Dan O'Sullivan

Technology Marketing - Bizdev strategy, positioning, market fit, sales. Cybersecurity, workforce education, vidstreaming #economics #history #politics #energy

[Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭 @ThierryBorgeat]

Imagine you spent 40 years doing the boring, responsible thing.

You opened a 401k at 23. You contributed every paycheck. You ignored the noise. You bought the index because Bogle told you to, because Buffett told you to, because every honest piece of financial advice for 30 years told you the index was the safest, most diversified, most rules-based way to own America.

The whole point was the rules.

The rules said: a company must trade for 12 months before joining the S&P 500. The rules said: it must show four consecutive quarters of GAAP profitability. The rules existed because in 1999 the index quietly bought a lot of stocks at the top, and pensioners paid the bill.

After the dot-com crash, S&P tightened the rules. Nasdaq tightened the rules. FTSE Russell tightened the rules.

For 23 years, those rules held.

Then SpaceX filed for IPO.

And the rules changed.

The S&P 500 waived the profitability requirement. Nasdaq cut its trading-history window from 90 days to 15. FTSE Russell cut its to 5.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the major index funds will absorb between 19% and 24% of SpaceX's float within six months. That's over $30 trillion of passive 401k and retirement money, mechanically buying a single newly public company at IPO valuations, because the rules said they had to.

Except the rules used to say they didn't.

Here's the thought exercise:

If you spend 40 years building a system designed to protect ordinary savers from buying overpriced stocks, and then you waive the protections the moment a sufficiently large stock asks you to, what was the system actually protecting?

Most of investing is about understanding what's a rule and what's a guideline.

A rule binds the rule-maker.

A guideline binds the saver.

You're allowed to find out which is which only after the fact.

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

Decades of Trickle Down and now the Age of Abundance are producing the " i " economy.

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@adamtaggart Decades of Trickle Down and now the Age of Abundance are producing the " i " economy.

[HustleBitch @HustleBitch_]

🚨 UNITED PASSENGER CATCHES INSANE NASA ROCKET LAUNCH FROM PLANE WINDOW — FLIGHT ATTENDANT LOSES IT MID-AIR

A United flight just turned into a front-row seat to history.

A woman captures the exact moment NASA’s Artemis II rocket launches… straight from her window at 30,000 feet.

And then you hear the flight attendant:

“15 years of flying… I’ve been praying to see something like this.”

• Rocket blasting through the clouds
• Crew calling it a “once in a lifetime” moment

He said he flew to Florida multiple times just to see a launch…

Canceled. Every time.

And then this happens midair.

What are the chances you randomly look out your window… and see history taking off?

[Cory 🦢 Real Bitcoin @ Swan.com @CorySwan]

"As Lutnick Sold Cantor to His Children, Tether Gave Them a Loan

Representatives for the financial services firm and the US Commerce secretary’s family declined to reveal the amount. An ethics expert said the loan may be ‘another favor his family owes Tether.’"
- Bloomberg headline

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@KeithMcCullough https://t.co/StisvUUb4l

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

He claimed every pop song is the same and then proved it in the most legendary way possible.

[Michael Green @profplum99]

Absolute must read. Especially @SecTreasuryofUS

[Ross Gerber @GerberKawasaki]

One thing that is absurd is @BillAckman made $140 mil in income last year and paid a lower tax rate than a school teacher in LA due to the hedge fund tax scam called carried interest. This must be stopped. He is an investment manager and should be paid w2 income like I am.

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@KeithMcCullough Kicking myself for not buying the dip 2~ weeks ago. Don't want to chase, but... Too late? Not in ETF Pro.

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@Bitfinexed Point that out and they'll tell you how the price of #eggs is down.

[Unicus @UnicusResearch]

We have raised concerns about private credit's deepening infiltration into both CRE and auto markets.

It is getting worse and the data is beginning to confirm what the main stream media have not yet caught up to (again).

https://t.co/rwn1CkIPzB

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@DougKass @JoeSquawk @SquawkCNBC Does the @SECGov ?

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@KeithMcCullough https://t.co/ViZGuVGLHm

[Hedgeye @Hedgeye]

As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, it’s worth revisiting Abraham Lincoln’s warning that America’s greatest threat would not come from abroad.

“If destruction be our lot," he said, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@RPKent @BPEInstitute "Cost Causation" should be added to every #ratepayer and #taxpayer working vocabulary.

[Michael Green @profplum99]

Makes you wonder if CEOs and board members are fully aware… (many are)

The SPACification of the QQQ has begun.

[Dan O'Sullivan @dan_osullivan]

@KeithMcCullough Tulip would be a good name for a crypto short instrument.

[Keith McCullough @KeithMcCullough]

Today in 1637, The Tulip Mania collapsed within the Dutch Republic

[Danielle DiMartino Booth @DiMartinoBooth]

January 23, 2026

OPEN
LETTER II

Every Hardworking American Who Wakes Up in the
Morning Asking Themselves What Went Wrong

The Federal Open Market Committee
2051 Constitution Avenue
Washington, DC  20418

Dear Distinguished Members of the Federal Open Market Committee,

Ahead of the contentious 2016 presidential election, Highland Park Presbyterian’s late Right Reverend Bryan Dunagan delivered a stern, succinct, secular message. To paraphrase, “If you don’t vote, you renounce the right to find fault for four years.” Deeply missed as he is, taken from the world at the tender age of 44 due to a fluke twist of medicine, Dunagan’s words are nonetheless directed at you this Wednesday.

By law, 18 of you can still occupy your positions at year-end. By law, you are required to elect the chair and vice chair of the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday, as is the case at the conclusion of every first FOMC meeting of the calendar year. By law, your vote counts. And by golly, if you don’t vote, you renounce the right to find fault with whomever President Trump nominates to a different position, that of chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

While you are more than aware, should President Trump choose to have Stephen Miran return to his post as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors after his abbreviated term ends the last day of this month, the 18 of you who can still occupy your positions at year-end are in full control of your fate. Allow me to repeat myself please. The gentleman or gentlewoman who stands behind the podium at the conclusion of every FOMC meeting to explain, on your behalf, why and how you have made monetary policy is the individual you elect.

Naïve, I am not. I worked inside the Dallas Fed for nine years. I personally bore witness to the deep intransigence against breaking with tradition. My vexation was so acute upon my departure that I wrote a book that immediately branded me persona non grata within the institution that 18 of you lead today. Call me bratty if you must. But two squandered years teaming up with 800 PhDs in economics searching for a better inflation gauge pissed into the wind left me…well, fed up. Why bother with the existential façade of caring for the American people if the solution required to correctly measure price pressures negated the ability to maintain zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE)? As such, as you are all highly cognizant, all staff papers concluding that a new inflation metric was needed to prevent a replay of the Great Financial Crisis were burned. So yes…a clinically hyperactive former markets advisor to Richard Fisher was sufficiently miffed to dedicate 2 ½ years of my life, with four kids under the age of 12, to writing a book explaining why the Fed abandoned the “public” officials are dutybound to serve.

But I don’t digress. The 18 of you can come clean on Wednesday. You can vote into power an FOMC chair who honors the Fed’s raison d’être of safeguarding the buying power of the U.S dollar.

At the risk of being political, which I’ve dedicated my career to avoiding, you have a Fed Chair candidate in your circle who can force the hands of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Trump.