Ideas on global macro and markets. Tweets are not meant as advice of any type. purely academic & for discussion only. consult your fin. advisor & do your own DD
Indexes are the NEW dumb money, it is built into regulations and guidelines. Now we made taking money from 401K possible by simply manipulating 10~ committee members and move wealth from working to elites. This is on top of ocean of money printing by manipulating CPI @profplum99
“This is recognized as something different, and we’ve dropped any pretense that they are passive indices.”
Mike Green returns to Excess Returns to discuss why the SpaceX IPO may mark a turning point in how investors think about passive investing.
✅ Why index funds now act as active forces in the market
✅ How SpaceX exposed the power of index committees
✅ How passive flows mechanically favor the biggest stocks
✅ What happens when years of buybacks meet a flood of new supply
✅ Why AI earnings may be more circular than they look
✅ Why the headline economy may be missing household stress
✅ What AI may change eventually, but not as quickly as markets expect
Rise of machine trading means no machine really understands what a deal means (so much for “AI”). There is no deal and there will never be any deal, one side has to surrender. That is all. In the meanwhile oil inventories are being depleted and bubble gets even more air.
This "deal" is essentially a deal to extend the current ceasefire deal for another 60 days to discuss uranium, compensation, and unilateral sanctions. Not sure what all the excitment is about. Iran would have 30 days to re-open the SOH and IRGC already said that traffic through the strait would not return to pre-war levels.
Well, here's some math. Starlink is a profitable business with about $11 billion of sales and $3 billion of free cash flow. It might be worth $75 billion at a frisky multiple of 25X free cash flow.
The balance----the space launch business and the AI/data centers in space fantasy----has $7 billion of sales and NEGATIVE -$17 billion of free cash flow. So why is it worth anything, unless you are pricing a dream peddled by sell-side hucksters?!
In short, after trading up to $2 trillion based on $75 billion of tangible Starlink value, where's the remaining $1.925 trillion of it?
This isn't just the classical mania of the crowds. This is sui generis--- mass insanity in a casino that has been giving a lobotomy by three decades of money-printing madness at the Fed and its fellow-traveling central banks around the planet.
There is a lot of manipulation the oil markets and by extension every other market (treasury and stocks etc). No one should have any absolute views and be prepared for everything. As much as I believe we are headed to a #WTI glut, to get here we may have huge spike first
The oil ETF $USO currently has 14,923,603 shares outstanding. The short interest is 19,660,351 shares or ~130% - Do you remember what happened to GME years ago in a similar situation?
Yes, not only there is government price suppression ongoing, but this is one of the many data points signalling how investors are shorting oil to an obscene degree
Don't be surprised if as soon as "tank bottoms" become headlines, the biggest short squeeze ever in the commodity markets triggers, along with a rush to secure crude oil in short supply to replenish critically low commercial and strategic oil reserves across the globe
Also more than GE Aerospace, RTX, Boeing, Airbus, Safran, Honeywell, Rolls Royce, Lockheed Martin, Howmet Aerospace, BAE, & Northrup Grumman combined...
Internal spreadsheet projections were 100’s of billion in revenue, but that is not justifiable from people who are going to spending the money. So AI megaphones resorted to hyperbole of all jobs are going to be gone and we will pick up those rev. Not happening fast enough !!
The AI bubble has burst.
Now OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing for a user war and price war.
Chinese AI models are dramatically cheaper, forcing U.S. AI companies to cut prices and sacrifice margins to stay competitive.
The higher the competition gets, the harder it becomes to justify hundreds of billions in AI spending and the valuations built on those expectations.
Everyone talked about growth at the top.
Now they’re talking about price cuts.
$MSFT $GOOGL $AMZN $META $NVDA $AMD $MU $TSM $ASML $ARM $AVGO #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #TechStocks #StockMarket #Investing
⚠️US households are ALL-IN on US equities:
American households now hold a record ~48% of their financial assets in stocks.
This exceeds the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble peak by 10 percentage points.
This is all unfolding at a time when US stock market valuations are at the highest level since the Internet Boom peak.
We know what happened next.
Is history set to repeat itself?
If you run a budget deficit of 6-7% of GDP and Fed prints money to support that deficit. Inflation is guaranteed. It is just monetary math. Of course if we corrupt CPI enough to exclude anything that goes up, in that fantasyland inflation will go down and you can lower rates
Kevin Warsh's view is clear: AI will eventually force interest rates lower because it will be highly deflationary.
"AI is going to make almost everything cost less. We're at the front end of a productivity boom."
The problem is that today's economy is telling a different story.
Inflation is at 4.2%, its highest level in three years.
Tensions with Iran continue to threaten oil supplies.
The labor market remains strong.
AI may be deflationary in the long run, but the Fed has to deal with today's inflation first.
