Owning Great Businesses Beats Predicting the Future
Full episode: https://t.co/pcpUzwJuhA
First episode of What Are We Missing with Pieter Slegers from Compounding Quality. He ignores macro entirely and just buys businesses he'd own for 20 years. Quality stocks haven't been this cheap in a decade. The full conversation challenged everything I do every morning.
#investing #stocks #momentum #WarrenBuffett #qualityinvesting
The AI Trade Is Becoming an Infrastructure War - Nvidia Earnings Preview
Everybody thinks Nvidia's earnings tomorrow are about chips. They're not. The largest company on the planet reports tomorrow night after the close. Wall Street is going to spend twelve hours obsessing over the usual things — revenue, margins, guidance, and whether Blackwell demand is still accelerating. They're watching the wrong screen.
Because Nvidia is no longer competing against AMD. It is competing against Amazon. Against Google. Against Anthropic. Against every customer it built dependent on it.
And underneath all of that... the AI trade is becoming an infrastructure war.
This is an Okay Show (Morning BBRRRRR)
Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for (whoa)... Been searching in the dark, your sweat soaking through the floor (whoa)
Good morning…
I hope you’re all off to a great start this morning… here’s the greatest morning show in the history of morning shows…
Stay positive,
Garrett Baldwin
https://t.co/ByJH795W75
Oil hit nearly $120 overnight. Both WTI and Brent over $100. Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down. Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan already rationing fuel. Markets down hard pre-open.
I broke down the full picture last night. Oil scenarios, nat gas, fertilizer chains, airline exposure, and 5 questions every investor should be asking themselves before the open.
Postcards from the Edge of the World (Vol. 5)
The insurance system is just an incentive created by the money printer...
To Whom It May Concern (You):
I was recently rejected for a life insurance policy.
I wasn’t repriced or upsold.
I just received a rejection letter in the mail.
The reason? I have a pre-existing condition.
It’s a phrase that sounds medical but really isn’t.
What it means is simpler and colder…
My risk no longer fits their risk model.
I wasn’t mad.
I just nodded by the mailbox.
But this rejection stayed with me longer than it should have.
It certified something I’d been circling for months… long before I started Postcards from the Edge of the World.
Insurance has become the place where every other inflationary decision settles.
In the things that really matter…
The Fed prints money. Deflation ends up in technology…
But the stuff we need… the stuff that matters… is tied to the fiat explosion…
Healthcare. Homes. Education. Electricity. Cars.
Even the act of staying alive long enough to matter to someone else.
Insurance is no longer protection.
Insurance is really… PERMISSION...
It’s permission to own a home.
It’s permission to drive a car.
It’s the permission slip we receive to access healthcare.
I’ll call it what it is.
Sorry to speak so bluntly…
But welcome back to the Edge of the World...
The Ways They Take
Let me show you how they’ve done this… 👇👇👇
Break Out the Candlebox... Markets Have Another 1993 Moment...
Hey, what do you know? BlackRock is at the center of another "innovation..."
Dear Fellow Traveler:
1993 might be the most important year of my lifetime in the financial markets.
Clinton tax changes. Inflation targeting. Wu-Tang Clan. Robert Rubin…
And the very first passive exchange-traded fund (ETF). The S&P 500 SPDR (SPY)…
The SPY was supposed to be simple, a way for regular investors to get broad access to the S&P 500 without picking stocks.
But it morphed into an investment practice that became a massive market distortion.
Thirty-two years later, there are now more ETFs than U.S. stocks. Money managers are better off charging 0.3% to track the S&P 500 than to actually pick stocks and try to generate a slice of outperformance…
And BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street control the ETF flows.
Now they want more.
So here comes BlackRock’s Larry Fink with another “revolution.”
This will be great…
Break out your Candlebox CD… Vs. by Pearl Jam… 36 Chambers… Doggystyle…
Just not In Utero by Nirvana (there are 30 albums better from that year)…
Whatever gets you through… because we’re having another 1993 moment…
And when we all look back in a decade, wondering why nobody owns anything anymore… remember Fink’s latest op-ed…
Click the link in the comments to finish this article free on Substack 👇👇👇
Why Michael Burry Walked Away...
