Liviu Cazacu

“We mostly just sit around reading, thinking and waiting.” – Stanley Druckenmiller

[Lyn Alden @LynAldenContact]

A few common macro posts that come up over and over on this platform that you can mostly ignore.

1) “The Fed injected [X billion]…”

That’s usually the Fed recycling their maturing securities back into more of the same securities. Or the Fed doing some repo activity, adding a tiny bit of liquidity that comes back out the next day. This year, the Fed is growing their balance sheet very slowly.

2) “The Treasury bought back [X0 billion] of government bonds…”

The Treasury performing buybacks on its own debt is interesting because the deepest, most liquid capital market in the world shouldn’t need the issuer assisting with liquidity. And they could potentially shorten duration over time by issuing t-bills to buy back T-bonds, so that’s worth monitoring. But for the most part, these announcements are nothingburgers. The Treasury issues fresh liquid bonds to buy back aging less-liquid bonds. No appreciable impact on your money or investments.

3) The Treasury has [X trillion] in debt to refinance over the next 12 months, how are they possibly gonna find so many buyers?”

The vast majority of the Treasury’s debt that will be refinanced over a given year will be bought by the same entities holding it now. They’re holding t-bills, those t-bills mature into cash, and they buy the next t-bill. Money market funds, insurance companies, pensions, individuals, corporations, etc. Posting about gross refinance numbers is popular because the number is big and sensationalist, but it doesn’t mean much, which is why you hear about it for years and it’s fine. Net new issuance (about $2 trillion per year) is mostly what matters, and nothing stops that train.

4) “Banks have [X00 billion] in unrealized losses…”

Yeah that was a problem for about one quarter in spring 2023. It’s mostly a non-issue since then but whenever the quarterly number comes out, people love to report it like it’s devastating new information. The number is trending flat-to-down, and it’s a small portion of bank assets and equity capital.

Anyway, good morning. Carry on.

[Thomas Chua @SteadyCompound]

Gavin Baker spent a week in Silicon Valley looking for one number that showed AI demand slowing.

AI stocks had just fallen 40 to 60% in a straight line.

He found none.

My notes from his new interview:

[Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker ♟ @pelositracker]

Another win for corporations, another loss for Americans

President Trump’s tariff refunds for:

• Walmart $WMT: $2.4B
• Apple $AAPL: $2.2B
• Target $TGT: $2.2B
• Ford $F: $1.3B
• Nike $NKE: $1.0B
• Amazon $AMZN: $600M
• General Motors $GM: $500M
• UPS $UPS: $500M

Your refund:

• $0

[Barchart @Barchart]

Amazon (MONSTER) Insider Trading Alert 🚨

Founder Jeff Bezos dumps $4 Billion worth of $AMZN shares 🤯 👀

[Jeffrey P. Snider @JeffSnider_EDU]

Everyone got gold wrong last year. And then they got it wrong again this year.

The story was simple. Gold is screaming higher, so the dollar must be going to zero. A debasement trade.

Except that is not what happened. From the day the Iran conflict started to the day the ceasefire was signed, gold fell 24 percent.

If gold were really the dollar-collapse trade, that makes no sense. So what was it actually?

Gold was doing exactly what a reserve asset is supposed to do.

Think of reserves as a country's piggy bank. You buy gold because one day it will rain and you will need dollars fast. When the conflict hit and liquidity got tight, that day arrived.

So you look at what you hold. Treasuries down 20 percent, or gold up big. You do not sell at a loss. You sell the winner.

Turkey sold. Russia sold. The Gulf states, hit hardest, sold. Right on cue.

That is the part the gold bugs miss. Reserves only help you if you are willing to sell them. Gold that you will never part with does nothing in a crisis.

Gold did not fail last year. It did its job.

[Jesse Livermore @Jesse_Livermore]

Hard to even process -- a president selling market-moving information to banks and wealthy investors in advance of everyone else, and personally pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars from it. This alone is more worthy of impeachment than 100 Watergate cover-ups.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Corporate insiders have rarely been this bearish:

Just 14.8% of US companies have recorded more insider purchases than sales so far in July, on track for the lowest monthly reading in at least 21 years.

This percentage has declined -12.0 points since February and now stands ~7.0 points below the 10-year average of ~25%.

By comparison, ~44% of firms saw insider purchases exceed sales in January 2022.

The weakness is broad-based, with only 3 sectors, consumer staples, materials, and utilities, seeing net executive purchases.

Among large-cap companies specifically, just 3.2% recorded net purchases.

Corporate executives are becoming increasingly cautious.