I don't expect a single rate cut before the end of 2026.
The velocity of the US oil industry throughput is stunning. From well head and imports by pipleline and east and west coast ports and the LOOP, to refineries in PADD3 running at 98% cap utilization last week... exporting 7 to 8 mm bbls of products every day and 5.5 mm bbls of oil. Producing 23.3 mm bbls of petroleum crude and fluids last week... US oil companies are printing money, sir, and this is just the beginning.
@kieran__duff I knew traders in the pit that made 500k a year that still worked their old job as baggage handlers at O'Hare on the weekends to avoid having trading be their only income.
On stocks there may be another Euphoric Iran resolution related rally. Institutions and FO’s are salvaging to sell into it. Stocks are not going up from here on this traders opinion except for a brief spurt (if it hapones)
Not trading oil directly but I will not be Long #WTI. Barrels are getting out. Gulf countries have found ways overland,pipelines,tankers with transponders off etc. Oil companies are salivating to lock in prices and could unload 100’s of million of barrels. Just 1 trader opinion
Again to be clear. I am not calling $50 oil in June26. Rather more like in 9-12 mos. Short term oil market is heavily manipulated. I could easily see oil in $120-$140 (not forecasting). It all depends on how quickly SoH opens. ST hard to predict, LT, I see a glut
Congratulations to the entire team @porterstansb We all know how difficult it is to get these things through the door. Wish a everyone a tremendous success. 🇺🇸🇺🇸
Congratulations @porterstansb on the launch of this ETF!
I have been a fan of Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio for years. Coincidentally, I received a clean copy of his 1970’s book “How You Can Profit From The Coming Devaluation” just yesterday.
I am familiar with your work and how you have sensibly modernized Harry’s work with a better version using tools that Harry never dreamed of. It’s great to see this ETF happen. This will help a lot of people get access to an important portfolio construction that they can “set and forget”.
Well done.
Congratulations @porterstansb on the launch of this ETF!
I have been a fan of Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio for years. Coincidentally, I received a clean copy of his 1970’s book “How You Can Profit From The Coming Devaluation” just yesterday.
I am familiar with your work and how you have sensibly modernized Harry’s work with a better version using tools that Harry never dreamed of. It’s great to see this ETF happen. This will help a lot of people get access to an important portfolio construction that they can “set and forget”.
Well done.
why Ron Baron makes billions while most people lose everything
when asked how he turned a little money into $40 billion by just ignoring the news - he dropped the cold truth:
"guys stare at screens all day trying to guess what happens next - we buy a company and literally don't look at the price for years"
"when tesla crashed in 2019 everyone in finance panicked and sold - we didn't care at all, kept all our shares, and made $4 billion"
"regular guys sell the second a stock drops a few bucks - we buy a good company and just leave it alone even when everyone is freaking out"
Baron didn't make $40 billion by guessing what happens tomorrow. He made it by just sitting on his hands and doing absolutely nothing while everyone else panics
bookmark and watch him explain how he actually plays the game
@aeberman12 That is essentially same as my math I put out 10 weeks ago. However in future when this is all resolved #WTI is going to $50. We will have 8 MBPD surplus once things normalize, and oil will be at $50~
Only innovation #Apple had since Steve Jobs is that they sell a plug for the wire to plug into USB for $20 which could have stayed as USB. Company lacks any innovation and does not deserve this valuation.
Apple now trades at 10.36x sales. The highest valuation in its history.
Remember Scott McNealy's warning about 10x sales? Apple just crossed it.
But here's the part that should stop you.
McNealy was describing a hypergrowth company. Apple is not. Apple's annual revenue:
– 2022: $394 billion
– 2023: $383 billion (its first decline since 2019)
– 2024: $391 billion
– 2025: roughly $415 billion
Four years. Less than 2% growth a year. Essentially flat.
Yet over those same four years, the stock soared and the price-to-sales multiple nearly doubled.
Read that again.
The revenue barely moved. The valuation exploded. Every dollar of the gain came not from Apple selling more, but from investors agreeing to pay more for the same sales.
That is multiple expansion. It feels like growth. It is not growth. It is sentiment.
Apple's long-term average price-to-sales ratio is 3.6x. It now sits at 10.4x. Nearly three times its own historical norm.
For the math to work from here, one of two things has to happen. Either Apple suddenly reaccelerates revenue growth after years of stagnation. Or the multiple holds at the highest level in company history. Forever.
History says multiples revert. They always do. The only question is whether earnings grow fast enough to cushion the fall.
This is the quiet danger hiding in the "safest" stock in the world.
Nobody worries about Apple. The ultimate quality compounder. A Buffett favorite. A permanent holding.
All of that can be true.
And you can still lose money for a decade if you buy a flat-growth business at three times its normal price.
Great company. Demanding price.
They have never been the same thing.