David

At the “fuck you pay me” point in my life. Lover of idiosyncratic risk. Power to the Players.

[David @fishstyx871]

@methodman Wu Tang is for the children!!

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE.....

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Tonight, Congress will vote to lower the age to prosecute minors as adults from 16 down to 14 in DC.

Let me get this straight:

Congress wants to prosecute 14 yr. olds as adults, but they don’t want to prosecute adults who sexually abuse 14 year olds?

Release the Epstein files.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

PSA: Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will.

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

The Hollow Men

American capitalism is rotting from the head down. We have replaced the "Owner-Operator"—the risk-taker-with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat: The Risk-Free Insider.

By "Insider," I am not referring to a specific title. I am referring to the entire administrative state that has captured the modern corporation. This includes the Directors who exist solely to collect fees, the Executives who exist solely to collect bonuses, and the Managers who exist solely to hire consultants.

These are the hollow men of the boardroom. They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about "governance" and "ESG." But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition.

In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken.

Today, we have severed that link.

We have rigged the game so that heads, the Insider wins; tails, the shareholder loses.

If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a "Golden Parachute" worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.

This looting starts in the boardroom.

We have normalized a "Country Club" culture where directors are selected based on social profiling rather than their ability to build a business. The modern board member is often a professional tourist—paid an average of $350,000 a year.

Let’s be brutally honest about what that number represents. The average director is paid nearly five times the GDP per capita of the United States. They earn more for attending four quarterly lunches than the vast majority of Americans earn in five years of hard labor.

And for what?

Most of these directors are "over-boarded," sitting on three or four boards simultaneously. They treat directorships as a gig economy for the elite. They fly in, rubber-stamp a compensation package they didn't read, and fly out. They collect checks from companies they do not understand, do not use, and certainly do not love.

They are not there to ask hard questions. They are there to be collegial. They are there to protect the other Insiders.

And what happens when these boards hire executives who also have no personal capital at risk?

We get the Delegation Economy.

When a Risk-Free Insider faces a crisis—bloated expenses, a broken supply chain, or a stale product—they do not roll up their sleeves. They hire a consultant. They pay a strategy firm millions of shareholder dollars to produce a 100-page deck telling them what they already know.

This is not management. It is intellectual money laundering.

They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.

While American Insiders are busy optimizing their severance packages, our global competitors are optimizing their products. They are not slowed down by bureaucracy. They are not waiting for a slide deck. They are outworking us.

If we continue to fill our C-suites with administrators instead of operators, we will lose our edge. We will see iconic American franchises hollowed out by fees, managed for the benefit of the Insiders, while the true owners—the shareholders—are left holding the bag.

The time for polite governance is over.

If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the "Owner’s Mentality." We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.

[Clint Jarvis @clinjar]

7 signs you have brainrot (& don't even realize it):

1. You idle-grab

[Cassandra Unchained @michaeljburry]

Remember GME? Bet you did not know this.

[TheUltimator5 @TheUltimator5]

Theory time about $GME - This is going to be a pretty massive claim, but bear with me:

My claim is that GME is swapped with Silver and JP Morgan is that major swap dealer holding the GME short swaps. Additionally, JP Morgan holds the Bear Stearns silver position, which far exceeds authorized position limits.

This feels like a big stretch making this claim, but I will write out my thought process.

On March 1, 2024, Chinese firms purchased a LOT of Gold and Silver calls from JP Morgan. In response, JP Morgan started hedging those by purchasing some of the underlying...
Apparently the problem here is that these Chinese firms weren't buying the gold and silver calls just to turn a quick buck... they actually wanted to exercise all of them.

Quick note: when you buy a TON of calls at a certain strike and exercise, you pay that price for the entire lot. If the price of the underlying goes above what the strike price is, then the difference is at the loss of the dealer. In this case, JP Morgan.

The calls were likely exercised Friday, March 22, 2024 (monthly OPEX). The next week, the price of gold and silver started skyrocketing, implying that JP Morgan was going out and purchasing it in the open market to deliver the goods. JP Morgan even sent their head of precious metal trading division, Scott Willig, to China that week to make good on their promise .(https://t.co/2avC7kN1Kt)

In response to the purchasing of all the precious metals, $GME started to rapidly decline for the entire duration of their purchase. This was likely their hedging algorithm doing basket readjusts on anything swapped with gold or silver. As soon as the gold and silver buying stopped, so did the decline in GME.

