was dead.

He rolled him onto his side, cleared the blood from his mouth and tried to bring him round.

“Are you all right, son?”

There was no response.

Janine stood nearby asking what she should do.

“Will I phone the police or an ambulance?”

“Both.”

The police arrived first.

One of the officers took a look at Ferguson and the man lying on the floor.

“What have you done, Dunc?”

“Jesus, go and clean yourself up.”

The paramedics managed to revive the burglar before taking him to hospital, where he remained for three days.

By the morning, Walter Smith already knew something had happened.

Ferguson phoned him at eight o’clock.

“Boss, I’ve had some trouble.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You’re ringing me early in the morning.”

“Boss, a burglar broke into my place last night.”

Smith only had one question.

“How bad is he?”

The two men were eventually caught and jailed for 15 months.

The judge told the court that Ferguson may have given the impression of being a hard man, but the break-in had left him shaken because his wife and young daughter had been upstairs.

Janine no longer felt safe in the house, so the family moved to Formby.

Two years later, another burglar broke into their new home.

Once again, the champagne was being taken.

This time, the man came at Ferguson with a vodka bottle.

Ferguson ducked and caught him with a right hand.

The burglar went down and Ferguson returned upstairs.

“You’ll never guess what’s just happened.”

Janine knew immediately.

“You have caught somebody again.”

“Yes, and I’ve left him to crawl away.”

Janine told him to go back outside and check because the man might die.

He had only managed to crawl a few feet.

Ferguson called the police and an ambulance again.

The burglar spent two days in hospital with a broken jaw and three missing teeth.

“Everyone has a right to protect their home and their family.”

“Any intruder deserves what they get.”
#football

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Underrated life advice: A good life is built by simply doing uncomfortable things sooner. The delayed conversation gets harder. The ignored problem gets bigger. The small repair gets more expensive. Peace is never found through avoidance. It’s found through direct early action.

[Scott Bryan @scottygb]

Wayne Rooney speaks for everyone.

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

Rooney is right, half time show was crap

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Major cheat code for life: The ability to recognize things that don’t matter. The world will pressure you to care about every single thing. To chase every problem. To take every slight personally. To have opinions on everything. Reject that trend. Focus on a few, ignore the rest.

[W @_common_W_]

Argentina are the only team out of all 48 participants not to have a single VAR intervention against them, despite committing the most fouls in the tournament. Do you even realize how insane that is?

[Sarahh @Sarahhuniverse]

In January 1985, Diego Maradona defied Napoli's management to play a village charity match in Acerra, Italy, raising funds for a sick local child's life-saving surgery. Napoli's president opposed the match due to injury risks and banned its players from participating, but Maradona paid the insurance out of his own pocket. ❤

[Bogachan Ozdemir @Bogachan_1971]

Life is all about networks....

What you see on the left is a healthy state and right one is a clustered unhealthy one.

At T=0, initial conditions are set for your life where some are born to highly effective networks whereas most of others are born as peasants.

Why did USA became the most prosperous nation in 80 years after 1833? The pictures show you why.

Free Markets and #RuleofLaw works against clusters.

Today there is no rule of law in USA. If you have access to one of those sons of #Trump, you can use the information you get from them and make money in markets. This is true for rest of the government, #Senate and #Congress as well. Therefore it is true for all those government agencies working for them.

If your ability to make money in markets rely only on who you know, then it is all about clusters. It goes further than traders. If you are running a company, it does not matter if you sell anything but whether you get government invest in your company.

If government allows your bank lose a few hundred billions on investments you made and help you conceal it, it does not matter who you hire to run those investments. It is all about who you know to get hired.

You see how a healthy economy gets more and more clusters. This is a typical Emerging Markets economy where it is all about who you know and why anyone with talent and education had been moving out and mostly settling in USA who had the most healthy economy until 2008.

USA 2026 looks more like Turkiye than USA 2008. Therefore the problems it will face will be very similar to what Turkiye had faced last 78 years

[Tasos Hadjinicolaou @Tas_hadj]

@ThierryBorgeat Brilliant book

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Munger: "My advice would be if you have a fixable disadvantage, remove it. And if it's unfixable, learn to live [with] it. What else can you do? You fix what can be fixed and what can't be fixed you endure."