Greg Merrill

CFA, RIA, Money manager in Federal Way, WA. Any commentary on the markets is wrong and you'd be a fool to believe it. p.s. It's twitter

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

@JoshYoung @hkuppy Na Man, it runs off vibes!

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Oil Spike?
Inflation Spike?
Recession Spike?

[Hedgeye @Hedgeye]

US inflation is eroding real wages for the first time in over two years

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Do this to an uncontacted tribe just before you land.

[まだ面白い @madaomoshiroi]

中国のニューイヤードローンが凄すぎる…

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

@RussianBear Your Quant?

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

China aggressively undercut the world’s solar markets until it became a monopoly. Everyone thought falling solar panel costs reflected some sort of technological leap, and lapped up the cheap panels. But now it turns out none of this output was cost effective at these prices. And the sector has become too costly for China to support fiscally.

As a result, the West’s climate agenda faces losing its Chinese subsidy. This is going to add even more cost pressure to most households and make net zero even more unachievable without making everyone significantly poorer. But I disagree that China’s monopoly position can somehow be used as statecraft.

With prices normalised capitalism will revert to doing what it does best. All the Western manufacturers that China originally priced out (and who were actually innovating properly) will be back within a couple of years or less.

[Jeremy Raper @puppyeh1]

I think this is a very important point. Big 7 management are clearly not “retards”, they see the way the puck is going and AI represents an existential threat - imminently - to huge chunks of their businesses (esp Google).

That is obvious and means endless capex to win AI race is not optional - it’s almost like maintenance capex at this point - but given it’s forced there is a huge chance it’s malinvestment/just a massive waste of money.

Obviously, in this scenario all the CEOs will tell you it’s not a woodchipper, it’s actually got amazing ROEs to it attached. Internally I bet you there are SOS emails going back and forth (“we have to spend the money Sergey otherwise we fucked anyway”).

It’s just another technology transition where the incumbents are petrified their current businesses are the horse and buggy. They will obviously spend anything, anything, to try to avoid that fate.

[Brandon Beylo @marketplunger1]

Historically it has not been a great signal when Cash-Rich mega-cap companies sell stock for capex buildouts.

Snagged this chart from the @MacroOps Dirty Dozen.

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Stephen Kotkin on Iran war, Israel, Russia, China; our current points of conflict. As always a good listen.

https://t.co/NJRm90vEfP

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Here's your daily dose boys.

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Sure, GoogleMaps is cool but not half as cool as ORBIS. The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World allows you to check travel times during Roman times. You can choose your mode of travel too! Source: https://t.co/zgVnhUdbKh

[Khan Noonien Singh @wtfcetialpha5]

You only think about yourselves.

[Nic @nicrypto]

This has never happened before in the modern era.

Central banks now hold more gold than US Treasuries as reserve assets.

Gold: 27% of global reserves. US Treasuries: 22%.

When Washington froze Russia's dollar reserves in 2022, central banks around the world started moving systematically into gold.

Three consecutive years of buying over 1,000 tonnes each year followed.

De-dollarization own goal.

[The Steampunk Gentleman Gamer ⚙️🚂🎩 @quirked_up_anzu]

Right before Porkins is shot down, Biggs yells "Eject!" at him as if they aren't all wearing open helmets and wouldn't just die anyway in the vacuum of space

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

@izakaminska So could this be something similar? Once people learn a trick they will try it again.

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Interesting theory. I don't have any serious conviction as to whether it's correct or not, but I wouldn't dismiss it.

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

🧵1/ Let's engage in a thought experiment. Let's assume for a second the reason China's energy stockpiles are not being drawn down isn't because the country has gigantic secret stockpiles no-one in the market has as yet detected.

Let's assume instead it's because the warehouse receipts underpinning these reserves exist as a type of base money that funds an extremely over-extended and leveraged shadow financing system. A parallel-dollar clearing system if you will. And that liquidating any of this collateral would trigger a daisy chain credit event, equivalent to a run on the yuan.

Far-fetched you say? Well let's test the hypothesis by running through what you would expect to see more broadly if it is indeed true that the reason the stockpiles are not being liquidated is because the system can't financially afford to extinguish that collateral without sparking a financial crisis.

https://t.co/BzNLQzXTKh

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

@izakaminska Weren't they financializing copper stocks several years ago?

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

@FreeRangeKids A teenage boy's idea of clean is not the same as an ice cream store's idea of clean.

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Excessive money supply growth creates excessive inflation.

[Steve Hanke @steve_hanke]

Argentina’s April inflation comes in at a RED HOT 32.4%/yr.

AR’s money supply is growing at 29.5%/yr. That's WELL ABOVE Hanke's Golden Growth Rate of 14.8%/yr, a rate consistent with hitting its de-facto 10%/yr inflation target.

INFLATION = PRES. MILEI'S ACHILLES HEEL.

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

Ironic I'm reading this on Twitter.

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Society is full of little, insidious mechanisms trying to capture and divide your energy and focus

This is completely against your own self-interest, but from this discourse this weekend on unhappiness in the face of abundance it should be fully evident that people are almost powerless to resist these forces

This is because the smartest people in the world are hard at work creating novel approaches to highjack your attention, degrade your willpower and convince you to trade your money and your time for the next _____ which will surely, finally, bring your happiness

But success, and contentedness, come from investing in *fewer* pursuits with *more* depth and intensity

You only need a few great friends who you can count on and who can count on you. A couple of hobbies you are willing to be bad at for years until you slowly live your way into well-crafted mastery. Your career will flourish if you embrace the dogged pursuit of a single outcome over a long period of time

This is the tension of modern existence, and the true meta-skill to hone and refine over decades. How do you live a deliberate life in a world that actively wants you to exist in a state of reactive desire?

I don’t claim to have the answer, and would simply posit this:

Become aware of all the ways society, and people, try to hijack your one precious life to divert attention toward things that really and truly do not matter, and even actively harm you

And every day seek to build mental and emotional resilience against those forces and cultivate persistence in your pursuit of the few things that really and truly matter

It is hard. Many days you will fail. But you cannot let the world knock you off balance and live a life defined by someone else’s terms

It is perhaps the only thing that matters

[Greg Merrill @merrillmatter]

I've pondered this before but Sabine wraps it all together. I wonder if there will be enough power growth to match the AI compute demand growth.

https://t.co/epNQ5qnrxx