A man committed to fundamentals and rational markets... finally sees the market for what it is...
Dear Fellow Traveler:
This morning, I read an article by @QTRResearch that resonated quickly with the state of affairs in the financial markets. The title wasn’t subtle: “Breaking Burry.”
The author eviscerates the way things work these days, noting that when it comes to extreme valuations and companies with terrible financials (and fundamentals)… You USED to short them into the ground for pride and profit.
That was how markets used to work… He notes:
"That was the job. You shorted garbage. You shorted things that didn’t generate cash. You shorted fraud. And you got paid for being right, because the scales of the market used to hover at least somewhat near calibrated and neutral."
The author laments the source of short sellers in the market… the people who point out the complete misallocation of capital in this world.
Unfortunately, for many of them today, they become a clear source of buying liquidity during the next squeeze… They’re the ones taking it on the chin. Their thesis is correct… but they’re fighting against a totally different animal: A world of refinancing.
It’s not hard to look at this market and wish the pre-2009 fundamental focus would return.
But it hasn’t. It’s the same shit every day…
Citing Michael Howell, as I noted this morning, the combination of passive investing and leveraged funds has taken over market flows, all incentivized by continuous support from loose fiscal and monetary policy over the last 17 years.
The last few years are especially evident in the increased support for Treasury operations, which have only boosted available liquidity to drive stocks higher.
Leverage and liquidity are dominating the market… helping to amplify returns on or extend the runways of crappy companies that should have gone bankrupt long ago…
Today, I want to take QTR’s statement just a little further with a review of an academic whom I really respect… on how the markets are now doing the complete opposite.
If you think it’s bad on the macro-economic side…
Let’s take it down to the balance sheet…
Click here to finish reading this article free on Substack 👇 https://t.co/WGcwumBCDL
Avoid the crash - A simple tool for spotting cracks in the system
Most traders treat FNGD, the 3x inverse FANG ETN, like just another levered toy.
I treat it like a warning light.
When FNGD breaks above its 20-day moving average, that is not noise. That is credit and liquidity stress leaking into the broader market. Add it to your toolbox.
When it flashes, I take it easy. I sell calls on names I am fine letting go. I raise some cash. Then I wait. Because every crack in liquidity eventually hands you the dip you want to ride higher.
Want to see how I use this in real time?
Join me for Market Masters at 8:45 a.m. ET every weekday. We break down momentum, liquidity, and insider flow together before the open.
Link in the comments👇👇👇👇
Riot Platforms - RIOT - just got big upgrades...
The bitcoin miner picked up fresh upgrades from JPM and Citi. Both leaning into the same story… this isn’t just a miner anymore.
That Corsicana buildout is sitting on 600 megawatts of power. They’re already looking at AI and HPC demand for it. And they just grabbed more land. This thing could push toward a gigawatt over time.
Jason Les bet big on vertical integration. Power first. Land first. Infrastructure first. People laughed at that strategy. Looks like it might pay off.
We’re live every weekday morning at 8:45 a.m. ET on Market Masters.
If you want to catch it in real time, the link’s in the comments 👇👇👇
Everyone’s a Fed Expert Today
It's one of those days where even my kid has an opinion on Powell.
My wife’s got a take.
The neighbor’s one-year-old probably expects a coordinated global bailout.
CNBC will have balloons falling from the ceiling when they announce a 25-point cut.
Cats and dogs living together. Full chaos.
That’s the theater.
But behind all that noise?
Liquidity, momentum, hidden actions that actually move markets. That’s where we’ll focus.
We’re live at 2 p.m. ET to trade the Fed with Don Kaufman, plus a few other special guests.
Should be fun, should be wild, and yeah… it actually matters.
Check in the comments for the link to join us. It's FREE!
See you there...
-G-