[Anas Alhajji @anasalhajji]

قطر تشتري عدداً كبيراً من شحنات الغاز الطبيعي المسال الأمريكي للوفاء بالتزاماتها تجاه عملائها. قانونياً هي غير ملزمة، لكن قطر للطاقة تحاول الحفاظ على سمعتها وطمأنة زبائنها.

وهكذا سيطرت الولايات المتحدة على معظم حصة روسيا من الغاز في السوق الأوروبية، والآن تستحوذ على جزء كبير من حصة قطر في آسيا...

هكذا... إيران تريد أن تسيطر أمريكا على العالم من خلال الغاز والنفط والهليوم والأسمدة!

من أغلق مضيق هرمز؟👇👇👇👇👇👇

[Shay Boloor @StockSavvyShay]

THIS HAS TO BE THE STORY OF 2026

Ken Griffin’s Citadel was pushing surprise-rate-hike fears just days before the AI trade collapsed and forced 4x-levered Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness to unload its book near the lows.

Citadel then reportedly bought most of those assets at significantly lower prices knowing that if sentiment deteriorated enough the fund could be forced to sell which makes the entire sequence look absolutely ruthless.

This is why the stock market is the greatest game on Earth.

[Henrik Zeberg @HenrikZeberg]

514K FULL TIME JOBS WERE LOST IN JUNE 2026.

79K FULL TIME JOBS WERE LOST IN MAY 2026.

2.2M FULL TIME JOBS HAVE BEEN LOST SINCE JANUARY 2025

This is exactly what a major Cycle Peak looks like 👇

If you do not see it - Macro is not your thing!

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

IMO, the CHIPS/IRA era was a subsidy-fueled sugar high, BUT these data continue to show that there's been no tariff-fueled factory boom.

[Luke Gromen @LukeGromen]

Central Bank gold buying up 62% y/y in 2q26 to a record 289 tons, despite the Iran war...

...or perhaps BECAUSE of the Iran war...

...because as we're seeing, while truth is said to be the first casualty of war...

...the second casualty of war are sovereign bonds.

[Henrik Zeberg @HenrikZeberg]

This is our "HISTORICAL ANALOG" in our #DemocratizingMacro

Instead of GUESSING which period today resembles, we have gathered close to ONE million data points.

And the verdict is clear!

We are in LATE PHASE OF THE BUSINESS CYCLE i.e. Recession is coming!

And looking broadly at the Economy, the current period resembles Q4 1999 and evenly Q3 2007.

There can be no debate about that.

THIS IS DATA-BASED FACTS.

[Cem Karsan 🥐 @jam_croissant]

“The Fed has not been taking the inflation "problem" seriously..” B/C THEY DO NOT SEE IT AS A ‘PROBLEM’.

Inflation has become a feature, not 🚫a bug 🐜 of the current system. It is how the USA 🇺🇸 will monetize its debt.

Hank Paulson’s trial balloon 🎈has already clearly laid out treasury’s plan to backstop the treasury market. This will be QE ♾️ into inflation & they know it. Any serious economist knows this only leads to 1 outcome… An inflationary loop 🔁…

Warsh/Bessent ➡️ Arthur Burns 2.0

[Special Situations 🌐 Research Newsletter (Jay) @SpecialSitsNews]

360,000 accounts have been liquidated in Korea $EWY
https://t.co/kpHwdMtpsV

[CrossBorder Capital/ GLIndexes @crossbordercap]

Whatever the #Fed decides is a major deleveraging already baked-in? @gnoble79 @JuliaLaRoche @JackFarley96 @fejau_inc

[Ronnie Stoeferle @RonStoeferle]

Gold Market Cap as a % of Global Stock Market Cap:

What a great chart by my pal @TaviCosta

His blogpost https://t.co/U6D5e2c0ns is highly, highly recommended!

[Liviu Cazacu @XLevux]

Nikkei Asia revealed that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle are carrying $1.65 trillion in debt that does not appear on their balance sheets. That’s in addition to the roughly $1.35 trillion in debt they officially report

[Liviu Cazacu @XLevux]

Consumer Staples: Companies that produce everyday necessities like food, beverages, household goods
Healthcare: Pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and healthcare providers
Utilities: like water, electricity, and natural gas.

[Stern Drew @SternDrewCrypto]

🚨INSANE: Axios Insider Just Torched Oil Market With a $100M Short on Hyperliquid, Hours Before the News Even Dropped

A 9-figure Axios-linked insider trader on Hyperliquid opened a massive oil short position just before the ceasefire proposal.

This comes as the US and Iran have submitted their formal responses to a joint Pakistani-Qatari proposal following a US request to return to negotiations, per Al-Arabiya.

11 oil trades. 11 wins. 100% win rate.

The White House denied everything.

The blockchain keeps recording everything.