A few days after the buying stopped, the price of gold and silver took a sharp decline, and GME started rapidly increasing in price two trading days later.
For reference, price of gold and silver dropped on April 22, 2024 and GME got the first (3) blocks of 5,000 call contracts on April 24, 2024.

If you remember back in late Jan / early Feb 2021, media was yelling that silver was squeezing and Redditors were the root cause. GME may have been swapped with silver all the way back then and the T+2 delivery resulted in turmoil in the silver market... It looks like the link may still be as strong as ever.

The CFTC even admitted that the Bear Stearns silver positions were transferred to JP Morgan upon their collapse, and the positions were so large, that it violated position size limits. JP Morgan got special approval to hold these positions.... And GME is swapped against that. (https://t.co/DgHAwSlKjw)

In short, the theory here is that JP Morgan is the major player in the GME short swap baskets and Silver (or possibly gold) is a major player in the swap basket containing GME.

Podcast explaining the gold and silver China calls-
https://t.co/6OFVzApW16

[Quantum @quantum1nvestor]

$GME Q2 will be insane🚀

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

It took over 200 years for the U.S. debt to reach $12 trillion.

$12 trillion is how much we added in 4 years between 2020 and 2024.

[EndGame Macro @onechancefreedm]

@KobeissiLetter
This Nasdaq drop isn’t about Nvidia’s H20 chip it’s about market structure cracking under pressure.

Many headlines tonight are pinning the -300 point plunge in Nasdaq futures on the announcement of new restrictions around Nvidia’s H20 chip. But let’s be real: that news didn’t cause this. It triggered what was already primed to unwind. The market was set up for failure, and this headline gave it the narrative excuse.

Over the past 72 hours, we’ve seen clear signs of internal decay. The Nasdaq New Highs minus New Lows ($NAHL) just printed -1053, one of the worst breadth collapses since the 2008 financial crisis. Nvidia’s own options flow was flashing institutional-scale hedging activity, not typical profit-taking. This wasn’t a story about one chip this was a structural rotation out of high-beta risk, with liquidity vanishing and volatility regimes shifting mid-tape.

Add in macro stress: a soft devaluation in USD/CNY, potential Japanese FX intervention, and cross-market hedging pressure spilling into U.S. tech. NVDA tied to both Chinese end demand and U.S. AI euphoria became the perfect proxy to break. The H20 headline just lit the fuse.

This was not fundamentals. This was flow fragility. When volatility spikes and 0DTE dealers are caught offsides, market makers have to hedge violently. What you saw tonight wasn’t “the market reacting” it was the market being forced to adjust, violently, by its own positioning.

So no, this wasn’t about a chip. It was about a market built on leverage, narrative, and diminishing liquidity all converging under geopolitical stress. Stay sharp. Headlines don’t move markets vulnerabilities do.

[Just Another Pod Guy @TMTLongShort]

I’ll spell it out explicitly one last time.

Everyone thinks Trump wants balanced trade. He does not.

He wants to force allies to stop trading with China. Completely. Zero inbound supply.

Because it’s not just because of American jobs. It’s a proactive move to slow down Chinas industrial rise.

Everything is downstream of this. Reserve currency status. The ability to address fiscal debt.

It’s a crazy risk because China has a vote.

It’s a crazy risk because you are forcing Europe to commit seppeku because they have very little leverage or say in the matter.

It’s a crazy risk because Xi might bomb the fabs in Taiwan and the world doesn’t get AGI.

It’s a crazy risk because China knows how financialized we are and will dump bonds and equities to drive anger towards trump.

But it also has benefits if it works.

If your allies can’t trade with China there is no near peer competitor to worry about.

That has a ton of benefits. Just look at what happened after WW2/USSR collapse when American was the last man standing.

Hegemony.

Trumps advisors like Miran believe that you can coerce your allies to pay for your security umbrella in the form of buying longer dated treasuries.

This removes the overhangs of the debt load while allowing you to pump markets in time for midterms.

If Mexico can’t import from China then you solved the fentanyl crisis because they won’t have precursors.

More importantly by establishing a tolerance for risk the level of fear you can instill in cartels is an order of magnitude higher.

“Shit if they risked WW3 they won’t think twice about droning Sinaloa. “

This same “logic” applies to the Middle East.

Now I will repeat for the 100x that this is not advocacy.

I’m only telling you guys what the people in power believe. And I’m telling you that what happens next if I’m right will come down to how Xi wants to fight.

He can go gloves off or glove on. There are real constraints as I have outlined in prior tweets.

But there is a plan and therefore the tolerance for market pain is way way higher than you think.

Because first you need Europe to be willing to commit economic seppuku. And they won’t want to (rightly). So Trump will crush them economically until they cry uncle. And then they still won’t want to and he’s going to threaten to defang NATO. And then they still won’t want to and he will withdraw swap lines.

Or a lot more likely, he will do it all very forcefully and all at once to maximize leverage.

Now you’ll rightly ask… why wasn’t this messaged better? Why have midwits like Lutnik on the team?

Because you are attempting to execute a reckless gambit where the big variables are not what the tariffs rates are. Or if you tariff penguins. Or if the person sounds dumb on TV. Non of that matters.

What matters is - will Japan capitulate quickly and agree to buy a large amount of treasuries? Will Saudi capitulate quickly with your B2 bombers waiting in Diego Garcia to bomb Iran? Will China invade Taiwan?

Many of you think everyone around Trump is retarded. I get it. You hate the guy and everything he stands for. But I will say this until I’m blue in the face. Bessant, and even Miran, have higher IQs than most if not all of you. They thought through the second order effects. Believe me. If I, a dumb TMT L/S bro thought this far ahead, they certainly did too. Which means they warned Trump how risky this was and how deeply irrational it is if you planned to eventually cut a deal with China. Therefore you have to assume Trump heard the risks and said “fuck it we ball” anyways.

Economic Blitzkrieg. That’s what we’re seeing. And it’s only the start.

[Derek. 🇺🇸 @SuitablePolitic]

Bessent was hired to strengthen the dollar by doing the opposite of all the warning signs he saw in the British Pound.

Inflated housing markets, treasury yields, etc. all pointed to the big short that the Soros fund pulled off.

Bessent's obsession with the prices of homes and the interest rates on treasury bonds isn't just rank populism.

He's looking to strengthen the leading indicators of a currency.

This is what I mean by "white hat hacking" the dollar.

Mapping out its vulnerabilities to protect it against future exploitation.

One of the most glaring vulnerabilities was a heavily overinflated trading market. Wall Street was on a sugar high.

Hedge funds were leveraged to the gills, and if that bubble popped, it would have created an 08 style financial crisis.

The tariff roll out... volatility and all... was a way of creating controlled detonation.

Wall Street FREAKED OUT and deleveraged themselves.

Now, there won't be any banks or hedge funds who can't afford to pay off their loans because they overlevered.

The extreme tariffs are also coming at a time when Bessent sees a recession or depression happening in China. He emphasized this several times with Tucker.

By boxing in China and shutting down their exports, he's creating the same conditions that led to the big short of the British Pound.

If the Chinese Yuan collapses, then it'll cause a global flight into US Treasury bonds.

Driving down interest rates even further for when they go to refinance the $9T of expiring debt.

[Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff]

$GME is up 15% today simply because it announced that it would use the cash raised selling over-priced shares to meme stock investors to buy over-priced Bitcoin. Rather than using the cash to grow its core business, pay down debt, or declare dividends, it will gamble on Bitcoin.

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

@jimcramer Nooooooooooooooo 😂

[ⁿᵉʷˢ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. @RobertKennedyJc]

Who else is tired of seeing Big Pharma ads dominate every other commercial?

America is truly SICK from it.

We’re committed to cleaning up our airwaves and transforming our food system for a healthier future.

MAGA +MAHA

[MAGA Resource @MAGAResource]

Donald Trump has only been elected for 2 days and RFK Jr is already working on making America healthy again.

God bless him.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

If Israel insists on destroying civilian targets in Lebanon, let them buy and build their own weapons. American taxpayers should not be funding this.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr]

Fast Food is a part of American culture. But that doesn’t mean it has to be unhealthy, and that we can’t make better choices. Did you know that McDonald’s used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990? This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic. Interestingly enough, this began to drastically rise around the same time fast food restaurants switched from beef tallow to seed oils in their fryers.

People who enjoy a burger with fries on a night out aren’t to blame, and Americans should have every right to eat out at a restaurant without being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils. It’s time to Make Frying Oil Tallow Again 🇺🇸🍔

[FoxyFarmer🦊🇺🇸 @GardensR4Health]

🚨Urgent Update🚨Holy Fuck.

The government is not running ANY search and rescue missions.

This is Johnathan Howard, he’s up there running major rescue operations.

Warning: this is HORRIFIC so be prepared. His info in comments. Please tag NC politicians in comments.